Virginia Books

An indictment of Virginia's child support parenting adjustment
A Book Review by Roger F. Gay
For Men's News Daily and Fathering Magazine
This review is available with links at:<...Support's Wacky Math is a book about the way that Virginia and other states modify child support orders in consideration of visitation and shared parenting. It promises two things; to prove that the formula is grossly in error, and to show how reality gets lost and logic muddled in the overly political process that now dominates the child support system. It delivers on both promises with room to spare.

The author is a divorced father of "four wonderful children" and a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel. He is also a child of divorce. Robert W. Ingalls wrote the book because he feels obligated to his children who he admits are the joy of his life. He recognizes the pain that divorce causes children and the pattern of interference that millions of fathers encounter in their efforts to remain good parents.

In response, he applied career skills in math and logic to analyze the parenting adjustment formula. He found influential recommendations from the Virginia Bar Association to be logically and mathematically flawed and shows that their errors were intentional. Their recommendations amount to special interest politics rather than honest analysis.

Virginia, like most states, uses the "Income-Shares formula" for calculating child support amounts. The Income-Shares model has an explicit goal of increasing child support orders to two and a half times what they had been under established child support law. The name "Income-Shares" suggests redistributing parental income rather than providing support for children.

The idea of a shared parenting adjustment is to reduce the amount that paying parents are ordered to pay in recognition of the time they spend caring (and paying) for their children directly. The Income-Shares adjustment begins with a calculation that increases a paying parent's financial obligation to the other parent.

To some, the calculation may seem strange and invalid from the start. To others, the author points out, it can seem logical on the surface. If two households are involved doesn't that mean more expenses? But the underlying logic of this particular formula, he explains, is to get the result that the designer wants rather than an honest balancing of the books. It is illogical to reason that a payer's financial obligation to the other parent increases in recognition of his own expenses. The result is inadequate adjustment to child support orders. In most cases there is no reduction at all.

As obvious as the problem may seem to some, the debate has raged for more than a decade and this logical error and many like it are still policy. In an effort to reach the broadest possible audience, two prehistoric gentlemen are called upon early in the book to illustrate a basic point. Caveman Vinney invented the wheel and manufactures them. His cousin Grog sells them. Should Grog account honestly for his inventory or falsify his numbers to create the business picture that he wants? Lying about the numbers or applying flawed logic leads to problems. From there the book moves to a steadily paced demonstration of the wackiness of the Virginia parenting adjustment. If similar evidence was presented against Grog's wheel business it would undoubtedly be investigated by the Bedrock Securities and Exchange Commission, leading to Grog's indictment.

How should the child support problem be addressed? I place particular importance on an overlying theme of this book. "Mathematics is about logic and relationships," he writes. "Just because you can 'do the math' does not necessarily mean that the solution or formula or algorithm or whatever you call it is correct, even if every time you work the numbers the value arrives at the same answer. It has to have meaning."

Virginia statues have previously been criticized for leaving the term "child support" undefined; the ultimate absence of meaning. Avoiding meaning; meaningful definition, meaningful logic, meaningful data, was an essential part of the process of developing the Income-Shares guideline. Yet, too often I have seen well-intentioned experts repeat the process as though it will unlock a hidden secret and lead to improvement. At the end of Child Support's Wacky Math is a fitting quote from Albert Einstein. "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it." Good problem solving starts at the beginning and proceeds logically.

I suspect that Child Support's Wacky Math is the kind of book that many paying parents would like to write. An average father is no stranger to bill-paying and might even show stereotypical irritation when his dilapidated old wallet is beaten too hard. That irritation can only get stronger when it threatens the precious time divorced parents share with their children.

Putting together an integrated view of the child support issue that includes basic wisdom, logic, mathematics, and politics is not an easy task. Robert Ingalls was motivated to focus on one part of the child support formula, the shared parenting adjustment, because of the enormous personal importance of time with his children. That sentiment is echoed by millions of parents across the country. Narrowing the focus to one piece of the problem also allows a more complete presentation of the problems that the author promised to expose. His criticism of Virginia's wacky adjustment equation is probably the most extensive in existence.

Given the absence of an independent judiciary (my own observation); policy oversight must be provided by concerned and responsible citizens. (An important activity in any case.) The book Robert Ingalls has written certainly places him solidly in that group. Will it speak to the masses? The answer may lie in the promotional quotes on the back cover. After reviewing material that was used in the book, two members of the Virginia House of Delegates promised support to "address the error" and "correct the situation." If Robert W. Ingalls' analysis can induce corrective action, then this book should be in the hands of every legislator, governor, review panel member, judge, lawyer, reform advocate, and child support paying parent in the country.

I was assigned to read this book for my graduate class. Thinking it would be boring, I read the last chapter first. After that, I couldn't put it down! Anyone interest in children's services should have this book on her shelf! It's a smooth, easy, enlightened look at children and libraries.

I first read this book in 1990 after it was assigned for a course on ministry with children I took in a graduate school for Christian Education. After 12 years I am still actively using it. The strength of the book is that it makes a convincing argument concerning the necessary of using children's literature in the Christian nurture of children. If you want children to learn to read and love the Bible, you need to use more than the Bible. This book convinced me of that. It demonstrates in practical ways how to use children's literature in connection with the Bible to give children a fuller understanding of the world God has made. Children's literature becomes a bridge linking the world of the Bible and the world of adults with the world of children. In addition to arguing its point and making excellent suggestions on how to use children's literature in the Christian education of children, the book also includes an annotated booklist of the best children's literature, the age groups for which it is written and a summary of the stories and themes you will find in each of the books. I highly recommend this book for parents, teachers, pastors and directors of Christian Education.

