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Stand Your Ground Forums => Main => Topic started by: Quentin0352 on Feb 20, 2010, 10:10 PM

Title: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: Quentin0352 on Feb 20, 2010, 10:10 PM
Oh, this is just too good now! He was cinvicted of bilking the county of tens of thousands in welfare fraud in the 1980s, kept a serious level of political pressure making everyone afraid of him by being a race baitor of the Jackson and Sharpton level, managed to get all the way to the top leading a national group formed by MLK Jr. and now we see he was late to the game but found the VAWA money easy to scam too!


SCLC battered women's shelter had little occupancy for years
Raleigh Trammell's group received nearly $745,000 in taxpayer money to run Safehouse in Jefferson Twp.
By Lynn Hulsey and Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writers
Updated 11:57 PM Saturday, February 20, 2010

Since 2006, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell's Dayton chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has received nearly $200,000 from taxpayers for a battered women's shelter that its federal funding application says housed 19 women and children a week.

But Montgomery County records indicate that since mid-2006, very little water has been used in the home at 5170 Derby Road in Jefferson Twp.

In fact, the property has not been a consistent user of water since June 13, 2006, said Greg Merrill, director of environmental services for Montgomery County. Records show no water usage at all from August 2007 to July 2008, he said.

Yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been providing an annual infusion of money for the shelter since 2004, and the state or county has kicked in money for the shelter since at least 1999. All told, nearly $745,000 in taxpayer money has gone to the SCLC Safehouse and its domestic violence program since 1999, according to government records and SCLC tax forms.

The SCLC's 2010 funding application, signed by Trammell's daughter Angela Goodwine, claimed the organization had served 225 women and children since 1988.

Efforts to reach Trammell, chairman of the Dayton SCLC, were not successful, and Goodwine declined comment.

The FBI raided SCLC's Dayton offices and the homes of Goodwine and Trammell on Feb. 11 and have asked to meet with officials at the United Way of Greater Dayton, which administers the federal funds Trammell's groups received.

National SCLC member Art Rocker, who met with FBI agents from Ohio and Georgia last week in Atlanta, said the probe involves the SCLC's use of federal funds.

Tammy Slater, who lives directly behind the purported shelter in the Derby Road neighborhood, said she has seen little activity there.

"I grew up out here and I've never known anything to be there," Slater said. "The most I've ever seen there was people mowing the lawn. I thought it was vacant all this time. It's been years."

Slater said battered women need more services, but it doesn't seem that Trammell is providing them. "He's getting all this money," she said, "and it's sad he isn't using it to do good."


Find this article at:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/sclc-battered-womens-shelter-had-little-occupancy-for-years-559378.html (http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/sclc-battered-womens-shelter-had-little-occupancy-for-years-559378.html)
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: Quentin0352 on Feb 20, 2010, 10:14 PM
UHHHG! That error in being able to see when posting is hitting me again or I would have put more in the OP. Here is a bit more on this great "Pillar of the Community" here.

McCarty: Pillars of community can withstand scrutiny
By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer
Updated 11:25 PM Saturday, February 20, 2010

I wish I had a nickel for every time, during the past couple of weeks, I've heard the Rev. Raleigh Trammell being referred to as a "pillar of the community" or some variation thereof.

In the midst of potential disgrace, it seems, Trammell is garnering high praise. No doubt people need to justify why so much county and federal money was handed to Trammell with so little apparent oversight. Federal agents are looking into allegations that Trammell and a colleague misappropriated at least $569,000 from the national Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That, in turn, has raised questions about his mishandling of local SCLC funds.

Before the scandal, "pillar" wasn't the word most commonly bandied about in private conversation about Trammell. "Bully" was more like it.

Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman has defended Trammell as a "very active member of the community representing a very important organization in this community and this country." Yet she also acknowledged his reputation for divisiveness: "Rev. Trammell spoke with a large megaphone, and very few people spoke up to counteract that megaphone."

Trammell spent a year in jail after a jury convicted him of opening fraudulent welfare accounts in 1973 and 1974 and using them to obtain welfare checks and food stamps. "He went to jail. He served his time," Feldman said. True, everyone deserves a chance at redemption. But why should a man with such a history be given notably less scrutiny than other custodians of the public trust? In a baffling move, the county waived a requirement for the SCLC and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance -- two organizations tied to Trammell -- to submit annual audits to participate in the county-funded feeding program.

