Everybody’s a hypocrite in some way or another, so I don’t get too excited about commonplace displays of moral inconsistency. I figure it’s better to have high ideals that you don’t always live up to than to have none at all. But there are cases where hypocrisy crosses a line and becomes obscene and therefore worthy of mention. The child support story out of Washington DC presently circulating the same blogs that bashed Trent Lott recently is such a case. It appears to have started with Andrew Sullivan:
WHY D.C. IS STILL HELL: What do you do with a man who has successfully evaded paying child support to kids from two different relationships? Make him head of D.C.’s child-support enforcement agency! Colbert King has the details. The kicker: D.C. collected payments in 12 percent of its child support cases in 2000. The national average is 42 percent.
and it’s been echoed by Glenn Reynolds and Don McArthur (a fan of the racist Gene Expression site).
These folks are all upset about the story of Roscoe Grant, Deputy Director of the DC child support collection agency written by dim bulb Colby King:
For years, the mother and aunt of Octavious Williams tried to get Grant to recognize and then do right by his son, Octavious. They even went to city agencies for help but got nowhere. It wasn’t until the family filed a paternity suit against him that Grant paid attention. And even then, it took a paternity test that came back positive to make Grant own up to the claim that he was Octavious Williams’s old man. Yet it fell to a magistrate judge to force Grant to do the right thing. Last July, the judge ordered him to pay $968 every two weeks to Octavious.
That’s right, our moral leaders are upset that Roscoe Grant didn’t just automatically start giving $2000 a month to a woman who claimed he was the father of her baby without a DNA test. What gall.
King also complains that the DC office of child support only collects money in 12% of cases, compared to a national average of 42%; this statistic caught the eye of the HIV-positive, bareback riding Mr. Sullivan, exemplar of virtue in all things sexual.
So let’s understand how government child support agencies work, and whether there’s any fire underneath all this smoke. Most of the people who collect child support have court orders against the father that were obtained as part of a divorce. Each state has a formula that dictates a percentage of income that has to be paid, and as soon as custody and paternity are decided, so is support. You don’t even have to have a judge issue these orders, they’re handed out by administrative judges, pro-temp judges, and by the child support collection agency itself.
Once an order has been entered, most people pay their obligation directly to the custodial parent, usually the mother, without much fanfare. The court has the power to order the payer’s employer to garnish wages, and this is a normal part of the procedure. Going through this process of obtaining the order and ensuring compliance doesn’t brand the recipient as a gold-digger or the payer as a deadbeat: this is simply how the system works. This money doesn’t show up in the official collection rates, as it never touches the government’s hands.
Now the process does get somewhat more complicated in the case where the child is born out of wedlock and the mother is on welfare, a very common scenario in Washington DC and in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland. In order to collect welfare, the mother has to identify the father and sign her child support rights over to the state. The state then obtains a judgment of paternity and a child support order, and begins collecting money. It keeps the money it collects if it’s less than mom’s welfare; if it’s more, it kicks her off welfare and gives her the child support. Hence there is a certain symmetry between child support and welfare.
In many cases – roughly half – the man identified as the father by the welfare mother either can’t be found or is not, in fact, the father of the welfare child. Hence, it’s wise for any man presented with a child support order for an out-of-wedlock child to seek a paternity test. You wouldn’t want to have a legal obligation to pay $2000 a month for 20 years if you didn’t have to, would you? Of course you wouldn’t.
This is exactly what Roscoe Grant did, and it doesn’t make him a deadbeat, it makes him prudent. King makes it sound like the mother of Octavious [sic] Grant had to shell out money from her own pocket for a paternity suit, but these proceedings are actually paid for by the state, with the father picking up the tab for the DNA test if its positive. It’s also common for fathers to pay welfare mothers under-the-table while all these proceedings are pending, and we don’t know that Grant didn’t do this himself.
Now some men will sign a voluntary declaration of paternity without the DNA test, so perhaps King is angry with Grant for not doing this. I would take issue with him on that point as well, because the alleged father really has no way of knowing if he’s the real father without a DNA test, and if he signs up for a child that’s not his, he’s just cheated the real father and a the child out of the relationship they deserve.
