Recently Seth Godin wrote about The Clowd. Apparently it is coming… your cell phones will be able to tell people where you are 24/7.

Does that sound helpful and fun? …Or does it sound like an invasion of privacy?

Do you like people having the power of constant surveillance over you?

Personally, I take my privacy seriously. I’m not a fan of phones, especially cell phones. I’ve never owned one. I’m sad and disappointed that my small town finally got a cell phone tower about a year ago. They emit dangerous levels of electromagnetic radiation. Did we need that? Should I buy a cell phone and support that? No way!

But I’m aware that most of you live in larger population areas than I do and by now, cell phones are a part of life. I’m wondering how you’ll feel about them when Big Brother can use them to follow your every move. Don’t we have enough invasion of privacy already? Do you think CPS caseworkers use them to track the whereabouts of their clients?

As part of my outreach - my effort to help CPS victims find this site - I’ve joined a number of social media sites using either my own name, or the name of FightCPS.

I hope you’ll help me in supporting these efforts.

Do you have a MySpace profile? Fight CPS At MySpace wants you as a friend.	This is a blog promotion site. I’d very much appreciate your votes in getting FightCPS listed on the front page there so more people can find out about our issues with Child Protective Services false allegations.
Technorati is a site for finding blog postings that are on a topic you want to read about. If everyone who came here registered at Technorati and added this site to their favorites list, this blog might reach the top-100 list, and become an issue many thousands of Americans would notice.	Is anyone else here using Twitter? If so, feel free to follow me there: Linda at Twitter. This is my personal Twitter account and you’ll see I’m interested in numerous topics, not just fighting CPS - but that’s something I’m always willing to write about. If you want to get to know me better and find out where my head is REALLY at, this is the place.
Check out the Fight CPS Squidoo Lens for information about the history and goals of Fight CPS. You can make a Squidoo Lens web page to tell people about your CPS case and information. It is very easy to sign up and create a page, plus you may earn some money by doing it.	Fight CPS is on Hover Spot

This is something I wrote and posted long ago; it has been linked on the right-side column for several years. I’m bringing it to the blog section of the site now because I’ve been getting a lot of comments and emails saying “Please someone, do something to help me!” I think these people need this message. Plus, I want to bring all those old articles into the blog, so expect to see a lot of old material crop up here in the coming months. - ljm
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The caseworkers almost always go to court working against you. At court the judge can and often does rule in favor of the families and against the social meddlers.

Be dignified around caseworkers - do not lose your temper. Do not let them see you in fear. Do not bother trying to kiss up to the caseworker. Do not try to give them more evidence of how good you are. Your evidence is to be shared with your lawyer and presented in court to the judge or juvenile court referee. If you give evidence to a caseworker you’ll find out everything you say can be twisted and used against you. This is a LEGAL case. Caseworkers are not nice friendly do-gooders trying to help you.

Caseworkers are your adversaries, though they are very deceptive and pretend to be your friend so they can get more evidence against you. What they do is practice sick deception for family destruction. They spend their days preparing a case against YOU.

To win in juvenile court and get a judge to rule in your favor, you must be able to present “a preponderance of the evidence”. That’s the standard of proof needed in juvenile court. To come up with a preponderance of the evidence, you must give the court more documentation & evidence than the other side.

Listen, very few of us are ever gifted with a good lawyer. We won (those of us who did) through our own hard work. We gathered the evidence. We documented things in writing and on tape. We typed up our own legal documents. We learned how to do it because we had to, for the wellbeing of our children trapped in the inhumane child “welfare” system.

If you feel you can’t type your own legal documents, then find a typist or paralegal to do it for you at a lot less than an attorney charges.

You can give your compiled legal documents and evidence to your attorney for review. Be sure to do it a few weeks before court so there’s time for the attorney to look it over and file it at the county clerk’s office for you. If the attorney won’t talk to you send the documents via certified mail along with a letter demanding his time and response on the documents so you’ll be prepared for court. You deserve fair representation - be sure your attorney knows you’re aware of the law.

If it’s too late for that - prepare legal documents anyway. The judge may accept them in court. Be sure you have plenty of copies for the judge, your attorney, the child’s attorney and the CPS attorney. You may have to ask for a continuance while your attorney deals with your compiled legal documents and evidence.

Use online resources, and help from friends, but mainly - it’s up to YOU.

PREPARE for court.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

In Germany a baby was offered on eBay by his parents. The ad was up only about two hours, and the mother, 23, insists it was a joke.

Child welfare agents there have confiscated the child, and law enforcement agents are investigating the couple for child trafficking.

Question: Do you think the child welfare agents overreacted? Should this baby have been detained?

