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Showing posts with label probate courts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label probate courts. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2016

Guardianship Gulag

Guardianship Gulag

One former nurse was so enraged by Fort Worth’s probate court that she wrote a book about it.
12
Posted April 13, 2016 by Static in News
A-Breach-of-Trust
Few newspapers have published more stories on probate courts and guardianship cases gone wrong than yours truly. Tarrant County’s probate courts, led by Judges Pat Ferchill and Steven King, hear difficult cases, for sure. But the Fort Worth Weekly has spotlighted numerous instances in which people have been stripped of their rights and removed from their homes with little justification. Associate Editor Jeff Prince has written a dozen stories, beginning with “Saving Katia” on July 2, 2008, and as recently as “Torn Apart” on March 16, 2016. He has described how a powerful system of judges, attorneys, bankers, and care providers are overstepping the limits of decency if not legality.
More and more newspapers nationwide have begun scrutinizing their own probate courts and guardianship systems. In Texas, the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, and San Antonio Express-News are providing the best coverage among mainstream dailies. A San Antonio-based grassroots coalition of activists known as G.R.A.D.E. is relying on social networking to build up their numbers and push for probate reforms. They and other people make frequent trips to Austin to speak at legislative hearings. And why shouldn’t they? Ferchill and other judges attend public hearings to speak in favor of laws that give them more power to tear apart families in the name of greed.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has been more of a cheerleader to the courts than anything. The paper has published stories depicting families who are happy about the court intervening in sticky situations. The paper has written puff pieces about judges. That’s fine –– good things do happen in probate courts sometimes. But the paper has pretty much ignored the questionable decisions being made on a regular basis inside those courtroom walls.
You know who isn’t ignoring Tarrant County’s guardianship system any longer? Susan Hodges.
Who is she?
Well, there is no reason you would know her. Until recently, she was just a retired nursing home administrator living the slow and easy life in Fort Worth. But something nagged at her. No, it was more than nagging. She has been haunted for years. Her conscience had declared war on her and was using razor-barbed guilt as its primary weapon of torture. Hodges worked at several nursing homes over the years, but it was her time spent in a Fort Worth facility that created her many sleepless nights. Her dealings with the local guardianship program showed her that the judges, attorneys, and caseworkers were more interested in power, control, and money than in doing what’s best for people.
Hodges felt guilty about being unable to protect some of her nursing home residents from decisions made by the local judges and court-appointed lackeys. So she wrote and self-published A Breach of Trust: Your Life Belongs to Them Now, her book “based on a true story” about dealing with the local probate courts.
“It took me this long to write it because I’m scared to death of that court,” Hodges said. “All the other nursing homes I worked in, none of this happened. There is something with [Fort Worth’s] guardianship program that I don’t understand. I don’t want to deal with these people again.”
Hodges based her book’s stories and characters on real events and people, although she used fictitious names. Some characters were composites of different people. But the nuts and bolts of the story were true, she said, including the part about the local guardianship system being a nightmare for people who have the misfortune of becoming elderly and vulnerable. In the book, the author connects heavy-handed tactics of the guardianship system with the premature deaths of patients. And while the first-time author is no Ken Kesey, her book is comparable to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the outrage it inspires against institutional abuses.
Tarrant County guardianship administrators would take control of patients via the probate judge’s rulings. Then, if nursing homes or other institutions did not do exactly as told, the guardians would move the patients somewhere else, Hodges said.
“The courts are very ignorant about what a nursing home is all about,” she said.
Nursing homes become small communities with groups of people forming deep friendships that, in some cases, improve their physical and mental wellness. The probate court seemed to consider money first when making decisions about when and where to move clients, she said. This is hard on old people, who get used to nurses, food, and surroundings. They become close to one another.
“The residents usually start loving the home, and they’re proud of it,” she said.
She recalled supervising a nursing home that was adjacent to another nursing home, and the residents in both homes acted like students at rival high schools, competing with each other to be the best.
But the probate court sees the residents as commodities rather than human beings, she said.
“It’s very gut-wrenching,” Hodges said.
Old people can die quickly when they’re ripped away from their community. Hodges saw it happen. That’s what haunted her the most.
“I’m supposed to be protecting these people,” she said. “I never took another court-appointed [client] from Fort Worth again.”
Later, she left Fort Worth and worked at nursing homes in rural areas.
“You don’t see this in rural areas,” she said.
Why not?
Well, people in rural areas know one another. They run into each other at dinner, at school, at church. If a judge tries to force people into guardianship cases to remove their rights and take control of their lives and bank accounts, every person around hears about it. That judge is unlikely to be reelected.
Tarrant County has almost two million people, making it much easier to destroy lives in anonymity.
Hodges said she complained to the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, the agency that licenses and regulates care providers.
“I was told, ‘Hands off.’ DADS does not get involved in anything with the court,” she said. “I got no answers. Everything should be about the residents and not about us and our agendas.”
She wrote the book to warn people about the guardianship program while assuaging her guilt.
“I’m not an author,” she said. “I never intended to write a book. But that’s how much this affected me. This program needs scrutiny. They do what they want. They are protected by the judges. We’re at their mercy.”
The afterword of Hodges’ book credits articles written by Prince as an inspiration for her book. “Check them out,” she writes, “and see the real faces of the folks who have been sucked up by this scheme.”
The book is available at Amazon.com and at Hodges’ website: www.abreachoftrust2016.com.

