Hello,

Here is an excellent article illustrating the need for reforms in
our Family Courts.

For those of you in the legal community, the Sustainable Community
Law Project is currently looking for reform-minded attorneys
to participate in reform efforts concerning tax, welfare, DCFS,
and family law.

If you have any questions, please direct them to us at:
community_law_project at sustainable-community.org



Best regards,


Michael Burns
Executive Director
Dialogue on Sustainable Community
Sustainable Community Law Project
Chicago, Illinois

-------------------------------------------


Case Study: Deadbeat Politics in Galesburg, Illinois

April 15, 2005



by David R. Usher



Politicians in Galesburg, Illinois think they have a plan to be
a "demonstration county" for Illinois child support enforcement.
Knox County State's Attorney Paul Mangieri and Judge Harry Bulkeley
plan to lock up poor men behind on child support payments from Friday
evening until Monday morning.

This situation is an excellent microcosmic study which pristinely
isolates the damage done to society and family in more complex world
of politics.

Justice has been set aside entirely in civil nonsupport cases.
Incarceration does not constitute removal of one's freedom (thus
requiring a high standard of scrutiny). It is considered a method to
compel a person to do whatever the court wants. The fact that one's
freedom has been revoked is immaterial. In these cases the
reasonability of the support order, and whether the father can earn
the amount ordered, are not defenses and cannot be pled. The only
question before the court is "did you pay or not".

What a marvelous idea. Make it impossible for poor men to be fathers
(so they cannot parent their children), and turn them into
workaholics for the state. This is in addition to seizing any and all
assets, taking away driver's, business, and professional licenses so
men cannot work or get to work, and inventing child support tables
that pretend the father has no living expenses of his own.

As in most publicized cases, the politicians in Galesburg picked two
men who are way behind on child support. Douglas Alexander and Justin
Jobe are the current poster boys for Knox County's antifamily
politicians.

It is entirely possible that these two men are bums. But we don't
know that, because the Galesburg Register Mail couldn't care less
about why these men are behind on support. And these men do not in
any way represent the serious employment problems facing everyone in
Knox County, Illinois.

Galesburg is a small town of 33,000, surrounded by expanses of
cornfields.. Maytag, the largest union employer in the entire area,
closed its plant in October, 2002 leaving over 1600 workers
unemployed. The jobs were relocated to a Maytag plant in Reynosa,
Mexico. The total ripple-through job loss is approximately 4,166
jobs. The impact on the area is devastating, especially because there
is no other major employer in the area.


Divorced men: Impressed guarantors of global economy shifts and the
welfare state

Every divorced father who lost his job in Galesburg as a result of
the Maytag closure, but has been unable to find equivalent
employment, or has been unable to get his child support modified
downward immediately, has become a slave and guarantor to the welfare
state and the global economy.

The Galesburg Register-Mail and local politicians are quite aware
they are putting divorced men in the impossible position of being the
guarantors of the welfare state and the divorce revolution. They are
also keenly aware that shifts in the economy cause unemployment and
increased needs for welfare.

The Galesburg Register-Mail's recent article "Lack of support" makes
my major points for me (as quoted from their article in italics
below). Bureaucrats know exactly what they are doing to insulate the
state from the welfare problem it created via no-fault divorce, poor
economic policy, and trying to end poverty by forcing chain-gang
policies on the poor:

Point : Taxpayers don't want to fund the welfare state or help the
poor:

"It has gone from being viewed as a family problem to being a
societal problem," Watts said. "The general public doesn't feel this
is just a family matter. It affects them as taxpayers in a number of
ways."


Point: Child support is the insurer of the welfare state, economic
shifts, globalization, and subsequent job loss:

"Watts said non-payment of support ends up costing taxpayers when the
Illinois Department of Public Aid issues food stamps and medical
cards to provide health care for the children…. Figures for how much
the non-payment of child support costs the Department of Public Aid
are not available, but research by the Center for Law and Social
Policy estimates if all support were paid, cash assistance would drop
26 percent, food stamp costs would be reduced by 19 percent and
Medicaid costs would be 5 percent lower.

