The Character Assassination Of Black Men

reposted from ThinkProgress by Moody Jim Rathbone

On Wednesday, the Washington Post obtained a Baltimore Police Department document, which states that a prisoner in the vehicle transporting Freddie Gray heard Gray “banging against the walls” and “intentionally trying to injure himself.” The Post was given permission to publish the information, provided that the name of the witness remained anonymous, yet the newly-released details counter previous reports about the events leading up to Gray’s death. What is consistent, however, is police departments’ selective release of information that paints people injured or killed by police in a bad light — and mainstream media’s decision to buy into it.

Since Gray’s death, BPD’s missteps in arresting him have been well-documented. In widely-publicized videos of the arrest, Gray yells in pain as three officers drag him to their van. They refused to give Gray, an asthmatic, an inhaler. They didn’t put his seatbelt on. And sometime between his arrest and hospital admission, Gray’s voice box was crushed and his spinal cord severed.

But of all the documents compiled during the course of BPD’s investigation, the one given to the Washington Post offers a different narrative: that Gray injured himself. That document minimizes officer responsibility for the 25-year-old’s death, and it’s emblematic of a larger police strategy to deflect blame.

In some instances, officers make false claims that are eventually disproved. Before video of Officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back surfaced, North Charleston police claimed Scott grabbed Slager’s Taser and attempted to use it. The Cleveland Police Department said Tamir Rice was sitting at a table, was told multiple times to put his hands up, and reached for his gun before officers shot and killed him. Video later disproved the department’s claims.

In other cases, police disclose background information that has nothing to do with the encounters in question, but which seems to undermine the character of someone who is no longer alive to defend themselves. Sanford Police told the Orlando Sentinel that, prior to his death, Trayvon Martin (who was killed by a private citizen and not a police officer) was suspended for an empty marijuana baggie. In the case against Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot Oscar Grant in the back while he lay on a train station floor, defense attorneys brought up Grant’s criminal background and history of resisting arrest.

Other times, officials reveal details that fuel local outrage. After Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police Department released a video of Brown robbing a convenience store. The day before, Captain Ron Johnson took to the streets in solidarity with peaceful demonstrators, and many believed the tide was turning. However, the ill-timed release of the video was subsequently perceived as a power play to distract from Brown’s death.

But cops aren’t the only group to affect smear campaigns against victims of lethal police force, as evidenced by the Post’s decision to publish the BPD document. As noted by Al Jazeera, the New York Times published an article about Brown’s recreational activities, saying “he dabbled in drugs and alcohol” and detailed his “rebellious streak.” The Associated Press tweeted that Renisha McBride, who was shot and killed by a Detroit homeowner, was intoxicated. CBS and NBC reported that Scott had a bench warrant for missing child support payments. Northeast Ohio Media Group detailed Rice’s father’s history of domestic violence.

And since the Washington Post article was published last night, people have taken to social media to express their anger:

WaPo isn’t simply smearing someone murdered by police, they are profiting off of smearing someone murdered by police. #FreddieGray

— Remi Kanazi (@Remroum) April 30, 2015

So the Washington Post reports an unnamed prisoner is claiming #FreddieGray willfully injured himself in transport van. For real y’all.

— ReBecca Theodore (@FilmFatale_NYC) April 30, 2015

Complete takedown of the lies spread by the Baltimore Police & Washington Post on #FreddieGray http://t.co/N0aYK0ZETe pic.twitter.com/QALCmbKQOu

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 30, 2015

Walter Scott and the Need for Child Support Reform

by Joy Moses

Walter Scott’s death was striking because a police officer fired eight shots at him while his back was turned. When something so tragic occurs, observers tend to wonder why. The officer’s actions and utter disrespect for human life can never be justified. But recently, the New York Times published new information about Scott’s split second decision to run — his child support case. According to his brother, “Every job he has had, he has gotten fired from because he went to jail because he was locked up for child support.”