This book is a sleeper that will ultimately find its place among the best books on race, children, and Black-Jewish relationships in post War America. Unlike so many books that relie on the invented memory of a few primary actors, this scholarly account closely follows the crisis among Blacks and Jews through the experiences of children. Besides being an excellent political biography of Mamie and Kenneth Clark, the book is a troubling journey into the lives of the children of the great black migration. Despite its seemingly narrow focus, this is a rich narrative account of recent American history.

Growing up in that area was truly a blessing. Through skilled photography and exceptional writing, this book captures the true essence of the islands, both past and present. It was a great read, a must have for anyone's collection!

This cookbook is written in the old world tradition of our grandmothers or great-grandmothers. The recipes are tried and true, of simple and available ingredients easily put together. The history or background of recipes are given. I found the background of one of my great-grandmother's recipes. I heartily recommend this book for all bakers who enjoy a good read along with readily executed recipes.

Withers' Chronicles of Border Warfare, an excellent example of the genre of frontier history, was originally published in 1831. In 1895, Reuben Thwaites, editor of Wisconsin Historical Collections, prepared an annotated edition of the Withers book based on materials not available to the author, among them the extraordinary collection of primary sources assembled at the Wisconsin Historical Society by Lyman C. Draper. Clearfield Company is pleased to reprint the revised edition of Withers' Chronicles at this time. The focal point of Chronicles of Border Warfare is the American settlement throughout the northwestern portion of colonial Virginia (an area which today encompasses parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) from the French and Indian War to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and the ensuing clashes with the indigenous population. While the watershed events of the advancing frontier (the arrival of scouts, establishment of forts, and the ultimate triumph of the U.S. Army) give a structure to Withers' account, what the book is really about are detailed, often grisly, descriptions of contacts between the races. Not something to be read by the squeamish, it is full of graphic accounts of massacres and reprisals. While the Chronicles purport to be essentially historical in nature, genealogists will appreciate the numerous references to the intrepid scouts and settlers along the frontier furnished by the author and amplified by Mr. Thwaites. All such persons are readily found in the index at the back of the volume.

Written by Marshall W. Fishwick, Ph.D, DPhil, Cicero, Classicism, and Popular Culture examines the seminal contributions that Greek poet, philosopher, writer, and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) has made to Western civilization in general, and modern popular culture in specific. From parallels between Cicero and Jefferson, to how Cicero's efforts to help make Latin into a universal language influenced linguistic development across the globe, to analogies between Rome and America, Cicero, Classicism, and Popular Culture sifts through threads of history to reveal hidden patterns, connections, and lessons for both the present and the future. A handful of color plates illustrate this illuminating discourse, especially recommended for college library shelves.

Dr. Harvey Black, grandson of one of the founders of Blacksburg, Virginia, served as surgeon of the 4th Virginia Regiment, as surgeon of the Stonewall Brigade, and as surgeon in charge of the Second Corps Field Hospital of the Army of Northern Virginia. Black's Civil War letters, which begin with Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and end with Jubal Early's Valley Campaign of 1864, discuss climactic battles like Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Literate and perceptive, Black had interesting things to say about figures like Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jubal Early, and Thomas Rosser. The Second Corps Field Hospital was the site of the amputation of Jackson's arm at Chancellorsville, and Black was one of three surgeons who assisted Dr. Hunter McGuire in the operation. In addition to Harvey Black's letters, the book contains three letters of his wife Mollie, all that have survived. They poignantly reveal the trials Southern women faced during the war, fending for themselves and their families. The small town of Blacksburg in Appalachian Virginia also plays an important part in the story. An appendix transcribes and analyses the free and slave schedules for the 1860 Blacksburg census.

Black was a significant figure in the Civil War and postwar Virginia medicine and education. After the war, Black helped found what is today known as Virginia Tech.

This absoloute Civil War site traveler book is fantastic in helping you locate and enjoy virtually every Civil war site in Virginia. Robertson smartly divides VA. into geographic regions
where he maps out the locations of famous CW sites with not only directions but brief description sof the events. With this book I found the famous Drewry's Bluff defense site located above the James river 7 miles below Richmond where the Confederates stopped the monitor and it's fleet and in 1864 played a key role in stoping the Union advance to take Petersburg and Richmond. A remote and beautiful earthwork over the river. Obviously, the great sites of Manasas and Richmond are noted but
off the beaten path locations are best. The site of Turner Ashby's death putside of Harrisonburg off a dirt road into the woods, the site of the Rifle pits and trenches of the North Anna campaign, the star shaped eathern fort in Smithfield, the remote twin on the opposite side of the James in Fort Eustis Army Base, Fort Early an earthwork in Lynchburg, the huge trenches in Newport News City Park, the Jackson valley Campaign and on. A great road trip book and I hope he will have an updated edition with more off road sites. Caution is needed regarding areas that have been developed since the initial printing. Original access roads may have been changed or renamed such as at Yellow Tavern where the connecting street, now called Old Francis Rd., no longer crosses U.S. 1. Now you must go further north and take a right (east) on VA. Center Parkway (North of 295 overpass) from U.S. 1 to old Telegraph Road, then travel south, .1 mile past Old Francis Rd to find Stuart's death site.