I got the following article in my inbox the other day. I found it to be interesting reading. I am a graduate of an HBCU (Elizabeth City State University) and come from a family of HBCU graduates. I'm also a former employee of a predominately White institution (Duke University)
which black employees routinely referred to as the "Plantation".
I must say my epxereinces as a employee at Duke only strengthened by view that HBCU's were both necessary and relevant in the post civil rights era. However I do agree with some of the authors critiques of HBCU's.
NewBlackMan: Reconciling the Romance for Black Institutions
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Media conservatives fearmongering: Obama will "take away your gun"
Blackman says: These right-wing idiots are at it again. How quickly they have forgotten Tim Mcviegh and Oklahoma City which taught us that not all terrorist call their God Allah.
Summary: Since President Obama's election, several conservative media figures have warned their audiences that Obama is planning to, in the words of Glenn Beck, "slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun" or have suggested that a government effort to ban guns is likely. Read the full article here
Summary: Since President Obama's election, several conservative media figures have warned their audiences that Obama is planning to, in the words of Glenn Beck, "slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun" or have suggested that a government effort to ban guns is likely. Read the full article here
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Forgotten Contribution
Blackman says: No comment needed.
Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus.
Eliza GrayNEWSWEEK
Rosa Parks's name is known round the world, but what about Claudette Colvin? On March 2, 1955, nine months before Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., a skinny, 15-year-old schoolgirl was yanked by both wrists and dragged off a very similar bus.
A new book by Phillip Hoose, "Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice," describes how the girl stood her ground, yelling, "It's my constitutional right" as the cops pulled her off the bus, threw her into the back of a cop car, and handcuffed her through the window. In Hoose's telling, a teacher named Geraldine Nesbitt had emboldened her students, teaching them about the 14th Amendment. "It just so happens they picked me at the wrong time—it was Negro History Month, and I was filled up like a computer," Colvin tells NEWSWEEK, "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat."
Today, Colvin is 69 years old and is a retired nursing-home nurse living in New York City—her bold actions largely forgotten and long ago eclipsed by Parks. "I just dropped out of sight," she says of her move to New York in 1958. "The people in Montgomery, they didn't try to find me. I didn't look for them and they didn't look for me." In the years that followed her heroism, Colvin felt completely isolated from the Alabama activists who had once been so interested in her case.
But at the time, as Hoose describes, Colvin's dramatic arrest did not go unnoticed; energized by the prospect of using her case to challenge the segregation laws in court, black leaders hired an ambitious young lawyer to defend her and raised funds from the community for her trial. A 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. accompanied black leaders to the police commissioner to plead her case. Colvin was convicted nonetheless, and the news tore across Montgomery. There was talk of a bus boycott—African-Americans made up three fourths of the passengers and the Women's Political Council, headed by Jo Anne Robinson (a professor at the historically black Alabama State College) had long known a boycott would be their most powerful weapon.
But leaders were unsure about Colvin. Hoose describes their thoughts at the time: "'Some felt she was too young to be the trigger that precipitated the movement,' wrote Robinson. E. D. Nixon, an influential black leader heavily involved with the case, said, 'I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with'."
Despite Colvin's lack of fame, Hoose believes she was an instrumental predecessor to Parks's actions nine months later. Before Colvin, Hoose tells NEWSWEEK, civil-rights leaders in Montgomery had been taking measured steps. Colvin "threw the stone in the water and forced them to jump in and think about what they had to do," he explains. Colvin's attorney, Fred Gray, a civil-rights activist who still practices law in Alabama, agrees: "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks."
When Parks was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, Montgomery was ready. Within days, Robinson and the Women's Political Council had organized a wildly successful and crippling bus boycott, and snapped the whole country to attention. Unlike Colvin, Parks was a refined and grandmotherly seamstress completely above reproach—she was the face that leaders had been searching for.
Colvin remained anonymous. She knew Parks, often spending the night at her house after weekly NAACP youth meetings, which she had gotten involved with after her arrest. Some time during the summer of 1955, Colvin became pregnant by an older, married man. Nixon would later say the pregnancy was part of the reason activists chose not to use Colvin as the face of their boycott. Still, in May 1956, Colvin testified with three other women in a successful class-action suit that ultimately desegregated the Montgomery buses.
Hoose hopes his book will introduce Colvin's contributions to a larger audience. "I want it to be impossible to tell the story of the civil-rights movement without Claudette" he says. "Rosa Parks has to scoot over a little bit." The civil-rights movement was made up of a million tiny acts by anonymous individuals, says Richard Willing, a former USA Today reporter who wrote a story about Colvin in 1995. Rosa Parks makes a "great book mark," he says, pointing out that even she lived in obscurity for many years working in a congressman's office in Detroit. Historian David Garrow, a biographer of Dr. King, adds that oversimplifying the story to only include Parks sends "the implicit message that everything in history happens only because of unusually great individuals." The reality is usually more complex than that, he says.
While she's glad Hoose has told her whole story, Colvin says she's satisfied with a bigger reward. "Being dragged off that bus was worth it just to see Barack Obama become president, because so many others gave their lives and didn't get to see it, and I thank God for letting me see it."
Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus.
Eliza GrayNEWSWEEK
Rosa Parks's name is known round the world, but what about Claudette Colvin? On March 2, 1955, nine months before Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., a skinny, 15-year-old schoolgirl was yanked by both wrists and dragged off a very similar bus.
A new book by Phillip Hoose, "Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice," describes how the girl stood her ground, yelling, "It's my constitutional right" as the cops pulled her off the bus, threw her into the back of a cop car, and handcuffed her through the window. In Hoose's telling, a teacher named Geraldine Nesbitt had emboldened her students, teaching them about the 14th Amendment. "It just so happens they picked me at the wrong time—it was Negro History Month, and I was filled up like a computer," Colvin tells NEWSWEEK, "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat."
Today, Colvin is 69 years old and is a retired nursing-home nurse living in New York City—her bold actions largely forgotten and long ago eclipsed by Parks. "I just dropped out of sight," she says of her move to New York in 1958. "The people in Montgomery, they didn't try to find me. I didn't look for them and they didn't look for me." In the years that followed her heroism, Colvin felt completely isolated from the Alabama activists who had once been so interested in her case.
But at the time, as Hoose describes, Colvin's dramatic arrest did not go unnoticed; energized by the prospect of using her case to challenge the segregation laws in court, black leaders hired an ambitious young lawyer to defend her and raised funds from the community for her trial. A 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. accompanied black leaders to the police commissioner to plead her case. Colvin was convicted nonetheless, and the news tore across Montgomery. There was talk of a bus boycott—African-Americans made up three fourths of the passengers and the Women's Political Council, headed by Jo Anne Robinson (a professor at the historically black Alabama State College) had long known a boycott would be their most powerful weapon.
But leaders were unsure about Colvin. Hoose describes their thoughts at the time: "'Some felt she was too young to be the trigger that precipitated the movement,' wrote Robinson. E. D. Nixon, an influential black leader heavily involved with the case, said, 'I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with'."
Despite Colvin's lack of fame, Hoose believes she was an instrumental predecessor to Parks's actions nine months later. Before Colvin, Hoose tells NEWSWEEK, civil-rights leaders in Montgomery had been taking measured steps. Colvin "threw the stone in the water and forced them to jump in and think about what they had to do," he explains. Colvin's attorney, Fred Gray, a civil-rights activist who still practices law in Alabama, agrees: "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks."
When Parks was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, Montgomery was ready. Within days, Robinson and the Women's Political Council had organized a wildly successful and crippling bus boycott, and snapped the whole country to attention. Unlike Colvin, Parks was a refined and grandmotherly seamstress completely above reproach—she was the face that leaders had been searching for.
Colvin remained anonymous. She knew Parks, often spending the night at her house after weekly NAACP youth meetings, which she had gotten involved with after her arrest. Some time during the summer of 1955, Colvin became pregnant by an older, married man. Nixon would later say the pregnancy was part of the reason activists chose not to use Colvin as the face of their boycott. Still, in May 1956, Colvin testified with three other women in a successful class-action suit that ultimately desegregated the Montgomery buses.
Hoose hopes his book will introduce Colvin's contributions to a larger audience. "I want it to be impossible to tell the story of the civil-rights movement without Claudette" he says. "Rosa Parks has to scoot over a little bit." The civil-rights movement was made up of a million tiny acts by anonymous individuals, says Richard Willing, a former USA Today reporter who wrote a story about Colvin in 1995. Rosa Parks makes a "great book mark," he says, pointing out that even she lived in obscurity for many years working in a congressman's office in Detroit. Historian David Garrow, a biographer of Dr. King, adds that oversimplifying the story to only include Parks sends "the implicit message that everything in history happens only because of unusually great individuals." The reality is usually more complex than that, he says.
While she's glad Hoose has told her whole story, Colvin says she's satisfied with a bigger reward. "Being dragged off that bus was worth it just to see Barack Obama become president, because so many others gave their lives and didn't get to see it, and I thank God for letting me see it."
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Injustice by Default
Blackman says: I was forwarded the link to this article on a mailing list that I participate in. All I can say is WOW! Talk about being abused by your government.
_________________________
Injustice by Default
How the effort to catch "deadbeat dads" ruins innocent men's lives
Matt Welch February 2004 Print Edition
Tony Pierce remembers vividly the exact moment in November 2000 when the state of California began trampling on his life. "There was a loud angry pounding at my door at five o'clock in the morning," he recalls. "Very scary."
It was a female police officer with a complaint accusing him of being the father of an 8-year-old girl in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco. "I'm like, 'Great! I'm definitely not the father of anybody,'" he says.
There were excellent reasons to think so. He had never met or heard of the mother of the child. He had never lived in Northern California, and at the time of conception (spring 1991) he was attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, beginning a monogamous relationship that would last for two years. What's more, he's a condom fanatic -- only once in his life, Pierce swears, has he failed to use a rubber during intercourse, and that was "many years after." (He's been a friend of mine for 15 years, and I believe him.) And if the summons had included the mother's testimony (it was supposed to, but did not), he would have seen himself described as a "tall" and "dark" black man named "Anthony Pierce." Pierce is a hair over five feet, nine inches; he is so light-skinned that even people who know him sometimes don't realize he's black; and no one calls him Anthony except his mom.
The front page of the court document gave simple but misleading instructions: "You have 30 days to respond to this lawsuit. You may respond in one of two ways: 1. File an Answer to the complaint with the Superior Court of Contra Costa County, not with the District Attorney....2. Settle the case with the District Attorney. You may call us at (925) 313-4200 to discuss your case." Concluding incorrectly (but understandably) that he could settle the matter over the phone, Pierce called -- three times that day -- and tried to weave his way through a labyrinthine phone tree. Finally he found a human being, who instructed him to leave a message with a home phone number. The department called him back the next day and left a message; it took another three calls from Pierce before he reached a caseworker for the first time.
"I said, 'What do I need to do? I'm not the father,'" he remembers. "And they were like, 'OK, well this is what you do: You just call in every day, and then we'll understand that you're not it, because if you're it, you're not gonna call us every day.'"
