“I’ve always had the feeling that I could do anything; my daddy told me I could, and I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.”–Ann Richards, feminist and governor of Texas, 1991 to 1995.
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Author: Super User
New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli often has dead-on observations about the way some women treat their husbands.
December 11, 2007
My recent His Side with Glenn Sacks radio commentary for KLAA AM 830 in Los Angeles discusses a recent Missouri child support auditor’s finding that 27% of the state’s 240,000 child support cases have incorrect balances. Some of the errors have gone unfixed for nearly a decade, and have led to enforcement action against innocent men.
To listen to the commentary, click here.
To learn more, see Truth-Telling Child Support Auditor Susan Montee Under Fire from CS Industry.
His Side with Glenn Sacks radio commentaries are broadcast daily on KLAA AM 830, a 50,000 watt talk station in Los Angeles and Orange County. KLAA AM 830 is owned by Arte Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. KLAA hosts include Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.
From 2003-2005, His Side with Glenn Sacks ran in a syndicated talk show format in Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Seattle, and other cities. To listen to show archives, click here.
[audio:http://glennsacks.com/hsrc/mp3/hsrc-childsupport.mp3]
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Postcards from Splitsville (Part III)
The drawing is taken from Kara Bishop’s www.postcardsfromsplitsville.com. Bishop works with Children of Divorce, a class run by Tucson, Arizona-based Divorce Recovery.
The class did an art project that included “sending away” the frustrations of divorce. The website is a place where Kara says “children can share their divorce-related feelings anonymously and parents can get a new perspective on how this life-changing experience impacts their children”s lives.”
To learn more, click here.
Kara can be reached at Kara@PostcardsfromSplitsville.com.
I’ve often criticized the Christian Right’s policies on marriage. My complaints are:
1) They ignore the true threat to marriage and parents’ rights–the family law system.
2) They do nothing to defend fathers’ rights, which are particularly vulnerable under the current system.
3) They bash gays, who haven’t done anything to anybody and deserve to be left in peace.
4) They waste an appalling amount of time and effort on non-issues like gay marriage while millions of children have been needlessly separated from the fathers they love and need.
The latest is a new New Jersey campaign from the National Organization for Marriage. Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher, an otherwise intelligent lady who has inexplicably decided to fritter away her time on gay marriage, recently sent Opponents of gay marriage launch all-out N.J. campaign (Newark Star-Ledger, 11/29/07) out to her elist. The article states:
“A national campaign to block gay marriage came to New Jersey this week as conservative groups began airing radio advertisements and bombarded a key lawmaker’s office with as many as 200 phone calls an hour.
“The National Organization for Marriage debuted a radio ad warning ‘powerful special-interest groups want to redefine marriage,’ and the N.J. Family Policy Council sent out an e-mail urging people to phone legislative leaders and Gov. Jon Corzine.
“Leaders of both organizations said they were trying to block an effort to legalize same-sex marriage during the lame-duck session of the Legislature that ends Jan. 8, when new lawmakers are sworn…
“Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, said the anti-gay marriage campaign may be aimed not just at lawmakers, but at voters casting their ballots in the presidential primary on Feb. 5.
“‘This is something that is a wedge issue,’ Harrison said. ‘It drives people to the polls.'”
While the NOM is wasting time and sizeable sums of money bashing gays and gay marriage, New Jersey marriages are being shredded and fathers are being manhandled in family courts. A few examples:
1) Earlier this year a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling did away with even the pretense of meaningful judicial oversight of restraining orders (aka protection orders). According to After-Hours E-Filing Allowed for Domestic Violence Cases, TROs (New Jersey Law Journal, 7/24/07), all that is now needed for a restraining order is for the woman to give testimony over the phone to an on-call judge. The judge then issues the order electronically, so it’s immediately enforceable. In other words, all a woman has to do is pretend to be frightened over the phone and her husband gets booted out of his own home and will be arrested if he tries to visit or call his own children. To learn more, see my blog post New Jersey Does Away with Any Pretense of Meaningful Judicial Oversight of Restraining Orders.
