A Personal Look At A Friend's Predicament

I recently read a blog post that, unlike a lot of blog posts I read, actually touched a chord with me. I felt compelled to leave a comment, which is unusual for me. The topic was pretty near and dear to my heart though, and brought up a lot of feelings that I had a difficult time dealing with until fairly recently.

The subject was child support. The sentiment expressed in the post was that the system is flawed and someone is being punished well out of proportion to their "crime". I personally agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly. I have a similar situation going on in my life, and let me tell you, don't try to change my mind. For those of you who know me and how laid-back and open-minded I am, you know how out of character that is for me!

What started as a worthy cause has been politicized and bureaucratized into an unrecognizable and misguided mess. In the mid- to late-1980's, there were a series of very high-profile deadbeat dads that caused our state legislators to overreact and do three things that had all kinds of unintended consequences.

First, they created a set of laws that pigeonhole everyone. Square peg in round hole kind of stuff. There are enough transgressions, both real and perceived, to overload the system, which is badly designed to begin with. Depending on the level of involvement that your ex-spouse has decided to take (more on this later), you can owe nothing, miss one payment 5 years down the line, and be treated the same as the deadbeat dad who has managed to avoid paying anything and moves around to stay ahead of the law. Toss in the fact that the people who actually work the system have so many cases that they can't afford to humanize their subjects. They have to treat it in terms of statistics. This many files, this many successful collections, etc. If you've been unemployed for half a year, it makes no difference to The Machine. They will treat you the same as the person who makes a million dollars but doesn't send in a dime.

Next, they endowed an agency with virtual carte-blanche to do whatever it takes to recover their money. The amount of power the Texas Attorney General's Child Support Division has is unbelievable. With no prior warning, they have the right to place a lien on every single asset you own - your bank account, your home, your car, your business. I have heard these exact words come from a caseworker's mouth:

"Well, I can remove the hold on your account if you give us half the money you have in there."

Are you KIDDING me? No formula, no desire to work with me, no attempt to find out what my situation was. The ironic thing here is that the check really was in the mail. While my account had a hold placed on it by the Attorney General's office, the check arrived and was returned NSF BY THE SAME AGENCY. So not only did I have to pay over twice the amount of child support that month (yes, I had to give them half the money in my account), I had to pay the NSF fee that was caused by their actions to begin with!

Lastly, the system puts 100% of the burden of proof on the non-custodial parent. (80% of the time, that's the dad.) Practically speaking, that means the Attorney General OR your ex can shoot first and ask questions later. In another example, I had a very unexpected hold place on my account. In this case, I had paid two months back to back, so I would be early for the next month. When I called to clear up the confusion, the overloaded caseworker condescendingly explained to me that I had missed a payment. When I insisted she look at her records, she got angry with me. We went month by month, and when we got to the back to back payments, there was literally 10 seconds of silence from her. I HAD her! She was going to admit she was wrong! Well, wasn't I wrong! No admission of a mistake was forthcoming from this defender of justice! The only concession I got was that instead of the familiar formula of "1/2 the money in your account", she insisted on a fraction of that. I guess that's as close to an apology as I am going to get.

It's not about the kids anymore, it's about the stats. As a society, we can feel good that this watchdog agency "punished" the deadbeat dad when the truth of the matter is that if you don't toe the line EXACTLY as you were told, there will be consequences ANYWAY. The child support division of the State Attorney General's office uses extortion tactics, plain and simple, and when you call them on it they have the ultimate weapon to use against you. They can threaten you with financial hardship or jail time and you have no recourse. You either bend to their demands or you get a lawyer and fight, but if you fight, then things tend to get messy. The mother has a moral advantage that is sometimes completely out of proportion to the reality of her situation. Many times a simple phone call from said mother will bring down a world of hurt on the father. It can't be avoided. It can only be suffered, with the hope that, in the end, the consequences will be mitigated. And there are rarely consequences on the non-custodial parent because, technically, no laws were broken. So if you fight the system, prepare to fight the system's ally as well.

When I was young, I also let my child support debt get out of hand. It has taken me a long time, a lot of sweat, and not a few tears to get to the point where I can see the light at the end. I personally have swallowed a TON of crap, as well as every drop of pride I have in my body, to just make it through until my kid graduates. Get this, though: I have been paying religiously for nearly 8 years. But since I am in the system and on their radar, there is NO leeway. None. If I am late, FOR ANY REASON (including extended periods of unemployment) I get harassed. They don't call, they don't bother to find out what your situation is. They lien and hold and garnish and, quite often, your first clue is when your debit card is declined or your payroll department calls you.