Pierce did everything he was told over the next three weeks of phone tag, except for comprehending that the 30-day deadline for denying paternity in writing was etched in federal law, regardless of what he discussed with Contra Costa employees -- who he says never once told him the clock was ticking. "All they were doing was delaying me from doing what I needed to do," he says. "It's a huge scam -- huge scam....They're just counting the days. They're like, 'Sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker.'...And this is the government!"
Two months later, after the phone conversations had ended and he assumed he was off the hook, Pierce received notice that a "default judgment" had been entered against him, and that he owed $9,000 in child support. He was between dot-com jobs, and his next unemployment check was 25 percent smaller; the state of California had seized and diverted $100 toward his first payment. Suddenly, he was facing several years of automatic wage garnishment, and the shame of being forced to explain to prospective employers why the government considered him a deadbeat dad. "That's when it hit me," he says. "I mean, it's mostly my fault -- 'Fill out the form, dumb-ass!'...But it's so rigged against you, it's ridiculous."
Dad Blamed
What Pierce didn't realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father.
This stacked deck against accused dads has provoked a backlash movement, triggering "paternity fraud" legislation and related legal challenges in more than a dozen states. Combined with advances in genetic technology, this conflict may end up changing the way we define parenthood. For now, the system aimed at catching "deadbeat dads" illustrates how a noble-sounding effort to help children and taxpayers can trample the rights of innocent people.
Here's how it works: When an accused "obligor" fails, for whatever reason, to send his response on time, the court automatically issues a "default judgment" declaring him the legal father. It does not matter if he was on vacation, was confused, or (as often happens) didn't even receive the summons, or if he simply treated the complaint's deadlines with the same lack of urgency people routinely exhibit toward jury duty summonses -- he's now the dad. "In California, you don't even have to have proof of service of the summons!" says Rod Wright, a recently retired Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who tried and failed to get several paternity-related reform bills, including a proof-of-service requirement, past former Gov. Gray Davis' veto. "They only are obligated to send it to the last known address."
In fact, a March 2003 Urban Institute study commissioned by the California Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) found that "most noncustodial parents appear to be served by 'substitute' service, rather than personal service, which suggests that noncustodial parents may not know that they have been served." In Los Angeles County, which is notorious for its sloppy summons service and zealous prosecution of alleged fathers it knows to be innocent, nearly 80 percent of paternity establishments come in the form of default judgments. In the state as a whole, which establishes 250,000 paternities a year while collecting $2 billion in child support, a whopping 68 percent of the 158,000 child support orders in 2000 (the last year studied) were default judgments.
Once paternity is "established," even if the government has never communicated with the father, the county court imposes a payment rate and schedule under the statistically mistaken assumption that he makes a full-time salary at minimum wage. (State audits have found that a full 80 percent of default dads don't make even that much.) To collect the money, the county may put a garnish order on the purported father's paycheck or place liens on his assets. If the mother has received welfare assistance after the child was born, the man will be hit with a bill to pay back the state, plus 10 percent annual interest. "That's what they're trying to do, is get some reimbursement to the state," says Carolyn Kelly, public relations officer for the Contra Costa County DCSS. "As you can imagine, [that's] millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars."
If the father falls 30 days behind on his payments, he will be blocked by law from receiving or renewing a driver's license or any "authorization issued by a board that allows a person to engage in a business, occupation, or profession" -- a category that includes teaching credentials, fishing licenses, and state bar memberships. If his credit rating was good, it won't be any more. If his past-due tab exceeds $5,000, the U.S. State Department won't issue him a passport. (An average of 60 Americans discover this each day. Meanwhile, Congress has been pushing to cut the limit to $2,500, while urging the State Department to begin revoking passports, which is allowed under the law.)
"When you tell people about the inequities of the system," Wright says, "they're surprised. They go, 'This is America! You couldn't do that!' And I go, 'Yes, you can.'"
Under the guidelines set forth by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, single mothers can receive welfare only on condition that the state take charge of collecting their child support, including unpaid amounts from the past. If the biological father is not paying support, he will be tracked down and hit with the bill. The admirable goal, which statistics show has partially been achieved, was to encourage more responsible sexual behavior by single women, give two-parent families an incentive to stay together, wean recipients off welfare by forcing them to work, and help them find a little extra cash they didn't have before. At the same time, however, the law gave states an explicit mandate and direct financial incentive to name the maximum number of fathers and extract from them the maximum amount of money.
The bottom-line results have been impressive: Since 1993, according to Senate testimony last March by Marilyn Ray Smith, director of the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, child support collection nationwide jumped from $8.9 billion in 1993 to $19 billion in 2001, while paternity establishments more than doubled, from 659,000 in 1994 to 1.6 million just five years later.
But you can read thousands of pages of laws, reports, and testimonies, and not see a single reference to the importance of naming the right guy, or to the gravity of making a mistake. Since Congress first got into the child support business in 1975, the cornerstone philosophy has been to orient everything toward "the best interest of the child," which in practice has meant ensuring that the kid receives money. Now that the states also have a financial incentive -- they pocket a cut of child support payments, earn performance rewards from the federal government, and enjoy the savings from reduced welfare rolls -- the cash motive is stronger than ever. California, for example, crunches the numbers every which way: total child support dollars collected per dollar of total expenditure, average amount collected per case, and so on. But nowhere does the state bother to count the number of citizens it has wrongfully named as fathers. The bias is overwhelming, and abuses are inevitable.
Paternity Test
Anyone familiar with paternity misestablishment horror stories will tell you that Tony Pierce is a fortunate man. "Oh, he got really lucky," says Taron James, a wrongfully named father who recently founded a group called Veterans Fighting Paternity Fraud. "Mine's going on eight years."
First of all, even at Pierce's current low, entry-level salary, he's rolling in dough compared to most default dads. According to the Urban Institute study, of the 834,000 Californians owing child support in 2001, "over 60 percent of debtors have recent net [annual] incomes below $10,000. Only 1 percent have recent net incomes in excess of $50,000." It's safe to guess that, also unlike Pierce, most don't have good friends who are high-powered lawyers willing to work pro bono. Like obtaining a green card, which is a hellishly complex process navigated disproportionately by the poor, fighting a paternity complaint is nearly inconceivable without legal representation, which Wright says costs a "minimum" of $2,000. "If he can't get the two grand together, you know what?" Wright says. "He's shit out of luck."
Pierce's lawyer, Kim Thigpen, is normally an entertainment attorney, so her crash-course education in family law came as a shock. "I've never seen anything like it," she says. Thigpen was able to get the default judgment set aside -- not canceled -- on grounds of excusable neglect and mistaken identity, thereby blocking the wage garnishment until the mother and child settled the question once and for all by checking their DNA against Pierce's. Nearly three years and $10,000 in legal expenses later, they're still waiting for the mother to comply. (It was far easier for Contra Costa County to declare Pierce the father from 400 miles away than to compel the local-resident mother to show up for a DNA test.) At the hearing, the county attorney admitted that Pierce looked nothing like the mother's description, a fact that a simple Google search would have easily revealed, since Tony publishes a Web site that includes several dozen pictures of himself.
So how was Pierce fingered? How low is the legal threshold for placing men in the cross hairs of default justice? Both Contra Costa County and the California DCSS refused to discuss the specifics of this or any other case, citing privacy regulations (though Contra Costa's Carolyn Kelly did point out that "if you don't contact us, there's nothing we can do"). But a look at how the process works reveals great potential for error.
Counties typically launch paternity investigations for one of two reasons: Either a parent or custodian directly asks for help in locating a biological parent, or a mother applies for welfare, which now is reported to the local child support system. If the mother was unwed, says California DCSS Assistant Director Leora Gerhenzon, "you ask about when you became pregnant, why you believe that date is correct, whether or not the father was named on the birth certificate, has the father seen the child,...does the father provide for support, has he ever lived with the child,...a Social Security number....It's a half-hour [interview], or even an hour and a half to two hours."
What if the only information the mother provides, I ask Gerhenzon, is that it was 10 years ago, with a white guy named Matt Welch, now between 30 and 40 years old, who maybe lives in the Los Angeles area?
"In that case, now it depends," she says. "We run our search on him; if we come back with one Matt Welch who lives in L.A., whose birthday fits that 10-year range, and we have nobody else, we presume in general we have the person. If we come back with three Matt Welches, all of a sudden we know there's a problem. We have to call her back in, or call her on the phone, and say 'OK, here's what we've pulled up. We need more help from you to identify which is the correct [one].'"
So a name, race, vague location, and a broad age range is sufficient to launch a process that could quickly lead to a default judgment, asset liens, and a blocked passport? "Right. Right," Gerhenzon confirms. "If it's clear that she's given us enough identifying information to come up with one discrete name, we would go ahead." Wouldn't that make people with unusual names easier targets? "Absolutely."
In addition to a low threshold for accusing men of paternity, the system lacks penalties for naming the wrong father. Mothers sign their declarations under penalty of perjury, Gerhenzon says, but neither she nor anyone else I talked to for this article could recall a single case where a mother was charged with a crime for naming the wrong man. In fact, until recently California hasn't had any way to see whether a woman had named different candidates in different counties. Asked how a caseworker might respond after discovering such a disparity, Gerhenzon says, "I think in all likelihood they would confront the custodial parent with both names, and say, 'Who is the appropriate parent?'" For both the mother and the state, the punishment for making a mistake is indirect, in the form of receiving less child support. (The state is much less successful in collecting from default dads, on average, and the wrongly named defaults surely pay the least.)
So how many default judgments catch the wrong guy? Nobody knows. Paternity reform activists point to a 2000 study by the American Association of Blood Banks that found 30 percent of the 300,000 paternity DNA tests conducted at accredited centers nationwide excluded the father. But the actual percentage of wrongfully named default dads is certainly much lower, since these samples come largely from people with doubts about paternity (as opposed to real deadbeat dads, who have considerable reason to avoid a DNA test).
Whatever the number, the state of California recognizes misidentification of fathers as a serious problem. "Some default orders are expected," reported the Urban Institute, "but a default rate of 71 percent statewide indicates that something is terribly wrong." In its study, which addressed the collectibility of California's $17 billion in outstanding support, the Urban Institute's No. 1 recommendation was to "reduce default orders." The DCSS now has a Default Work Group, established at the behest of former Gov. Davis after he vetoed one of the reform bills, that is preparing recommendations for reducing the rate.
"What we have done in the past is sped up many of these defaults," Gerhenzon says. "And they were penny-wise and pound foolish, maybe, to go ahead and get quick orders.... And what we've certainly learned through our collectibility study, and...through general customer service, is that it is far, far better to get the right parent up front....In cases where we actually, because of the default, have the wrong parent, we end up collecting a whole lot less money."
Innocence Is No Defense
The systems for establishing paternity and providing child support are replete with legal deadlines that vary from state to state. Besides having 30 days to respond to a paternity complaint, an accused father in California has 180 days to contest a child support order and two years from birth to challenge paternity using DNA evidence (unless he has signed a voluntary declaration of paternity in the hospital under the federal government's new Paternity Opportunity Program, in which case he has just 60 days). If, for what-ever reasons, any of these deadlines aren't met, no amount of evidence can move the state to review the case; the DCSS has to be sued. Unlike capital murder convictions, which are being overturned around the country because of DNA evidence, family court cases typically hew to the "finality of judgment" principle to prevent disruptions in children's lives. Or, in the words of former California legislator Rod Wright, "It ain't your kid, you can prove it ain't your kid, and they say, 'So what?'"
