[Rhodes22-list] Could I Have Another Helping of Big Government, Please?

[Brad Haslett]

Herb,

Good point! That reminds me of when I flew for a commuter airline and was
ramp checked one day.  I showed the examiner our log books and all the
deferred items I was dealing with and the questionable airworthiness issues
on this particular bird.  He just shrugged.  A few months later I left and
was flying a Cessna Citation jet on a charter certificate.  We had our
maintenance done at the factory, our training at Flight Safety, and ran a
spic-and-span little operation.  The same examiner ramp-checked us once a
week (our office was right next door).  I got pissed one day and called his
bluff.  "You only check us because you know we're clean and you can fill
your paperwork drill without having to get into any messy situations".  He
just shrugged.

Brad

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 7:35 PM, Herb Parsons <hparsons at parsonsys.com>
wrote:

> I'd love to see the exact times of this incident noted, and a study done
> tracking how many children where shown to be abused during the same time
> period.
>
>
> Brad Haslett wrote:
> > You would think after the almost three years of post-Katrina Gubment
> > bullshit I've witnessed I'd be immune to this stuff.  Nope, it still
> pisses
> > me off.  By all means, let's have mo Gubment to "help us". Maybe it's
> just
> > an age related cranky thing, but you folks who think you need mo gubment
> in
> > your lives deserve it.  Keep it out of mine, thank you very much.  Brad
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > BRIAN DICKERSONHard lemonade, hard priceDad's oversight at Tigers game
> lands
> > son in foster care
> >
> > BY BRIAN DICKERSON • FREE PRESS COLU
> >
> > If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called
> > Mike's Hard Lemonade.
> >
> > And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of
> their
> > 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family
> watches
> > much television.
> >
> > The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have
> > known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a
> > lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's
> > ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got
> up to
> > speed on the commercial beverage industry.
> >
> > Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
> >
> > Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University
> of
> > Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be
> > excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with
> the
> > Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.
> >
> > The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade
> > existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to
> their
> > seats in Section 114.
> >
> > "I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of
> Ann
> > Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I
> expected
> > when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."
> >
> > But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park
> > security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.
> >
> > "You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.
> >
> > "You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but
> the
> > security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.
> > Mistake or child neglect?
> >
> > An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer
> at
> > Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had
> > dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.
> >
> > Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police
> > officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the
> boy
> > admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.
> >
> > The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the
> hard
> > lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood
> less
> > than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats
> > detected no trace of alcohol.
> >
> > "Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he
> is
> > cleared to go home."
> >
> > But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's
> wife,
> > U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and
> > nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own
> house.
> >
> > And if you think nothing so ludicrous could happen to your family, maybe
> you
> > should pay a little less attention to who's getting booted from "Dancing
> > with the Stars" and a little more to how the state agency responsible
> for
> > protecting Michigan's children is going about its work.
> > Doing their duty
> >
> > Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded
> the
> > state was probably overreacting.
> >
> > The sympathetic cop who interviewed Ratte and his son at the hospital
> said
> > she was convinced what happened had been an accident, but that her
> > supervisor was insisting the matter be referred to Child Protective
> > Services.
> >
> > And Ratte thought the two child protection workers who came to take Leo
> away
> > seemed more annoyed with the police than with him. "This is so
> unnecessary,"
> > one told Ratte before driving away with his son.
> >
> > But there was really nothing any of them could do, they all said. They
> were
> > just adhering to protocol, following orders.
> >
> > And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying
> > himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective
> > Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk
> outside,
> > wondering when they'd see their little boy again.
> > A vain rescue mission
> >
> > Child Protective Services is the unit of the Michigan Department of
> Human
> > Services responsible for intervening when someone suspects a child is
> being
> > abused, neglected or endangered. Its powers include the authority to
> remove
> > children from their homes and transfer them to foster parents who answer
> > only to the state.
> >
> > By law, CPS officials are forbidden to discuss the particulars of any
> > investigation.
> >
> > But Mike Patterson, Child and Family Services director for the Wayne
> County
> > district that includes Comerica Park, said that in general his agency's
> > discretion is limited once police obtain a court order to remove a child
> > from the parental home -- usually authorized, as in Leo's case, by a
> > juvenile court referee responding to a police officer's recommendation.
> >
> > "Once the court has authorized a child's removal," Patterson told me,
> "we
> > cannot return the child to the parental custody" until the court has
> OK'd
> > it.
> >
> > But that doesn't explain why CPS refused to release Leo to the custody
> of
> > two aunts -- one a social worker and licensed foster parent -- who drove
> all
> > night from New England to take custody of their nephew.
> >
> > Chris Ratte's sisters, Catherine Miller and Felicity Ratte, left
> > Massachusetts at 10:30 the night of the fateful lemonade purchase after
> the
> > police officer who'd reluctantly requested a removal order told Ratte
> the
> > state would likely jump at the chance to place Leo with responsible
> > relatives. But when the two women arrived at the CPS office early
> Sunday, a
> > caseworker explained they would not be allowed to see Leo until they had
> > secured a hotel room.
> >
> > The sisters quickly complied. But by the time they returned to CPS
> around
> > 10:30 a.m., their nephew had been taken to an undisclosed foster home,
> where
> > he would remain until a preliminary court hearing the following
> afternoon.
> >
> > By that Monday, April 7, when Ratte and his wife returned for a meeting
> with
> > Latricia Jones, the CPS caseworker assigned to their case, no one in the
> > family had been able to talk to Leo for a day and a half.
> > More investigation needed
> >
> > At a hearing later that day, Jones recommended that Leo remain in foster
> > care until she had completed her investigation, a process she estimated
> > would take several days. It was only after the assistant attorney
> general
> > who represented CPS admitted that the state was not interested in
> pursuing
> > the case aggressively that juvenile referee Leslie Graves agreed to
> release
> > Leo to his mother -- on the condition that Ratte himself relocate to a
> > hotel.
> >
> > Finally, at a second hearing three days later, Graves dismissed the
> > complaint and permitted Ratte to move home.
> >
> > Don Duquette, a U-M law professor who directs the university's Child
> > Advocacy Law Clinic, represented Ratte and his wife. He notes
> sardonically
> > that the most remarkable thing about the couple's case may be the
> relative
> > speed with which they were reunited with Leo.
> >
> > Duquette says the emergency removal powers of CPS, though
> "well-intentioned"
> > are "out of control and partly responsible for the large numbers of kids
> in
> > the foster care system," which is almost universally acknowledged to be
> > badly overburdened.
> >
> > Ratte and his wife have filed a formal complaint with the CPS
> ombudsman's
> > office.
> >
> > "I have apologized to Leo from the bottom of my heart for the silly
> mistake
> > that got him into this mess," Ratte wrote in the complaint. "But I have
> also
> > told him that what happened afterward was an even bigger error, and I
> would
> > like to be able to say to him that institutions, like people, can learn
> from
> > their mistakes."
> >
> > *Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-351-3697 or
> > bdickerson at freepress.com<
> http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/COL04/mailto:bdickerson@freepress.com
> >
> > .*
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> >
> >
> >
>
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