The collection rate statistic that Sullivan’s so impressed with is also not what it appears to be. States play all sorts of games with this figure, mainly by keeping people in the state collection system after they have no need for it. To understand this, take this example: State A obtains child support orders, begins collecting, and then allows the woman to exit the state system and collect directly from the man’s employer. She gets all her money every month without the delay of up to a month while the state holds the money, collects interest, and cuts her a check. State B, however, requires the mother to remain in the state program as long as she’s collecting support. They all get federal incentive dollars for the money they collect, and this approach maximizes them, even though it inconveniences mother and child.
State A will have a low rate of collection, since most of the cases in its system are pending paternity tests, while state B will have a high rate of collection owing to the large number of cases in its system where paternity has been established. DC apparently follows the A model, more friendly to mothers, than the B model, more friendly to the government.
Collection rates also reflect the underlying ability to pay of the local population. In California, half of unpaid child support is owed by people too poor to file an income tax return; given the high rates of unemployment among black men in DC, that figure is probably around 80%.
But the larger issue is the $2000 a month child support order that King tries to diminish by dividing it into a bi-weekly sum when all orders are monthly. Dad’s contribution is supposed to be matched by a comparable one from mom — this is what all that “equality” stuff is about — so that young Octavious should be supported to the tune of $4000 a month. Will everybody who thinks it takes $4000 a month — or even $2000 — to raise an infant please get in touch with me? I’d like to sell you this fine bridge I’ve got over the Frisco Bay.
But let’s suppose that I’m all wet and this Roscoe Grant character is a scumbag would should be fired from his job in the DC government; what happens to young Octavious and his momma when Roscoe no longer has a paycheck? That’s what I mean about the hypocrisy.
Here’s another news story that provides additional details:
Family Says No Financial Aid Has Been Offered, Despite Positive DNA Test
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 12, 2002; Page B01
The second highest-ranking official in the District’s child support agency is the subject of a paternity suit filed by a family that says he has not agreed to voluntarily support his son, despite a genetic test that confirmed he is the father.
The test concluded in March that it is virtually certain that Roscoe Grant Jr., the deputy director of the Child Support Enforcement Division, is the father of Octavious Williams, a 20-year-old college student. The case is now headed for the family division of D.C. Superior Court.
This week, Grant’s own agency petitioned the court to establish a child support order in the case. Grant could be compelled to make back payments dating to his son’s birth if it can be proved that he had the ability to pay during the past 20 years.
In an earlier paternity case, court records in Prince George’s County show that Grant agreed in 1999 to pay $300 a month to support a daughter, now 4. A test in that case, brought by the girl’s mother, found it was virtually certain that he was the father.
Grant, 49, a 30-year city employee who makes $97,890 a year, declined several requests for comment. His lawyer, Lolita James Martin, said in a statement that he “became aware of the possibility he may be the biological father of a 20-year-old man” in March and that he voluntarily submitted to paternity testing.
Martin added that although the test came back positive, “there remain outstanding issues of paternity and support that will be adjudicated” in court in July. “Mr. Grant has two other children for whom he has provided emotional and financial support and he fully intends to offer the same support to the young man in question if he is in fact the father,” she wrote.
Corporation Counsel Robert R. Rigsby, whose office includes the Child Support Enforcement Division, said he assigned a lawyer from outside the division to handle the current case involving Grant to avoid the possibility of a conflict of interest. “There seems to be an appearance problem if he’s helping to supervise the child support division,” Rigsby said.
Tony Bullock, a spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), said Grant has not broken any law. “Mr. Grant at this point is not in violation of any court order, he’s not delinquent on any payment, and he has not as yet entered into a payment plan,” he said.
Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity, a government ethics watchdog group, said Grant has a higher responsibility to acknowledge and perform his parental responsibilities, regardless of what the law requires. Allison questioned whether Grant can effectively enforce the city’s child support laws when he has twice been taken to court to be declared the father of children who were not receiving support.
In the District, if paternity is not established at birth, a child’s mother and father can sign and submit a voluntary paternity form to the D.C. Department of Health. And many parents reach informal support arrangements without using the federal-state child support program and local courts.
Williams and his family said they have tried repeatedly over the years to get Grant to recognize his son and provide informal support. But Grant’s father, Roscoe Grant Sr., said his son told him that he had a grandson only about two weeks ago. The elder grant, 79, said his son had been told years earlier that the child was not his.
