Lament of the Apathetic Voter

For those who may be wondering, no, I'm not going to post a virtual tombstone for John McCain because I don't believe that he qualifies for the Curebie Graveyard. Despite his obnoxious remarks about autism, I think McCain is just an ignoramus and panderer. I am, however, giving him a suitably poetic sendoff just in time for Halloween.

Based on "The Raven," with sincere apologies to both Poe's ghost and parrots.


Once an economy dark and dreary, in a country Iraq war-weary,
Preyed on many a voter's mind with dismal gloom like none before.
While I blogged, my keyboard tapping, I heard someone's lips a-flapping,
Politics as usual yapping, yapping I tried to ignore.
"Oh, not this again," I muttered, "what a miserable bore—
Same old lies, and nothing more."

Very clearly I remember it was not far from November,
With Election Day approaching and commercials to endure.
What our leaders were achieving seemed like little more than thieving,
And I sat at my desk grieving—grieving for the land of yore—
For the strong and hopeful country I had known in years before—
I feared lost for evermore.

The unwanted sound of chatter seemed like nothing that could matter,
And I looked around intending to get rid of it for sure,
But I found no radio blaring, and no TV screen was staring
In the house that now was scaring me down to my shivering core—
Noise continued unabated like waves breaking on a shore—
Fear dripped from my every pore.

I checked for an open window; —was my neighbor fond of Limbaugh?
But the house was closed up tightly, with a deadbolt on the door.
With no right-wing talk shows hating and no candidates debating,
Could I be hallucinating? But I never did before.
There must be an explanation for this hellish noise, I swore!
Then I started to explore.

I went down into the basement and examined every casement,
But found only crickets chirping and old spiderwebs galore.
Still, from up above came gabbling—neverending pointless babbling—
As if someone might be dabbling in unholy spirits' lore.
What strange evil could be lurking up there on my home's first floor?
It had to be stopped! No more!

Then, still feeling some confusion—could it just be an illusion?
I decided it was time for drastic action to ensure
That I hadn't just been missing a TV or radio hissing
Loud obnoxious talk shows dissing candidates, and nothing more.
So I took a few steps forward and I flung open a door;
Time to end this hideous roar!

Hoping not to meet my Maker, I flipped my main circuit breaker
Plunging me into deep darkness like Hades' infernal shore.
Suddenly there was no talking, but I heard a startled squawking
And the sound of someone walking—huge footsteps!—on my first floor.
I imagined thirsty vampires, or cold ghouls dripping with gore
All parading through my door.

Then I saw a giant parrot, orange-feathered like a carrot,
Wisps of smoke were rising from it where it stood upon my floor.
Hellish flames inside it were stoked, like a cruel spirit invoked,
"Our foes are everywhere!" it croaked. "Bomb Iran! Third World War!
Keep building bases in Iraq for a hundred years or more!
Give our troops tour after tour!"

I was sure I must be dreaming when I saw its red eyes gleaming,
But it cackled ever louder, just as if to underscore
The fiendish cruelty deep inside this monstrous parrot's feathered hide
Deliberate schemes to divide our country from shore to shore.
Flames of hatred burning higher, with more fuel still to pour
Cackling there upon my floor.

"Don't you think so?" it demanded. "If you don't agree, you're branded
As a commie pinko liberal that good people must abhor!
Your friends may lack moderation, or your neighbor's on probation
It's guilt by association—that's how smears have worked before.
You're probably a terrorist Americans should deplore.
Off to Gitmo evermore!

"Now, as to the economy—well, there's no problem I can see.
More big tax cuts for the wealthy will be sure to make it soar.
Its fundamentals are quite strong! There's nothing seriously wrong
That can't be fixed before too long, if we hurry up and pour
All our money into Wall Street, with oversight nevermore!
There's no need to mind the store.

"We’ll make health care just like banking, never mind how much it's tanking,
Just trust us with all the details—thinking for yourself's a chore.
Let us praise deregulation as we sack and loot the nation,
What's best for a corporation is what we should all adore.
Hallelujah for free markets! Joe the Plumber knows the score.
Trickle-down forevermore!"

Its harsh words gave me cold shivers, like a million icy rivers.
No, this couldn't be the future our great country had in store!
Torn to shreds, with hatred sundered—could this really be, I wondered?
Had we all so badly blundered as to be doomed evermore?
Surely it must still be possible for good folks to restore
Our kind, decent land of yore?

Or perhaps that country never had existed—no, not ever—
And the land I loved was just a fantasy, and nothing more.
"No," I said aloud, still thinking, as the parrot's eyes kept blinking
And the reek of brimstone stinking grew much stronger than before.
"Even though we have some problems, we're not rotten to the core
In this country I adore.