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Posted by Probate Shark at 6:03 AM 0 comments
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Monday, December 28, 2015

Downloading and posting the presentation on exposing judges’ wrongdoing and advocating judicial reform


Downloading and posting the presentation
on exposing judges’ wrongdoing and advocating judicial reform

 

By
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline ReformNew York CityDr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, RicCordero@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com,Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com

 


View Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.’s professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq. discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners.



 

This article may be republished and redistributed, provided it is 
in its entirety and without any addition, deletion, or modification,
and credit is given to its author, Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.

 

 

Dear Advocates of Honest Judiciaries,

 

Thank you for your interest in the presentation that I made as a guest on Ms. Lidya Radin’s radio talkshow program Crooked Doctors.

 

A. The oral presentation in an mp3 file

 

1. The presentation is contained in an mp3 file, which can be downloaded through these links:



 

2. I can also send the file itself through Skype. Search for Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq. or DrRCorderoEsq, and after finding me, send me a request for it.

 

B. The written study of judges and their judiciary in a pdf file

 

3. I would appreciate it if in close proximity to the presentation links, you would prominently indicate that the research and evidentiary basis for the presentation is my study of the judiciary and its judges, and that it is titled and downloadable as follows:

 

Exposing Judges’ Unaccountability and 
Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting*

 



 


 

If these links do not download the file in Internet Explorer, download either of the following browsers, install it, copy the first link above into the browser’s search box, and hit ‘Enter’. If the file, which has over 810 pages and is more than 53 MB in size, does not download, try using the other links and then the other browser:

 


 


 

C. The outline linking the presentation to the study

 

4. The outline of the presentation is in the study file at * >ol:350. I encourage you to listen to the presentation as you follow it in its outline.

 

5. The outline has numerous internal links to sections in the study and articles accompanying it. All of them provide supporting and additional evidence and analysis concerning judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform.

 

6. All links are active so that by clicking any of one of them the referred-to section in the study and accompanying articles is called up to the screen. This greatly facilitates its review, after which you can click the Previous View tool on the pdf Navigation Toolbar, i.e., the icon consisting in a left-pointing arrow inscribed in a circle. If that tool is not installed, click anywhere in the toolbar and go to More Tools >Page Navigation Toolbar and check Previous View.

 

7. The outline its worth reading on its own to get an overview of the subject. It is also a guide to my novel series of concrete, realistic, and feasible actions identified through strategic thinking to advance such exposure and reform, as opposed to the traditional, tried and failed ways of complaining about wrongdoing judges.

