The History of U.S. – Latin American Relations: An Overview
Nicholas F. Dupree

The history of U.S.-Latin American relations is a long and bloody one checkered by imperialist aggression and exploitation. The United States had a head start building its democratic institutions because it spawned from Britain, a constitutional monarchy whose fledgling parliamentary democracy was far ahead of most of the world at the time, and the U.S. built on that with a constitution and a government based on a revolutionary ideology. American revolutionaries, like the French revolutionaries that followed, were driven to spread their pro-freedom, anti-monarchist ideology, but unlike France’s First Republic, America’s first republic was not only more moderate, it could quickly stabilize amid its isolation and relative lack of competitors for the continent. Surprisingly rapidly, the United States was moving aggressively west and south to spread their revolutionary state and colonize land held by loosely organized indigenous tribes and a Spanish Empire spread thin and in relative decline.

Early on, America’s founding generation had their eyes (and territorial ambitions) pointed South. Presidents Jefferson and John Adams saw Cuba and Puerto Rico as “natural appendages” of North America that should break away from Spanish influence and join the United States. John Quincy Adams thought Cuba an “apple” fallen from the North American tree and that it should end its “unnatural connection” with Spain and rejoin its source, America. (Smith, 2007, p. 25) Thomas Jefferson had an impressive collection of Iberian writers in his library at Monticello, and actively promoted learning of the Spanish language.

“Spanish,” he wrote in a note accompanying a Spanish-language dictionary that he gifted to Peter Carr in 1787; “Bestow great attention on this, & endeavor to acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections with Spain & Spanish America will render that language a valuable acquisition. The antient [sic] history of a great part of America, too, is written in that language” (Works V: 322).1

But alongside the founding generation’s interest in Latin America, loomed skepticism. The prevailing views of the time included deep doubts about the ability of newly independent Latino populations to adopt republican values and effectively govern themselves, given racial and cultural differences and the dark legacy of oppression and violence from Spanish colonization. “I fear the degrading ignorance into which their priests and kings have sunk them, has disqualified them from the maintenance or even knowledge of their rights, and that much blood may be shed for little improvement in their condition. Should their new rulers honestly lay their shoulders to remove the great obstacles of ignorance, and press the remedies of education and information, they will still be in jeopardy until another generation comes into place, and what may happen in the interval cannot be predicted, nor shall you or I live to see it,” Thomas Jefferson wrote (Smith, p. 46) in an 1811 letter to Dupont de Nemours.2

John Quincy Adams echoed Jefferson’s views (p. 46), and as the United States became a power on the world stage competing for land and resources, it sought to seize them without seizing the diverse populations that lived there. “By the late 1830s, the idea of manifest destiny signified a racist nationalism that preferred to incorporate into the Union ‘unsettled’ and ‘empty’ lands—such as those taken from Native American peoples and, soon thereafter, Mexico.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57) After the “Mexican Cession” of 1848, in which Mexico “ceded” 55% of its territory to the United States, the limits of Manifest Destiny were undecided, and the question of further annexation was fiercely debated among the varying factions in Congress, especially in the Senate. Seizing “Mexico proper,” including the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula, and Cuba, were both the subject of heated debates, but ultimately they were just too different for Congress and the public to support annexing. Cuba was too black (Smith, p. 26) and Mexico was too Indian: as the New York World wrote, “Mexicans are Indian, aboriginal Indian, and they must share in the destiny of the Indian.” (p. 49) Neither Mexico nor Cuba were incorporated into the United States, despite an unprecedented surge in U.S. imperialism in the 1890s and early 20th century that brought U.S. borders to their greatest territorial extent after Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and more were brought under U.S. control. American militarism and expansion were led by William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt at the helm of a newly modernized and powerful army and navy, and like-minded Republicans like Albert Beveridge and Orville H. Platt at the helm in the Congress. These American imperialists believed, in the words of Senator Beveridge, that “God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation. No. …He has made us adept at government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.” (p. 51) This view would have driven even more aggressive expansion had their not been deep anxieties among the people and their Congress over “inferior peoples” becoming U.S. citizens. “Racism cut at least three ways. It inspired and justified American territorial expansion, but it also limited its reach due precisely to the indisposition of many Americans to incorporate into the Union “inferior peoples” as equals and citizens. It also underlay the slave/free divide in American domestic politics.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57)

Once the United States had emerged as a 20th century world power after McKinley and Roosevelt’s wars of expansion, it was ready to put the Monroe Doctrine’s shaky record keeping European powers out of the Hemisphere throughout the 19th century behind it and enforce a U.S. sphere of influence in the Americas in earnest. The U.S. positioned itself to defend its gains in the new global race for land, resources, arms, military bases, trading-posts and colonies, called the “Great Game” in Britain, and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was designed do just that: no opportunistic Europeans would bring their game into the U.S.’ backyard. Roosevelt’s Corollary insisted that the United States could intervene in any Latin American republic where instability reigned; the U.S. would send troops anywhere in the Americas where European powers could possibly see an opening due to unpaid debt or revolutionary turmoil. And send troops they did: TR sent troops to seize the “Isthmian Canal” in Panama and took over the customs collections of the Dominican Republic until debt to the U.S. and other great powers (Netherlands and France) were paid in full. (Smith, pp. 56-57) A similar scheme of occupation and repayment was imposed in Haiti with much less success. (p. 60) The customs repayment scheme actually led to war in Nicaragua, where the Americans’ fears of the “Bolshevist” revolutionary government of Mexico establishing its own “sphere of influence” and “primacy” over Central America (p. 67) collided with the Nicaraguan people’s anger and aspirations to be free from the yoke of crushing debt, and a guerrilla insurgency erupted (p. 59). President Coolidge only withdrew the Marines from Nicaragua in 1924 after imposing a fraudulent election that ousted disobedient liberals in favor of pliant “conservatives” led by Adolfo Diaz, who would focus on debt repayment. The Marines came back five months later amid rumblings of possible rebellion against Diaz and further unrest. U.S. efforts to “break kneecaps” in Central American and Caribbean states for payment due didn’t end until the Great Depression and looming threat of World War II necessitated it.

The last Marines withdrew from Nicaragua in 1933, and the Marines’ nineteen-year occupation of Haiti ended in 1934. The Great Depression made such foreign entanglements financially untenable, and Americans looked to the prospects of increased inter-hemispheric trade to aid recovery (p. 74) Soon, the U.S. would concern itself with an even more dire task, countering Axis attempts for world domination; with German and Italian fascists competing to influence fledgling republics in Latin America, Washington could ill-afford its previous “Big Stick” foreign policy. Brazilian trade with Germany was at an all time high, and the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) “formed in 1932 as a deliberate imitation of the Fascist parties of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Salazar in Portugal,” (Leonard, 2007, p. 145) had taken over Brazil’s government, given themselves unlimited “emergency powers,” and decreed the Estado Novo, “the new state,” along the lines of Portugal’s integralist Estado Novo. Brazil was obviously part of Hitler’s empire-building strategy; in Congress, a young Fiorello LaGuardia ranted against Brazilian collaboration with Nazi Germany (Smith, p. 76). Chile remained neutral at this time, having strong ties with the German military and an active German-Chilean minority, and still embittered over the Americans’ siding against them in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific and the U.S. adoption of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which had hurt Chile economically. (Leonard, p. 162-165) And Argentina, despite being a “closet ally” who supplied the Allies with crucial food during the war, (p. 184) was bogged down in a power struggle with its Nazi-sympathizing military, who were devoted to ultra-conservative, virulently anti-Semitic Argentine Catholicism (p. 188). Ultimately, Argentina didn’t end diplomatic ties with Germany until January 1944 (pp. 162-163).