"We can take back our great nation from this corporate predation
Build it up and make it better than it ever was before.
Yes, we have the strength to do it if we just get right down to it,
We can help each other through it—that's what good neighbors are for.
So get out of here, you monster; you won't fool me anymore.
You're done preying on the poor!

"I've had quite enough of struggling to pay all these bills I'm juggling."
Then I glared in bold defiance at this fiend upon my floor.
Still the parrot seemed undaunted, as my house it cruelly haunted,
"Well, so what?" the creature taunted. "Did you go vote in '04?
If you didn't, then it's your own fault the wolf is at your door!
Wall Street owns you evermore!"

"Not this time," I answered stoutly; —not again, I vowed devoutly!
"Corruption isn't going to own America any more.
No more tricks of vote suppression leaving us in a recession
Or perhaps a Great Depression like the worst we've known before.
Now I've learned my lesson when it comes to voting, that's for sure.
Me, skip voting? Nevermore!"

"Others will," it kept on jeering, with its twisted beak still sneering,
"That's how Repubs got elected for so many years before!"
Then it vanished, leaving troubling questions deep inside me bubbling,
As my worries kept redoubling—worries I could not ignore.
Could our apathetic voters doom our land for evermore?
I hoped not—but was I sure?

Kristina Chew on John McCain's Autism Policy

…or, as the case may be, on his lack thereof.

As many of us noticed, McCain went out of his way to kiss up to the antivax crowd during the third presidential debate, in addition to his usual assortment of wingnuts and conspiracy theorists. Although McCain gave the distinct impression that he doesn't even know the difference between autism and Down syndrome, his ignorance didn't stop him from declaring that federal spending was needed to find the cause of autism—that is, when he wasn't promising an across-the-board spending freeze. (Obama was quick to point out that very obvious contradiction. You go, Barack! And here's a teensy hint, John—just about everyone whose fashion choices don't include a tinfoil beanie has figured out by now that autism is caused by genes, not vaccines.)

McCain's clumsy attempt at pandering failed to appeal to many parents of autistic children, as reporter Claudia Kalb mentioned in a Newsweek web exclusive interview with Kristina Chew of Autism Vox, who noted that McCain's comments "seem to betray a lack of knowledge or understanding about the kinds of things that autistic children need… He's sentimentalizing the children, but not looking at how we can help them, how we can teach them, how we can make things better." Another topic discussed in the interview was the tendency of politicians and others to overlook the needs and concerns of adults with disabilities.

That observation was certainly accurate. John McCain has overlooked people with disabilities so thoroughly in the course of his presidential bid that—with only two weeks to go before the general election—his own campaign admits that he hasn't even bothered to prepare a disability policy statement. That says far more about his attitude toward American citizens with disabilities than any platitudes spoken in a debate ever could.

John McCain Has Disability Activists Arrested

On Monday afternoon, September 15th, police arrested several people from the disability advocacy organization ADAPT at the Arlington campaign office of Republican presidential candidate John McCain when they protested the campaign's refusal to look at the ADAPT platform for affordable, accessible housing. The day's events are described on the ADAPT website:


After setting up a tent city at HUD headquarters just after 4 a.m., ADAPT sent 100 activists to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) offices in Washington, D.C., and another hundred to a Sen. John McCain campaign office in Arlington, VA. All three entities were presented with the ADAPT platform for affordable, accessible housing.

"The DNC was cordial, and they accepted our housing platform, as well as our invitation to visit 'DUH City,' which is HUD spelled backwards," said octogenarian Barb Toomer, ADAPT organizer from Utah. "The career HUD staff that met with ADAPT told our people they had no authority to make decisions and had to wait for the administration or administrative appointees to make any decisions, so the meeting felt like a waste of time. Sen. John McCain's campaign staff not only refused to even look at our housing platform, they had eleven of us arrested by police who caused injuries to at least one arrestee."

ADAPT's housing platform points to America's longstanding and still growing crisis in the availability of affordable, accessible integrated housing. Many people with disabilities live on benefits that are only 18% of the median income, a full 25% below the poverty level, and an amount that is less than the national average rent for a studio/efficiency apartment.


Local Arlington reporter Bruce Leshan of WUSA Channel 9 reported on the arrests in a story entitled Disabled Activists Arrested At Arlington McCain HQ. He wrote:


Sen. McCain opposes a Senate bill designed to change a system that disabled advocates say pushes them to spend the rest of their lives in an institution...

"We don't want no houses like he has. Seven houses. We don't need anything fancy. We're asking for an apartment," said protestor Cassie James.