To her credit, Feldman acknowledged that "accountability broke down" in Trammell's case, and has vowed the county will step up its monitoring of its contracts with some 250 local faith-based and service organizations. "This is not the standard for which we should be judged," Feldman said. "This contract was not monitored in accordance with the policies and procedures we have in place."

That, of course, begs the question, "Why?" Was it truly a bureaucratic snafu, or a case of the schoolyard bully silencing his regulators?

Some churches are already wondering if they're going to be penalized because of the Trammell investigation. "We don't want to paint all people with the same brush," Feldman said. "If they're doing the job they're contracted to do, they should have no concerns."

Still, some local ministers are worried, including members of the Anchored in Peace activities designed to counter community violence. Barbara Wiechel, pastor of Fairview United Methodist Church in Dayton, doesn't know Trammell, but she believes "faith-based programs should maintain the highest standards of integrity, with a primary emphasis upon caring for the most vulnerable among us. Certainly, I am concerned about the group of persons who went to Haiti and attempted to remove 33 children without following protocol. Sometimes, we as Christians think that if God is on our side, we don't have to do our homework, or follow government procedures. Whenever (and wherever) that happens, we do irreparable damage to wonderful organizations ... who do build solid relationships of trust with the people we are hoping to help."

Undoubtedly, local faith-based groups will be facing more scrutiny about how they handle the public's money. That's as it should be.

But let's hope the poor and vulnerable can still turn for help to their neighborhood church or food pantry.

There are a lot of pillars in our community who provide those services without divisiveness and mistrust.


Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or [email protected].



Find this article at:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/mccarty-pillars-of-community-can-withstand-scrutiny-559388.html (http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/mccarty-pillars-of-community-can-withstand-scrutiny-559388.html)
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: Quentin0352 on Feb 20, 2010, 10:18 PM
Last one since it shows they were getting a LOT longer than the first article implies for the shelter which was closed, abandoned and in serious disrepair.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/water-to-sclc-funded-shelter-turned-off-weeks-after-federal-money-arrived-559377.html (http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/water-to-sclc-funded-shelter-turned-off-weeks-after-federal-money-arrived-559377.html)


Water to SCLC-funded shelter turned off weeks after federal money arrived
Safehouse on Derby Road was supposed to house 19 women and children a week.
By Lynn Hulsey
 and Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writers
Updated 11:25 PM Saturday, February 20, 2010

DAYTON -- In mid-June of last year, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell's local Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter received two electronic transfers of federal money totalling $17,250 for a battered women's shelter the group claimed to operate in Jefferson Twp.

Within two weeks of the transfers, water was turned off at the 5170 Derby Road shelter for non-payment of a $341 bill, said Greg Merrill, Montgomery County director of environmental services. In June, Vectren disconnected gas at the house, which is owned by Trammell's church.

Even so, the SCLC in August accepted another $5,750 in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for the Safehouse, a shelter that was supposed to house 19 women and children a week.

A Dayton Daily News examination raises new questions about the shelter, a federally funded program to fight domestic violence, a food pantry and a meals program that the SCLC or the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance operate with taxpayer funds. For example:

• County records show little water usage at the shelter property since mid-2006 and no water service between August 2007 and July 2008, Merrill said. SCLC received nearly $200,000 in federal money for the shelter and domestic violence programing since 2006, and at least $743,361 since 1999.

• Most of the "community stakeholders" the SCLC listed on the applications it submitted to successfully secure federal funding for its Teen Relationship Abuse Program said they had never heard of the program, which purports to fight teen violence. Listed stakeholders include the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, the county Department of Job and Family Services, Miami Valley Hospital, the Dayton Public Schools, the YMCA and the YWCA. The program's paid staff included Trammell's two adult daughters and a son-in-law.

• A former SCLC receptionist who first worked for the organization in 2001 said the shelter was closed when she was rehired in 2004. After seeing photographs of damage inside the vacant house, she said she was shocked when she heard that Trammell's organization was getting FEMA money. "I was like, the Safehouse is not even open and they're getting money?" said Dionne Jones of Dayton.

