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.
Can I have some of what you're smoking? I'd like to plant it on one of the more obnoxious child support agents. :)
You're surely living in a happytime dreamworld if you think an ex-father could get away with "an obvious attempt to evade his responsibility" by starting a business.
Exactly how is he supposed to "start a business", when every "free" dollar -- which would be necessary for startup costs, inventory, expenses, and so forth -- the type things that every business has to wrestle with when starting up -- is claimed by the Child Support gestappo as unpaid tribute to his ex?
It is obvious that you've never had any direct contact with "the system", and are getting your "facts" from the feminist propaganda mills.
You need to think things through before weighing in with your basket of solutions.
Thanks for the advance generalization.
Actually I would like to hear your story of woe since the amount of venom you put out about this issue should make it a doozy.
You have tried to justify the actions of a guy who held hostages by his treatment at the hands of child support collectors. Mr. K would be a much better case to promote though I doubt he wants the job. I am sure there are many like him otherwise why have a fathers movement in the first place.
It's the extolling of the extreme via armed conflict that seems to be a theme in these CPS battles. Not many want to defend CPS but fewer want to defend child abusers and armed hostage takers. I hate to say it but some of you guys sound like suicide by cop candidates. And that is frightening.
Cute.
Except that it doesn't work very well in Michigan.
Cop shows up. Cop knocks on door. Cop stands there waiting for a minute or so. Cop knocks on door again. Cop waits another minute. Cop knocks on door again. Cop waits another minute.
Cop turns to you, shrugs his shoulders, tells you, "Well, she won't open the door," then says goodbye, and leaves.
Enforcement, right.
I have it straight from the mouth of the former head of the Friend of the Court agency that there is intentionally zero enforcement for anything the woman does, "because we believe that women care about their children."
The entire superstructure of the divorce/"child" support industry is driven by hard core doctrinaire radical feminist agenda.
I did read the article. It was your followups that got my attention.
I just think there are much better cases to be stated. My father could be an example. But a guy who decides to take on armed conflict because he owes child support and takes a family hostage is not exactly a great banner carrier. To then use rage at the injustice of the system as an implied justification of what was done was ridiculous. To say this is predictable with the system and its circumstances and slyly condone this father rage, it seems that armed conflict is what is the goal. It is extolled as the fathers working in the system are villified.
Oh, beautiful! Hegelianism on crack!
Knock him down, step on him, piss on him, and then say "you really expect us to let The Children get anywhere near some bum on the ground who stinks of urine?"
Congratulations!
You're today's winner of the Josef Stalin Resource Management Award!
Please, do remember to properly dispose of the livestock when it is no longer able to deliver an appropriate return on investment.
Ah, the Marie Antoinette gambit!
"What are those men complaining about? If they're hungry, let them eat cake! Divorce is not 'difficult' or 'expensive' -- just ask any divorced woman and she'll tell you!"
"He's screaming copyright infringement elsewhere as I post this. His crossing over to Free Republic was just too funny as my hubby is a poster here . . ."
ROTFL! I would think that with as many boards as Roger has already posted this to (including FR) that this "article" is public Domain by now.
Welcome to FR MrsDrumbo.
Having to pay $300 per month forces him to live in a car? Sounds like your brother isn't trying very hard to pay up.
Just how long did your brother not pay support? A $300 monthly interest payment translates to $3,600 a year. At 10% (I checked--that's the CA interest rate on overdue support), that's $36,000 in arrears.
Finally, why didn't he pay?
Don't be silly. The answer is, "Because he's a man, of course."
No, what you are saying -- basically -- is that if there is "something" about working conditions at the Post Office that results in a dramatic series of "going postal" incidents, the proper path to take is to continue shooting the miscreants, and ridicule anyone who suggests that it might be prudent to examine what that "something" at the Post Office might be.
OK, fair enough.
How about one who instead of holding four people hostage for four hours, spends his last five bucks on a bottle of cheap whiskey which he takes "home" (his 25 year old Chevy Impala rustbucket) and drinks it before starting up his engine, flooring the accelerator, and aiming the car at the biggest tree he can find once the speedometer has reached 95 MPH?
Would you have any "SYMPATHY" for that postal worker? How about ten of them? Or fifty? Or a thousand?
How many would it take before you had "SYMPATHY" for people who were driven over the edge?
Or would you simply say good riddance to bad rubbish and leave the status quo alone?
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