“Then later, it comes up now that he is the father,” said Grant, a widower who lives in Portsmouth, Va., and raised six children. “If he’d have known, he’d have supported him, I’m sure. . . . I’m sure he’ll do what’s responsible.”
Payments were collected in 12 percent of the District’s 127,890 child support cases in 2000, compared with the national average of 42 percent. Low-income families often have a hard time establishing paternity and seeking and enforcing child support orders. Elaine Sorensen, an economist at the Urban Institute, said the three main reasons fathers do not pay child support — with or without court orders — is that they cannot afford to pay, do not have access to their children or have remarried and had additional children.
Williams is the third of five children, all born to different fathers, said his older sister and legal guardian, Michelle J. Thomas, who opened the child support case on his behalf. An older brother is in a federal prison for selling drugs, a younger brother was given up for adoption, and the youngest brother lives with an uncle.
Their mother, Veronica T. Williams, 46, said she has had a long-standing cocaine addiction and has not regularly worked since 1987. She said she met Grant when she was a city parking attendant and he was a leader in one of the city’s largest municipal unions. They never married.
Octavious Williams’s mother and sister said Grant helped out occasionally until Williams was 5 or 6 years old. After that, contact with him largely ceased.
Single mothers on public assistance have long been required to give welfare case workers the names of their children’s fathers, from whom the government tries to recoup welfare expenses. Veronica Williams said that she has provided Grant’s name in the past to city employees but that they did not follow up. The city’s child support director, Joseph G. Perry, said he is trying to improve child support collections for welfare recipients.
Thomas, 26, has been her brother’s guardian since 1996. She said she applied for child support for him in February after learning that she did not need a private attorney to do so and after Grant refused her request for informal help for her brother’s college costs. “I would have never applied if Octavious was not getting ready to go to school,” she said. “It doesn’t need to be thousands of dollars. Anything would help.”
Craig C. Hughes, the manager at the city-run Rosedale Recreation Center, coached Williams and has known the family about 12 years. “I never had any relationship with his father, or even knew his father existed,” Hughes said.
Hughes recalled giving the youth money for food, clothing, shoes and transportation. Williams occasionally stayed over, including once when Hughes witnessed Williams’s family get evicted.
Thomas said she took Williams to live with an aunt in suburban Atlanta in 1996 to avoid the lure of the streets. After returning to Washington, Williams was a running back for Dunbar Senior High School as the team won three consecutive championships.
Craig Jefferies, Dunbar’s head football coach, said Williams was “looking and craving for attention and structure.” He credited Thomas for providing most of Williams’s family support, saying she went to his away games and scraped together money to get him a tuxedo for the school prom. Jefferies also recalled subsidizing Williams’s attendance at summer football camps and giving him rides home when he lacked bus fare.
Last year, shortly before Williams was to graduate, he was charged with carrying a pistol without a license. He spent two months in the D.C. jail and received probation from a judge who urged him to attend college, the family said.
He is now studying business administration at Allen University in Columbia, S.C., and is back home for the summer. Above his athletic trophies is a diploma from Dunbar with his full name: Octavious Roscoe Williams.
“To this day, I don’t really know him, I just know of him,” Williams said of Grant. “It’s been a rough ride for me, very rough, growing up in a household that’s very broken.”
Grant fathered a daughter in 1997, according to records in Prince George’s Circuit Court. Her mother sued in 1998 to have him established as the father, and both sides agreed on payments of $300 a month. The mother declined to comment.
Told about the older case, Octavious Williams said: “I was surprised that I’ve got another sister out there. I feel as though I’m his child too, and I need help from him too.”
Hired in 1972 at $3.17 an hour, Grant worked as a laborer, sheet-metal worker and roofer and rose to the presidency of the local that represents hundreds of public works employees. After managing speaking engagements for Sharon Pratt, who was then mayor, Grant joined the child support office in 1995. He was promoted in July 2000 and made deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in a division with 180 employees and a $20.3 million budget.
Grant also chairs Advisory Neighborhood Commission 7B, which represents a pocket of middle-class and upscale neighborhoods in Southeast Washington.