Elements of Scott’s story reflect existing concerns about the child support system. A debate over potential large-scale reform is more than a decade overdue. The seeming impossibility of change has always loomed ominously large, overshadowing calls for reform and pushing them into the dark corners of the policy world. However, at this current political moment, there are national conversations about policing, bipartisan criminal justice reforms and an existing White House initiative focused on men and boys of color — concepts that would have seemed laughable just a few short years ago.

child support can make a man indigent

There are some fathers who absolutely refuse to care for their children and they should be held accountable. However, the current system reaches well beyond that group, creating negative consequences for men who are rarely credited with being caring parents and are simply too poor to pay. The political explosiveness of the “deadbeat dad,” a figure that some researchers say sprang out of the same sources as his female counterpart (the “welfare queen”), helped distort the foundations of child support policy. The system seems to partially rest on underlying beliefs that low-income men, and especially those who are black, avoid work and financially providing for their children at all costs while also being permanently childlike and in need of both discipline and lessons on how to behave.

Over the years, the program has effectively served many families (transferring funds from one parent to another) for which it should be applauded. However, policies built on a foundation of stereotypes about numerous men who don’t want jobs stand in stark contrast to the reality of numerous jobs that don’t want the men. Researchers like William Julius Wilson (More Than Just Race), have documented decades long trends of disappearing job opportunities for low-skilled workers as well as increased criminal justice involvement which further leads to employment discrimination.

When entities spend significant time on activities that fail to help and that actually hurt parents and families, it’s often useful to redirect their energies elsewhere. Reforms should shift the program mission and values away from damaging racial stereotypes that hurt families of all races and towards efforts to accurately diagnose the needs of families and take ‘pro-social’ action to address them.

One useful primary goal would be to comprehensively address the family law needs of low and middle-income families, helping with a very real challenge — the increasing and extraordinarily large number of families who can’t afford an attorney or who don’t feel comfortable representing themselves in legal matters. In doing so, agencies should assume that parents of all racial and class groupings share in a desire to care for their children, suggesting that they be treated with respect and provided with quality customer service. This would build upon efforts to accurately identify bad dads whose non-payment is rooted in an adamant refusal rather than their economic circumstances.

With such a vision, services would start to look much different. No longer treated as enemies of the state, low-income fathers would be less likely to literally and figuratively run away from child support. The sole focus wouldn’t be on a father’s monetary value but on improving father-family relationships. Court decisions and unaddressed legal needs would be replaced by model practices like mediation that support mothers and fathers in making their own decisions for their families. Punishments like imprisonment would be replaced by employment assistance. And other proposed reforms designed to guarantee child support for women and children would avoid potential incentives to hound men for unaffordable reimbursements of funds states pay out to women and children.

Some states have already experimented with such reforms, finding positive results that have included increased child support payments by fathers and greater parental satisfaction with agency services. The Obama Administration has encouraged states to adopt these best practices while proposing helpful new rules. However, there are limits to the changes that can occur without Congress overhauling currently existing state requirements and incentives.

We need a fruitful, progressive conversation that abandons a focus on the status quo and reform efforts that toy around existing edges — instead choosing a new vision for the future that endeavors to do the hard work of changing the culture and functioning of a system that means so much to so many.

—-

Of course, there is no mention in this article about U.N. Treaty or the Bradley Amendment, which prohibits child support arrears from being changed or removed – but the article does pretend to care (and is much kinder than I am). Meanwhile, the welfare queens still have control over America at great cost to all Americans. – MJR

Single Mothers Often the Chief Child Abuser

by Jim Hays

NY District Attorney Kate Hogan states, “Often, the most serious cases occur at the hands of men who have no biological and emotional connection to a child, many times the child’s mother’s boyfriend.”

Unfortunately, this quote is taken out of context, for it fails to identify who abuses and neglects children most, the family makeup and relationship to the child, and how these children end up under the hand of the single mother and mother’s boyfriend. So let’s look at the whole story.

The 2010 Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4) once again shows the greatest incidence of child abuse and neglect is perpetrated by “single” mothers (not living with the biological father), followed by abuse and neglect caused by live-in boyfriends.

The NIS-4 executive summary states “Children living with their married biological parents universally had the lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories.”

While the study speaks of single parents, we have a default mother custody rate of more than 85 percent in our family courts in this nation, including here in New York state. So it is single-mother homes with a live-in boyfriend where we have the highest threat of abuse and neglect for children.