• The SCLC and IMA listed some of the same clients for separate programs that provide home-delivered meals to the elderly -- one funded by the county human services levy and the other by FEMA. When a Daily News reporter told Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman about the records, she said she would cut levy funding to the two organizations.

While it is unclear from the documentation if the groups double-billed for meals, Feldman said mounting controversy surrounding Trammell prompted her to act to halt the $40,000 in annual levy funding. She said the county will find another agency to serve the nine elderly people now being fed by the two groups using levy funding.

"I think the information that has come to light from the last several days (and) weeks raises questions about all the documentation we have received from the SCLC," Feldman said.

Trammell did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Trammell is chairman of the national SCLC and its Dayton chapter, and executive director of the IMA. His local activities came under scrutiny after national SCLC officials accused Trammell and national treasurer Spiver Gordon of embezzling $569,000.

Both the local SCLC and IMA have since lost funding over concerns about how the money was spent. On Feb. 11, the FBI raided the local SCLC offices and the homes of Trammell and his daughter Angela Goodwine. That same day, Feldman said she was eliminating nearly $52,000 in annual funding to the SCLC for a counseling and case management program through the Dayton Urban League. Feldman said the SCLC couldn't prove it had provided the services.

Last week, after learning that the SCLC's Derby Road shelter and a food pantry operated by the IMA had quietly closed, the Montgomery County Emergency Food and Shelter Policy Board rejected $87,979 in 2010 FEMA funding for the shelter and the IMA's food programs, which included the pantry, home-delivered meals and a feeding program at Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church.

The church has been feeding elderly people five days a week for 26 years, said its pastor, the Rev. Junior Greenlee. Greenlee is listed on SCLC letterhead as the group's treasurer, although he said he hasn't been treasurer for 10 or 15 years.

He said it's "ridiculous" that the board rejected funding.

'We are not partners'

A Daily News tally found the county, state and federal governments have given the Dayton SCLC and IMA about $3.7 million in taxpayer money since 1999 for a variety of local programs.

One of them was SCLC's Teen Relationship Abuse Program, headed by Goodwine, which collected more than $120,000 in federal tax money to talk to kids about preventing violence, according to the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, which administers the TRAP program.

Most of the organizations listed by the SCLC as partners had no idea they were included on the group's application for the money.

"We are not partners with this TRAP thing at all," said Bonnie Weyrauch, assistant to Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer. "This is news to us."

"I have called every department I know of and no one knows about this program," said Jill Moberley of the Dayton Public Schools.

"I've never heard of this program," said Tim Helm, president and chief executive of the YMCA of Greater Dayton.

As project manager, Goodwine was paid $29 an hour. Also on the TRAP payroll were Goodwine's husband, Virgil, and Trammell's other daughter, Cheryl Spencer, an employee of Montgomery County Job and Family Services.

County officials are looking into Spencer's connection with TRAP because she did not seek permission to work there as required by her department's conflict-of-interest rules, said Ann Stevens, spokeswoman for JFS.

State officials recently shut down the program and halted payments of more than $50,000 after finding Goodwine couldn't prove how the money was being spent.

Reached Friday, Goodwine said she had no comment.

A 'multitude' 
of services

Since 2004, FEMA spent $134,033 on the Derby Road Safehouse, which provided clients with a "multitude" of domestic violence services, including counseling, case management and job placement, according to SCLC's 2009 funding application.

The 2010 application, submitted by Goodwine, says the shelter has been open since 1988 and served 225 women and children.

Water and gas remain disconnected there, and records indicate that annual water usage since mid-2006 has been far less than that of an average family of four, according to Merrill. Usage also was low in 2004 and 2005.

Moreover, the Safehouse is virtually unknown among local officials who assist victims of domestic violence. None of those interviewed made referrals to it.

"I have never heard it mentioned," said Dayton police Chief Richard Biehl. "It certainly appears very unlikely that we ever referred anyone there as a victim."

Trammell signed invoices claiming the promised shelter services had been provided, according to documents for 2006-08 on file at the United Way of Greater Dayton. Documents for 2009 are not yet due.

