DadTalk

Scenes From Immigration Rally

I brought my camera with me for a work-related project before realizing it was May Day, which means Immigration Rally.

Since 2007, I’ve watched the rallies directly from my place of work. In 2006, I was in Los Angeles. This and last year, the protesters passed in front of my office window.

Since working in the financial sector, I’ve heard a handful of derogatory and distasteful remarks about immigrants, especially Hispanics. But the rally was peaceful, at least, when it passed my vantage point on Jackson Boulevard.

I’ve included more photos on the jump.

Circumcisions Cut Spread Of HIV in Half, Studies Find

A few years ago, circumcision bashing became de rigueur, especially by Dr. Dean Edell, who calls the practice unethical, painful, dangerous and without medical benefit.

If Edell doesn’t like circumcision, that’s fine by me. I’ve always harbored a few doubts about the practice. But the guy would incessantly rail against the procedure to such a degree that I had to tune him out. After all, I can’t undo my circumcision, and now I have a boy who is circumcised.

So I read with extreme irony that circumcision may cut the risk of HIV infection in half, according to The New York Times. U.S. health officials were so amazed by the results that they halted two clinical trials and offered circumcisions to the other men in the African study.

Everyone agrees that the best method to avoid HIV is through safe sex practices, but with infections spreading unchecked throughout Africa and parts of Asia, they also agree that circumcisions can be a useful tool in fighting the disease.

And for one last tweak at Dr. Edell: Despite his claims otherwise, recent studies show that circumcisions significantly reduces cervical cancer rates and other sexually transmitted diseases, reports the Times.

Now please stop making parents feel so guilty, Dr. Edell.

Only Lawyers Profit on Divorce in West

Parents and their children pay a high price in this country – as well as much of the Western world – when they get divorced. The only people who ever really profit are the lawyers.

While the system is unfair to both sexes, it tends to be downright hostile toward men. One case that recently grabbed the headlines involves a U.S. Navy Seal named Gary who was sent off to Afghanistan in 2003. While there, his wife moved to Israel and filed for divorce, reports the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Instead of a welcome home, Gary came back to a $2,100-a-month bill for child support and an empty nest. When the story first hit the air, Gary hadn’t seen his son in nine months and was rarely allowed to talk to him on the phone, syndicated radio columnist Glenn Sacks originally reported here.

Gary, who only has seen his son three times since he went to Afghanistan, is nearly bankrupt paying for child and spousal support, travel costs and legal fees, Glenn Sacks and divorce rights lawyer Jeffery M. Leving write in a new column.

While a recent California Supreme Court decision has made it more difficult for a spouse to move far away with children, most states do not have similar protections. Anyway, the decision was too late for Gary, whose case is based out of California.

Reservists who come home may face an even more dire situation when they switch from civilian pay to lower military pay. That’s because the federal Bradley Amendment prohibits judges from lowering child support benefits below the original amount. A drop in income doesn’t matter. Some reservists are coming home to possible felony charges and prison time if their arrears reach $5,000.

Such mistreatment from the legal system is not limited to military reservists. The courts placed two restraining orders on Christopher Kennedy of Connecticut that prevent him from seeing his children, reports The Associated Press via Newsday.

“They will not enforce a father’s motion, and they will do everything they can to rule in favor of mothers,” Kennedy tells The Associated Press. “You would honestly have to sit through a hearing to believe it yourself.”

I believe it, because it has happened to family members and friends. By court order, one relative of mine had to bring a security guard with him just to see his own three children. The distraught father had to scrimp and save for weeks at a time just to save up enough money to see his own children, before the judge finally relented. My relative’s biggest complaint? The judge automatically rules against him without even hearing his side of the story.

Some dads are beginning to fight back in this country, albeit slowly. Kennedy and other fathers, for example, are backing a bill that promotes shared parenting, which encourages judges to consider co-parenting custody arrangements. The idea is that both parents get equal time with the children. But such efforts attack the problem slowly, state by state.

Another effort, by The Indiana Rights Council, is taking a more aggressive approach by attempting an enormous nationwide class-action lawsuit. But whether the lawsuit will work is yet to be seen, and so far the press seems largely uninterested. You can read my post on the issue here, but keep in mind the dollar amounts are no longer accurate.

