Women on welfare should not be allowed to get boob jobs.
There, I said it.
This was not a topic to which I had devoted a lot of thought. I've rarely, if ever, stood in a grocery line behind a woman using food stamps, so impressed by her saline-filled breasts that I asked for the name of her plastic surgeon.
Recently, however, I stumbled upon a woman who not only managed to afford cosmetic surgery while feeding her family with food stamps, but who literally could write the book on "How To Beat The System and Screw My Ex-Husband All In One Fell Swoop."
She disgusts me. She disgusts me to the point where I am ready to march on Washington wearing a fake-breast costume covered in food-stamp pasties while carrying a blazing copy of the Child Support Standards Act on a stick.
As Lewis Carroll wrote in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," (fitting in more ways than one), I will "Begin at the beginning."
It all started in 1989, when the Legislature enacted the Child Support Standards Act, which remains the driving force in determining parents' child support obligations.
With that body of law, the "deadbeat dad" was officially born, and Maury Povich could be heard rejoicing throughout the land.
The act was necessary for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the need to protect mothers from baby-daddies who planted their seeds without ever tending to the saplings born there from. It should be regaled for that reason alone.
Unfortunately, the act is not without its bugs, and in certain scenarios - particularly those where Dad is not a deadbeat, but rather a hard-working slob who may have fallen on hard times - the flaws in the law can truly undermine the purpose.
For example, when a mother and father live together contributing to a single household, and one spouse loses his job, neither the state, nor the court, nor Superman swoops in to shake the pockets of the non-income-producing parent. In such cases, the family sucks it up to get by. That's life. And sometimes, life doesn't include summer camp.
Once two parents live separate and apart and the non-custodial parent suffers financial hardship, there is little mercy. At this point, the custodial parent can, with the help of the court, put a boot on the ex's throat and use child support as a tool that does little to put food on the table now, and instead serves to increase the financial burden on the already strapped parent.
Compounding that is the sheer lack of oversight in ensuring the receiving parent doesn't spend the money she gets for the benefit of her children on a boob job. I don't care if she did breast feed her young. It doesn't qualify.
One mother did just that. And, this is why I am duct taping the Child Support Standards Act to a stick and dousing it in gasoline right now.
This mother took her ex-husband back to court to increase the amount of child support he was ordered to pay for the care of their 17-year-old daughter.
There wasn't much unusual about that, save for the fact that the child herself was working and well-fed. In other words, there wasn't a real need to raise the support. There was, instead, a desire for Mom to extract as much blood out of Dad as the court would allow. Shocking? Hardly. It happens all the time.
Meanwhile, Mom remained gainfully unemployed, popped Paxil, and collected public assistance. She got a free lawyer, and, get this, was charging the 17-year-old daughter for whom she was collecting child support, rent, though she and daughter were living rent free with Mom's boyfriend.
Dad fought the law, and not surprisingly, the law won.
After the hearing, Mom took her boyfriend out for a lobster dinner, and for dessert, she got breast implants. In my book, there is no bigger thief than a woman who receives assistance to feed her children, and instead uses it to feed her ego.
While the court is permitted to deviate from the Child Support Standards Act for good reason, it too often turns a blind eye to good reason. Especially in this economy, the act should be adhered to - or ignored -in a way that results in justice for all, and not as a windfall for either parent.
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