Trump And DeVos Just Robbing AUTISTIC BABIES Is All, And The Families Who Care For Them
Very legal very cool.
I began this post yesterday.
And I was suddenly overcome with a sense of isolated desperation, of sadness and gloom, melancholy, a deep moroseness, and other feelings I still find difficult to articulate. Maybe it was just a case of things coming to a head, disappointments piling up, and the feeling that a new threat or attack could very well break me. It is known that I am one to indulge in tearful interludes often; I read stories, tweets, posts, and lives all day long, so I cannot help but to empathize with strangers on the web that I'll probably never meet. Yet yesterday wasn't one of those times I went looking for troubles to collect or reasons to sing the blues; I simply got my first real good look at Betsy DeVos's 2020 Education budget proposal. And I am still pissed the fuck off and ready to snatch someone bald. I cry when I'm angry too, not just when I'm sad.
Let me tell you something:
YG & Nipsey Hussle "FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)" (WSHH Exclusive - Official Music Video) www.youtube.com
Let me tell you, "Fuck Donald Trump."
As the mother of an autistic child I am livid, I am horrified, I am fucking devastated. Not because I believe Nancy Pelosi will go along with this inhumane attack on the least fortunate among us, but because our nation has elected a leader so depraved, so vile, so utterly horrifying, and so EAGER to harm people he sees as beneath him, that he and his goons would steal from Special Needs and Disabled children.
I spent three hours watching that overly privileged "Frost and Glow" Stepford wife Betsy DeVos testify yesterday; and she did it without ever once saying, indicating, or appearing like she loves any children whatsoever. Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to hire, as Secretary of Education, a woman who looks like she dog-naps Pound Puppies so she can make her boots and gloves with their skin? Only Donald fucking Trump would allow some yachty harridan to strip money from the developmentally disabled. Not only is she proposing to cut the funding for Special Olympics -- bitch has $5 billion and "donated" her "salary" to Special Olympics when she could fund the whole thing with half of one yacht -- but she also wants to cut relief for parents who have children who need care and supervision around the clock. Kids like mine.
Read it for yourself .
I'll list some of the programs the budget plans to eliminate:
Alaska Native Education- (I live in Alaska, this is insane.)
Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants (Kids don't need to know how to read. Not In New Gilead, anyway.)
Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (This is ONLY for poor -- read minority -- kids.)
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (This is also ONLY for poor kids.)
Native Hawaiian Education (Notice a racial pattern yet?)
Javits Gifted and Talented Education (My youngest is in the gifted program. Awesome.)
Special Olympics Education Programs (My oldest is in the Special Needs Program and LOVES Special Olympics.)
Impact Aid Payments for Federal Property (Once again, poor kids. My GOD.)
What did that insane billionaire lady have to say for herself? The asshole woman said this:
In the case of the $17.6 million cut to help fund the Special Olympics, a program designed to help children and adults with disabilities, DeVos simply suggested it is better supported by philanthropy and added, "We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget."
You fucking *&*%@%! Difficult decisions? Honey, you don't look like you have ever found it difficult to harm a damn thing. Life is so easy for her, in fact, that she was able to reuse this dead ass explanation as many times as she wanted.
"Do you know how many kids are going to be affected by that cut?"asked U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., while also pointing out a recent report by a nonprofit group that concluded the U.S. government has spent as much as $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or closed because of mismanagement or other reasons.
Exactly, If she found the decision so difficult, why didn't she take the money from the failing Charter School con game instead of trying to pump an extra $60 million more of our money into that crapfest? Because she's there to undermine education; and how better to do that than pumping our money into ... unsupervised Charter Schools!
From WaPo :
The Education Department's office of inspector general has over the years issued reports citing problems with the program, most recently in 2016. It found that of the 33 schools it reviewed, most had conflicts of interest with the organizations managing them, known as charter management organizations (CMOs).
Now, having read that hotcatshit, let's talk about how "Fuck Trump" and "He's a fucking hypocrite POS." and also, "Fuck Mrs. Mike Pence too for good measure." Just recently, Trump and Pence were hanging ou t with Special Needs kids, and Mrs. Mike Pence attended the Special Olympics as our representative. Trump and Pence did it while knowing they were actively seeking to harm those very kids they posed with.
They really are nasty people
As an Alaskan, a black mother born in poverty, mom of an intellectually disabled child, and also mom of an intellectually gifted child: It truly feels like a personal attack. This administration targeted programs I have used, my children have used, my Native friends use, and that we ALL use, to keep our heads above water, and pay for our educations. It could be that they are trying to prevent any more young, poor, uppity, gifted and talented black (or POC) girls, like I was, from growing up to be successful women like I want to be. Perhaps we, women of color, have done too well for the Betsy DeVoses of the world; too many Stacey Abramses and Kamala Harrises turned out, and they want the "Old Days" back. They want the days for my children that my mother lived through; poverty, lack of food, and lack of hope ... until the school lunch program, one of the GOP's favorite targets, finally made it to her school. Education and Food. Small things to some, but for my mother, it was a life-altering experience to read and eat everyday. To know she would eat tomorrow was remarkable, to be able to access books was divine. Her children, though she was a teenage mother, never suffered that insecurity, we have never been the "invisible poor," were never sent home from school at "lunch" just to starve slowly on the streets. The Department of Education was formed the year my sister was born, in 1979 . Since that time, the outlook for black women has gone from hopeless to "My name is Kamala Harris, and I'm running for President," so, just remember, fuck Betsy DeVos, and more importantly, fuck Donald Trump.
[ Freep / WaPo / BudgetSummary ]
I am too tired to read the whole thing, but Applied Behavioral Analysis got my hackles up; the way in which it is practiced can be punitive and damaging, and most ABA providers are not Masters level providers, some have an AA and training in the "therapy" to modify the child's behavior can be rigid and punishment based. In the program I manage, we have a woman who is 50 years old and has Autism and other issues; she is also a very smart woman who has a great sense of humor. She is glad she did not get this "therapy" but also angry that the neurologist she sees does not consider it a neurological issue, "just" a psychiatric problem; as if the brain is completely detached from the body and neurotransmitters and hormones were not at all connected.
I have a friend who is convinced that the President* of the United States cannot, on his own and at his sole say so, order up the launching of nuclear missiles. I am unable to disavow him of this notion. It is this that we are, all of us, up against.