Thanks to CNN for its interviews with former and present debt collectors, giving us a clue to what makes these people tick.
Check out the story of these people.
Like, Mel Harsh, a debt collector for 20 years, with only one week left with an auto finance company.
“I was absolutely ruthless when I first started out as a debt collector. I had a black heart.
“If someone told me they only had $150 to their name this month and needed to feed their entire family of five, I would say, “I don’t care, this is your fault and you owe the money. Pay it.” I would even use blind threats like, “I know where you work” to intimidate them.”
I was a collector for 2 years. Did medical and utility collecting. While I did follow the rules of the Fair Debt and Collection Act, it was the “barracks lawyers” who dole out the advise to those who owe money, on how to scam the “man”.
What amazed me the most, was the blanant ignorance and disregard of the debt incurred, and the legal obligation to pay said debts.
FTR: I was firm but fair, and always made my quota. I no longer do this work, but debt collection and money owed is a valid part of business that effects the whole bottom line……….Peace out!!!!
Debtor’s prison has been alive and well in the child support/alimony industry. Before everyone goes off on a “half-cocked” rant on there are “deadbeats” and men have obligations to support their children and wives, let’s look at the reality of the situation.
There are a lot of fathers out there who’ve lost their jobs thanks to our government meddling into the banking and mortgage businesses, and now the car businesses. Government, with its lapdog press, like to pick on groups of people to create animosity and divisiveness. It’s time to show the government for the real “deadbeat” that it is.
According to a 7-year study done by Arizona State University Professor Sanford Braver, Ph.D., which resulted in his book, “Divorced Dads–Shattering the Myths”, he found that less than 5% of those that owed child support are true deadbeat dads-the ones with the younger trophy wives and sports cars, who don’t want to pay anything. The truth of the matter, is that according to the Federal Gov’t. General Accounting Office, Report # GAO/HRD-92-39FS, pg. 19, over 66% of those owing child support can’t pay because they are unemployed, underemployed, disabled, dead, and in some cases the mothers don’t want support.
Judges order such onerous child support amounts in some cases, along with alimony, daycare, medical expenses, and other expenses, that the father can’t survive. He ends up becoming despondent, leaves his job and drops out of sight. He loses all contact with his child(ren) as a result. This is the government’s ultimate goal. Breaking up of father-headed families (and then mother-headed ones when there are no more fathers, wherein, the government will come for the children without any resistance). Government doesn’t do anything for altruism. They always have a motive behind what they do and the laws they make. It’s all about money, power and control.
Judges in NJ & NY refuse to reduce child support and alimony when a man loses his job because of the current economic climate. They tell the guy that it’s too soon to reduce support because “you might get another job” in a short time. Most often the guy never gets the same-salaried position and winds up making substantially less. All the while, he falls farther and farther behind, with no hope of ever making up the arrearages.
But, do the courts reduce support? No. They keep it there until the arrears are so high, that the guy’s credit is ruined, and they start putting warrants out for his arrest, even though he did everything he was supposed to do by law.
Judges then use detainers to hold the men in jail, somewhat like bail. But, it isn’t bail, because child support is a CIVIL debt. Detainers to keep the men in jail until they pay? STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES! It’s not about the children! Keeping a man in jail to pay support is an oxymoron. And, most of the NJ Family Court judges are morons! How does one pay child support if in jail? Does he work in the jail making $10, $15, $20/hr. and have his wages garnished? Does this person invoke the INSOLVENT DEBTORS STATUTES when he gets out of jail, since he has no assets or income, and the jailing served as the remedy for the debt owed? Under the INSOLVENT DEBTORS STATUTES, the debt has been paid once the person has been jailed for it and released. But, the state will try and keep the arrears on the books.
The reason for this: Because judges are granting high orders and enforcing them stringently because the Federal government pays the states a federal reimbursement incentive funding (42 USC Section 658a) for amounts awarded, collected and enforced. This money goes into the state coffers, no strings attached (42 USC Section 658f). The first things paid out of state treasuries are judicial salaries and pensions and state employee salaries and pensions.
This is a major unconstitutional conflict-of-interest that has been outlawed by the US Supreme Court in Tumey v. Ohio, Ward v. Monroeville, Gibson v. Berryhill and other cases. The Supreme Court held that judges and officials (i.e., child support probation officials) who sit in judgment of cases that they have a financial interest in, are too tempted to abuse their contempt powers to jail unsuspecting litigants-taxpayers to extort/extract more and more monies out of them to increase the amount of funding, and ultimately increase their salaries and pensions.
Yet, family court judges continue to thumb their noses at the US Supreme Court mandates. This is not only contempt of the Supreme Court, but felony official misconduct by judges, who are public officials that swore an oath to uphold, support and defend the U.S. Constitution and their respective state constitution. By refusing to disqualify themselves from these cases, where they have a financial interest in the outcome of them, the Supreme Court has held that their orders are essentially null and void and have no effect or force.
