Will You Let Politicians Sacrifice Your Child? is the title of an article by Howard Margolis.
The piece brings up some very good points and is well worth the read. In the US, we are facing cutbacks on support for the disabled. The time to fight about this is now.
Unless parents of children with special needs do something quickly, unless they start to deal with budgetary problems and stop buying into the false belief that this country is broke, their children will be sacrificed on the unfounded altars of “tax cuts for the rich” and “austerity” for everyone else.
There is at least one point I disagree with, but the idea that we have the money to continue the levels of support we have (which are not high), is a good one:
This country is rich. It has plenty of money. If it didn’t, it couldn’t have given huge tax cuts to the upper 1% of wealthy (who get about 24% of America’s annual income). If it didn’t, it couldn’t give politicians such rich pensions. If it didn’t, corporations couldn’t get away with paying little or no taxes. If it didn’t, hedge fund managers wouldn’t have a 15% tax cap on most of their income. If it didn’t, Wall Street and banker bonuses wouldn’t be astronomical. If it didn’t, Albert Pujols couldn’t hold out for $300,000,000. If it didn’t, in 2010 the U. S. Chamber of Commerce couldn’t have spent more than $70,000,000 to defeat the Democrats.
He quotes an earlier piece he wrote, and I repeat it here:
Ignore bumper sticker phrases like ‘reduce taxes,’ ‘higher standards,’ ‘throw the bums out.’ These are usually shorthand phrases for inflaming anger or bigotry and gaining political power, not phrases for strengthening knowledge or insight and improving lives…. Instead, read about and study policies that will help your children and then become politically active in supporting them. Keep holding politicians accountable: keep asking them questions, keep examining their votes, keep examining the bills they offer, keep calling them, keep withholding support for those whose actions don’t immediately help your child and other children, keep supporting those whose actions do, join and actively support organizations that support your views. Consider running for office so you can institute and support policies that help children. Learn, learn, learn. And share your learning. Keep writing to newspapers and magazines and blogs. Call radio shows. Let them know what you think and why: provide compelling facts and logic, not bitterness and bluster. Help schools to get the resources they need to help your child and all children; then keep holding the schools accountable for their actions. If they have the resources, they should have the accountability. Do the same for state agencies that are supposed to serve adults with disabilities…. And so you must advocate hard for your child’s needs, for the needs of all children. And you must keep advocating: respectfully, forcefully, intelligently, knowledgeably, and persistently.
State budgets, local budgets, federal budgets, school budgets–they are all facing a decline due to lost revenue. That just means that now is the time to fight.
Again, read the full piece , it’s worth it.
Left Brain Right Brain 
[LBRB say] Will You Let Politicians Sacrifice Your Child?…The time to fight about this is now.
Past time!
Here are posts to another list…apologies if this posted here to another LBRB topic…it is specific to CA-USA…but believe it is applicable to all USA states and perhaps other world governments…
stanley seigler
ref #1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DDRIGHTS/message/6671
Veery interesting…Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan, CEO) say CA deficit is 1% of states GDP…thus could reduce the deficit with a 1% tax increase…
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/02/13/exp.fareed.dimon.state.pensions.cnn
and i add the 1% could sunset when the economy picks up.
it is not as simple as it seems and devils in details…but neither is it as difficult as gov/legs who pander to “no new tax crew” make it…and let the least eat cake in the snake pit to which their cuts condemn them.
but then what would the legs, gov, advocates do with their free time…maybe fix a bureaucracy at its worst. ie;
[CA State Council on Developmental Disabilities, SCDD 2007-11 Plan say] Overwhelming complexity is a defining characteristic of California’s government services…It is bureaucracy at its worst…costly, inefficient and in many cases unaccountable… http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DDRIGHTS/message/6398
and provide quality programs for our most vulnerable, quality education for all…among other positive actions.
ref #2 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The budget process is on a fast track because [CA] Governor Brown wants the Legislature to act quickly to approve his 2011-2012 State budget proposal that contains about $12.5 billion in cuts in State general fund spending (includes fund shifts) and about that amount in revenues largely due to a proposed 5 year extension in temporary tax increases. [ref say]
COMMENT
how about an additional $750M tax increase vice a $750M cut to programs for old, po, disabled folks…actually a tax increase for them…reduces their disposable poverty level income…
same as tax increases do to rich folks and corps…the $750M tax increase to BP, BP, exxon-etal, is chump change to their bottom line…but life threating to the least.
