NPO Blog Archive

New York, New York–Interesting perspective on marriage from William Hamilton of the New Yorker.

Milwaukee, WI–In the amazing story below, a woman sought a restraining order against a police detective who was investigating her boyfriend for a string of burglaries. It’s a clever way for a suspect or possible co-conspirator to derail a police investigation. And of course, since we have very little judicial oversight on restraining orders, the judge just went ahead and rubberstamped the order anyway.

The writers, Cary Spivak and Dan Bice, see the story as humorous, but it’s no joke to all of the innocent men who are tossed out of their homes by false restraining orders. Spivak and Bice can be contacted by phone at (414) 223-5468 or e-mail at sb@journalsentinel.com. Their blog is www.jsonline.com/links/spiceblog.

The judge was Court Commissioner David Pruhs. The story is a couple years old. Thanks to Mark, a reader, for sending it.

Woman enlists court to ditch the law
Cary Spivak and Dan Bice
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
October 15, 2006

There are many ways to avoid the cops: Some folks run, some lie and others hide. But one creative Milwaukee woman came up with a novel idea, one that police hope never catches on.

She got a temporary restraining order in family court against a detective.

“I”ve had suspects talk about doing this before, but this is the first time I ever saw it,” Milwaukee County sheriff”s Detective John Davis said last week. “I was somewhat amused by it, but it was a little aggravating.”

The creative strategy was tried by Latoya Anderson, a west side resident who Davis said is the girlfriend of a man he wants to question about a string of burglaries. The first time Davis went to Anderson”s home, the man — whom he declined to name — wasn”t there. But Anderson reached him on her cell phone. Not surprisingly, the man declined to stop over to chat with the detective.

The next day, Davis and a Milwaukee detective returned. This time nobody would let them in, even though Davis said it looked like somebody was home.

Anderson”s response: She rushed to the courthouse, filed a petition accusing Davis of harassment and received a temporary restraining order banning him from harassing her or coming near her home. Thousands of similar orders are issued annually.

Anderson”s petition actually makes a pretty compelling case for why she needed protection from what sounded like an abusive ex.

“John came over banging, knocking, kicking at the door,” she wrote. “He was looking through my blinds. He took the plates off my car. He also had my car towed. He was calling my house asking for someone who does not live there.”

Wisconsin–Background: Wisconsin Fathers for Children and Families is trying to get their shared parenting bill out of committee, and recently I asked you to write letters to the Wisconsin Assembly’s Children and Families Committee in support of the bill. Steve Blake, president of WFCF, wrote me and said that he spoke with one of the Committee’s clerks and was told that they are receiving “many, many E-mails” from you in support of the bill.

During the recent hearing on the bill, Tamara Grigsby, one of the legislators on the Committee, stood up and asked, “Why is my mailbox filled up with letters over this bill?!” The Committee has heard testimony but has not voted yet. Below is the testimony against the shared parenting bill from the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

To learn more about the bill, click here. I make the case for shared parenting in my co-authored column HB 5267 Will Help Michigan”s Children of Divorce (Lansing State Journal, 5/28/06).

Testimony in opposition to Assembly Bill 571
Patti Seger, Executive Director, Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to provide testimony today regarding opposition to Assembly Bill (AB) 571. I am testifying on behalf of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WCADV). WCADV is the statewide voice and membership organization of over 70 Wisconsin domestic abuse programs, victims of domestic violence and their children, and citizens who are concerned with ending domestic violence.

AB 571 creates a one-size-fits-all solution to the concerns of some parents who, despite their desire for equalized placement, are not awarded equal placement by the court. While we wonder if this is a resolution that is even desired by all parents, WCADV’s concerns are specifically focused on families affected by domestic violence and the devastating impact equalized placement could have on victim and child safety. Under current law, the courts are already directed by a presumption of joint custody (decision making) and are to enter court orders that maximize the time each parent has with each child. Under 2003 Act 130, the courts additionally must consider the impact of domestic violence on the safety of the children and must make attempts to protect children from further violence whenever possible. AB 571 creates yet another presumption that the courts must equalize placement unless it can be shown, by clear and convincing evidence, that it is not in the best interest of the children to do so.

Despite the overall trend in Wisconsin, and nationally, to recognize the seriousness of domestic violence, particularly within the criminal legal system, abusive men who fight for custody win 70% of contested custody actions, obtaining at least joint physical and legal custody or sole custody. As research has increasingly established, men who are violent and abusive towards their wives or partners often use the legal system as a tactic of abuse after separation and divorce. They pursue custody of the children, equalized physical placement, and unsupervised access as a means to continue to exert control over or to harass their estranged partners.

