Montana Enemies
The Department of Public Health and Human Services operates the Child Support Enforcement Division. It has field offices in Missoula, Butte, Billings, Great Falls, and Helena, each field office assigned a bunch of counties.
The District Courts handle the domestic relations cases.
Very few Montana counties maintain much of a presence on the Web at this time. Most are very small in population.
The Flathead County Attorney, the Teton County Attonrey, and the Yellowstone County Attorney do not list child support enforcement as one of their duties. Neither does the Lewis and Clark County Attorney, though he lists representing the State of Montana in child abuse and child neglect cases. It appears that the county attorneys do not have the responsibility to enforce support orders, or they do not say so on their web pages.
Politically, it makes sense to not hold the local elected officials responsible for this enforcement duty, and leave it to the state, IF this insane system is NOT as popular with the public as we are lead to believe. If it were popular, the elected county attorneys would want a piece of this action, to give the voters another reason to vote for their re-election. But in Montana, they don't show any desire to claim it as a duty, not even in the larger population counties with the tax base to support such an expanded responsibility of the local prosecutor. Reasons for this may be as follows:
Social conservatives are a bane of our existence. They pollute the conservative movement with their unpopular anti-abortion stance and their frightening "Christian Taliban" attitude towards gay rights and other live and let live concepts, including legalization of marijuana. They are too "law and order" for us libertarian conservatives, who believe it is the Constitution that should be strictly enforced. They do not seem to have limiting government and taxation as among their primary goals. However, the absence of large urban centers with their loony left politics frees states like Montana from the liberal influence, which includes the feminazi movement that is the driving force behind child support peonage. Anti-government sentiment may not be as rampant as in rural Idaho, but Montanans may not care for a nanny state running every aspect of their lives. Example, the Interstate freeways did not have a posted speed limit for several years, making them similar to the German autobahns. The old 55 MPH limit was enforced with the famous five dollar tickets. Given the high powered emotions that surround any family law, child custody, or other child welfare case, it is politically smart to leave local county government out of the support enforcement business as much as possible. If county prosecutors in small rural counties have to arrest those noncustodial parents down on their luck due to the rampant layoffs in the rural economy, re-election would get problematical. County officials might respond by simply refusing to enforce such orders, as they prefer re-election. Therefore, we see this pattern such as in Montana: the state government in Helena taking all of the responsibility for doing just enough support enforcement to qualify for federal funds, while the county officials are left to perform their usual duties of misdemeanor and felony prosecution.
Think about it. Prosecute some guy who is still famous for leading a local high school to football glory because he got divorced and then laid off. His celebrity status will guarantee coverage of the case in the local weekly paper. The few thousand folks in the county can accept that a parent has a duty to provide for his child. Still, they see that duty as being dependent upon an economy that will allow him to meet such duty. Punish the fellow with an excessive support order and for the consequences of worldwide free trade without a planetary minimum wage and we might see such a county turning itself into a "safe haven" for noncustodial parents. The local sentiment may turn against this insane system. What do you have for an economy in such counties?
Agriculture. A finite source of income, limited by the acreage that can be farmed. When the prices the farmers receive are good, it is because of a crop failure. The farmers have nothing to sell! If the farmers produce a bumper crop, the prices are depressed because of the law of supply and demand. If you notice that all of the Cadillacs in farm country were built during the same year, that was the year there was a bumper crop AND good prices. Still, for those who do not own land, agricultural employment is not the road to prosperity. That's why it is dominated by Mexicans for whom conditions back home are even worse.
Timber. Like agriculture, a finite source of income, only the crop takes longer to mature. Either you are not allowed to cut down the old growth forests because of the spotted owl, or you eventually run out of old growth forests. There is some employment planting tree seedlings in the clear cuts, and in thinning out the crop as it grows. Still, you pretty much have to wait for the trees to get big enough before you can cut them down and run them through a sawmill. If a forest fire doesn't burn them first. Because most timber is used in construction, sales are highly dependent upon the business cycle. Recessions always lead to layoffs in timber country. Sure there is paper, which can be made from trees, but paper can be made from any species of tree, and it can be made from hemp. As hemp growing is legalized for industrial purposes, timber employment will take a further hit.
Mineral extraction and refining. Believe it or not, there are those who actually prefer to work in mines. Compared to offices, there is something to be said for an environment where the only thing the boss cares about is whether you can do the job. Blue collar workplaces tend to be like that. Can you run the ore machinery? If yes, you have a job. Until the mine closes down. Which has happened a lot in Montana. Sometimes, it is because the lode runs out. The pollution previously locked up safely in the ore is now part of the surface environment and everyone has mysterious illnesses. Example: the apparent asbestos related illnesses in Libby. The neighborhood around a refinery is the poster child for the environmental movement. It looks terrible! Mines close down before the lode runs out for many reasons: Environmental regulations. Imports from nations where the environmental regulations are lax and so are the local wages. How do you compete with copper from Bolivia or gold from Siberia under such circumstances? And then there are the recessions, which always lead to layoffs in the mining industry.
Needless to say, county prosecutors in places like rural Montana might not want the child support business. Which might explain why they either do not have it or do not emphasize it on their web pages.
In California, Idaho, Arizona, and Montana we see child support enforcement responsibilities moving away from the elected county prosecutors and toward the state governments. The public is not as enthusiastic about cracking down on noncustodial parents as it used to be, if it ever was. As President Bush's base of support is in the very rural counties that seem to or are abandoning the enforcement of support as a responsibility, perhaps he should rethink his support for this insane system in light of his oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Antipeonage Act is a law of the United States.
If the enforcement of child support is indeed as popular with the public as we are lead to believe, then every elected public official would be proclaiming their enthusiastic support for it. The California District Attorneys would have loudly opposed transferring the control and responsibility over their Family Support Sections to the state government. They did not. The elected county prosecutors in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona would loudly proclaim on their web sites their enthusiastic efforts to enforce the support obligation. They do not. While many of the county prosecutors in Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii loudly proclaim their enthusiastic enforcement of support, prominently listing child support as a responsibility on their web sites, some of the more rural county prosecutors in these states do not.
It is like with the Metric System. If it was universally popular with the public, the road signs would change and the elected officials would fall over themselves taking credit. It is not, and the road signs, at least in the United States, do not change. Elected school board members go silent when asked about the track meets and the math curriculum. When local elected public officials wash their hands of something, it is because it is not popular with the public upon whom they depend for re-election.
There is hope for us, folks!
Article II Section 3 of the Montana Constitution declares inalienable rights, including the right to acquire, possess, and protect property.
Article II Section 4 of the Montana Constitution declares that the dignity of the human being is inviolable. It contains the state Equal Protection Clause.
Article II Section 12 of the Montana Constitution provides the right of any person to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes with an explicit exception for carrying of concealed weapons.
Article II Section 17 of the Montana Constitution is the state Due Process Clause.
Article II Section 18 of the Montana Constitution is a waiver of state sovereign immunity unless overridden by a 2/3 vote of each house of the legislature. I wonder if the Montana Legislature ever passed a bill with 2/3 majority in each house to re-establish Eleventh Amendment and common law state sovereign immunity in the federal courts, and if a federal court ever ruled on whether this provision constituted a waiver of sovereign immunity in the federal courts.
Article II Section 22 of the Montana Constitution prohibits excessive fines and bails and cruel and unusual punishments.
Article II Section 27 of the Montana Constitution prohibits imprisonment for debt except where the debtor refuses to deliver up his estate for the benefit of the creditor.
Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with any information that you have to share.
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