Do not call

Trying to get a bit of value out of my federal tax dollars...

Here's a complaint logged at FCC.gov; let's see how well they do.

The below is from my cell phone's call log.

 I cannot tell whether it is the same company or two separate companies. Each time the call, I try to determine who it is, but it is in Spanish. 

I block the number on my cell phone. Then they call back from another number.

I have no outstanding debt and good credit, and I've not even been able to determine what company is making these calls, please stop these calls.

They appear to own the entire 512-351-XXXX block, and probably also the entire 214-430-XXXX block.

These are some of the numbers they've called from:

214-430-9876 (2014/09/08 11:32:00)
214-430-0111 (2014/09/08 10:28)
214-430-6654 (2014/09/05 13:33)
214-430-3323 (2014/09/04 20:28)
214-430-8822 (2014/09/04 18:16)
214-430-8765 (2014/09/02 09:19)

512-351-6864 (2014/08/26 11:27)
512-351-9771 (2014/08/25 16:10)
512-351-1242 (2014/08/25 10:01)
512-351-7027 (2014/08/19 16:13)

...the list goes on.

I have had my cell phone number for at least 4 years. These have been going on for at least one year.

...of course, the caller-ID's could all be fake. Curiously, though, the call will continue from the same number until I add that number to my "reject" list.

Greg Abbott, Attorney General, where are you?

Will Mr. Abbott please address the obvious deficiencies in the Attorney General's office?  Here are a few from experience with the Child Support division; there are surely more:

1. Most significantly, if my ex-spouse fails to complete her paperwork, or completes it incorrectly or omits data, the OAG holds me liable for any presumed non-compliance, threatens sanctions and legal action.  Even if I am able to provide proof that I am in compliance (such as copies of endorsed processed checks and bank statements), they will not accept that. However, what incentive does an estranged ex-spouse have to take any action (let alone timely action) to produce correct and proper documentation that demonstrates my compliance?  This is fundamentally broken and fails the common-sense test, let alone a presumption of innocence and burden of proof!
2. If I am paid bi-weekly, then the OAG divides my annual child support obligation by 12 to calculate my monthly obligation, but divides by 26 to calculate my withholding out of each paycheck. Thus, often I receive a warning notice that I am in arrears with a balance due, even though I have never missed a payment and it is auto-deducted. Their systems should be able to handle this case.
3. If my attorney has ever contacted the OAG, they refuse to speak to me, even though I am ultimately the customer.
4. In this day of technology and on-line banking, there is still not a simple on-line bill-payment option; every other payee I have in my life has a simple on-line payment option.  All of the available options for the OAG either require a check in the mail, their own broken paycheck deduction system (see note for #1 above), or dollar and process limitations.  The narrow list of allowed providers wreaks of cronyism -- there is no reason one should not be able to do direct-pay from a bank account, or electronic check, or on-line debit payment.

Respectfully,
A Proud and Engaged Texas Father

Child Support Distribution Unit -- Just a few of the things that don't work

Thank you, Attorney General Greg Abbott.  I could never vote Democrat, but you sure make it harder to vote for a Republican, in your case. (The Child Support Division of the Office of the Attorney General falls under Mr. Abbott.)

This is just a short list of some of the hiccups I've run in to; now I know how people in the prison system and immigration system feel: you're a customer of sorts, but they don't care about customer service, presume you're guilty/undesirable, and they have so much power over your future that you can't hope to improve things.

If they have an administrative glitch on their end, they do not call you about it -- they send a nasty letter about how you are behind, and you will be penalized, sanctioned, have wages garnished, etc.  
You are treated as a criminal and delinquent dirt-bag, rather than presumed innocent or given an honest inquiry.

There are child support division offices all around the state of Texas. But you cannot make payment at them (by check, money order, debit or credit card).  
Checks can be mailed to the CSDU in San Antonio only... of course, this relies on the USPS, and if USPS loses your check, it is the same to the OAG as if you never made payment.  Further, this means that if you're in a pinch, you can't wait until payday and walk in at your local office -- you have to mail the check several days earlier.
 