But Mexico, so important to U.S. national security for its bountiful oil reserves and immediate proximity along the U.S. border with the American Southwest, was Washington’s most pressing concern in the lead-up to World War II. The Cårdenas administration (1934-1940) was just stabilizing and consolidating control over a Mexican polity that for decades had been in revolutionary flux (p. 17). Mexicans were beginning to interpret the European battle between the communists and fascists, especially the Spanish Civil War, through their unique revolutionary lens, and whether Mexico would side with the United States was unclear during Lázaro Cárdenas’ rule as he remained neutral. “Capitalists, businessmen, Catholics, and middle-class Mexicans who opposed many of the reforms implemented by the revolutionary government sided with the Spanish Falange” (p. 18) i.e., the fascist movement, and Nazi propagandist Arthur Dietrich and his team of agents in Mexico successfully manipulated editorials and coverage of Europe by paying hefty subsidies to Mexican newspapers, including the widely-read dailies Excelsior and El Universal (pp. 18-19).

The situation became even more worrisome for the Allies when the major oil companies boycotted Mexican oil following Lázaro Cárdenas’ nationalization of the oil industry and expropriation of all corporate oil properties in 1938, (p. 19) which severed Mexico’s access to its traditional markets and led Mexico to sell its oil to Germany and Italy (Smith, p. 79). In Mexico and throughout Latin America, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” was necessary at such a delicate time, and in the case of the Mexicans, ultimately led to the Douglas-Weichers Agreement in June 1941 that secured Mexican oil only for the United States, (Leonard, p. 21) and the Global Settlement in November 1941, a rare example of the U.S. putting national security concerns over fairness for American oil companies (p. 22-23).

But such “Good Neighbor” agreements and “soft power” influence were self-interested in the end, accomplishing the abrupt end of German Fifth Column activities in Mexico, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, all nine Central American and Caribbean republics declared war on the Axis nearly in unison in a show of seldom-seen Hemispheric solidarity (Smith, p. 86). Unfortunately for Latin America, the United States’ inter-American strategy would drastically shift as soon as their interests did.

The post-war world, with Russia and the United States locked in a Cold War that threatened to involve, if not destroy, every state on the planet, was not kind to the republics of the Americas. Washington soon divided Latin America simplistically along “with us or against us” red lines, and fear of communist infiltration, both real and used as a political football, was rampant. During the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election, Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower accused the incumbent Democratic party of pushing Latin Americans into the arms of wily Communist agents waiting to exploit local misery and capitalize on any opening to communize the Americas (Smith, p. 127). From that point on, the “Big Stick” foreign policy came back to Latin America in various forms and guises until the ’90s, with the U.S. consistently backing the same type of elite-led fascist regimes they were trying to undercut during WWII.

Up to the time of Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal that embarrassed the United States on the world stage, U.S. foreign policy supporting fascist local elites as long as they were suitably pliant and reliably anti-communist was commonplace. One would hope that the current non-interventionist tack toward Latin America under the Obama administration is due to assessment of tough historic lessons learned and not mere economic constraints. Future repeats of the George W. Bush approach to the Americas, with “second acts” for several notorious Iran-Contra figures (see Observers Warn of U.S. Manipulation in Nicaragua) and the CIA’s Venezuelan Coup Attempt of 2002, is certainly cause for concern. The future of U.S.-Latin American relations I’d like to see, is one where Simon Bolivar’s famous statement “the United States seems destined by Providence to bring misery to the Americas in the name of liberty”4 seems something solely relevant for historical background, instead of something that’s directly related to current events and threatens to crop up again in U.S. Foreign policy at any moment.

Works Cited

Leonard, T. M., Bratzel, J. F., Rankin, M., Smith, J. & Scheinin, D. (2007). Latin america during world war ii. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Loveman, B. (2010). No higher law: american foreign policy and the western hemisphere since 1776. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: The University of North Carolina Press.

Smith, P. H. (2007). Talons of the eagle: dynamics of u.s. – latin american relations (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

Footnotes:

1: Bauer, Ralph. (2009). Thomas Jefferson, the hispanic enlightenment, and the birth of hemispheric american studies Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, 32(1), Retrieved from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-11917558/Thomas-Jefferson-the-Hispanic-enlightenment.html

2: Ibid.

3: Garcia-Navarro, L. (2006, November 2). Observers warn of u.s. manipulation in nicaragua. NPR, Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6423982

4: LaRosa, M., & Mora, F. O. (2009). Neighborly adversaries: readings in u.s.-latin american relations [2nd Edition]. (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

Here are some shows to avoid at all costs:

Chase – NBC, 10/9central Monday night

This show is about a Houston task force of U.S. Marshals who chase the most dangerous, most wanted fugitives in Texas. But unlike most crime dramas, where you’re rooting for the cops, with Chase, you’re rooting against the cops just as much as the criminals; the U.S. Marshals are every bit as unsympathetic and unsavory as the fugitives. In the pilot, they’re breaking doors off their hinges and intimidating the mom and fiancée of a suspect like freakin’ thugs.

"Annie Frost," played by Kelli Giddish

Maybe that’s an important commentary on what law enforcement has become in the 21st century, but it isn’t fun TV. The lead character, Annie Frost (played by Kelli Giddish from All My Children) lives up to the “frost” name, because she’s a frosty, cold shell of a woman with all the human warmth of an Arctic winter. I turned this show off after less than 15 minutes; it was that unappealing. Avoid this.

Hawaii Five-O – CBS, 10/9central Monday night

This is a remake of CBS’ original Hawaii Five-O series (1968-1980), trying to make it slick and hip for the new era. Problem is, it’s not that appealing because it’s layered in cheese. The episode last week was a good example; it centered on a kidnapping of a business leader who was about to expose security threats to Hawaii and nearby naval forces. Grace Park (formerly an awesome performer on Battlestar Galactica) is an actress of Korean extraction, unconvincingly portraying native Hawaiian rookie cop “Kono” on the Hawaii 5-0 team (no CBS, Korean people do not look like native Hawaiians! How dumb do you think we are?!)

Poor Grace Park

She (Kono) is guarding the kidnapped CEO’s young son, when suddenly she finds a note in a foreign language on the kitchen counter. The CEO’s white, normal-looking girlfriend is behind the kidnapping! It’s what we least expected! The white, model-looking girl sees Kono (Grace Park) uncovering the secret plot, and reveals she’s actually evil and has an incredibly fake Russian accent and she ambush attacks Kono in the kitchen! They start an epic martial arts battle! The girlfriend slams Grace Park’s face into the kitchen counter, and then they karate each other ferociously and crash fakely through fake bamboo and end up poolside. Then the girlfriend, who’s evidently secretly been an enemy commando, knocks Grace Park into the pool and Grace Park spins horizontally, dramatically like a figure skater in a tight twirl or a phony Matrix parody. Soon we end up inside the white terrorist/mobster lair (Dano mentions they’re Serbian cyber-terrorists? LOL) and Grace Park is tied to a chair along with the CEO dude and now his preteen son, too. The dude’s white model girlfriend is carrying some giant carbine or something, half her size, and pointing this weapon at the hostages and pacing menacingly and angrily spitting threats in her fake Slavic accent “you’re going to die! only matter of time.” The ridiculousity line has been crossed. I start openly laughing at the show. Laughable isn’t what CBS was going for at all, but they got it in spades. Grace Park is a great actress, capable of some awesome dramatic performances, and I’m sure she’ll look back on this Hawaii Five-0 part of her career with intense regret.  :-/

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THE EVƎNT – NBC, 9/8central Monday night

The TV review blogs HATE this show; they reject it as a blatant, heavy-handed rip off of 24 and Lost and are just savaging it.

