Communism is alive and well and it runs the United States of Amerika. I have been involved in the research of child support and welfare reform for years and have researched a number of very astute scientists, economists, psychologists, legal professionals, politicians and many others.

Irwin Garfinkle's paper, "Sweden's Child Support System" (1982) is the current model for the state of Wisconsin which has been emulated by a large number of states in the U.S. However, economics experts studying this field of child support have found that is indeed not from Sweden, but in actuality from the former Soviet Union. Though we can learn from other systems, the transplantation of any foreign social program into the U.S. is fraught with danger. We have our own Constitution and a different relationship between government and private economy. It is nonsensical to transplant social programs outside the political and economic context in which they develop because this inevitably leads to treason and sedition and the overthrow of our government by internal forces.

U.S. child support reforms are based on the Soviet model, Article 81 of the The Russian Family Code, adopted in 1995. Its use was and is promoted in the United States by Irwin Garfinkel as part of a suite of Communist policy which became known to us as "The Wisconsin Model" because it involves the income shares approach--how much each parent makes determines how much child support is paid; rather than the true cost of raising children. As the Communist Manifesto says: "Each according to ability; each according to his needs". Our child support system was conceived and implemented as part of the former Communist way of doing things.

We can start by recognizing that the "percentage of income" formula comes directly from the Russian lawbooks. The Russians used 25% for one child, 30% for two, and 35% for 3 or more. Sound familiar? This must have made sense in a country where most everyone was poor, prices were controlled by the government, and the transfer of "wealth" was the most important fundamental ideal of the oppressive regime's entire economic system. The Income shares model developed by Robert Williams, of Policy Institute, Inc. fame, mimics the "percentage of income" formula to a significant extent.

Russian fathers pay the amount prescribed by the formula. That's it. There are no deviations; there are no exceptions; there is no consideration of individual circumstances (i.e., involuntary loss of employment due to economic downturn, downsizing, outsizing, ageism, etc., disability, illness, underemployment and unemployment, and even death); and there is no excuse for non-payment. Most payments in the Russian system are taken directly by the government. They are all processed by the central bureaucracy. The bureaucracy doesn't care about "special circumstances". There was no "individual" in Soviet society--only compliance. Those who found, or even look for, a way to avoid compliance in the Russian child support system could get jail, credit problems, exclusion from work, loss of rights (to the extent they had any), and loss of government benefits. Sound strikingly familiar? Debtor's prison for CIVIL child support debt in violation of Fourth Amendment since there's no probable cause a crime was committed to arrest and jail someone in a CIVIL matter; prohibitions against imprisonment for debt; ruination of credit; suspension of driver's licenses, professional licenses, hunting and fishing licenses; seizure of Social Security Disability benefits and retirement benefits (I know firsthand since I am disabled and they left me below the regional poverty line after garnishing my Social Security Disability benefits without a trial); denial of visitation rights without any enforcement of court orders for same; jailed for extended periods of time causing loss of employment due to no fault of self because of inability to comply with excessively high support orders leaving people unable to fend for themselves.

How did the Russian Communists react to the fact that not everyone in their society matched the model of a good communist citizen? With public humiliation and condemnation and even ostracizing from groups; calling groups of people "deadbeats" and putting up posters with names and pictures of people who interfered with communist efficiency. The child support enforcement tyranny does the same identical tactics in this country.

Those who say we won the Cold War are sadly mistaken. Former Soviet Union Premier Nikita Kruschev was right. He stated that the United States would be defeated by communism from within its own borders. The Communist system existed for 80 years in Russia before its collapse. We fought communism all over the World--Korea, Vietnam. NATO was a result of Communist hegemony.

Why then, are the biggest, most important U.S. social policy changes of the last 15-20 years based on the Soviet-Communist model? Why also, are the centralized computer systems purchased for the child support system powerful enough to keep track of intimate details of every person on the planet? Why are we opening up the IRS database for use by other agencies? Why have there been so many court decisions undermining the guarantees spelled out clearly in the Bill of Rights? Doesn't this all involve a completely foreign vision of the basic fundamental relationship between individuals and the state; something that is indeed, in the most concrete way possible, anti-American?

We are headed in the wrong direction for this country. The time to stop it is now before it is too late. Government is passing more and more draconian child support enforcement laws every day. Government oppression is at its highest pinnacle since the British ruled this country over 225 years ago. Where does it stop? We are on the slippery slope. And, for what? Because some bureaucracy wants to remain employed by violating and depriving the people of their fundamentally secured rights? It has become big government/big business. Just like in the Soviet Union.

Bruce Eden, Constitutional Rights Director, Fathers Rights Association of New Jersey & Mid-Atlantic Region

Copyright Family Guardian Fellowship