Two Views On Deadbeat Dads
Two Views On Deadbeat DadsReproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
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Deadbeat dads work to avoid manhood by Mike Seate
Response by William Wagener — Host and producer of On Second Thought
© 2005 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
January 13, 2005 — It takes only a few moments of pleasure to make baby, but a lifetime of work to raise one. One would think the reality of that old expression would be enough to scare folks away from parenthood.
I've found just the opposite to be true.
Each time I venture out to interview local men for a story, I run into deadbeat dads. How can I tell? It's easy.
These fellows owe so much in delinquent child support payments, they won't even give me their full names.
White or black, city or suburb, it doesn't really matter. Mr. Duck Responsibility is everywhere.
Earlier this week, I met him about a half-dozen times while researching a column on a grocery store planned for Uptown. I approached men at work, in bars and guys just chillin' on corners.
Sure, they wanted to talk about the lack of retail outlets in their community, the absence of jobs and the three decades of corporate disinvestment that's helped turn the neighboring Hill District into one of Pittsburgh's largest slums.
What they did not want to share were their last names, where they live and details about what they do for a living.
“Naw, man, the ex-old lady sees my name in your paper and next thing you know my butt's back in court,” was a typical response.
At this point, I'm likely to suffer a heart seizure if I ever meet a local man who gleefully announces that not only does he pay child support, he's two, maybe three months ahead on his payments.
That's unlikely to happen. Instead, I meet guys who prefer to work under the table to avoid paying child support, or, worse, men who'd rather not work at all because the courts can mandate child support deductions up to 55 percent of a paycheck.
Patrick Quinn, chief administrator of the Allegheny County Family Court, said the court has 80,000 active cases. Veteran family attorney Derwin Rushing describes the issue as “a huge problem.”
Though it is far easier these days to catch up with deadbeat dads thanks to a law allowing the courts to order deductions from their paychecks, Rushing said men continue to find ways to beat the system.
“They can still work under the table or try to reach an agreement on how much they pay with the mothers, but those arrangements are unenforceable,” he said.
After years of grappling with the child support issue for his clients, Rushing is refusing to take on more family law cases.
“It got to the point where it was like baby sitting adults. All I ever heard from the guys was whining about how they can't pay all this money,” he said. “I tell them they should have thought of that before they took their pants off.”
It's tough to determine who's more responsible in these cases, the men who father children into poverty or the women who see nothing wrong with having babies with guys they're neither married nor particularly committed to.
Either way, the kids lose — and we end up with a city full of men with no last names.
Mike Seate can be reached at mseate@tribweb.com or (724) 320-7845.
You hold yourself out to be a Tribune-Review reporter and a member of the “4th Estate,” but in my read of your story above I find that your objectiveness for “getting both sides of the story” is like Fox News, i.e., unfair and highly biased, despite the self-serving, self-proclaiming propaganda of the opposite position.
Or like only listening to Saddam Hussein's views in 2001, or only listening to George W. Bush's views, anytime. One sided, sufficiently lopsided to sink another Titanic. Only this time the Titanic is the foundation stone of America, the nuclear family with Dad, mom, kids, and grandparents.
It is as if you were from another galaxy, and you made a pit stop on Earth, to gather precious fresh water, because your charts hinted that water could be found on the third planet from our sun, but nothing else, just water. But you happened to land at the North Pole at night. Took 10 minutes to cut up some frozen water, 10 seconds to pee on what you did not take, and you then flew off to report to other intergalactic travelers that indeed, there is nothing on Earth but “frozen” fresh water. No tropics, no temperate zones, no bubbling springs in Colorado Springs, because you chose to land at one spot, and, voila, all you found was frozen water. No life apparent, no liquid water, no birds, cats, bears, snakes, nothing but frozen water. You admit life could be possible, but you did not find it. Just frozen water (or men with no last names).
Such is your piece of trash Deadbeat dads work to avoid manhood.
If this is the level of your journalistic research you would be better suited to be a propaganda minister for Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Osama Bin Laden or George Bush. (I hear Bush is creating some new concentration camps on an obscure base in Cuba...Gitmo...he might need you to portray them as Vacation Resorts where former Terrorists are “Reconditioned” to be “productive One World citizens.”)
“Fair and Balanced” is obviously not within your PC spell check ability. My only questions to you are:
• How much did N.O.W. or some other redfem group pay you to push out that piece of trash?
• Did the Tribune actually pay you for that?
As a real journalist, let me briefly tell you, what 100 days of intensive interviewing got me in 32 states from California, Utah, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Iowa, and many places in between.
I found men doing their best to overcome the divorce industry rape and pillaging of their assets, while trying not to be angry with their ex, and have a positive, responsible relationship with their child or children. Many admitted to getting “involved” with the wrong kind of woman, and often for hormonal reasons. Testosterone has no moral compass to be sure. Women make the same mistake, too, but often claim to have been “raped” or “date-raped,” or just in their “wild phase” (but now at court they are Miss Responsible Mom).