I just sat through a “Legislative Breakfast” – held annually to give Agencies, families, and self-advocates face time with the powers-that-be. I live in an area that had many, many tea parties (each presided over by a Mad Hatter) – and there were quite a few in the audience: they are not immune from DDs, you know. I couldn’t believe these people still support maintaining tax cuts for the rich -on local, state and federal levels, yet can sit and argue against funding cuts to their programs, illustrated by rather putrid displays of their helpless and feeble ADULT “children” – sorry, I believe that everyone is entitled to digniy and respect, as well as support. Quite a bit of reality dissonance. And to listen to the powers that be assure everyone that they will maintain their commitment to those reliant on programs – their speech writers should be commited! Cuts six years running here in New York, with a HUGE demographic moving into the costly over-21 age group… there’s madness in the air. Rant over.
house keeping:
re VMGillen post
from “on line” to “costly over” was lined thu on my computer…can this be corrected…is my computer playing games with me…
stanley seigler
[VMGillen] I just sat through a “Legislative Breakfast”
legs bfast, whatever, are just a pandering pat on the head…but they have to be used to educate the legs…
stanley seigler
[VMGillen say]I couldn’t believe these people still support maintaining tax cuts for the rich
a lot of education needed to dispel the myth of free market and trickle down ideology is good for the least and the economy…it trickles up…actually gushes up…in USA 10% control 50% of the wealth (similar to what it was in 1929)
maybe “the following post” to another list will help…
stanley seigler
the following post:
Agnotology: ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth…or drowning it out…the [budget] solutions allowed on the table by the establishment are inadequate to the crisis, they’ll actually do long-term damage to the country. …And, of course, that will mean (all together now) more “tough choices”! [ref say]
COMMENT
havent been reading huffpost…may have to, seems like some reasonable points made there…a reminder of shared sacrifice: [ref say] the president just gave away nearly $120 billion by extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Im [lisa] looking at a 39% pay cut. How much
are you giving up to rescue our state [CA] in this financial crisis? How much are millionaires and businesses contributing? Shared sacrifices,
balony.
[ref say] And the way to enact these “necessary” cuts is, to quote Council of Economic Advisers Chair Austan Goolsbee, OMB Director Jacob Lew, and President Obama himself, to make “tough choices.”
really tough choice: cut lisa 39% and give away $120B to the rich…seems they shudda taken the amount lisa is being cut out the $120B…for that matter the $750M cut could have been taken out too.
know they fed/state doesn’t work that way…figs are facetiously quoted just for not so facetiously order of magnitude comparisons…
[ref say] let’s at least stop pretending that it’s a real debate
stanley seigler
ps. *What don’t we know, and why don’t we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology—the study of ignorance* http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5652%205901
ref huffpost xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Posted: February 23, 2011 08:48 PM
The Incredible Shrinking Budget Debate: Why the Only Choice We’re Being Offered Is Between Bad and Worse
We are now locked in the great budget battle of 2011. Who will win, the president or House Republicans? It’s impossible to say yet, but I do know who is going to lose: us. In fact, we’ve already lost. This is due, in part, to the fact that our country no longer seems capable of coming up with anything other than what Tom Friedman once called “suboptimal” solutions to our problems.
Just look at this so-called “debate” we’re having. The problem ostensibly on the table is the deficit. But, without any context, the raw deficit number is meaningless. If the country’s debt were, say, $50 million, that wouldn’t be a big deal. If some average American suddenly found himself $50 million in debt, well, that would be a big deal. And that’s because the country’s GDP is a lot bigger than the average person’s income. So what we’re talking about is really the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Yet the debate is concentrated almost entirely on the debt side of the equation and barely at all on ways to increase the GDP side. How has the playing field of what is acceptable in this debate been so shrunken that the only two competing proposals still allowed on the field are the president’s cuts and the House GOP’s draconian cuts?
Well, it was no accident. And, as it turns out, there’s an entire field of study based on the dynamic being played out: Agnotology. Coined by Robert Proctor, a historian of science at Stanford University, the word means the study of ignorance that is deliberately manufactured or politically or culturally generated. “People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth — or drowning it out — or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.”
Sound familiar? It’s the process underlying practically every crisis that has befallen this country in the last decade or so. But you don’t need to be a professional agnotologist to see that this pattern is endangering the future of the country.
And here we are in the middle of another budget “debate” in which the only choices being offered are largely confined to which programs in the non-military discretionary budget are going to be cut and by how much. That means almost all the cuts are limited to a portion of the budget that makes up just over 12 percent of our spending.
And the way to enact these “necessary” cuts is, to quote Council of Economic Advisers Chair Austan Goolsbee, OMB Director Jacob Lew, and President Obama himself, to make “tough choices.”
But curiously omitted from all this self-congratulatory talk about making “tough choices” is any mention that the president just gave away nearly $120 billion by extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
In fact, had the administration done the right thing in December, it would have had the public on its side. Only 26 percent favored extending the cuts for everybody, with 53 percent wanting them extended only for those making less than $250,000. But the public doesn’t make the rules for the debate. And so now our “tough choices” are limited to bad and worse.
The reason is easy to understand, concluded Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly: “Pesky Americans may think jobs and the economy are the most pressing national issue, but the political world has no use for such parochial concerns. The establishment has moved on.”
But not only are the solutions allowed on the table by the establishment inadequate to the crisis, they’ll actually do long-term damage to the country. “Slashing spending while the economy is still deeply depressed,” wrote Paul Krugman last week, “is a recipe for slower economic growth, which means lower tax receipts.” And, of course, that will mean (all together now) more “tough choices”!
It’s a vicious circle. But it’s not inevitable. It’s happening because this is the choice — and not a “tough” one — of those who control our political debate.
We all know basically how this “debate” is going to end — with lots of unnecessary suffering. Whether we’re going to have to deal with bad choices or worse choices might still be up in the air, but let’s at least stop pretending that it’s a real debate and that nothing else was possible.