Gaming the Courts

Men and Women

We have been having a lively conversation about child support and paternity. A comment here made me want to write a complete post as a story and possible warning from my own past:

The one thing that I have always been poor at, is in romantic relationships with women. I did have a girlfriend once who told me that it was because I am a professional rescuer in every sense of the word, and she told me that because I feel the need to rescue everyone, some women will take advantage of that. I’m not sure if she is right, but a string of failed relationships does tell a compelling story.

One of those relationships was as big of a mess as you could ever imagine. This one was the one and only time that I dated a woman who had children. She had two of them, and about 3 months after we began dating, I let her move in with me because she and her two kids had nowhere else to go. I helped her out in a lot of ways. I let her use my second car, I provided her with a cell phone on my account, and treated her children properly. A few months later, we broke up, but she kept my car and my cell phone. Then she sued me for child support.

So it turns out that we had dated for a year and a couple of days before breaking up, and there is a law that says if a man acts like a father to children that aren’t his for a year or more, but that man is the only father figure these children know, the court can consider what is in the best interests of the children and can compel him to visit, spend time with, and pay child support for the children. The theory is called parentage by estoppel. Under the doctrine of parentage by estoppel, a court can order a non-biological man to pay child support if:

  • He knew he was not the biological father.
  • He held himself out or acted as if her were the child’s father
  • The child relied on that representation, forming a parental bond and treating him as a father.

This is applied in narrow circumstances, often in stepparent or long-term partner situations. A year or more of acting as the only father figure can support such a finding. Once established as a legal or equitable parent, support obligations can follow even after separation. So that’s what she tried to do.

In my case, she told the court I was abusing her, so she wanted child support and also a domestic violence injunction. That way, I wouldn’t get other parental rights like visitation or joint custody, but I would still have to pay child support. It took me a year to get out of that mess. You can read about much of the case here. I resolved to never again date a woman who had a child.

I made the mistake of telling the story to another girlfriend, and she tried doing the same thing, just minus the child support. It was also a mess. The only good thing with this one is that she was stupid and I only had to deal with it for about a month. I can certainly understand the idea of men not wanting anything to do with women. Thanks to our court system, relationships with women are something that is fraught with danger.

By Divemedic, ago

Twenty Years

The community note on this tweet is wrong.

Let me explain. Child support is based upon the sum of the incomes of both parents. There is a chart and a formula. So let’s say that the father has two jobs. One where he works for the fire department, and a second job where he works as a janitor at a theme park. The mother claims to be working 20 hours per week as a bartender making $6 per hour. The child support is calculated and they take 70% of the father’s income for the couple’s two kids, but aren’t taking any of the income from his second job. The amount being taken is still less than 60% of dad’s total income, so they are below the Federal limit.

I would guess that’s what is happening here. The $163 the man is left with is the income from his first job, and he also has income from a second job. The example I used above wasn’t bullshit- that’s what happened to me when I was paying child support. It’s what actually made me homeless. The judge didn’t care. When I told him the money they were leaving me wasn’t enough to survive on because it wasn’t even enough to pay rent, the judge said “Get a second job.” When I pointed out that I already had two jobs, his reply was, “Well, get a third job, then.”

So you do that, and guess what? Now you are making more money, meaning that your child support increases again. It was impossible to get ahead. When I had one job, I was paying $700 per month in child support. I was forced to live on $700 per month. I got a second (part time) job, the wife went back to the judge, and my support went up to $900 per month. But hey, now I had $900 per month to live on.

How was my wife making it? She didn’t have a job. She had $700 per month in child support, $400 worth of food stamps, $300 in earned income credit, $200 per month in WIC, and $300 worth of welfare, plus she was getting $750 a month babysitting two children while their parents were at work. She netted a total of $2650 a month. Yeah, she got half of whatever I was making, plus she got to keep all of her money AND collected all kinds of government assistance money.  That is the equivalent of grossing over $40,000 a year. Meanwhile, I was living below the poverty level on what was left. It is easy to see why many men become “deadbeats.” The child support system is fundamentally unfair, and there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the money actually supports the child.