2) A recent New Jersey appeals court reaffirmed a decision mandating that a man must pay alimony to his ex-wife–who killed their son. To learn more, see my blog post She Killed His Son but He Must Pay Her Alimony
3) Sharp anti-father custody bias. For example, in the study “Child custody arrangements: a study of two New Jersey counties’ published in the Journal of Psychiatry & Law, New Jersey mental health experts researched hundreds of custody cases in two New Jersey counties, Bergen (one of the wealthiest) and Essex (one of the poorest). Rich man or poor man, for these New Jersey fathers it didn”t matter–in either county they won custody in only one out of every 20 cases.
The “defenders of marriage” at the NOM probably don’t have a clue about any of these cases and about the myriad ways children are being separated from decent, loving fathers in family court. It’s not as important as the “threat” from gays.
To learn more, see my blog posts:
Some Thoughts on Mary Cheney’s Baby and the Christian Right’s Hypocrisy
Protecting Gays from Domestic Violence Is ‘Promoting Homosexuality’?
“James Kim put himself through a desperate ordeal, climbing down a ravine over boulders and logs, through nearly impenetrable brush and in and out of an icy creek, in what one rescue leader called a ‘superhuman’ effort to save his family.”–San Francisco Chronicle
Background: In December of last year, hero father James Kim (pictured) gave his life trying to save his wife and kids. Kim, his wife, and two daughters took a winter vacation in Oregon but took a wrong turn and found themselves stranded in snow and lost on an obscure backroad.
To learn more, see my blog post James Kim: Hero Father.
Some of James Kim’s co-workers at www.CNET.com put together a short memorial video for Kim, featuring clips of Kim discussing his work and also his little daughters, and have reposted it on the anniversary of Kim’s death. To watch it, click here.
In his honor, James’ family and friends have established the James Kim Technology Foundation. The foundation provides San Francisco public schools, and the children who attend them, access to emerging technologies like the ones James covered every day for CNET.com and Crave. To learn more about the James Kim Technology Foundation, go to the foundation’s website at http://www.jameskimtechfound.org/.
Ohio law is not particularly friendly to genuine shared parenting. It is the only parenting arrangement that a court can terminate on its own discretion without either parent asking for the shared parenting plan to be terminated (ORC 3109-04E(2)(c) http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3109).
So it is encouraging to see the Ohio Supreme Court take a small step towards shared parenting. Paul Fisher of Mercer County, Ohio, was a custodial and residential parent under a shared parenting plan that divided parenting responsibilities for his daughter, Demetra, equally between him and the child”s mother, Emma Hasenjager. Both Paul and Emma went to court asking to be declared the sole custodial and residential parent. The trial court did not terminate the shared parenting plan but modified it to remove Paul”s status as a custodial and residential parent without finding that there were changes in the circumstances.
After an unfavorable decision by the Appeals Court, Paul appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. In a 5-to-2 decision, the Court found that ‘shared parenting” does, after all, mean something in Ohio. Even though a court may terminate a shared parenting plan on its own initiative without a finding that there has been a change of circumstances, it cannot modify a shared parenting plan by eviscerating it completely–by removing a parent”s custodial and residential status–without finding that there is a change of circumstances. (See the OSC Summary of the decision here and a video of oral arguments here.
While this is a small victory for shared parenting in Ohio, it is still unclear how this will turn out for Demetra and Paul. The case has been remanded to the trial court which, under Ohio law, can bring about exactly the same effect by terminating the shared parenting plan. There is a long way to go, but this is a small but welcome step toward making ‘shared parenting” mean something in Ohio. Our cause will triumph through small incremental victories such as this one.
Okay, so the connection is a bit of a stretch, but here it is: John Trumbull created the famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence–from his imagination, as it was painted 42 years after the actual signing. It was then placed in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol in 1826, where you can still view it today.
What does this have to do with paternity fraud? Trumbull confessed in a letter, “I was a little too intimate with a girl who lived at my brother”s, and who had at the same time some other particular friends; the natural consequence followed, and in due time a fine boy was born; the number of fellow labourers rendered it a little difficult to ascertain precisely who was the father; but, as I was best able to pay the bills, the mother using her legal right, judiciously chose me.’