Before we can blame the sex of the parent in these single-parent homes, we need to look at how we got so many single mothers with boyfriend homes in the first place. And here, the fact of the matter is that it is the biases of Family Court judges to award sole custody to the mother in more than 85 percent of cases, which removes the parental rights of the father without cause, limits the fathers access to minimal times, and provides no enforcement for interference with the father’s access to his children by the mother or others.

The No. 1 reason a father doesn’t spend more time with his children is the limitations of a court order. No. 2 two is prevention of access by the mother, 50 percent of whom admit to interfering with the father’s access with impunity. This is combined with a system that ignores and dismisses the complaints of a father about abuse or neglect of his child as vindictive before a proper investigation of the facts.

If we look at the best situation for children, we see that not only do children having married biological parents in the home have the lowest abuse and neglect rates, this is followed by unmarried biological parents and then children with biological parents living apart but involved (caparisoning or shared parenting).

Inversely, single mother with mother’s boyfriends and then single-parent homes have the most abuse and neglect of children.

So it is easy to see that in speaking about healthy outcomes of children, DA Hogan is off the mark.

If she wants to do something to protect children, she and her fellow DAs could enforce violations of custody orders just like protection orders and child support orders, with criminal charges for blatant violators.

Then, I suggest she get the book written by the late David Levy of the Children’s Rights Council which summed up the solution to negative child outcomes in the title: “The Best Parent is BOTH Parents.”

Child Support: Is Losing Your License Legal?

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241
Conspiracy Against Rights

This statute makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).

It further makes it unlawful for two or more persons to go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another with the intent to prevent or hinder his/her free exercise or enjoyment of any rights so secured. Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both; and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years, or for life, or may be sentenced to death.

By the way, a corporation is typically considered as a person under most statutes.

If Title 18 makes this illegal, why is this constantly allowed through government toward individuals, particularly for child support (loss of license, etc.).

The Dark Underbelly & Child Support

Many households have never paid bills for themselves: Utilities came with public housing, food stamps helped with groceries and everything else was paid for in cash. Not surprisingly, the priority was to keep receiving benefits and, if possible, increase them. That meant keeping live-in boyfriends – even if one was the father of a child in the household – off the lease lest the man’s income lead to a rent increase. It also meant suggesting to school authorities that a child might have a learning disability – such a designation could bestow nearly $300 a month in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) on the household. (School officials reportedly are often eager to comply because excluding hard-to-teach students could boost schoolwide test results.)

Reinventing Public Housing

Protect Disabled Fathers from Family Court Abuses!

Work to Protect Disabled Fathers from Family Court Abuses! Arizona HB 2348 is being voted on today, designed to protect disabled fathers and mothers from child support and alimony abuses. Concerned and supportive Americans all over the nation are encouraged to email and fax a letter to your local representative in support of the bill and legislation that support this cause. This is a national issue and supporters both inside and outside of Arizona are encouraged to participate.

Although federal law is clear, advocate judges are often ignoring federal law as they calculate veterans’ disability compensation into divorce settlements as a divisible asset. Very often these payments are the only assets a veteran has. When judges include disability compensation as income, this creates great hardship for those veterans, who rarely have the resources to hire legal help to contest the taking of their benefits. Anyone that is disabled and living on meager social security disability should be protected! HB 2348 will help end this practice in Arizona. We need to end this fiasco nationwide! A nation of veterans and disabled parents need your help and protection!

We have links to databases that hold the names and contact details for your current legislators. Use your freedom of speech and right to petition government representatives for the good of America!

A Message to Women: Women, Entitlement & Unhappiness

Unhappiness is growing like a festering sore in one segment of American society and the media is taking notice. (Surprise) Who is it? It’s women. According to study after study, women across the globe are becoming more and more unhappy. Considering all the gains and power that women have made over the last five decades, a vexing question comes to mind: What in the world is going on with women? One thing is certain, many of them are coming after their men, breaking up families and destroying lives. They are encouraged to do so.

The happiness of women is trending downward as studied in a report by the Wharton School in Pennsylvania. Women have secured greater opportunity, greater achievement, greater influence and control and more money. The decline in their collective state of mind seems to defy logic on all levels.

Since 1972, the U.S. General Social Survey has asked men and women what would seem to be a very simple question: “How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3?” The survey includes a representative sample of men and women of all ages, education levels, income levels, and marital status. 1,500 yearly were surveyed for a total of almost 50,000 individuals today. What is revealed?