They take the money right out of your paycheck before you get it. Some men work under the table or drift from job to job to avoid paying. That doesn’t really work. If you try that, they take your professional licenses away. Good luck making a living at anything other than minimum wage without a license. Still, some men work at their own business or have help working under the table. Those men get their passports and driver’s licenses taken. The debt accrues and never goes away, not even in bankruptcy. Eventually, they will toss you in prison if you aren’t paying.

I always knew that my ‘child support’ was going to support their mother, not the kids. That is why things like this always make me angry, when I think about how women use their children to ride the gravy train, while their fathers get accused of being ‘deadbeat dads’ because they can’t afford to pay.

As soon as the kids turned 16, she threw them out of the house and had them live with me. First my son, and a year later, my daughter. As soon as it was no longer profitable, they were unceremoniously thrown out.

She still plays the game to get your tax dollars. Right after the first kid was thrown out, she got a job at WalMart as a cashier, and ‘injured’ her back soon thereafter. She now collects Social Security Disability and collects survivor benefits because the man she married after me passed away. To this day as far as I know, my ex-wife has never had a job her entire adult life other than that one year working at Wal Mart. Now that all three of her kids (2 from me, 1 from the dead guy who came next) are grown and out of the house, she lives in a doublewide trailer near Gainesville with her now elderly mother. Between them, they collect more than $5500 per month in SS benefits.

It’s been twenty years since I last paid child support. It still pisses me off. America’s new class of entrepreneurs are young women having children out of wedlock, or they marry a guy, have a kid, then divorce him, and collect. It may or may not even be his kid. Most people who work for a living actually make far less money than America’s new entrepreneurs. Forget college, the average college graduate only makes $44,000 a year upon graduation after 4 or more years of college. By the age of 20, a young woman can be making more than that with almost no effort, all she has to do is get pregnant a few times.

By Divemedic, ago

Mom, he’s looking at me

The Chicago Cubs are suing a bar located near their stadium, because the bar isn’t paying the Cubs for allowing their customers to look at the team while they play baseball. The team is claiming the rooftop bar is misappropriating the team’s property rights because the bar is selling admission to the bar and allowing patrons to watch Cubs games from that vantagepoint. It looks like the courts are going to side with the team. In the meantime, the city is investigating the structural integrity of the roofs, issuing citations to those in danger of collapse. I’m sure those investigations are totally legit and were in no way sponsored or encouraged by the billionaire team owner.

Money talks, I guess.

The Ricketts family, billionaire owners of the Cubs, began purchasing the nearby rooftop properties in order to control the marketable sight lines into the stadium and by the end of the 2016 season, owned (or controlled via agreement) 11 of the 13 rooftop locations that had a view into the nearby baseball field. Wrigley Rooftop is one of the two that has thus far refused to sell.

I don’t care what the court says, if I can see it from my property, then you have no claim to force people to pay for looking at it. This will open all sorts of legal maneuvering. If my neighbor can see into my yard, can I sue him for watching me swim in my pool?

If the Cubs don’t want people in nearby tall buildings watching them play, perhaps they should build a dome. I’m sure they can get taxpayers to foot the bill. After all, teams build sports ball complexes at taxpayer expense all the time. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays are getting a Billion dollars of taxpayer money to build their new stadium, even while the local governments of the state are assuring the taxpayers that property taxes are totally needed to fund things everyone agrees are needed- things like firefighters, police, schools, and roads: “The money we take in from property taxes totally is being used for needed services and is in no way being used to fund billion dollar sports complexes. The money going to build places of business for billionaires to pay millionaires to play children’s games is totally coming from a different line item that was totally taken from taxpayers in a different way, so it doesn’t count.”

If that doesn’t work, perhaps the team could try the Scooby Do method and pay someone to dress a ghost in order to force the owners to sell.

Meanwhile, the shortstop for the Rays is being paid $182 million to play baseball. Jason Heyward is being paid $184 million to play the game by the Cubs. Meanwhile, the bar in question (Wrigley Field Rooftop Bar) is estimated to be making $1 million a year.

This is one of those times where a billionaire is doing something immoral to make more money, and the government shouldn’t be getting involved. Government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. Remember, when the legislature decides what can be bought or sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are the legislators themselves.