That's how a man like Taron James could be slapped with a support bill for thousands of dollars from Los Angeles County in 2002, and continue to be barred from using his notary public license, even after producing convincing DNA evidence and notarized testimony from the mother that her 11-year-old son, whom he's seen exactly once and looks nothing like, is not his child and that she no longer seeks his support. James says his name was placed on the child's birth certificate without his consent while he was on a Navy tour of duty; then the mother refused to take blood tests for eight years, and he became aware of a default order against him only when the Department of Motor Vehicles refused to issue him a driver's license in October 1996. By that time, James had missed all the relevant deadlines, the court was unimpressed with his tale of woe, and he has since coughed up $14,000 in child support via liens and garnishments.
"I contact Child Support Services, and their whole thing is, 'Take us to court. You don't like what we're doing, take us to court,'" he says. "Whether or not you're the biological father doesn't matter -- if someone's got your name, and you've...failed to participate in the court date, then you have an obligation to pay child support, period."
Needless to say, taking DCSS to court is expensive (James says he's already run up legal bills of $4,000), and success isn't likely. To add insult to injury, even if you win, you won't get any of your money back.
State bureaucrats say their hearts bleed, but rules are rules. "We are obligated by law to enforce the order," says California DCSS's Gerhenzon. "We have no ability not only to stop enforcement of our own, but not to proceed with doing everything we can to get child support in this case, because we have to enforce the legally established order. The recourse is to get that order set aside, or overturned."
When judicial systems enthusiastically enforce rulings they know to be unjust, it's a surefire formula for creating activists. After writing scores of letters to politicians and conducting endless Internet searches, James and his girlfriend, Raegan Phillips, hooked up with a national group called U.S. Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, founded by a Georgia engineer named Carnell Smith. Smith paid more than $40,000 in support over 11 years to an ex-girlfriend's child he assumed to be his, until she requested more money in 1999. He then took a DNA test and discovered he wasn't the father, but the court ordered him to pay $120,000 anyway. Enraged, he launched Citizens Against Paternity Fraud and began lobbying the Georgia legislature to change laws that limited the admissibility of DNA tests. In May 2002, the effort passed, so now at least some default dads in Dixie -- those who have never adopted their children or officially acknowledged paternity -- can overturn support orders using DNA evidence, regardless of how much time has elapsed. In March of last year, under the new law, Smith's personal support order was finally overturned.
Similar laws have passed in Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Arkansas, and Alabama; others are working their way through statehouses in Texas, New Jersey, California, Florida, Michigan, Vermont, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, courts across the country are trying to redraw the legal lines of paternity now that genetic testing and welfare reform are colliding with 500 years of common law tradition, which has presumed that all children born in a marriage are the husband's responsibility, whether or not he is the biological father. In May 2003, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that men who have admitted paternity, even if the mother lied to them, are not allowed to introduce DNA evidence to challenge support orders. Carnell Smith has been trying to push the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, so far without success.
Although paternity fraud activists are beginning to gain traction, they face formidable obstacles. The Welfare Reform Act is largely a popular success. More two-parent families are staying together, more single mothers are entering the work force, and child support collections have doubled. By just about any measure, these trends are in the best interests of the affected children. In Massachusetts 18 years ago, for example, women had a miserable rate of success (around 10 percent) in suing for paternity, according to Marilyn Ray Smith, the state's chief child support enforcer, and genetic tests were inadmissible except to disprove paternity. For single mothers and their children, the legal climate obviously has changed much for the better.
Which helps explain why so many feminist groups and politicians have dug in their heels to block paternity reform bills. Considered in zero sum terms, any change that prevents some unjustly named fathers from supporting kids they didn't sire reduces the amount of money children and single mothers receive while increasing states' welfare payouts. Child support advocates also worry, with some reason, that narrow-sounding legislation aimed at preventing obvious injustices may become a Trojan horse for men who change their minds about the responsibilities of fatherhood. But that's rarely how the issue is presented. Women's groups usually argue that fatherhood cannot be measured by DNA alone -- a disingenuous stance, considering the thousands of men who pay for kids they've never lived with.
"What makes a father?" California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) said in an August 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she was voting against Rod Wright's latest reform bill. "This bill says the donation of genetic material makes a father. I don't agree."
Kuehl, a former family law attorney who cosponsored a law that reworked California's child support system in 1999, has been the single biggest opponent of paternity-related reform bills in the state, to the point where activists like James and Phillips refer to her as "Sheila Cruel" and are planning demonstrations outside her office. Kuehl refused repeated requests to comment for this article. "She says it's not her issue," a spokeswoman told me. "She's not interested to talk about it."
Wright, who considers Kuehl a friend, says he tried several times to sway her with individual stories of innocent victims who'd been trampled by the current system. "Sheila said to me one day in a hearing room: 'You know, I understand that, through the convergence of science and thousand-year-old common law, we have to work toward a kind of balance. And I side with the kids; I don't really care about this guy.'" Wright chalks it up to the prevailing poli-tical winds. "If this was a case where women could be charged similarly," he says, "Sheila would be all over this like a cheap suit. It's really a case where it becomes a guy vs. a child. So it's like, 'Well, screw the guy.'"
Paternity activists argue that the best interests of the child should include, among other things, knowing who her real biological father is, so she can have accurate medical information. And every day the wrong man is on the hook, they point out, is a day not spent finding the real father.
"They have failed her," Tony Pierce says of Contra Costa County's effort on behalf of his supposed daughter. "If they're in it to feel good about themselves and to go to heaven because they're fighting for women -- no, they're going to hell, because they have not found this woman's father, and they have tried to fuck me over....What they should have said right away is, 'Hey look, this isn't the guy; let's get the [right] guy.'"
Every child support official I talked to was sensitive to the criticism and eager to discuss many past and future reforms aimed at reducing the number of default judgments, humanizing the system, and even (in the words of Contra Costa County's Kelly) eliminating the word deadbeat from their vocabulary. "This is a tough area," California DCSS's Gerhenzon says. "When you have bad results in these situations, they are tough on everyone involved in the process: the parents, the legal parents, the child, the system. It is to everyone's benefit not to have these cases come up."
But as long as state and federal laws remain as they are -- with low evidentiary thresholds for issuing paternity complaints, no proof of service required, the presumption of guilt in default cases, a series of short legal deadlines beyond which paternity becomes extremely difficult to challenge, and financial incentive for the government to keep naming dads and extracting money -- these cases will continue to come up. "I can see how so many men could be totally screwed right now," Pierce says. "You know, I was educated, I had a good job, I'd never been involved with the cops before, I had nothing to fear, nothing to run from. But still, I got tied into it....I can see where this stuff could create many victims."
Victims like Taron James, who lost at least two jobs while putting his life on hold for eight years so he could fight a judgment that should have never been made. "I'm a veteran -- I fought for and defended my country," James says, sitting in a Torrance, California, park down the street from his great aunt's crowded house, where he lives with his girlfriend and splits his time looking for work and driving to Sacramento to lobby legislators. "To be treated like this is ridiculous....Right now, I'm fully disgusted with California and the United States for allowing this to go on after I put my hind end on the line."
Note: The print edition of this article incorrectly stated Raegan Phillips' name and one detail about Taron James.
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Injustice by Default
How the effort to catch "deadbeat dads" ruins innocent men's lives
Matt Welch February 2004 Print Edition
Tony Pierce remembers vividly the exact moment in November 2000 when the state of California began trampling on his life. "There was a loud angry pounding at my door at five o'clock in the morning," he recalls. "Very scary."
It was a female police officer with a complaint accusing him of being the father of an 8-year-old girl in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco. "I'm like, 'Great! I'm definitely not the father of anybody,'" he says.
There were excellent reasons to think so. He had never met or heard of the mother of the child. He had never lived in Northern California, and at the time of conception (spring 1991) he was attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, beginning a monogamous relationship that would last for two years. What's more, he's a condom fanatic -- only once in his life, Pierce swears, has he failed to use a rubber during intercourse, and that was "many years after." (He's been a friend of mine for 15 years, and I believe him.) And if the summons had included the mother's testimony (it was supposed to, but did not), he would have seen himself described as a "tall" and "dark" black man named "Anthony Pierce." Pierce is a hair over five feet, nine inches; he is so light-skinned that even people who know him sometimes don't realize he's black; and no one calls him Anthony except his mom.
The front page of the court document gave simple but misleading instructions: "You have 30 days to respond to this lawsuit. You may respond in one of two ways: 1. File an Answer to the complaint with the Superior Court of Contra Costa County, not with the District Attorney....2. Settle the case with the District Attorney. You may call us at (925) 313-4200 to discuss your case." Concluding incorrectly (but understandably) that he could settle the matter over the phone, Pierce called -- three times that day -- and tried to weave his way through a labyrinthine phone tree. Finally he found a human being, who instructed him to leave a message with a home phone number. The department called him back the next day and left a message; it took another three calls from Pierce before he reached a caseworker for the first time.
"I said, 'What do I need to do? I'm not the father,'" he remembers. "And they were like, 'OK, well this is what you do: You just call in every day, and then we'll understand that you're not it, because if you're it, you're not gonna call us every day.'"
Pierce did everything he was told over the next three weeks of phone tag, except for comprehending that the 30-day deadline for denying paternity in writing was etched in federal law, regardless of what he discussed with Contra Costa employees -- who he says never once told him the clock was ticking. "All they were doing was delaying me from doing what I needed to do," he says. "It's a huge scam -- huge scam....They're just counting the days. They're like, 'Sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker.'...And this is the government!"
Two months later, after the phone conversations had ended and he assumed he was off the hook, Pierce received notice that a "default judgment" had been entered against him, and that he owed $9,000 in child support. He was between dot-com jobs, and his next unemployment check was 25 percent smaller; the state of California had seized and diverted $100 toward his first payment. Suddenly, he was facing several years of automatic wage garnishment, and the shame of being forced to explain to prospective employers why the government considered him a deadbeat dad. "That's when it hit me," he says. "I mean, it's mostly my fault -- 'Fill out the form, dumb-ass!'...But it's so rigged against you, it's ridiculous."
Dad Blamed
What Pierce didn't realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father.
This stacked deck against accused dads has provoked a backlash movement, triggering "paternity fraud" legislation and related legal challenges in more than a dozen states. Combined with advances in genetic technology, this conflict may end up changing the way we define parenthood. For now, the system aimed at catching "deadbeat dads" illustrates how a noble-sounding effort to help children and taxpayers can trample the rights of innocent people.
Here's how it works: When an accused "obligor" fails, for whatever reason, to send his response on time, the court automatically issues a "default judgment" declaring him the legal father. It does not matter if he was on vacation, was confused, or (as often happens) didn't even receive the summons, or if he simply treated the complaint's deadlines with the same lack of urgency people routinely exhibit toward jury duty summonses -- he's now the dad. "In California, you don't even have to have proof of service of the summons!" says Rod Wright, a recently retired Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who tried and failed to get several paternity-related reform bills, including a proof-of-service requirement, past former Gov. Gray Davis' veto. "They only are obligated to send it to the last known address."