 

8. This highlights the substantive difference between:

 

a. complaining against a rogue judge, who, if removed, is merely replaced by another one of his or her ilk by the same conniving politicians, whereby the wrongdoing continues essentially undisturbed; and

 

b. i. exposing coordinated wrongdoing that has become the institutionalized modus operandi of judiciaries so that an informed public may become so outraged as to pressure politicians to take a stand on such wrongdoing and call for investigations by Congress, DoJ-FBI, and their state counterparts, as well as for nationally televised hearings.

 

9. The politicians who can be most easily so pressured are those running for election or reelection, who need to appear sensitive and responsive to the public mood. In turn, the ones among them more susceptible to that pressure are those who must stand out in the overcrowded field of presidential candidates.

 

10. It is such exposure that opens the way to judicial reform. Consequently, it commands most deservedly the joint effort of all advocates of honest judiciaries.

 

D. Offer to make presentations so We the People may hold our public servant judges accountable

 

11. I offer to make a presentation, whether in person or at a video conference, to you and your colleagues as a means of informing the public about, and outraging it at, judges’ wrongdoing.

 

12. Therefore, I respectfully request that you network me to other people who can conceivably network me to top officers of any and all presidential candidates’ campaigns, such as their respective chief of staff and campaign strategist:

 

a. to present to them, and thanks to them to their candidate himself or herself, a strategy for drawing electoral support from the huge(* >ol:311¶1) untapped voting bloc of the people dissatisfied with the judicial and legal systems.

 

E. Your choice and opportunity to become a Champion of Justice

 

13. You can continue being a lonely victim of wrongdoing judges and keep complaining through ways that judges steer to failure for the worst reason, because they can, thus turning your effort into yet another exercise in futility; or you can join a courageous and visionary group of pioneers as they start to expose them through a series of novel, imaginative, and realistic actions(* >ol:349).

 

14. Thereby you can help yourself and We the People, the masters in ‘government, not of men and women, but by the rule of law’, assert their status and the right flowing from it to hold all their public servants, including judicial ones, accountable and liable to compensate the victims of their wrongdoing.

 

15. By so doing, you can become nationally recognized by the People as one of their Champions of Justice.

 

So I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Dare trigger history(* >jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.


 

Sincerely,

 

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.

Judicial Discipline Reform

New York City


 


.

NOTE: Given the interference with Dr. Cordero’s email and e-cloud storage accounts described at * >ggl:1 et seq., when emailing him, copy the above bloc of his email accounts and paste it in the To: line of your email so as to enhance the chances of your email reaching him at least at one of those addresses.


*******************************

 

Outline of the Presentation

on how advocates of honest judiciaries can join forces to

pursue a series of concrete, realistic, and feasible actions

identified through strategic thinking

to expose judges’ wrongdoing and lead to judicial reform

that turn advocates into national Champions of Justice*

By
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline ReformNew York CityDr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, RicCordero@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com,Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com

 


 

This article* may be republished and redistributed, provided it is 
in its entirety and without any addition, deletion, or modification,
and credit is given to its author, Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.




 

A. Pragmatic two-fold objective: help parties and reach out to national public

 

1. Help parties before same wrongdoing judge join forces and confront them

 

a. Ever more parties are pro se(jur:28fn35, 38, 64)

 

b. Organize court strikes to protest coordinated wrongdoing in a court

 

2. Inform & outrage the national public about judges’ wrongdoing(ol:333§G)

 

a. Turn the issue into a key one of Election 2016

 

b. Develop a single-issue national movement to hold judges accountable and liable to compensate the victims of their wrongdoing

 

c. Tea Party precedent and model for developing single-issue movement

 

B. Failure to make any progress in holding judges accountable(jur:21§§1-3)

 

3. Judges’ wrongdoing(jur:5§3): disregard of the facts and the applicable law

 

4. Only 8 federal judges impeached & removed in the 226 years since 1789

 

5. 99.82% of complaints against federal judges are dismissed(jur:10-14)

 

6. 75% of appeals disposed by summary orders + 11% by perfunctory orders

 

7. Judges cover for each other: systematic denial of en banc review motions

 

C. The circumstances enabling judges’ wrongdoing(jur:1§1)

 