Source: Baby offered on eBay now in state custody posted by Leslie Katz on the CNN News Blog.

(You can also leave your comments there at the CNN news blog.)

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

I just got an email from Cindy (last name withheld) who subscribed by email to this site’s blog postings. She read my last post - the one about parents and drugs, and had this question, “…Don’t you think it is time that we mandate random drug screening for all CPS workers and contractors?”

That’s so true, Cindy. It is LONG past time. And I believe we can do something about this.

CPS caseworkers and social workers DO need to be tested for drugs. They also need psychological testing. They need to be screened for past legal offenses. They also need to be licensed.

Who agrees with that?

So here’s what we can do. Let’s go to work writing letters to our state legislators asking them to introduce legislation requiring that all CPS employees having any contact with children be investigated for past legal problems, psychologically tested, drug tested regularly, and licensed.

Let’s tell our state legislators that we’ve been victims of bad social workers who should be screened out if they have psychological or drug problems. Any social worker or caseworker that lies in a report to the court is obviously mentally unstable. These people should be weeded out of the social services jobs, just as we wouldn’t want unstable people getting law enforcement jobs.

Tell your state legislators to read the comments on the guestbook pages here on Fight CPS so they can see what a huge problem false accusations are. Nobody tells it better than the hundreds of people who come to this site due to victimization by bad social services agents.

Any suggestions or comments on this writing campaign are welcome.

If you write a letter to your state legislators, you’re welcome to post a copy of it here in the comments section.

Keep it brief and to the point. Your legislators are more likely to read a short letter than one that is many pages long.

LET’S KEEP THE HEAT ON THEM until something is done about this travesty of unstable and incompetent social services caseworkers. Only our state legislators can help us on this one. I’ll remember to bring it up from time to time and hope that many of you will get positive responses from your state legislators that you can share with us.

Is there anyone here capable of drafting sample legislation that we can send to our legislators for consideration? If so, email me at the webmaster link at the bottom of this page.

To find out who your state legislators are, see the Write To Your Legislators page here at Fight CPS. And remember, we’re targeting STATE legislators, not federal.

Write letters - hand written letters will be fine, or type them. Don’t send emails as they are too easily deleted.

Thanks to everyone who takes part in this letter writing campaign.

P.S. - THANKS, CINDY, for the great idea!

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

I’ve often found things I’ve written on this site posted on other websites and blogs. It bothers me when this is done without giving a link back or any mention of who the author is - and many would consider that plagiarism. As the author of these postings, I have a copyright on everything I write, and if I find my words reposted elsewhere, and it doesn’t say “Written by Linda Martin of Fight CPS“, I get upset.

Usually I wouldn’t be upset by that if the person copying things at least mentioned that I’m the author and gave a link to this site, but most people apparently don’t bother to do this, which is why I’m writing this now.

God knows I want this message to be spread far and wide. However there are some limits.

Limits on what can be copied:

Please do NOT under any circumstances copy/paste any of the comments left by people on this site. These comments are all copyright to the authors, and since you can’t email them for permission (I don’t post the email addresses) you cannot get their permission to move their personal information to another place. So don’t do it.

Please do NOT under any circumstances copy/paste anything found on the message board. The only exception is if you get the permission of the person who wrote what you want to copy. Generally this is possible because you can private-mail people on the message board. I will stay out of that issue, unless someone tells me things are being copied without permission. If this happens, the person copying postings will lose access to the forum permanently. No exceptions. This is a very important privacy issue.

Please do NOT copy anything from this site without my written permission. You can easily email me using the webmaster link at the foot of every page. (On the message board, the webmaster link is at the top.) Anything copied MUST have my name as author (if I’m the author, and I am author of almost everything here) and MUST have a link back to the page of this site where you found the information. If I indicate in a post that I’m not the author, you would need to contact the author to get permission to repost something elsewhere.

Printing: You are welcome to print one copy of anything I write, for your own use. If you want to print more than one copy, email me for permission. Use the webmaster email link at the bottom of this page.

Thank you for your cooperation with these rules. If you follow these rules, you’ll be making me very happy.

From Lisa’s blog at MySpace:

“NOW HIRING!
The Children’s Protection Services is now hiring.
In order to qualify for employment you must …”

…go to BellasMom’s blog at MySpace to see the rest. Please leave her a message letting her know you saw it on FightCPS.Com

Thanks to Lisa and Kathy for sending this to me.

Rarely have I read anything so poignant and moving as the day-by-day account a loving mother is writing of the TPR trial she’s enduring. See: TPR Trial Blog. You may have to be logged into MySpace to read this. Get an account if you don’t have one already. This is really worth reading.

