BREAKING NEWS:   Governor Butch Otter is expected to call a special session of the legislature to try and pass the Idaho version of the UIFSA which call for state participation in The Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance.  Idaho Statesman

There is a mal­a­dy that affects insti­tu­tions whether they be cor­po­ra­tions, gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cies, non-prof­its, it doesn’t mat­ter.  The mal­a­dy is insti­tu­tion­al iner­tia.  It occurs when an insti­tu­tion has been oper­at­ing for many years with an estab­lished sys­tem of oper­a­tion.   Any sug­ges­tion of change is met with, “this is the way we do it”; “this is the way we have always done it”.   For the peo­ple inside the sys­tem, it’s rather like being in a trench.  They see only one way to go and it’s the way they’ve always gone.

Over the past month, I’ve been work­ing on an issue con­cern­ing uni­form leg­is­la­tion pro­duced by the Nation­al Con­fer­ence of Com­mis­sion­ers on Uni­form State Laws (NCCUSL) – more com­mon­ly known as the Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion (ULC).  They are locat­ed in Chica­go, Illi­nois.   The leg­is­la­tion writ­ten by the ULC is an update to the Uni­form Inter­state Fam­i­ly Sup­port Act of 2008 (UIFSA).   The require­ment imposed on the states by fed­er­al extor­tion (with­hold­ing pro­gram funds) is that all states must replace their exist­ing law with the updat­ed ver­sion of UIFSA.  The updat­ed ver­sion includes ref­er­ence to an inter­na­tion­al treaty called the Con­ven­tion on the Inter­na­tion­al Recov­ery of Child Sup­port and Oth­er Forms of Fam­i­ly Main­te­nance con­clud­ed at The Hague on Novem­ber 23, 2007.   Sim­ply stat­ed, what this leg­is­la­tion does is to cre­ate a glob­al sys­tem of Child Sup­port Enforce­ment under inter­na­tion­al law.  It effec­tive­ly trans­fers sov­er­eign­ty of a process of gov­ern­ment to a Spe­cial Com­mis­sion appoint­ed by the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Hague Con­fer­ence on Pri­vate Inter­na­tion­al Law. 

For over a cen­tu­ry there has been a move­ment to build an inter­na­tion­al sys­tem of law that began with bor­der issues between nation-states.   Andrew Carnegie built the Palace of Peace at The Hague to pro­vide a per­ma­nent loca­tion for the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Arbi­tra­tion that was estab­lished by treaty in 1899.  Tak­ing our think­ing about our coun­try back to the late 1800’s, if the intent was to build an inter­na­tion­al sys­tem of law, the first order of busi­ness would have been to build a uni­form sys­tem of nation­al law first – and then to inte­grate that nation­al law into the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem.   The Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion was found­ed in 1892 and since that time, they have been writ­ing uni­form law for the states with the states bend­ing to fed­er­al pres­sure – ced­ing their inde­pen­dence and ours to the col­lec­tive that we call the Unit­ed States.   Regard­less of the sig­nif­i­cance of the child sup­port issue in terms of the big pic­ture of things, the point is that the Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion has moved to the inter­na­tion­al are­na and is writ­ing law ced­ing the inde­pen­dence of our nation to the glob­al col­lec­tive cen­tered in Europe.   QED — it is … what it is.

The ques­tion is, what are we going to do about it?   My sug­ges­tion is that we put a stop to it NOW and that we shut down this sedi­tious oper­a­tion of “har­mo­niza­tion and inte­gra­tion into inter­na­tion­al law” through the cal­ci­fied sys­tem of uni­form state law.    If you don’t think there is a need, then con­sid­er this – how inde­pen­dent are the states from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment?    How much does the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment rule our lives?   How many obnox­ious, offen­sive and oppres­sive laws has the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment put on us?    Do you think the glob­al col­lec­tive sys­tem of law run by Euro­pean social­ists and com­mu­nists will make things any bet­ter?   Will we have any more con­trol over gov­ern­ment?   Will we have an eas­i­er time of deal­ing with an inter­na­tion­al bureau­cra­cy than we do with the fed­er­al and state bureaucracies?

In Ida­ho, the leg­is­la­tion writ­ten by the Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion to pro­vide mod­el leg­is­la­tion for the Uni­form Inter­state Fam­i­ly Sup­port Act of 2008 (UIFSA) was in Sen­ate Bill 1067.  It failed here due to the quick action on the part of the grass roots activists and the brav­ery of nine Ida­ho leg­is­la­tors who refused to suc­cumb to insti­tu­tion­al pres­sure that stopped the bill in the Ida­ho House Judi­cia­ry Committee.

The leg­is­la­tures in all the states are being extort­ed to put this mod­el leg­is­la­tion into their state law.  The Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion has a web­page on the sta­tus of this leg­is­la­tion along with the bill num­bers in the respec­tive states (below the map).   We need a nation­al effort to stop this leg­is­la­tion and to get it repealed in the states where it was slipped into law with­out notice.

It should be not­ed that in some states where it has passed, they have includ­ed an amend­ment or two.  Those amend­ments don’t change the essen­tial, objec­tion­able ele­ments of the leg­is­la­tion.  The issue is includ­ing our states into the sys­tem of inter­na­tion­al law through the inclu­sion of a spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to The Hague Con­ven­tion that lim­its the juris­dic­tion of our state courts and forces them to rec­og­nize for­eign court (tri­bunal) orders.

The states where it was intro­duced but has not yet passed include:
Alaba­ma                               Louisiana
Alas­ka                                    Maryland
Cal­i­for­nia                              Nebraska
Col­orado                               New Hampshire
Con­necti­cut                         North Carolina
Hawaii                                    Oregon
Illi­nois                                    South Carolina
Indi­ana Texas
Iowa                                       Vermont
Kansas                                   Washington

The states where it has not been intro­duced include:

Michi­gan
Ohio
Pennsylvania
New York
Massachusetts
Rhode Island (? Can’t tell – it’s too small)
New Jersey
Delaware

If you live in any of the above states and you care about our nation­al and state sov­er­eign­ty, please con­tact ALL of your grass roots orga­ni­za­tions and call their atten­tion to this leg­is­la­tion.  The orga­ni­za­tions that should have an inter­est would be the Tea Par­ty, 9–12, Eagle Forum, Oath Keep­ers, the Three Per­cent, John Birch Soci­ety just to name a few.    Tell them, this is not about child sup­port.  This is about independence.

Vicky Davis
April 29, 2015