The whole system is a mess. It's too easy to paint people with a broad brush, and where racism is the standard against which all such brushes are measured, the child support issue is the dirty little secret brush that nobody talks about. If you're male, you will suffer the wrath of the system , whether or not you deserve it. I applaud those men who have successfully navigated the waters and have made the most out of a bad situation. They are rare. Let's hope that one day they get taken off the endangered species list.

A New Beginning

IT Manager.

I really like the sound of it. What I like even more is the hard work and post-graduate education in the School of Hard Knocks (Colt Exploration, thank you very much!) that it took to get here.

I won't bore you with the details, but in a nutshell, I have taken on the responsibility of building an Information Technology department for Coastland Federal Credit Union.

Why is this such a new beginning? Well, professionally, it's the culmination of a lot of lessons, a lot of disappointment, a lot of determination, and a fair amount of luck that has put me in a position to secure my future. Personally, it has required a change in scenery.

How about New Orleans?

I know that I just elicited a heck of a response from you. Whether that response was positive or negative is the question!

More details to come. Thanks to everyone who has supported this decision.

That means you, Jessica!!

I was just talking with my wife and I had a thought. Am I the only one that thinks it is NOT a coincidence that 1 month ago, our President was talking about our economy as if it was the second coming of the Black Plague, and now he sounds like, of all people, John Freaking McCain?

I am adamant that the next four years are going to be great for this country - IN THE LONG TERM. If the GOP can get their collective heads out of their collective rear ends, it will be a windfall of Regeanesque proportions for political conservatives of all walks of life.

The only question is if any of us will survive it intact.

Don't Pinch Me. If This is a Dream, I Don't Want to Wake Up...

I've said it once, and I'll say it a thousand times more. My wife is the best EVER. Not only did she watch the baseball game with me - the Astros pummeled the Cards, by the way - she is whining that I haven't bought a grill for us yet. A grill. Are you KIDDING me?

Now she reminds me that I need to buy tickets for a Cubs - Astros game in August.

In Chicago.

Have I mentioned that I love my wife?

This Post Is About Making a Point...Any Point

It has been so long since I posted anything that it is a little hard for me to get in the groove. I can't understand why, there is a LOT going on in my life right now. I just got promoted at work, and the work load doubled as a reward. Jessica and I are going on our first month of marriage (she and I have decided that the 26th of April will be our anniversary...2 dates in one, so it's easy). We also finished our third week at the Culinary School of Fort Worth. I start a new class at the University of Phoenix tomorrow. When I'm not thinking about it, it doesn't seem like a whole lot going on, but now that I put it down on a blog post, it seems almost overwhelming! What the heck, though, I will look back on this period of my life and realize that these were the golden years, so I am determined to make the best of it.

The Appalachian State Corollary

“Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion!”

Former Houston Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich spoke these words right after his team captured the NBA championship with one of the most improbable runs in sports history. Since they were seeded last in the playoffs, everyone they would play would have better records than them. In fact, the Rockets beat the four teams with the best record in the NBA that season and crushed a young and powerful Orlando Magic team in the Finals

Nobody expected them to do it. They just believed they could.

In 2005, the Houston Astros were terrible during the first half of the season. At 15 games under .500, the Astros weren’t thinking about winning the World Series. They were just trying to win some dignity and self respect! But something happened on the way to a lousy season; the team forgot how to lose. During one of the most remarkable in-season turnarounds in Major League Baseball season (and the first time since the Boston Braves did it in 1914) Houston clinched the Wild Card on the last day of the regular season and overcame both perennial nemesis Atlanta and St. Louis’ best attempt to crush the psyche of the Astros (Albert Pujols home run, anyone?) to end up in the first World Series in franchise history.

Nobody expected them to do it. They just believed they could.

If you are a sports fan, the previous two stories illustrate one of the major reasons why you love sports in the first place. The fact is that on any given day your team, no matter how good or bad they are, can pull of something remarkable and YOU were along for the ride. It happens all the time in sports. Something in the chemistry and collective psyche of a team comes together and the players almost literally will themselves to do something they shouldn’t be able to do. But what happens when an entire season, perhaps even an entire league, collectively, truly believe they can win against any odds?

I give you the 2007 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision season and the birth of the Appalachian State Corollary.

In case you have been in a foreign country or under a rock the past month, here is a brief refresher on the events of this season. It is customary for college football powerhouses to schedule cupcake teams during the first few games of the season to prepare their kids for the “real” season of conference play. These teams from the “lower” divisions of college football understand that their role is to be cannon fodder. They will make money, get some TV exposure, then go home to lick their wounds. Sometimes these teams get uppity and win a game or two, but almost invariably against a “big” school having a down year – or decade.