An Iowa study estimates potential state welfare costs are reduced by
86 cents for every dollar in child support collected…. Bradley said
if she were receiving monthly support payments, she would not have to
depend on public aid and other assistance.".
Authors note: The Register Mail did not bother to tell us if the
father was also a Maytag employee or why he isn't paying support).

Point : There is no longer any substantive legal or attitudinal
difference between welfare and child support. Welfare has been recast
as "child support" to blame men for everything that goes wrong and
absolve the state for poor planning and economic policies. Any
welfare given out is mislabeled "child support":

"Pam Compton, the acting administrator of the Illinois Department of
Public Aid Division of Child Support Enforcement, said in the 1970s,
the department only worked on support cases for parents on welfare.

In the 1980s, its services were expanded to provide free services to
all custodial parents who ask for assistance in collecting child
support …. "Technically, our client is the Illinois Department of
Public Aid," Mangieri said. "That is who we represent because they
have expended taxpayers' money for the benefit of the child of non-
support ….

Dinges said "research by the Center for Law and Social Policy shows
that child support is a critical source of economic stability for
moderate and low-income families. For Bradley, regular child support
payments would supply that stability " (Author's note: where does
this child support come from? A good job? Making a quick illegal buck
in the underground economy to stay out of jail?)

Point: States think the poverty and welfare problem will melt away if
all "child support" (read welfare) is collected back from the poor.
Welfare is no longer welfare – it is a loan given to the poor taken
back by force of criminal penalty against the poor. (Note: these
items are in the printed version of the article, but not in the
online version:

"Child support collections significantly reduce the federal, state
and local costs of providing cash assistance to single parent
families and lowers the costs of Medicaid and food stamps" …. An Iowa
study found that potential state welfare costs are reduced by 86
cents for every dollar in child support collected."

Point: "Lack of Support" states that 1844 of the 1900 "public
support" cases in Knox County were behind in 2004. According to the
article, the most that DCSE can collect (via an arsenal of tools that
makes the IRS jealous) is 55% of what the state gave out in welfare.
What does this figure mean? It proves that 1844 out of 1900 poor men
in Knox County can't support the welfare state and themselves at the
same time. The difference used to be called "welfare". Even a
trained chicken can understand this.

The welfare deficit is as high as ever. Politicians just found a
handy new name to "pass the buck" and make themselves look good.
States are still handing out welfare like Johnny Appleseed, using the
courts and DCSE to get it back from millions of poor men, most of
whom will never have the money. Perhaps somebody should have
read "Robin Hood" to these people when they were children. They
never learned that you aren't supposed to steal from the poor to give
to the poor.

We see that the Register-Mail failed to add up its own facts honestly
and relate the real story to us. Much of the language in the article
is "deadbeat spin" of political convenience on simple facts that even
a ten-year-old child could understand. It is classic "symbolism over
substance', but perhaps more destructive than most.

Knox College, a small liberal arts college located in Galesburg is
quite aware what happened in its current article Globalization On the
Prairie. Knox suggests that help is on the way:

"Because Maytag's relocation was deemed the result of foreign
competition, displaced workers from the plant can receive educational
benefits and extended unemployment insurance through the federal
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. In the next two years, the
most fortunate among the dislocated in Galesburg will become service-
providers—nurses or radiology and computer technicians—in Galesburg's
post-industrial economy."

Here is what Knox missed: unemployment benefits do not come close to
satisfying any child support obligation. No family court or DCSE
tribunal will grant a child-support abatement to allow a divorced
father to take time for education or training needed to change
careers so as to maintain the previous high income level. If men are
not allowed to seek the education required to transition to
Galesburg's new service economy, then what are these men supposed to
do?

I would like to hear from the good men in Galesburg who are most
certainly being abused by these politicians. I would like to help you
organize to end the economic terrorism of men in Galesburg.

A Petri dish in the larger laboratory of deadbeat politics

The situation in Galesburg is not unusual. However, it is immensely
valuable because it can be studied as a relatively pure example of
what transpires in the larger political diaspora all across America.

