The Doofus Department

The Doofus Department
by Stephen Baskerville
by Stephen Baskerville, PhD

Those madcap child support officials are at it again. Ever vigilant in their
pursuit of the elusive deadbeat, these Wile E. Coyotes of family policy are
devising ever-more outlandish schemes to snare their quarry. It is ironic
that a prominent theme in today's media culture is so-called doofus dads,
bumbling fools invariably defeated by the superior wisdom of their wives and
children. For despite ever greater outlays of taxpayers' money for ever more
intrusive incursions into civil liberties, it is not so much the fathers as
their pursuers who are shooting themselves in the foot.

Their latest escapade concerns Viola Trevino, who discovered she could
obtain a child support order against a man without the inconvenience of
actually having a child. Steve Barreras was forced to pay $20,000 for a
child that, it turns out, never existed. Barreras protested for years and
produced documentation that no child could possibly exist, but he was
ignored by New Mexico's Child Support Enforcement Division. "The child
support system in this state is horrible," an Albuquerque woman tells a
reporter. "A woman can walk into their office with a birth certificate and a
'sob' story and the man on that birth certificate is hunted down and forced
to pay child support." Yet the agency - which ironically claims to be
keeping an eye on other people's parental "responsibilities" - claims they
were not responsible for the shakedown of Barreras, because they were
"merely enforcing child support already ordered by a judge." No automatic
provision requires the return of the fraudulently ordered payments, so to
recover his money Barreras must hire more attorneys and sue.

Though officials try to dismiss such shenanigans as aberrations, they
proceed logically from the child support system, which was created by
lawyers and feminists not to provide for children but to plunder fathers and
transfer their earnings to other grown-ups. In an increasingly typical
decision, a Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in November that a mother
could collect full child support from two men for the same child.

But mothers are not the only ones using children to make a fast buck. Such
apparently inane rulings are explicable only by the fact that child support
is a moneymaker for lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, and government coffers,
plus private hangers-on - all at the expense of fathers and federal
taxpayers.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox recently hailed the passage of six (!)
new laws that he says will help collect child support. But Cox already has
egg on his face from his ill-fated scheme to recruit the state's children as
government propagandists. Cox offered free Domino's pizzas to children who
designed billboards vilifying their own fathers as deadbeats. He even
invited mothers to express their feelings about their former husbands
through their children's artwork. But far from shaming the supposed
scoundrels, it was Cox who was forced to retreat with his tail between his
legs. He cancelled the campaign when first the public and then Domino's
directed more anger against him than against the fathers. One political
cartoonist showed Cox telling a young child that she could not see her
father but she could have a pepperoni pizza.

Michigan's enforcement methods have been the subject of federal legal
challenges. Attorney Michael Tindall relates in Michigan Lawyers Weekly how
he was arrested without warning when his payments were current. Wayne County
enforcement agents admitted under oath that they frequently increase
accounts without valid court orders. A federal court ruled that Michigan
violated Tindall's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet
the agency defied the court and even initiated another round of enforcement
using the same illegal procedures to collect the same arrearage they had
admitted was erroneous. Cox's campaign came as Michigan was set to lose $208
million in federal funds if it did not meet federal guidelines for
organizing its collection system. To comply, the state promised to
accelerate the very measures that the federal court had ruled were in
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In just the last few months, repeated exposés of mismanagement and fraud
throughout the child support system have poured forth from journalists,
scholars, and even some officials themselves. These include charges of
illegal and unconstitutional practices that violate basic civil liberties.

In Society, Bryce Christensen writes, "The advocates of ever-more-aggressive
measures for collecting child support.have moved us a dangerous step closer
to a police state and have violated the rights of innocent and often
impoverished fathers." In The Law and Economics of Child Support Payments,
William Comanor and a team of scholars have documented horrific abuses.
Ronald Henry's essay calls the system and its rationalization "an obvious
sham," a "disaster," and "the most onerous form of debt collection practiced
in the United States." The fraudulent and predatory nature of the child
support system has been documented in peer-reviewed publications by the
Independent Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the American
Political Science Association, and repeatedly in Society.