In fact, a March 2003 Urban Institute study commissioned by the California Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) found that "most noncustodial parents appear to be served by 'substitute' service, rather than personal service, which suggests that noncustodial parents may not know that they have been served." In Los Angeles County, which is notorious for its sloppy summons service and zealous prosecution of alleged fathers it knows to be innocent, nearly 80 percent of paternity establishments come in the form of default judgments. In the state as a whole, which establishes 250,000 paternities a year while collecting $2 billion in child support, a whopping 68 percent of the 158,000 child support orders in 2000 (the last year studied) were default judgments.
Once paternity is "established," even if the government has never communicated with the father, the county court imposes a payment rate and schedule under the statistically mistaken assumption that he makes a full-time salary at minimum wage. (State audits have found that a full 80 percent of default dads don't make even that much.) To collect the money, the county may put a garnish order on the purported father's paycheck or place liens on his assets. If the mother has received welfare assistance after the child was born, the man will be hit with a bill to pay back the state, plus 10 percent annual interest. "That's what they're trying to do, is get some reimbursement to the state," says Carolyn Kelly, public relations officer for the Contra Costa County DCSS. "As you can imagine, [that's] millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars."
If the father falls 30 days behind on his payments, he will be blocked by law from receiving or renewing a driver's license or any "authorization issued by a board that allows a person to engage in a business, occupation, or profession" -- a category that includes teaching credentials, fishing licenses, and state bar memberships. If his credit rating was good, it won't be any more. If his past-due tab exceeds $5,000, the U.S. State Department won't issue him a passport. (An average of 60 Americans discover this each day. Meanwhile, Congress has been pushing to cut the limit to $2,500, while urging the State Department to begin revoking passports, which is allowed under the law.)
"When you tell people about the inequities of the system," Wright says, "they're surprised. They go, 'This is America! You couldn't do that!' And I go, 'Yes, you can.'"
Under the guidelines set forth by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, single mothers can receive welfare only on condition that the state take charge of collecting their child support, including unpaid amounts from the past. If the biological father is not paying support, he will be tracked down and hit with the bill. The admirable goal, which statistics show has partially been achieved, was to encourage more responsible sexual behavior by single women, give two-parent families an incentive to stay together, wean recipients off welfare by forcing them to work, and help them find a little extra cash they didn't have before. At the same time, however, the law gave states an explicit mandate and direct financial incentive to name the maximum number of fathers and extract from them the maximum amount of money.
The bottom-line results have been impressive: Since 1993, according to Senate testimony last March by Marilyn Ray Smith, director of the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, child support collection nationwide jumped from $8.9 billion in 1993 to $19 billion in 2001, while paternity establishments more than doubled, from 659,000 in 1994 to 1.6 million just five years later.
But you can read thousands of pages of laws, reports, and testimonies, and not see a single reference to the importance of naming the right guy, or to the gravity of making a mistake. Since Congress first got into the child support business in 1975, the cornerstone philosophy has been to orient everything toward "the best interest of the child," which in practice has meant ensuring that the kid receives money. Now that the states also have a financial incentive -- they pocket a cut of child support payments, earn performance rewards from the federal government, and enjoy the savings from reduced welfare rolls -- the cash motive is stronger than ever. California, for example, crunches the numbers every which way: total child support dollars collected per dollar of total expenditure, average amount collected per case, and so on. But nowhere does the state bother to count the number of citizens it has wrongfully named as fathers. The bias is overwhelming, and abuses are inevitable.
Paternity Test
Anyone familiar with paternity misestablishment horror stories will tell you that Tony Pierce is a fortunate man. "Oh, he got really lucky," says Taron James, a wrongfully named father who recently founded a group called Veterans Fighting Paternity Fraud. "Mine's going on eight years."
First of all, even at Pierce's current low, entry-level salary, he's rolling in dough compared to most default dads. According to the Urban Institute study, of the 834,000 Californians owing child support in 2001, "over 60 percent of debtors have recent net [annual] incomes below $10,000. Only 1 percent have recent net incomes in excess of $50,000." It's safe to guess that, also unlike Pierce, most don't have good friends who are high-powered lawyers willing to work pro bono. Like obtaining a green card, which is a hellishly complex process navigated disproportionately by the poor, fighting a paternity complaint is nearly inconceivable without legal representation, which Wright says costs a "minimum" of $2,000. "If he can't get the two grand together, you know what?" Wright says. "He's shit out of luck."
Pierce's lawyer, Kim Thigpen, is normally an entertainment attorney, so her crash-course education in family law came as a shock. "I've never seen anything like it," she says. Thigpen was able to get the default judgment set aside -- not canceled -- on grounds of excusable neglect and mistaken identity, thereby blocking the wage garnishment until the mother and child settled the question once and for all by checking their DNA against Pierce's. Nearly three years and $10,000 in legal expenses later, they're still waiting for the mother to comply. (It was far easier for Contra Costa County to declare Pierce the father from 400 miles away than to compel the local-resident mother to show up for a DNA test.) At the hearing, the county attorney admitted that Pierce looked nothing like the mother's description, a fact that a simple Google search would have easily revealed, since Tony publishes a Web site that includes several dozen pictures of himself.
So how was Pierce fingered? How low is the legal threshold for placing men in the cross hairs of default justice? Both Contra Costa County and the California DCSS refused to discuss the specifics of this or any other case, citing privacy regulations (though Contra Costa's Carolyn Kelly did point out that "if you don't contact us, there's nothing we can do"). But a look at how the process works reveals great potential for error.
Counties typically launch paternity investigations for one of two reasons: Either a parent or custodian directly asks for help in locating a biological parent, or a mother applies for welfare, which now is reported to the local child support system. If the mother was unwed, says California DCSS Assistant Director Leora Gerhenzon, "you ask about when you became pregnant, why you believe that date is correct, whether or not the father was named on the birth certificate, has the father seen the child,...does the father provide for support, has he ever lived with the child,...a Social Security number....It's a half-hour [interview], or even an hour and a half to two hours."
What if the only information the mother provides, I ask Gerhenzon, is that it was 10 years ago, with a white guy named Matt Welch, now between 30 and 40 years old, who maybe lives in the Los Angeles area?
"In that case, now it depends," she says. "We run our search on him; if we come back with one Matt Welch who lives in L.A., whose birthday fits that 10-year range, and we have nobody else, we presume in general we have the person. If we come back with three Matt Welches, all of a sudden we know there's a problem. We have to call her back in, or call her on the phone, and say 'OK, here's what we've pulled up. We need more help from you to identify which is the correct [one].'"
So a name, race, vague location, and a broad age range is sufficient to launch a process that could quickly lead to a default judgment, asset liens, and a blocked passport? "Right. Right," Gerhenzon confirms. "If it's clear that she's given us enough identifying information to come up with one discrete name, we would go ahead." Wouldn't that make people with unusual names easier targets? "Absolutely."
In addition to a low threshold for accusing men of paternity, the system lacks penalties for naming the wrong father. Mothers sign their declarations under penalty of perjury, Gerhenzon says, but neither she nor anyone else I talked to for this article could recall a single case where a mother was charged with a crime for naming the wrong man. In fact, until recently California hasn't had any way to see whether a woman had named different candidates in different counties. Asked how a caseworker might respond after discovering such a disparity, Gerhenzon says, "I think in all likelihood they would confront the custodial parent with both names, and say, 'Who is the appropriate parent?'" For both the mother and the state, the punishment for making a mistake is indirect, in the form of receiving less child support. (The state is much less successful in collecting from default dads, on average, and the wrongly named defaults surely pay the least.)
So how many default judgments catch the wrong guy? Nobody knows. Paternity reform activists point to a 2000 study by the American Association of Blood Banks that found 30 percent of the 300,000 paternity DNA tests conducted at accredited centers nationwide excluded the father. But the actual percentage of wrongfully named default dads is certainly much lower, since these samples come largely from people with doubts about paternity (as opposed to real deadbeat dads, who have considerable reason to avoid a DNA test).
Whatever the number, the state of California recognizes misidentification of fathers as a serious problem. "Some default orders are expected," reported the Urban Institute, "but a default rate of 71 percent statewide indicates that something is terribly wrong." In its study, which addressed the collectibility of California's $17 billion in outstanding support, the Urban Institute's No. 1 recommendation was to "reduce default orders." The DCSS now has a Default Work Group, established at the behest of former Gov. Davis after he vetoed one of the reform bills, that is preparing recommendations for reducing the rate.
"What we have done in the past is sped up many of these defaults," Gerhenzon says. "And they were penny-wise and pound foolish, maybe, to go ahead and get quick orders.... And what we've certainly learned through our collectibility study, and...through general customer service, is that it is far, far better to get the right parent up front....In cases where we actually, because of the default, have the wrong parent, we end up collecting a whole lot less money."
Innocence Is No Defense
The systems for establishing paternity and providing child support are replete with legal deadlines that vary from state to state. Besides having 30 days to respond to a paternity complaint, an accused father in California has 180 days to contest a child support order and two years from birth to challenge paternity using DNA evidence (unless he has signed a voluntary declaration of paternity in the hospital under the federal government's new Paternity Opportunity Program, in which case he has just 60 days). If, for what-ever reasons, any of these deadlines aren't met, no amount of evidence can move the state to review the case; the DCSS has to be sued. Unlike capital murder convictions, which are being overturned around the country because of DNA evidence, family court cases typically hew to the "finality of judgment" principle to prevent disruptions in children's lives. Or, in the words of former California legislator Rod Wright, "It ain't your kid, you can prove it ain't your kid, and they say, 'So what?'"
That's how a man like Taron James could be slapped with a support bill for thousands of dollars from Los Angeles County in 2002, and continue to be barred from using his notary public license, even after producing convincing DNA evidence and notarized testimony from the mother that her 11-year-old son, whom he's seen exactly once and looks nothing like, is not his child and that she no longer seeks his support. James says his name was placed on the child's birth certificate without his consent while he was on a Navy tour of duty; then the mother refused to take blood tests for eight years, and he became aware of a default order against him only when the Department of Motor Vehicles refused to issue him a driver's license in October 1996. By that time, James had missed all the relevant deadlines, the court was unimpressed with his tale of woe, and he has since coughed up $14,000 in child support via liens and garnishments.
"I contact Child Support Services, and their whole thing is, 'Take us to court. You don't like what we're doing, take us to court,'" he says. "Whether or not you're the biological father doesn't matter -- if someone's got your name, and you've...failed to participate in the court date, then you have an obligation to pay child support, period."
Needless to say, taking DCSS to court is expensive (James says he's already run up legal bills of $4,000), and success isn't likely. To add insult to injury, even if you win, you won't get any of your money back.
State bureaucrats say their hearts bleed, but rules are rules. "We are obligated by law to enforce the order," says California DCSS's Gerhenzon. "We have no ability not only to stop enforcement of our own, but not to proceed with doing everything we can to get child support in this case, because we have to enforce the legally established order. The recourse is to get that order set aside, or overturned."