Trumbull was good-natured about this: “Having committed the folly, and acquired the name of father, I must now do the duty of one, by providing for the education of the child, to whoever he may belong.’
As the boy grew a little older, he came to live with Trumbull as his “nephew,’ as was the custom of the day. But was there some alienation, or estrangement? Trumbull was a patriot, but his son joined the British army during the War of 1812.
Why did Trumbull accept the mother”s claim with such good humor? As Trumbull came from a wealthy family, perhaps the cost was easily borne. Or perhaps, knowing that he would be able to actually raise the boy, rather than just pay the mother, the boy himself was Trumbull”s reward.
Only today are men required to pay for children who are not theirs, 1) in amounts dictated by the state; 2) that they may or may not be able to afford; and 3) most important, without rights to the care, custody or companionship of the child.
For a blogpost another day: Benjamin Franklin and his out-of-wedlock son, William. Now there”s a story! Not to mention Alexander Hamilton, an even better story!
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
December 7, 1941 was a day that will “live in infamy,’ in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Approximately 2,400 people were killed in the surprise air raid on the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii.
The great majority of those killed were men, but few were fathers. Why?
Because society held a strong belief that fathers belonged at home, supporting their families and helping to raise their children. Hence, fathers were discouraged from volunteering for military service prior to World War II, and most servicemen on December 7, 2007 were not fathers.
The strong belief in stay-at-home fatherhood soon collided with the huge manpower needs of World War II. The military draft, which had expired over twenty years earlier, was reinstated. But even then, fathers of children born before July, 1942 received a special deferment from the draft. It was only in October, 1943 that the draft boards were forced to turn to fathers as a source of manpower.
This measure was unpopular. Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana introduced legislation to postpone this provision. A poll in the fall of 1943 disclosed that over two-thirds of Americans believed it was preferable to draft single men employed in military-critical industries than to draft fathers. The public also preferred to draft single women for non-combat military service in order to avoid drafting fathers. Still another proposal to avoid drafting fathers called for drafting seventeen-year-old boys instead of fathers. As pollster George Gallup commented, “. . . drafting fathers would lead to the breaking up of too many families where there are children.’
When the war ended, both the public and the soldiers believed that fathers should be high on the list for early discharge.
What a change in attitudes! Today, society seems to consider fathers dispensable, except for the cash they earn.
(Acknowledgments to David Blankenhorns” Fatherless America, which provided many of the facts reported above, and which can be consulted for additional details and references.)
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
“My toughest fight was my first wife.”– Former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali
Research shows that women are as likely to attack their male partners as vice versa, and that a third of domestic violence inquiries are suffered by heterosexual men. I’ve often emphasized that domestic violence is a lot more than a man and a woman fighting in a kitchen-turned-boxing ring, and that female abusers often use the element of surprise to balance the scales. When you live with someone, there are an endless number of possibilities if you want to harm them.
This new Tampa case is yet another example. According to Husband wakes to hot grease from wife:
“Tanesha Young, 24, thought her husband was cheating on her, so she poured hot grease all over him. That’s according to a report from Tampa Police.
“After Antone Neely fell asleep, Young poured hot grease on him that burned the majority of his body.
“Young is being held without bond at the Hillsborough County Jail and has been charged with aggravated battery with great bodily harm.
“The husband remains at Tampa General Hospital.”
Nice that the reporter was able to get the woman’s justification for her crime right there at the beginning of the sentence, before the crime is even mentioned. Nor does the story or the others I’ve seen mention the phrase “domestic violence.”
Wayne, the reader who sent me the piece, says that various news sites have reported this crime and that “those sites that allow comments have a disturbing number of ‘cheating bastard got what he deserved’ type of comments.”
Interestingly, this is similar to what happened to singer Al Green. According to VH1:
“At the height of his popularity, Green’s former girlfriend, Mrs. Mary Woodson, broke into his Memphis home in October 1974 and poured boiling grits on the singer as he was bathing, inflicting second-degree burns on his back, stomach and arm…Green interpreted the violent incident as a sign from God that he should enter the ministry.”
[Note: If you or someone you love is being abused, the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women provides crisis intervention and support services to victims of domestic violence and their families.]