But the type of men you ran into, were by far the tiniest minority, of the whole set.
I found judges and district attorneys sleeping with and having sex with the ex-wife (see the L.A. Times Story of the judge there). Or district attorneys selling “deals.” (see the Green Bay Press Gazette in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He went to federal trial in Green Bay and I think was found guilty and sentenced to prison in 2004 I think).
I found women collecting child support from men who were not the biological father. And judges in Texas, Michigan, California, and Missouri that accepted that fact, but said it did not matter. What is that? Court sanctioned perjury and fraud, nothing less. I found one woman collecting “support” from three men for the same child. Another father sitting in jail for 7 years for failure to pay what had been lost in a investment downturn. Seven years! How does that benefit the father's kids?
I found a Non -Dad, who was the only “dad” a 2-year old had, who was free of drugs and trying to “be Dad,” but the slut-for-a-mother, always got the State of Wisconsin to come to her “aid,” and put the would-be Dad in Jail for baby sitting, while mom went out to screw around some more. When done, she came home, kicked the Non -Dad out and called police when she no longer needed his “baby sitting services.”
I found “moms” who deliberately look for “rich guys” to get them pregnant. I found that John Mohammed, the freeway shooter, was twice screwed to the wall in “family court” and would have gone to jail anyway for failure to pay what he could not earn to two ex-wives after “honorable service and discharge” from Desert Storm. Mr. John Mohammed was not gay as often hinted by CNN and that other “fair and balanced” propaganda channel. He was as “straight” as Hugh Hefner. But John snapped silently under the pressure of knowing there was no justice in the nation he fought for in middle East. Your kind of trash “reporting,” Mr. Seate, assures that there will be more John Mohammed's killing more innocent Americans.
I found a health worker fired for having collected evidence that 24% of the “live births” in her jurisdiction, were not from the named father on the birth certificate and that story was then “sealed” by court order. In Indianapolis, Indiana, I found a Child Collection Agency worker, ahum...a woman, written up in the local paper for stealing child support payments, while the good “Dads” went to court or jail for “failure to pay” because the “woman” put the payments in her personal bank account, instead of crediting the payer, the NCP — Dad.
I found many fathers so stressed and emotionally beat up by child protective services (CPS) and the divorce industry that they became non-functional as workers or were murdered by the custodial mom. These men included cops, computer techs (late Wilbur Streett of N.J.comes to mind), architects, medical doctors (see Dr. John Brooks San Luis Obispo County, California, early 1990's) and recently Dr. Strohman. All these men were doing 120% of their best to no avail because of politically correct cow manure, like the stuff you wrote above. Society, believing such dribbling feces, has the government and divorce industry set to fleece them out of every penny, punish them for daring to be “Dad-in-child's-life,” while leaving them insufficient funds to survive on.
The lucky ones got remarried to a better, far better woman, who worked, loved him and healed him of the deepest scars, and they manage to limp along at some level of functionality. If they are lucky their first ex tired of torturing him for being a man, and went on to make some other new dumb smuck miserable. Sometimes, the woman actually matured to the point that she realized she was as much to blame for his failure to make her happy as he was. But those were few.
So, from Brian Armstrong, a 41-year-old unemployed welder murdered in the Valley Street Jail, in Nashua, New Hampshire (and no one there wanted to discuss that case). to Dr. Brooks in California, and everywhere in between, I found noncustodial parents, Dads, very much the victim of a vicious and widespread, though subliminal and secret campaign to treat them like pre 1860 black men in the old South trying to escape slavery, or Jews in Nazi Germany. No matter how hard they worked, they were granted no rights, except to be a contented slave or die — or accept those infamous words over many Nazi Death Kamps.
For illiterate “reporters” like Seate that translates as “Work makes Free.” Which is, of course, a total lie. Work means your child support payment gets raised still higher, until you can not meet it, and you eventually get behind and appear to be a “Deadbeat Dad.”
Then there is a new thing I discovered. The Gay-Lesbian alliance has infiltrated the courthouse. They are clerks to lesbian judges, court reporters, lawyers. And their numbers in the court system is way higher than the 1-2% of the general population. And even when these man-hating butch lesbian judges get shot by their lesbian lovers (as in Atlanta, Georgia), or they are arrested like lesbian judge Diane Hall and convicted of misdemeanors, they continue on as judges. Insane, but true. And in Santa Barbara County where Diane Hall is a judge, I found more than 10% of the judges were gay or lesbian. That is 500% to 800% more than the gay/lesbian population of the county. Is that an insignificant fact? Or is that some unperceived group pushing their agenda, and pushing it hard? How can a macho, good father, being dragged through a custody battle in “Family Court” (read that as Kangaroo Court usually), get a “fair” trial with a butch-lesbian judge or father-hating gay judge, if and when you can afford a trial. And the good father is already under a restraining order, accused of sexually molesting every female in sight, including the late Mother Teresa? And the judge gets to decide what to let the media “know” (unfounded and unsupportable allegations) and what to keep “ private” (the Moms adultery or recent conversion to lesbianism).
