stevekuusisto

Disability and Presidential Politics

We at "Planet of the Blind" are happy to pass along this announcement and call for participation in the presidential campaign by people with disabilities. This information was sent to us by our friend Mark Johnson.

S.K.

NONE of the Presidential candidates are talking about our issues publically. Members of the disability community in TX have launched a campaign to bring attention to our issues. Following is an article about Senator Clinton’s Rally in El Paso yesterday. Advocates passed out flyers (English and Spanish) and issued this Advisory.

A large presence is planned at the Democratic debate on February 21st in Austin. The candidates need to meet with representatives of the disability community before the debate. If you agree, PLEASE contact (call and write) Clinton, http://www.hillaryclinton.com/help/contact/ and Obama’s,

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/contact/ campaigns.

If you would like to support this campaign and/or have any information about the Republican events in TX, please contact Bob Kafka, bob.adapt@sbcglobal.net, 512-431-4085.

All the candidates must address our issues so the public can make an informed decision. Whatever the issue or whoever the candidate, it is important that the disability community, young and old convey the fact that we care about our issues.

ARTICLE

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/02/12/politics/fromtheroad/entry3824090.shtml

PRESS ADVISORY

For Immediate Release

Subject: OUR HOMES NOT NURSING HOMES OR OTHER INSTITUTIONS

For information call: Frank Lozano (915) 565-7077 or Jose G. Lara (915) 253-1573

Members of the El Paso disability community called on Senator Clinton to include reform of the institutionally biased long term care system in her health care plan and her long term care positions.

Senator Clinton is a cosponsor of the Community Choice Act (S 799-H 1621) but has not included the passage of this legislation in either her health care or long term care positions.

Millions of Americans will be confronted with long term care decisions over the next few decades. The current long term care system, created in 1965, has an institutional funding bias that frequently forces individuals into nursing homes and other institutions. Total Medicaid long term care spending in FY 2006 was almost $100 billion dollars. 61% of these dollars were spent on institutional services leaving only 39% for all home and community services.

"All the candidates are talking about change in their campaign speeches"said Frank Lozano disability rights advocate. "We want Senator Clinton to talk about changing the institutionally biased long term care system by including passage of the Community Choice Act in her health care and long term care positions."

This issue is one of the highest priorities for the disability and aging communities in Texas and throughout the country.

Picking on the Wrong Guy

You can imagine my surprise and corresponding disgust when I saw the story about Brian Sterner this morning on the Today Show. Brian, who is a quadriplegic, was arrested by the Hillsboro County Sheriff’s Department for outstanding traffic violations. A sheriff’s deputy ordered him to stand for a frisking and when he declared that he was unable to do so, the deputy dumped him out of his wheelchair. Apparently she didn’t "believe" him. I’m certain that by the end of the day this video tape will be everywhere in the mainstream media. As so it should be. This is absolutely appalling.

The video clip below shows Mr. Sterner being dumped on the floor, then "frisked" while lying there. Eventually he is picked up off the floor and "dumped" back into his chair.

Brian is a disability rights advocate and a doctoral student at the University of South Florida. He teaches courses in disability studies among other things. I was particularly struck by his insistence on the Today Show that his mistreatment at the hands of the sheriff’s office represents a police abuse crisis that affects everybody.

In short: Brian Sterner wasn’t abused because of his disability! He was abused because he was essentially in the hands of the constabulary.

Of course having a "reasonable accommodation" that they can take away surely adds to the enticements of cruel and unusual punishment.

I wonder what Judge Alito, our nation’s newest expert on the acceptability of water boarding would say about this?

Alito would likely say that since Brian Sterner was not yet technically "in the jail" he wasn’t yet being punished–he was having a "pre-correctional opportunity".

At any rate, as I said to my wife after the Today Show interview: "I think they picked on the wrong guy!"

S.K.

Links:

View Scott Rains’ numerous follow-up links on the Rolling Rains Report

Match Girls For Everyone!

Why do I hate novels with this kind of plot? And why are so many of them being written these days? The "young girl who leaves home without a plan and no clue novel" is everywhere This is the plot summary for Fay a novel by Larry Brown. Read on:

Fay Jones had no education, hardly any shell you can’t call what her father’s been tryin’ with her since she grew up "love." So, at the ripe age of seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home. She lights out alone, wearing her only dress and her rotting sneakers, carrying a purse with a half pack of cigarettes and two dollar bills. Even in 1985 Mississippi, two dollars won’t go far on the road. She’s headed for the bright lights and big times and even she knows she needs help getting there. But help’s not hard to come by when you look like Fay. There’s a highway patrolman who gives her a lift, with a detour to his own place. There are truck drivers who pull over to pick her up, no questions asked. There’s a crop duster pilot with money for a night or two on the town. And finally there’s a strip joint bouncer who deals on the side. At the end of this suspenseful, compulsively readable novel, there are five dead bodies stacked up in Fay’s wake. Fay herself is sighted for the last time in New Orleans. She’ll make it, whatever making it means, because Fay’s got what it takes: beauty, a certain kind of innocent appeal, and the instinct for survival.

I don’t mean to be disingenuous. I really don’t know why these match girl novels, almost exclusively written by men, are all over the place.

Is it simply a function of male boomers who now have daughters working out their conflicted feminist schadenfreude?

How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?

If you ever wonder about what it’s like to be blind or visually impaired I can attest that the story below is “legion”. Both blindness and low vision are poorly understood by the general public. I personally have been mocked by service employees in almost every kind of setting from airports to restaurants to hotels, bus stations, you name it. Our hats are off to Alice Camarillo. She is fighting for everyone on the Planet of the Blind.