The discerning nerd audience at Comic-Con

The backlash is probably because it was hyped heavily to the discerning nerd audience at Comic-Con in July, and then the pilot seemed like one long trailer for a pilot and the epic “event” the plot revolves around doesn’t actually occur in the pilot, so it failed to meet those high Comic-Con expectations (note to NBC: don’t write cheques your ass can’t cash). The reason people cared about the elaborate mysteries in Lost was they cared about the characters and their backstories and what will happen to them; THE EVƎNT pays little attention to characters but expects us to care about the half-dozen complicated, interconnected unanswered mysteries they’ve presented? FAIL! Listen up NBC, people don’t watch undeveloped characters they don’t care about, especially when you gotta break your brain on mysteries; that is the reason THE EVƎNT got crushed in its time slot, coming in third behind ABC and CBS. Third-place won’t pay THE EVƎNT’s big stunt and special effects budget and fat salaries for Blair Underwood and Laura Innes, so I expect NBC to pull the plug fairly soon.

"THIS ENDS NOW"

$#!T My Dad Says – CBS, 8:30/7:30central Thursday night

I was rooting for a show from the internets to do well, a lot of us were. But this show is just terrible. The canned laughter, the laugh track, sounds so incredibly fake, and it’s really unbearable to hear it over and over and over and over. The jokes are very forced, and fall flat. Nothing funny here. Avoid.

Outlaw – NBC, 10/9central Friday night

Not only is this show awful, the worst premiering show of 2010, it’s the worst premiering show I’ve witnessed in YEARS. Sweet Lord, this show is atrociously, hilariously awful. Plan 9 from Outer Space bad. It’s the first drama ever produced by Conaco Productions, Conan O’Brien’s production company, and it often verges on comedy, albeit unintentional. Most everything in the pilot is preposterous and impossible; it just can’t happen in real life. Jimmy Smits plays Cyrus Garza, “the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court,” and son of fictional Latino civil rights activist Francisco Garza who worked alongside César Chávez. After Francisco and Cyrus’ car crashes, and only Cyrus survives the accident (implausible plot device #1) Cyrus randomly sleeps with a random (beautiful model) ACLU protester and suddenly does a 180 on his bedrock political beliefs and lifelong legal philosophy and he resigns from the Supreme Court to become a liberal activist lawyer, defending the downtrodden and dispossessed–pro-bono–against “the system” that he spent his career bolstering (outrageously absurd plot device #2). He gives a nonsensical speech about how he’s resigning because the role of the Supreme Court is upholding the law and defending “the system,” and he wants to challenge the law for people “the system” doesn’t work for and blah blah blah blah blah, while sitting in open session on the bench with the other justices (really implausible). Then he becomes the defense attorney for Greg Beals, the death row inmate his own Supreme Court opinion gave another chance to (very implausible). Then he is somehow able to use the majority opinion he himself wrote, Beals v. Pennsylvania, as precedent to introduce new evidence to exonerate his client…Beals. The legal impossibilities just stack higher and higher until it becomes a kid’s cartoon of the judicial process.

Left, Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits), center, Al Druzinsky (David Ramsey) and Mereta Stockman (Ellen Woglom) at right

The women characters are just as “profiles in preposterous,” even bordering on offensive with the female cliches. Cyrus is a chauvinist pig who womanizes blatantly. First, a random liberal protester who angrily protests and denounces him for being neutral (“I’m Switzerland!”) about the Beals case, and, of course he ends up in bed with her.
Second, his legal aide from the Supreme Court, Mereta (pictured above) overhears Cyrus’ bookie telling him he has to have all his hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debt paid in full within three months, and because in this show women are dim-witted, she thinks that this means Cyrus has three months to live. Later, she interrupts Cyrus talking to the death row guy’s girlfriend and the rest of the 4-person legal team by the courthouse stairway and, in front of everybody, desperately throws herself at him! She’s all “Now that I know the truth you’ve only got three months left, we can focus on what really matters. I LOVE YOU, CYRUS!” It’s a failed caricature of a woman, a failed attempt to twang romantic heartstrings, and reinforces negative stereotypes of women and negative stereotypes of people with terminal illness.
Third, Cyrus’ private investigator “Lucinda Pearl,” a caricature of a sexy, bisexual leather cyberpunk chick in knee-high boots who’s always doing something extremely brazen sexually like taking her top off to distract guards so she can swipe info, and teasing Cyrus’ chief clerk with single entandres and popping her gum.
Come on man, can you get more blatantly ratings-whoring than this, with such exaggerated, fake, cartoonish, borderline degrading characters? It’s like the pilot’s creators don’t have a wife or daughter or any woman they respect in their lives. What’s it say about American culture today that this one-dimensional, shock-jock type caricaturing is how we view women?

The most realistic character in the show was Mereta’s (apparent) Corgi mix. Whatta good dog!

Just as fake as the characters were the sets. The pilot opens with ridiculous paper mache bricks on the “prison.” Later, Lucinda goes to a crime scene with a skeleton that looks so fake it had to come from Rite Aid halloween clearance. Jeez, NBC! Fund your pilots, otherwise Conan’s company is gonna keep the C team on sets.

Don’t take this show seriously; you’ll end up offended. If you’re going to watch this drek, put on your LOLLERSKATES and get in your ROFLCOPTER because this clunker is layered in (unintentional) hilarity; you will ROFL, indeed.

Other good reviews of Outlaw:

USA Today: NBC’s outlandish ‘Outlaw’ richly deserves death penalty (“That’s not a prime-time show, it’s a Saturday Night Live sketch.” “Preposterous to a painful degree”)

Washington Post: Jimmy Smits’s new NBC courtroom drama, ‘Outlaw,’ should be dismissed (“ludicrously dumb” “my eyes rolled so hard that my contact lenses popped out” “Smits is a fully glazed, overcooked ham”)

Collider TV Review: NBC’s OUTLAW (“painstakingly exaggerated” “veritable treasure trove of cliches” “searing pain that runs through my leg (and the rest of my body) when I think of all the resources wasted on a show like this”)

Discerning readers will note that the network responsible for the most shows on my “avoid at all costs” list is NBC. This network seems hopelessly mired in creative, programing and financial FAIL. Time for some serious soul-searching at 30 Rock, dudes, and at Comcast HQ too….

For my list of newly premiering shows actually worth watching, read my previous post, What New Fall TV Shows To Watch (2010) Spoiler: nearly none of them are from NBC.

If you have other shows or other things you want me to review, put it in the comments!

Nick

This is the ultimate unacceptable act by a nanny state+police state gone awry.

Police Begin “Guns Drawn” Raids on Organic Food Stores in California

LA Times: Raw-food raid (features actual surveillance video of the police storming an organic grocery store, pointing guns at unarmed food workers, demanding to confiscate food property)

Raw Milk Controversy: Raids and Regulations

At issue is raw milk and other unprocessed dairy products. This is why members of the FDA, USDA, California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office invaded the private property of the aforementioned Venice Beach grocery store, Rawesome Foods, and confiscated jugs of raw goat and cow milk, blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese, and yogurt.

Despite the fact that Rawesome Foods has always had a big sign by the front door stating that this is a private membership buyer’s club (ala Sam’s Club) and only members may enter, and states that members take responsibility for their own health choices–all those caveats up front!–the peaceful property was still raided, commando-style. Yelling commands at unarmed citizens while pointing guns at them implies strongly that you’re ready to shoot any uncooperative people! ALL OVER UNPROCESSED MILK!! Unprocessed milk that no one has argued has hurt consumers; they just argue that it lacks government permission.
This has gone way too far into jackboot thug territory for me.

All-organic grocery stores are available here in NYC, so I’m a recent convert to organic eating (though I am not vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination). I’ve become to strongly believe in the power of free enterprise to drastically improve our health (and taste!) choices, plus, through competition, begin to change the awful, immoral and terribly unhealthy practices that are so pervasive in the food industry. The dominant factory farms are chafing from rising competition; their PR hacks have spread dubious “safety concerns” for years (meanwhile their products get repeatedly recalled after hard evidence of salmonella and e. coli). Word has it that the factory farm industry leaned on the FDA and USDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture to begin raiding organic grocery stores. Now they have gotten their wish: the government is taking down competitors FOR THEM.

