No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority. - Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Most of the individuals in the crisis of divorce are up to their eyebrows in lawyer fees and very often can't afford the membership fee. We send the bulletin to anyone who asks us to and take an IOU for when things smooth out. We let people join and work off their membership in volunteer time. We are also sending the Bulletin to Judges in Wayne and Oakland counties, and upon member request, to Judges and FOC personnel throughout Michigan, the United States, and organizations in France and England.
Our output is exceeding our intake, cash wise.
I don't nag. It never does any good, otherwise I would. You would be hard pressed to read in past issues of the Chapter news bulletin where I even ask you to join. But now we need your membership. Our budget needle is bouncing off empty.
The Monthly Membership meetings are getting very interesting, but two things that came up during the most recent meeting are unique.
The first is a new organization called Citizens for Judicial Accountability (CJA), P.O. Box 71925, Madison Heights, MI 48071-0925. They say:
CJA works to have the courts function in fairness, to follow the Constitution, and to eliminate the corruption within the judicial system. We believe we can best accomplish this by uniting and working together to publicly expose the wrongdoing by the courts against the people they are supposed to serve.
So far, CJA has twice picketed the place of worship of one Oakland County judge who has been put on the Oakland County Family Law Court. And they held a candlelight vigil in front of the Oakland County Courthouse. These are non custodial mothers and fathers. As we have often said, the system is harsh on all non custodial parents.
| The more ludicrous laws become, the greater the activist response provoked. |
The other thing that came up is another organization called Parents for Children, 33205 Vista Way, Fraser, MI 48026. PFC has spread to Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties in less than three months. They ask:
Are your children not receiving child support? Has custody been automatically taken away from you? Is your judge, lawyer, guardian ad litem, psychologist or friend of the court personnel incompetent and badly trained?Parents have a Constitutional right to the care, custody and maintenance of their children as defined by the Supreme Court of the United States in Stanley vs. State of Illinois and Santosky vs. Kramer. ... If you are tired of lawyers stealing your property, alienating your children, harassing and intimidating you, fighting with the other lawyer, and using your money and community property to do so, contact PFC.
What impressed me was PFC was initially founded to impact on Macomb county as Macomb has the worst collective reputation of the three counties. (The September 14, 1997, Free Press-News reported that the Macomb county judges have asked that their current chief judge not be re-appointed.) Within just a few months PFC has established itself in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties and is ready to go state wide. Merely words? On September 18, 1997, PFC picketed the Grand Reception of the State Bar Association conference at the Museum of African American History in Detroit. It seems PFC isn't reluctant to get to the heart of things.
How are these two organizations so unique? Their rate of growth and degree of activism are high.
Recently, a newspaper reported asked for the Chapter position concerning a new bill that makes it a felony to conceal income when determining child support. The laws that are being passed are so gender politicized that it has become ludicrous. I told her that concealing income should be made punishable by life imprisonment or death. The yin and yang of it is that the more ludicrous laws become, the greater the activist response provoked.
It is starting to feel as if a seismic backlash is in the making. From that perspective, the more oppressive the laws become, the better.
What should be readily apparent to vote seekers is that given the divorce rate, you can't walk ten feet without encountering a non custodial parent, or the second spouse, parents, siblings, relations, friends, etc. of someone who has been through the mill. Pit all their votes against the flagging gasps of gender movements and it is just a matter of time. One of the main principles from which we draw our strength is very simple: children need two parents is right, and anyone who would oppose that idea is wrong (and probably hasn't read Joseph Addison).
It will be interesting to see if the above law is enforced, especially when we are not aware of even one case in Michigan where false allegations of child abuse or domestic violence (a standard custody battle tactic) has ever been prosecuted. Perjury in divorce and custody cases is judicially acceptable if not expected.
An idea from one of our members: FOC needs to do to parenting time what they have done for child financial support. What he had in mind is that all parenting time orders be computerized and accessible, so when a non custodial parent arrives at an empty house to pick up their child, a call to the police will result in a squad car that would instantly access the court order and print out a complaint that would feed back to FOC. The denied parenting time parent would then call the FOC computerized telephone system and with the punch of a button have a show cause hearing scheduled, just like for child financial support.
Interesting, no?
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