The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

If you work for any entity which receives funds from the federal government, the following would seem to imply that disability discrimination by your employer violates federal law:

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, as defined in section 7(6), shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (Cited in What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement - Fred Pelka, 2012)

Wikipedia's article on Section 504 adds:

Codified as 29 U.S.C. 794.
According to this law, Individuals with Disabilities are:
"persons with a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities."

 where

"Major life activities include caring for one's self, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, working, performing manual tasks, and learning."

In a previous post we noted cases "where the august Court cruelly denied protection to disabled individuals even though the intent of the Americans With Disabilities Act should have been clear. As the Times noted, The court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law." The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund website notes another case where Congress found it necessary to pass a law undoing unreasonably restrictive Supreme Court interpretation of Section 504 and other disability rights legislation:

The longest legislative battle was fought over the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA), first introduced in 1984 and finally passed in 1988. The CRRA sought to overturn Grove City College v Bell, a Supreme Court decision that had significantly restricted the reach of all the statutes prohibiting race, ethnic origin, sex or disability discrimination by recipients of federal funds.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

There was also foot-dragging on implementing Section 504:

Section 504 was the last sentence in the 1973 Act. However, initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504. After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977. The sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, led by Judith Heumann and organized by Kitty Cone, lasted until May 4, 1977, a total of 28 days. More than 150 demonstrators refused to disband. This action is the longest sit-in at a federal building to date. Joseph Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977.

The Reagan administration, in addition to attempting to weaken the Voting Rights Act, attempted to undermine Section 504 when it came into power:

Over the next several years, Section 504 was somewhat controversial because it afforded people with disabilities many rights similar to those for other minority groups in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Throughout the Reagan administration, efforts were made to weaken Section 504. Patrisha Wright and Evan Kemp, Jr. (of the Disability Rights Center) led a grassroots and lobbying campaign against this that generated more than 40,000 cards and letters. In 1984, the administration dropped its attempts to weaken Section 504.

When any governmental agency's employees discriminate against the disabled, they are acting in the name of the taxpayers who fund them. For example, public transit organizations receive substantial federal assistance. So does every state. We know of a case where a disabled person, having his driver's license renewed, heard the state photographer say, "Whiskey, cheese, harelip." That bigoted employee was acting as a proxy for the public. When he attempted to demean, degrade and intimidate a citizen making a required license application, he represented you and me.

Whether the license applicant could have sought redress under Section 504 is unknown. Public action under Americans with Disabilities legislation and Section 504, to date, has been entirely about access, with notable success. Protection from discriminatory attitudes and acts designed to humiliate, marginalize, and disenfranchise the stigmatized disabled, hasn't even begun. As an earlier post cited:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

The dream of the disabled is an American dream, that one day America will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed, that all are created equal.

The values of the left often discriminate against the stigmatized disabled

The politics of identity [POI] is the politics of approved identities, primarily "minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures at the present time.(1) But the nation's largest minority, the disabled, have a socially "spoiled identity," as Erving Goffman wrote.

Under the liberal principle that all people are created equal, this is a problem. Egalitarianism would not allow approved identities and disapproved identities. This is clearly not equality. To tag anyone as having a disapproved identity because of the group they were born into would be prejudicial discrimination under the principles of liberalism.

Theoretically, the politics of identity is about identities which produce targeting. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures, are the identities progressives valorize because these groups have historically been the victims of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. A disabled person of whatever race, gender, or class is targeted because disability stigma is spoiled identity. Because the disabled also have historically been targeted, the politics of identity would be expected to work to the advantage of people with disabilities as well.

That's not what actually happens. More typically, when members of the left see a white male (for example) who is one of the CPs (stigmatized by Cerebral Palsy or Cleft Palate), they remember that white males should be punished for racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Here's an example:

At a party I, a white male CP attended, an East Asian community college teacher started asking intrusive questions when she discovered I wasn't a community college teacher like most of the people there. She persisted even when it was clear that I was uncomfortable with what seemed to be an insinuation that I didn't belong there. When she managed to work in a reference to someone she knew who was also--her exact words--"funny looking," the two guests to my left were visibly shocked.