The result of the genetic test came back while Williams was still at school. Since then, he said, his father has given him $100 and vowed to find him a summer job with the city, but made no promise of regular financial assistance. “I just started meeting him,” the son said. “He missed me growing up.”
Metro researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
? 2002 The Washington Post Company
Add to this the fact that in at least several cases, men who have proved by DNA test that the men are NOT the father of a child have been forced by the courts to continue paying child support, because those men at one time agreed to pay child support. Those men at the time had believed the lying mother when told that the father of the child was the man in question.
Let’s face it, the very first thing a man ought to do when told by a woman that she is pregnant with that man’s son is to order a DNA test.
In every case. And given the treachery being coached into women today by feminism, that would include a man’s wife.
Get that DNA test. Always.
You may or may not know any deadbeat ‘dads’. I know [of or personally] three. There was no question of paternity. They are deadbeat bastards……………
w h hall jr
Married men are the legal fathers of all children conceived during the marriage, so DNA testing in these cases is irrelvent, Paul.
Mr. Hall, your attitude is like that of the Klan lynch mobs who said it didn’t matter which negro they hanged, since they’re all guilty. I don’t agree.
So your argument then is that DC isn’t hell because this is the way they run things?
I’m trying to see the good part of the story.
Help! I think I just got spattered with a broad brush!
That’s right, our moral leaders are upset that Roscoe Grant didn’t just automatically start giving $2000 a month to a woman who claimed he was the father of her baby without a DNA test. What gall.
It isn’t that Grant had to take a blood test first — that’s a prudent move. It’s that the court had to force him to comply. Seems more likely that he was well aware the paternity could be his.
…the HIV-positive, bareback riding Mr. Sullivan…
One can argue about the medical dangers of this behavior — and I don’t know enough to comment on that — but at least he’s not fathering children and shirking responsibility. Rather, it’s just an ad hominem attack.
“For years, the mother and aunt of Octavious Williams tried to get Grant to recognize and then do right by his son, Octavious. They even went to city agencies for help but got nowhere. It wasn’t until the family filed a paternity suit against him that Grant paid attention.”
Nice try BUT the first two words sum up Mr. Grants position quite nicely. Since he avoided his responsibility for “years” and then had to be brought to court just to have the test makes it clear what his thoughts were about paying support for his child. Of course the fact that this is the second time this has happened with Mr. Grant also speaks volumes about his character.
I wonder which city agency was not helpful in pursuing this matter and if Mr. Grant was a factor in it’s reluctance??
TO: All Wet
RE: What Happens Indeed
“But let’s suppose that I’m all wet and this Roscoe Grant character is a scumbag would should be fired from his job in the DC government; what happens to young Octavious and his momma when Roscoe no longer has a paycheck? That’s what I mean about the hypocrisy.– Richard Bennet
What happens, SFB, is that Roscoe goes back to court and pleads that he has had a significant change of income and goes through the proper drill of having his payments adjusted accordingly. [Note: This is the voice of experince(s) speaking.]
Personally, children are a lever used by divorced women to get money out of men. If you doubt that, let me introduce you to a former Mrs. Pelto, a.k.a. Sharon. Supposedly she’s in the market again. After raping her second the same way she raped me.
Another observation…
…I notice a lot of people who are complaining about the way Washington DC’s government ‘works’ are ‘white’.
I’m beginning to wonder why that is so.
RE: Married Men
“Married men are the legal fathers of all children conceived during the marriage, so DNA testing in these cases is irrelvent, Paul.” — Richard Bennet
Even if they are not the DNA contributors.
Now…
…there’s something to rage about. But I don’t see you ‘raging’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Women: The unfair sex. — The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce]
… HIV-positive, bareback riding Mr. Sullivan, exemplar of virtue in all things sexual.
What do Andrew Sullivan’s sexual habits have to do with this issue? The comment is complete ad hominem. (Secondarily, what is the supposed problem with this behavior when practiced between consenting adults?)
For years, the mother and aunt of Octavious Williams tried to get Grant to recognize and then do right by his son, Octavious. They even went to city agencies for help but got nowhere. It wasn’t until the family filed a paternity suit against him that Grant paid attention.
