Removing Barriers to Opportunity for Parents With Criminal Records and Their Children

Nearly four decades of mass incarceration and over-criminalization have made the United States the world leader in incarceration and arrests. The number of Americans in federal and state prisons and jails has quintupled over the past four decades. As a result, nearly 2.3 million Americans are behind bars today. The U.S. incarceration rate is at more than six times the average across developed nations. “Communities of color” and “men of color” are hit hardest, with black men six times more likely and Latino men two-and-a-half times more likely to be incarcerated than white men.

Between 70 million and 100 million Americans, or as many as one in three American adults have a criminal record. Many have been convicted of only minor offenses, such as misdemeanors and many have arrests that never led to a conviction. Regardless of whether an individual has been incarcerated, having a criminal record often carries a lifetime of consequences, lasting long after that person has paid his or her debt to society.  A minor criminal record can be a life sentence to poverty, while presenting obstacles to employment, housing, education, training, public assistance, financial empowerment, and other lifestyle choices.

While the effects of parental incarceration on children and families are well-documented, less appreciated are the family consequences that stem from the barriers associated with having a criminal record. A child’s life chances are strongly tied to his or her circumstances during childhood. Thus, these barriers may not only affect family stability and economic security in the short term but also may damage a child’s long-term well-being and outcomes.

Nearly half of U.S. children now have at least one parent with a criminal record. Parental criminal records create significant challenges among low-income parents and their families.

Income
Parents with criminal records have lower earning potential, as they often face major obstacles to securing employment and receiving public assistance.

Savings and assets
Mounting criminal justice debts and unaffordable child support arrears severely limit families’ ability to save for the future and can trap them in a cycle of debt.

Education
Parents with criminal records face barriers to education and training opportunities that would increase their chances of finding well-paying jobs and better equip them to support their families.

Housing
Barriers to public as well as private housing for parents with criminal records can lead to housing instability and make family reunification difficult if not impossible.

Family strength and stability.
Financial and emotional stressors associated with parental criminal records often pose challenges in maintaining healthy relationships and family stability.

The End of Society?

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.” – Ayn Rand

Many politicians and ‘leaders’ are truly sick. Their sociopathic narcissism causes the masses (or at least themselves) to believe that he or she has a superior ability to spend other people’s money.  Politicians also hold a worldview based on of scarcity. Politics is really the art and science of allocating scarcity, while making decisions about the collection and redistribution of resources within an economy and among its people.

This same truth applies with child support, the Bradley Amendment and all statute worldwide.

Fair Child Support: The Audacity of Hope

Not a few of us have come to personally wonder, even mourn the loss of our true national identity. The personal identity of Americans is even more challenged. We have come to a place of oppression and circumstances over which we have no control, but we are going to have it all rubbed in our faces by oppressive law and unfettered government application. Mistakes aren’t permitted unless you have influence and a hefty bank account. Justice is bought and sold like a revel at Bourbon Street. It’s cheapened the nation and weakened the fabric of society instead of strengthening it. We are a nation that encourages vile and predatory behaviors which reject the core of what builds and strengthens the strong nations of the past for the rhetoric of despots that seek to wield unlimited power.

But …social conservatives…want a return to a bygone era, in which sexuality outside of marriage was subject to both punishment and shame, obtaining a divorce was far more difficult, and marriage offered not merely personal fulfillment but also well-defined social roles for men and for women. In their view, any government policy that appears to reward or even express neutrality toward what they consider to be immoral behavior whether providing birth control to young people, abortion services to women, welfare support for unwed mothers, or legal recognition of same-sex unions-inherently devalues the marital bond. Such policies take us one step closer, the argument goes, to a brave new world in which gender differences have been erased, sex is purely recreational, marriage is disposable, motherhood is an inconvenience, and civilization itself rests on shifting sands.

In this missive posted in his book Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama pretends to be reasonable by acknowledging the feelings of the opposition. He spends a chapter acknowledging the beauty of the Constitution, while dismissing it for something better, likely because of his status as a attorney that specializes in constitutional law. Instead, he talks around it as if to say, the Constitution is nice to study and a great document to thump on when you want to make a point, but it is a quaint tool of the past. Too bad the nation didn’t read his books before they voted him into office, not that it really matters anyway. John McCain, with ties to banking fraud, wasn’t a better choice, just a different one. Presidents have become cheerleaders of what sounds good while allowing Congress to pass predatory legislation without so much as a wimper. They have become complicit with the criminals that pretend to protect the nation.

Many politicians say that they see life as an issue of sexual behavior instead of the ability to maintain relationships, which government is loathe to do. It reinforces the negative instead of the good. It lies and distorts for the powerful and well-to-do. It favors mothers over fathers based on the timeworn models that it seeks to reject through the politics of empowerment. It has transferred this evil to divorced or rejected non-custodial parents. They are simply work horses that will sustain the children of the state as the elite look after their own interests.

