Month: September 2002

Avoid Deadbeat Parent Problems by Enforcing Visitation Orders/Joint Physical Custody

The Christian Science Monitor’s Marilyn Gardner wrote an interesting article about ‘deadbeat’ dads that acknowledged the problem with parents failing to pay child support but balanced it with a look at the obstacles that stand in the way of noncustodial fathers and mothers.

One of the interesting statistics Gardner cites is how the likelihood of a parent failing to pay child support increases when the noncustodial parent’s ability to visit the child is cut off by the custodial parent. Gardner writes,

Some fathers want an end to what appears to be a double standard in the legal system.

“They throw fathers in jail for not paying support,” [Fathers’ Rights Foundation founder Ronald] Isaacs said. “But they don’t throw mothers in jail for denying visitation. If the courts would enforce visitation orders with the same vigor that they enforce child support, they would get a lot more money than they do by going after these few people.”

As Gardner notes, custodial parents sometimes have what they believe are very good reasons to violate court-ordered visitation. But those sorts of issues should be addressed by independent mediators and/or the courts, not the custodial parent. Courts should enforce visitation orders just as they enforce child support and other orders.

Going even further, courts should have a presumption of joint physical custody. Joint legal custody is already common, and several states have a presumption of joint legal custody. With joint physical custody, the child spends time living with both parents on an agreed upon schedule, typically with the child residing with one parent 70 percent of the time and with the other parent 30 percent of the time (50/50 arrangements are also common). This keeps both parents active in the life of the children.

Now obviously there are many circumstances in which joint physical custody is simply not possible or feasible, but courts should presume joint physical custody unless and until circumstances of the individual case suggest that a different arrangement would be better for the children involved.

Source:

Making ‘deadbeat’ parents a thing of the past. Marilyn Gardner, Christian Science Monitor, August 28, 2002.

Corruption Still Rampant in Most Countries

While the Sustainable Development Summit poured millions of dollars down the drain for speeches about ending poverty, Transparency International released its latest report outlining one of the major reasons why poverty endures in the developing world — corruption.

In its survey of 102 countries, more than two-thirds of the countries had ratings indicating that corruption is a major problem — including in the Sustainable Development Summit’s host country of South Africa.

As Transparency International’s chairman Peter Eigen said in a news conference, this ongoing endemic corruption in the developing world all but guarantees continuing poverty in these nations.

The 10 most corrupt nations in Transparency International’s 2002 rankings were.

1. Bangladesh
2. Nigeria
3. Paraguay
4. Madagascar
5. Angola
6. Kenya
7. Indonesia
8. Azerbaijan
9. Uganda
10. Moldova

The complete rankings are available at Transparency International’s web site at http://www.transparency.org/.

Sources:

Corruption ‘rampant’ in two-thirds of countries. Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters, August 28, 2002.

Transparency International
Corruption Perceptions Index 2002. Transparency International, August 28, 2002.

Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Dismissed Over Plaintiff’s Loose Lips

Women’s E-News reports that a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Ford Motor Company was dismissed by a judge after the plaintiff and plaintiff’s lawyers publicly talked about a prior sexual misconduct conviction by one of the defendants.

Justine Maldonado is suing Ford claiming that an inspector at one of its plants, Daniel P. Bennett, exposed himself to her and demanded oral sex. Several other women have filed similar lawsuits against Ford and Bennett. According to Women’s E-News, Ford maintains that it investigated the complaints and found them baseless.

Maldonado and her lawyer both gave interviews with reporters in which they discussed Bennett’s 1995 conviction for exposing himself to three women. Under the terms of that conviction, Bennett’s conviction was expunged after he met court-determined requirements.

Circuit Court Judge William J. Giovan dismissed Maldonado’s lawsuit saying that the plaintiffs efforts at publicizing the expunged conviction was little more than an attempt to prejudice any jury that might hear the case. In his decision, Giovan wrote that, “The behavior in question has been intentional, premeditated and intransigent. It was designed to reach the farthest boundaries of the public consciousness.”

According to a Detroit Free Press story, along with interviews with the press Maldonado and her lawyer also staged protests and handed out flyers detailing Bennett’s expunged conviction.

Sources:

Lawyer to file appeal in Ford case. Alejandro Bodipo-Memba, Detroit Free Press, August 27, 2002.

Judge Dismisses Sex Harassment Suit against Ford. August 31, 2002.

To The New York Times , Palestinian Torture Is Just an Afterthought

Last week, the warbloggers were all up in arms when the Aksa Martyrs Brigades — a Palestinian extremist group associated with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement — executed 35 year-old Ikhklas Khouli for collaborating with Israel.

Such extrajudicial murders are bad enough, but in this case Ms. Khouli’s son, Bakir, said that he was tortured into providing incriminating evidence against his mother. Photos posted on news sites such as at Yahoo! of Bakir Khouli showed his back covered in welts just as if he had been repeatedly hit with an electrical cable just as he claimed. Khouli said in interviews that by the time the Aksa Martyrs Brigades torturers were done with him, he would have said anything to stop the interrogation. And what he did say — falsely he claims — was that his mother was a collaborator.

And so, being the sort of upstanding movement concerned about human rights, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades gave her a show trial and then took Ms. Khoui outside and shot her dead.

What is interesting is how The New York Times chose to cover the story. Serge Schmemann has a 1,453 word article about Ms. Khouli’s execution and the execution of another female “collaborator.” But rather than a story about horrific torture of alleged suspects by Palestinian groups, the article largely offers the Aksa Martyrs Brigades the opportunity to defend its actions. The Aksa Martyrs Brigades don’t want to torture and murder people, but the Israelis force them into it, you see (a nutty Israeli peace group actually took this absurdity to its logical conclusion by saying Israel was to blame when Palestinians terrorists torture and murder suspected Palestinian collaborators).

In fact, it is not until the reader has trudged through more than 1,300 words of Schmemann’s dry prose that the possibility of torture is even introduced. Even then with three pitiful paragraphs at the end to cover a major part of the story, Schmemann can’t bring himself to actually use the word “torture”. Instead Schmemann frames the story by noting that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed that Bakri Khouli testified against his mother voluntarily, but that the details of Bakri’s own account “tell a different story.”

Can you imagine, even for a moment, what would happen if a photo of a prisoner at Guantanamo was released showing the prisoner’s back covered in welts? Do you think The New York Times would relegate that fact to the final three paragraphs of a long story dominated by comments from Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft about just how guilty they are certain the prisoner really was and that this was the only way to deal with such witnesses? Hell, if Bakri Khouli had been tortured by the Israeli’s rather than by fellow Palestinians, this would be front page news for weeks and by now the United Nations would be calling for at least three international investigative teams to be put together to examine the crime.

It is odd that the Times and the rest of the world seem to think that when the Israeli’s accidentally kill civilians while trying to eliminate terrorists who are illegally placing themselves in civilian populations, that this is worthy of front page news for days on end. When Palestinian terrorists close to the president of the Palestinian Authority decide to torture children and execute women,however, even The New York Times can’t use the “t” word and the story is apparently of little interest around the world since it doesn’t fit the dominant media paradigm of Israeli oppressors vs. Palestinian victims.

Disgusting.

Source:

For Arab Informers, Death; For the Executioners, Justice. Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, September 1, 2002.