The activists say Medicaid WILL pay for their care in a nursing home. But WON'T pay for them to have a health aide at home. "All we want to do is level the playing field so people will have a choice," said activist Rick Knight.

Sen. McCain says government living assistance for the disabled should NOT mean "perpetual confinement to an institution." But he also says the bill supported by the activists is too expensive. "The Community Choice Act is not a piece of legislation that I support," Sen. McCain told a Denver forum.

Bobby Coward says that's not good enough. He's a Persian Gulf war vet left a quadriplegic by a car accident. "If I don't get an attendant, I can't get out of the house, so I'm laying in bed."


Shame on you, John McCain, for playing up your claim to fame as a wounded war hero, while not even bothering to look at the needs of injured veterans and others with disabilities for housing assistance and services!


Update, Sept. 20: Here's a powerful new video that illustrates the McCain/Palin ticket's attitudes toward people with disabilities.

Abortion, Disability Rights, John McCain, and the Supreme Court

Since John McCain's recent pick of a running mate, Sarah Palin, who holds very strong pro-life views and has an infant son with Down Syndrome, I've seen a few people in the autistic community arguing that the Republican ticket would be the best choice for us. A prenatal test for autism could be only a few years away, this argument goes, and the only way to save our people from eugenic extermination is to vote Republican so that McCain can appoint more conservatives to the Supreme Court and put the abortionists out of business before they start killing off autistic babies.

Although this argument packs a strong emotional punch, it doesn't reflect what would actually happen under a Republican administration with a conservative Supreme Court. First of all, even if the court were to decide that there was no constitutional right to abortion, that in itself would not outlaw abortion. It would simply allow the states to legislate on abortion as they saw fit. In liberal states such as California and New York, abortion would remain legal. In the most conservative states, abortion would be promptly banned; but these states have very few abortion clinics anyway, so the only difference would be that their residents, most of whom already have to go out of town to get an abortion, would have to drive a few more hours to get to a clinic in another state or in Canada. The overall number of abortions in the United States would not be significantly reduced.

What's more, even the strictest anti-abortion laws would not ban prenatal tests, most of which have legitimate medical purposes. A prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome, for instance, can result in better medical care for the fetus because the doctor can consult with specialists during the pregnancy. If a specialist determines that the baby will need heart surgery immediately after birth, which sometimes happens, there will be a surgical team standing by. Although autistic infants do not have similar medical issues, parent groups reasonably could argue that a prenatal autism diagnosis would help families to get on waiting lists for early childhood enrichment and therapy programs. I think it's highly unlikely that any state legislators would risk their wrath by proposing to outlaw prenatal testing for autism.

That leaves us with the question: If we can't put a stop to selective abortion by legislating it out of existence, how can we protect the next generation of autistic children from being routinely aborted? To find the answer, I believe we need to look at parents' reasons for choosing abortion when they are told their child will have a disability. Most parents who opt to abort are not selfish monsters who just don't want to be bothered with the child; rather, they agonize over the decision and then conclude that abortion is for the best because the child likely would never have an independent and fulfilling life.

And they're not just relying on outdated prejudices and stereotypes in thinking so. It is a fact that people with disabilities face many barriers to independent living in today's society—lack of community services and housing options, in particular, and widespread employment discrimination. These are issues that can be addressed effectively through the political process. When we remove the barriers and build a society in which all people are empowered to live as equal participants in the community, regardless of disability, the rationale for selective abortion disappears.

Therefore, when choosing the presidential candidate whose policies are most likely to bring about an America in which autistic children and others with disabilities are not routinely aborted, we need to consider the candidates' views on disability rights issues and vote for the one who will act to remove barriers to independent living.

That candidate definitely is not John McCain. As I mentioned in a recent post, McCain opposes the Community Choice Act, which would provide funding for community services and housing for Medicaid recipients who would otherwise be forced to live in nursing homes or other institutional facilities. On the employment discrimination issue, let's talk about the Supreme Court again for a moment. The House of Representatives recently passed, and the Senate is now considering, amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act. These amendments became necessary to restore the act's original protections after they were significantly eroded by a series of Supreme Court decisions—authored by those conservative justices Senator McCain so often praises.

When Senator Tom Harkin, a longtime supporter of disability rights, challenged McCain on this point at a community forum in July, McCain asserted that the decisions had nothing to do with the conservatism of their authors, but that Congress was to blame for not being specific enough in drafting the ADA. Uh-huh. Apparently, McCain would have us believe that his pals on the Supreme Court just didn't notice that the ADA was supposed to be an anti-discrimination law. Well, I'm not buying it—and I'm not voting to give McCain a chance to appoint even more conservatives to the Supreme Court so that they can take another whack at our disability rights laws, either.