Jayne Klose, senior vice president of United Way of Greater Dayton, which administers FEMA money for the Virginia-based United Way Worldwide, said Trammell called Friday and asked how to appeal the policy board's decision to cut off funding.

"We are obviously extremely distressed by these findings and will work with the appropriate authorities to rectify this serious violation of the community's trust in this SCLC program," Klose said.

She said the FBI called her Friday asking to meet with United Way officials.

Scarce resources

The discoveries made during probes into the activities of Trammell's organizations have been unsettling for others who run community programs for those in need.

"Resources in this and every community are very, very scarce," said Patti Schwartztrauber, executive director of the Artemis Center in Dayton, which provides domestic violence resources.

"It gives a bad impression of nonprofit organizations, as if they're not monitored or not trustworthy. It's just incomprehensible to me that they were able to get by like that."


Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7455 or [email protected].



Find this article at:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/water-to-sclc-funded-shelter-turned-off-weeks-after-federal-money-arrived-559377.html (http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/water-to-sclc-funded-shelter-turned-off-weeks-after-federal-money-arrived-559377.html)
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Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: dr e on Feb 21, 2010, 07:02 AM
Wow Q!  This is an important find.  We all know that fraud is rampant in the DV industry but it is rarely caught due to their demands for "secrecy" in order to protect "victims."  Enough is enough. Time to shine a bright light on this fraudulent and bigoted mess.  Call your senator or congressman and tell them about this and demand that the dv industry is investigated fully.

1.  It is fraudulent as exposed by artices linked in this thread.

2. It is inneffective.  In the rare instances when the dv industry has been tested for effectiveness they have failed to produce any data that showed they were much more effective than a placebo.  The billion plus dollars a year is going down a hole and sometimes that hole is simply to the pockets of fraudmeisters.

3.  It falsely blames men for DV and ignores the multitude of male victims and female perps.

It's time for this crap to come to a screeching halt and those who have defrauded the system to pay the price.
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: poiuyt on Feb 21, 2010, 08:44 AM
Fraudulent, ineffective and unjust are good adjectives to describe the system of domestic violence institutions and its attendant social justice economic transfers.

But a system that sets out not to diminish and abate intergender conflict but to exacerbate and incentivise it to justify its pursuit of economic transfers, necessarily has to be fraudulent, ineffective and unjust.

And a close look shows us that extracting increasing economic yeilds from a cheap, unprotected and unprivileged labour supply is the systems actual objective. Not conflict supression.

In this light, the question then becomes how does our social system cheaply acheive its ravenous economic and resource needs, without inflicting fraud, inefficiency and injustice impacts upon males ?

Is such a thing possible, for example by spreading the injustice a bit thinner to include perhaps injustice and fraud onto women aswell, not just onto men. Thus having a society that more equitably shares the burden ?
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: PaulGuelph on Feb 21, 2010, 10:44 AM
Feminists will just say that it proves that women should be in charge of providing these services. The article would not be very useful to us then.
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: Quentin0352 on Feb 21, 2010, 11:15 AM
I really like this part though...

Quote
"Resources in this and every community are very, very scarce," said Patti Schwartztrauber, executive director of the Artemis Center in Dayton, which provides domestic violence resources.

"It gives a bad impression of nonprofit organizations, as if they're not monitored or not trustworthy. It's just incomprehensible to me that they were able to get by like that."


Gee, that exact same group refused to help me since I am male and thenhelped my ex repeatedly based on false accusations with no actual evidence against me. But hey, they don't mind accepting tax money and violating the laws on discrimination while being upset at someone else running a scam? Want to bet she is really upset that it might hurt their scam instead of that someone else was scamming or that they got money in their scam she feels she was entitled to get in her scam instead?
Title: Re: Accountability in government? Nahhhh!
Post by: dr e on Feb 21, 2010, 11:18 AM

Feminists will just say that it proves that women should be in charge of providing these services. The article would not be very useful to us then.


You aer missing the important point here.  This article shows how easily the DV system has duped the government of large sums of money, all under the guise of secrecy in order to protect the "victims."  This example will be a gold mine to carry to capital hill and say look at the  way the dv system is cheating taxpayers.  We must investigate and stop this NOW!  What are they going to say?  No?  LMAO