I was shocked for a different reason. None of the teachers and instructors there expressed social disapproval at seeing a person with a birth defect demeaned and degraded by a colleague. What they saw was what they considered a "minority" giving a member of an oppressor group what he deserved.

This is an example of the way the left concept of justice for "minority" identities can produce a miscarriage of justice in the case of disability.

Another very touchy problem is that members of other cultures and ethnicities can be even more inclined to discriminate against disabled people than the American mainstream. From a disability blog:

"Al in Texas": I am not being critical of our growing foreign population, but the views regarding people with disabilities outside the USA can be harsh and I am seeing more of that pop up in my daily life than I ever have.

As one of the CPs, I sometimes hear someone mutter, "pendejo," as I make my way down the aisle of a crowded bus.

Writer James Fallows observed this in China:

The real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人, or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who looked unusual and so different from the norm.

And the treatment I experienced at the hands of an East Asian community college teacher, above, may be an illustration of the "harsh" effect that some immigrants and refugees can have on America's largest minority.We all welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to this great land, but as "Al in Texas" observed, that does not excuse prejudicial "views regarding people with disabilities."

Here again, the values of the left exacerbate the problem. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures are valorized; funny looking awkward people who offend us by making us feel uncomfortable do not have the support of the community. And democracy, says these values, is the will of the community.

(1) The Politics of Identity tends to produce ad hominem argument. Here Andrew Sullivan's observation concerning campus left values may be apropos:

Unashamed resort to ad hominem fallacy on campus now: "The idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make."

Other Discrimination Also Masquerades as Normal Social Interaction Ctd. (reprinted)

Virtually everything in the following description of routine (and "socially" legitimized) sexual harassment  is also typical of disability discrimination.

As the United States moves toward its four-year presidential election, routine social abuse of a vulnerable segment of the population has become an issue in the candidacy of one of the abusers, Republican candidate Donald Trump. A recent article by Michelle Goldberg calls him A Human Trigger. Mr. Trump uses the Big Lie technique; projects his bigotry onto his victims; leverages Conventional Wisdom's denial of the reality of gender marginalization; and often leaves his victims' disoriented and doubting the reality of their own experience:

Like many abusers, Trump is so shamelessly, fluently dishonest that listening to him can be disorienting. “One of the hallmarks of an abusive person is that they do not ever take responsibility for their behavior, ever,” [Kristen] Slesar says. “It is always the other person’s fault, or it never happened.” Abusers, she says, can crowd out their victims’ sense of reality: “In conversation and arguments with this person who is so able to change reality or deny reality and shift blame and responsibility, the victim ends up doubting [herself], getting really confused, feeling really unstable.

The Big Lie deserves its own examination, because the phrase originates with another authoritarian who understood that routine bigoted error of conventional social thought can be used to corrupt the political instincts of a large segment of the public. Wikipedia explained:

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The following selection from Mein Kampf describes techniques familiar to those who have followed the rhetoric of the Republican candidate's campaign—appeal to emotion in defiance of evidence and reason; belief that no one could be so shameless as to perpetrate such fraudulent claims; and "sensible" recourse to the opinion that there must be "some other explanation":

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

What women experience in the Trumpian abusive subculture parallels what the disabled experience — particularly the denial — but nobody is quoting us. As the previous article in this series argued:

This is all too familiar to those of us who are disabled. We wonder why "funny things" keep happening to us. We feel vaguely guilty—that we must have done something wrong. Eventually, we reluctantly come to realize that it isn't us. The problem is "normal" social attitudes toward those who bear stigma. But when we attempt to talk this over with our "friends" and family, they pooh-pooh our concerns ... It is all in our heads. We are only imagining that we are the target of unjustified social disapproval. To think that way is to be disloyal to the community. Our attitude is antisocial—no wonder those around us disapprove of us (this is the stigma Catch-22).

Ms. Goldberg continues:

Marie, a 30-year-old massage therapist in Virginia [says] "The truths that we experience as women are denied. It really brings out the victim mindset: These things keep happening, but nobody will actually say that they’re happening, nobody will acknowledge anything is happening ..."

Years ago, in Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, this was the situation:

We who write this remember that most of our lives we ourselves kept silent. And there is an internal struggle against convention every time we [feel we ought to speak out]. A struggle, ... against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up.