By Divemedic, ago

There Goes the Jury Box

Florida passed a law making it illegal for illegal immigrants to enter the state. A Federal judge in Miami issued an order barring the state from enforcing the law, citing the supremacy clause, making the claim that only the Federal government can enforce immigration laws. When the Florida Attorney General told the court that law enforcement agencies weren’t subject to the order, the judge found him in contempt.

The courts are just as partisan and biased as the rest of the nation, and are becoming illegitimate as a result. The orders you get depend on the political stance of the judge in question, and not on the Constitution. I can prove it. Ask this same judge to put out an order telling the states that due to that same supremacy clause, no state can enforce any gun laws, because there are Federal gun laws. Likewise, drug laws, laws against murder, etc.

We all know what would happen.

By Divemedic, ago

Law Is Dead

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami has ruled that Florida’s law making it illegal to enter the state as an illegal immigrant violates the Supremacy clause and is prohibiting state enforcement of the law. The states, according to her, cannot have any immigration laws because the Feds already have them.

OK. I will accept that.

That also means that the states can’t enforce any gun laws. Or drug laws. Or laws on murder, kidnapping, or any other laws. In fact, let’s just get rid of the states. Make them political subdivisions of the Federal whole.

We know that isn’t what she and the rest of the activist judiciary want. If a case making the claim that California’s gun laws violated the supremacy clause were to come before one of these judges, it would be summarily dismissed. This isn’t about the Constitution or the law. It’s about twisting things to fit your side. Note that so called sanctuary states and cities haven’t had the same treatment.

We are living in a time when the law is nothing more than a tool to be used to get what you want.

By Divemedic, ago

Due Process

There are a lot of Democrats running around and bleating about the Constitutional right to due process and illegal immigrants. Where does the right to due process appear in the Constitution? The Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an illegal immigrant who was deported to El Salvador and is being held there in prison. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release, an order affirmed by the Supreme Court, and to provide evidence of the actions it has taken to get him back.

Here is the problem with that- the Supreme Court doesn’t have the authority or the jurisdiction to order that. He is a foreign citizen who is in prison in his home country. The US government in general, and the US Supreme Court in particular, doesn’t have the authority to order the Salvadoran government to do a thing.

It doesn’t matter whether or not he is a gang member, an illegal, or a criminal in the US. The Supreme court cannot order the executive to invade another country, it just isn’t within the SCOTUS’ enumerated powers. The rest of the argument is moot.

Still, I will list the reasons why he wasn’t entitled to due process during deportation. Refer to the Fifth Amendment.

  • He isn’t being held by the US to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
  • He isn’t subject in jeopardy of life or limb twice for the same offense,
  • nor is he being compelled to be a witness against himself,
  • nor did the US government deprive him of life, liberty, or property, all they did was return him to his home country.

According to court filings, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was born in July 1995 in the neighborhood of Los Nogales in El Salvador, where he helped his family run a business making pupusas, a local cuisine.

He crossed the border illegally near McAllen, Texas, in March 2012 when he was 16 years old. From the border, Abrego Garcia made his way to Maryland to live with his brother. The Trump administration sent him back to his home country. No due process was required, because the Fifth Amendment doesn’t say he is entitled to it.

By Divemedic, ago

Law Goes Too Far

A bill in the Florida legislature is going too far, and I think that I know why. The proposed law says that a property owner that is being photographed by a drone in an area of his property where he has an expectation of privacy may use reasonable force to prevent that spying. The law is being sold as a boon for the privacy of a homeowner being photographed in their backyard pool:

If I’m at a park and I’m playing baseball with my kids, and somebody takes up a drone just to show what’s going on in the park, do I really have an expectation of privacy? But if my daughters are sunbathing in the pool behind my house, I have an expectation of privacy.

Picture that a drone has been flying over your house. You believe that it is taking pictures of your family as they sunbathe in your backyard. You know that this looks just like the drone owned by your neighbor, so you go to his house. Sure enough, he is standing on the porch, flying his drone. You happen to know that the law also says this:

2. A person who has a reasonable expectation of privacy on his or her privately owned real property may use reasonable force to prohibit a drone from conducting surveillance in violation of this paragraph, if such drone is operating under 500 feet over such property.

To stop him, you wind up and punch him square in his stupid face. That was reasonable force, right? The problem here is that there is no way for you to know if he is conducting what the law says is surveillance or if he was simply flying by your house on the way to another location.

