The biggest shared parenting story of the year has entered its final week in North Dakota. The bar associations and their allies have begun their media blitz to defeat the Shared Parenting Initiative.
Mitch Sanderson and the North Dakota Coalition for Families and Children are fighting a David and Goliath battle that has already sent shock waves throughout the divorce industry. Not surprisingly, divorce operatives are now pulling out all the stops during the final week to defeat the Initiative.
The only opponents of this Initiative are those who profit from family breakup and fatherless children: lawyers, judges, social workers and other bureaucrats, child support enforcement agents, domestic violence lobbies, and feminist groups. Because they have no substantive arguments to wield against the measure, they resort to insulting personal attacks against the citizens who have collected thousands of signatures to place the measure on the ballot.
Here is what Mitch and the NDCFC are up against:
- The wealthy bar associations have begun an all-out media campaign to protect the profits they acquire by destroying families and encouraging fatherless homes.
- The state’s Division of Human Services has again been caught using taxpayers’ money to lobby against the Initiative. DHS director Carol Olson has already admitted such practices when she directed DHS employees to stop using government, taxpayer-financed time for political purposes, in violation of North Dakota law and standard ethical principles.
- The federal government has also been caught using taxpayer-funded government resources to lobby against the citizen Initiative. This is a flagrant violation of federal law, the constitutional division between federal and state government, and standard ethics. HHS Deputy Secretary Dr. Wade Horn has likewise corrected misinformation propagated by his region administrator, but much of the damage has been done.
The big guns of bar associations and state and federal bureaucrats are being trained on this Initiative. The stakes are even bigger than shared parenting and the American family, important as those are. They have upped the ante to the point where the issue is now American democracy itself and the power of an out-of-control federal tax-and-patronage apparatus to thwart democracy, suppress lawful citizen initiative, and destroy the republican institutions and participatory democracy for which this nation has long been a shining beacon.
Yet the response from family defenders across the country and even in neighboring states has been less than overwhelming. If you cannot go in person to help, what Mitch and his allies need more than anything during this last week is money. The financial power of the bar associations is massive. As a political scientist, I can attest that referenda are usually won by the side that has the most money to saturate the media, and no law requires that they tell the truth. Measures that begin with huge popular support are often defeated by well-funded special interests.
In this case, the bar associations are using precisely the same tactics politically that they use in the courtroom: Plant doubt in the public’s minds. Spread misinformation which, however inaccurate, nevertheless creates fear. Slander the opposition and innocent people. And if all else fails – if you are a state or federal bureaucrat – break the law.
To contribute to the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative, go to http://www.ndspi.org. You can contact Mitch Sanderson and the North Dakota Coalition for Families and Children at their website: info@ndspi.org.
Stephen Baskerville is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (www.acfc.org). His latest major article, “Politics and Same-Sex Marriage,” is published in the November-December issue of Society, a journal of the social sciences.