But my objections go deeper. This is about the ongoing debate over what America IS. Is America supposed to be more and more like a gigantic, continent-sized open air prison? the guards make most of our choices, we have little freedom except to be human batteries (Matrix-style) for the state. Is that what the Founding Fathers wanted for us?

We can’t even choose what’s for dinner anymore? This is so unAmerican. The above articles say it is illegal to buy milk direct from the animal (just like our Founding Fathers did, by the way) in 39 states–ironically, California is one of the 11 states that normally allows it.

People should be free to be put whatever they want into their bodies, from raw eggs and milk, to abortion utensils or whatever, to hard drugs, to hookers… even if you argue that certain things cause self-harm and (as do I) advocate strong moral codes, the state still has no sensible reason to interfere with self-harm because self-harm poses no threat to the well-being or freedom of other citizens, and, therefore, the state must be barred from interfering. The role of the police must be to protect us from the interference of others who would diminish our well-being or freedom, and those freedoms include the right to choose. That means that the police should be arresting someone who swipes your beer in public, not doing the swiping themselves (43 states enforce ridiculous open container laws).

How do we end this nanny state+police state tag team that has crushed more of its peoples’ basic civil liberties and human rights than most other developed countries? This IS NOT what the Founding Fathers wanted for us.

Nick

I wish Congress would have put protecting the most disabled Americans ahead of uninsured able-bodied people, but they didn’t. For Congress, people like me are invisible.

The states slashing Medicaid the deepest (the Southern states) are the ones that will see the most new Medicaid eligibles thanks to “Health Care Reform.”

PERFECT
FISCAL
STORM

That means life for people with disabilities in the South is about to get even worse. Good thing I fled Alabama.

Medicaid, especially in the South, is increasingly in tatters. State Medicaid programs were slashed to the bone in the 90s thanks to “the Republican Revolution” and now there’s no fat left to trim, so they’re taking chainsaws to muscle and bone.

In the Wall Street Journal, it discusses a woman who’s had to sit in her own waste all day thanks to state budget cuts. I suppose the state hoped her bed sores and inevitable sepsis take her quickly, otherwise Medicaid will be on the hook for expensive hospital stays that would dwarf the cost of just leaving her f#$%ing home care uncut in the first place. I’ve seen this happen over and over again to people I fight for. It’s left me scarred to depths few of you could ever understand.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal piece, by Clare Ansberry.

FLORENCE, S.C—Tandem forces of shrinking state budgets and rising health-care costs have collided and struck a small brick ranch house in this rural town, home to Barbara Hickey.

Born with cerebral palsy, Ms. Hickey, now 67 years old, is confined to a motorized wheelchair. She lives alone and relies on certified nurse’s assistants to get her in and out of bed, bathed, clothed and fed.

In December, she received a letter from the South Carolina Department of Special Needs and Disabilities, saying her weekly 50 hours of personal-care help was being cut to 28 hours. That meant Ms. Hickey would get help for two hours in the morning and two hours at night. If she needed to use the bathroom in between, she would sit in a soiled diaper.

After several days of reduced care, the local office of the South Carolina Legal Services appealed the cuts on behalf of Ms. Hickey. Her hours have been restored pending the appeal.

Home health care—funded largely by Medicaid—generally costs less money than institutionalizing developmentally disabled people like Ms. Hickey. But the political reality is that it’s easier to cut back home services than to close a 24-hour facility, which can leave people with nowhere to go. Thus, some of the biggest cuts around the country are happening in the basic services that help the disabled cope at home.

South Carolina says it has little choice but to cut funding for Medicaid. It faced a $563 million deficit for the current fiscal year, and like other states must have a balanced budget. Medicaid, the joint federal-state health-insurance program for the poor and disabled, already consumes about 20% of its $5 billion budget and is one of its fastest growing costs.

The health-care program is on course to consume 40% of the budget of South Carolina in five years, and leaves little for anything else, says Gov. Mark Sanford. “It could force legislators to either cut further into bone in the areas of education, law enforcement and economic development, or raise taxes. Neither option is palatable.”

The state already is making painful cuts elsewhere. The state’s Department of Juvenile Justice has closed five group homes and cut 25 after-school programs. There are 1,000 fewer public-education teachers this school year than last.

Across the country, budget-strapped states are focusing on Medicaid. Created in 1965, it is now a $379 billion program, including state and federal funds. State spending grew an average 7.9% in fiscal 2009 as the economic crisis hit and more people signed up for Medicaid.

It was the highest growth rate since the last downturn six years ago. Spending is expected to keep growing at that pace for the next decade because of rising costs and growing enrollment.

But states don’t have much flexibility when it comes to what they can and can’t cut inside Medicaid. Although it is a state-managed system, the federal government pays a percentage of each state’s total costs and makes many of the Medicaid rules. Under federal Medicaid law, states must offer inpatient and outpatient hospital care, X-rays and lab services. They also have to cover nursing-home services and meet certain standards, such as staffing ratios.

There are further constraints this year. States can’t reduce Medicaid eligibility this year because of a condition attached to federal stimulus money, and under health-care reform, they can’t eliminate existing programs.

States also run up against other laws when they make deep cuts. Lawsuits have been filed in South Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, Virginia, Mississippi and New York, claiming Medicaid cuts make it impossible for those with disabilities to live at home and that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
(I know the lawyers behind this class action. I say RIGHT ON!!!!)

Logically, states would cut the most expensive, least efficient services and keep the most cost-effective. But because of mandates and the need to save money quickly, that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

For example, home care—because relatives often provide some of the care—is generally cheaper than housing people with developmental disabilities in institutional facilities. In 1993, the average Medicaid cost for each person with disabilities was $48,500. At the end of 2008, the latest figures available, it cost an average $55,000. Adjusted for inflation, that actually represents a 23% decrease, largely as a result of more services being shifted away from costly institutions to the home, says Charlie Lakin, director of a University of Minnesota program that tracks services for the developmentally disabled.

But many in-home services, though critical to those receiving them, are optional. Furthermore, there aren’t many minimum standards set for in-home services, so it’s easier to cut them without violating funding requirements. There are fewer immediate consequences for the state when it cuts those services because families won’t generally abandon disabled relatives and leave states on the hook for housing.

Cutting home care could ultimately prove penny-wise and pound-foolish, however. It could push more people into institutions or large group homes because that is where services are guaranteed, even though institutional care is more expensive.

…

The department’s fiscal problems have been exacerbated by past spending decisions. A special state audit released in December 2008 showed that the department hadn’t provided many new services for which it had received funding and, as a result, it couldn’t recoup millions in federal matching Medicaid dollars. For example, the state spent less than $700,000 of $10 million allocated to serve autistic children, which resulted in the loss of $13.6 million in federal matching money. The state said it couldn’t ramp up the program fast enough because it couldn’t find qualified service providers. After the audit, the executive director of the department and four of the department’s seven commissioners resigned. The department has since implemented most of the recommendations made by the Legislative Audit Council.
(This same thing nearly happened with the NHTD –Nursing Home Transition & Diversion– waiver here in New York: the bureaucracy imposed on providers was SO ridiculous than very few participated, and the rules were so cumbersome for patients that, in the program’s first two years, only one patient downstate–me–transitioned home from a facility!)

Recent state cuts have targeted developmentally disabled people living at home. In December, families were told that some of their in-home support was being cut by as much as half.

Brian Phillips, a 37-year-old with cerebral palsy, was told that he was losing half of his personal-care hours. He can work a TV with a remote control but can’t dress or feed himself, or get in and out of his bed or wheelchair.

He lives alone with his father, James, 70. The elder Mr. Phillips, who has had open heart surgery and whose heart functions at only 26% of its capacity, cannot lift Brian on his own. He appealed the cuts and the hours were restored pending his appeal.

