[nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get labeled

John G. Heim jheim at math.wisc.edu
Wed Apr 21 21:32:11 UTC 2010


A lot of money gets wasted no matter who's running a program.  What makes 
you think a private charity is more efficient than the federal government? 
You should check out the salaries made by the leaders of most non-profits. 
It is not at all unusual for the President of a non-profit to make half a 
million dollars a year. Not to mention the fact that most of our social 
programs were created in the first place because private charities weren't 
getting it done.

Its simply a myth that governments can't solve social programs. Countries 
like Switzerland and Sweeden have happy, healthy citizens. The USA, on the 
other hand, ranks low on just about every measure of health and happiness. 
Our infant mortality rate is high, our life expectancy is low, our 
unemployment rate and crime rates are high.

The available evidence would tend to indicate that the United States doesn't 
have enough social programs, not too many. Now, you could argue that a 
reduced tax burden and less government interference makes it worthwhile. But 
that would be a value judgement. I mean, you could argue that our 
independence is more valuable than living a longer life. But you can't argue 
that government can't solve social programs. There's just no evidence for 
that.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Amelia Dickerson" <ameliadickerson at gmail.com>
To: <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: "Nijat Worley" <nijat1989 at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:25 PM
Subject: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get labeled


> Hello-
> I'm just going to put my two cents in here. I think that when the
> government does stuff, it ends up swallowing up a lot of money that is
> wasted. I have spent several months applying for jobs in the federal
> government and it has been a bit of a comic sketch. At the same time,
> we have people in our society for whom we need to care, and the fact
> is that any point in time, most people end up in that position.
> Ideally, we would privately take care of this on our own- people
> within a community would rise up and put together their own education
> system for their kids and for all of them, we would help people out
> with food when they needed it, doctors and therapists would take on a
> few patients and clients pro bono at any one time. But until people
> choose to do that over buying that brand new car instead of continuing
> to drive it even though it is no longer the latest and greatest, we
> need to have the government programs on which to fall back. That
> doesn't even address the fact that certain communities have a deficit
> of such resources.
>
> At my own church, I am in charge of organizing local community service
> activities. We have a solid core of people who give generously of
> their time and energy and money, but there are others who are very
> much occupied by the things in their own lives and they just don't
> really contribute to anything. Fortunately, most will give to others
> in some form, but there are a lot of causes and people out there to
> give to. I am personally in my mid 20's and my peers are a notoriously
> self-centered population. I know some people who meet that discription
> and others who do not. Honestly, I don't know what you would need to
> do in order to try and meet the needs of others. However, as a person
> with my masters in counseling and with a lot of personal experience
> working with people who are needy in both an emotional and physical
> sense, itt is absolutely not as easy as giving them money for food
> each month. Talk to me one on one if you want to know what it looks
> like to try and quote unquote "help" someone with schizofrenia or a
> personality disorder.
>
> In addition, I am currently taking a class on universal media design
> at the local state university. The principles of the class have to do
> with  making media and web sites accessible to everyone, whether they
> are using an old computer on a dial up connection, using a smart
> phone, the latest and greatest computer with whatever internet
> browser, they are hard of hearing,  or a use a screen reader. Despite
> its principles though, I have had to do a lot of self advocacy. They
> have us learning about java script from on-line clips that do not
> provide enough information for me to keep track of what is happening
> in the visual part of the training. Someone asked me to give feedback
> on the web site for the business association of downtown Denver in
> preparation for the AHEAD conference here this summer. It is all in
> flash, and I was unable to get any content off of it. The business
> association doesn't feel particularly obliged to change their web site
> at all, even if it also means that people out for the night cannot
> pull up their site on a smart phone. The conservative principle is
> that economic forces will convince them to change it, but they aare
> not yet terribly interested. Along the same lines, the web sites at CU
> are often times poorly designed to the extent of decreasing
> accessibility, but as a whole group of sites are looking at being
> redesigned in the next couple of years, the man in charge of it
> doesn't know the first thing about concepts such as the W3 standards.
> I met with him and showed him a bit about what makes his current site
> that he manages difficult to navigate with a screen reader. Maybe he
> will be motivated to learn more, butthus far people outside of
> disability services at the university have been pretty apathetic with
> regards to making accessibility improvements to sites. All of this is
> just to say that I don't tend to find that the best ideas win out; too
> many people are caught up in the concept of how things have always
> been done and "it works for me, so it's fine."
>
> With all of this having been said, I vote we stick with putting
> concepts out there without needing to label them as being part of one
> group or another. I am all for innovation, change, and progress. No
> political group gets to lay claim to those words and my use of them
> does not put me in any one group.
>
> Amelia
>
> -- 
> Amelia Dickerson
>
> What counts can't always be counted, and what can be counted doesn't
> always count.
> Albert Einstein
>
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