The politicization of welfare has wreaded disastrous results on
families. Even military reservists called into active duty are being
turned into deadbeat dads as we speak. I can think of no greater
national outrage than to send a man overseas to be shot at or blown
up, while we are are making a criminal out of him stateside and
pretending it is a wonderful thing.

In "Lack of Support", the state pretends that it is reasonably simple
to modify a child support order when the obligor's income changes:

"Assistant State's Attorney Dean Stone said when a non-custodial
parent's financial situation changes, through losing a job or finding
a better job, support payments are modified."

This is absolutely incorrect. The Illinois Department of Child
Support website contains plenty of information about getting support
initiated or enforced. There is no information for the NCP about how
to get it modified. In fact, modification is not even mentioned on
the one and only web page describing the "services" available to non-
custodial parents. This is the first clue that these services are
being intentionally withheld, in probable violation of federal law.

I called the Illinois DCSE hotline. Buried in a nondescript section
of their PBX menu, I eventually found an address in Springfield,
Illinois where one can mail a request for modification. There is no
form for the request available, and no information about what one
should send or what the requirements for modification are.

Illinois uses a private contractor to enforce child support, but does
not provide any equivalent, easily accessible services to the non-
custodial parent.

Elaine Sorenson suggests that Stone's comment about modifiability of
child support orders is not credible in her article "A Little Help
For Some Deadbeat Dads". She informs us that only 4% of noncustodial
fathers who were paying child support received a downward adjustment
when it was called for:

How is the current system unfair to lower income fathers? In most
cases, their child support orders are in excess of their ability to
pay. Noncustodial fathers who become unemployed. or disabled cannot
simply walk into a support enforcement office and have their orders
adjusted downward as the result of their change in status. The
process for adjusting orders is quite bureaucratic-information must
he verified, forms reviewed, and in man states a judge must approve
the modification. This takes time and, often, money.

There also is a reluctance to reduce child support orders on the
assumption that incomes will eventually improve. But in the meantime
arrearages accumulate. According to U.S. census data. only 4 percent
of noncustodial fathers who were paying child support under an order
received downward adjustment when their earnings felt by more than 15
percent between one year and the next.

The Center for Family Policy and Practice also finds Dinges' comment
incredible in Negotiating the Child Support System: Recommendations
from a Discussion of Policy and Practice:

Virtually all of the noncustodial fathers who participated at the
colloquium noted that it is often very difficult and time-consuming
for noncustodial parents to have their child support orders modified
downward if the current order exceeds their ability to pay.
Colloquium participants said that they were often not informed of the
possibility of getting a downward modification, that the process once
initiated generally took many months, and that they often did not
ultimately receive the modification, or, if they did, that it might
not go back to the date requested but only to the date of the hearing
or decision. CFFPP recommends the following:

Noncustodial and custodial parents should be informed of the
possibility of seeking a modification and of the process entailed in
doing so (e.g., requesting a review or modification from the child
support office vs. petitioning the court).

Modification requests should be handled expediently.

A modification should revert back to the time of the request rather
than to the date of the court hearing.

In his 1999 Family Law Quarterly article "Child Support at a
Crossroads", reknowned attorney Ronald K. Henry reported:

Federal law requires that child support services be made available,
without discrimination, to both custodial and noncustodial parents.
[31] All states have procedures for initiating child support
modifications. Many violate federal law because they will only
process upward modifications or requests made by custodial parents.
Some states contend that they have an attorney-client relationship
with the custodial parent.

This is not correct. The child support bureaucracy represents the
interest of the state in ensuring fair support of the child and does
not stand in the position of private attorney to either parent. [32]

The failure or refusal to process requests for downward modifications
both violates federal law and creates uncollectable arrearages which
adversely affect the state's enforcement performance. Following
federal law with respect to downward modifications will improve
compliance and reduce enforcement costs. The benefit of downward
modifications in reducing the accumulation of arrearages will also be
helpful to states under the new incentive formula that is currently
being phased in.

