Two-Tiered Society

Many days I am in court, representing indigent children who are wards of the state, foster children. My job is to ensure that they are cared for properly and have a voice in the courtroom. Over the years, I have worked as a prosecutor enforcing domestic violence laws, hate crimes laws as well as white collar cases like Medicaid Fraud. More and more each day, I believe that we have created a two-tiered society. Clearly, the upper tier contains those we have managed to get an education and find a job and maintain some semblance of a family life. Naturally at the upper end of that tier are the very wealthy. At the lower end are those who have scratched and clawed their way into the tier and are hanging on for dear life.

But then, there is the remainder, the other tier, and that is what concerns me. We have created a permanent underclass of our society, our country who costs us millions and billions, for foster care, programs for mental health, addiction, domestic violence, for therapists for these abused and neglected children, for incarceration of parents who engage in the abuse or neglect, or for the children who grow up repeating the cycle. The movies and television shows cannot accurate depict what is truly happening in our court system. Every so often we will hear about a particularly horrific case that captures our attention for a brief moment before Charlie Sheen or Lindsey Lohan comes back in the news. We send money overseas to fix other societies but don't fix our own.

The crazy part to me is that no one really studies this. What works? What doesn't work? What is less expensive and better? Wouldn't long term studies make sense, especially in these economic times. It seems as though we just keep throwing money at the problem without really knowing what works. Birth control - shouldn't there be a requirement if someone is receiving public assistance and so much economic and social support? Don't we need to stop having children when we can't support them physically, emotionally, financially?

I know, I know, what the Supreme Court says. Forcibly sterilizing someone is wrong. Too much big brother is wrong. But somehow we need to rescue our society from this mess. We need to really study this, as did Daniel Patrick Moynihan at various times in his career. Not some presidential commission, but social scientists, sociologists and psychologists, and MPAs and figure out what works, where to put our money, how to stop this freight train of disfunction.

Stop.