In your case, it turns out that he wasn’t taking pictures of your house, he was taking pictures of your other neighbor’s house because that neighbor wanted to sell his house and was looking for some drone shots for the listing’s Zillow page.

This is going to create a mess. The law is vague and isn’t really intended to protect homeowners. The law requires that the person using force know the intent of the person operating the drone. Let me explain:

A person, a state agency, or a political subdivision as defined in s. 11.45 may not use a drone equipped with an imaging device to record an image of privately owned real property or of the owner, tenant, occupant, invitee, or licensee of such property with the intent to conduct surveillance on the individual or property captured in the image in violation of such person’s reasonable expectation of privacy without his or her written consent. -emphasis added

So why is this law being proposed? The real reason for this law has absolutely nothing to do with homeowners or their families at the pool. No, it has to do with the state’s powerful developers, like the developers of The Villages. That developer is engaged in a legal battle with local journalists who have been filming and selling video of the construction projects in the area. It seems that there is quite a market for this sort of thing, and people have been making money by selling drone footage. That particular developer owns their own newspaper and has been trying to make money by selling their own footage of the area, and is upset that others are trying to horn in on the action. This is purely a big company trying to use the law to create their own monopoly.

Developers in Florida have been trying to do this for over a decade. Back in 2011, there was a failed attempt to make it a felony to take pictures of a farm. It wasn’t about farms- developers will often claim that their property is a farm because property tax rates on farms are low. The developer will place a cow or two, or perhaps a couple of orange trees, on a property that they have bought in order to develop the land, and they claim it to be a farm so that they can avoid paying taxes on the land until the last minute.

They don’t want people photographing their land because the construction crews are frequently breaking all sorts of laws- most of the construction crews are illegal immigrants, there are frequent environmental and OSHA violations, along with other illegalities, and this is how they get the official protection from the government.

When my own house was under construction, I took pictures of the entire house. I have hundreds of photos of the house as it was being built. I did it to have a record of where each wire, pipe, and stud was located, just in case I needed to do repairs or renovations. The developer found out and had a fit. He told me that I couldn’t take any pictures unless there were no construction workers on site, or he would prosecute. It is a felony in Florida to be on a construction site without permission.

Officials know that they are breaking the law, but can’t ignore it unless there is no evidence staring them in the face.

A few decades ago, children of the large farmers in Florida decided that they didn’t want to be farmers, and realized that you could make a lot more money per acre by growing houses on the land and selling them to gullible retirees than you could by growing oranges or raising cattle on that land. They became developers. The Villages is one of those developers, but there is no shortage of them in this state.

Illegal immigration is the modern day equivalent of slavery. Too many people, Democrat or Republican, are making money from this. That is why so many entrenched politicians hate DJT. They are all, D and R, making millions in the graft and corruption, and can’t have him upsetting their golden goose.

A note on developers:

You can take an 80 acre farm, develop it into a housing neighborhood with about 250 houses. If you get cheap enough labor to build the houses, those homes will sell for more than $25 million in profit. Do you have any idea how long you have to operate an 80 acre farm to sell $25 million in oranges?

Do the math- an orange orchard grosses about $2500 per acre each year. It would take an 80 acre orchard more than a century to bring in that kind of cash.

By Divemedic, ago

Tickets are Racist

California has decided that “traditional enforcement methods have had a well-documented disparate impact on communities of color, and implicit or explicit racial bias in police traffic stops puts drivers of color at risk” therefore, traffic tickets are racist.

To correct this, tickets will come with fines that are adjusted based upon the driver’s income level. How this passes through the equal protection clause, I don’t know.

By Divemedic, ago

Hypocrisy

All of the pearl clutching about how Trump is evil for ignoring the judges orders opposing his executive actions is complete partisan bull hockey. Here is what AOC said two years ago when a Federal Judge in Texas suspended the approval of abortion pills:

When it comes to executive actions, I don’t believe that any low level judge has the power to overrule the President. Any order to stay or overrule a President’s executive actions can, in my opinion, only come from SCOTUS.

Why? SCOTUS is the only court that is explicitly created by the Constitution. Lower courts are established by Congress. A judge in a court created by Congress shouldn’t be able to overrule the chief executive.

By Divemedic, ago