“But all in all, I have little sympathy for those who would enlist the government in the task of enforcing sexual morality. Like most Americans, I consider decisions about sex, marriage, divorce, and childbearing to be highly personal-at the very core of our system of individual liberty. Where such personal decisions raise the prospect of significant harm to others-as is true with child abuse, incest, bigamy, domestic violence, or failure to pay child support-society has a right and duty to step in. (Those who believe in the personhood of the fetus would put abortion in this category.) Beyond that, I have no interest in seeing the president, Congress, or a government bureaucracy regulating what goes on in America’s bedrooms.

Moreover, I don’t believe we strengthen the family by bullying or coercing people into the relationships we think are best for them-or by punishing those who fail to meet our standards of sexual propriety. I want to encourage young people to show more reverence toward sex and intimacy, and I applaud parents, congregations, and community programs that transmit that message. But I’m not willing to consign a teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of lack of access to birth control. I want couples to understand the value of commitment and the sacrifices marriage entails. But I’m not willing to use the force of law to keep couples together regardless of their personal circumstances.” – (Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama, page 335)

No Mr. Obama, instead we bully them after the fact with law that only the most wealthy can manage. In the article “Deviance and Society in Child Support Law,” I detail how behavior has been stigmatized and grouped into types of addicted behavior. Politics ignores the truth about its’ role in the process as it seeks the “common good,” pretending to be above all matters of humanity. It treats single mothers and their children as wards of the state and celebrates its’ role in the matter. It treats fathers as workhorses, slaves which must forever pay for the mistakes of the relationship without due process and the standards that built the nation. Remember that these standards only apply to criminal law. The possibility of innocence only applies to criminals, but not to the non-custodial parent of children that the  government owns.

Family law has carefully been maintained as civil law, the law of lying ex-spouses and courthouse escapades, even though the non-custodial behavior has been criminalized in a world without the assurance of justice on any level. Judges can’t stand the irreverent carping of the ‘human trash’ they serve. Government has sanctioned the same predatory behavior in families and relationships that it holds as precious in its worldview of control. Manipulation has become the reality of all relationships, while soft words such a diversity and peace are espoused. They sell the virtues of sacrifice without possessing that virtue. Diversity and peace are the watchwords of society, as that society is gripped by social engineers that claim “common good.” We don’t need society. Government is the holder of punishment and shame.

You know the solution. Be a good slave, stay employed at all costs in the name of fear and don’t make waves- or face the consequences. Economics don’t matter, nor does unemployment. Good men and women know what they have to do. Playing into the system isn’t necessarily the best answer. Otherwise, there isn’t even the audacity of hope, the kind of hope that President Obama claims to live by.

Fair Child Support: The Audacity of Hope by E.J. Manning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://bradleyamendment.wordpress.com.

Hot Potato: 'Experts' Analyze Parental Alienation

A political hot potato rests in the hands of the American Psychiatric Association as it updates its catalog of mental disorders. They must decide whether to include parental alienation on that list, a disputed term conveying how a child’s relationship with one estranged parent can be poisoned by the other.

This is most often is triggered by a divorce and child-custody dispute. There’s bitter debate over whether this plague of society should be formally classified as a mental health syndrome. That question now is before the psychiatric association as it prepares the first complete revision of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1994.

“We’re gotten an enormous amount of mail — more than any other issue,” said Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force drafting the manual. “The passions on both sides of this are exceptional.”

On one side of the debate, which has raged since the 1980s, are feminists, advocates for battered women and others who consider “parental alienation syndrome” to be an unproven and potentially dangerous concept useful to men trying to deflect attention from their abusive behavior.

On the other side are legions of firm believers in the existence of a syndrome that is likely grounded in bipolar and sociopathic behavior. Recognition of parental alienation in the psychiatrists’ manual would lead to fairer outcomes in family courts while enabling more children of divorce to receive appropriate treatment so they could reconcile with an estranged parent in their poisoned relationship.

This family blight not only cripples families, but relationships across the board in an ongoing manner. It is a plague of this modern society and needs to be regarded as a mental disorder.

Associated Press Article – source material removed

Recession & the Family: Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces

Of important milestones that women, and arguably feminists, have achieved, now women have surpassed 50 percent of the nation’s employment due to the recession. Behind the scenes, some are giving women a big ol’ sanctimonious pat on the back, as if the nation can forever profit at the expense of others. Yet, the “success” of women hasn’t come without a great cost even as it saves Corporate America billions of dollars in payroll bottom-line…at least, that is the assumption I make based on statistics and the latest from the mainstream media.

This national employment benchmark comes at men’s expense to be certain, but there is clearly a larger loser, the American family. During this “man-cession,” if a family is whole and complete, women are more often the breadwinners in a classic role reversal when compared to the Beaver Cleaver days. If a family has already been “castrated” from male influence, the remaining family of kids is now firmly on the back burner to fend for themselves while mom works her heart out. You cannot assume a nine-to-five scenario either. The jobs that are left are not necessarily the “plum picks,” but all kinds of shift work including part-time employment in an attempt to get by, as well as classic underemployment that now plagues America. Women are not the winners, but the losers, and the family along with it.

