Followups on child support and parents rights

I cited a law professor saying that Free Range Parenting is a Constitutional Right. Now he admits that, as a practical matter, it is nearly impossible for parents to assert those constitutional rights.

I posted last year Old Iowa man charged with raping his wife because prosecuted said that her dementia was bad enuf to prevent her from legally consenting. Now he has been acquitted of all charges in a jury trial. Remember that whenever someone tells you that the jury system is obsolete. Sometimes the jurors are the only ones in the justice system with any common sense.

I posted about a proposed California vaccine law, and now:

Vaccine laws across the nation may be toughened, observers say, if California passes a fervently debated bill that would strip parents' rights to exempt kids from immunizations based on personal beliefs.

A potential end to California's opt-out provision gained ground Wednesday when the state senate's education committee voted 7-2 to require full vaccinations for almost all public school students. ...

But some experts see California as the most potent social and medical laboratory, the state where such legislative action could create national waves. ...

That's a roadmap that worries some parents like Shtein, who describes herself not as anti-vaccination but as "pro-health" with deep concerns about any government dictating any child's vaccination schedule.

And she believes the momentum from California, should the bill become law, could color future immunization laws for Americans of all ages.

The ACLU is against it because:

If the bill passes, vaccine-resistant parents will have to home-school their children.

They are left-wingers who are probably against home-schooling. I would rather oppose the law on the grounds that parents should have the right to direct the medical care of their kids. The measles outbreak was caused by Filipinos visiting Disneyland, so it would make more sense to vaccinate Filipinos visiting Disneyland.

I have posted about kids arrested for walking home unsupervised, and the usual response is that kids did this a generation ago, but the world is more dangerous today. A Wash. Post article debunks this notion:

The first thing to note is that the overall child mortality rate in the United States has literally never been lower. In 1935, for instance, there were nearly 450 deaths for every 100,000 children aged 1 to 4. Today, there are fewer than 30 deaths for every 100,000 kids in that age group -- more than a tenfold decrease. ...

Part of that decline is a drop in child homicides. As of 2008, the homicide rate for kids under the age of 14 stood at a near-record low 1.5 cases per 100,000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And the homicide rate for teens ages 14 to 17 plummeted from 12 homicides per 100,000 in 1993 to just 5.1 in 2008, another near-record low.

Long story short: for a kid between the ages of 5 and 14 today, the chances of premature death by any means are roughly 1 in 10,000, or 0.01 percent. ...

The FBI has several decades of data on missing persons now, and those numbers show that the number of missing person reports involving minors has been at record low levels in recent years. Overall, the number of these reports have fallen by 40 percent since 1997. This is more impressive when you consider that the overall U.S. population has risen by 30 percent over that same time period, meaning that the actual rate of missing person reports for children has fallen faster than 40 percent. ...

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that between 1993 and 2013, the number of child pedestrians struck and killed by cars fell by more than two-thirds, from more than 800 deaths to fewer than 250. The number of traffic-related pedestrian injuries in this age group fell by a similar percentage over the same period. Again these are raw numbers, and as the population has grown over that period, the actual rate has fallen even faster.

So being a child is safer than ever before, whether at home or in public.

I posted Idaho against federalized child support, and a week later the NY Times got excited about it:

It took five years for negotiators to work out the details of a multinational treaty on child support that would make it easier to track delinquent parents around the world. It took only a couple of minutes for a committee of the Idaho Legislature to endanger America’s participation.

In a 9-to-8 vote in the closing hours of the legislative session, the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee killed a bill that state and federal officials had said was crucial to the finely crafted choreography of the child support treaty reached at The Hague. All 50 states must approve the mechanics of the treaty for American ratification to proceed, and 19 have signed off thus far.

A major factor seems to be Idaho’s ornery streak, the part of the state’s identity that does not like the federal government — or, worse still, foreign governments — telling it what to do.

Idaho's action would make more sense if foreign countries were imposing onerous child support orders. But the USA is by far the worst country in the world, as documented by this draft book: Real World Divorce. It has a wealth of info about differing state child support laws.

Most people think that child support is purely a matter of state law, but this story shows how federal policy and money drives much of what the states do. See this article for more detail. Here is the official federal and Idaho sides to the story.

It is true that some legislators expressed concern about foreign countries imposing onerous child support orders, but what Idaho really did was to resist the United States government imposing onerous child support rules and regulations on Idaho -- even though the government's position is that no state can operate its own child support system (or enforce its own child support orders) without the supervision and assistance of the federal child support agency.

So now, the federal agency is threatening to exclude Idaho from the entire system unless Idaho passes this bill. This proves that the whole child support system is controlled and managed by the federal government under rules passed by Congress, and states have no significant discretion to vary those required rules and procedures.

THere is more fallout in Idaho on Allgov.com and Idaho TV.

I posted on Why Scott was running from the police, and 11 days later the NY Times said similar things in a front page story titled Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. It was sympathetic to the black man who was killed while in child support arrears. I guess the liberal NY whites can side with a dad if he is a black fugitive in the South, and his problems can be blamed on white people. The article drew over 1000 comments, and an editorial opinion debate.

The NY Times calls it a debate, but all the debaters are in favor of extracting more money from dads and giving it to moms.

Most of the comments agree that the child support system has many inequities that should be reformed. But there are a distressing number of comments that say that there should be no limits to the punitive measures imposed on deadbeat dads. Here is one of those solicited debate opinions:

As a single mother who has raised a child with virtually no assistance from the biological father, I feel strongly that child support enforcement measures are not strong enough. ...

He is one of many parents who avoid child support obligations, by working under the table jobs such as yard work, or by obtaining fake Social Security numbers to work under a different identity, or by dealing drugs. Many of these individuals may already have criminal records that may act as very real barriers in obtaining legitimate employment. But this does not mean that they should be absolved of their responsibility to their children. ...

A noncustodial parent's financial hardship should not absolve them of responsibilities to the children who they choose to create. The custodial parent often has an even harder time.

So she had a kid with a criminal drug-dealer who cannot get a legitimate job, and she complains about the child he chose to create? And his lack of money should not be any excuse for his lack of money?!

Unfortunately these dopey single mom opinions intimidate politicians against doing anything to solve the problem. Unless you agree that women have an unrestricted right to choose an abortion at any time and for any reason, and to choose to have sex with any man at any time, and to freeload off welfare, and to cut the dad off from even seeing his kid, then you are part of the war on women. And if the man does not want to spend all his money on the child he supposedly chose to create, then no punishment is too severe.

This country is doomed.