Posted on 08/22/2002 6:45:01 AM PDT by RogerFGay
Another Man Down in the War Against Fathers
August 22, 2002
By Roger F. Gay
America's Most Wanted put it like this:
Catalino Morales is wanted for the attempted homicide of five deputy sheriff’s in Allentown, Pennsylvania and for failure to pay back child support.On Saturday, morning, December 9, 2000, eight deputies in Lehigh county Pennsylvania broke into Catalino Morales' home to serve an arrest warrant charging him with failure to make child support payments. According to the deputies, Morales barricaded himself in a second-floor bedroom and fired two shots through a closed door. He then shot out a back window, jumped onto a flat roof, and onto the ground where it is alleged that he shot at a deputy. The deputy returned fire but no one was injured. Morales escaped the immediate area.
Police say Morales then entered a house in the neighborhood and held a family of four hostage for several hours. The standoff ended when one of the residents managed to wrestle the gun out of Morales’ hands and Morales fled the scene. A massive hunt ensued, including search dogs, helicopters, and Allentown police; to no avail.
On the night of June 20, 2001 a SWAT team in Hartford, Connecticut surrounded Morales in a housing complex and shots were fired. No policepersons were injured in the encounters. Morales was hit by three of 25 police bullets, permanently damaging his hand and his leg and endangering the lives of the nearby residents.
He is a father. He is a man. He is allegedly behind in making "child support" payments.
It is unlikely that the child support system will be put on trial in defense of Catalino Morales, but it should be. Under heavy influence from a profit-driven collection industry the process of determining the amount of child support ordered and enforcement practices have changed dramatically within the past fifteen years. Political corruption is rampant and obvious not only to those who have studied the system closely but to many fathers who have been forced into subjugation by it.
Millions of men are treated arbitrarily and unfairly to a degree that compromises or destroys their chance to maintain themselves, let alone get on with a normal life. Many cannot do what the system requires them to do. Add to that years of harassment and threats from a long list of strangers, including half-witted pimple-faced high school drop-outs trying to collect to make a commission and female bureaucrats, possibly former welfare mothers, who revel in the opportunity to emasculate men. There is no escape, no reason. Every politician says so. Men and women with more power than moral character constantly remind them that this is what fatherhood is all about.
Then other strangers arrive with guns and invade their homes with the intent of taking them prisoner. They are experiencing the horror of a dictatorial police state.
Catalino Morales is one of many canaries in the child support coal mines. Year after year we watch the canaries die yet the workers are not allowed to leave. Those among us who have the opportunity to communicate are morally obligated to pass the word. This system must be abandoned as quickly as possible whether the masters wish it or not.
In the early 1990s, millions of fathers first experienced the suspension of constitutional law in domestic relations courts and the transition to enforcement of arbitrary en masse central political decisions. The new system seems designed to ruin men's lives. Decisions are arbitrarily based on statistical projections that have no basis in reality. State governments are encouraged to take as much from fathers as possible in order to increase the amount of federal funds they receive. "Public-private partnerships" formed with private collection agencies that benefit from higher child support awards and greater debt. Industry representatives control much of the policy making process, including the design of most formulae used in setting child support amounts.
With so many people involved, there has been a predictable variation in reaction to the change. The early 1990s saw the rise of the fathers rights movement, class-action lawsuits, a surge in the number of appeals filed against child support orders, and new national conferences on fathers issues. State and federal politicians were lobbied constantly to fix or abandon the new laws. Members of the Washington State Legislature received thousands of pairs of baby shoes from fathers trying to make a point.
There were also reports of increases in suicide and violence. The early 1990s saw news reports of the first of the early morning raids on communities to round-up hundreds of dads to cart them off to jail. It saw shootings in courtrooms, lawyers and judges taken bloody to ambulances, and fathers barricaded in their homes surrounded by police.
In Dallas, a lawyer representing himself in a divorce case pulled a semi-automatic weapon from his briefcase and opened fire. While one father was barricaded in his home threatening suicide if police came too close, he was telephoned by a reporter who wanted to turn the conversation over to a police negotiator. Feminist groups protested, saying the government must not negotiate with terrorists. News coverage on such incidents ended. Billions of dollars were spent increasing security in courthouses.
Despite the best efforts of ordinary citizens, the system got worse. Fathers rights advocates were largely cut off from making their appeals through traditional media that continued an enormous propaganda effort against the so-called "deadbeat dads." By the mid-1990s politicians were confident that the public couldn't get enough. Child support was on the political agenda in every election year. Politicians in both parties continually promised to make life tougher for fathers and passed law after law to do so.
By the late 1990s life had become so desperate for a few divorced men (in more than one country) suffering psychologically from the loss of their children and constant harassment that they took guns into day-care centers and held children hostage. Do you now understand how it feels, they asked before being gunned down by police snipers.
Due to the enormous weight of one-sided reporting on the child support issue, many people are still quite unfamiliar with the problem. It is easy to find people who believe that errors can be corrected and orders adjusted to circumstances by a quick visit with a family court judge or through some simple administrative process. They have been brainwashed into believing that men generally avoid what are presumed to be fair and reasonable obligations to their children. It is difficult for them to understand that millions of ordinary citizens are fighting for their survival in the midst of a constitutional crisis.
The Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the states define a system of checks and balances. Unreasonable orders are to be corrected on appeal. Unconstitutional laws are to be overturned by the judiciary. These are necessary safeguards against harmful, intrusive, and corrupt government behavior. But during the past twelve years the system has not functioned as designed. Everyone in government connected with child support, including judges, receive financial rewards for maintaining the centrally planned system and courts and prosecutors have cooperated to an amazing degree. This has created a situation in which no legal remedy for arbitrary and oppressive orders and overly zealous enforcement measures exists.
Some orders are so high as to be life threatening. They do not leave the person who is ordered to pay with sufficient income to support himself. Lives have been lost. But to create the order is not enough. Once bound, the system constantly threatens and harasses fathers who are unable to meet their arbitrarily assigned "obligations." Just give the situation more than two seconds thought. If you do not think that the system caused Catalino Morales to fire a gun and run for his life you do not pass elementary applied probability. You do not understand humans.
Unless the corruption in the system is dealt with and those abusing power and influence arrested and jailed, there will be more gunfights and more men brought down in the war against fathers. Some will no longer have the compassion for life that Catalino Morales displayed. Their instinct to fight when threatened will win out over flight. They will aim at police before firing and not relinquish their weapons to hostages. We will all be guilty if we do not hold those responsible for the child support system as we know it today guilty of conspiracy.
Copyright © 2002 Roger F. Gay
Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. He has also been an intensive political observer for many years culminating in a well-developed sense of honest cynicism. Other articles by Roger F. Gay can be found at Fathering Magazine and Men's News Daily.
An example of why I feel this is sometimes necessary, picture a millionaire with an ex-spouse only capable of earning minimum wage. Do you think they could afford to live in the same school districts, allowing for a viable joint placement? Probably not AND we'd have the kiddso living in one parent's mansion half of the time & living in the getto the other. You'd have them wearing used hand me downs to school on the days they were with their poorer parent & designer clothes on the days they were with their richer parent.
You know, if custody is joint, it is only major bills which are to be split anyway.The keyword being if. And if not? Or do we go on the assumption that all parents are fit or want JC?
Any parent who doesn't want to raise their own children is a loser and unworthy of discussion.That doesn't work. How do you not discuss that which is the cornerstone of these discussions? Why do you think CS even exists? If there were never any "losers" in society, why was it ever proposed?
The alternative, which would be for the government to decree how many children a person may have based upon their socioeconomic status, is unacceptably fascist.My grandparents had 10 kids and adopted yet another. Grandma kept up to 7 foster kids at a time in addition to her own. Their socioeconomic status was not rich, and yet they did not seek handouts or welfare. They raised all their kids, insured they were fed, clothed, housed, and well cared for through their hard work.
My grandparents had 10 kids and adopted yet another. Grandma kept up to 7 foster kids at a time in addition to her own. Their socioeconomic status was not rich, and yet they did not seek handouts or welfare. They raised all their kids, insured they were fed, clothed, housed, and well cared for through their hard work. prefer that we continue raising what others throw out?
And that is the way things need to be. My cousin has twelve kids, and refuses to accept money from family, much less the government. In a rustic make-your-own-toys way, her family is in great shape. No welfare needed.
Needless to say, I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who had mutiple kids that they either run out on and leave just one parent raising or leave the state taxpayers raising...or even for those who stay and expect the taxpayers to raise them and their kids when they have no intention of working to better themselves.
Ditto.
Perhaps you may think the goverment should never be involved, yet to believe such is also to believe that I, as a taxpayer, should be content in paying for the mistakes of others. See, the government does decree where my tax money goes. If it goes to support those who choose to remain on welfare because they have 5, 6, 7 or 8 kids they cannot afford to feed or because they were dumped there when one parent chose to take off, I have a beef with that. I find that unacceptable. prefer that we continue raising what others throw out?
Again, you make a quantum leap and then argue against scarecrows I never built. I'm against the govt. telling people how many kids to have and am against the govt. spending taxmoney to welfare-support other people's kids.
Or, we could all just toss those kids in the garbage and let them fend for themselves I suppose. Would anyone really like to see that? Or would you prefer that we continue raising what others throw out?
People should raise their own children and people should support their own children, with neither biological parent being presumed to have greater rights or responsibilities than the other.
To you. Not to those who consider custody and the right to parent and to be parented to dwarf financial issues.
Why do you think CS even exists?
To institute a Marxist Slave State with fathers on the low end.
If there were never any "losers" in society, why was it ever proposed?
To feed the greed of those who want money they will never earn.
Fine. Let it all be fought out in state legislatures!
People should raise their own children and people should support their own children, with neither biological parent being presumed to have greater rights or responsibilities than the other.People should but if they don't want to and no one insures that they do, are you proposing we just forget about them and not discuss them because they are losers? What do we do with their kids?
And what would be the Constitutional approach to custody determinations?
To feed the greed of those who want money they will never earn.You have quite a narrow view that seems more fed with anger and bitterness than anything. I don't think it's possible to see any other POV until you can get past that.
Unwanted children can be adopted...Unwanted babies often are, unwanted children often live in foster care and orphanges. Do you have anymore wisdom to share?
Endless measures...but elsewhere.
Have a wonderful, safe, happy, healthy, fulfilling, comfortable, engaging life.
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