On 11/4/06, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Small scale services organizations benefit from the Democrats. For example Nancy Pelosi was at the celebration of DREDF (Disabled Rights Education and Defense Fund) a small legal group that sued for disabled kids in the schools. So that schools reflected more assistive technology and access. This Democratic support was reflected nationally in the Americans for Disability Act (ADA), and other laws that DREDF had a significant hand in formulating. So businesses that serve disabilities gain support by Democratic legalities.
Until recently, the GOP has joined the DP behind such programs as the ADA and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). In California, the Lanterman Act (which helps many with disabilities using a decentralized system of not-for-profits called "Regional Centers") was pushed by Frank Lanterman, a GOPster. But the way that the US legislative system works goes beyond partisan lines. Instead, what happens is that some rich and/or politically powerful individual has his or her life touched by disability and then makes a political program that helps the disabled into a personal cause. For example, because John F. Kennedy's sister Rose was mentally retarded and perhaps had schizophrenia, he pushed for the creation of the system of University Affiliated Programs for Persons with Developmental Disabilities [now called the "Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities," a much more pretentious but ambiguous name] to help people like her. There's one at the Albert Einstein Medical school at Yeshiva University in NY. My wife works for the one associated with the University of Southern California and Childrens [sic] Hospital. (Bizarrely and cruelly, Joseph Kennedy, Rose's father, had her lobotomized.) Lanterman pushed for the Lanterman Act because he had a close relative (a grandson?) who was mentally retarded. Because of the personal nature of this political cause, the system of care for people with disabilities is quite spotty. -- Jim Devine / "Mathematicians are like [Germans]: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely [more profound]." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