As the emergence of a 2005 tape revealed that a major political party's presidential candidate treats half the population as a group of people who may readily be subjugated, demeaned, degraded, and abused, what On Liberty calls "social tyranny" (approximately page 3) is still alive and well.

 

For women, and for the disabled.

Dear majority, please stop telling me you stand with me

Two years ago Umair Haque wrote:

I hear it a dozen times a day. “Don’t worry!” say the kind and good people. “We’ll stand with you when the registries/camps/oppression come!”
What a noble sentiment. It is supposed to reassure people like me  —  a disabled brown guy. And yet. It doesn’t. Why not?
Let’s do some quick moral accounting, so we can see whether this grand declaration of solidarity carries any water.
Every single minority of any kind can tell you stories. Not just one, but many. Of being ridiculed, tormented, heckled, harassed, bullied, demeaned. From the very day that they entered the classroom, the playground, the boardroom, the office, the bus, the train, the cafe, the restaurant.

Haque does not resort to the easy condemnations progressives deploy — you’re evil because you’re white, able-bodied, privileged — but because as a member of the mainstream, the CW, the Conventional Wisdom tacitly allows you to discriminate without fearing any consequences; and you haven’t thought about it. You didn’t know you were doing it.

Well, you were, it was wrong, stop it. Haque continues:

Every single person — whether they are a woman, a person of color, a disabled person, gay, whatever — can tell you about countless incidents of abuse, big and small. There is not a single minority in this country that hasn’t experienced it.
Now. Where have you been, the good and kind majority, when all this was going on? There are three possibilities — and only three. You turned a blind eye. You egged it on. Or you were part of it. The incidents happened, right? So by definition, you did nothing to stop them, prevent them, mitigate them, ameliorate them.
You didn’t step in then. The millions of thens. And now you tell me that you will finally step in? Am I to believe this with a straight face?

Unfortunately, in the case of derogatory remarks, slights, or other discriminatory treatment, the mainstream responds to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? Umair Haque adds:

The sentiment that “I will stand with you!” is just that. A sentiment. It is not a reality. You haven’t done it so far. So why would you start now? … But how good have you really been? As I said, you’ve failed to stand with me, us, a million times before, every single day of your life. ...
We got here precisely through the way of your negligence, and no other way. Through all these little dehumanizations. The grade school bully that cries “kike!” is not so different from a Trump. You stood by and watched then. Maybe you laughed. That is how we got here.
So how do we heal? We heal not by avoiding the truth, running away from the painful reality of our mistakes. But by facing them. ... I don’t want your kind sentiments. I don’t want to hear that you will stand with me when we both know you haven’t so far. I want something truer and harder. The admission, the acknowledgement that you did not, could not, would not, when you should have.

Does America's largest minority still have a "spoiled identity?"

This morning, Lisa Rose wrote,

“The federal definition of a hate crime includes any offense that "attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person."”
This selection is highlighted. Note that disability is excluded in her cite of federal law.

Later in her article Ms. Rose adds an uncited remark: “Additionally, any offense committed against an individual because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is also a hate crime.”

For practical purposes, America's disabled, and particularly those with birth defects, have been left out of the civil rights revolution.

The Disability Rights Washington website does not list any of the terms for cleft palate (though it does list cerebral palsy).

We are America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA. But we seem to have a "spoiled identity" (as seen below) in ways that other identities do not. Late night shows such as Stephen Colbert's regularly feature racial minorities, but I do not ever recall seeing a disabled person there.

From our blog post of July 6, 2014:

In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:

The dwarf, the disfigured, the blind man, the homosexual, the ex-mental patient and the member of a racial or religious minority all share one characteristic: they are all socially "abnormal", and therefore in danger of being considered less than human. Whether ordinary people react by rejection, by over-hearty acceptance or by plain embarrassment, their main concern is with such an individual's deviance, not with the whole of his personality. "Stigma" is a study of situations where normal and abnormal meet, and of the ways in which a stigmatized person can develop a more positive social and personal identity. (Emphasis added)

An entry by Deborah Fallows in James Fallows' column three years ago illustrates this:

The real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人, or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who looked unusual and so different from the norm. (Emphasis added)

The rules of behavior in mainstream America tend to prevent such openly discriminatory behavior on the street. But as many of the previous posts on this weblog demonstrate, disability discrimination—a violation of our own professed values—is prevalent throughout our society. The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances": 

Goffman [says] “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2). [1] Observing that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman explains that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.”