“These are cuts no one wants to make. They are very difficult for agencies to implement and they are very upsetting and very, very difficult for our families,” says Lois Park Mole, spokesperson for the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs.

People will generally do what they must to keep their disabled family member at home regardless of the cuts. At some point, however, even the most dedicated may not be able to continue, especially as their own health deteriorates.

…

In Aiken County, Board of Disabilities Executive Director Ralph Courtney says waiting lists for services are growing. There are more than 5,000 on waiting lists for various services, from residential programs to in-home programs.

“We want to give families hope to keep their family unit together, but in reality there is very little we can put in place to assist them,” says Mr. Courtney.

In-home support is cheaper, he says, than the alternative: group homes and larger residential programs that need to be maintained and staffed 24 hours a day. “But you can’t put people out on the street,” he says. “You can cut in-home support.”

Even though Ms. Hickey lives alone and needs help with nearly every aspect of daily living, it cost less to have her live in a house with 50 hours of personal care help than in a nursing home. Institutional care in South Carolina costs about $100,000 per person a year, compared to $39,000 for home and community services, according to the University of Minnesota research.

Read the entire article here: Disabled Face Hard Choices as States Slash Medicaid

How does littering the entire country with families destroyed by Medicaid cuts, jive with HEALTH CARE REFORM?

Honestly, I have gotten so many hate messages over the years, I’m now convinced that the Americans will continue to react with cold indifference, or, worse, celebration–”good riddance! No one is gonna force me to pay for you useless leeches!”–as Medicaid policy continues to cull out people with disabilities like me, UNABATED.

And you wonder why I’m so angry that I’d consider reconstructing the U.S. entirely? It’s because my every day experience involves the above Kafkaesque Medicaid policies harming me or the people I care about!

Nick

Insurance company bureaucracy is even worse, but federal programs have to be significantly better in the future for there to be meaningful competition. Right now, the government health care system is still far too fail. Medicaid is deeply corrupt, admitting people to nursing homes because institution owners and their lobbyists line the pockets of state legislators; people are even stripped of home care just for turning 21, and forced into institutions. As far as Medicare goes, its fee schedule encourages procedures over responsible diagnosis and management, causing the death of primary care and creating a costly and disastrous situation for patients. An old man will have no problem finding a cardiologist to do an angioplasty, but may find it near-impossible to find a primary care specialist who can manage him with meds instead.  A crude example, but it speaks to how costs can explode when so few primary care docs are around and it’s mostly proceduralists who have survived the extinction. Most new doctors the past few decades have stayed away from family practice because Medicare’s the AMA‘s drastic undervaluing of the E&M (evaluation and management) reimbursement codes make it difficult to survive financially as primary care physicians. You get what you pay for, and Medicare (and the private insurance industry that follows Medicare’s lead) pays for procedures, procedures, procedures, NOT talking to patients and thinking about what’s best for us. According to Medicare, taking a detailed history from a patient is worth nothing more than something like the first 27 seconds of a proctoscopy; I rarely see doctors taking detailed histories anymore, outside of residents in university hospitals who are ordered to do so. Do plenty of docs have to do more and more procedures just to stay afloat and keep their doors open? YES!!

Aside from a fee schedule that has buried primary care and incentivized unnecessary procedures, Medicare has also become such an unwieldy bureaucracy that even the most basic functions are drowning in red tape.

Read this personal experience from primary care specialist Dr. Toni Brayer:

Dear President Obama,
I am in favor of Health Care Reform and I agree with you that universal coverage and eliminating the abuses that both patients and doctors have suffered at the whim of the for-profit insurance industry must be curtailed.

But I also want you to fix Medicare. Medicare is so bureaucratic that expanding it in its current form would be the death knell for primary care physicians and many community hospitals. The arcane methods of reimbursement, the ever expanding diagnosis codes, the excessive documentation rules and the poor payment to “cognitive, diagnosing, talking” physicians makes the idea of expansion untenable.

May I give you one small example, Mr. President? I moved my medical office in April. Six weeks before the move I notified Medicare of my pending change of address and filled out 22 pages of forms. Yes, Mr. Commander in Chief…22 pages for a change of address. It is now mid-August and I still do not have the “approval” for my address change.

I continue to care for my Medicare patients and they are a handful. Older folks have quite a number of medical issues, you see, and sometimes it takes 1/2 hour just to go over their medications and try to understand how their condition has changed. That is before I even begin to examine them and explain tests, treatment and coordinate their care. Despite the fact that I care for these patients, according the Medicare rules, I cannot submit a bill to Medicare because they have not approved my change of office address.

I have spent countless hours on the phone with Medicare and have sent additional documentation that they requested. I send the forms and information “overnight, registered” because a documented trail is needed to avoid having to start over at the beginning again and again. I was even required to send a signature from my “bank officer” and a utility bill from the office. Mr President, I don’t have a close relationship with a bank officer so this required a bank visit and took time away from caring for patients…but I certainly did comply.

I am still waiting to hear from Medicare. At my last call they said they had not received yet another document, but when I gave them the post office tracking number, they said it was received after all. They could not tell me when or if they will accept my address change.

I have bills stacking up since April and I just found out that they will not accept them if they are over 30 days old. I have cared for patients for 5 months and will not receive any reimbursement from Medicare. The rules state I cannot bill the patient or their supplemental Medicare insurance either.

Believe me, Mr. President, I commend you for taking on such a huge task. Please also know that Medicare reform is needed along with health care reform.

A loyal American,
Internal Medicine (aka: primary care) physician

Source: EverythingHealth: Fix Medicare

It seems like the government doesn’t want doctors participating in Medicare, and makes the reimbursements so low and the hassles so high (they can’t even manage a simple change of address without a half-year bureaucratic nightmare) that more and more providers just give up. Yes, this is yet another case of the government’s unfortunate cranial-rectal inversion.

Dr. IcedLatte lists more aspects of modern medicine that desperately need to change here.

The Tower of Babel

Nick

Back in the early 90s, before 19-year-old girl “pharmacy technicians” were the norm, and most medications were prepared by actual licensed pharmacists, we had a serious mix-up with a medicine involving my younger brother.

He was still a baby then, about six years old, and was taking antibiotics (in liquid form). Just in time, we realized the label was papering over the REAL label, which identified it as a powerful anti-seizure sedative that likely would have killed my brother.

Mislabeling kills people. My mom went down to the pharmacy and hit the roof.

Turns out that pharmacist was crazy overworked for weeks and fatigued to the max. Why? the pharmacist shortage, the shortage that would soon force them to delegate much of the work to 19-year-old girls.

That pharmacist was put on forced leave for several weeks.

Because of this pharmacist shortage, much of the work of handling and passing out medications is now done by 19-year-old girl “pharmacy technicians.” Is this safe? In Cleveland, it wasn’t.

Emily Jerry, the 2-year-old daughter of Christopher and Kelly Jerry, suffered an agonizing death after a pharmacy technician gave her a solution containing 23 percent salt at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital on Feb. 26, 2006.

The solution was supposed to be about 1 percent salt. The child was undergoing her final treatment for cancer.

Ohio governor signs ‘Emily’s Law’ forcing standards for pharmacy technicians

The supervising pharmacist, Eric Cropp, was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter because he didn’t catch the mixing mistake. The young girl pharmacy technician, Katie Dudash, was not charged with a crime after agreeing to testify against Mr. Cropp, who she said approved the IV bag mixture even after she told him she wasn’t sure it was right.

As a result of this high-profile FAIL, Ohio passed “Emily’s Law,” which requires the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to test and certify pharmacy technicians. Emily’s Act, introduced in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Steve LaTourette (OH – 14th) would also require some sort of college training for pharmacy technicians, and I support that idea even more.

Please comment. Are you comfortable with 19 year-old girls with minimal training mixing and arranging your medications? If not, do you see Emily’s Act as a good solution? What should be done?