When judicial systems enthusiastically enforce rulings they know to be unjust, it's a surefire formula for creating activists. After writing scores of letters to politicians and conducting endless Internet searches, James and his girlfriend, Raegan Phillips, hooked up with a national group called U.S. Citizens Against Paternity Fraud, founded by a Georgia engineer named Carnell Smith. Smith paid more than $40,000 in support over 11 years to an ex-girlfriend's child he assumed to be his, until she requested more money in 1999. He then took a DNA test and discovered he wasn't the father, but the court ordered him to pay $120,000 anyway. Enraged, he launched Citizens Against Paternity Fraud and began lobbying the Georgia legislature to change laws that limited the admissibility of DNA tests. In May 2002, the effort passed, so now at least some default dads in Dixie -- those who have never adopted their children or officially acknowledged paternity -- can overturn support orders using DNA evidence, regardless of how much time has elapsed. In March of last year, under the new law, Smith's personal support order was finally overturned.
Similar laws have passed in Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Arkansas, and Alabama; others are working their way through statehouses in Texas, New Jersey, California, Florida, Michigan, Vermont, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, courts across the country are trying to redraw the legal lines of paternity now that genetic testing and welfare reform are colliding with 500 years of common law tradition, which has presumed that all children born in a marriage are the husband's responsibility, whether or not he is the biological father. In May 2003, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that men who have admitted paternity, even if the mother lied to them, are not allowed to introduce DNA evidence to challenge support orders. Carnell Smith has been trying to push the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, so far without success.
Although paternity fraud activists are beginning to gain traction, they face formidable obstacles. The Welfare Reform Act is largely a popular success. More two-parent families are staying together, more single mothers are entering the work force, and child support collections have doubled. By just about any measure, these trends are in the best interests of the affected children. In Massachusetts 18 years ago, for example, women had a miserable rate of success (around 10 percent) in suing for paternity, according to Marilyn Ray Smith, the state's chief child support enforcer, and genetic tests were inadmissible except to disprove paternity. For single mothers and their children, the legal climate obviously has changed much for the better.
Which helps explain why so many feminist groups and politicians have dug in their heels to block paternity reform bills. Considered in zero sum terms, any change that prevents some unjustly named fathers from supporting kids they didn't sire reduces the amount of money children and single mothers receive while increasing states' welfare payouts. Child support advocates also worry, with some reason, that narrow-sounding legislation aimed at preventing obvious injustices may become a Trojan horse for men who change their minds about the responsibilities of fatherhood. But that's rarely how the issue is presented. Women's groups usually argue that fatherhood cannot be measured by DNA alone -- a disingenuous stance, considering the thousands of men who pay for kids they've never lived with.
"What makes a father?" California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) said in an August 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she was voting against Rod Wright's latest reform bill. "This bill says the donation of genetic material makes a father. I don't agree."
Kuehl, a former family law attorney who cosponsored a law that reworked California's child support system in 1999, has been the single biggest opponent of paternity-related reform bills in the state, to the point where activists like James and Phillips refer to her as "Sheila Cruel" and are planning demonstrations outside her office. Kuehl refused repeated requests to comment for this article. "She says it's not her issue," a spokeswoman told me. "She's not interested to talk about it."
Wright, who considers Kuehl a friend, says he tried several times to sway her with individual stories of innocent victims who'd been trampled by the current system. "Sheila said to me one day in a hearing room: 'You know, I understand that, through the convergence of science and thousand-year-old common law, we have to work toward a kind of balance. And I side with the kids; I don't really care about this guy.'" Wright chalks it up to the prevailing poli-tical winds. "If this was a case where women could be charged similarly," he says, "Sheila would be all over this like a cheap suit. It's really a case where it becomes a guy vs. a child. So it's like, 'Well, screw the guy.'"
Paternity activists argue that the best interests of the child should include, among other things, knowing who her real biological father is, so she can have accurate medical information. And every day the wrong man is on the hook, they point out, is a day not spent finding the real father.
"They have failed her," Tony Pierce says of Contra Costa County's effort on behalf of his supposed daughter. "If they're in it to feel good about themselves and to go to heaven because they're fighting for women -- no, they're going to hell, because they have not found this woman's father, and they have tried to fuck me over....What they should have said right away is, 'Hey look, this isn't the guy; let's get the [right] guy.'"
Every child support official I talked to was sensitive to the criticism and eager to discuss many past and future reforms aimed at reducing the number of default judgments, humanizing the system, and even (in the words of Contra Costa County's Kelly) eliminating the word deadbeat from their vocabulary. "This is a tough area," California DCSS's Gerhenzon says. "When you have bad results in these situations, they are tough on everyone involved in the process: the parents, the legal parents, the child, the system. It is to everyone's benefit not to have these cases come up."
But as long as state and federal laws remain as they are -- with low evidentiary thresholds for issuing paternity complaints, no proof of service required, the presumption of guilt in default cases, a series of short legal deadlines beyond which paternity becomes extremely difficult to challenge, and financial incentive for the government to keep naming dads and extracting money -- these cases will continue to come up. "I can see how so many men could be totally screwed right now," Pierce says. "You know, I was educated, I had a good job, I'd never been involved with the cops before, I had nothing to fear, nothing to run from. But still, I got tied into it....I can see where this stuff could create many victims."
Victims like Taron James, who lost at least two jobs while putting his life on hold for eight years so he could fight a judgment that should have never been made. "I'm a veteran -- I fought for and defended my country," James says, sitting in a Torrance, California, park down the street from his great aunt's crowded house, where he lives with his girlfriend and splits his time looking for work and driving to Sacramento to lobby legislators. "To be treated like this is ridiculous....Right now, I'm fully disgusted with California and the United States for allowing this to go on after I put my hind end on the line."
Note: The print edition of this article incorrectly stated Raegan Phillips' name and one detail about Taron James.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Hillsborough GOP official rebuked for racial e-mail joke
Blackman says: Sigh! here we go again folks. Yet another Republican official is being called out and forced to apologize for being stupid by distributing what many consider to be a racist joke via email. This time it's right here in Tampa Florida. Although this isn't the first time this group of Republicans has been called out for making stupid racist statements or sending out racist emails.
But you can go to any city in any state and the story is the same. Will this ever end? Right now you hear all this talk coming from Republicans about how they plan to transform their party in the wake of getting whipped in the 2008 elections. There is even a grassroots organization called Rebuild the Party which is attempting to be a driving force in the transformation. While electing Michael Steele is a start, the GOP has a LONG way to go if they even want to be s serious contender for black votes. Republicans need to understand why Black Americans view them they way they do. It's not because the "evil Liberal Media" has distorted their image nor is it due to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton exercising some sort of mind control nor is because of "Political Correctness" (which they like to blame when ever they get called out on saying inappropriate stuff) The reason black folks view Republican Party (and quite frankly Black Republicans themselves) the way they do is because of BS like this. Now sure we know there are plenty of racist Democrats out there. We saw that during the primaries. But it's always Republicans that are stupid enough to put their racism on display over and over again. I also linked to the story so you can read all the comments from the knuckleheads who are defending this person and the "joke". We can only hope that one day people that think like this will become extinct.
I've said before that a lot of my ideas would probably qualify me as a conservative and maybe
even a Republican. But I can never bring myself to actually make the switch because the Republican party can't seem to dump it's racial baggage. I've even told my Republicans friends
that I would be a Republican if it were not for Republicans.
Before I go check out this Blog entry from Wonkette.
Blackman out..........
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TAMPA — Florida Republican chairman Jim Greer said Wednesday that longtime Hillsborough state committeewoman Carol Carter may lose her position because of the racial joke she forwarded in an e-mail.
"Carol Carter has been a hard-working, loyal Republican for many years, but this action I have no tolerance for, regardless of the circumstances or intent," a furious Greer said of Carter's e-mail.
Concerning her future, Greer said, "I am currently considering all options, including my authority to remove her from the office of state committeewoman."
The e-mail read:
From: Carol Carter
Friday, January 30, 9:30 AM
Subject: FW: Amazing!
I'm confused
How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in 1 day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn't get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?
Carol Carter
Later she sent out a second e-mail that read:
From: Carol Carter
January 30, 5:54 PM
Subject: Earlier e-mail
I have been asked to send this apology for my earlier e-mail. I am sorry that it was received in a negative manner. I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humor.
As you can now see, it went to very few people. I did add Todd Marks in this apology, as he is in the mix now. I am also sorry to learn that some of these persons are not real team players. There really was no reason for this to go beyond those that I e-mailed (8 people). This was not an e-mail blast as I do not have that capability.
Carol
"I'm pretty much done with those sorts of inappropriate and, and — I am at a loss for words," Greer said. "I just came back from Washington, D.C., working to get our first African-American elected as (Republican National Committee) chairman. It's one thing to have a person express their thoughts and humor. It's another to have a leader of the Republican Party. I'm just done with it."
Carter did not return a telephone message seeking comment.
Hillsborough has been a magnet for racially charged controversies in the Republican Party in recent months. Former county chairman David Storck was roundly criticized for forwarding an e-mail lamenting the many blacks voting early in the presidential election, and former state party finance chairman Al Austin apologized for forwarding an e-mail joke referring to the assassination of Obama.
Storck's successor, Deborah Cox-Roush, said local and state party officials are investigating the actions of Carter, whom she calls a die-hard, hard-working Republican.
She said she has spoken to Carter, and she was very apologetic.
Cox-Roush has called a board meeting but said nothing could be determined Wednesday.
"We are moving forward, and the Republican Party does not tolerate any kind of racist remarks of this kind."
Others in the party sounded just as flummoxed.
"I just saw Carol last Tuesday, and we had a good conversation," said Curtis Stokes, president of the Hillsborough County NAACP and a prominent Republican. "Never in a million years would I think she would forward something like this."
Stokes said he started getting angry phone calls about Carter early Wednesday morning but didn't learn the content of the e-mail until later that night.
"That kind of behavior has no place in the modern day Republican Party," Stokes said.
Hillsborough Democratic Party chairwoman Pat Kemp said she was surprised at the "utterly ugly" commentary.
"I think obviously she really has to look at herself, and people who would say such a thing really need to look deep at their prejudices and racism," Kemp said Wednesday night. "We aware that this exists, but it doesn't usually hit us in the face so hard. It's just so sad."
Times staff writer Janet Zink contributed to this report.
But you can go to any city in any state and the story is the same. Will this ever end? Right now you hear all this talk coming from Republicans about how they plan to transform their party in the wake of getting whipped in the 2008 elections. There is even a grassroots organization called Rebuild the Party which is attempting to be a driving force in the transformation. While electing Michael Steele is a start, the GOP has a LONG way to go if they even want to be s serious contender for black votes. Republicans need to understand why Black Americans view them they way they do. It's not because the "evil Liberal Media" has distorted their image nor is it due to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton exercising some sort of mind control nor is because of "Political Correctness" (which they like to blame when ever they get called out on saying inappropriate stuff) The reason black folks view Republican Party (and quite frankly Black Republicans themselves) the way they do is because of BS like this. Now sure we know there are plenty of racist Democrats out there. We saw that during the primaries. But it's always Republicans that are stupid enough to put their racism on display over and over again. I also linked to the story so you can read all the comments from the knuckleheads who are defending this person and the "joke". We can only hope that one day people that think like this will become extinct.
I've said before that a lot of my ideas would probably qualify me as a conservative and maybe
even a Republican. But I can never bring myself to actually make the switch because the Republican party can't seem to dump it's racial baggage. I've even told my Republicans friends
that I would be a Republican if it were not for Republicans.