The drop in happiness is expansive.  The unhappiness remains whether they have kids, how many kids they have, how much money they make, how healthy they are, what job they hold, whether they are married, single or divorced, how old they are, or what race they are. The truth is that women are so unhappy because they continue to focus exclusively on themselves. Women have been trained to think that they can and should have it all without apology. Women are being manipulated by those with an agenda under false pretense in a massive power grab.

Why are women important to media, advocacy and government? “It’s not about you stupid!” It’s all about power and influence and it isn’t yours. The problem is that you believe what you are being told and have decided that it is time that “you get yours”. You are being led down the garden path!

You need to think beyond yourself. Chances are, you are just as abused by the world system as your man. So why are you taking everything out on him if he is an otherwise decent fellow? Instead of kicking your partner (partner in crime) in the teeth, rebel against the insanity of the system. Get a new life and get out of your trap, but take care of the ones you love or need to love instead of destroying everyone around you.  If you are in a relationship that works, you need to realize that government agenda and entitlement is not really on your side. There is no free lunch. You are being manipulated. You are being convinced that thinking only about yourself, your private parts or your money is the best thing for you on all levels.

Whatever the case, you need to stop feeling entitled and look closer at that “free lunch”. Anyone that offers you anything that destroys your family or beleaguers your kids will cost you dearly sooner or later. Remember… this is all about money and power. In the end, you will not have the power you think you do…and neither does government. When the people get tired of abuse, things happen. Look at history. Don’t assume that any institution will last forever because in the world of history, no agenda is truly forever.

The family will survive. Be a part of that. Wake up and change your life without destroying your family.

Unemployment: The Plight of Non-Custodial Parents

The concept of child support was originally designed to be dynamic and flexible, going up and down as parental income changed. Child Support has become a national battleground for civil rights that is being ignored. You can make a difference.

The Plight of Non-Custodial Parents During Unemployment

on Associated Content.

False Abuse Reporting Faces Washington Review

On Thursday, state senators passed House Bill 3065, after the measure met overwhelming approval in the House of Delegates last week. The bill charges those who make a false abuse report with a $1,000 fine, or forces the plaintiff to pay for the defendant’s legal fees. The misdemeanor crime would also carry a punishment of up to 60 hours of community service.

Unsubstantiated abusive comments and charges of abuse about the opposite party has been the mainstay of divorce and child support/custody proceedings for years, notably by the prosecuting party which is usually the woman’s side. If you have been involved in a divorce, you probably understand the problem. Finally, Washington has grown wise to the rampant abuse. While first amendment rights are important, documenting false charges in court documents as part of public record is not part of first amendment rights. Considering that the federal government has already entered just about every other phase of family law, this move cannot be considered surprising or any more invasive than other legislation. Most federal law that attempts to govern state law and citizen rights guaranteed by the Constitution is blatantly unconstitutional. The federal Bradley Amendment and Title V law is a perfect example of bad law that flies in the face of civil rights.

Clinton and Poverty: "Child Support Reform"

Hillary Clinton has launched a vision that she calls “Youth Opportunity Agenda”. Within the powerful agenda is contained the seeds for unprecedented federal spending and power. As part of this vision, Ms. Clinton seeks to “restore funding for child support enforcement to make sure that fathers do their part to support their children. But she will also reward responsible fatherhood by ensuring that every dollar of child support payments directly benefits children and expanding the EITC to give fathers more economic opportunities to do right by their kids.”

On the surface, what Ms. Clinton proposes appears to be visionary. She desires to restore and enforce, to ensure and to expand. That is language for spending more money. “Hillary believes that fathers who have the financial resources must pay their full and fair share of child support.” The text reasons, “Child support payments lift more than one million children out of poverty each year and enable 300,000 families to leave TANF rolls. Child support payments can represent half of these men’s income, and can provide a strong incentive to work in the underground economy.” The statement made by the campaign is a myth. Then, Ms. Clinton proposes to reverse “deep cuts” to child support enforcement that we made through “the Bush Administration”. She projects that $11 billion will be lost over the next 10 years because of these “cuts”. She will make certain that states and counties have the resources necessary for collection through more federal funding. Ms. Clinton will also “encourage states to take more realistic and cooperative approaches to managing arrears, so that fathers leaving prison are not immediately saddled with unrealistic payment obligations.” Could this also be for parents that are arrested for non-payment of child support through the federal Bradley Amendment in the first place?

