Upcoming election

I had a lovely conversation with my Mother last night. We were talking about the primaries and potential presidential election. Which candidate is the best? Who should we vote for?  As I have been watching leadership and who I respect or who I want to represent me, I have been seriously wondering about the candidates themselves.  For example, one of my colleagues was serving in the State government as a representative. He invited me to sit with him while they make their votes.  He highlighted to me a vote that was about to come up related to higher education. He said that in his role in higher education he should vote this way, but his own personal feeling was to vote another.

How does he accurately vote to represent his constituents? Do they vote for him because of who he is? Or, do they vote for him to support him in his role in Higher Education? Or, do they vote for him because he represents their interests?

This causes me to think about the arguments around Bill Clinton and his indiscretions with women. He admitted he lied about having intimate relations with Monica Lewinsky. Republicans were mortified!  He had lied under oath! Later Democrats claimed that Bush lied about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  You may have heard: "Bush lied, people died." What is the role of moral character in the voting process?  Do they have to believe the same way you do on every issue? Are you more interested in their intelligence, or are you more interested in their values?

So, my last question to you is...is it OK for our candidates to be less than honest depending on what they lie about? Are we voting for their stand on the policies? Or, are we voting for the person? When it comes to family policy, what are we voting on?

I look forward to your discussion...

The role of education in government and families

One of the biggest questions we have to ask ourselves when thinking of families and social policy is who should have the responsibility to educate our children?  We can see the need for the public school system. The parents who may be undereducated can have a resource in the teachers to help them, but somewhere in the 60's or 70's, parents began to think of the school as the primary educator rather than the family.

What are your thoughts about educating our children? What about public colleges and universities? If students don't graduate from high school with the necessary skills to be successful in college, do the colleges have a responsibility to do that for them?

Lots of questions and we are just getting started!
Have a great Christmas!

News reporting and validity

I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking about how the elections are discussed in the media. One thing that surprised me was the discussion from the guest who suggested that Fox News was asking the hard questions, particularly citing Brett Baier and Bill O'Reilly.

In the past, I have had many colleagues claim that Fox News "makes up" the news; however, if you look at the NEWS programs, (not programming like Sean Hannity or even Bill O'Reilly) you will find that the cable networks (CNN, FOX) are more balanced and unbiased in their reporting than the national news networks (NBC, CBS, ABC).

I would argue that it's important to get your news from a variety of sources rather than following one alone. I LOVE to listen to NPR, watch the local news, and follow some of the Cable stations.

My big question is--  Have you considered the role of the news in your participation as citizens?

Studying families

I recently read an article discussing which companies are happiest. The first of the criteria to determine "happy" was the company's work/life balance.

I find this interesting that researchers (and companies) are starting to realize that happy employees are more productive. That means, allowing people flexibility in their work environment to manage family responsibilities. To see the article:  http://finance.yahoo.com/photos/companies-with-the-happiest-employees-1323452888-slideshow/

A GREAT reason to study families!

I'm BAAAACK!!!!

Now that we have lots of discussions between candidates and a new presidential election coming up, it's time to start the blog going again.

I just read that Mitt Romney offered Rick Perry and $10,000 bet during the last debate. The problem with this is NOT the amount of the bet, but the focus on class warfare. Romney has money. Others do not. Should we demonize those who have money? Are they all bad? Why is that the issue rather than the candidate's values on health care? Family values?

I have to confess, I am not for class warfare; however, I do agree that there are institutional problems with how money is managed. Those with money are able to get away with more than those who do not. For example, I know of a realtor who was able to take mortgage payments from a couple who bought a house from him. He was obligated to apply that mortgage payment to their home loan; however, he took the money and put it toward his over-extended lifestyle. The result was the couple lost their home to foreclosure. There were no repercussions for his theft. He is still in business.

This is an injustice that we should be paying attention to. White collar crime goes unpunished most of the time because we either don't pay attention or don't understand how it affects us until it's too late. This is the important aspect of the debate, NOT whether Mitt Romney has lots of money or that corporations pay their CEO's a bonus. If they are employing people and the wage is competitive...what's wrong with that?

Bottom line, I challenge everyone to focus on the real MEAT of the debate and not on superficial issues. We are not a democracy. We are a republic. What does that mean for our choice of candidate?

Best! I look forward to a great semester!
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Divorce issues

I just read the most troubling article in the Daily Herald.  The author documented that a mother was charged with the sexual abuse of her daughter hoping to implicate the father in a custody battle.  There is evidence of all kinds of problems with parents who are battling custody issues where the parents end up behaving badly. Parental Alienation Syndrome is one of them. I think we are seeing this more than we would like. The issues of divorce and custody are a serious problem, especially in high conflict cases. These are few and far between, but when we have parents resorting to abusing their children in custody battles, that's serious!  Representatives Tim Cosgrove and Lorie Fowlke have both tried to create legislation that reduces the damage of divorce; however, when the state gets involved in family issues, I'm not convinced that they can improve the outcome.