Before I go check out this Blog entry from Wonkette.
Blackman out..........
_______________________________
TAMPA — Florida Republican chairman Jim Greer said Wednesday that longtime Hillsborough state committeewoman Carol Carter may lose her position because of the racial joke she forwarded in an e-mail.
"Carol Carter has been a hard-working, loyal Republican for many years, but this action I have no tolerance for, regardless of the circumstances or intent," a furious Greer said of Carter's e-mail.
Concerning her future, Greer said, "I am currently considering all options, including my authority to remove her from the office of state committeewoman."
The e-mail read:
From: Carol Carter
Friday, January 30, 9:30 AM
Subject: FW: Amazing!
I'm confused
How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in 1 day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn't get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?
Carol Carter
Later she sent out a second e-mail that read:
From: Carol Carter
January 30, 5:54 PM
Subject: Earlier e-mail
I have been asked to send this apology for my earlier e-mail. I am sorry that it was received in a negative manner. I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humor.
As you can now see, it went to very few people. I did add Todd Marks in this apology, as he is in the mix now. I am also sorry to learn that some of these persons are not real team players. There really was no reason for this to go beyond those that I e-mailed (8 people). This was not an e-mail blast as I do not have that capability.
Carol
"I'm pretty much done with those sorts of inappropriate and, and — I am at a loss for words," Greer said. "I just came back from Washington, D.C., working to get our first African-American elected as (Republican National Committee) chairman. It's one thing to have a person express their thoughts and humor. It's another to have a leader of the Republican Party. I'm just done with it."
Carter did not return a telephone message seeking comment.
Hillsborough has been a magnet for racially charged controversies in the Republican Party in recent months. Former county chairman David Storck was roundly criticized for forwarding an e-mail lamenting the many blacks voting early in the presidential election, and former state party finance chairman Al Austin apologized for forwarding an e-mail joke referring to the assassination of Obama.
Storck's successor, Deborah Cox-Roush, said local and state party officials are investigating the actions of Carter, whom she calls a die-hard, hard-working Republican.
She said she has spoken to Carter, and she was very apologetic.
Cox-Roush has called a board meeting but said nothing could be determined Wednesday.
"We are moving forward, and the Republican Party does not tolerate any kind of racist remarks of this kind."
Others in the party sounded just as flummoxed.
"I just saw Carol last Tuesday, and we had a good conversation," said Curtis Stokes, president of the Hillsborough County NAACP and a prominent Republican. "Never in a million years would I think she would forward something like this."
Stokes said he started getting angry phone calls about Carter early Wednesday morning but didn't learn the content of the e-mail until later that night.
"That kind of behavior has no place in the modern day Republican Party," Stokes said.
Hillsborough Democratic Party chairwoman Pat Kemp said she was surprised at the "utterly ugly" commentary.
"I think obviously she really has to look at herself, and people who would say such a thing really need to look deep at their prejudices and racism," Kemp said Wednesday night. "We aware that this exists, but it doesn't usually hit us in the face so hard. It's just so sad."
Times staff writer Janet Zink contributed to this report.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Key Obama officials reveal executive pay limits
Blackman says: While I'm sure the right wing crowd will howl "SOCIALIST!" I agree with this move. To date the banks that have gotten this bailout money have acted totally irresponsible. They still aren't loaning money to anybody. So what are they doing with it other
than buying corporate jets, paying bonuses and sending their executives on $400,000 retreats?
I can't wait to see how the media wing of the Republican Party AKA FOX News spins this one.
____________________________________
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Executives of companies receiving federal bailout money will have their pay capped at $500,000 under a financial compensation plan that President Barack Obama is expected to announce Wednesday, two senior administration officials said.
$500,000 will be the limit on executive salaries at companies receiving tax dollars, Obama officials said.
Obama alluded to a change in executive salary in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
"Tomorrow I'm going to be talking about executive compensation and changes we're going to be making there," he said. "We've now learned that people are still getting huge bonuses despite the fact that they're getting taxpayer money, which, I think, infuriates the public."
Under the president's plan, companies that want to pay their executives more than $500,000 will have to do so through stocks that cannot be sold until the companies pay back the money they borrow from the government, according to administration officials.
The restrictions will most affect large companies that receive "exceptional assistance," such as Citigroup. The struggling banking giant has taken about $45 billion from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Watch Obama talk about limiting executive salaries »
In January, the bank reversed plans to accept delivery of a new $42 million corporate jet, after Treasury Department prodding.
Don't Miss
Commentary: Put strict conditions on bailout money
States to Congress: Stop squabbling and send help
The new rules will also mandate that shareholders of banks have a greater say about the salaries paid to company heads. The measures will put in place greater transparency for costs such as holiday parties and office renovations.
Institutions that are financially healthy -- and receive more generally available government funds -- can waive these requirements if their shareholders vote to do so, according to the plan.
Obama ripped Wall Street executives in January for their "shameful" decision to hand out $18 billion in bonuses in 2008. The president said it was the "height of irresponsibility" for executives to pay bonuses when their companies were asking for help from Washington.
"The American people understand we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of, but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up," he added.
Congress also was furious, with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, introducing legislation to cap compensation at bailed-out companies to no more than the salary of the U.S. president.
Obama's annual salary is $400,000.
"We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer," an enraged McCaskill said on the floor of the Senate on Friday. "They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses."
than buying corporate jets, paying bonuses and sending their executives on $400,000 retreats?
I can't wait to see how the media wing of the Republican Party AKA FOX News spins this one.
____________________________________
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Executives of companies receiving federal bailout money will have their pay capped at $500,000 under a financial compensation plan that President Barack Obama is expected to announce Wednesday, two senior administration officials said.
$500,000 will be the limit on executive salaries at companies receiving tax dollars, Obama officials said.
Obama alluded to a change in executive salary in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
"Tomorrow I'm going to be talking about executive compensation and changes we're going to be making there," he said. "We've now learned that people are still getting huge bonuses despite the fact that they're getting taxpayer money, which, I think, infuriates the public."
Under the president's plan, companies that want to pay their executives more than $500,000 will have to do so through stocks that cannot be sold until the companies pay back the money they borrow from the government, according to administration officials.
The restrictions will most affect large companies that receive "exceptional assistance," such as Citigroup. The struggling banking giant has taken about $45 billion from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Watch Obama talk about limiting executive salaries »
In January, the bank reversed plans to accept delivery of a new $42 million corporate jet, after Treasury Department prodding.
Don't Miss
Commentary: Put strict conditions on bailout money
States to Congress: Stop squabbling and send help
The new rules will also mandate that shareholders of banks have a greater say about the salaries paid to company heads. The measures will put in place greater transparency for costs such as holiday parties and office renovations.
Institutions that are financially healthy -- and receive more generally available government funds -- can waive these requirements if their shareholders vote to do so, according to the plan.
Obama ripped Wall Street executives in January for their "shameful" decision to hand out $18 billion in bonuses in 2008. The president said it was the "height of irresponsibility" for executives to pay bonuses when their companies were asking for help from Washington.
"The American people understand we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of, but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up," he added.
Congress also was furious, with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, introducing legislation to cap compensation at bailed-out companies to no more than the salary of the U.S. president.
Obama's annual salary is $400,000.
"We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer," an enraged McCaskill said on the floor of the Senate on Friday. "They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses."
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Rush Limbaugh does it again.
Why are they even bothering with this idiot. Hopefully
he and the type of people that follow him will one day be extinct.
The fact that people like Limbaugh, Hannity and Ann (Skeletor) Coulter
have become the face of the GOP is actually quite disturbing. Conservatives
love to blame their shortcoming and failures on the vast Liberal Media conspiracy.
When the real problem is much like Islam thier party has been high jacked by extremist
elements that are wedded to a corrupt ideology that will lead their party to ruin. Mickey Edwards articulates this very well in an opinion piece for the LA Times titled
"Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP"
____________________________________
CNN) – In a bid to capitalize on Rush Limbaugh's recent comment that he hopes President Obama "fails," national Democrats launched a petition drive Wednesday taking direct aim at the conservative radio host.
"Jobs, health care, our place in the world — the stakes for our nation are high and every American needs President Obama to succeed," says the petition, sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Stand strong against Rush Limbaugh's Attacks — sign our petition, telling Rush what you think of his attacks on President Obama."
Limbaugh told listeners last week he sharply disagrees with Republicans who have said they hope Obama succeeds as president, and particularly expressed frustration over what he viewed as the "absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care."
"If I wanted Obama to succeed, I'd be happy the Republicans have laid down," Limbaugh said. "I hope he fails."
The comment sparked outrage in Democratic circles, while defenders of the remark said it was made purely in the context of Obama's economic polices.
Still, the DCCC petition not only provides an outlet for Democratic anger at Limbaugh, but also serves as a vehicle to gain names and e-mail addresses, presumably for later use in fundraising and organizing efforts.
The petition follows reports Obama warned GOP congressional leaders last week that they should stop listening to the conservative talker, prompting Limbaugh’s response that the new president is "frightened of me."
“He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Limbaugh told listeners Monday. “He’s more frightened of me, then he is of say, [House Minority Leader] John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”
he and the type of people that follow him will one day be extinct.
The fact that people like Limbaugh, Hannity and Ann (Skeletor) Coulter
have become the face of the GOP is actually quite disturbing. Conservatives
love to blame their shortcoming and failures on the vast Liberal Media conspiracy.
When the real problem is much like Islam thier party has been high jacked by extremist
elements that are wedded to a corrupt ideology that will lead their party to ruin. Mickey Edwards articulates this very well in an opinion piece for the LA Times titled
"Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP"
____________________________________
CNN) – In a bid to capitalize on Rush Limbaugh's recent comment that he hopes President Obama "fails," national Democrats launched a petition drive Wednesday taking direct aim at the conservative radio host.
"Jobs, health care, our place in the world — the stakes for our nation are high and every American needs President Obama to succeed," says the petition, sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Stand strong against Rush Limbaugh's Attacks — sign our petition, telling Rush what you think of his attacks on President Obama."
Limbaugh told listeners last week he sharply disagrees with Republicans who have said they hope Obama succeeds as president, and particularly expressed frustration over what he viewed as the "absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care."
"If I wanted Obama to succeed, I'd be happy the Republicans have laid down," Limbaugh said. "I hope he fails."
The comment sparked outrage in Democratic circles, while defenders of the remark said it was made purely in the context of Obama's economic polices.
Still, the DCCC petition not only provides an outlet for Democratic anger at Limbaugh, but also serves as a vehicle to gain names and e-mail addresses, presumably for later use in fundraising and organizing efforts.
The petition follows reports Obama warned GOP congressional leaders last week that they should stop listening to the conservative talker, prompting Limbaugh’s response that the new president is "frightened of me."
“He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell,” Limbaugh told listeners Monday. “He’s more frightened of me, then he is of say, [House Minority Leader] John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
I.G. report says former civil rights chief broke the law
WASHINGTON (CNN) – A long-awaited Justice Department report on the troubled Civil Rights Division says a politically-motivated former chief of the Division violated a federal hiring law and made false statements to Congress about his controversial hiring practices.
Bradley Schlozman, however, will not be prosecuted. The report says the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia decided last week not to prosecute Schlozman for the violations found by investigators for the Inspector General.