This is dubious. If you want child support, there is one and only one agency to see, the Dept. of Child Support. Everyone in the welfare community acutely know this, so the only reason the woman could have gone to other city agencies was to smear Mr. Grant by passing gossip about him.
If it took the woman years to do this, she obviously wasn’t hurting for money or on welfare.
…there’s something to rage about. But I don’t see you ‘raging’
Then you aren’t paying attention. I sponsored the bill in the California Legislature would have relieved men misidentified as fathers from the child support obligation (to someone else’s children).
The governor vetoed it, so I’ll pass it again. Stay tuned.
What do Andrew Sullivan’s sexual habits have to do with this issue? The comment is complete ad hominem. (Secondarily, what is the supposed problem with this behavior when practiced between consenting adults?)
If you’re going to condemn others for their sexual practices, as Sullivan does with Grant, your own had better be pure.
Since there is more than one strain of the HIV, bareback sex is inappropriate for HIV-positives, even with other HIV-positives.
… it’s that the court had to force him to comply…
That’s what courts are for, dude.
Since there is more than one strain of the HIV, bareback sex is inappropriate for HIV-positives, even with other HIV-positives.
It’s nice of you to be concerned with the health of Mr. Sullivan and his partners, but the appropriateness of a behavior is rightly determined by those whom it affects.
It’s got nothing to do with sex – it’s about evading responsibility. In this light, Andrew Sullivan’s personal life is irrelevant; by your ad hominem attack, you undermine your own arguments.
According to this news story, Octavious is 20 years old. His mom, a cocaine addict, and his older sister, who appears to be the substitute mother, says Grant gave the mom money for Octavious till he was 5 or 6 years old, then stopped. (He claims he didn’t know the kid was his until last March when the test was done.) The mom gave welfare his name, she says, but they didn’t follow up. His older sister filed the paternity suit to get money for Octavious’ college expenses.
Grant is paying only $300 a month (salary of $100,000 a year) for his 5- year-old illegitimate daughter; I suspect the $2,000 a month ordered for Octavious includes back child support.
I have sympathy for some fathers who don’t pay child support, but not this guy. He obviously thought the kid might be his, even if he wasn’t sure. He could have volunteered for a test to decide the issue when the boy was a baby. But nobody made him, so he ducked out. And now he’s making the kid, who grew up destitute, wait more than six months to get any help.
The mother is a complete jerk too, but she’s not on the city payroll.
In California it’s very common for an unwed mother wanting welfare to pick a man with a good income as the named father, even if she’s never met him. She provides a false address for him (often her own). He never receives anything from the court, so he doesn’t show up for the paternity hearing and looses by default. A few months or years later he’s notified that he owes this woman 20% of his gross income – and there’s no appeal, no way to overturn it even if he does prove beyond doubt that he isn’t the father.
The mom’s a coke addict? Then that is a different story. Probably the dad noticed that little or none of the money he was giving at first was actually being used for the child’s benefit – more likely it it went up her nose or got smoked in a crack pipe. And so he stopped making wasted payments.
But the law does not care if the “child support” is really supporting a child. The law is a blunt instrument.
Started with Sullivan? It started with a little neighborhood daily called the Washington Post. Why didn’t you attack Colbert King with such spite? It’s his column Sullivan linked with a brief comment. “Dim bulb” is the best you could do? What’s the matter, don’t know any good slander about King’s sex life?
But you only write this crap because “there are cases where hypocrisy crosses a line and becomes obscene and therefore worthy of mention.” And the “obscene” hypocrisy is that Andrew Sullivan, an OPENLY HIV+ man who has in the past sought sex with other HIV+ men, linked to a story about a government official whose private affairs appear to clash mightily with his public duties? There is obscenity on display in your post, but not it’s not in the direction your index finger points. Three fingers on your hand are pointing in the right direction though.
The navel of the blogosphere, Mr Bennett? Go a little lower on the body, male and female , front and rear. Your retread slurs against Sullivan are scabby enough but to pretend that real concern lies behind your dishonest shorthand for Sullivans’s circumstances is a breakthrough in scumbucket polemics. You should add it to your resume.
The mom stopped working in 1987, and the dad stopped paying her about 1988 or 1989, according to the other story in the Washington Post.
