Hard-Hearted AG|Sober Judgment

"Family Court Judge Sheds Light on Unfair Child Support Practices in Texas" by Megan Feldman, April 3

This story boils my blood. My wife was a child support officer for the attorney general for several years. She has told many stories about men paying support for kids fathered by other men that provoked many heated arguments...with her accepting the AG's official line that screwing over people with the letter of the law in the face of truth was just fine. AG employees know they are going after the wrong men. Sometimes they even laughed about it.

She is generally a good-hearted person. There must be some kind rareified air in the AG's offices that turned her into a bona fide heartless bureaucrat. Not the real dad? Oh well, he shouldn't have acknowledged paternity, should have suspected the woman was a lying whore. His fault. Pay up or go to jail.

As someone with some insight to the AG's child support collection procedures, I will advise anyone to never deal with the AG without a good lawyer. AG employees most certainly are evaluated based in large part on the amount of child support they are able to collect.

This article tells me that there needs to be mandatory genetic testing at birth for all children. It is not fair to the child if the paternity results come out later. As an aside, I can confirm that the AG only cares about collecting money. I have two friends (male and female) who have seen this. The male has been told that they don't care if he has been trying to get caught up (he was laid up for a year after a very bad accident). This has cost him two jobs already. The other had the AG office pressuring her to file for child support against her ex-husband whom she acknowledged was not her child's father and had no visitation rights.

I may be mistaken, but there is a term called "fraudulent concealment," which allows a defendant the right of appeal if that defendant discovers fraud that would allow reasonable people to come to another conclusion about the disposition of a case. Lawyers, prosecutors, judges do not have the right to conceal important facts in a cause.

I wonder if true paternal identity could be a form of "fraudulent concealment" if the courts know that the wrong man is paying for child support of another man's child?

"The office receives federal funds based in part on the amount of child support that it collects and distributes, giving the Child Support Division a budgetary incentive to close as many cases as it can, no matter whose rights it might trample." BINGO!

And they claim they are child activists. Yeah, right!

"Four Clubs Closed in Deep Ellum and Exposition Park in the Past Month," by Pete Freedman, March 27

Sober Judgment

Just an observation that may be BS from someone who really is not well-informed on the Dallas music scene, but...

One of the main things I always notice when I read articles about Dallas bands is that the venues always center on bars, bars and more bars. I enjoy music and occasionally go to Bend Studio to listen there, but I would never go to a bar to hear a band. It is just not an environment that I find inviting, perhaps because in my life I have seen the violence and destruction of life that goes along with the bar scene. It seems that every 12-18 months a tragic story surfaces in the Dallas papers regarding the bar/music scene. It is just not an appealing place, whether the area is Deep Ellum or anywhere else.

So, if the music scene is disappearing here in Dallas in general or Deep Ellum in particular, maybe the question the musician community should be asking themselves is whether the venues that they choose to play in are conducive to getting the best possible response from the public. Now, I am not talking about opening Chuck E. Cheese stores in Deep Ellum, just a more safe-and-sane venue than an establishment that counts on copious consumption of alcoholic beverages by its customers to make a profit.