Monday, January 23, 2006

Kleptocracy in Virginia

This is an article about proposed child support increases in Virginia. Click the article title to read it in full.

Kleptocracy in Virginia

Excerpts:

Yet another rigged government panel is groping for any justification to railroad through higher child support, though it already is at punitive levels. Under current guidelines, a father clearing $2,100 monthly, pays $1,137.50 and lives on less than $1,000. Add-ons for health insurance can easily bring it to $2,000. This is how Virginia officials subsidize divorce, plunder fathers and create instant criminals out of law-abiding citizens.

Twice their efforts failed when the chicanery was exposed in this newspaper in 1999 and 2001. Now Richard Byrd, a divorce lawyer, has devised a new excuse: Child support must be increased because of inflation. Never mind that child support adjusts automatically for inflation because it increases with income. This is like saying taxes must be raised due to inflation.

Mr. Byrd hopes to tie child support to the Consumer Price Index, based largely on adult consumption of adult clothing, tobacco, alcohol, taxes and the like. His proposal is an admission child support is not really for children but more for the enrichment of grown-ups. Officials are in open violation of federal law, plus Section 20-108.2 of the state domestic relations code and Senate Joint Resolution 192 specifically requiring them to examine "the costs of raising children in Virginia." Officials claim that study "would cost millions" and have never done it, despite receiving federal funds to do so.

The self-serving economics of child support has been harshly criticized by scholars. Yet the panel only consults "experts" who urge increases. They ignore scholars like Bryce Christensen, who notes "evidence of the linkage between aggressive child-support policies and the erosion of wedlock," and who writes in Society that "the advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support ... have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state."

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1 Comments:

Blogger FLC said...

We need to vote these scumbags out of office.

11:21 PM  

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