Comparing the Presidential Candidates' Views on Autism

The Autism Society of America recently invited the presidential candidates to submit statements about their views on autism and posted those statements on the ASA website. Unfortunately, John McCain's response consists mainly of alarmist rhetoric, ignorant stereotyping, and bogus statistics. Here's an excerpt:


More than one in 150 children born today will be diagnosed with autism. It now affects almost 1.5 million Americans, and costs the U.S. $ 90 billion each year. Autism has a significant impact on families -- bankruptcy and divorce rates of parents of children with autism are well above the national averages. Worse, there is no quantifiable way of determining how many future doctors, lawyers, teachers, or scientists autism has taken from society. Autism is a national crisis and the federal government must respond accordingly.


I've written before about how obnoxious it is when politicians ignore the social and economic contributions of people with disabilities and reduce human lives to costs, so I won't go into detail on that point. Rather, I'll move on to discussing McCain's uncritical acceptance of the totally groundless urban legend about autism destroying families. Susan Senator recently wrote a blog post on that topic—take a look at her comments to find several cites to research studies establishing that families with autistic children do not have higher than average divorce rates. This illustrates McCain's approach to national policy decisions: when there aren't any statistics to support a popular prejudice, just make something up.

And yup, he just gets worse when he goes on to portray autism in medieval changeling terms, as stealing children from society. Those of us who are autistic and are employed in professional careers such as those McCain mentioned, or who have autistic professionals in our families (both, in my case), know how wrong and harmful it is to perpetuate the stereotype that we are incapable of professional employment. Apparently McCain is clueless as usual on this point, though. He clearly never considered what happens in the real world as a result of that prejudice when an autistic teenager wants to enroll in college preparatory classes, or when an autistic freshman tells his university advisor that he is considering a pre-med or pre-law major, or when an autistic student enters her senior year of college with high marks and applies to a graduate program, or when one of us emerges from the comparatively sheltered environment of academia and applies for that first professional job.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, made it clear in his statement on the ASA website that he understands the importance of ending disability discrimination. After a paragraph discussing research and education, Obama wrote:


I also support the adoption of a comprehensive plan designed to provide lifelong supports and resources to Americans with ASD and other disabilities. This plan would ensure that their needs are met by:
· Reclaiming America's global leadership on disability issues by becoming a signatory to—and having the Senate ratify—the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
· Providing Americans with disabilities with the educational opportunities they need to succeed.
· Ending discrimination and promoting equal opportunity
· Increasing the employment rate of workers with disabilities, and
· Supporting independent, community-based living for Americans with disabilities.


Now that's a lot more like it.

John McCain on Disability: You Cost Too Much

The panelists at the National Forum on Disability Issues had a discussion about how to improve disability services when there are so many competing budget priorities. (A video of the event can be found here.) Enabling people with disabilities to work and contribute to society should be regarded as a long-term investment that would reduce public costs and increase tax revenues over the years, they said. Another point raised during this discussion was that the cost of services would not be used as an argument for excluding other groups of people from full participation in their communities.

Later in the program, Senator John McCain took the opposite view when answering a question from moderator Judy Woodruff about the Community Choice Act, which would provide supports and services to allow Medicaid recipients with disabilities to live and work in their communities. Senator McCain said that he does not support the Community Choice Act because he thinks it would cost too much.

In my view, it's totally illogical to argue that keeping people in nursing homes and institutions for a lifetime is somehow cheaper than it would be to provide the services needed to turn them into productive taxpayers, earning wages and contributing to the economy. But, at the same time, I have to disagree with the claim put forth during the panel discussion that similar arguments would not be made to exclude other minority groups.

We don't have to go back very far in history to see that those in positions of power and privilege have repeatedly complained about the cost of extending equal rights to other groups. Opponents of school desegregation claimed that it was too expensive to build new integrated schools to replace the run-down, rat-infested structures where black students previously had been sent. Employers objected to the cost of keeping jobs open for women on maternity leave. When women first entered universities and workplaces that had been exclusively male, there were some men who complained about the cost of building women's lavatories. Those who didn't want to see a menorah next to a crèche in municipal holiday displays said that it was an unnecessary expense. And if we go back a bit farther, a common argument made in favor of slavery was that it would be prohibitively expensive to free the slaves and pay wages to them. In short, the argument that we can't afford to integrate various groups into full community participation has been made throughout American history by scoundrels and bigots.

Now, I don't mean to imply that Senator McCain is prejudiced against people with disabilities. His grasp of economic issues is poor, as he has himself admitted, and it's possible that he may genuinely believe that it is cheaper to keep people in institutions than to enable them to live in the community and earn wages. However, it is an unfortunate fact that Senator McCain is not in good historical company in making that argument.