Our society is becoming more identity-conscious, not less; to the detriment of universal justice.

“Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

A person with a cleft palate (PWACP) reports that at the college they attended there four people with cleft palate. Only the one with facial characteristics of cleft palate was treated as disabled.
Margo Victoria Bok and others in the BC Disability Caucus Facebook page:

“Government needs to act on making educational environments far more supportive for those in both k to 12 and post secondary A big part of that needs to be insisting that organizations address the prejudice and discrimination that is far too commonplace. People need to learn that we aren't less able than the nondisabled. Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

“Yes, very true. I like the way she put it because the disabled are so seriously marginalized. Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many. So, it's especially tough for the disabled to find environments that are inclusive, supportive and accepting.”

Martha Nussbaum in Reason 2004:

On the other side, our society also has been thinking a lot about how to protect citizens from shame. One can see this in particular in recent public debates about citizens with disabilities, where much attention is given to how both employment and education can be non-stigmatizing. One of my questions is whether it is coherent to favor a restoration of shaming in criminal punishment, while seeking to protect all citizens from shame. I hold that there is no surface inconsistency in such a position, but that there is a deeper inconsistency, because an interest in shame in punishment is ultimately inconsistent with respect for the equal dignity of all citizens. (Emphasis added)

As one PWACP says, we aren't anti-social. Society is anti-us.

We need a new narrative. "Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many." A common experience can occur when we attend a party. Someone starts asking supposedly friendly questions, but the subtext is negative. They are rhetorical questions. People start edging away, but nobody in the social group objects, even though it is clear that the one person present who is different is being put on the hot seat. "Prejudice and discrimination ... is far too commonplace." The subtext is, "what's a misfit doing at a party?" It's a double standard. The mainstream wouldn't stand by and do nothing if a derogatory environment was being created for a racial minority.

The reciprocity principle expressed in the first post in this blog:

Reciprocity principle: If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

When families don’t support a member with a disability

A family which adopts an African American would be expected to stand up for her in the case of racism or other discriminatory treatment. If they responded to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? — They would obviously be in the wrong. They would be failing to honor family responsibility. They would be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Such a family, having a minority member, would be itself racist because it had the same prejudicial attitudes and behaviors as the mainstream society.

The situation is parallel for a family when one of its children is born with cerebral palsy, cleft palate, or other disability. The family would be expected to stand up for her in the case of derogatory remarks, slights, or other discriminatory treatment. If they responded to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? — They would obviously be in the wrong. They would be failing to honor family responsibility. They would be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Here’s an instance: The family of a Person With A Cleft Palate (a PWACP) unfortunately has a nearly perfect record of avoiding its responsibility with regard to their daughter’s cleft palate.

To start with, the family refuses to discuss any issue having to do with cleft palate. When someone calls her "pendeja" on the bus, she knows better than to mention it. When the State driver’s license photographer says "cheese, whiskey, harelip," she knows better than to mention it. When a resident who wasn’t even born when she moved into her building calls the manager on her while she’s waiting for a family member to arrive, she knows better than to mention it.

When the family keeps her out of the loop, that’s disability discrimination.

Her email "sent" list contains many items to siblings or her children where she attempts to get feedback on the most important factor in their sister’s or mother’s life, and the response is a disapproving silence.

That’s disability discrimination. Worse, this precludes taking the first step to resolve the problem: bringing the problem up. The attitude is, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser?

But as a PWACP she’s not allowed to defend herself from these implied accusations. She’s not even allowed to bring them up.

For many people with disabilities, particularly those with birth defects, mainstream social behavior expects them to be humble and apologetic, not to make a big deal about marginalizing and disenfranchising attitudes and treatment, not to rock the boat. If the stigmatized disabled yield to social pressure, they perpetuate habitual mainstream discrimination and civil rights violation.

