The Government Mechanic

Episode 26 concludes Season 3, which focused on the failures of family law, family

court, foster care, medical kidnapping and parental alienation. The host, Dr. Lynn

Sandra Kahn, had three final points, found in the title of this episode, 3 reasons why 90

million Americans hate the Democrats. Doctor Kahn aimed her comment at her

Democrat friends, Democrat leadership and progressive podcasters.

First, Dr. Kahn pointed to the 3 million children taken from their homes by child welfare

systems over the past ten years, not because of abuse, but for “neglect” which is o...

Episode 25 summarizes problems and solutions for farming, ranching, fishing and

America’s food supply in Episodes 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The first lesson is that USDA -- the

US Department of Agriculture -- policies are consistently horrible, with destructive

impacts on family-owned farms, ranches, fisheries and their small communities.

For example, the USDA sets the price of milk below what it costs the dairy farmer to

produce that milk. The numbers are clear: In the 1970s, we had 770,000 dairy farms; in

2024 we had 36,184. Our founding fathers were farmers, food producers an...

Episode 24 summarizes the 7 episodes posted about America's children lost in foster

care and through family court. I warn you, my listeners and viewers, this is

heartbreaking stuff. Please find your support network if you are triggered by these clips.

Start with the list of resources below.

Dr. Kahn showed some clips from these episodes:

 Episode 17 spotlights Rachel Bruno, who had her own children taken in 2015, then

sued Los Angeles County and the State of California. She won. She has the lived

experience an...

Episode 24 summarizes the 7 episodes posted about America's children lost in foster

care and through family court. I warn you, my listeners and viewers, this is

heartbreaking stuff. Please find your support network if you are triggered by these clips.

Start with the list of resources below.

Dr. Kahn showed some clips from these episodes:

 Episode 17 spotlights Rachel Bruno, who had her own children taken in 2015, then

sued Los Angeles County and the State of California. She won. She has the lived

experience an...

David R. Shubert

Author, Speaker, and Family Rights Advocate

Shubert’s work stems from his own painful experience of international parental abduction, parental alienation and struggles through family courts. He authored Parental Alienation Unmasked, a guide to the emotional aspects of parental alienation and navigating the legal system; Stolen Memories, about his journey after the international parental abduction of his own children; and Parental Alienation is Abuse! which raises awareness of a failed family court system. Shubert wants people to know that they are not alone. His works can be...

The episodes bring back guests Connie Reguli, lawyer and child welfare reform advocate; Rachel Bruno and Bailey Templeton, parents whose children were taken by child protective services and returned many months later; Terri LaPoint, investigative journalist researching medical kidnapping for 15 years; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist and YouTube and podcast host.

More Information: Kahn

Website: https://govmechanic.com/

More Information: Reguli

YouTube channel - Connie Reguli

https://youtube.com/@connieregulifamilyforward?si=39HQPmm4_pN0EC94

YouTube - Family Forward Training...

The episodes bring back guests Connie Reguli, lawyer and child welfare reform advocate; Rachel Bruno and Bailey Templeton, parents whose children were taken by child protective services and returned many months later; Terri LaPoint, investigative journalist researching medical kidnapping for 15 years; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist and YouTube and podcast host.

More Information: Kahn

Website: https://govmechanic.com/

More Information: Reguli

YouTube channel - Connie Reguli

https://youtube.com/@connieregulifamilyforward?si=39HQPmm4_pN0EC94

YouTube...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

·   ...

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. 

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

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...

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...

Episode 10 looks under the hood at the US Department of Veterans Affairs with Steve Sanson, Co-founder and President of Veterans in Politics International; Kathleen Monahan, an organizational consultant with 40 years of federal government experience and volunteer with homeless vets; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic. The conversation begins with a discussion of the new VA mission adopted in 2023. Since 1865 the VA mission has been to “to care for he who has borne the battle, his widow and his orphan.” The new mission seeks to fulfil...

Episode 9 is the first of our special episodes called “Under the Hood” where we look at the key elements of any organization: mission statement, strategic goals, priority actions, performance metrics and even communication style. In this episode, looking under the hood of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is Brenda Cochran, a dairy farmer for 50 years; Kathleen Monahan, an organizational consultant with 40 years of government experience; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic. The conversation concludes that family farmers are not represented in the USDA stra...

Episode 8 focuses on small-scale fisheries and reveals similarities with family farming and traditional ranching. Our special guest is Niaz Dorry and we talk about fishing, farming, ranching and America’s food supply system. Niaz Dorry has been a community organizer for over 35 years. Now she is both the Director of the North American Marine Alliance (NAMA) and the Director of the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC). These two organizations together are the largest voice for grassroots communities of fishermen, farmers and ranchers -- what they call the first set of hands that touch our food.  The two organizations began a shar...