If that link doesn’t work for you, try this one: TPR Trial Blog.

For those who don’t know, TPR means “Termination of Parental Rights”.

I ask that this weekend everyone who reads this who is inspired to do so, please say a prayer for this family to be reunited, send positive energies, pray for the judge to make the right decision, and so on . . . because next Monday the trial continues.

This mother, who is a nurse, deserves our support and love and good wishes. Please keep praying that she’s able to bring her children home.

And to the mother: thanks for posting to Fight CPS and for giving us the link to your blog.

This week I had guests on this website that are not sympathetic to our cause. John and Brooke, who post from Texas, seem to think they are God’s gift to Unfortunate Children … in other words, they are self-righteous foster parents. See the messages they contributed to this site at Texas: “The System Is Maxed”.

Normally I have no problem with having foster parents posting here at Fight CPS. Some foster parents are loving, kind, and truly on the side of parents who want to regain custody of their children. I appreciate that they care enough to come here and give advice to suffering parents and other natural family members.

John and Brooke did not fit that description. They apparently were here to insult and annoy the suffering people who this site was created to help. Some of their comments were inappropriate and unkind, and some of those are being held in the moderation queue because they are not appropriate for this site.

At first I didn’t know they were related though it was clear that John was backing up Brooke and railing against me, including a few rude comments along the way. I’d had enough of him when John finally declared, “I am not at all simpathetic [sic] to the people who complain about removal because I don’t know if they are truthful, I know that these parents will lie or tell only part of the story to gain simpathy [sic] from anyone that will listen.”

The people who come to this site - those for whom this site is intended - do not need to be insulted by being called liars.

In retrospect it is humorous to see that John is so unfamiliar with the concept of sympathy that he cannot even spell it right.

Because of John’s rude statement, I put his future comments on moderation by putting his Texas IP number in the comment moderation box in my blog administration panel.

I was surprised when I woke up the next day and found a comment from Brooke in my moderation queue! It was then that I noticed that Brooke and John were using the same IP number!

That day John finally admitted to being a foster parent receiving money from the state. It was as I’d suspected - he has his hands in the pockets of the system and so naturally is blind to anything that might be wrong with what he’s doing. He wrote, “I couldn’t really care less about the money I am financially secure without it.”

Does that qualify him to leave comments on this system where there are hundreds of suffering parents and family members seeking help every day, insulting everyone by calling them liars? I think not, and won’t tolerate it. So I decided that John and Brooke will not have any further comments published.

Brooke posted one more time - and I have not published it - her final comment remains in the moderation queue because it is an insult to another suffering parent who is trying to recover from heroin addiction. Like most people here, I’ve never tried heroin and never will, but I do not believe it is right to spew hatred and recriminations at people who are trying to recover from an addiction, as Brooke did in her final comment.

I honestly cannot understand why Brooke and John were so intent on posting here. They have no respect for the people who come to this site for help, and don’t have a clue as to why I started and maintain this site. They have their foster home money and some Unfortunate Children… and yes, I’m concerned about the children in their care. If this is how they respond to suffering people, those children may be receiving similar maltreatment at the hands of these self-righteous people.

The point of this story is in the title to the post. People who come to this site should be aware it is my intention to build suffering people up, not tear them down. Tearing them down is what CPS does. I’ve known for nearly twenty years that what CPS does is find people who are going through a rough spot in life, then the caseworkers kick them while they’re down, figuratively speaking, by destroying their families.

Here at Fight CPS we must do the opposite. When suffering people come here, we must give them hope, strengthen them, build them up, love them, care for them, understand them (we are all God’s children) . . . and give them tools to use to express themselves in court so that CPS workers aren’t the only ones going in with legal paperwork, prepared for court.

John and Brooke, be gone. We don’t need anyone telling people they have problems. Everyone who gets involved with CPS is aware already they’ve got a problem and/or made mistakes. They don’t need you stuffing your recriminations down their throats. God help the children you’re warehousing for the state.

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* I know the exact city their IP number comes from but am concealing that information, for now.

I just finished installing the WordPress blogging interface on this site. The old blogger.com archives are still available. The links are on the lower-right side of this page.

There were 786 posts in the old blog which I’ve been using since 2001. Ideally I’d like to migrate them over to the WordPress blog, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the time. Still, it is a project I’m working on. The new blog will make it much easier for people to find us when they’re looking for help with their CPS cases. I’m also about to start paying for advertising this site through Google Adwords, to reach more people seeking help.

Thanks to everyone who has put a link to this site on theirs. It helps people find us through the search engines.

Now that WordPress is installed, you can make comments on the posts here. I’m still working on a few issues, but for the most part the update is done.