Because of the federal Bradley Amendment, a child support arrearage
is unmodifiable even if it is utterly uncollectable because of the
obligor's poverty. Accordingly, states have an interest in
identifying the circumstances under which child support obligations
should be suspended or modified prior to the accrual of an arrearage.
If an obligor becomes temporarily disabled or is laid off from his
job and has no income for a period, it does no good to pretend that
an income exists since any child support accrual will simply become
another uncollectable arrearage on the state's books. Just as intact
families sometimes have to deal with interruptions in income, child
support enforcement needs to recognize when an obligor is unable to
pay.

If Ron Henry is correct, abused men in Galesburg may well have a
class-action suit, and perhaps a Rico suit as well.

The Center for Law and Social Policy strongly iterates the fact that
child support obligations often bear no resemblance to the earning
ability of low-income fathers. They make many solid recommendations
for policy changes that would be very beneficial to parents and
states.

Wendy McElroy reminds us that we treat American war hostages just as
cruelly as stateside fathers. In the early 1990's, Boeing employee
Bobby Sherrill was held captive by the Iraqis for five months when
they invaded Kuwait. He was immediately arrested when he returned
home, for arrears of $1,425 in child support that had accrued during
the time he was held hostage. This is brilliant evidence of
unconstitutional insanity right here in America.

Now here is the clincher: Phyllis Schlafly recently pointed out that
even our military reservists called into active duty in Iraq are
being turned into deadbeat dads. Even they cannot get their child
support modified! Missouri is the only state protecting reservists,
in a law I conceived and got passed in 1991 when we initiated the
first war in Iraq.

How can we turn men we called into active duty into criminals while
they are being shot at in a foreign land fighting for freedom? Is
this really America? Every breathing soul should be heating up the
phone lines to congress over this tragic abuse of good men.

Beyond the appalling issue of our military reservists, there is no
other state statute or federal law requiring a just and timely
modification of support for other men faced with involuntary economic
hardship. We do not demand that married men support their families to
an arbitrary standard created by bureaucrats. Accordingly, there is
no constitutional rationale authorizing our present practice holding
a large number of men to a higher and rigidly inflexible standard of
family support simply on the basis of marital status, particularly
where no fault was found or assigned.

Federal Subsidies: Perverse incentives bar fairness and sane public
policy

There are no federal incentives encouraging fairness or reasonability
on the part of DCSE, judges, or county officials. And there are no
federal targets for ensuring that what they do is fair. Every nickel
of federal funding to states provides incentives to continue handing
out welfare, create unreal child support orders, and then abuse
divorced fathers.

In addition to other items mentioned in this article, there is one in
particular federal entitlement that is most disconcerting. Most folks
do not know that local jails receive an automatic federal entitlement
to lock up and warehouse men behind in child support. In 1990, the
incentive was at least $125 per night. I have not been able to
discover what the current amount of the federal subsidy is.

This entitlement is particularly dubious in Knox County, Illinois.
Knox has a brand new, high-tech county jail that is nearly completed.
Knox County desperately needs paying guests to finance the new hotel.
Drunks and most other guests do not provide income to the county.
But "deadbeat dads" do. They are already helping pay for it.

Welfare fraud: Fathers criminalized for crimes of mothers

In 1991, Missouri State Auditor Margaret Kelly issued a stunning
audit of the Missouri Department of Social Services [Report 92-24,
March 24, 1992]. She reported that the State had collected $28
million in child support, but had given out $58m in welfare benefits
to un-entitled recipients.

To get benefits, mothers applied for welfare but failed to show the
child support they were receiving on their applications. Social
services did not crosscheck their own records for existing support
orders, and gave benefits to mothers.

Kelly ordered the CARS (Claims Action Restitution Service) to recover
the monies. They promptly responded by filing AFDC collections
against fathers, most of whom had paid child support while mom
was "double dipping". This is completely legal, because federal law
does not require states to recover fraudulent claims from the person
who received the benefits.

These men were forced to pay child support twice, and many who could
not were incarcerated as deadbeats.

The latest audit of Missouri Social Services indicates there is still
substantial welfare fraud in Missouri, however the newer audit fails
to reveal the size of the problem, or indicate any change in
practices of the state.

It is quite probable, given the strong proclivity of politicians and
social service agencies to act like "Johnny Appleseed", that this
problem exists in other states, showing up only as incarceration
rates and uncollected child support.

