Note from Sis: Check out the number of this bill. Revealing.

SCAN THIS NEWS 7.16.2000

So you think you won't be affected 'cause you don't owe child support...

Think again.

The Orwellian Noose Tightens

According to Representative Ron Paul's aide, Norman Singleton, the House is scheduled this week to vote on the Child Support Distribution Act of 2000 sponsored by Republican Rep. Nancy L. Johnson. http://www.house.gov/nancyjohnson/

This act will tighten the Owellian noose created by the Republican Congress under their "Welfare Reform Act" of 1996. That Act amended 42USC 666, so as to create a network of linked databases designed to allow authorities to monitor each individual's every action; all accomplished through use of social security numbers.

For example, the 1996 act forced all employers in every state to report to the National Directory of New Hires the names, wages, addresses, and social security numbers of each newly hired employee. It forced each licensing agency in every state to collect the social security numbers of all applicants for all licenses, permits and certificates. It required banking and financial institutions to provide, and transmit to the state all customer account information, linked with each customer's social security number. The Act required that passports must be denied to anyone charged with owing back child support payments. It required employers to act as the state's enforcement arm by forcing them to garnish the wages of obligees. It also required the IRS to deduct unpaid child support amounts from tax refunds.

This newest act will now expand that dragnet by granting to private entities access to the same centralized databases of information originally reserved to state and federal agencies.

The purpose of the Child Support Distribution Act is to create a "bounty hunter" mentality with regard to child support enforcement. It will provide for the establishment of private enforcement goons whose business will be to track down delinquent parents and force them to pay up. The intent, at least initially, is to authorize private collection agencies to use information generated by the states in locating individuals owing past-due child support.

When the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was first being considered, all assurances were given that "only authorized government agencies" would have access to the massive amounts of personal data they would be collecting. Of course, no one in their right mind believed that.

The next step in the Orwellian scheme -- after this present bill is approved -- will be to expand the enforcement mechanisms still further. Soon thereafter, these same "locating and tracking" databases to be used to locate any and all "suspects" or "created criminals" who try to alluded authorities or escape their due punishment.

Think about the scope of this dragnet. All license information (including marriage, driver, business, occupational, recreational licenses) will be linked to all banking and financial account information, which is linked to tax records, which is linked to all employment information (including address and wages or salary), which is linked to all registration information (such as automobiles), which is linked to passport information. And now, under this bill, all of the above information will be available to private entities which will act in partnership with government as their paid enforcement arm.

What more could Hitler have dreamt of?

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You can look up the bill here if you've got the stomach: http://thomas.loc.gov/

Search for 4469 or 4678 (both of which appear to be virtually identical with only minor differences).

Scott

P.S. We won't be sending out any "action alerts" encouraging you to get your congressman to vote against this bill. Such efforts will most likely be futile. The real "big boys" are pushing this one and it will almost certainly become law one way or another. If it is not approved in its standalone version, it will simply be incorporated, at the last minute, into the final budget appropriations bill where no one will be able to find it until it is too late.

-- (sis@home.zzz), July 27, 2000

Answers

Hmmm

"So that government by the people, for the people shall not" what???

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), July 28, 2000.