Deadbeat Dads?

For several days now, I've been seeing stories like this in my local media: "Deputies serving warrants for failure to pay child support."

For years now, I've been wondering as my state has implemented nearly mandatory child support guidelines that seem very generous to the custodial parent vis-a-vis the noncustodial parent.

I've heard the complaints of women who've received nothing for years.

I've heard the complaints of men who say they cannot earn enough to satisfy these payments and who have been jailed for not paying.

Now a column on the subject has appeared by the arch-conservative lawyer Phyllis Schlafly. I have had some stark disagreements with Phyllis over the years; but I have to give her credit where it is due. The column is titled "Welfare reform meets the law of unintended consequences;" and it offers some knowledgeable legal explanations for what's been going on. Here's an excerpt:

The Great Society welfare system was recognized by the 1990s as a social disaster that created fatherless children, illegitimacy and women's dependency on government. Channeling taxpayer handouts to mothers provided a powerful financial incentive for fathers to depart; they were not needed anymore.

Unfortunately, policy changes in the 1988 and 1996 welfare laws created similar financial incentives for state governments to exclude middle-class fathers from the home. The law incentivized the states to manufacture "noncustodial" (i.e., absent) fathers and to order money transfers (usually through wage garnishment) to mothers, thereby putting a large segment of the middle class under the welfare bureaucrats.

Read the rest of her column to see how this works.

Wetware Is Here!

You science-aficionados have been waiting for engineers to implement the wetware blueprints I furnished writers like William Gibson so they could make commercials, such as Johnny Mnemonic, for my upcoming line of products.

I am pleased to announce that my friends at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have created the first working models. You can read about them at LiveScience.com. Here is a picture of the first of these neuro-chips:

With one of these neuro-chips implanted into your nervous system, you will be able to use its built-in wireless networking transmitter to IM and talk to your friends without using your hands or vocal chords.

You will be able to hear all existing recorded music without headphones and watch any movie ever made just by closing your eyes.

You will have instant access to all human knowledge, allowing you to make an A+ on every test.

The vast memory on the chip will help preserve functionality even in no-service areas.

And as a special bonus, to assist your decision-making and conversations, I will send you brilliant thoughts so real and convincing you will not be able to tell them from your own!

UPDATE: CNN's Future Boy tells you more about it.

UPDATE: Brain Chip Alters the Mind.

UPDATE: Machines 'to match man by 2029': "Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil."

Demonstrations

Demonstrations can be evidence of precious freedom. Peaceful demonstrators, no matter how unpopular their message, should be protected by the police against violent counter-demonstrators.

However, demonstrations can also turn into ugly, violent episodes of vandalism, injury, and death. Even "civil" disobedients committing illegal acts should expect to be arrested without excessive force and prosecuted.

Demonstrations are often newsworthy; but it is important to remember that the mere act of demonstrating does not make the demonstrators "right" about their cause. Nor is there some magic number of demonstrators that, once reached, makes them "right" about their message.

"Right" is a common but tricky concept. "Right" is legally whatever the king or dictator or legislature or court says it is. Mao Tse-Tung was perceptive when he said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Whoever wins a war makes the rules. I've heard it put this way: "It's not who's right; it's who's left." Mao also said, "Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

Demonstrations can make you think. I like it when you really think.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin reports on the dark side glimpsed in recent immigration demonstrations; and Hit & Run discusses demonstration-media interaction in the blog age.

UPDATE: Mona Charen includes some interesting statistics and constitutional history about "birthright" citizenship.

Public Airwaves?

Never have I felt so abused as a TV viewer as I did watching the NCAA men's basketball tournament on the CBS network. There were so many TV timeouts to pad the show's advertising revenue that the natural flow of the games was disrupted.

And how about those flyover ads that distract you from what programming there is? And, on many cable networks, what began as a half-hourly network ID logo in the lower right has become a continuous, more visually prominent, and larger chunk of the screen.

I want TV advertising minutes per hour regulated the way they used to be and these greedy and selfish practices stopped. If that means less profit for media companies, well, boo hoo, readjust, because the airwaves in this country belong to the people, not to the temporarily licensed custodians abusing their public grant.

I think Congress and the President are pushovers for these giant media companies. I think our elected representatives are suckers for the celebrities trotted into their offices, on the one hand to secure deregulation of broadcast ownership and practices, but on the other hand to seek longer and more stringent copyright protection for their properties to the detriment of the public domain and fair use. I think politicians are a little scared of the networks, too, because network news organizations could decide to go after any politician who doesn't vote their way.

I may come back and update this post with links to show what has happened to our television and radio; but this is a commonsense matter I am trying to start a buzz on while I'm mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore. Even Walter Cronkite has recently criticized the networks for shortening the nightly newscast to pack in more ads.

We need a President and a Congress and an FCC that will roll these encroachments back: hold hearings on how many minutes of advertising time should be allowed, counting flyovers and network logos, which are self-advertising; and get us more choice in cable and fiber-optic Internet and entertainment access. "Cable" is not immune from regulation; cable also uses the public airwaves, for microwave and satellite links.

Here's a good overview: "The Public Interest Standard in Television Broadcasting"

UPDATE: It’s time for cable companies to face competition.

UPDATE: The Next Big Fight Over Media Ownership.

UPDATE: The National Entertainment State, 2006.

UPDATE: As the Fall Season Arrives, TV Screens Get More Cluttered.

Sex and Babies

This is a pointer post to two resources I've found of interest.

The first is to the excellent series of LiveScience articles on the biology of sexuality to be found, of all places, at FoxNews.com. Start with "Scientists Begin to Define Attractiveness" and work your way through other articles in the Stories box that pique your curiosity.

