Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the most traditional holiday for me. All my siblings get together with their kids and occasionally the random guest or two who did not have anywhere else to go. The kids and I host. The food is mostly the same. The core being the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pies, along with our family traditions of stuffed olives and pistachios. And there are always a few unique items every year. This year one of my brothers brought whipped sweet potatoes and my eldest made polbano peppers stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. Mmmm.

The stories and jokes are the same. Somehow, despite this, everyone laughs just the same as always. This reminds me of when I was a kid and would laugh at my uncles' well worn stories and jokes. Tradition. 

We truly give thanks at Thanksgiving. For family. For love. For those who have sacrificed for us. I take a broad view on this. I thank my parents who not only raised me but gave the opportunity to be educated. They taught me to think critically. They taught me ethics and responsibility.

I thank all those who throughout history have worked to improve humanity. Those who have helped others. Those who have made humanity better. Whether that be in new knowledge, art or ethics.

I believe we who have benefited so much from the countless people who have gone before us have an obligation to do the same. It is unfortunate that many, due to lack of material wealth or education, can only deal with daily survival.  Others, even more sadly, choose to go through life only caring about themselves. They use others to obtain wealth or prestige without guilt. They live life only to entertain themselves. They lack the empathy to even realize they are hurting others. They gladly commit the most heinous actions if they are assured they can get away with them. This site has many examples of people who act this way.

I have spent years being the victim of crime. Crimes committed by Spring as well as many working in family court. Although I have spoken out, I have seen zero progress in my case and have no real evidence my protests have helped others. Although I hope they have.

But clearly my efforts have been subdued due to my desire to protect my children. Spring has used the children as leverage agaisnt me. She doesn't realize she hurts them and herself in doing so.

Now, with my youngest graduating form college in the spring, that leverage is having less and less of an effect. I know that I am not in a unique position. I know that unethical and criminal actions are common in family court. I know that these actions are a cancer on society and spread pain, suffering and even death to many innocent people. Given that knowledge, am I not obligated to do all I am capable of to improve justice in family court? 

To be honest, the reason I have not spoke out more, the reason I have remained publicly anonymous, is not just to protect the children. It is because this is not what I envisioned my contribution to society to be. There are many, many other ways to help humanity I would prefer to focus on. The corruption in family court has a stench that repels me. But it seems I do not have a choice. Because it has not been my choice.

Champions? Hopefully Some Day

I went as saw Bohemian Rhapsody this weekend. In a theater. I don't think I have seen a movie in a theater in over half a year. The movie centers on the band Queen and especially it's lead singer Freddie Mercury, who tragically died of complications from Aids in 1991.

Mercury came from a Parsis family that emigrated from Zanzibar to the UK. His parents had earlier emigrated to Zanzibar from India. They practiced the ancient Zoroastrian religion.  In the movie Freddie's father would  advise, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds", a Zoroastrian tenet. Just before Queen played at Live Aid in 1985, Mercury repeated the phrase to his father to show he had indeed listened to the advice.

The movie, although a bit sanitized, was excellent.

It was especially poignant for me as for many years now whenever I hear the opening verse of the Queen song "We are the Champions" I feel a distinct connection.

I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I've come through

I hope someday the last line rings fully true. But no matter what:

Good Thoughts
Good Words
Good Deeds

Stress

I have to apologize on my last post as it looks suspiciously similar to the September 23 post. I did not notice until a few days after I published it. I even used the same graphic!

My only excuse is that I have been extremely busy lately. I am always too busy but it has been especially bad lately. I just cannot seem to catch up on work. That combined with taking care of the kids and maintaining a relationship barely leaves me time for cleaning the house and doing the other maintenance items in life. Oh yeah, there is also my work advocating for a more just family court system of which this site is a part of.

So I am stressed. Which is a good (or bad?) segue into a new study that shows that a father's stress can be passed down to his children.

A stressed-out and traumatized father can leave scars in his children. New research suggests this happens because sperm “learn” paternal experiences via a mysterious mode of intercellular communication in which small blebs break off one cell and fuse with another.

Striking evidence that harsh conditions affect a man’s children came from crop failures and war ravaging Europe more than a century ago. In those unplanned human experiments, prolonged famine appeared to set off a host of health changes in future generations, including higher cholesterol levels and increased rates of obesity and diabetes. 

Great. Given that I have not only had numerous crimes committed against me not only by Spring but many others and the fact that I have to work for the rest of my life to benefit the perpetrators of those crimes, I suspect I am at the high end of stress. The fact that I can never retire nor can I remarry because that would obligate my new wife to pay alimony to Spring should I become sick or disabled only adds to it.  Not to mention the "normal" stress that comes from being a single parent.

I have never understood how people can commit terrible acts. Are they simply evil? Do they lack a moral compass? I think part of it is that they just do not think about the consequences of their actions. Perjury may get you alimony but it also might push your ex to suicide. Stating that you are unable to work when you can might give you a life of leisure but at the expense of your children's respect and love. A lawyer who lies in court may win his or her case but the victim may become so despondent he gets drunk and causes a car crash that kills children.