Ms. Clinton’s policy also states that she wants to ensure that every dollar of child support goes to the children through “incentives” and “support”, doubtless through more funding with more rules and guidelines. The federal government currently maintains that every dollar of child support is going to child support right now. So what’s up with this need for incentives? The dirty secret is that 4% of child support gets lost in the money stream through mismanagement of the system even though every dollar is sent for the children.

She holds that her reform will increase child support payments and result in administrative savings. Do you smell more power and larger federal government without results? Honesty would dictate that she address the current money mismanagement in the system. Instead, she has chosen to pretend the problem does not exist.

Ms. Clinton proposes to “make work pay for responsible fathers by expanding the EITC.” EITC is the “Earned Income Tax Credit” for low-income workers and families. Ms. Clinton sees the EITC as “one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in the U.S.” Have any of you seen this tax credit lift anyone out of poverty or does it simply support more of the same? Ms. Clinton suggests tripling “the size of the benefit for single workers, providing 4 million people with a tax cut averaging $750.” Does a $750 tax rebate eliminate poverty? For whom would this eliminate poverty? This sounds more like creative social engineering and promotion for single parents rather than promoting the honesty of marriage.

Ms. Clinton expects the cost to top out at $5 billion a year, financed by the “carried interest loophole” which allows some Wall Street investment managers to pay a lower tax rate on their earned income than middle class workers. How many Wall Street investment managers does the United States have? Only Ms. Clinton knows, but I think you know. This is clearly a smoke and mirrors approach to funding. The savings will be so great that she says that she will generously dedicate a portion of the savings to improve government efficiency. Does this sound real to you? Where will she improve spending? She says that she will improve government efficiency by mandating a freeze on expenses, reducing a vehicle fleet and managing surplus property. What money is needed for that? She proposes to eliminate improper federal payments. What improper federal payments will Ms. Clinton eliminate that we don’t know about and who decides what those are?

Currently the federal enforcement of the Bradley Amendment for child support runs at $6 billion yearly with 55% of child support being paid and collected. Ms. Clinton proposes to add another $5 billion to that sum every year with her plan. The $11 billion “saved in reversing budget cuts over a decade”, if those cuts exist, would result in additional funding of roughly $1 billion a year. This would lift federal funding through enforcement of child support through the Bradley Amendment from $6 billion to $12 billion. Additional state expenses to meet federal Bradley requirements are still outstanding and remain the responsibility of each state. There is no free money. This projected $12 billion is a federal expense that did not exist before 1994. Before 1994, there was no federal funding for child support collection. Why does this matter?

What Ms. Clinton is not telling you is that she is intent on reforming the Bradley Amendment federal enforcement laws that were enacted beginning in 1993. Who created those laws to begin with? Hillary Clinton, Donna Shalala and other feminists rose to the challenge to beat out “deadbeat dads” no matter what the cost. Through federal legislation, they removed state rights assigned by the Constitution and worked to exercise control over the rights of Americans that had never been exercised before. They pulled it off without a hitch because of public sentiment that they drummed up as they promised welfare reform and poverty resolution. The democratic Bradley Amendment had sat on the law books since 1986 without the capability of enforcement. Hillary’s crew of feminists was the enforcement agency for the Bradley Amendment. Opportunity was transformed into power. Bill and Hillary are, in theory, single-handedly responsible for federal child support enforcement as it exists today and have mangled the Constitution and the rights of Americans to do it. The really fascinating part of the whole drama is that none of the legislation has worked. Costs are up. Court orders are up. Welfare has not been reduced as promised. Poverty has not decreased. Child support collections are down. Hillary aims to fix the situation with more invasive methods. Are you prepared for that reality?

The Bradley Amendment must be repealed to restore order in the United States of America. Ms. Clinton is preparing to elevate Bradley Amendment enforcement and reform to new heights. The plans and proposals are real. Hillary Clinton is here to rule your world. Hail to the King.