I wouldn’t pay an unemployed crackhead either, but that’s just me.
Some time after that, an aunt took custody, which means that mom has an obligation to pay child support as well. I don’t see anybody complaining about her.
With the interest charged on unpaid child support, and the fact that money paid without a court order is not considered child support under the law, Mr. Williams will be paying the mom at least until the boy is 35 or 40; is this “child support” or “mom support”?
Colbert King is a regular fill-in guest on Inside Washington, when one of the regulars can’t make it. You only have to watch him once to know he’s not the brightest light on the tree.
This whole discussion points to how messed up things have become as a result of the changes in our sexual morality over the past thirty years. We are operating out of conflicting beliefs & understandings about what the proper responsibilities of men & women are when they have children.
I’m a traditionalist in this area, & have for many years thought that men should be held strictly responsible for supporting their children, out of wedlock or otherwise. But the law in so many areas – abortion is the most obvious – has reached the conclusion that women are autonomous in all their sexual decisions, regardless of the interest of the man, even if they are married (to each other) that I have strong doubts whether the traditionalist view makes any sense any more. It surely does not make sense to a lot of women when it comes to regulating their sexual behavior – but of course, when it comes to paying over some money, they are all traditionalists!
So I’ve about reached my own conclusion that the law should be radically simplified – if a woman has a child by a man to whom she is not married, it is her problem, and not the man’s responsibility.
The objection will be raised that this hurts the kids, but that might not prove true. In the first place, it looks like the kids are being hurt anyway. And in the second place, maybe women will get their heads screwed (pardon the pun) on straight and stop doling out free sex to any guy that comes along.
I don’t think that it is the responsibility of the government to take care of the results of all these sexually irresponsible people. And the outcome of welfare reform seems to me to suggest very strongly that if we stop paying women to support out of wedlock children, they will stop having them.
I am still looking for the good part of this story. Sometimes divorce and paternity cases are troublesome. Sometimes women will lie to injure a man or go after his income. However, in this case, the woman was correct.
Why did Grant pay for the first few years – because he didn’t think the child was his?
Do you not see a problem with a man with two illegitimate children he does not care for being in charge of the Department of Child Support? Sure, he has experience, but that means you should make a lifer the warden, too.
Jeez, might as well pick a convicted crack smoker for the mayor. Oh, wait…
Why did Grant pay for the first few years – because he didn’t think the child was his?
Maybe he was just trying to be a nice guy. I don’t think, however, that this good beahvior should be held against him, because there are lot of men paying money for children they didn’t father – probably 20% of child support orders have misidentified the father.
As to whether the father of an out-of-wedlock child should be allowed to work in the child support agency, I have to say that it’s been my experience as a child support agency overseer that a large number of child support recipients are employed by these agencies, and that’s not held against them. So sauce for the goose, etc.
It’s interesting to note that the bloggers who’re all over this story, with the exception of Bareback Sullivan, all link to the racist Gene Expression web site, and that the man in question happens to be black.
Take that for what it’s worth.
1. If Grant thought the money he was providing was going for coke (probably true), he should have taken custody of his son, not abandoned him with no money and no contact.
2. The child support will be paid — if Grant ever does pay — to Octavious, since he’s now over 18. It will not go to his mother.
3. It’s not true that a welfare mother can stick some guy with child support obligations by giving a phony address. A husband is presumed to be the father of his wife’s child unless he proves otherwise. There’s no such presumption if the couple isn’t married and the man hasn’t voluntarily declared himself to be the father. A paternity test is required before support can be ordered.
Making a false statement to collect welfare — such as lying about the father’s identity — is a federal crime. As a reporter, I sat in on welfare intake interviews. Pregnant women are warned that their statement will be investigated, and that it’s a crime to lie about anything. Almost always, of course, they’re claiming not to know who the father is because they don’t want the boyfriend to have to pay.
Joanne, you’re dead wrong on all points.
1. You don’t know what happened with respect to custody and contact, and neither do I. But it is not the case that some guy can just “take custody” of a child without a court order. It’s called kidnapping.
2. Child support is never, ever owed to the child directly – it’s a debt that as a matter of law belongs to the custodial parent, regardless of the child’s age. This is such a bizarre claim that it makes me shudder that a former journalist who’s covered this issue could make it.