If they resist, if they object, if they speak out, society isolates them as antisocial, as troublemakers. That’s the birth defect Catch-22. A responsible, supportive family helps.

But all too often their families see disabled members with the same cold, hostile attitude as prevailing society.

The role of behavior in sexual assault and disability assault

There are parallels between #MeToo and disability discrimination. In both cases the abuse of a targeted minority is in many ways an effect of mainstream social behavior.

In both cases things which people _know_ happened are unhappened by habitual social pretense. You saw a respectable man swipe his hand down a woman’s crotch, but it would be in bad taste to make an issue of it. 

Someone subjects the only disabled person at the party to intrusive, derogatory questions, and the group pretends that this is just friendly interest. 

The person with the disability is publicly humiliated, effectively reduced to a pariah and an outcast right in front of everybody, but the attitude is that this is normal social action. 

“The community” legitimizes the civil rights violation which has occurred by countenancing it. If the person who has just been abused calls the indifferent partygoers out on what they just did, she is treated as a bad sport. 

It all works, for objectified women, or marginalized members of America’s largest minority,(1) because of _behavior_. Our social standards enable shabby treatment of those who don’t matter very much.

Thousands of cases of covering up what people know about, of casual social acceptance, hid from us the fact that large numbers of women were experiencing sexual assault right under our noses. 

Exactly the same situation obtains with the millions who have disabilities. The difference is that it’s not a thing. There’s no #UsToo.

(1) America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA:

http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/diverse.htm

http://www.adainfo.org/sites/default/files/Leadership-Network/Modules-1-5/5a-America-largMinorityFINAL.pdf

The mother of a disabled woman reveals the pervasive disrespect for the largest minority

Frank Verpaelst of the Federation of Disabled Bloggers on Facebook:

“I sit here fuming in my chair after having read a recent message from a disabled friend, telling me a story of how her mother mused out loud “How can an able-bodied woman love a disabled man who has very short legs and no arms? He’s not a real man! How does she do it?””

Would her mother have said a racial minority was not a real man? Probably not, because we’ve had a civil rights revolution. But there’s unconscious acceptance of a double standard: it’s ok to express a slur about a disabled person in a way that disparaging a person of color is not. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t mention the disabled. Many feel that the idea that disabled people have the same rights as people of color would be racist, although Martin Luther King knew better, proclaiming, Injustice anywhere endangers justice everywhere.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws applies to disabled people or it is meaningless.

Many people with disabilities have loving and supportive families who help them deal with a world which is often biased and unfriendly. Sadly, in this case the mother of a disabled woman exemplifies what is too often the reality of family discrimination. That’s what expressing a negative attitude about a disabled person to one’s disabled daughter conveys.

If "Money is speech," much of our taxes is unconstitutional compelled speech

The disabled are America’ largest minority. Yet the law does not treat this minority as it does those minorities that matter, by placing it in a protected class and affording adverse circumstances with heightened scrutiny.

If, as the law of the land holds, money is speech, we disabled are often paying through our taxes for a system which, so far as I have been able to learn, has never had a landmark disability civil rights court case comparable to the racial minority rights case, Brown vs. Board of Education. The racial rights case was badly needed, but ours is overdue.

Previous posts document silencing, shunning, tolerated efforts to demean and degrade, medical discrimination, and double standards across the board. We have exactly the same rights as the other minorities do, but by the compelled speech of our legally mandated taxes, we are forced to support a system which treats us as second class citizens.

Below is a copy of an article on tax money as compelled political speech;

To our Court: Our taxes constitute un-Constitutional compelled speech

“Money is speech.”
Under this unsupportable rule-by-judges dogma, because of tax mandated by law:
I am “speaking” Trump, though I and eleven million of my fellow Americans voted for someone else (three million more for email Benghazi Hillary, eight million for the green or Sanders contingents).

I am “speaking” concentration camps for poor innocent children separated from their parents, although even the Nazis never did that.

I am “speaking” deficit-financed tax cuts for the one percent, which will oppress our children with catastrophic trillion dollar debts.

I am “speaking” not “government of the people, by the people, for the people” — the first Republican President’s mantra — but government of the heartless rich, by the filthy rich, for the treasonous rich.