Actions have consequences. If you want to be a good person, you have to thoroughly think them through.

Holding Family Law Judges Accountable

ParentAdvocates.org has a good article titled, Holding Family Law Judges Accountable.

Today’s family law judges are generally rubber stamps for civil rights abuses. It is routine for due process to be violated. Unequal protection by the law is the norm. The judges generally think this is all OK because family law courts aren’t criminal courts. Judges complain they don’t have enough time to handle the numerous cases they have. They complain about budget cuts. They complain about needless litigation. Whose fault is all of that? They should look themselves in their mirrors as they have created the problems that have lead to the family law courts being overwhelmed with destructive litigation.

How true. Family court is probably he single biggest arena for crime in the country. That may sound like an exaggeration but keep in mind courts have a long history of operating in a criminal manner. Just look how they treated minorities in the past? Sadly when courts act criminally, there is almost no ability for the victims to obtain justice. After all, it is the courts who rule on injustice. This is the very reason so many victims turn to violence against themselves or others. And when bad people sees just how easy and financially rewarding it is to commit crime in the courtroom, they flock to it like moths to a light. 

The article delves into several areas of abuse caused by corrupt judges and officers of the court including:

• Family Law Judges Rubber-Stamp Civil Rights Abuses
• Family Law Courts Reward Criminals, Punish Victims
• Typical Family Law Abuses Include “Kick Out” Orders

As this site has shown in some detail, I and my children have been victims of all of these.

Bullies And Their Sycophants

There is a lot of anti-bulling talk in schools but what is bullying? My definition: Bullying is when a person uses power, physical or other, to intimidate, hurt or steal from another person.  In the past we did not call people bullies so much, we just called them evil. Same thing.

Bullies have a hierarchy. Usually there is a top dog in a group. That group may be in a neighborhood, a school, or even a country. Hitler was bully. So is Trump.

Bullies are supported by their sycophants. Cesar Sayoc who mailed pipe bombs to former government officials, including a President and Secretary of State along with other critics of Donald Trump, is a bully and sycophant.

There are degrees of bullying. Or degrees of evil if you will. In reality, no one is 100% good. We all have our moments. But still, there are lines you should not cross. As a society we try to define those lines with the criminal code.  To be clear you can still be evil and not be a criminal. Racism, sexism, and hate in general are not crimes. Only actions are crimes.

Which is why it is so disturbing when people commit crimes and get away with them.

Judge Mearly is a bully. He likes to intimidate people. But I am not sure whether or not he committed an actual crime.

Spring and Nelly Wince clearly committed crimes. Horrendous ones. They not only got away with their crimes but it pays every day for them.

When bullies are tolerated within a group bullying becomes institutionalized. That is what happened in Nazi Germany. That is what happened under Stalin in the USSR. That is what happened under Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  That is what is happening today in family court in Ramsey County Minnesota.

Cost of Alimony

I ran across some interesting statistics in an article on the changes in tax law for alimony. Basically the law no longer allows for alimony to be deducted by the payer. However, this change does not affect existing agreements or orders.

One of the reasons the law was passed is because people were cheating. in 2015 15 million people who pay alimony deducted it from their taxes. I am one of them. However, only 10 million alimony recipients declared alimony, which was taxable for them, on their taxes.

So 5 million people who received alimony paid no taxes on it. That is a  huge amount of money not paid to the government that law abiding taxpayers needed to make up for. Yet another reason why alimony is a cost for all taxpayers.

And let's keep in mind that for those 5 million people who are cheating the system, this is unlikely the only crime they are committing. Criminals rarely commit only one crime.

Even for the 10 million that dutifully declared the alimony they received on their taxes, there is a cost to taxpayers.  The alimony recipient has a strong incentive not to make more money as that would put their alimony at risk. So they become willfully underemployed thus also reducing tax revenue for the government. Furthermore, because normally the alimony recipient earns less money than the payer the amount of the tax deduction for the payer is greater than the taxes paid by the recipient so again the government receives less taxes.

When you add up the cost of the cheaters, willful underemployment, and the effect of alimony duductability it comes out to a massive amount of lost taxes. Taxes that must be made up by those who follow the rules and act with integrity.

The Tax Payer Cost of Divorce

One of the many tax payer costs of divorce is that divorced people can claim social security benefit based on an ex-spouse contribution history. How much this costs taxpayers is quite difficult to figure out. But let's take a stab anyway.

• Approximately 2,000,000 (roughly) women are divorced who are of social security age. See
• The increase in social security for a divorced woman receiving social security over a married one is $1860/year. See

Thus the cost to taxpayers is $3.72 billion/year. (2,000,000 x 1860) And that is a conservative estimate given that I have ignored men who receive social security based on their ex-wife's income. I did this because I could not find good statistics for men. Yet another subtle sign of sexism.

Taxpayers are not only subsiding people who divorce but are actually encouraging them to do so.

Even worse, to quote the social security administration in the second link above, "many divorced women will become eligible for the higher benefits if their ex-husbands die" Yikes! What a crazy world.