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

John G. Heim jheim at math.wisc.edu
Thu Apr 22 14:38:25 UTC 2010


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "qubit" <lauraeaves at yahoo.com>
To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get labeled


> Hi -- I may be venturing on thin ice here, but there is one thing I worry
> about.  This is not a material problem so much as a mental/spiritual one.
> One drawback to government run programs that is more a subjective,
> nonquantifiable one: If you give the government the full responsibility 
> for
> taking care of the needy in the country, it has the effect of sweeping
> problems under the rug of "the government is taking care of it" -- kind of
> like the SEP invisibility field in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
> books--adams fans will know what I'm talking about. SEP stands for 
> "someone
> else's problem" and has such a powerful effect on viewers as to render an
> object invisible.
> I think that this change will attempt to take the responsibility of 
> looking
> out for our neighbors and give it to the government so people will be less
> apt to give in times of need.  In particular, if taxes are high, they will
> figure they already gave to that cause, and maybe try to give moral 
> support,
> but if the government office isn't helping, the person is still in need of 
> a
> friend or someone to identify the problem so as to get him to the right
> government office. and there may not be someone there. You can't predefine 
> a
> government office for every problem.
> In the case of health care, there is also the question of privacy, if on
> huge monolithic government run health agency pays the docs, then it will 
> be
> easy for people's records to be available for others to view, at least for
> government employees. And in a socialistic society, there are a lot of
> government employees...*smile*
>
> I guess I am playing conservative today.
> Obama's health plan, such as it is, does allow for private medical 
> insurers.
> And I think government programs can be a very good thing for those who 
> need
> them.
> It's just that the change has me worried.
> Take care.
> --le
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 4:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get 
> labeled
>
>
> 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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>>
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