I am “speaking” not “all are created equal,” but rich white preppies born to wealth, privilege, and court clerkships shall be protected by the Senate Judicial Committee, by Mitch McConnell, and the FBI — all supported by The People’s tax dollars — not only from consequences of sexual assault for which thousands of lower class adolescent males are now languishing in adult detention facilities, but even from having their mocking abuse of young women brought to the _attention_ of the American people.

Wherefore:

That portion of my public taxes which “speaks” what I oppose with all my heart shall under NO circumstances represent what the Founders decried as “taxation without representation.”

Those taxes which constitute un-Constitutional compelled speech shall be sequestered. Neither I nor any other citizen of the land of the free shall be compelled to pay taxes for a cause which shocks the conscience.

It’s a free country.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

In previous posts this blog has noted that the disabled have been left out of the civil rights revolution in America, that the disabled are this nation’s largest minority, and that under the reciprocity principle, If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

As seen below, the UN has begun addressing these issues.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Prevention of discrimination

The Article 8 of Convention stresses the awareness raising to foster respect for the rights and dignity against discrimination:

1. To raise awareness throughout society, including at the family level, regarding persons with disabilities, and to foster respect for the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities.
2. To combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to persons with disabilities, including those based on sex and age, in all areas of life.
3. To promote awareness of the capacities and contributions of persons with disabilities.
4. Initiating and maintaining effective public awareness campaigns designed: (i) to nurture receptiveness to the rights of persons with disabilities. (ii) to promote positive perceptions and greater social awareness towards persons with disabilities. (iii) to promote recognition of the skills, merits and abilities of persons with disabilities, and of their contributions to workplaceand the labour market.
5. Encouraging all organs of the mass media to portray persons with disabilities in a manner consistent with the purpose of the present Convention.
6. Promoting awareness-training programmes regarding persons with disabilities and the rights of persons with disabilities.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law. The Convention has served as the major catalyst in the global movement from viewing persons with disabilities as objects of charity, medical treatment and social protection towards viewing them as full and equal members of society, with human rights. It is also the only UN human rights instrument with an explicit sustainable development dimension. The Convention was the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century.^[1]

The text was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006,^[2] and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. Following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on 3 May 2008.^[3] As of April 2018, it has 161 signatories and 177 parties, which includes 172 states and the European Union(which ratified it on 23 December 2010 to the extent responsibilities of the member states were transferred to the European Union).^[4] In December 2012, a vote in the United States Senate fell six votes short of the two-thirds majority required for ratification.^[5] The Convention is monitored by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_Persons_with_Disabilities

Neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized

From at least as far back as Bush v. Gore, which substituted the Court selecting a Republican over the democratic vote for Gore, extremist rightism has been resorting to methods which are neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

A recent example: The occupant of the White House recently excoriated his own justice department:

Trump tweet: “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of  two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......”

As David Graham said,

"Trump’s tweet is so blunt one is almost tempted to look for deeper meaning. He’s saying the U.S. Department of Justice should be most concerned not with enforcement of laws but with aiding the Republican Party. Plenty of politicians are corrupt, but few announce it proudly from their Twitter accounts."

Here is a POTUS openly advocating the partisan use of the criminal justice system to aid his party, and in so doing, subverting the rule of law and violating the Oath of Office, in which he swore to defend the Constitution. This is neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

Yesterday the New York Times published an article in which a member of the White House staff reported that they and many of their colleagues are acting to protect the country from erratic, impulsive, and irrational acts by their master. David Frum and others have accused them of fomenting a constitutional crisis or a "coup against Trump," saying that they should use the formal means of the 25th Amendment or impeachment to protect the nation.

But it has been apparent for months that neither the House, nor the Senate, nor the Vice President will perform their constitutional duties to protect their country from this toxic presidency so long as they are getting activist judges and tax cuts for billionaires. The rule by minority and by unelected judges which they are now ramming down our throats will foment a calamitous backlash which will be neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

The extra-constitutional undermining of the current pretender to the throne is what happens when the House, the Senate, the Vice President, and the nominal chief executive all abdicate their constitutional duties. The inevitable has begun to happen. Neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.