The second is the work of a few of the authors at Townhall.com. I keep this site on my reader to keep up with what its many conservative columnists are saying; but it is also a main archive for intelligent pundits like George Will. Start here with a new piece by Kathleen Parker, "Deleting Dad," that questions the wisdom of single motherhood becoming more common in American society. Almost all the writers provide a contact page through which you can give them feedback; I have gotten replies from some.

UPDATE: BBC News: "Sex cues ruin men's decisiveness."

UPDATE: The (UK) Guardian Unlimited's "Special Report: Gender Issues" collects some interesting research articles, like "Britons put work and fun before babies":

Britain's low birthrate is being driven by a generation of potential parents who would rather get rich and have fun than start a family, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It also shows that while people still think it is best to have children while young, they are being forced to delay family life by career pressures and the growing difficulty of finding a partner.

and "The tyranny of choice: Our inflated expectations of partners are making it harder to find someone to start a family with."

UPDATE: Men, your face speaks to ladies:

Experts said evolution has apparently programmed women to recognize men who might be interested in propagating the species by raising a family.

The study wasn't all bad news for men not interested in settling down.

It found that women can look at men's faces and figure out which of them have the highest testosterone levels. Those men -- rated the most masculine by the women -- turn out to be just the kind of guys they would want for a fling.

UPDATE: Newsweek -- Why More Married Couples Are Going Childless.

Fake Libertarians

These self-styled little-L "libertarian" interventionist warmongers seem to me little more than neoconservatives who smoked a little pot growing up. As an early big-L Libertarian, I am posting Section IV. D. 2. of the National Platform of the Libertarian Party:

The Issue:
Intervention in the affairs of other countries has provoked resentment and hatred of the United States among many groups and nations throughout the world. In addition, legal barriers to private and personal aid (both military and economic) have fostered internal discord.

The Principle:
The United States should not inject itself into the internal matters of other nations, unless they have declared war upon or attacked the United States, or the U.S. is already in a constitutionally declared war with them.

Solutions:
End the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid, guarantees, and diplomatic meddling. Individuals should be free to provide any aid they wish that does not directly threaten the United States.

Transitional Action:
Voluntary cooperation with any economic boycott should not be treated as a crime. End all limitation of private foreign aid, both military and economic. Repeal the Neutrality Act of 1794, and all other U.S. neutrality laws, which restrict the efforts of Americans to aid overseas organizations fighting to overthrow or change governments. End the incorporation of foreign nations into the U.S. defense perimeter. Cease the creation and maintenance of U.S. bases and sites for the pre-positioning of military material in other countries. End the practice of stationing American military troops overseas. We make no exceptions to the above.

Whoomp! (There It Is):

I'm takin' it back to the old school
'Cause I'm an old fool who's so cool
If you want to get down
I'm gonna show you the way
Whoomp! there it is

Minority of One

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold's resolution to censure the President sparked an incomplete memory of an old quotation which I tracked down and now believe originated with mid-nineteenth century Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian Thomas Carlyle:

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men.

On Heroes And Hero Worship And The Heroic In History (1841).

This concept has appealed to some other notables, listed in probable order of publication:

Even if I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.

Mohandas Gandhi

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

Will Durant

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.

Charlie Chaplin, in My Autobiography (1964)





Hang in there, Russ Feingold!

National ID Card

There always seems to be a real or anticipated knee-jerk reaction every time the notion of establishing a national identification card is brought up. Now, resistance to the concept may give way to hopes of better prevention of terrorist acts and better enforcement of immigration laws.

Congress is headed toward approving a plan that would require employers to check every worker's Social Security number or immigration work permit against a new federal computer database.

Critics see the move - aimed at stemming illegal immigration - as the beginning of a government information stockpile that could be used to track U.S. residents.

"We're getting closer and closer to a national ID card," says Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Personally, I never saw a big problem with this. I used to be required to carry my draft card on my person. Drivers are required to carry their licenses. Employers can require a prospective hire to present a Social Security card. Some form of photo ID is routinely required in many circumstances we encounter already.

Some people use fake or stolen ID to commit identity theft crimes or to prevent police from connecting the dots if they are stopped for investigation. National computerized databases accessible from points of law enforcement, like airports and squad cars, already exist and are being enhanced with photographs, allowing fake and altered ID's to be discovered and identity confusion at apprehension to be reduced.

Computerized databases of fingerprints on file are also helpful in identifying perpetrators of crime and fugitives from justice. The new DNA databases built from samples of convicted felons also have potential in solving and perhaps even preventing crimes (especially rapes) where biological evidence can be collected from the victim or the crime scene. The DNA and/or fingerprints of a child (by parental consent) or of an adult voluntarily could be entered into these databases for victim identification in the case of homicides or in pursuit of kidnappers.

So there are some very good things in the field of identification achievable by modern science and technology in the fight against crime. On the other hand, regarding the prospect of "tracking U.S. residents" raised in the linked article, see my post on "Enhanced" 911. I welcome a discussion of these matters in the comments.

UPDATE: Criminal Records, Bogus Licenses Among Truckers at Key U.S. Port

UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Nevada’s “stop and identify” statute requiring a person detained by an officer under suspicious circumstances to identify himself, in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty. (2004) (5-4 decision).

UPDATE: Criminal Kinship: Slouching toward a DNA database nation; and Ninth Circuit Upholds Collection of DNA from Parolees (.pdf).

UPDATE: Vast DNA bank pits policing vs. privacy.

UPDATE: Suspect Captured in Clemson Murder Case.