I am really curious about whether or not the divorce education classes make a difference in the parents behavior in the case of divorce. Is the state of Utah doing any kind of evaluation to support the divorce education classes?  Do they work? Or, we we causing parents to spend time and money that's just another hoop for them to jump through?

If you want to read the article, here's where I found the link:

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/article_13544491-50ae-558b-9ad1-6fb7ad27e27b.html

Guest worker programs and AZ-type attempts to handle illegal immigration

I have been following with interest some of the discussions about undocumented immigrants. There are more than two sides to this issue. I would like to point out that it's difficult for us to find good information on this because of the breadth of the problem. We honestly have no idea how many undocumented immigrants are in the country, but some hospital administrators are starting to document the costs of health care. Schools in Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico and others have been dealing with the costs of education for undocumented immigrants. They have to provide bilingual teachers, etc. When children aren't doing well in school, we can predict all kinds of problems.

However, on the other hand, some of the undocumented people come here thinking they can get a visa to work, or they are being manipulated by unscrupulous people. Whenever there is a policy that isn't enforced well, we will have problems with people taking advantage of the system. An excellent example of this is the slave trade system and agricultural workers. There are lots of stories about people who were lied to when coming to this country and then are abused, beaten, raped, etc. They can't report their injuries if they are undocumented. So, what to do?

Representative Bill Wright and others are debating these problems on Capitol Hill as we speak. Check out this story if you are interested.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=833&sid=14404836

There are hosts of other stories on this topic. It would be interesting to see if we can collect a bunch of them to attempt to understand the many sides of the undocumented immigrants.

Best!

First Family Impact Seminar

 Representative Drexler

From right: Lynn Wardle. Judge Kimberly Hornak, Ray Wahl

Representative Christine Watkins

Lori Fowlke

Lori Fowlke, Gloria Danziger, Ray Wahl, Judge Kimberly Hornak

Utah's First Family Impact Seminar is History!

For our first Family Impact Seminar (FIS), we discussed the Unified Family Courts (UFC) model. We had representatives from the Juvenile Justice System provide information describing how our Juvenile Justice System in Utah "gets it" when it comes to family courts issues.

I found the discussion quite interesting! The UFC model is an attempt to keep family issues in the same court with the same judge. Utah is considered NOT to have a UFC system because it's not completely family oriented even though it is family driven. It's interesting how the two models are similar and different at the same time.  Speakers Gloria Danziger from the University of Baltimore Law School, Lynn Wardle from the BYU Law School, Lorie Fowlke, former House Representative, Ray Wahl and Judge Kimberly Hornak all spoke and did a fantastic job! The interesting outcome is that many of the speakers and discussants want to continue discussions! I am excited to see what happens as a result.

We didn't have as many legislators as I hoped. However, we did have some key people attend the seminar and lots of interest. I will be creating materials discussing the outcome and sending to all legislators.

It was an exciting, exhausting and exhilarating experience!  I hope you can all come to our next event! I'll post pictures as I can get them uploaded.

Value of being involved

I've been listening to the discussions about the rioting in Tunisia.  For years, those living in Tunisia have felt that they don't have a voice in their government. The rioting started because a young man wasn't able to get a job, so he set up a stand to make money. The government shut his stand down and, in protest, he committed suicide.

It's an interesting situation when people aren't allowed to speak their mind or have a say in how they are governed. Part of what is helping the people of Tunisia is the electronic age where they can tweet or send messages to find out what's going on.

It's critical that we be a part of our government. Regardless of your values, your politics, etc, take an opportunity to voice your concerns. Be aware. Share your voice or your voice will not be heard.  Tunisia is hoping for new government. Let's not get to that point!

FAMILY IMPACT SEMINAR!!!

We are getting down to the last two weeks of the seminar. I am working on booking our reservations for our guest speaker. Once we are sure she is ready, I'll announce her name and provide information about her. I am very excited that she is willing to come talk with our legislature about Family Courts!

I am also currently seeking volunteers for the seminar. It would be great if any of my current or former family policy students would like to attend. Or, if you are just interested in the legislative process, this would be a great opportunity to see how things work! I need to create a list of volunteers and get your name on the list for lunch.

Please send me your email information if you are interested. The seminar is held from 12:00 to 2:00 in the Auditorium at the state capitol building. If you could be there at about 10:00 for a brief training and assignments for the seminar, that would be great!

my email address is:  susan.talley@usu.edu