The Government Mechanic
The Government Mechanic encourages everyone to look under the hood of government, diagnose the real problems and decide what actions will fix what problems. In each episode, discussion reveals the mechanics of fixing broken government agencies, including broken missions, broken goals, and broken measures of success. Our audience includes new agency leaders, change agents already working with agency leaders, or anyone wondering how to change a damaged, dysfunctional agency.
America’s Forgotten Children: Lost in Foster Care

On Season 3 Episode 20, Dr. Kahn’s special guest is Connie Reguli -- a family lawyer and advocate for child welfare reform who has spent 30 years defending families in our family court systems. More than that, Reguli has built a support network for parents threatened by child protective services and brought together resources, guidelines and training videos for parents who suddenly find themselves in family court. See links below in Show Notes.
Episode 20 opens with Dr. Kahn describing a photo of her and Reguli in Des Moines at the Iowa State Capitol on...
Medical Kidnapping with Terri La Point

Terri La Point
Investigative Journalist, Speaker and Author
Episode 19 is the third in a series about the failures of family law, family court and foster care. The topic is medical kidnapping with investigative journalist, speaker and author Terri LaPoint.
Terri started investigating the child welfare system by looking at medical kidnapping. She had no bias going in, she just wanted to know what was going on. She found the same kind of stories everywhere - innocent parents losing their kids or going to jail. This included losing custody of ill or h...
Our Government Took My Child

The theme for Episodes 17 to 22 is the failure of the child welfare system in the United States, including the failures of foster care, family law, family court and government policies to take custody of your child. My special guest today for Episode 18 is Baily Templeton -- mother and advocate for family rights and child welfare reform.
ATTENTION: I warn you, my listeners and viewers, this is heartbreaking stuff and yo may be triggered by this conversation. If you are chaught up in the child welfare and family court system, find your support group – you are not alo...
Fighting for Parent's Rights with Rachel Bruno

Season 3 opens with Episode 17 and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn introducing Rachel Bruno, a courageous mother, author and advocate for parents falsely accused in the child welfare system. The Episode begins with a warning from Dr. Kahn: this interview may trigger emotions related to foster care and family court or images of violence and children separated from their parents. Viewer discretion advised. Please see resources below.
Rachel tells a powerful story about the abuses and violations of family law, foster care and family court when her son was illegally seized in 2015. She concludes...
Making Government More Efficient

Episode 16 closes out Season 2. Creator and host Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and co-host Kathleen Monahan, management consultant and strategic planner, talk about making government more efficient. They start with the graphic labelled Reinventing Government: 1992 to 2000 and then the Reinventing Government: Transformation Roadmap.
The Roadmap is an artist’s drawing of a vision for reinvention, a mission to deliver on the three goals and pathways to rebuild public trust in government (see Episode 14, for reinvention strategic plan and implementation roadmap). Kahn asserts: “We are starting here because we believe in the importance of clearly and visually communicating the esse...
Under the Hood: The Government Mechanic

In Episode 15, host Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and co-host Kathleen Monahan talk about how the podcast and YouTube channel started and how it’s going. Then they discuss the 15 most viewed clips with number of views:
· Top Challenges for Veterans 10K
· The truth behind dairy prices 6.4 K
· Ending Veteran Homelessness 5.2 K
· Understanding Peacebuilding, Peacemaking and Diplomacy 4.2 K
· DOJ Policy That Works – Transform DOJ 1.6 K
· Peacemaking - Rhythms of Harmony 1.6 K
· Policy the Reduces Violence 1.4 K
· Running for President E1 1.3 K
· A Theory of Peacemaking 1.2 K
· ...
For Strategic Planners Only — Kathleen Monahan

In Episode 14, Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn presents nine different strategic plans and implementation roadmaps, and the areas of reinvention, aviation, justice reform, and regional food processing. Dr. Kahn is the host of The Government Mechanic.
The 7 Track Plan

Episode 13, The 7 Track Plan, describes the strategic plan used by Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and Kathleen Monahan when they ran as independent candidates for President and Vice President of the United States in 2015 and 2016. The 7 tracks are:
1. Cut one trillion dollars of government waste and invest in local communities
2. Multiple solutions
3. Transforms all federal agencies
4. Build Partnerships
5, Communicate honestly
6. Measure the truth
7. Build Peace
A Theory of Peacemaking

In her 1988 book, Peacemaking: A Systems Approach to Conflict Management, Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn talked about the technology, psychology, theory and application of peacemaking skills. Episode, she reviews some key points: For Technology, she walks listeners through the design of the 1994 Cleveland Summit on Violence. For Psychology, Dr. Kahn describes both individual and group dynamics. While individuals bring their unique history into any group discussion. the dynamic of the group as a system is another level of interactions. Dr. Kahn’s Theory states: people joined together in face-to-face dialogue generate a field of energy with patterns of balance and rhythms of...
Peacebuilding, Peacemaking and Multi-Track Diplomacy—John McDonald

You may wonder how a podcast and YouTube channel called The Government Mechanic arrive at Episodes 11 and 12 to talk about the activities of peacebuilding, the psychology of peacemaking, and international diplomacy among countries and peoples in conflict. The answer is that fixing broken Departments and Agencies means leaders in these government departments and agencies get out of their offices and out of their comfort zones and go out into the communities and hold Listening tours and townhall meetings and work with community-based people to come up with shared solutions to any number of problems. Once those conversations start to...