The truth, I found going to 32 states and doing interviews on video tape with cops, judges, noncustodial parents, and Dads, is that there is a war against the traditional family. There is a highly motivated divorce industry that employs more government folks and gets more government grants to create noncustodial Dads (and 10% of the time noncustodial Moms), and then persecute them to the point of disfunctionality, than America has chasing drug pushers.
Prof. Stephen Baskerville, of Howard University told me that in an interview in February 2002, but until I did my own research that was hard to accept. True! I found that absolutely true.
Debtor prisons, have been reinstated under the disguise of “failure to obey a court order,” which it usually turns out is impossible to obey. Like a Nazi SS prison guard demanding the hapless Jewish Rabbi to work 25 hours a day or be shot on the next Sabbath.
Oh, and did I forget to mention Australian-born Gordon Bray in the high Rockies of Colorado. Gordon absolutely refused to pay the “Mom” of his two beautiful children child support, even though he lives in a $900,000 house in a resort area. Yes, there are macho, self-aware men like Gordon Bray. “Aha, thinks Mr. Seate...I knew I was right.” Until you find out that Mr. Bray did not want to break up the family, and Mr. Bray built this dream mountain home for her and him and the two kids. And it is Mr. Bray who is making breakfast for the kids 4 days out of 7 and getting his children off to school while Mom (who I also interviewed, but she refused to be video taped) sleeps extra morning hours with the “boy-toy” friend, just a mile away. And, oh yes, Colorado took this construction contractor's (Mr. Bray's) drivers license away for refusing to pay child support (because he cares 4 out of 7 days) for the kids. Oh, did I forget to mention, Mr. Bray states Mom got to take $80,000 equity out of the house, while Mr. Bray took none, and is letting it go to foreclosure, since the county district attorney is demanding Mr. Bray Pay “her” even while he takes equal or more care of the children.
. You see Mr. Mike Seate, while your looking only in the tiniest niche of toilets for “men without last names” I am looking both high, in the Rockies, and low in the suburbs of New York City.
Moms need only claim victimhood to get, the kids, house, car, and 20 years of payments to support her new and usually changing “boy-toy” friends (and the kids if there is anything left after she and her boy-toy get their needs met). Dads can present piles of evidence, and get not a thread of justice. Justice in “Family (Kangaroo) Court” is an unfunny joke. More like a Jewish Rabbi on trial for not being Islamic trying to get a “fair” trial by Al Queda's terrorist trainers, with Osama Ben Laden sitting as judge. As soon as he admits he is “Jewish,” he is as good as “guilty” and all civil rights are then suspended. As soon as a Dad admits he is the “man” of whom all the false allegations are made by his ex or soon-to-be ex, all his paternal civil rights to have or even see his own kids are suspended.
Mr. Mike Seate. You don't know sh-t about this issue you dare scribble about.
So why don't you apply to be the bathroom toilet cleaner at the Tribune, or the Texas Headquarters of N.O.W. so you can get to know sh-t. And I am not angry, yet. Just supremely disappointed that limp noodles like you get to be called “reporters.” You're not! You're just a “front man” (make that “front -toddler”), for those who enslave both good (95%) and bad Dads (5%), for the increasingly “No-fault-divorce-is-good” divorce industry.
Her attorney could care less if the “Dad” is good or “bad.” Both will be treated like dirt for the purpose of extracting every last penny they have to their name, and depositing the normal 30% - 50% into the attorney's bank account. That is a “winning” case, regardless of how destroyed it leaves the children. Rich or poor at the beginning of hostilities, they will all be poor when the attorneys “win” for whomever.
Any day you have guts to do a live debate on TV let me know, Mr. Mike Seate. Until then, on this issue, pull the cork out of your butt so you stop spewing crap, like the manure above, out that other oral orifice below your brown nose.
Best Regards, with all the respect due someone who proffers such trash as “reporting” and in hopes that I have given you some Second Thoughts,
and heard on www.KrightsRadio.com
| EJF Home | Find Help | Join the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter |
| Families And Marriage Book | Abstract | Family site map | Family index |
| Chapter 3 — Child Support: A Program For Everyone But Children And Fathers |
| Next — One-Stop Divorce Shops by Donna Laframboise |
| Back — Girl's Death Lost In The System And Father Pays Support For 11 Years Afterward by Stacy Horany |