Albany, New York-In a stunning upset, New York  has snatched the prize for worst family law bill of the year in a late surge that overwhelmed Massachusetts” seemingly invincible “Babies in Prison.’ Sounds eerily similar to the Super Bowl. The winning entry mandates that any person who receives an order of protection must wear an electronic dog collar (OK, so it”s actually an ankle bracelet). No exceptions. This is a device that allows a person”s location to be monitored 24/7 by law enforcement personnel. See the full text of S. 04796. For those of you who subscribe to the racketeering theory of family court, the dog collars and the personnel needed for real-time monitoring of the wearers are provided by for-profit firms. The cost approaches $4,000 per year per wearer.
Let”s see – with about 50,000 restraining orders per year in New York State, that comes to about $200,000,000 per year. No wonder Omnilink Systems, a vendor, issued a delirious press release when this bill was introduced in the New York State Senate on April 23, 2007. It actually passed the Senate on June 19, 2007, but mercifully died in New York”s other chamber, the Assembly. I fully expect it to return next year. In their haste to pump up the hysteria for this bill, the Assembly published the following pseudo-statistical garbagio, “In 1999, New York State . . . received 55,558 police reports of family offenses involving adult intimate partners. In one out of five of these cases the victim knew the offender . . .’ So Senator Clinton of New York, do you agree that intimate family partners in your state know each other in only one out of five cases? What is your plan for helping these people get to know each other? The dog collars may actually be a good idea in some cases  — where a person has been convicted by a jury of a crime and is out on parole  — but this bill went way beyond any reasonable bounds. For any of you new to this topic, the short version is that these orders are obtained without the presence of the accused, with no opportunity to defend oneself, without the need for evidence, without the need to even claim that a crime has been committed  — in short, in an assembly line fashion, in huge numbers. See more on this by Glenn Sacks. I ask my usual question: where are the ACLU, the privacy advocates, the law school professors, the Innocence Project, the legal aid defenders, Justice Watch, the Supreme Court . . .  . . . .? And I give my usual answer:  no one is going to reform the family courts except us  –those who personally care about the injustice. (Winning entry submitted by Rinaldo del Gallo of Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

Glendale, AZ–The Super Bowl ads in general were pretty fair to men this year, but there was one major exception–Pepsi’s “Magnetic Attraction” commercial. According to the MySpace Super Bowl ads description:

“The Pepsi Stuff promo shows Justin Timberlake being drawn toward a woman and somehow pulled through space, off the ground, by some magnetic force. He crashes and gets beat up by his strange experience being pulled through space and having close and sometimes painful encounters with immovable objects and experiencing near misses with death.”

I understand slapstick humor but this was way over the line–Timberlake is in severe pain in the ad, and gets painfully whacked in the nuts on three separate occasions. All because some pretty girl is sucking him in by drinking her Pepsi (pictured). To watch the ad, click here.

The two people to contact at Pepsi regarding the ad are:

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. A very high profile individual, she was #1 on Fortune”s list of the 50 most powerful women in business in both 2006 and 2007. She can be reached at indra.nooyi@pepsico.com, headquarters phone: 914 253-2000, headquarters fax: 914 253-2070

Pepsi CMO Cie Nicholson. She is the Pepsi executive with the most direct responsibility for the ad. She can be reached at cie.nicholson@pepsi.com, or headquarters phone: 914 253-2000. Her personal fax is 914 249-8361

To email them both, click here.

The ad was designed by BBDO, a prominent advertising agency with a track record of making commercials which denigrate men and fathers. To view some of them, click here.

To contact their corporate offices, see the contact information below:

Andrew Robertson, BBDO CEO, andrew.robertson@bbdo.com, Phone: 212 459-5000, Fax: 212 459-6645

Bill Bruce, BBDO-NY Chief Creative Officer (The BBDO executive with the most direct responsibility for the ad), bill.bruce@bbdo.com, Phone: 212 459-5000, Fax: 212 459-5280

To email them both, click here.

Thanks to advertising guru Richard Smaglick of www.fathersandhusbands.org .

To be fair, while BBDO does have a track record of anti-male commercials, they also produced the fine AT&T ad “Monkey,” which can be seen here.

New York–“Clinton also recognizes that many states” child support guidelines are excessive, noting:

“‘Child support payments can represent half of [low-income] men’s income, and can provide a strong incentive to work in the underground economy.’

“Clinton”s proposals are a good start, but much more needs to be done to address the problems low-income fathers face.”