You also cannot, in this day and age, make simple and direct payment electronically, as you would with your utilities and other services.  
There is much made on the website of the new payment options.  Those all have serious limitations: you cannot pay by credit or debit card -- even with a surcharge. That's right, it's easier to make payments with walmart.com -- even with the Tx Drivers License division -- than with the OAG. There are a few third parties through whom payment may be made at locations such as Walgreen's; but these still require special payment on your part, and are limited to several hundred dollars -- potentially far below your monthly obligation; and these, of course, have fees.  So, why can the OAG not accept payment by online E-check, by debit card, by direct bank bill-pay, by credit card (with a surcharge) and even PayPal?  I think someone lobbied here to ensure that you can only pay through certain channels to profit certain businesses.  OAG is harder to work with than your local city water utility, which allows online bill-pay.

You probably cannot even log in to the web site in order to check your status. 
In order to log in to the OAG CSDU web site, you require a "CIN", and a "PIN."  They do not provide the CIN to you when your case is created -- you have to request it.  Call them on the phone, and ask "Hi, I need to know the login information for my account; can you please help?"  "We're not allowed to give that to you over the phone. We can only send it to your mail."  ...because USPS is more secure than phone?  And they authenticate you on the phone with only your name, your ex-spouse's name, and your social security name... all information that your ex-spouse would readily have.
 
They will not get you the information that they say they will get to you.   
I called and asked for my CIN at least twice -- never received it in the mail. I sent an email to their support email address, listed on their web site, and I never received any reply of any kind.

The "I can't log in and I need my CIN" web page does not work at all.  You enter the information they require (your SSN, birth date and child's birth date), and you get an error that "We were unable to ..."  There were several things that did not work on the web site.
 
Even when you actually have the information, they won't confirm it for you. 
They had me give them my Member ID number.  I gave that.  Then I said, "I can't log in; I guess I need to verify my CIN".  "I can't tell you if that is your CIN.  I can mail it to you.  You should receive your CIN some time in the next few days."  ...nobody at any time would confirm to me that the CIN is the Member ID number. ...that would have cleared up a lot. The real problem for me was browser-related.  Oh, and Google had sent me to the custodial parent login, rather than the non-custodial login... the difference is not obvious if you don't know that they are different pages.
 
They may not even talk to you about the status of your case.   
Call into the customer service line. "If you have an attorney representing you, then we cannot talk to you about your case; that is policy."   "But that doesn't make any sense: the attorney works for me, how can you not speak to me? ...and I'm only asking for information and help to log in through the website."  "We're not supposed to talk to you."

They leave your attorney on hold... at $250 per hour or so out of your pocket, and then give conflicting answers.
What they told my attorney about providing proof of payment was apparently not entirely correct.  But they did put her on hold until she had to hang up as a practical matter.

To continue feeding the beast, or not?

#StarveTheBeast
Please like/share if you think that this is at least worthy of discussion.

I believe that if I financially support evil, then I am a part of that evil, and that evil stains my soul.  I believe that God expects us not participate in evil -- more than that, to peacefully, at least, stand for right.

Is this the year you and I decide to stop participating in...
* paying for peoples' abortions and organizations that advocate for and fund them,
* paying for the NSA, CIA, and other institutions to unlawfully invade your personal effects and private communication,
* paying other people for not working for years,