Nick

(hat tip to Buckeye Surgeon for bringing the Cleveland pharmacy technician fail story to my attention)

The US can engage in meaningful partnerships across sectors and help developing nations with the construction of accessible infrastructure, expanding inclusive education and vocational training opportunities. By signing the Convention the US is dedicated to these efforts. Can we make a different, “Yes We Can!”

Wut?? The U.S. is going to be like the Peace Corps for accessibility of the third-world’s infrastructure or some $#!T?! PLEASE!! We can’t even implement our own disability rights laws! As we speak, the feds are moving against ENTIRE TOWNS that are inaccessible and violating the ADA! Don’t send the Accessibility Corps to Africa or India; first send them to renovate the Mobile Public Schools! First send them to Ann St. in Lower Manhattan, where most of the businesses are inaccessible, and all over the five boroughs, where inaccessible pre-war buildings seem to be the rule, not the exception. Where’s the US’ “meaningful partnerships across sectors” to address this inaccessible McDonald’s on 429 7th Ave. off W 34th, which is a major tourist area?

Picture of some serious McFail in accessibility. Alejandra provides us an important public service by documenting the many accessibility fails of NYC

We weren’t looking for some McDs yesterday, we were searching for pizza. The Spinelli’s pizza next door was accessible. When a locally-owned pizzeria tops a mega-giant multi-national chain in basic accessibility, that gigantic corporation needs to do some rethinking. As a special double bird to the elderly and disabled, this particular McDonald’s location has accessible entrances on either side of the stairs…that only open from the INSIDE, and only lead to stairs for the basement, staff confirmed. That leaves the middle stairs as the only access point for this location. Well done 7th Ave. McDonald’s, that’s some top-notch FAIL!

The U.S. has a lot of changes to make before we are a disability rights leader, an example to follow.

Any idea of when I’ll be able to access currently INACCESSIBLE public businesses? Maybe for the ADA’s 29th anniversary? 39th? Dammit, where’s the enforcement? We have no room to finger-wag and advise other countries about disability rights!

Nick

The recent addition of the U.S. as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) has been much ballyhooed. Any idea if/when Article 19 of the CRPD Treaty will be enforced? That’s the article that guarantees me community choice, the freedom to live in my community, without fear of being segregated in a nursing home because the government will only provide care in institutions. You know, the right to “the most integrated setting” that TEN YEARS AGO the Supreme Court ruled we’re entitled to under the ADA?! This is particularly bitter for me because I am currently STUCK IN AN INSTITUTION.
Why agree to Article 19 when we are not following it?! The feds continue to look the other way while poorer states cut off community services for the severely disabled just because they’ve turned 21, and leave them no choices but death and/or an institution. I had to fight that policy years ago in Alabama, and won, but apparently this despicable practice is still going strong in Illinois, as I recently read on VentWorld:

My son turns 21 at the end of August and will lose his current funding source. There are no adult waivers or funding that would provide him with the same level of support he has now. Trying to get info to prove that he would NOT be safe in a skilled nursing facility or nursing home. I found a web site where I can look up the name of a home to find out their staffing levels, ratios, violations, etc. but I have to know the name of the homes first. When I do search for homes the results are not specific to ones that can handle complex ventilator care. The state of Illinois wants the cheapest plan for my son which means without proper documentation they will only provide him with minimal funding for nursing care in our home. He currently has 114 hours per week and 336 respite care hours per year. The state is saying the adult program only allows for about 30-40 hours per week – more if we use non-skilled people. The state wants to find the cheapest way to care for him and if that is a nursing home then I must have proof that the staffing ratios will not be adequate for him. Plus there are no facilities anywhere close to where we live so he would have to leave his community, his friends, his family, his job, etc. He is very social, wants to continue living at home and just because he has a birthday his life is being turned upside down. If you know of facilities that take patients 21 years of age or older with complex ventilator care and what level of staff and their ratios please respond. Thank you.

I’ve been fuming furious ever since I found this post a few days ago; despite all my years of work on the 21 “aging out” policies, despite the fact that I brought national attention to the problem and forced the HHS secretary to notice, the government (state AND federal) are still allowing this unintended consequence of the EPSDT program to put even ventilator-dependent people and their families in a horrible, untenable positions where their lives will be torn apart at best, and lost to nursing home neglect at worst. For adults, it’s incredibly difficult to remain at home if you have a severe disability. As Dr. Ford Vox wrote in a recent piece in Salon: “…if your electric wheelchair breaks down or needs a new battery, we’ll have no problem moving you into a nursing home. You’d prefer a new battery so you can continue living at home? You picked the wrong state. As a poor Missourian, you’ll have no more than 30 days for your rehabilitation. Not quite ready to go home? Need a few more days of intensive therapy? Again, you picked the wrong state. Missouri Medicaid wants to admit you to a nursing home so much that it also doesn’t allow for outpatient physical therapy services or in-home therapies, taking another essential tool out of the hands of your medical team.”

We won CRPA, The ADA, Olmstead, and more, but our victories seem almost inversely proportional to the realities on the ground, as states slash services to the bone at the same time as the disabled population (uninsured or uninsurable) grows. The president announced his “Year of Community Living” as a mother in Illinois prepares to move her ventilator-dependent son away from his job and community and into an institution just because he’ll soon turn 21 and “age out” of what little services the feds require state Medicaid agencies provide to children.

The “out of sight, out of mind” mentality of our politicians makes me angry; the fact that so many advocates in the disability community, who should be fighting for our most vulnerable people, are every bit as unaware of the 21 cutoff infuriates me. The termination of Medicaid home care services at 21 is like this wormhole that’s continuing to suck innocent people in and lead them to institutionalization and/or death, and the fact that I’m (as far as I know) still the only activist noticing this and fighting back is intensely frustrating and disturbing. We’ve GOT to stop fiddling while Rome burns, and unite to end the worst injustices. And the ongoing FAILURE to rectify the 21 cutoff situation should certainly be at the top of that list.

Nick

But what about the most basic accessibility?  The most fundamental provisions of the ADA involve a guarantee of disability access to buildings open to the public.  But we’re not there yet.  Even in the Big City™ steps block wheelchair access to businesses.

19 YEARS after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) enshrined accessibility in federal law, we’re still dealing with this crap!

We wanted to get into this Popeyes on Ann St. but couldn't because of this one step.

ADA FAIL

They’ve had almost two decades to build basic and inexpensive ramps, but haven’t.

It is UNJUST that we can’t access restaurants just because we’re disabled. These are some of the injustices that the ADA was primarily written to rectify. But the law is moot when unheeded and unenforced.

Does the ADA matter if businesses aren’t listening?

Nick

“you keep on tellin’ me
‘baby I love ya,’
but MARRIAGE
just ain’t your game

You tell me I can have anything I want
but whhhyy can’t I have your name?

LYIN’
BACKSLIDIN’

callin’ each other brother
with your hand in his pocket
hypocrisy! yeah“

–Millie Jackson, singing her song “Hypocrisy” on Soul Train to promote her “It Hurts So Good” album, 1973.

Gov. Mark Sanford admitted last week that he "created a fiction" about where he was. He was actually in Argentina committing adultery

Cartoon by Rex Babin, Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2009

This is the same Mark Sanford that, when asked about philandering Republican Congressman Bob Livingston (who resigned when his extramarital affair was exposed right before officially taking over for philandering Republican Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House), said “I’m sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out the president lied under oath, [Livingston's] situation was not under oath. But the bottom line is, he still lied. He lied under a different oath and that is the oath to his wife. So it has got to be taken very seriously.” (video proof)

Mark Sanford built his career on his moral rigidity and finger-pointing at those who weren’t as “upright” as him. Anyone who stepped outside the box became fodder for Sanford’s sanctimonious grandstanding. Especially gays. Sanford is one of the gay-hatingest politicians in America. One of his primary campaign platforms was how urgent it is to “defend marriage” against the gay threat. Were you “defending marriage” when you repeatedly begged your wife for permission to cheat, governor? (she refused to condone such behavior). Why is it that the “red states” most eager to “defend marriage” make up eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates? (according to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract)

Cartoon by Dwane Powell, Raleigh News and Observer

Democrats cheat just as much as Republicans, but they don’t campaign for office with Bible-beating messages attacking those less righteous than them. That Bible they are waving actually contains many more condemnations of adultery than condemnations of homosexuality, which, if you listen to some conservatives, sounds like the ONLY thing the Bible talks about. The sages understood how destructive adultery is to families and communities. Unfortunately, politicians don’t.