The 65-page report by Inspector General Glenn Fine describes Schlozman as a staunch conservative who tried to punish liberal employees within the Civil Rights Division.
"Our investigation concluded that Schlozman… inappropriately considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Division," the report said. "We concluded that in doing so Schlozman violated federal law (The Civil Service Reform Act) and Department policy, both of which prohibit discrimination in federal employment based on political or ideological affiliations, and committed misconduct."
The Inspector General also faulted Schlozman for his congressional testimony.
"Our report concluded that Schlozman made false statements about whether he had considered political and ideological affiliations when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 5, 2007 and in his written responses to supplemental questions from the Committee."
The report is the fourth and final one to be issued by the Inspector General stemming from the controversial firing of U.S. Attorneys by top Justice Department officials, and allegations of extensive improper hiring practices by conservative Republican officials who used political criteria in their decision making.
Grandson of slaves: Obama is our Moses
This is a great story. However A lot of the comments written are disturbing and show that we still have a long ways to go in the country.
__________________________________________________________________
Editor's note: The n-word appears in this piece because CNN feels the context in which it is used is pertinent to the story of James "Little Man" Presley.
SLEDGE, Mississippi (CNN) -- James Presley stands amid chopped cotton, the thick Mississippi mud caked on his well-worn boots. A smile spreads across his face when he talks about voting for Barack Obama and what that might mean for generations to come. His voice picks up a notch. He holds his head up a bit higher.
"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says.
At 78, Presley is a legend of the past living in the present and now hopeful for the future. A grandson of slaves, he's one of the few men left in America so closely tied to his slave past, still farming cotton on the same land as his ancestors. He's picked cotton since he was just 6 years old.
He and his wife of 57 years, Eva May, raised 13 children and six grandchildren in a cypress-sided house in the middle of cotton fields in northwestern Mississippi. He was a sharecropper most his life, but rarely qualified for food stamps. Watch "Obama, he come up like" »
His father died in 1935 when he was 5, and he had to step up and be the "Little Man" of the house, a nickname that has stuck seven decades later.
He's lived a raw-knuckled life where hope moved at a molasses-slow pace. The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Obama has changed everything to the poor in these parts. iReport.com: What does Obama's presidency mean to you?
"I'm a church man," he says. "And I kind of figured this here is about like it was with Moses with the children of Israel. On that day, when he gets to be president, we're all going to be rejoicing."
Does he have plans to celebrate on Inauguration Day?
"Oh man, it's gonna be nice. I believe we're gonna have a good time," he says. "I never thought one would get there." See photos of the weather-beaten home where Little Man raised so many children »
As the nation prepares for Obama's inauguration on January 20, CNN.com traveled to Sledge, Mississippi, a forgotten town of about 500 people in the heart of the Mississippi Delta that some consider to be the birthplace of blues in America.
Nearly 20 percent of residents over the age of 60 live below the poverty line, according to the 2000 census. That number nearly doubles, to 37.5 percent, for residents under the age of 19. About three-quarters of the population are black. Two-thirds of the people here make less than $35,000 a year.
Presley says the fact the nation will have a black president will have a ripple effect in poor communities like his. For the first time ever, he says, black parents and grandparents can tell youngsters in rural America that through education, anything is possible -- that the White House isn't just for white folks.
Three of his children graduated from college. Two have died -- one as a youth, one as an adult. It never gets easier, he says, no matter what age they die. Obama has already brought inspiration to future generations of his own family.
"I might be dead and gone, but it's going to be a good thing to me, because I know that they ain't gotta go through what I went through. They'll have a better time, a more joyous time, than what I had when I come along. It is gonna be grand to them and to me, too."
After Presley's father died, he was raised by his mother, and he finds comfort that Obama was raised by a "single mother, like me." Read: My great-granddaddy hired Little Man as a boy
"He knows what it is to come up without a father and what it is to come up for what you work for," Presley says. "Me and the poor man coming up, we had to work for what bread I got."
Presley shifts back and forth on his feet as he speaks. His flannel shirt and oil-stained jeans seem befitting of his life on the farm. He peers out from a camouflage hat, the fuzzy ear flaps pulled up over his head. He speaks in an accent as thick as the mud on his boots.
His hands speak to decades of hard labor. His fingers appear swollen with overworked muscles. The skin seems about a quarter-inch thick. If his hands could speak, he says, "They'd be crying, instead of talking, for what they've been through."
"You see how rusty and rough they are. They've been through something, ain't they?"
At 6-foot, 2-inches and 214 pounds, Presley has what seems an odd nickname. "They call me Little Man," he says.
He wears the nickname with pride. The youngest of three sisters and four brothers, he says that after his father died in 1935, he became the "Little Man" of the house. "I was tall, but I was small. So they called me Little Man," he says.
He doesn't remember much about his father. He can't recall the day he died or the sound of his voice. He was too young. He never met his slave grandparents either. They died long before he was born. But the fact they were slaves still stings.
"That doesn't make you feel too good, you know, to be sold like a cow. But back then, they couldn't help it. So I reckon I'm just glad that things come out better like it is now."
A thick fog hangs over the fields on this day. Presley pauses. He scans the fields and says, "I think about the good times and the hard times."
"When I started farming, we planted with hands ... and hauled it to the gin by wagon, a mule and a wagon. One bale at a time," he says.
He worked the fields when he was 6, the age of a typical kindergartner these days. "I was making 50 cents a day, from sunup to sundown."
"Back then, you know, I didn't get no schooling. I had to get out, come home and break the land, cut the stalks, plow the land and get it ready for the crop."
Presley has a total of four years of education, classes that he took in between growing seasons. His mother taught him to read and write, but he admits even to this day he struggles with both.
When it comes to life as a black man -- a sharecropper -- in Mississippi, he says it's tough to explain how difficult it was. He points to a nearby bluff and says that when he was just a boy, a black man was lynched from a tree. "I never saw him hanging up there," he says. "All I seen was the tree."
Blacks were segregated from whites. They couldn't go to the same schools. They had separate water fountains. Blacks couldn't go in the front doors of businesses. And just about everywhere you went, he says, racism was rampant.
"You go into a place, and they say, 'Nigger, get outta here.' You don't want nobody telling you that. You're a citizen around town. If you're a citizen, I'm a citizen like you," he says. "It makes you feel mighty bad."
"When I was a young boy, they was bad about that, calling you that."
He registered to vote for the first time in 1959 and cast his first presidential ballot for Kennedy. He says he's voted in every presidential election ever since.
"We felt like we were moving on up when we voted for him," he says. When Kennedy was assassinated, "everybody was kind of sad on that day, because he looked like the first president that had come in and was trying to help the poor folks."
King brought hope, too. "He was the only hope that we were looking for -- to bring us out," Presley says. But when King was killed on April 4, 1968, he says, it "put us right back where we was."
"It was pitiful that day," he says. "Everybody around here was in mourning."
He says Obama has brought inspiration to blacks in these parts, the likes of which hasn't been seen since 1968.
"With Obama coming in, it's gonna be another Martin Luther King helping us," he says. "Maybe in the next 40 years, we'll be better off."
He says Americans should never take their voting rights for granted. He was 30 years old before he first voted. "It means a lot to me, because I can put in for who I want to be president and who not to be president," he says. "So I just feel proud that I can vote."
Before parting on this day, Presley gives a tour of the weather-beaten, four-bedroom house where he raised his 13 children and six grandkids. The wood-framed house was the first home he ever lived in with running water, a bathroom and electric stove. The now-abandoned house is dilapidated, many of its windows broken, its doors barely hanging on hinges.
"I've had a good life, despite the hard times. I sure did," says Presley, who is retiring after 72 years of working the fields.
What's his message to the world?
"The important thing in life is to try to live and do the best you can," he says. "We done had it bad. Let us help give our children a better life, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren. Let's try to give them a better life than we had. But anyway, just keep the good work going, is all I say."
__________________________________________________________________
Editor's note: The n-word appears in this piece because CNN feels the context in which it is used is pertinent to the story of James "Little Man" Presley.
SLEDGE, Mississippi (CNN) -- James Presley stands amid chopped cotton, the thick Mississippi mud caked on his well-worn boots. A smile spreads across his face when he talks about voting for Barack Obama and what that might mean for generations to come. His voice picks up a notch. He holds his head up a bit higher.
"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says.
At 78, Presley is a legend of the past living in the present and now hopeful for the future. A grandson of slaves, he's one of the few men left in America so closely tied to his slave past, still farming cotton on the same land as his ancestors. He's picked cotton since he was just 6 years old.
He and his wife of 57 years, Eva May, raised 13 children and six grandchildren in a cypress-sided house in the middle of cotton fields in northwestern Mississippi. He was a sharecropper most his life, but rarely qualified for food stamps. Watch "Obama, he come up like" »
His father died in 1935 when he was 5, and he had to step up and be the "Little Man" of the house, a nickname that has stuck seven decades later.
He's lived a raw-knuckled life where hope moved at a molasses-slow pace. The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Obama has changed everything to the poor in these parts. iReport.com: What does Obama's presidency mean to you?
"I'm a church man," he says. "And I kind of figured this here is about like it was with Moses with the children of Israel. On that day, when he gets to be president, we're all going to be rejoicing."
Does he have plans to celebrate on Inauguration Day?
"Oh man, it's gonna be nice. I believe we're gonna have a good time," he says. "I never thought one would get there." See photos of the weather-beaten home where Little Man raised so many children »
As the nation prepares for Obama's inauguration on January 20, CNN.com traveled to Sledge, Mississippi, a forgotten town of about 500 people in the heart of the Mississippi Delta that some consider to be the birthplace of blues in America.
Nearly 20 percent of residents over the age of 60 live below the poverty line, according to the 2000 census. That number nearly doubles, to 37.5 percent, for residents under the age of 19. About three-quarters of the population are black. Two-thirds of the people here make less than $35,000 a year.
Presley says the fact the nation will have a black president will have a ripple effect in poor communities like his. For the first time ever, he says, black parents and grandparents can tell youngsters in rural America that through education, anything is possible -- that the White House isn't just for white folks.
Three of his children graduated from college. Two have died -- one as a youth, one as an adult. It never gets easier, he says, no matter what age they die. Obama has already brought inspiration to future generations of his own family.
"I might be dead and gone, but it's going to be a good thing to me, because I know that they ain't gotta go through what I went through. They'll have a better time, a more joyous time, than what I had when I come along. It is gonna be grand to them and to me, too."
After Presley's father died, he was raised by his mother, and he finds comfort that Obama was raised by a "single mother, like me." Read: My great-granddaddy hired Little Man as a boy
"He knows what it is to come up without a father and what it is to come up for what you work for," Presley says. "Me and the poor man coming up, we had to work for what bread I got."
Presley shifts back and forth on his feet as he speaks. His flannel shirt and oil-stained jeans seem befitting of his life on the farm. He peers out from a camouflage hat, the fuzzy ear flaps pulled up over his head. He speaks in an accent as thick as the mud on his boots.
His hands speak to decades of hard labor. His fingers appear swollen with overworked muscles. The skin seems about a quarter-inch thick. If his hands could speak, he says, "They'd be crying, instead of talking, for what they've been through."
"You see how rusty and rough they are. They've been through something, ain't they?"