Episode 7 could also be titled Do You Know Where Your Hamburger Comes From? This is the third of five episodes about our food supply system here in America. The   accomplished and surprisingly talented guest is Marty Irby, the director of the Organization for Competitive Markets based in Lincoln Nebraska, though he works and lives in Washington, D.C. Marty Irby was born in southern Alabama and grew up on a farm with horses, cattle and other animals. Flash forward to 2024, Marty is a lobbyist in Washington DC, demanding our elected officials do the right thing. For example, he helped pa...

Episode 6 is the second of five episodes about America’s food supply system. The special guest is Sherry Bunting, investigative reporter extraordinaire, an independent agriculture journalist since 1981. She was born and raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where she now lives and works. She has worked on dairy farms, milking and feeding cows, sometimes as a relief milker called in at the last minute. Now, she is a farm and food policy expert, publishing weekly in the Farmshine newsletter. The conversation started with questioning why it is illegal to serve whole milk in our public schools in America. Yes, it’s il...

Episodes 5 through 8 are all about farming, ranching, fishing, and our food supply system here in America. The special and outspoken guest on Episode 5 is Brenda Cochran, co-founder of Farm Women United. Cochran has been a dairy farmer for nearly fifty years; her husband was born and raised on a dairy farm; and they are now farming in Pennsylvania. Together they raised and homeschooled 14 children. Cochran has a lot to say about the struggles of dairy farmers, the destructive policies of the US Department of Agriculture, and the future of our food supply here in the United States. 

T...

Episode 4 brings back Steve W. Sanson, co-founder and president of Veterans in Politics International. Steve served in the United States Marine Corps from 1985 to 1991 and in the United States Army from 1992 to 1998. He was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He has advocated for veterans for almost 25 years, testifying in front of the Nevada state legislature on issues from veterans’ cemeteries, to keeping nuclear waste out of Nevada, to printing the word veteran on Nevada driver’s licenses, and fighting to change police policies when dealing with veterans who might have PTSD.

In Episode 4, Sanson describes the effor...

Episodes 3 and 4 feature Steve W. Sanson, president of Veterans in Politics International. Steve served in the United States Marine Corps from 1985 to 1991 and in the United States Army from 1992 to 1998. He was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He has advocated for veterans for almost 25 years, testifying in front of the Nevada state legislature on issues including veterans’ cemeteries, keeping nuclear waste out of Nevada, printing the word Veteran on Nevada driver’s licenses, and fighting to change police policies when dealing with veterans who might have PTSD.

In Episode 3, Sanson describes challenges faced by veterans, especially those...

John Kamensky is the featured guest in Season 2, Episode 2 where he describes government reform efforts over the last 35 years. Kamensky is currently a visiting lecturer in the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also an emeritus fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. He started working on government reform at the 1974 Texas Constitutional Convention. He served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as a deputy director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government in the Office of the V...

Season 2, Episode 1 features Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn and Kathy Monahan talking about their 2016 campaign as independent candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States. Kahn is an organizational psychologist with over 40 years’ experience as a strategic planner specializing in government reinvention and transformation. Monahan is a strategic planner and management consultant also with more than 40 years’ government experience, often focused on performance measurement. Together, they worked inside the federal government at the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Border Patrol, Defense, and the Department of Justice.

Their campaign stretched from coas...

Welcome to Episode 1 of my podcast The Government Mechanic. I’m going to describe my background, my goals, lessons from my 40-year career as an organizational psychologist, and what I saw and heard in 2015 and 2016 as an independent candidate for President of the United States.

Episode 5 with Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi.

Episode 2: The Playbook, the overall plan, describes how to look at the 7 Layers of Government from different angles so you can see what’s really broken and know what to do.

The 7 Layers of Government

Mission and Vision are the foundation of the agency. Mission is the purpose or prime objective of the agency. Vision is the north star, where the agency is headed. Together they are the engine that drives the agency. In government, the Mission is often distorted and the Vision is usually missing.

Goals are the key objectives that will ac...

Episode 6 - Part 2 of our conversation with Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi.

Multi–track diplomacy includes government to government negotiations, as well as all the different ways in which citizens work to solve problems and build peace. Peacebuilding is active behavior, such as agreeing on a cease-fire or even showing up for the conversations. Peacemaking is internal, a change of heart or a new point of view. Fixing government is deeply connected to the activities of peacebuilding and the dynamics of peacemaking.

Multi–track diplomacy includes government to government negotiations, as well as all the different ways in which citizens work to solve problems and build peace. Peacebuilding is active behavior, such as agreeing on a cease-fire or even showing up for the conversations. Peacemaking is internal, a change of heart or a new point of view. Fixing government is deeply connected to the activities of peacebuilding and the dynamics of peacemaking.

Episode 7 - Steve Sanson, Founder of Veterans in Politics International