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.
So, Missy Kettle from Sicily, did you apologize to me somewhere over this libel you wrote?
"CJ threatened to sick the FBI, the CIA, and the forum administrator on me because she disagrees."
You are almost as dishonorable a man as the ones you blindly defend.
We know that already, Sissy. We are not certain you are a man, but we know you are dishonorable and flakey.
I'm sure you have a point here.......
He imported the Wisconsin Model from Soviet Russia.
IE, anything the commies came up with just has to be bad.
According to him, Wisconsin is like heaven for fathers.
Believe it or not, it's not as bad & you seem to want to portray it and it's getting even better for fathers as time goes by. Now ask yourself why.
The percent of income formula and all the trimmings is the fairest thing humans ever invented.
There's more to it & I bet you know it. So tell me Rog, what are the other statistics for the state of Wisconsin? Statistics you ask? *Statistics* she responds. What percentage of Wisconsin fathers pay 100% of formula? What percentage of fathers have primary placement?
Sherri Heller from OCSE says it's great that the federal government is arresting and prosecuting wealthy fathers as a display of government power.
As opposed to allowing them to be scofflaws? *Wealthy* Rodge, not the poor saps who are just getting by, the wealthy, those who can afford to help support their kids, but consider themselves above doing that.
The purpose is to intimidate everyone, and that's a good thing -- for the children.
Was that a quote or your spin?
My lapse into juvenile name calling is a far cry from pulling out a gun and shooting it at someone and so is sending eight police officers to request the honor of the presence of the man in the article.
For those of us who worked within the system, had no personal agenda of revenge, truly wanted what was best for everyone, and the system worked, I don't know why you or anyone else would expect us to be aware of problems in another jurisdiction. Maybe in Michigan, my solutions wouldn't work. Maybe in New York, they would. I only know what my experience has been, and I speak from that perspective.
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.
Too bad creating a small business has become a well known evasion ploy & it doesn't work, eh Don?
Exactly how is he supposed to "start a business",
Just do it!!! Ignore all of background noise or you'll never do it, you'll never succeed. Trust me.
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?
OOoops, I hear someone who listened to background noise. That was your first mistake. Your business model is smack dab out of "Starting a Small Business 101"...... Those who can't teach. Those who can, do. Those looking for an excuse usually find it.
It is obvious that you've never had any direct contact with "the system", and are getting your "facts" from the feminist propaganda mills.
Whilst you get your factiods from anti-femanist propaganda mills, which is no more accurate.
That's you telegraphing your moves. Dishonorable people like you often attribute their own failings to others.
Yet, when any portion of context is judged as being worthy of just ignoring, what part in any of this has to do with the truth?
Walking the road Mr Gay has put us on in this thread isn't an easy one and I found proximity very much determines compassion.
I'm actually surprised at how much Rodger has participated & responded here. It's not his usual MO, which is generally to drop his dribble & ignore everything contrary. He only walks the walk to a point, that being the point where anything is counter to the limited agenda he wishes to promote.
Look up entries under "women" in your phonebook. Probably several along the lines of networking and support . Look at listings under "men". I rest my case.
When you rest your case there, you rested before you won your case, which actually *makes* my point. Your case has no merit. Go back to that phonebook & call the numbers along the lines of networking and supporting for women & discover the origins of those resources. You want to fault those who have found a need and filled it? Nothing is stopping you from doing the same, but that would require you to do something, do something other than complaining about those who have taken action
You've not really taken the issue much further than money here and there simply is no need to. That's what it's all about.
Who says there's no need? You? Maybe you could actually ask, instead of reaching for an assumption?
So it is okay to use armed resistance against preceived injustice by goverment over what amounts to money decreed for your children. I thought this attitude was what hurt the fatehrs movement in the first place with begatuve mainstream media coverage>
From my post 149: "I agree that men should not have children if they are not prepared to support them "
Isn't it obvious from my post that I think they should have remained childless?
Your expalanation was the system caused this. We do not know how much Morales owed, how many kids he had, how late he was in payment, what efforts he may have gone through to avoid payment, how he was treated in court etc.
We do know 8 deputies showed up to arrest Morales and he fired at them. We know Morales took a family hostage for several hours. We know Morales was eventually shot and captured and is now on trial for attempted murder.
You seem to be drawing things from another source, possibly thin air.
What I see is a nutjob who may or may have not been wronged by the system decided to use armed conflict to settle the issue. Same with idiot in the courthouse. You explained that of course the system leads to these actions. This is a justification. It is calling the act understandable like one would say about a parent killing an abuser of their child. That is not what happened, he was to be arrested, he fired on police and took a family hostage. What he did was not condonable, explainable or anything in that context. Remove him as any example of a system gone awry because it only hurts your cause. As I have said many times before there is a mountain of anecdotal and statistical evidence to bolster the movement. Hell my father could throw in some good ones. But the article seems to state that frustration taken out to its extremes is a inline with natural course of events. I say BS to that.
You seem to be at your wits end, continually raging while not getting your point across. Which is why I made my comment regarding suicide by cop. Your posts have a martyr tone to them.
Yikes...so much for checking before you post. It should read:
I thought this attitude was what hurt the fathers movement in the first place with negative mainstream media coverage.
This country is dominated by self-interest groups who are constantly pushing their agendas. White/Christian/Straight Men, are systematically unfound in our polpular media!
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