S.K.

The following article is forwarded to you by the DBTAC-Great Lakes ADA Center

New York Daily News (New York, NY)
February 9, 2008

Fast food employees mocked a blind woman who needed help reading menu
BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Continue reading “How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?”

Blogging From the "K List"

I’ve been thinking lately about blogs and blogging and about the “A List” bloggers like Lance Mannion or James Wolcott, Blue Girl in a Red State or Shakespeares Sister — bloggers who command what can only be called a readership.

When A List bloggers blog, well, even small birds cry out from the larch tree.

Here at “Planet of the Blind” we like to think of ourselves as “K List” bloggers. This means that we’re read by a lively and spirited miscellany of folks who prefer that part of the alphabet that comes before the diminuendo known as “LMNOP”.

Our readership likes to be within hailing distance of the “ABC or D” Lists, while foraging for truffles in the wild violets of Provence. But of course I’m mis-stating the case since our readers are much more likely to eat truffles found only in the Basque regions.

Provence is of course an “A List” place.

What are the “K List” places you ask?

Continue reading “Blogging From the "K List"”

Report Card Haiku

Hey Bush: C minus

Leadership assures dead troops,

Dead women, dead kids.

S.K.

Send a Haiku Postcard to the President

Blue Girl? When was the last time you wrote a Haiku?

Lance?
Dave?
Wren?
Ruth?
Ira?
Andrea?

On the Split This Rock Poetry Festival web site you’ll find a link to Blog This Rock where we can all read read haiku written to "Dubya" by attendees of the 2008 AWP Conference in New York City.

Let President Bush know how you feel. We’re all invited to do just that. Send a "Haiku Postcard to the President!" c/o

Split This Rock Poetry Festival
The Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

Here’s mine:

I support our troops
but you can’t have my children.
Not for your mistakes.

~ Connie

The Fight to Come

New polls are out suggesting that if the presidential election were held today Hillary Clinton would be in a statistical dead heat with Senator John McCain; the same polls show Barack Obama would have a three or four point lead—which, in terms of the margin of error means he would be tied .

As a Democrat I’ve always argued to anyone who would listen that McCain is the most viable candidate in the GOP largely because by the time November rolls around it’s predictable that Americans will once again be confused about the war in Iraq and that other war in Afghanistan, and that other war shaping up in Iran.

I make no bones about my own views. I’m a participant in the loosely affiliated group called Poets Against
the War which was co-founded by the poet Sam Hamill.

The Democratic House and Senate have shown those of us who are fiercely opposed to the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq what we can pretty much expect from Democratic leadership. The party opposes the war but lacks all conviction when it comes to fashioning a credible pullout strategy.

I have always said to anyone who would listen that the GOP will make this autumn’s election about the war on terror and whoever its candidate is will mark the Democratic ticket as being cowardly in the face of terror. We’re already hearing what we can expect from McCain: any withdrawal from Iraq would constitute a victory for Osama bin Laden. In fact, Senator McCain will base his entire campaign on this idea. He will have to do this because he has no substantive plans to assist the middle class or repair the U.S. economy. You can bet that part of his campaign will be smoke and mirrors.

The problem for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is that they’re respective plans for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq are made from the same smoke and mirrors the McCain forces will use for the economy. In point of fact neither Hillary or Barack has any idea how to get troops out of the middle east.

In the meantime you can predict that events on the ground in that troubled and wide region will remain precarious.

And so, in turn, the Democratic ticket will look weak.

Which of these two leading Democratic candidates do you suppose will have the tougher position and the most seasoned advisors when it comes to fighting John McCain on the war on terror?

For my money the answer is clear: Hillary Clinton is the toughest candidate the Democrats can choose. In this matter Connie and I are putting our money behind Senator Clinton.

Hillary will have to fight on two fronts: she will have to assert that the Democrats are tough enough to fight terrorism when and where it counts while arguing that the ticket possesses the leadership and vision to map an effective military and diplomatic strategy.

Again, our money’s on Hillary in this critical fight.

S.K.

Don't Forget Your Prozac

Wednesday night’s episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” on NBC left me speechless. The plot was centered around the abuse of jailed prisoners by the correctional facility’s psychiatric personnel.

Vincent D’onofrio played the role of Robert Goran, a NYPD detective whose nephew has been incarcerated for being an unwitting dupe in a drug related incident. This character is depicted as having various psychiatric problems which are in turn poorly diagnosed by the jail psychiatrist. Then, in a plot twist that made my hair stand on end, the prison “shrink” takes a dislike to this kid and decides to restrain him to a cot and torture him by depriving him of food and water.

Vincent D’Onofrio’s character then goes undercover to see for himself what’s going on and predictably enough he’s also chained to a cot next to a radiator and subjected to lengthy torture.

As someone who reads widely on the state of people with disabilities I know that the largest psychiatric facility in the United Statesis the Los Angeles County jail.

IN an age of largely unsupervised “privatization” of jails and prisons it’s not unreasonable to imagine that last night’s episode of “Law and Order” may well be founded in genuine despair.

So this morning I have a “Law and Order” hangover. I guess I’ll take some Prozacand shovel my driveway.

As I shovel I’ll think about the 40 million or so who are not in jail but who need proper medical care and can’t get it.

As Yakov Smirnoff used to say: “What a country!”

S.K.