At the start of the 2007 season, the University of Michigan was ranked 4^th in the country and, many believed, had the talent to win the national championship. Three highly touted seniors postponed their pro careers and millions of dollars in pay to return for that reason. The contest against Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA) program Appalachian State was a warm-up game, a chance for these mighty Wolverines to flex their muscles, integrate the new kids into the team and shake off the rust of a long off-season. Except that they lost. In arguably the most historic and unprecedented upset in sports history, the school that hardly anyone outside of North Carolina had ever heard of stood toe-to-toe with the biggest boy on the block and came out a winner. In literal terms, if not in socially significant ones, this was the college football equivalent of the USA-USSR hockey game at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980.

Most likely, Michigan was guilty of nothing more than looking ahead, underestimating an opponent because they didn’t have the same pedigree. This happens everyday, both in sports and in the real world. But because Appalachian State literally did not belong on that field, because they did something so unbelievable, a collective wind swept through the ranks of every other team in the college football landscape.

“If App State can do it, why can’t we?”

This became the rallying cry for every program that had the talent to win at the highest levels of college football, but lacked the pedigree and, by virtue of the wonderful world of the uncharted human brain, the self-confidence – or, in this case, the collective team confidence – that is required to achieve at the highest levels. All of a sudden, every underdog truly believed they could win. More importantly, every powerhouse suddenly understood that they could lose. I mean, really understood, for the first time ever. All that “On any given day” talk suddenly became real. The “It will not happen to us” syndrome, that every teenager that has ever lived feels, was suddenly and very visibly shown to be “It CAN happen to us”.

Some might argue that the Boise State win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl last year was the true start of this season’s phenomenon. Although exciting and certainly an upset, it doesn’t fit in to the same category as they App State win for two reasons.

1) Boise State’s win came at the end of the season where they proved that, at the very least, they belonged on the same field as the big boys. After an undefeated season, they earned the chance to play Oklahoma.

2) Boise State is a Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly I-A) school. In other words, they have the same pedigree as the big boys, they just haven’t had it as long.

What App State did was truly uncharted territory, and we have already seen its effects. The smaller schools are playing loose; they are playing aggressive; they are playing to win. The big schools are playing tight, they are playing conservative, and they are playing NOT to lose which, as anyone can tell you, is almost a guarantee that they will.

And so, thanks to the hundreds of young men who were deemed unworthy to play for the big boys, thanks to the collective chip on their shoulders, and thanks to the most stunning win in college football history, I give you the Appalachian State Corollary to the 2007 college football season:

“Why Not Us?”

I Feel Weird Even Half-Agreeing with the Media!

In this age of media hyperbole, it’s not often that the media actually gets it right.

In one of the most remarkable weekends of college football that I have ever witnessed, five of the Top 10 teams and nine of the Top 25 teams in the nation lost. On a day that is already being dubbed as Insanity Saturday, the supposed powerhouses treated us to every type of loss imaginable. They lost close games. They lost by big margins. They shot themselves in the foot. They were simply outplayed. They lost on the road AND they lost at home. They lost to ranked teams, sure, but most of them were losses to UNRANKED teams. How many times have you seen not one, but THREE 17-point dogs win outright on the same weekend? Even the winners have taken some hits, as evidenced by #1 USC's hard-fought victory over Washington that resulted in USC being jumped by a (only slightly) more impressive LSU squad. No team was safe, no reputation was safe, no lead was safe.

Before you dismiss this weekend’s happenings as flukes, a result of the full moon or something like that, take a look at the schools in the AP top 25. Some familiar names are missing, and quite a few outsiders are crashing the party this year. Perennial powerhouses like Michigan, Auburn, and Notre Dame are conspicuously absent from the polls. They have been replaced by newcomers like Hawaii, Kentucky, and South Florida. These schools are defying the odds with every rung they climb on the ladder of college football success. The Bowl Championship Series was invented specifically to exclude these schools. The powers that be in college football are twisting themselves into knots trying to explain how they meant for this to happen all along!

College football has long been about cycles. Look in the history books and you’ll see that once upon a time the landscape was very different. Harvard, Army, Rice, and Duke were all regulars in the top 20. So it’s no surprise that we are seeing a slowly evolving landscape. But the evolution has accelerated with a suddenness that nobody expected. It started last year, with Boise State crashing the BCS party and Rutgers and Wake Forest staying in it until the very end. But this year has been crazy.

No single weekend has been crazier than this one. I heard a hundred reasons why as I was watching ESPN last night. But what I didn’t hear was one explanation that covered ALL of the losses we saw yesterday or all of the losses we have seen this year so far. That’s OK, though. It must be scary for the Establishment to see what is happening and realize that their cushy positions as the elite in their field are being threatened. Since I have no such laurels to rest on, my vision is clear, and I have come up with a theory which I have termed the Appalachian State Corollary. I’ll explain more when I come back. It’s Sunday, and I am ready for some (more) football!