Just north of us, Canadian dads may be in worse shape. That’s because dads may be facing an onslaught of retroactive child support payments, reports the Calgary Sun.

It all started in Alberta courts, which decided that four dads who had been faithfully making child support guidelines owed more because of changes in income. Not new income, but increases since 1997, when Canada-wide child support guidelines were only partially implemented.

The judges fined these dads, who were not deadbeats in any way, up to $100,000 in back child support. The dads are appealing, but if they lose, fathers across Canada may have to dig deep into their wallet.

In all these cases the courts and attorneys seem determined to bankrupt dads, which results in hurting his former family as well as a new one. Which brings me back to my basic point: the Western legal system is a disaster for families.

Bad court decisions and ridiculous legal costs serve only to make dads resentful. While some men are deadbeats, did judges ever stop to think by cutting them out of family time that dads lose their vested interest in paying child support? Even if dad has limited custody rights, I’ve seen moms get away with making it impossible for some guys to see their children by claiming junior has a “cold” or a “school project.” What incentive does a dad have to pay in such situations? He still should, of course, but mistreatments as mentioned above must leave an awful lot of men feeling hopeless and bitter.

It is time for reform that does not enrich the lawyers at the expense of parents and their children. Any solution should be inclusive of dads rather than exclusive. It is time for a fair, equitable solution that protects the rights of moms, dads and most importantly, the children.

Here’s How to Cure Wal-Mart’s Lousy Health Care Coverage

Pity poor Wal-Mart employees. They make $10 an hour to work in a place where shoppers treat them like dirt; they’re blocked from unionizing at every turn; and they face sex discrimination as a matter of course if a lawsuit filed on behalf of one million women proves true.

But Wal-Mart’s greatest mistreatment of employees comes in the form of health insurance – or lack thereof. Although the company swears it provides coverage to all its “eligible” employees, Wal-Mart is clearly living in a fantasy Wonderland.

Take a Georgia survey that found more than 10,000 children of the company’s employees are in the state’s health care program, reports The New York Times. Well no wonder, since Wal-Mart helps its employees apply for government assistance.

The company, which not surprisingly refuses to reveal the full extent of how they neglect employees, insured only about 45 percent of its 537,000 workers. Costco Wholesale, on the other hand, insures 96 percent of its eligible employees. One reason for the huge difference is that full-time Costco employees become eligible for benefits after three months, while the saps working for Wal-Mart must wait six months.

Because Costco pays more on average and generally has better working conditions, employees are more likely to remain on the job and earn those benefits. And Costco employees shoulder only 8 percent of the insurance cost, while the more poorly paid Wal-Mart “associate” must pay 33 percent. But then again, that might be why Wal-Mart makes a pretax profit of 5.5 percent while Costco is stuck at 2.7 percent.

Wal-Mart shifts the health-care crisis blame, however, onto the government. Why should the largest employer in the United States sacrifice its competitive advantage? After all, executives say, it’s not fair to ask corporations to solve America’s serious social problems such as the uninsured or escalating cost of Medicare.

Sure guys. That’s why you are spending $500,000 to block passage of Proposition 72 in California, which is a government attempt to solve the problem. The ballot measure would level the playing field in California by requiring large companies to either provide affordable insurance or pay into a pool to defray the state’s costs of treating the uninsured. I know, I know, you don’t want a level playing field.

But after all is said and done, I’m going to give the billionaires at Wal-Mart an out, should they choose to take it. With 45 million uninsured in this country – most of them who are employed – it is clear that too many of America’s businesses are not up to taking care of our health needs. So instead of blaming the government for your failings, why don’t you spend some of your lobbying millions on a national health care program that covers all Americans, whether working or not? The positive press might even push customers who HATE your company into the stores, which would then boost your profit margin up to 6 percent.

Government Considers Creepy Environmental Study of Kids

Are you a parent who uses pesticides in the home? How about Teflon or Scotchguard? Would you like $970 from the government to find out if these chemicals are harming your young children? Does that sound a bit creepy?