My new co-authored column, Hillary Clinton”s Youth Opportunity Agenda Will Help Low-Income Fathers (Black Press USA Network, 1/25/08), discusses some small but significant proposals from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to resolve the child support problems faced by many low-income African-American fathers. The proposals are based on the Urban League”s 2006 report on the state of black America, which concluded that the child support system and its abuses are a major problem for African-American men.

The column, co-authored with Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, is below. Clinton’s child support reform proposals are discussed here and here, along with her misguided position in favor of restoring federal child support enforcement budget cuts.

Hillary Clinton”s Youth Opportunity Agenda Will Help Low-Income Fathers
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks

It is rare for a major politician to propose well-informed measures about fathers and fatherhood during an election campaign. While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is not normally a beloved figure in the fatherhood movement, her new Youth Opportunity Agenda reflects a commendable understanding of the problems faced by African-American fathers.

The Urban League”s 2006 report on the state of black America concluded that the child support system and its abuses are a major problem for African-American men. The report found that the system represents a large, hidden “tax’ on the already meager earnings of many black men. This tax drives some out of their children”s lives, and either underground or into crime.

Half of uneducated African American men ages 25-34 are non-custodial fathers. The child support they struggle to pay usually does not go to their children, but instead goes to the state to reimburse the cost of public assistance, including welfare, for the mother and children. This is demoralizing for low-income men struggling to make a difference in their kids” lives. Some of these fathers even live with their children and their children”s mothers, yet their wages are still garnisheed to pay child support to the state.

Research shows that allowing the child support to go directly to the custodial parent promotes fathers” bonds with their kids. Federal incentive funds mold the states” child support policies. Clinton pledges to “work with states and counties to ensure that they have support and incentives to pass on every dollar of child support’ directly to the men”s children.

Many minority noncustodial fathers have spent time in prison, often for nonviolent drug offenses. Under the current system, these men rack up thousands of dollars in child support arrearages while they are incarcerated. Interest accrues rapidly, and upon release many ex-offenders struggle under a staggering debt they could never hope to pay off. Some even return to jail for nonpayment.

To address this problem, Clinton says she will “encourage states to take more realistic, cooperative approaches to managing arrears, so that fathers leaving prison are not immediately saddled with unrealistic payment obligations.’

Clinton also recognizes that many states” child support guidelines are excessive, noting:

“Child support payments can represent half of [low-income] men’s income, and can provide a strong incentive to work in the underground economy.’

According to the Urban League, low-income men in arrears on child support sometimes keep as little as a third of their paychecks.

Clinton”s proposals are a good start, but much more needs to be done to address the problems low-income fathers face. Economist Harry Holzer, a co-author of the Urban League report, recommends forgiving the arrearages that low-income fathers owe to the government. While this proposal may not be politically popular, it makes very good policy.

Low-income fathers” arrearages mount in large part because the child support system is impervious to the economic realities low-income fathers face, such as layoffs, wage cuts, chronic unemployment, and work-related injuries. Low-income fathers have very little access to affordable legal help, and an unemployed construction worker usually doesn”t have the money to get professional legal assistance to help him get a child support modification. According to an Urban Institute study, less than one in 20 non-custodial parents who suffer substantial income drops are able to get courts to reduce their child support payments.

California”s Compromise of Arrears Program provides an example of the type of pragmatic approach these men need. According to a California Judicial Council report, 80% of California child support debtors earn poverty level wages, and over a quarter of the arrears total is interest. Under COAP, these obligors can settle their paper debts to the state for realistic amounts.

Sacramento legislative advocate Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children, which worked on the legislation, explains:

“Rather than engaging in the ‘we”ll crack down on deadbeats” chest-thumping so often employed by politicians, COAP is a common sense, everybody wins solution. Instead of hounding and jailing low income dads, the COAP program allows these dads to provide their children real support, both emotional and financial.’

The federal government should use its incentive funds to influence states to institute similar and more extensive programs. The costs of current policies far outweigh the value of the child support collected. Allowing more low-income men to be functional fathers benefits them, their children, and their children”s mothers.

Elections usually are a bad time for family policy, as applause lines about punishing “deadbeat dads’ are often substituted for rational, informed thinking about fathers and fatherhood. Several candidates have been bashing so-called “deadbeat dads,” including Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson. Clinton”s proposals are a modest but tangible step forward in addressing the weighty issues low-income dads face.

Below are some recent articles and items of interest from Fathers & Families’ latest News Digest.

