Monday, April 16, 2007

1) Debut


16 April, 2007
Well, today I'm fifty years old. I feel pretty good for fifty. Especially when one considers I've survived Melanoma (twice) and Chemotherapy once; I was lucky!
I just heard a report by Elaine Kory, a Senior NPR reporter based in San Francisco that pissed me off; "California to Cut Welfare Safety Net for Parents" When is the public going to wake up and realize what is going on in this country in regard to Welfare "Reform", Gay Marriage (which I couldn't care less about) and Child Support? I mean, before they'd even broadcast the meat and potatoes of this piece I knew that the article was going to be about the struggle of poor single Moms and, of course, I was correct! See, people who know recognize that the states, California in this example, despite their statements to the contrary have a vested financial interest in creating as many single mother households as possible. Understand, the first thing the Family Law Industry does in the majority of American divorce cases involving children is remove the fathers from their children's lives. In the U.S., Mom's are awarded primary Custody in over 90% of divorce cases involving kids. In this way, Child Support commences and the counties or Collection Enforcement regimes get a percentage of dad's income perpetuating their livelihood and industry.

California alone receives well over $40 million dollars per year from The Federal Government for it's child support collection efforts. Those Federal Funds finance payroll, employee benefits, and paid vacation time for the employees of the Child Support Collection Industry. Those funds do not make their way to the lives of children of divorce or impoverished kids, they simply pay people, many of them Government officials, to police child support collection. And so you know, according to the brilliant book, Father and Child Reunion, Farrell - Putnam the only definitive study ever done on child support collection indicated that Dad's pay between 80 and 93% of their court ordered support. But when these figures became apparent Wayne Stanton, then head of the Family Support Administration in Washington, D.C., had the study cancelled. In fact, it took a formal submission to the Freedom of Information Act to retrieve the data from Stanton's agency.