But that’s exactly what the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing, reports The Washington Post. And just to make matters creepier, the EPA accepted $2 million from the chemical-makers’ apologist group – the American Chemical Council – to pay for part of the research, the Post reported in another story:

The study will survey 60 children over the next two years in Duval County, Fla., and collect information on their exposure to pesticides and household chemicals, such as flame retardants and perfluorinated chemicals, a family of substances in products such as Teflon and Scotchguard. Some of these chemicals have come under scrutiny for possible links to health problems.

And here’s an explanation from Carol Henry, a Chemical Council vice president, on why they want this survey done: “Exposure has been ignored for many, many years. It’s the wasteland of risk assessment. We’d like the regulatory framework to be based on a very firm scientific foundation.”

Translation: if the government study finds that our chemicals are doing bad things to children, we want to know about it first so we can either run interference on the information or begin damage control. But don’t worry, says Henry, the government will retain control of the actual findings. What a relief.

And while some EPA managers in other states are expressing concern about this whole project, Linda Sheldon, a top EPA official says that the research is needed to find out what these chemicals are doing to small children. “We are developing the scientific building blocks that will allow us to protect children.”

Wait, am I missing something here? Hasn’t the American public ALREADY been promised that these chemicals are safe in our households? And why is the EPA focusing on children under 3? Do they already suspect something is wrong?

None of these EPA administrators are too young to remember President Clinton’s 1997 apology to the eight survivors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. From 1932 to 1972, the American government conducted studies on 399 black men to see if syphilis essentially killed them in a manner different than white men.

During the experiments, a cure was found for the disease and then denied the survivors to protect the sanctity of the study. The men, who were from an extremely poor county in Alabama, were led to believe they were receiving free medical care. Many of the men suffered horribly, gave syphilis to their sexual partners or died from the disease. Here’s part of Clinton’s apology to the experiment’s victims:

The United States government did something that was wrong – deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.

And yet here we are in 2004 with the EPA considering a study that smacks of the Tuskegee Experiment. Sixty children from a poor Florida county will be used as lab rats to see if their nervous systems are being damaged by everyday household chemicals.

But there is a difference between Tuskegee and the Duval County study. Americans and people all around the globe already are using these chemicals in and around their homes on a daily basis. So in reality, all of our children are lab rats. Why take these chemicals off the market and protect our children when we have an apology already to go? A president 40 years from now can just repeat Clinton’s words and all will be forgiven.

Sperm Popularity Is Color Coded

How can a man father 101 children – even if he’s a virgin – and not know it? Easy, if he’s from Denmark he simply donates semen for money at a sperm bank, reports The New York Times.

While men can make as much as $40 a donation in Denmark and as much as $500 in the United States, many opt out because of fear that their identities may be revealed some day. But Cryos in Arhus, Denmark, has been much more successful in protecting the anonymity of it’s donors and has grown accordingly.

Although most countries limit how many children can be sired by a single donor, sperm banks can send one person’s DNA to multiple countries. That’s how one Dane wound up with 101 descendants, though I was just speculating about his unlikely virginity.

Here’s how it works, according to the Times:

Every day dozens of students here (Arhus, Denmark), and in Copenhagen, walk into Cryos International, the world’s largest sperm bank and, after undergoing a battery of tests to determine their health and fertility, make an anonymous deposit.

That deposit, frozen and eventually shipped, can make its way to as many as 40 countries. Destinations include Spain, Paraguay, Kenya, Hong Kong and New York, where the company opened an office last year to meet the demands of descendants of people from the Nordic countries.

But why is Danish sperm so popular in so many nations? Maybe it’s Nordic mystique:

“It was difficult for them to get pure Scandinavian spare parts,” said Ole Schou, the managing director of Cryos International, which operates discreetly in Arhus from an unassuming office across the street from a pet shop. “We could see there was a market.”

“It’s not that people want superchildren,” Mr. Schou said. “It’s that they want someone like them, someone they can relate to.”

Let’s get real Schou; there’s no need to hide behind code words. What you mean is your customers want white babies and Scandinavian sperm offers that implicit guarantee. Don’t worry Schou, you are engaging in a form of subtle racism that most people can’t see.