These are men who love themselves deeply, need to be recognized and relish approval. These are men who adore getting praise and who often are surrounded by swarms of sycophants. These are men who, in some cases, need to exercise power and sometimes can become drunk from it. These are men who think the rules don’t apply to them and who think they’re untouchable.

Source: AP: Analysis: Why do politicians cheat?

There’s a culture of infidelity in every state capitol. I saw it in the Senate offices in Montgomery, AL; with the way Senators’ secretaries look at their Senators and how they interact like spouses, you’d have to be really oblivious to not notice what’s going on. State legislatures take some of the most arrogant and entitled men in a state, and, for half a year, assemble them in the capital city, far away from their wives. With scumbags like politicians, some infidelity is inevitable in that situation.

Next time a politician is presenting himself as moral arbiter, remember all of this.

Nick

Related Bloggery

Field Negro: The “hiking” excuse.

Glenn Beck is stupid.

Several weeks ago, I slapped down an idiotic routine from Beck, and now, he’s at it again.

This time, he’s making outrageous comments and going completely off the rails about new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The rallying cry of the Republicans against Obama’s nominations has been “EMPATHY IS BAD!!!”   This from the same group that spent the last three decades beating us over the head with their holy book that commands love and empathy.  They don’t want empathetic judges! They want automatons that will apply the LETTER OF THE LAW without “gay” things like “feelings” or “considering the situation.” And if you break away from this particular party line, you’re THE ENEMY, on par with Hitler.

Beck cites Hitler example to state that “empathy leads you to very bad decisions”

Right, Glenn, when I think of empathy, the first person that comes to mind is HITLER.

Glenn suggests that Hitler’s extermination program to cull people with disabilities (he calls it out by name, Action T-4) was borne of empathy, and thus no judge with empathy should be on the bench.

Hitler’s euthanasia program had nothing to do with “mercy” or “ending suffering,” and everything to do with their sicko “racial hygiene” policies to achieve a “pure” master race.  The notion that the Nazis were “empathetic”–does he think there’s something warm and fuzzy about old Adolf?–puts Mr. Beck decidedly aboard the Crazy Train.

Beck has focused his show lately on beating the drum against empathy.  In a very unfortunate move, he mocked people wanting diversity in our system, joking, “we need a blind, deaf, handicapped Asian woman!” for the Supreme Court (source). He just has to continue his tradition of mocking disability.

And he really misunderstood the Hebrew Bible.  He tried to make a point, and really failed. Dude, you’re doing it wrong.

YES, King Shlomo was empathetic! Because he knew that by pretending to expose the baby to danger, the real mother would reveal herself, and the dispute would be settled. Come on. Someone who recovered from alcoholism through Mormonism should know a lot more about the Bible than that.

First, an example of abuse from my local area:

NEW CITY – Frank Zanghi says his blind, deaf son, who uses a wheelchair, was abused when he lived in a facility for the developmentally disabled in New Jersey years ago. His son’s front tooth was knocked out, his back was slashed and his penis required five stitches.

Now what happened to the monstrous place that subjected a deaf/blind child to such horrible physical and sexual abuse? The perpetrators were jailed? At the very least, was the institution involved shuttered, and the millions of taxpayer dollars supporting it moved elsewhere to non-abusive settings? Nope and no.

The father of the victim wants more funding for the types of places that so severely abused his son.

Zanghi says the abuse happened because of funding cuts to the facility. Now he’s worried that Gov. David Paterson’s proposed budget that reduces funding for the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities will take a severe toll on organizations like Jawonio, where his son, Joseph, has been receiving care for 15 years.

Source: The Journal News: Rockland advocates for developmentally disabled lobby for funding

Though Jawonio is not the same culprit in New Jersey that abused Joseph, NO institutions should be receiving financial rewards (increased funding) for the abuse and low quality of life they so often provide us. We should shut down institutions, and put that money into home care and small group homes integrated in our neighborhoods. We should make this transition all the faster when the recession is pressuring states to shed expensive and outdated programs like institutionalization (sadly, states have not been increasing home care to compensate as they close institutions).

Further, although funding cuts definitely hurt quality of life in institutions, increased funding often makes no difference in these hell holes. Last year, the state of Texas poured millions into its state institutions. The result? The night staff at Corpus Christi State School arranged human dogfights, threatening mentally disabled residents with jail unless they fought, and laughing at their terror and betting on the outcomes. ABC News recently brought national attention to this disgusting story (warning: contains disturbing violent videos).

In this disturbing image of the "fight club" at Corpus Christi State School, one resident chokes another, as staff snap pictures with their cell phones.

After seeing this debacle, merely the latest chapter in its long and infamous history of abuse, the state will obviously close the doors on this dangerous environment and move the residents somewhere safer, right? NO!! Texas’ solution? Putting an additional $112 million into their 13 gulags for the mentally disabled! Whenever they abuse people, these institutions get rewarded with more money! Incredibly, this $112 million dollar commitment was enough for federal prosecutors to back down on the numerous civil rights violations they had found, and settle the case. Closing down these places isn’t even on the table; all the thinking is deeply embedded “inside the box.”

“They’ve already dumped lots of money into the system and nothing has really improved,” said Beth Mitchell, Senior Managing Attorney of Advocacy Inc., an organization that works to protect the rights of Texans with disabilities. “It’s sad that we may end up spending a significant amount of money and not see a significant improvement to the system.”

Source: ABC News: After ‘Fight Club’ Scandal, Texas Will Pump Over $100M into Residences for Mentally Disabled

If we actually care about stopping abuse, we have to move to a new, community model.  Repainting and refurbishing a car with no wheels won’t get us anywhere.

Nick



Transcription (as captioned in the video):

Hello, this is Nick Dupree for the for the Nick’s Crusade blog. This is my fourth video blog, and today is the 252nd day that I’ve been in an institution because I can’t get access to community services. And it seems that the Obama administration is not going to help us fix this problem — the problem of the institutional bias, where if you need services, they’re not readily available in the community so, so many people end up in expensive institutions, and it’s a lot worse for them, lowers their quality of life, and ends up costing exponentially more. I know in Alabama, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to keep someone in an institution, and it cost $70,000 to give them 24/7 home care. It’s a very stupid financial decision that the government keeps making, and despite all the activism and the years of court decisions that are on our side, we’re still not getting change we can believe in, as Obama says.

It’s even more disturbing, because during the campaign, Obama promised us that he would support the Community Choice Act, which would let people have a choice to live in the community, versus being forced to go into a nursing home, as that’s all the government will pay for.

He promised he’d support the Community Choice Act during the campaign, but yesterday we discovered that the Community Choice Act has been removed from the White House website. The White House website had the Community Choice Act featured on their Disability web page, and now it’s gone. They erased us. They erased what we really needed, and that’s despicable. And now, they’re going forward with health reform initiatives, without addressing long-term care. They’re going to reform health care without addressing one of the largest expenses of health care, which is long-term care. They say “we don’t have time”. With this kind of expense, how can we afford to wait? How can we afford, morally, to segregate part of our population, and keep them trapped in nursing homes with no choice? It’s not moral.