An armchair history of welfare and child support, where it went
wrong, and what you can do to restore pro-family politics and social
policies in America

Prior to 1964, welfare was essentially a public tithe to help poor
families. This is as it should be, if government is to be in the
tithing business at all. But in 1964, changes were made such that
money given to poor mothers became collectible from poor fathers.
What most folks thought was the "War On Poverty was actually a "spend
and tax" policy, with the poor being the benefactors and victims
according to their sex. Unfortunately, you can't collect money from
turnips. This money was, and remains uncollectible to this day.

Meanwhile, the feminist divorce revolution devoured about half of all
married families (primarily in the middle and upper classes), leaving
many families poorer because of the simple structural fact that
former couples cannot magically support two households and a bevy of
lawyers and psychologists without coming up short. All of a sudden,
poverty moved into the middle class; but most scholars prefer to cry
about the "shrinking middle class".

Instead of doing something about the divorce revolution, we simply
added legions of divorced single mothers to the so-called "War on
Poverty". The existing system makes it virtually impossible to
differentiate between genuine poverty and the larger problem of
feminist-driven predatory poverty. Politicians simply invoke the
former as moral justification for expanding the latter, while the
spin and political noise ratchets up another notch.

Between 1964 and 2004, America handed out a total sum of money that
is actually greater than the national debt, and also discovered out
it still cannot not collect it back from men. That's because you
can't fix the family deficit by funding more of it.

By 1994, taxpayers had enough of the welfare state. So
Congress "cooked the books" by passing the Personal Responsibility
and Work Act of 1996. What was once called "welfare" was quickly
renamed an "advance on child support".

The redecorated "deadbeat dad" state sailed into the new century,
hurling epithets in all directions, in spite of the promised "kinder,
gentler society". Nothing has changed substantively. The
uncollectable amount of "child support" still accrues as a federal
deficit, just as before. The only difference is that our accounting
system pretends that the welfare state isn't.

We don't really give out welfare any more. Bureaucrats decide what
standard of living women should have and then expect men to provide
it under all circumstances. I must point out that "no fault divorce"
does not exist and never did. Fault is automatically assigned against
men without hearing or fact, and then men become slaves to the
families they are not allowed to participate in even though no fault
was ever shown as to why they were ejected in the first place.

Any man who can't provide that standard of living is labeled
a "deadbeat", and put in a position where he has no way to succeed in
modern society. Many of these men end up perennially in child support
debt, working for 25-cents an hour in a contract prison operated by
CSI or another private agency to pay a monthly child support amount
that assumes they are earning real money in the real world. According
to the Office of Child Support Enforcement in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, many states do not regard incarceration,
in and of itself, as a basis for modification. This is one reason why
the United States has a largest percentage of its population in
prison of any other country in the free world.

Holding Feminism Responsible for "Fatherless America"

Feminism brought about some long-overdue changes getting equal rights
for women to vote and be on the workplace. My grandmother, Mrs.
Roland Usher, and her sister, Mrs. Florence Richardson were leaders
of the suffragette movement. I respect their work completely.

Enron also did some good things before it pulled off the biggest
investor fraud in Wall Street history. Now it is time to recognize
the fact that feminism went beyond all reasonable goals. Feminism is
primarily responsible for "Fatherless America" -- the most expensive,
painful social debacle in American history.

It is time that we hold post-1960 feminists squarely responsible for
it. We must realize that feminists, liberals, and feminist
neoconservatives are the last people we should listen to for policy
solutions.

We must look to those who can provide policies that reasonably
restore the importance of marriage, allowing natural economic and
social forces to rebuild the cultural value of marriage without
interference from radical feminists.

Living in the Answer

Government spent the last 45 years "living in the problem". Nothing
has improved substantively since PROWA was passed in 1996. Father-
absence, divorce, illegitimacy, poverty, and child well-being loom as
large as ever. We know it is impossible for government to resolve
these social and economic problems reactively. A proactive, forward
looking approach is mandatory in order to see the changes that
America both needs and wants.