3. A husband is ALWAYS presumed to be the father of the issue of the marriage, EVEN if he can prove he’s not the biological father. This has been the case for hundreds of years. It is also NOT the case that a paternity test is required in order to establish a child support order: a voluntary declaration on the man’s part will do, as will a declaration by the woman that isn’t challenged in 90 days. I know you covered a bill on this subject matter at the Merc, because I sent you the info on it.
It’s also the case that false statements about paternity are almost never followed-up by prosecution. If you can find even one case in California where this has happened, I’ll eat Rushton’s research on head size and IQ.
I came across the original Washington Post article a day or two ago and happen to agree with most of your points, Richard. I don’t see how bringing up Andrew Sullivan’s HIV status or sexual preferences has any bearing whatsoever to this story — paragon of sexual virtue or not, he’s not the one in charge of any programs.
Don’t think I’ll be back for a second look at your site. Oh well.
Maybe he was just trying to be a nice guy. I don’t think, however, that this good beahvior should be held against him, because there are lot of men paying money for children they didn’t father – probably 20% of child support orders have misidentified the father.
Please. You are just being silly now. He had sex with the woman, so he had knew he was a candidate for fatherhood.
The child support orders have nothing to do with anything, since he was doing it voluntarily.
And if it was good behavior to pay, wasn’t it bad behavior not to pay?
And the bottom line is, he turns out to be the father.
I don’t see where any of it makes him out to be a good guy.
DC gets the government it deserves, I guess.
I don’t think referring to Gene Expression as racist is fair. To me the term means “unrationally prejudicial”. Seems like the posters are uniformly logical and rational, and if the conclusions are politically incorrect, well, so be it.
Yeah Richard, bad form. Gene Expression has every ethnicity you can think of posting over there, including people who are south asian, east asian, white, and black. You can disagree with them, but it hardly makes sense to accuse a blog with every race present to be racist. Racist means “hatred”.
Gene Expressions favorite writer on race is Rushton. Guess who else cites Rushton favorably for his views on race? Just about every racist or eugenics organization you can think of, that’s who. For example you can read Rushton postulating on “Race and crime” on David Duke’s website.
http://www.duke.org/library/race/rushton-crime.html
Rushton’s views on race are also considered favorably by the Aryan Nations:
http://www.twelvearyannations.com/thefacts/fact12.html
Rushton’s funding comes from the Pioneer Fund, a neo-fascist eugenics-supporting organization.
Given that kind of intellectual company I’d have to conclude that, yeah, they are indeed racist.
Here’s a comment that was directed at me by one of the regulars at Gene Expression:
The reason why the black illegitimacy rate has worsened faster than that for whites or orientals since WW2 is easy. The same environmental or cultural shift in the USA- loosely, towards “permissiveness”- has impacted more on the tribalistic phenotype of the Negroid (whose living conditions have converged with those of other Americans since desgregation) than on the more civilised phenotypes of Caucasoids and Mongoloids.
Is this racist, or not? We report, you decide.
Richard. The black illegitimacy rate has always been higher than the white rate in the USA. In 1900, in 1950, in 2002.
The rates for all races has been rising, but the black rate went from, in Moyniham’s famous report (in 1964), from 25% to the nearly 70% today. The white rate in 1964 was much smaller, and, as you know, is still smaller today (about 20-30%, in my recollection).
No, blacks aren’t genetically all that different than they were 50 years ago. But the differences in the illegitimate birth rate continues.
You can argue whether that’s genetic or social in origin, but it’s dishonest to make the claim you did, and you know it.
David
The invective some of you direct at members of Gene Expression amounts to nothing more than ideological chicanery. Gene Expression is open to all points of view in regards to Human Biodiversity. My advice to anyone interested is to go see for your self what Gene Expression is all about. Check out the archives, read the posts, and the responses for a few weeks and come to your own conclusions. Only someone deeply committed to a particular ideology would be so closed minded as to characterize individuals who are genuinely interested in individual and group differences out of curiosity as racists. You seem to like to bifurcate the world into two camps. Those who are open to possible population differences are labelled as racists and those who are closed minded to the possibility of ethnic differences as non-racist.