Some will say that if we don’t have judges or hearing officers to enforce orders, how then will they be enforced? As a taxpayer and voter, that is not our problem. The government made the situation. They must fix it. They can fix it by empanelling a group of people that have no financial interest (for example, economists, vocational experts, marriage experts, accountants, psychologists, even lawyers and retired judges). But, they cannot use arbitrary and capricious contempt powers.
Anyone arrested on one of these orders is being arrested for not only a fraudulent order, but on a CIVIL matter. The U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd highest courts in the land) as well as the US Supreme Ct. hold that one can’t be arrested on a CIVIL matter because there is no 4th Amendment probable cause that a crime has been committed to issue an arrest warrant. See, Stevens v. Rose (9th Cir. 2002), Allen v. City of Portland (9th Cir. 1995), Wooley v. City of Baton Rouge (5th Cir. 2000), Peterson v. City of Plymouth (8th Cir. 1995), Moore v. Marketplace Rest.(7th Cir. 1985), Paff v. Kaltenbach (3rd Cir. 2000). Also, included is the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals case of U.S. v. Parker, 108 F.3d 28, 30-31 (3rd Cir. 1997)(child support a civil, commercial debt). In U.S. v. Lewko, 269 F.3d 64, 68-69 (1st Cir. 2001), the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that child support is nothing more than a common civil, commercial debt, and that it is NOT any “special kind of debt”. Again, another fraud perpetrated by government officials. Every other Circuit, including the Third, has followed suit and hold that child support is a common commercial, civil debt.
The child support industry is a total fraud. It is a $5-$10 BILLION per year INDUSTRY that, if eliminated, the monies saved and sent to the children that supposedly need it, would wipe out all child support arrears in the US at one time. All that would be needed to do is send the BILLIONS in the form of a Social Security check or wire transfer, since child support enforcement laws are part of the entire Social Security Act.
Lastly, fathers will find an unusual way to pay their child support. They will sue the sheriff’s officers and sheriff’s departments, probation dept’s. (because probation workers sought warrants when they are neither attorneys, nor were those arrested ever on probation). They will sue for Civil Rights Damages and for FALSE ARREST, ASSAULT, AND FALSE IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT (In the New Jersey Constitution, Article I, Section 13, it prohibits Imprisonment for Debt in ANY action; every other state has such a prohibition, and 18 U.S.C. Sections 1581 and 1589 prohibit involuntary servitude by taking someone under government threat and making them work for someone else to pay off a debt).
Even if they can’t collect, the state will be paid for the uncollectible debt, to insure a win-win situation for the state. They collect if he pays, and they collect if he doesn’t. Child support has long since stopped being about supporting children or relieving taxpayers of the welfare burden. It has now become a lucrative “REVENUE STREAM” for the states, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. in addition to being a Communistic “TRANSFER OF WEALTH” scheme for the entitlement of women, lawyers and child support INDUSTRY. If not so, then why don’t we hear about DEADBEAT MOMS, who fail to pay ordered support in over 65% of cases?
Before castigating the fathers for not supporting their children, show some concern for the corrupt courts who CREATE those fatherless children for profit. The judges and politicians, over the past thirty years, have trivialized fatherhood by giving sole custody to the mothers in 90(+)% of cases, denying fathers their due process rights, treating them like criminals, and separating them from their children in order to separate them from their money. Divorced, or single fathers have had fatherhood beaten out of them, and so, have no consideration for the responsibilities of siring children. Neither is there any respect for marriage by the women bearing those children.
Fatherlessness breeds sexual promiscuity. The socialist-liberals in the courts, the legislatures, and the editorial offices have created a problem. Then they designed programs to throw money at the problem. Those programs have the opposite affect from what was desired. Instead of slowing or stopping the problem, they made it WORSE, creating even MORE fatherlessness. When you analyze the situation with an open mind, it may occur to you, as it has to some, that failure to pay child support might actually a rebellion against tyranny.
Some will say “it hurts the children” when you don’t pay. It hurts the children when the custodial mother, supported and empowered by the courts and politicians, deprive the children of contract with their father, which, according to empirical studies, occurs 75% of the time. No wonder there is a lost generation of children out there. It’s not an accident. It’s by design. The government breaks up families for profit, gain, power and control.
Remember that the next time you accuse someone of being a “deadbeat dad”!
Before jumping on the debtor’s prison bandwagon, let’s jail those that created the financial mess in the first place–Congressmen Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, US Senators Dodd, Schumer, Feingold, et al. These are the real “deadbeats” that caused the mortgage bubble, real estate bubble and financial markets bubble implosion by creating laws that forced banks and lending institutions to give mortgages, under threat of gun, to those who didn’t belong in a mortgage in the first place, but passed laws on some crazed, delusional ideology that everyone should own a house.