RSS Feed MenuLet the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.
–George H. W. Bush on the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The above quote might be the last time I can remember a president seriously considering the disability community that contains over 50 million Americans. In the 2008 elections, both parties released disability policy statements but the issues that concern the disability community have never been fully addressed. It seems that the Democrats use public welfare as one way to show their support of the community. Ironically, many members of the community desire self-sufficiency and economic independence, ideals much more in line with conservative thought. There is a great piece in The New Atlantis that discusses “Disability Politics: Liberals, Conservatives and the Disability Rights Movement”. The Republicans’ silence on these types of issues often drives an otherwise conservative voter into voting for the Democrats. If the GOP wants to win in 2012, this is one group of voters that can help.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) are co-sponsoring The Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in the Schools Act. Last spring, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report detailed hundreds of cases of school children being abused as a result of inappropriate uses of restraint and seclusion, often involving untrained staff. While many of these testimonies demonstrated procedures that resulted in injuries and trauma to students and their families there were also testimonies heard from families whose children died tragically due to these wrongful practices. The Children’s Health Act of 2000 only addresses hospitals and other medical and community-based facilities; schools are exempt. As the mother of an autistic child, I praise McMorris Rodgers for taking the Republican lead on this issue and introducing an act that will withhold federal funds from those who would harm our children.
Being the mother of a child with Downs Syndrome, McMorris Rodgers knows that there are a disproportionate number of disabled children that are subject to this abuse. McMorris Rodgers is a promising Republican leader in championing disability rights issues.
michaelstafford // Jan 22, 2010 at 11:46 am
I was an identified student under one of the predecessor statutes to IDEA when I was in school. I didn’t go to my feeder-pattern school from K through 2d grade.. I road the proverbial “short bus”… I ended up going to a top 10 law school. I want to commend you for sharing this.
balconesfault // Jan 22, 2010 at 11:58 am
You do realize that you’re talking about a party fueled by talk show hosts across the country who regularly rail against how liberals have done too much to tie the hands of schools in discipline. Any initiative like this will be seen as using fake labelling to encourage permissiveness.
You might manage to push it through if you somehow label it a battle to destroy teacher unions. But otherwise your plea is largely going to fall on deaf ears outside a forum that attracts more moderate voices, like this one.
sinz54 // Jan 22, 2010 at 5:53 pm
balconesfault: You do realize that you’re talking about a party fueled by talk show hosts across the country who regularly rail against how liberals have done too much to tie the hands of schools in discipline.
Not if Sarah Palin, who has a son with Down’s Syndrome herself, made it her cause.
BTW, your posts are sounding more bitter and negative lately. This has been a hard week for liberals, what with Scott Brown, the Supreme Court ruling and the end of Air America. Maybe you need to take a breather.
rbottoms // Jan 22, 2010 at 6:22 pm
The above quote might be the last time I can remember a president seriously considering the disability community that contains over 50 million Americans.
You can’t possibly believe that the party that fought the ADA tooth and nail and still moans about the expense of putting rails in bathrooms and accommodating the handicapped are better at this than the Democrats?
Did you ever want to walk up to a blind man and punch him in the face when no one else was around? You didn’t? Neither did I. I’m less certain about 17 members of Congress– and especially one from New Jersey. Now, nothing against New Jersey– except for this one maniac, every single New Jersey Democrat and every single New Jersey Republican voted for H R 3195, the Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments, late yesterday. Actually it wasn’t only the whole New Jersey delegation (minus one) that voted for this. Every single Democrat in the nation and all but these 17 far right extremist Republicans supported it too.
So, who were the skunks at the picnic? Some of the worst of the rubber stamp extremists who love to oppose this kind of positive legislation– people like Mean Jean Schmidt, Patrick McHenry, Michelle Bachmann, Tim Walberg and David Dreier– are too scared of facing their constituents in November to pull their regular hate-filled routines. But that doesn’t account for this handful of lunatic fringe Republican hate-mongers:
Paul Broun (GA)
John Capmbell (CA)
John Doolittle (CA)
John Duncan (TN)
Jeff Flake (AZ)
Scott Garrett (NJ)
Louie Gohmert (TX)
Jeb Hensarling (TX)
Jack Kingston (GA)
John Linder (GA)
Kenny Marchant (TX)
Ron Paul (TX)
Ted Poe (TX)
Tom Price (GA)
Tom Tancredo (CO)
Dave Weldon (FL)
Lynn Westmoreland (GA)
balconesfault // Jan 23, 2010 at 1:18 am
BTW, your posts are sounding more bitter and negative lately.
Not really. Just pointing out inconsistencies where I see them.
As for Palin, she just follows the general rule regarding conservatives and liberal policies that I have observed in the past.
If you want to see a conservative who supports gay rights … find one who is gay, or has a gay child.
If you want to see a conservative who supports Title IX … find one who has a teen-age daughter into athletics.
If you want to see a conservative who supports government taking positive steps to make sure people with pre-existing conditions can get coverage, and recissions don’t occur, find one who has an ailment that would bar them from getting coverage, or a relative with such.
And if you want to find a conservative who supports the massive additional spending it would take to provide adequate educational services for autistic and other learning disabled children … find one who has a child with autism or another learning disability, as Palin has.
daisyforu // Jan 24, 2010 at 7:38 am
My child has been identified as gifted…gets 45 minutes a week….another child in his class has mutiple disabilites…gets a full-time aid. Gifted-$50.00 a week …diasabled-$2100. The best that can possibly be hoped for this other child is a less restrictive group home when they are an adult. At some point there has to be a frank discussion of allocation of resources where they can do the most good. I am not saying eliminate by ANY means but there has to be a serious look at this. Everytime everyone gets all geared up up increasing the help to disabled the gifted programs and enhancement programs for the rest of the class get hit hard, reduced, eliminated. Perhaps if children like my child were better served those with disabilities might down the road might actually get better served with the possibilites of cures etc.
rbottoms // Jan 24, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Perhaps if children like my child were better served those with disabilities might down the road might actually get better served with the possibilites of cures etc.
I’ll hazard a guess you’re supporter of the FY-22 and the yet to function Star Wars money pits, but multi-multi-billion dollar projects that with sensible cuts could fund programs for both many times over. It’s the GOP that tells you those bloated welfare programs for defense contractors are worth more than improving children’s lives, disabled or not.
Next time your party huffs about cutting subsidies to agribusiness, Exxon, and gold plated Medicare policies think about what that money is not being spent on.
areyoukiddingme // Jan 24, 2010 at 6:11 pm
This must be some kind of joke. The ADA was a huge intrusion on private property rights and a windfall for big government, unions and lawyers. This Frum site is terrible. If the GOP is going to remain a liberal-lite political party then count me out. Leftist ideology is like a creeping cancer that keeps re-injecting itself into public and private life after failure upon failure. The ADA has killed private sector jobs and created countless new onerous regulations on the private sector. If the GOP follows the advice of writers like Frum and Commandatore they will march off the same cliff the Democrats are moving toward.