I cannot for the life of me, think of anything more obscurantist than to oppose ideas that may interfere with one?s beliefs. As someone who has always supported the goal of one-man one vote and equality before the law in South Africa, and is opposed to discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender, I am rather perturbed by your ignominious accusations of racism. I also happen to firmly believe in the way in which science operates. And right now, the weight of the evidence is clearly leaning heavily towards ethnic/population differences in a wide variety of abilities, traits, and aptitudes. The only way I would shift my views from the views I currently hold (and I am assuming most if not all of the members of Gene Expression would do the same), would be if there were a shift in scientific evidence supporting the absence of ethnic/population differences. If you don?t like Rushton?s or Jensen?s work because you feel it is tainted by their prejudicial, racist views, then conduct your own studies and have them peer reviewed in a respected journal. Perhaps you are afraid what you may find.
You’re taking one person’s views (W.J. Phillip) as representative of the views of the entire blog. W.J. has had disagreements with other members of Gene Expression in the past, mostly in regards to religion. When I read what W.J. had posted, in regards to the black illegitimacy rate, I knew that it would be taken by Richard Bennett as an example of Gene Expression?s ecumenical view on the matter. Why is it inconceivable that those opinions stated by W.J. are just W.J.’s opinions? I don?t necessarily agree with W.J.?s view 100%, especially the way he characterizes it as a fact, but it is a plausible explanation nonetheless.
Julia Mittros: You are setting up a Straw Man when you say, ?Gene Expressions favorite writer on race is Rushton?. In fact, he is not their favourite writer on race. I have read a few posters comment on some of Ruston?s theories that are positive and I have read comments that view some of Rushton?s theories in a negative light. And just because white supremacist groups happen to quote Rushton?s work because it is inline with their ideology doesn?t discredit Rushton. Marxists are firm believers in egalitarianism, but it would be wrong of me to assume that everyone who is egalitarian is a Marxist. Most Canadians are in favour of public health care (a socialist program), but they are, for the most part, neither socialists nor Marxists.
If there were a favourite writer among Gene Expressionists, Jensen would seem to be your man, at least in terms of writing on intelligence. If Jensen is such a racist, why is he always touting the benefits of miscegenation? Hybrid vigour, also known as heterosis is, in Jensen?s view (pages 196, 327; Jensen, ?The g Factor?) a eugenic outcome of race mixing.
remember when people were getting on LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS for the comments that were being posted on its message boards by some persons? smearing that blog because of the message boards was asinine in my opinion. what next? attack blogs where one might sumrise that people might have salacious thoughts? perhaps readers of ANDREW SULLIVAN fantasize about bareback sex-eeewwww….
quote me all you want-i’m sure you can find all you want to ‘incriminate’ me richard-but don’t EVER expect me to go around banning people if they are stating their opinions and avoiding personal attacks. (i have a pretty high tolerance of attacks directed at me-as you might have noticed since you told me take my penis out of [my brain] on my own blog-i tend to ban people only when they attack others on the message board).
I’m less permissive than you, Razib. Because you made a libelous statement in your last comment (which I’ve corrected), you’re banned from posting comments on this site.
Free Speech doesn’t mean I have to provide you with the means to break the law.
Always easier to prevent someone from talking than to address the “libel,” eh, Dick?
David
LOL! What? You’ve banned Razib after one comment while you’ve put half a dozen on his blog???
“Have you no shred of decency, sir? Have you no shame?”
Of course, you know where _that_ quote is from!
(I have responded to your weak objections to my post about Ashkenazi Jews and HBC on Razib’s blog, and I look forward to reading your responses, which I am sure Razib will allow.)
The the more recent thread, Is Gene Expression racist? for updates on the race topic.
Razib, “intelligence” is contextural. For example, in the context of a literate environment, a person who uses the word “effect” when the proper term is “affect” is subnormal. Speaking as a person who has in his life earned all the requisite labels – scholarships, SAT scores, the works – in the top 99% from start to finish – let me tell you that life has taught me that the smartest person around is usually the one who works the hardest.
That’s why I find all this pseudoscientific discussion of “race” & “intelligence” to be so much bunk. It always hides some other agenda. It is, I suppose, a discussion that interests those without much experience of life.