In 2002, a Georgia superior court ruled that the state's guidelines "bear no
relationship to the constitutional standards for child support" and create
"a windfall to the obligee." Characterizing the guidelines as "contrary both
to public policy and common sense," the court noted that they bear no
connection to any understanding of the cost of raising children. "The
custodial parent does not contribute to child costs at the same rate as the
non-custodial parent and, often, not at all," the court notes. "The
presumptive award leaves the non-custodial parent in poverty while the
custodial parent enjoys a notably higher standard of living." The court
anticipated the findings of Comanor and his team: "The guidelines are so
excessive as to force non-custodial parents to frequently work extra jobs
for basic needs.. Obligors are frequently forced to work in a cash economy
to survive."

A Wisconsin court likewise found that state's guidelines "result in a figure
so far beyond the child's needs as to be irrational." When a court struck
down Tennessee's guidelines on similar grounds, the state Department of
Human Services (which jails fathers for violating court orders), announced
they would not abide by the ruling.

One may disagree with these assessments. Yet despite admitting that the
system it oversees is "way out of balance," the federal Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) has never even acknowledged these scathing
allegations or made any effort to correct them.

Last summer, HHS's Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) held an
invitation-only meeting for local officials and a few organizations and
announced (in a perhaps unfortunate wording) a new "five-year plan" called
the National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan.

OCSE Director Sherri Heller promised to develop fairer procedures. Yet
nothing in the Plan addresses the violations of constitutional rights and
civil liberties. In a peculiar example of Orwellian newspeak, the Plan
promises to build a "culture of compliance," in which parents support their
children "voluntarily" but also says that "severe enforcement remedies" will
be used against parents who fail to volunteer.

The Plan includes nothing about the desirability of observing due process of
law or respecting constitutional rights. No concern is expressed that
guidelines be just and appropriate. Nowhere is the charge addressed that
child support may be subsidizing family breakups, nor is the possibility
raised of using federal subsidies to encourage shared parenting, which would
relieve the overall enforcement load. No concrete measures or incentives are
advanced for requiring or encouraging the involvement of non-custodial
parents in the decision-making or raising of their children.

None of the scholars who have criticized the system's ethics and methods was
invited to speak at this or any other meeting sponsored by OCSE. Instead
house academic Elaine Sorensen was trotted out to reinforce the official
line. Sorensen dismissed the Georgia Superior Court decision as "only one
judge's opinion."

If any public official (plus millions of citizens) is alleging that federal
police operations are sending innocent people to prison, one would think
this at least a matter for discussion, if not investigation - especially in
an agency that acknowledges its operations are "way out of balance." But
OCSE have their fingers in their ears. One official acknowledged that in
preparing the Plan no solicitation of public comments was ever issued and no
systematic citizen input was collected.

The appointment of a new HHS secretary offers the Bush administration the
opportunity to honestly confront the sprawling welfare machine in its
destructive entirety. Though Mike Leavitt seems to have little experience in
these matters, he may also arrive free of the ideological baggage that made
his predecessor Tommy Thompson one of the most authoritarian and disliked
figures in the administration.

The Associated Press reports that Indiana is losing more than $57 million a
year in state and federal tax dollars to collect child support payments
averaging about $54 a week. Yet in a bold leap of logic, the AP blames the
boondoggle not on the legislators who are wasting taxpayers' money but on
unnamed malefactors who are about as real as Viola Trevino's baby.

December 27, 2004


--
"The most terrifying words in the English language a
I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--- Ronald Reagan

"Dusty" wrote in

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox recently hailed the passage of six (!)
new laws that he says will help collect child support.


Yes, by all means, do collect CS, but at a fair rate!!!!!!!

So what has all this talk and bitching accomplished? Nothing!

More important, What are "WE" going to do?

Lanark wrote:
"Dusty" wrote in

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox recently hailed the passage of six (!)
new laws that he says will help collect child support.


Yes, by all means, do collect CS, but at a fair rate!!!!!!!

So what has all this talk and bitching accomplished? Nothing!

More important, What are "WE" going to do?

Ummmm. Bitch about it in four crossposted newsgroups?