[blindlaw] The Census does not track the blind

James Pepper b75205 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 11 16:06:15 UTC 2009


The American Community Survey only tracks the senosry impaired.   That
incluides the deaf.  We need to know about the blind, the deaf blind, the
visually impaired and the color blind.  We need to know the status of the
blind in society, where we need to change things and we cannot do that when
the government does not track this specific minority.  Including us in a
general class is not going to do it.

There is no reason to ignore the blind and we need this done NOW, not 10
years from now, NOW.  All of this should have been done 36 years ago with
the passing of the Rehabilitation Act.

Our economy spends 50 billion dollars a year on the blind, most of that is
in government payouts to support the blind. The US Government pays out
$266,000 to each blind person over their lifetime on average in public
assistance.  If you mutliply the 50 billion figure over the past 36 years of
the Rehabilitation Act, the US economy has spent 1.8 Trillion dollars on the
blind.  The US government should be tracking the results of that expenditure
but it is not doing it, because the results are terrible.

So who cares if the census is going to have to be redone, do we have to
spend another 500 billion dollars to wait for a real census just so the
government policies can maintain us at a 70% unemployement rate?

James Pepper



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