8. Secrecy: adjudicative, administrative, policy-making, disciplinary meetings

 

9. Unaccountability: abused self-disciplinary system; state within state

 

10. Coordination: among judges & between them and other insiders

 

11. Risklessness: all gain, no loss, attraction makes wrongdoing irresistible

 

D. Traditional, tried & failed ways of complaining about judges(ol:336¶68; 340§B)

 

12. In-court/judges-judging-judges; in-Congress/appointers-protecting-appointees

 

E. The need for strategic thinking(Lsch:14§3;  ol:8§E;  jur:xliv¶C)

 

13. Dynamic analysis of harmonious & conflicting interests(Lsch:14§2;ol:52§C)

 

14. Advancing potential allies’ interests; not asking for their help(jur:xxxix, xliii)

 

15. Creating and undermining alliances according to their interests(dcc:8¶11)

 

F. The need to inform and outrage the national public(ol:331§§C, G)

 

16. Out of court, two step, strategy(ol:135)

 

17. The nature and ranking of outrageous information(jur:5§3)

 

G. Natural and potential allies(ol:332§F)

 

18. Victims of wrongdoing judges

 

a. parties: easy prey pro ses; those represented by solo-medium law firms

 

b. not ‘well-connected’ lawyers

 

c. court and law clerks and judges disgusted with the wrongdoing(jur:100¶b.6)

 

19. Journalists

 

a. not a monolithic industry

 

b. scandal sells

 

c. fiercely competitive: the Nielsen ratings

 

20. Politicians

 

a. of different parties

 

b. incumbent v. challenger

 

c. top senator v. first term member of the House(ol:231§3)

 

d. presidential candidates

 

H. Concrete, realistic, feasible actions: the three at the core(ol:337§2)

 

21. Auditing judges(ol:274, 284, 304)

 

a. Identifying 4 or 5 dissatisfied parties before the same judge

 

b. Searching for commonalities that reveal patterns of wrongdoing

 

c. Presenting journalists with patterns of wrongdoing, not one case

 

d. Court strike by parties and lawyers

 

1) ‘the Spring the Courts’ campaign on social media

 

22. Presidential candidates(ol:311)

 

a. Candidates: need to say something to attract media & public attention

 

b. Outraged voters compel candidates to take a stand on the issue

 

c. Networking to top campaign officers, e.g., the chief of staff

 

d. Presentation on their drawing support from the huge untapped voting bloc of people dissatisfied with the judicial and legal systems

 

e. A candidate’s denunciation(jur:98§2) at a press conference or rally of evidence of, and statistics on, judges’ wrongdoing(jur:21§§1-3)

 

f. The two unique national stories(ol:191§§A,B; ol:138; 321)

 

1) P. Obama-SCt Justice Sotomayor: concealment of assets (jur:65fn107a,c) and the Follow the money! investigation

 

2) Federal Judiciary-NSA: electronic transfer of concealed assets between hidden/declared accounts; interception of exposers’ communications(ol:344§§B,C): the Follow it wirelessly!investigation

 

g. A Watergate-like(jur:4¶¶10-14) generalized media investigation:

 

1) Trojan horse-like(ol: 269§1) investigation(ol:194§§1-2) of the two stories leads to enabling coordinated wrongdoing, causing

 

2) systematic investigation of judges’ wrongdoing, results in

 

3) pioneering the news and publishing field of judicial unaccountability reporting(jur:2§2) first at federal, then state, level

 

h. Turn judges’ wrongdoing into a key issue of Election 2016(ol:269§2)

 

i. Nationally televised hearings on judicial wrongdoing

 

23. Radio and TV talkshow hosts(ol:146, 308)

 

a. holding a meeting of network officers and talkshow hosts

 

b. making a presentation at each talkshow

 

c. each host to hold a weekly show on judges’ wrongdoing, how to audit judges(ol:274) & progress thereof; shows as victims’ rallying point

 

d. forming coalition that becomes a powerhouse of American politics

 

I. An effort at presentations(ol:197§G)

 