At 6-foot, 2-inches and 214 pounds, Presley has what seems an odd nickname. "They call me Little Man," he says.
He wears the nickname with pride. The youngest of three sisters and four brothers, he says that after his father died in 1935, he became the "Little Man" of the house. "I was tall, but I was small. So they called me Little Man," he says.
He doesn't remember much about his father. He can't recall the day he died or the sound of his voice. He was too young. He never met his slave grandparents either. They died long before he was born. But the fact they were slaves still stings.
"That doesn't make you feel too good, you know, to be sold like a cow. But back then, they couldn't help it. So I reckon I'm just glad that things come out better like it is now."
A thick fog hangs over the fields on this day. Presley pauses. He scans the fields and says, "I think about the good times and the hard times."
"When I started farming, we planted with hands ... and hauled it to the gin by wagon, a mule and a wagon. One bale at a time," he says.
He worked the fields when he was 6, the age of a typical kindergartner these days. "I was making 50 cents a day, from sunup to sundown."
"Back then, you know, I didn't get no schooling. I had to get out, come home and break the land, cut the stalks, plow the land and get it ready for the crop."
Presley has a total of four years of education, classes that he took in between growing seasons. His mother taught him to read and write, but he admits even to this day he struggles with both.
When it comes to life as a black man -- a sharecropper -- in Mississippi, he says it's tough to explain how difficult it was. He points to a nearby bluff and says that when he was just a boy, a black man was lynched from a tree. "I never saw him hanging up there," he says. "All I seen was the tree."
Blacks were segregated from whites. They couldn't go to the same schools. They had separate water fountains. Blacks couldn't go in the front doors of businesses. And just about everywhere you went, he says, racism was rampant.
"You go into a place, and they say, 'Nigger, get outta here.' You don't want nobody telling you that. You're a citizen around town. If you're a citizen, I'm a citizen like you," he says. "It makes you feel mighty bad."
"When I was a young boy, they was bad about that, calling you that."
He registered to vote for the first time in 1959 and cast his first presidential ballot for Kennedy. He says he's voted in every presidential election ever since.
"We felt like we were moving on up when we voted for him," he says. When Kennedy was assassinated, "everybody was kind of sad on that day, because he looked like the first president that had come in and was trying to help the poor folks."
King brought hope, too. "He was the only hope that we were looking for -- to bring us out," Presley says. But when King was killed on April 4, 1968, he says, it "put us right back where we was."
"It was pitiful that day," he says. "Everybody around here was in mourning."
He says Obama has brought inspiration to blacks in these parts, the likes of which hasn't been seen since 1968.
"With Obama coming in, it's gonna be another Martin Luther King helping us," he says. "Maybe in the next 40 years, we'll be better off."
He says Americans should never take their voting rights for granted. He was 30 years old before he first voted. "It means a lot to me, because I can put in for who I want to be president and who not to be president," he says. "So I just feel proud that I can vote."
Before parting on this day, Presley gives a tour of the weather-beaten, four-bedroom house where he raised his 13 children and six grandkids. The wood-framed house was the first home he ever lived in with running water, a bathroom and electric stove. The now-abandoned house is dilapidated, many of its windows broken, its doors barely hanging on hinges.
"I've had a good life, despite the hard times. I sure did," says Presley, who is retiring after 72 years of working the fields.
What's his message to the world?
"The important thing in life is to try to live and do the best you can," he says. "We done had it bad. Let us help give our children a better life, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren. Let's try to give them a better life than we had. But anyway, just keep the good work going, is all I say."
Friday, December 12, 2008
It's My Party, But I Don't Feel Part of It
Excellent article written by a Black Republican. She outlines exactly why even though many of my values and ideas fall in line with the Republican I have never been able to bring myself to actually register as a Republican.
Friday, December 5, 2008
O.J. Simpson's sentencing hearing starts
Does anybody feel sorry for this guy? I sure don't. He shuold have taken a clue
for Michael Jackson and left the country. He should have know certain folks were not
going to rest until they see him behind bars. What a dumb ass.
for Michael Jackson and left the country. He should have know certain folks were not
going to rest until they see him behind bars. What a dumb ass.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
More on the Soldier Kareem R. Khan
It's about time somebody finally called the Republicans on their hateful divisive tactics. What makes it even better is it came from a member of their own party. In typical fashion the Republican response was swift and nasty with some Republicans even suggesting that Joe the Plumbers endorsement means more than Colin Powell's. That statement is too stupid to even comment on. So I'll just let that one stand out there on it's own.
Black Man
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On “Meet the Press” today, Colin L. Powell concluded his endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama by referring to the death of a Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq on Aug. 6, 2007, and whose remains were buried in Arlington.
Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan
He and three other soldiers, including a corporal from Washington Heights, were killed in Baquba after a bomb detonated while they were checking abandoned houses for explosives. They served in the Stryker Brigade combat team of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Lewis, Washington.
Mr. Khan graduated from Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin in 2005, and enlisted in the Army a few months later, spurred by his memories of the 9/11 terror attacks. “His Muslim faith did not make him not want to go. It never stopped him,” his father, Feroze Khan, told the Gannett News Service in a story printed shortly after his death. “He looked at it that he’s American and he has a job to do.”
Mr. Powell mentioned Mr. Khan’s death to underscore why he was deeply troubled by Republican personal attacks on Mr. Obama, especially false intimations that he was Muslim.
Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim, he said. But, he added, “The really right answer is, what if he is?”
“Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? No, that’s not America,” he said.
Mr. Khan’s death came to his attention, Mr. Powell said, when he saw a photo essay in a magazine about the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. One picture showed a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her fallen son in Arlington cemetery. It was the grave of 20-year-old Mr. Khan, engraved with his name, his military awards, and the Muslim symbol of the crescent and star.
“He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life,” Mr. Powell said. “Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way.”
Mr. Powell said that he had heard senior members of the Republican Party “drop this suggestion that he [Obama] is a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.”
“Now, John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that within the party we have these kinds of expressions.”
Mr. Khan had served in Iraq for just over a year, arriving in July 2006. He had sent home pictures to his family of him playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a smiling young Iraqi boy in Baghdad, according to his obituary in the Newark Star-Ledger.
He loved rooting for the Dallas Cowboys with his father, and challenging his 12-year old stepsister, Aliya, to video games. He last saw his family during a two-week visit in September 2006.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Blame the Niggras part II
last week a buddy of mine blogged Blame it on the niggras. In this blog he was commenting on the fact that some on the right are attempting to pin this whole financial crisis on the back of black folks. Now Ann Coulter has joined the bunch with her latest column.
___________________________________________________
Looks like Ann Coulter has slithered out from what ever dark, damp hiding place she calls home to pen another masterpiece of sheer stupidity. She's now claiming that this whole financial crisis is the fault of niggras, liberals and Bill Clinton. According to Coulter liberals in the Clinton Administration put undue pressure on lending institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make more loans to poor and minorities. According to Coulter they were forced to practice "Affirmative Action" with their lending policies
Coulter writes:
“Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001. Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."
Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.”
But she’s not done. She then goes on to write later in her piece:
“In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."
I guess Ann never stopped to think that maybe Black and Latino home ownership surged because of a strong economy and record low unemployment rates during the Clinton years. Unlike the “good economy” of the 1980’s. The jobs created during that time actually paid decent wages and allowed many people the opportunity to finally be in a position to afford to purchase a home.
Then she comes up with gem of a statement:
“A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.”
Nice……
She finally ends her column with your typical right-wing rambling about Democrats and Political Correctness. What ever……
I would like to thank Ann Coulter for clearing this up for me. See I was thinking this whole financial mess was caused by all sorts of complicated economic principles and circumstances. But now I know it is much simpler than that. It was all the fault of liberals, Democrats, the Clintons and those uppity nigras buying houses they had no business buying.
___________________________________________________
Looks like Ann Coulter has slithered out from what ever dark, damp hiding place she calls home to pen another masterpiece of sheer stupidity. She's now claiming that this whole financial crisis is the fault of niggras, liberals and Bill Clinton. According to Coulter liberals in the Clinton Administration put undue pressure on lending institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make more loans to poor and minorities. According to Coulter they were forced to practice "Affirmative Action" with their lending policies
Coulter writes:
“Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001. Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."
Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.”
But she’s not done. She then goes on to write later in her piece:
“In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."
I guess Ann never stopped to think that maybe Black and Latino home ownership surged because of a strong economy and record low unemployment rates during the Clinton years. Unlike the “good economy” of the 1980’s. The jobs created during that time actually paid decent wages and allowed many people the opportunity to finally be in a position to afford to purchase a home.
Then she comes up with gem of a statement:
“A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.”
Nice……
She finally ends her column with your typical right-wing rambling about Democrats and Political Correctness. What ever……
I would like to thank Ann Coulter for clearing this up for me. See I was thinking this whole financial mess was caused by all sorts of complicated economic principles and circumstances. But now I know it is much simpler than that. It was all the fault of liberals, Democrats, the Clintons and those uppity nigras buying houses they had no business buying.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Who am I?
In retrospect this probably should have been my first post. Oh well.......
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I’m a “Forty Something” Black male, born and raised in the South. Politically, I consider myself a moderate-to-conservative Democrat. In my younger days, I was much more left of center than I am now. During my journey to my present place in the political spectrum, I became an Independent for a while but didn’t like it very much. I’m also a student of geopolitics and how events around the world affect our lives here in the US.
I came up with the name of my blog from a black commentator (who's name escapes me) that my parents used to listen to. He would end each commentary with the statement; "This is just one black mans opinion". For some reason that has always stayed with me through the years.
I am a battle hardened veteran of the old USENET newsgroup wars, where I regularly debated with people on the right as well as the left. At the moment, I prefer to not discuss my profession especially since I’m now putting my personal opinions on display in a very public forum. I’m just your average Brother; I’m a husband, father and all around nice guy that likes to dabble with computers, frequent Flea Markets and thrift stores looking for that one gem that everybody else has over looked. When I’m not traveling, I also sell stuff on eBay and Amazon, mainly for a little extra weekend beer money. I currently reside in Tampa, Florida and have no plans to live anywhere where the temperature drops below 40 degrees ever again.
________________________________________________________
I’m a “Forty Something” Black male, born and raised in the South. Politically, I consider myself a moderate-to-conservative Democrat. In my younger days, I was much more left of center than I am now. During my journey to my present place in the political spectrum, I became an Independent for a while but didn’t like it very much. I’m also a student of geopolitics and how events around the world affect our lives here in the US.
I came up with the name of my blog from a black commentator (who's name escapes me) that my parents used to listen to. He would end each commentary with the statement; "This is just one black mans opinion". For some reason that has always stayed with me through the years.
I am a battle hardened veteran of the old USENET newsgroup wars, where I regularly debated with people on the right as well as the left. At the moment, I prefer to not discuss my profession especially since I’m now putting my personal opinions on display in a very public forum. I’m just your average Brother; I’m a husband, father and all around nice guy that likes to dabble with computers, frequent Flea Markets and thrift stores looking for that one gem that everybody else has over looked. When I’m not traveling, I also sell stuff on eBay and Amazon, mainly for a little extra weekend beer money. I currently reside in Tampa, Florida and have no plans to live anywhere where the temperature drops below 40 degrees ever again.
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