Avoid sides when friends divorce (Contra Costa Times, 1-30-08)

New documents filed in Bollea divorce battle (ABCactionnews.com, 1-30-08)

Social worker advises families in process of divorce (WISHtv.com, 1-30-08)

Marriages on ice in January? (Saginaw News, 1-31-08)

Seeking a stable home for a child of divorce (Washington Post, 2-1-08)

The season of divorce (Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 2-4-08)

Child support sweep lands 13 men in jail (Houston Chronicle, 1-28-08)

Child support cases slated for review increase (Ventura County Star, 1-29-08)

State accepting input on child support rules (The Examiner, 1-29-08)

Candidate with bill for child support released (The DC Examiner, 1-30-08)

Mom forms group for parents without custody (Bridgeton News, 2-4-08)

Glendale, AZ–One of the pleasures of watching the Super Bowl was seeing AT & T’s touching, father-positive ad “Monkey.”

To watch the ad, click here and click on “Monkey.”

View the ad on NFL.com by clicking here.

The ad, which came out last year, depicts us dads as we are–loving to our children, who love us in return.

 

Texas–I often receive letters from people urging me to support underdog Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Recently Jerry, a reader and fervent supporter of Paul, wrote me and I invited him to write an essay explaining why he thought Paul would be best both for the country and for noncustodial parents. His essay is below.

I invite any other Paul supporters to write in with their views.

WHY I SUPPORT RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT OF THE US

First I want to say that I am a single father of an eight your old boy (born Nov. 1999) that was stolen from me through the cooperation of the State and the mother. The courts call it awarding custody, but it is in fact kidnapping the child from one parent that the child needs and deserves and giving the child to the other parent. This is done through the power and force of the State, this is violence on the hands of the State and is Child Abuse.

The courts are ruled by the love of money and are making all the money they can for the State with absolutely no real interest or care for the child. This is as clear as night and day. Sure the State pretends and gives words that it is doing this in the best interest of the child. It is not in the best interest of 99.9% of children to be kidnapped from one parent and be given to the so-called custodial parent. It is parents that love their children more than any other people. The reason the courts are giving custody (stealing/kidnapping) to one parent is so that they can make an Order Child Support so that the State can collect the Federal Incentive Payments.

How would President Ron Paul put a end to this? Easy. He will abolish the unconstitutional Federal Bureaucracies. Congressman Ron Paul has a 20 year pristine history of tirelessly fighting against bigger government and the private fiat monetary system called the Federal Reserve System. Congressman Paul has always voted in accordance with the original intent and meaning of the US Constitution for limited federal government. Even now while campaigning to be the President of the US he is still introducing bills for honest money and limited government. Ron Paul is fighting for the liberty and Freedom of We the People and none of the other candidates are doing this or will they. Ron Paul will abolish the unconstitutional federal bureaucracies and this would immediately put an end to the Federal Incentive Payments to the States. This would end the reason the States are always awarding custody to one parent (Kidnapping), giving them a reason to make enormous Child Support Orders that are out of proportion to what is required to meet the basic needs of children and, often times, more than the non-custodial parent can pay. If you think the courts don”t do this well I am living proof that they do and so are many other so-called non-custodial parents. It appears that the family courts’ main interest and duty is to make revenue for the State via the Federal Incentive Payments.

Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate that will make the changes at the federal level that are necessary to stop the reason why courts are destroying families. If the flow of federal money to the states is stopped, the Child Abuse Industry will stop. A vote for any other candidate is a vote to stay enslaved. Our children and grandchildren need us to take freedom back now so that they will know what freedom is. A man like Ron Paul may only come along once in a lifetime and he is here now and running for president, lets make him president or the US will continue to enslave the people.

We are alive today to change this sick, deprived system, so do not give up, do not let this chance pass us by. Ron Paul can win, saying he has no chance to win is the same as saying freedom has no chance. Ron Paul has far more grass roots support than any other candidate, just check out the number of Ron Paul meetup groups on the internet in the US and the entire world. No one even compares to Ron Paul that is running for President. His official web site is www.RonPaul2008.com.

The world is watching us and they want Ron Paul as the President of the US. We must do this; it really is a matter of our survival, as well as our children”s survival as free people or slaves. The battle is here and now, let’s get busy doing everything we can to give our children two parents and freedom. The battle will not get any easier if we wait, the bureaucracy will only grow larger and more controlling, taking more of our liberties. There are lots of places to check Ron Paul out on the web, youTube, Goggle video, www.RonPaulLibrary.com, www.FreeMe.tv, www.DailyPaul.com, www.RonPaulReveres.com, and many other places. He is very popular and has more support than you can imagine. Let’s make sure Ron Paul is the next President of the US.