24. Journalism schools and associations(Lsch:23; ol:319)

 

a. not even judges can retaliate simultaneously against all journalists

 

b. investigator can become this generation’s Washington Post Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame

 

c. enhance portfolio for student’s first job or journalist’s promotion

 

d. conducting team investigation of the two unique national stories

 

25. Law schools(Lsch:1, 2, 21)

 

a. glut of unemployed law school students and attorneys(a&p:23§W)

 

b. create a niche market(ol:257§2) for motions to recuse, and vacate orders of, judges who failed “to avoid even the appearance of impropriety”

 

c. offer a seminar on judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform(ddc:1)

 

26. Business schools(jur:119§a; ol:324)

 

a. Fraud and Forensic Accounting Investigation

 

1) Follow the money! from bankruptcy, tenant, probate courts

 

2) Statistical analysis of judges’ wrongdoing to detect patterns of individual and coordinated wrongdoing, and trends(jur:131§1)

 

27. Information Technology schools and institutes(ol:42, 60)

 

a. Conduct Follow the money! & Follow it wirelessly! investigations

 

1) concealing assets for tax evasion and money laundering

 

2) abused access to confidential information in sealed case files

 

b. Develop commercial software to perform statistical, linguistic, and literary auditing of judges’ writings(jur:132§§2-9)

 

J. Supporting actions(ol:337¶74)

 

28. Pitching the judges’ wrongdoing study(jur:1)to book publishers(jur:l)

 

29. Contacting and coalescing bloggers and website owners; and inducing digital news media start-ups and documentarists(ol:313) to investigate

 

30. Identifying authors of scandal books & private investigators to persuade (jur:21§§1-3) to investigate judges’ wrongdoing(jur:65§§1-3; ol:191§§A,B)

 

K. Material and moral rewards(ol:3§F)

 

31. A scoop, Pulitzer Prize, and interviews on news casts and talkshows

 

32. Bestseller on the two unique national stories & institutionalized wrongdoing

 

33. Blockbuster movie, e.g., All the President’s Men & President Nixon’s resignation

 

34. In-house promotion and advancement to a more prestigious company

 

35. Appearance on the cover of Time magazine as Person of the Year

 

L. Your choice and what is next

 

36. Traditional, tried and failed ways of complaining about judges(ol:347§A) v.

 

37. Novel, reasonable strategy for appealing to people’s interest in exposing judges’ wrongdoing and advocating judicial reform: the agenda(ol:329)

 

38. A statement of your contribution

 

a. experience, qualifications, skills, networkable relations

 

b. commitment to an action and hours per week

 

c. money; mass emailing; library research and field investigation

 

39. Key effort: organizing presentations to colleagues, schools, institutes, etc.

 

40. Forming a multidisciplinary academic(ol:115; 327) and business venture team of people with professional skills and work ethos(jur:128§4)

 

41. Building a movement for judicial accountability(ol:201§§J,K)

 

a. Tea Party-like single-issue the People’s Sunrise movement(jur:164§9)

 

b. first expose nature, extent, & gravity of judges’ wrongdoing(jur:49§4)

 

c. then discuss means to detect, punish & prevent exposed wrongdoing(jur:158§§6-8)

 

1) e.g. establishments of citizen boards that publicly receive and investigate complaints against judges and hold them account-able and liable to compensate their victims(jur:158§§6-8)

 

42. Exposers & advocates recognized as We the People’s Champions of Justice

 

Dare trigger history(jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.


 

Sincerely,

 

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.

Judicial Discipline Reform

New York City


 

NOTE 1: Given the interference with Dr. Cordero’s email and e-cloud storage accounts described at * >ggl:1 et seq., when emailing him, copy the above bloc of his email accounts and paste it in the To: line of your email so as to enhance the chances of your email reaching him at least at one of those addresses.


 

NOTE 2: Listen to Dr. Cordero’s presentation on judges’ wrongdoing and its exposure through a series of concrete, realistic, and feasible actions in the context of the presidential campaign, at .


or


The outline of the presentation is at * >ol:350:


or


or


...

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