I advise you to go to the website of the President’s health reform initiative, HealthReform.gov. There’s no mention of long-term care, not a word whatsoever. There’s no mention of nursing homes, there’s no mention of home care, and there’s definitely no mention of the Community Choice Act. Go to HealthReform.gov and see for yourself. We’re not included, and our segregation is continuing unabated. Nobody notices us. That’s something that really has to change.

As I noted here, ablism (discrimination based on ability) is one of the dumber forms of injustice.

It’s dumb because it’s based on falsehoods. Just because someone is in a wheelchair, doesn’t mean they’re deaf or have mental retardation. That man in a wheelchair you just (loudly) talked down to? Maybe that was genius astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, or one of the most talented computer programmers in your city. FAIL. You never know the amazing things people with disabilities are capable of, especially now that rapidly-advancing computer technology and the internet is increasingly leveling the playing field. Despite our abilities and achievements, we are too often condescended to, and treated as outsiders and lesser beings. What a waste.

Personally, I was able to enter college at age 16. Still, I am too often assumed mentally impaired, not taken seriously, or, most angering for me, am openly disbelieved by some of the hospital staff. This is where stupidity crosses the line from annoying to dangerous. “The feeding tube is leaking!” “No it isn’t.” “Yes it is.” “No it isn’t.” And when they discover the bed is wet from the leaking tube and they have to change the pads, my prior warning doesn’t even warrant mention, much less an apology.

My girlfriend (the amazing, the wonderful, the beautiful) blogs here about hospital ablism, people not taking me seriously, and one incident where a hospital administrator told her that allowing her to stay late to help me would be pointless because she’s disabled. Paradoxically, those who deal with disability professionally (those in hospitals, nursing agencies, etc.) are often the rudest, most anti-disability people you’ll meet, much worse than random people off the street or at work or school.

And now for rank idiocy! sorry to digress into silly season here, but I can’t let Blogging Against Disablism Day go by without posting the footage of Glenn Beck recently mocking Obama’s aunt’s disability (warning: contains extreme, brain-boiling stupidity). He’s essentially an 8th grade class clown, and here he’s mocking Obama’s aunt’s limp, and, more broadly, making fun of anyone sympathizing with people with disabilities. Ha ha, only a weak-kneed bleeding heart wussy would hesitate to deport a disabled person to Africa where nothing’s accessible!

Glenn Beck is stupid.

Glenn Beck is an idiot.

Society needs less ablist idiocy, not more.

Nick

It wasn’t a patient coding, it was one of the staff. A phlebotomist (guy who draws blood for tests) collapsed near the elevator, evidently of a major heart attack. He is a grimly depressed looking guy with dark cones under his eyes that give him a vampire bat-like appearance, big ears and chubby jowls, and I have been stabbed by him numerous times. I think he’s Pakistani, but he rarely talks (blood tests are srs bzn).

Phlebotomist dude

a quick sketch by me, approximating the guy’s appearance

This guy was in bad trouble, and they had to work hard to get his heart started again (heavy duty CPR). An ambulance raced to the scene. The paramedics helped with CPR, but then a problem; they didn’t want to transfer him to the gurney. “He’s not a patient here, so we don’t know if we’re covered.” A heated argument ensued. In cases of cardiac arrest, there’s not a second to waste. The aides jumped in and angrily did it themselves, putting him on the stretcher, then the paramedics rushed him to the emergency room. “He’s an employee! he’s one of us! it could be me on that floor” an aide told me when she relayed the story that night. They didn’t know if he would make it when he left.

Fortunately, he lived, and is now back at work, silently and efficiently stabbing me and others. But this incident exposes some very serious issues. Has the morality in our society sunk so low, that a remote risk of liability is worth more than a man’s life? This man survived; how many haven’t because of this madness?? When medical personnel’s hands are so tied by liability concerns that they hesitate to saves lives, doesn’t that mean America is pretty much finished? Are we so weighed down by our tangle of draconian rules and regulations that we would, even for an instant, consider the liability of moving someone a greater risk than the liability of letting him die? Is covering yourself now more important than humanity, morality, and even saving a life? I’m usually a calm person, but stuff like that makes me want to throw down!

I really don’t understand what the health care industry is becoming, but it seems to me the antithesis of the bold, pioneering American spirit. Refusing to transfer a code blue guy to a gurney due to liability concerns is cowardly and selfish, and at worst possibly “negligent homicide” if death results, or “criminal indifference,” and at best “reckless endangerment.”

Is the American spirit in code blue? How do we resuscitate it?

Nick

From peoplewhositinthedisabilityseatswhenimstandingonmycrutches.com

An example from the blog.

Nick

Photo credit: Alejandra Ospina

Photo credit: Alejandra Ospina

This failed sign says “STORAGF.”

People don’t realize it’s broken (a fitting metaphor for this place).

Inspired by FAIL BLOG

“That’s not my job.” For me, these are four of the most hated words in the English language.  But hospitals, whether here in New York City or back in Alabama, seem to encourage them with their strict, stifling policies.

In the home, I had one nurse at a time, and she’d do everything I needed.  Simple.  I got used to that. Here, even charge nurse RNs aren’t allowed to change the humidifier water bag, even though it’s essentially identical to the IV bags they could hang in their sleep, because anything involving ventilation is the purview of Respiratory.  And since there are only two respiratory therapists for the North Campus, your lungs may dry out and form tumbleweeds before they get to it.  It’s all fun and games until a tumbleweed blocks someone’s airway.

Nurses don’t (usually) wash patients.  You’re dirty?  “You’ll have to wait until the aides are free.”  “Your ass will be washed in the order it was received. “

I’m allowed to eat lunch in my room, but anyone who needs assistance to eat (me) can’t eat in the cafeteria; it’s banned.  Because “what if something happens?”

You need a doctor’s order just to drink gingerale.

The aides can’t mouth suction (the simplest form of suctioning).  They’ll go try to get a nurse while you choke.

The staff can trim your fingernails, but not your toenails.  Only the official hospital podiatrist can do that.

They had allowed “med-surg technicians” (MSTs) to suction patients, change dressings and do tube feedings in addition to aide tasks. This worked well, with no problems, for over a decade.  But since January, the government has declared only nurses are allowed to do those things, which has meant less care for patients (hello, there’s a nursing shortage) and deeply exacerbated the madness over the division of labor, leading us straight to reductio ad absurdum.  The outcome (two grown women standing over me as I struggle, saying they can’t mouth suction and will have to get a nurse) is absurd, therefore the policy causing the outcome must be fundamentally absurd.  My girlfriend (who uses a powerchair) can do it for them, however, while they stand helplessly, paralyzed by their own rules and regulations (and once again, we’ve answered the “who’s more disabled?” question from my last post).  This is why I say I’ve not yet moved to New York City, I’ve moved to an alternate dimension that’s loosely connected to New York City on the outside.

Art by plognark.com

The motive for all this, ultimately, is LIABILITY.  They’re practicing “defensive medicine.”  If something happens, they can say, “respiratory tasks are only done by a certified respiratory therapist” or “only trained nurses are allowed to do X, Y and Z.”  But to accomplish this, they’ve created a tangled division of labor that stresses patients (“wait for a nurse” in an emergency probably creates more liability, not less).  There are so many ways they could make it better for patients, like letting nurses do routine respiratory things, freeing up the RTs for when they are really needed.   And for heaven’s sake, let the MSTs do what they have successfully done for years, because there really aren’t enough nurses to do it alone.

It’s definitely discouraging how far immorality can go in the name of  “policy” and “just following orders.”  The staff here are in an alternate dimension where it actually makes sense to let a patient suffer for “the letter of the law.”  Things that make no sense are blindly accepted.  Lewis Carroll-esque absurdity is unquestioned normalcy here.  And you’ll never convince them that they’re in a bizarre alternate reality.  New staff come in, and just accept that because it’s policy, it obviously must be in the best interests of patient safety.

I’ve suffered a lot in the name of “patient safety,” and yeah, sometimes I get angry.  There’s got to be a better way.

Nick