Last month, women held 50.3 percent of the nation’s “nonfarm” payroll jobs in seasonally unadjusted data, up from less than 33 percent in 1964. The loss of jobs held by men during the recession has finally tipped the scales of employment at a great cost to all. This isn’t to say that many women haven’t become unemployed during this recession. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women have lost 3.9 million jobs while men have lost 7.4 million. Due to the number of seasonal jobs, men are likely to reclaim their status once again in the labor market, even though the trend toward women will likely continue.

Fractured families are faring far worse. Not only are women forced to work harder, more often for less, but men are more and more unable to make a supportable living, even to pay their child support. After all, if you can’t keep a roof over your head, how can you hope to pay child support? For the first time ever, untold numbers of men in fractured families, are held victim to the oppressive Bradley Amendment and a dramatic or total loss of income.

The nation has fallen victim to a system that demands fiscal perfection for “noncustodial parents,” which more often than not, happens to be men. This means that men must work under the system if they can hope to make enough to keep themselves off the streets. Others live perilously, under great stress, hoping to sustain themselves for another day, often on unemployment while barely making rent. The other option is living with friends or in the car for those that have worn out their welcome. Clearly, the recession and the banker-types that created the recession from unbounded hubris, have put America in a state of decline, not unlike that of a third-world nation. The big loser isn’t just men, but all families that don’t belong to the Wall Street or government “elite.” The larger problem remains: an unsustainable economy and mounting debt. The hubris and greed are proving to be the nations’ undoing in more ways than one.

Human Rights and Child Support in the U.S.

The concept of child support was originally designed to be dynamic and flexible, going up and down as parental income changed. This is no longer the case. The Bradley Amendment has become an anathema to human rights propogated by the U.S. government, presented as responsible parenting and care for children. The reality is that the system promotes fear and the trampling down of human rights on multiple levels.

Child Support has become a national battleground for human rights that is being ignored in the United States. The United States cannot stand as a champion of human rights. In the case of the family and parents, non-custodial parents have become an oppressed and distressed object of  political disdain, designed for political support and convenience through the division of families, often augmented by controlling maternal sociopaths. 

Non-custodial parents have become social targets of envy and jealousy. The social, financial envy and oppression of parents has become big business to government and business alike.  Coupled with the criminalization of poverty in the United States, oppressed and distressed parents that become unemployed or have life-changing events fall into a government-ordained economic and social trap as the wealthy of the nation look away or promote as a device for their own personal satisfaction. There is a grass-roots movement to change the oppression of human rights in America. Someone does care and has been taking action, whether you approve of their methods or not.

 

The Reality of Parental Alienation Blight

by E. Manning, senior writer, family rights advocate and retired economist

“I don’t care if the judges and the lawyers die of heart attacks in the process of getting their job done. They are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid — they’re the most God-awful people.” These are the words of popular actor Alec Baldwin after a minefield experience in the U.S. family courts. Regardless of how many men have felt the same way, Alec Baldwin finally lends a voice to abused men in the court system.

According to ABC News, Baldwin believes that many family court lawyers and their manipulations and delays make the child custody duel much worse than it needs to be. “The judges are like pit bosses in Vegas casinos. Their job is to make sure everybody stays at the table and keeps gambling.”

The casino reference is based on the fact that the family court debacle is neverending: a heartrending, expensive and impossible situation for most men, particularly when the “little ex” proves to be vindictive and abusive, even turning children against fathers.

Most divorced dads have become strangely familiar with a national disease referred to as parental alienation syndome. In most cases, nothing could have prepared newly divorced dads for what they would face in the land of the free and home of the brave.

Yet, neither freedom or bravery come to mind as men are continually beat down by a system that dispassionately disregards men as nothing more than beasts of burden. Thoughts of leaving the country, sinking into the mires of endless depression or ending life are common responses to the negative reenforcement that the federal government and judges across the board show divorced men. Baldwin was so distraught that he lashed out hysterically at his daughter in a famous phone call promoted by the national media. While Baldwin might have been a little over the top, he creates a national identity for abused dads in a system that favors only women and children coupled with the political expedience that continues to destroy the family long after the family is dissolved.

This tale is not one of complaint, but one of real hope and change. Men are not debris in a maternally-ordered society. America has built itself up as a champion of freedom. Recent years of corruptive politics and negative press have turned politics and family courts into a socialist regime, undermining the freedom and civil beauty that made the idea of the United States great. Society has corrupted itself, fashioning the tools of order into weapons of abusive emotion and policy grounded in nothing more than entitlement attitudes. Feminists and other socially-oriented individuals and corporate bodies have promoted children’s rights over any other in the vain attempt for power and influence to radicalize the political scene in their favor.

Insane jealousy and hatred always need vindication. For the last thirty years, America has become a hotbed of everything it used to hate: unconstitutional laws and hurtful abusive policy that eliminate human and civil rights instead of promoting them. Until America resolves these laws and works to reverse the blight of parental alienation, the nation has no right to promote itself as a lover of freedom and human rights to the world regarding the lack of freedom and oppression that it actively promotes. Until this blight of parental alienation is reversed and the Bradley Amendment is repealed, we are a nation of hypocrites. ~ E. Manning

Read an excerpt from Alec Baldwin’s new book.