Alabama's Child Support Enforcement System An Indictment by James Blackston These are perilous times for Alabama's disenfranchised parents. Wolves and leeches in lawyers clothes prey upon those parents that have been forcablly removed from their families. Only a miracle can avert another super attack upon Alabama families by the divorce and child support enforcement establishment. Only a miracle can stop the Alabama Supreme Court from raising Alabama parents' child support obligations to exponential levels. The miracle came on April 12 when James Blackston and Brad Barber, two Alabama fathers from Birmingham, filed suit against the State of Alabama. Blackston and Barber have been successfully fighting the fascist Alabama divorce and child support enforcement system for more than seventeen years.  James Blackston is a grandfather, who says the State of Alabama, owes him $2,200.00 in child support overpayments the State illegally took from him in 1991. In an action, reminiscent of a totalitarian state, Blackston's property has not been returned. Brad Barber is a father who was forced to give up his children to adoption because of an unrelenting and punitive child support bureaucracy that cannot do simple math calculations in determining child support obligations.  Child support enforcement is a wonderful tool, if used properly, but sanctions alone against fathers will not work. A new strategy is needed to draw fathers and all disenfranchised parents back into the system. Too often punitive child support enforcement divorces fathers from their children. When the divorce and child support enforcement system takes away a child's right to see one parent, while concentrating only on child support, paying more child support is like throwing money down a rat hole. The term "fathers" is used to describe those that pay child support because the majority of child support payers are fathers and Alabama judges have special words for fathers. Recently one Jefferson County Judge spoke on Channel 33/40 TV saying, "All good fathers that love their children should be willing to pay more child support." In rebuttal, disenfranchised parents say, "Many good fathers do pay more, but do not receive any child support credit for time and money spent directly on their children." The good judge failed to comment on custodial mothers that frequently deny their children's right to their dad and that child support is often used to force a father out of his child's life. The divorce and child support enforcement system wrongfully refuses to address a parent's right to be involved in his child's life, concentrating only on extracting more money from the parent. Fathers who do not have the ability to pay court ordered child support do not have the financial ability to provide for the children while the children are in his care. Unfortunately these fathers are forced to give up contact with their children and are literally driven out of their child's life by the punitive child support enforcement system. The fact that Alabama's child support enforcement system separates a father and his child is significant, because Alabama's child support enforcement system has several flaws that deny fathers due process and equal protection of the laws. Using federal and state tax dollars, a company hired by the Alabama Supreme Court to review Alabama's child support guidelines, in February this year, proposed that child support be raised by as much as 32 percent above current levels. The company has a two-prong approach to child support enforcement. In addition to reviewing states' child support guidelines the company operates several child support collection agencies. The company's research on child support guidelines is driven by the zeal to increase child support collections for the privately owned child support collection agency. Before we continue to throw tax dollars down the bottomless pit of lawyers and the child support enforcement rat hole, we should ask, "Where is the research on the ill effects of depriving fathers of the love and companionship of their children?" Where is the research that proves empirically that children are better off WITHOUT their fathers? How will children be better served by divorcing children from their fathers? To throw tax dollars down the child support enforcement rat hole with the pretense of helping children is a lesson is futility. Maybe the State of Alabama's child support guideline's committee can answer these questions. To ensure that the State of Alabama qualifies for federal child support enforcement funds, the Alabama Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Child Support Guidelines and Enforcement (the Child Support Committee) is charged with updating Alabama's child support guidelines every four (4) years. But the Alabama Supreme Court cannot get it right. The State of Alabama has been sued in federal court three times in the last eleven years because the judges and lawyers that control the Child Support Committee refuse to follow the law and the rules of order. How's that, the State of Alabama is the real deadbeat!? Alabama judges and lawyers and DHR child support enforcement employees will not be raising child support by thirty-two (32) percent in the near future. The latest round of child support reviews, complete with meetings and arrogant judges and lawyers controlling every detail of the Child Support Committee, came to an abrupt halt on Friday, April 16, 2004 when a scheduled Child Support Committee meeting for April 19, 2004 was canceled. The Child Support Committee meeting came to a halt because, James Blackston and Bradley Barber sued the State of Alabama and several Alabama Supreme Court judges and lawyer-employees on 12 April 2004 to stop the coming genocide against Alabama's disenfranchised parents. Less than six (6) months, after agreeing in federal court to hold public child support committee meetings in good faith, the Alabama Supreme Court continues to hold secret meetings and refuses to share information about the Child Support Committee to the public and hires outside contractors to review child support guideline's tables, without the Child Support Committee's input and refuses to consider public comments on improving Alabama's child support guidelines. In any democratic government, public input into the decision-making process is absolutely essential to good government. Anything less is anarchy and a fascist state, invites public condemnation and leads to rebellion. The Child Support Committee must follow rules of order and consider public comments in establishing and updating Alabama's child support guidelines. By disallowing public comments and controlling every aspect of the Child Support Committee, Alabama judges create a job for every divorce and child support enforcement lawyer in Alabama and insure a steady stream of federal child support tax dollars to the State. For those that may think, fascist is too strong to describe Alabama's divorce and child support system, let me explain. Fascism is an oppressive system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often is a false policy of belligerent nationalism - enter Alabama's divorce and child support enforcement system. Nationalism is the doctrine that our national culture and interests are superior to any other and must be promoted at all costs. After all, citizens are told, child support is for the children. Explaining the divorce and child support enforcement system to the average naive citizen never caught up in debtors prison, will bring such mundane clichés like, "This is the best country in the world, if you don't like it, go to Russia or China and how can you refuse supporting a child?" Similar depraved ignorance and simple-mindedness allowed Hitler to take control of Germany before World War I and II and such depraved naivety will become the eventual downfall of America. The analysis of what has gone wrong with child support enforcement and where we are heading has been off-base. An investigation is in order of the underhanded criminal tactics fascist regimes undertake to legitimize their agenda and accelerate the rate of change in their favor. America has nationalist myths that our brand of fascism taps right into. In that sense, America is not exceptional. In the near future, America will embark upon a more radical search to define who is not part of the natural order: exclusion, deportation, and eventually extermination, might again become the order of things. "Fatherhood" is under attack and vilified from every aspect of American life. The State of Alabama's maltreatment and hatred of disenfranchised parents is one example. Governor Siegelman's lost dogs campaign against those that pay child support is a beginning. Notwithstanding the United States Constitution's prohibition against debtors prisons, disenfranchised parents are the only American citizens illegally jailed for "debt." Divorce and child support debtors prison is a "weapon for the government to criminalize citizens who have done nothing wrong." Alabama's disenfranchised parents are rebelling against an extremely unfair divorce and child support enforcement system that forcibly removes fit parents from their children. In future generations, Alabama citizens will remember the many Alabama fathers that stood firm and refused to be bullied and driven into the ground by a fascist divorce and child support enforcement system. The state of the state on Alabama' s child support enforcement system is an indictment upon the oppressive and belligerent system that harms those that pay child support and harms their children by depriving the children of the love and companionship of their fathers. In the age of enlightenment, the time has come to establish a child support enforcement system built around reuniting fathers with their children. The current child support enforcement system is wholly inadequate.
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