Is this the year you decide to not file, to not pay the IRS any more than a reasonable flat tax to fund the legitimate purposes of government? Or will you (and I) continue to sustain and participate in corruption by:
* paying for Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi and others' personal jets for work and for personal travel,
* paying for the destruction of the family, especially in inner-city and minority communities, and the general destruction of personal initiative,
* paying for unconstitutional institutions who saddle your family and your employer with burdensome and illegal regulations with which it is impossible for you to comply simply by virtue of the immensity, expansiveness and convolution of those regulations, thereby making you a criminal,
* paying for the power elite to rob your children and grandchildren of their future, to pillage your savings through deliberate devaluation of the dollar, to make you and all generations of your posterity dependent on the state for sustenance,
* paying for unlawful wars (such as in Libya) where the patriotic devotion of our fathers, brothers and sisters, and children, is abused, and where they are made to pay the ultimate price... while also paying for institutions and policies that remove your personal and natural right to legitimate defense of self, family and property,
* paying the bureaucracies, like the IRS and ATF, that unlawfully bully regular citizens who are exercising their lawful and constitutional privileges, meanwhile, even as their misdeeds are publicly known and documented, nobody goes to jail for it,
* paying for a system that gives lip service to "equal protection", meanwhile placing greater burdens on those who sew and reap more, that by policy and sometimes law places some persons above others based on race, gender, or even occupation, where some 'are more equal than others',
* paying for the government to propagandize its policies and initiatives,
* paying for entities with mandates such as the betterment of education, elimination of dependance on foreign energy, but that in every case have failed except to standardize on and promote mediocracy, even while their spending grows every year.
* paying for a leviathon that has the power to destroy you and your family, likewise to lock the doors of your business, to take all that you have, even to place you in internment camps (and has done so twice in the last one hundred years), without trial or conviction,
* paying for an organization that, while removing your personal and natural rights to place them in the hands of officials -- some elected some appointed, and some career bureaucrats-- that organization is also ceding its own sovereignty to outside organizations where you have no power or influence through the ballot, and thus no recourse by which to curb abuse,
* paying for a beast that has so compromised the marketplace and the currency, that power elite can engage in repeated pump-and-dumps, creating economic bubble after bubble, while each consequential crash resulting in consequences only for those who are not members of the club, as well as a new rash each time of additional laws and regulation, additional compromise of the marketplace,
* paying for a system that does not abide its own founding, defining, and instantiating document, nor the bounds set for its existence at its creation, who was established as a federation of entities, but has grown to see itself as the sole arbiter of its own rights and power... and who labels those people a threat who suggest that it should abide its own rules,
* paying to support a system of laws, policies, and people that are in general, if judged purely by their fruits (as only God can judge their souls), evil.

...in short, are you and I only going to continue to fund evil through the sweat of our brow, taking bread from the table of our children, to pay for the political and bureaucratic elite to lie to and abuse us, and steal from our future?  Or do we, as Daniel in the time of old, simply and peacefully, cling to our principles, and leave the matter in the hands of God, no matter the consequences?  (For creating the universe, giving us life, sustaining us daily, all that Almighty God asks is 10% of our earnings as a tithe.  What is the national government doing that it demands more than God?)

Where do you stand?  Words or deeds?  Though I know what the right thing clearly is, I find it very hard to do the right thing.

I long to say and feel the courage of our fathers and of the man E.T.Benson, who said, "I'd rather be dead than lose my liberty."

Christians believe in rendering unto Caesar, and in being subject to kings, etc. ...but we believe that this nation's founding (and the revolutionary war that made it possible) was directed and inspired by God, albeit through imperfect men and women. And we know that God expects us to obey His laws.  And how can we suppose that the people of this country will experience the personal reformation (return to virtue) necessary to restore this country if there is not the conflict that arises from simply doing what is right? (And by conflict, I mean the ripples and eddies that are present in any current past and around an immovable pillar of support; I do not mean armed conflict.) Things improve, it seems as one looks at history, only after struggle of some kind... think MLK, Gandhi, even the Magna Carta.

If doing what is right flies in the face of a law, then is not that law, by definition, unjust, and worthy of nullification by noncompliance?

I know that it is natural to be afraid, but I know that fear is not a valid excuse to participate in evil.  And a search of the KJV Bible for "lukewarm" tells us how God feels about failing to take a stand, whether for better or for worse.

I know that one or a few of us, standing alone, will be destroyed, even as others who look on from the sideline will tsk-tsk and shake their heads, because the eventual consequences were easily foreseen.  I know that a single mighty redwood will be felled by a very modest storm.  But I know that many redwoods, though their roots are shallow, can withstand the tempest.
 
...I know that the more you feed the beast, the larger, bolder, and more invasive it becomes; but if you can starve the beast, it will eventually weaken and diminish after first lashing out.
 
Though the heavens fall, though we be persecuted or imprisoned as upstanding people often have been in history, we should do the right thing.  I don't know whether I can - I know that I will lose my children; but in keeping my children, I have taught them how to compromise principles out of cowardice, how to exercise moral relativism and to be morally timid.  The right thing is the right thing, regardless of consequences.  Is it time to stand for principle?  If the facts of the above are not in question, then is there a fault in the reasoning?  Are you ready to stand? Or do you need more time to brace yourself?  What do you say?

I know this is rough, it's a first pass; others could say it better. But, I've got work to do, to feed my children. And, here you have it, it is what it is.  Please do share if it's worthy of discussion... your friends may think you're crazy for it, but then they'll always think I'm far crazier.