Whenever you hear the words "uncollected child support", remember you
are listening to a collective of anti-family politicians in both the
Republican and Democratic parties. Both parties are very guilty of
this. There are a very few Republicans and Libertarians who
understand the larger dynamic, and who refuse to participate in anti-
family politics. I encourage these individuals and organizations to
confidently organize, act on principles, and speak out. Most
Americans are sick and tired of the institutionalized gender war
started by feminists in the 1960's, and want to see an end to it in
their lifetimes.

I am frankly surprised that mainstream Republican conservatives have
been unwilling or unable to walk away from the welfare state and set
forth a new "Pro-family Contract For America", that is truly based on
personal responsibility. Policies expecting spouses to work through
the normal problems and processes of marriage and aging would not be
a "marriage trap".

Programs funded to help responsible spouses get an irresponsible or
troubled spouse into treatment for addictions such as chemical
dependency, gambling and sexual addiction will clearly reduce the
need for divorce.

Most men and women just want a decent marriage. Public policy only
provides them with two options: "live with it" or get a divorce.
Providing active "pro-family" options will give Americans what they
want and need. It will also provide useful historical courtroom
evidence for easily assignment of fault against an irresponsible
spouse in the event a divorce is really needed. We should never again
place children in the custody of a parent who has been irresponsible
to the marriage – which is largely what we have been doing for the
past 45 years.

In addition, welfare and child support must become separate,
independently accountable programs. Welfare should return to being a
simple tithe, and limited accordingly. We should rely more on
charitable organizations, who know the individuals in their area far
better than bureaucrats in Washington do.

Child support must be entirely reformed, as follows, to remove the
perverse political incentives that presently drive the divorce
revolution and cause the state to pretend they can erase the poverty
problem by ordering and enforcing unreasonable sums of support. The
present system is completely unreasonable. Many men are pushed into
the underground economy. The unreasonability breeds resistance,
encouraging men to hide enough money so they can even eat. When
fairness is established, we will see very few men dropping out or
refusing to comply.

Child support must contain no alimony. It should reflect only the
costs of caring for a child. If alimony is to be ordered, it should
be construed as such in full view, and not hidden in a child support
order.
Child support must be ordered as a percentage of the obligor's actual
periodic income, and reconciled annually with IRS income tax forms.
Any amount of alimony should be itemized and withheld separately.
Courts must be barred from imputing income in child support orders,
except in very limited circumstances. All companies compute
percentage based withholdings for Social Security, FICA, and state
withholdings. There is no reason why they cannot do this for child
support as well.
When we make this change, we will finally hold fathers to the same
level of support that we hold married fathers to. Divorced fathers
will be as likely to be able to support their children as their
married counterparts, and have no reason to not comply. The few bums
and cheaters will become obvious, and the relatively small caseload
will be manageable.

Federal law must assure consistency of state child support orders.
The ICC was invoked as the basis for federalizing child support many
years ago Where federal funds are used to enforce support, federal
law must also set standards to ensue consistency and fairness of
orders, to ensure that states do not abuse NCP's, and to give
standing to NCP's to seek proper redress when states operate outside
the law.
NCP's have been denied due process for years: Federal courts hold
that child support orders are entirely a state issue. States know
this, and act illegally knowing that there is no federal oversight,
no matter how egregious their actions are. If Congress is to continue
funding child support enforcement collections, it has an absolute
duty to ensure that support orders are viable in the first place.

Federal code must stipulate what cannot be classified as child
support, and set maximum amounts of support that can be ordered,
expressed as a percentage of periodic income. Federal law must
require states to fairly credit NCP's for each day that children are
in their custody, and provide baseline child support amounts for an
average state, with cost-of-living adjustment percentages for each
state. Judges should have some discretion, but this should only be
available within the limits reasonably established in federal law.

The Bradley Amendment, which bars retroactive modification of support
orders, and forgiveness of unpayable amounts when states make
outrageous child support orders, must be nullified. The Bradley
amendment is a major tool used by states to abuse divorced fathers.
New positive policies will clearly reduce poverty, deficit spending
on welfare and social services, and even reduce the severity of the
looming Social Security Retirement Fund crisis.

David R. Usher