A mathetmatical approach to "dead beats"

KXAN.com - Austinite On List Of Top Child Support Evaders

You may have seen this list in your own town with different names, but each with enormous amounts of debt listed in their name and with a bullseye on their head. These men are wanted deadbeats and should be picked up at any cost. But really, do you know what the amount that you are looking at really is?

From the article:

The number one offender, John Vines, owes his ex-wife, Dolly, $130,000. She lives here in Austin, and their son needs help with his tuition at Texas State University.

Attorney General Greg Abbott says these criminals continue to make their situations worse month by month.

"When they are initially ordered to pay child support, for John (Vines) and these other people, it's a couple hundred dollars a month," Abbott said. "[That's] an amount of money that, if they're out of jail, if they have a job, they should be able to come up with that amount of money."

First off a sidebar: hopefully these men have actually been "convicted", else this station faces a defamation case. And a conviction can only be done by a judge. They may be wanted on suspicion of contempt to pay child support, but unless they actually have a conviction, that is false.

But onto Abbot's wildly inaccurate claim that these men are ordered to pay "only a couple of hundred dollars a month". Okay, let's look at John Vines, who owes 130796 to his wife. Note: she has said that her son is about to enter college.

Taking that 130,796 and dividing it by 200, we come up to a total of 654.88 months, or approximately 54.57333333333333333 years. That's right, if John's son can wait a little more than 11 years, he can collect social security. Now some may accuse me of being a little too literal with the DA, but even if you double the amount, $400, it comes to about 28 years. Now, he could have waited around about ten years to enter college, but I don't think they mean that.

Now, let's look at what would happen if we calculated the other way. John's son is entering high school, so that approximates 18 years. Giving the custodial parent and the DA the benefit of the doubt and saying that the debt was accumulating for 18 years, it comes out to approximately $605.53. The last time I checked, a "couple" meant two, three if you were stretching, not six. Minimum wage (and again, we're being real generous with the DA and the CP by assuming that the current federal standard existed all those years) comes out to approximately $892.67. Two thirds of a minimum wage job is eaten up by child support, and the costs that child support is intended to pay that could have been covered with the NCP's own costs (such as heating, utilities, and some food which can be shared) must now be doubled.

But the real world rarely goes all one persons way. The DA is being fundamentally dishonest with the public. Child support has several factors that some people may not know about and would sway a public towards some if not total sympathy with the parent that is behind on debt.

• Child support can be figured retroactively, in some states back to the birth date of the child, whether or not a person knew of or should have known of the existence of the child of if the custodial parent blocked the other parent from participating in the child's life by denying DNA tests.


• Child support can be "imputed", or set upon an amount that the courts think the non custodial parent should make if they think that ncp is "voluntarily underemployed". This can go on even when the parent in question was dismissed for whistle blowing (as with John Mutari), or the non custodial parent has a terminal disease (William Street, who died on his second day in jail for failure to pay the child support).


• Child support has an interest rate which the states are free to use for as long as the debt remains.


• Child support cannot be reduced or forgiven retroactively by the courts, even when the debt stays where it is because the courts have not acted speedily on the modification in order to avoid future harm to a parent in financial straights.


• Custodial parents can often become "stay at home moms" or "stay at home dads" with no requirement to do anything but sit back and collect the child support.

So the next time you look at one of those debts, think about exactly how it is being calculated. That "couple of hundred a month" the DA freely talks about seems to occur several times in that month.

Can anybody understand parody anymore?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061223/ap_on_fe_st/teddy_bear_attack



The gist of the story, a judge reinstated two teenagers because of a parody put on the internet. While she may have reinstated them, she felt compelled to give a morals lesson to the two teenagers.



From the article:

"School officials need to know you've learned a lesson," Barker said.





You have it slightly wrong and backwards, your honor. The school officials don't need to know that the kids learned a lesson; they need to have a lesson in the First Amendment given to them.

Parody and satire are important parts of our country. Without them, people in positions of power have no fear that they will be called to account for misdeeds. Without the tools of parody and satire to take someone down a rung or two, we are in danger of falling over a cliff with our leaders because somebody didn't speak out and say, "No disrespect sir, but you're an asshole on this issue."

The kids may not have liked that particular math teacher, but they didn't go the length to which civil sanctions were appropriate. Your job, your honor, is to decide whether the kids were in line with the law, not to go about giving morality lessons simply because somebody's feelings were hurt.

If you wanted to address somebody, you should have started with the school board members, principle and staff, by explaining to them that the little document they teach in civics class called the Constitution does have power, and it cannot be put aside just because of the speaker's age.

If the boys had wanted to apologize on their own, then so be it, but that is far from the school officials "needing to know (the students) had learned a lesson." The only thing they need to know is that they cannot do this, and the next time it comes about there will be financial penalties for flouting the right to Free Speech.

powered by performancing firefox

If there's a case from the prosecution, I can't wait to hear it.

SI.com - More Sports - Defense: Duke accuser misidentified attackers - Thursday December 14, 2006 7:35PM

I guess the third time is the charm for the prosecutors and the police, especially if you make sure that everybody in the lineup was there.

Proof that Americans are smarter than their leaders

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/christmas_greetings_poll_dc



In other words, Americans know the difference between a greeting and forcing religion down a person's throat. Too bad we can't say the same for commentators on either side of the political spectrum.

powered by performancing firefox

Divorce Parties

href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=739"
rel="bookmark" title="Permalink"
‘Tis the divorce season? Holidays’ dark side by
href="http://zdnet.com" Donna Bogatin -- Tis' the
season? Along with 'stocking stuffers,' 'divorce parties' is among the
top six searches today. No need for divorce to dampen a festive
mood! />

Wonder if this would be acceptable if was male oriented.

powered by performancing firefox