From the Desk of Karl Denninger

1. The "opposition point of view" – that the current Child Support System is helping – admits to the following facts and makes the following claims, all of which I, and many others, have pointed out to you in the past:

• Only 10% of all persons who do not pay child support are able to, as demonstrated by those who, when threatened with jail or other criminal sanction, somehow come up with some amount of money. This is a buried fact in the claims that "half of all kids don’t get what they’re owed." It’s a fact that puts the lie to the idea that we can significantly help children through these programs.
• In the third paragraph the claim is made that "if we are truly about strengthening families….it is time to get serious about setting up an effective national child-support enforcement system." Oh really? How do you square this with the fact, as documented by Sanford Braver and many other researchers – along with anyone who simply asks a divorce attorney – that at least two thirds of divorces are filed by mothers. The truth is laid out in the "pro-tear-down-the-system" argument – that men are forcibly ejected from their children’s lives, they are plundered for everything they have, kept from their kids, and financially and morally destroyed. To claim that promoting fatherless homes – which is precisely what these systems and laws do – is somehow "strengthening families" is perversity of the highest order. If you truly cared about families and children you would pass laws that enact what I have urged you to do – and get rid of incentives to destroy children. None of you in the legislature can make the claim to give one good damn about family values – none of you – until you stop this carnage.
• In the fourth paragraph the truth is finally "outed". 60% of all children born in the nineties will spend part of their lives in a single-parent household. What the author of that little piece conveniently refuses to discuss is the current system that creates at least half of those single-parent households through its system of incentives and perversities! If there is one thing we learned through welfare reform it is that incentives control the day when it comes to human behavior. Sadly, you are refusing to apply those lessons to something far more important than money – our nation’s kids and future!
• The "big omission" in the statement that "Approximately 40% of children who live in fatherless households haven’t seen their fathers in at least a year" is why this happens. Surprised? I’m not. When mothers can turn around and move across state lines with impunity, how is Dad supposed to "visit". And what’s this "visit" thing anyway? You parent your children. Once Dad is reduced to a "visitor", what’s left for him? A healthy relationship with his kids? Not a chance. First you, as lawmakers, create a system that destroys families and drives men from their children’s lives, then you complain when the intended and designed result occurs! You are all hypocrites!
• Finally, despite all these draconian measures, the "other side" – those who argue for even more enforcement – admit that none of what has been done has managed to obtain the money. Isn’t it obvious that there is nothing further you can do beyond putting someone in prison? Is it not obvious that if you’ve gone that far – and you have – that you’re tilting at windmills and should be called Don Quixote
• The charge is made that we have lost an entire generation of children because of a "broken system". That part is true. What’s broken, however, isn’t that we don’t collect child support. Its that we use this sanction in the vast majority of the cases in the first place, destroy families, provide financial incentives for women to initiate divorce and eject their children’s father from the home. Its morally and ethically bankrupt to treat men – nearly all of whom would be happy to take care of their kids on their own, with their own money – as criminals.

1. You are personally and directly responsible for this. As lawmakers, every law that you enact and every one you leave on the books that takes these actions is your personal responsibility. It is not someone else’s. It is yours. Personally
2. The millions of children who are abused – and abused they are – by these systems and policies have their blood on your hands. YOUR HANDS. The results of these policies – youth crime, teen pregnancy, truancy, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse – is readily apparent if you only care to open your eyes. You are each, as lawmakers, personally, individually and jointly responsible for these tragedies – as well as the destruction of the American family.