In the villages of northern Ghana, in Africa, people believe that a person who manifests mental illness is possessed by evil spirits. The way they deal with this is to tie the person to a tree for days, weeks and even months at a time until they are no longer possessed.
My niece, who was spending her semester abroad in Ghana, became aware of this practice in one of her classes, where her Ghanan classmates used similar reasoning to justify a husband beating his wife for failing to become pregnant.
Her concern extended to another American student, a manic depressive who was not handling the stress of being in the program very well. The young woman wanted to travel with my niece into the countryside, but my niece was afraid what would happen if she lost control and “acted out.” Would she be tied to a tree?
More than 200 million children around the world with developmental disabilities live in a torturous world – hidden inside homes, and even chained up, denied the ability to go to school, suffering taunts and bullying and other cruelties, says Tim Shriver, the CEO of the Special Olympics. “Every day, they have to look fear in the eye – people are tied up, lonely, isolated, humiliated,”
Some 650 million around the world live with disabilities that could keep them blocked off from the opportunities and quality of life afforded others.
Our country had manifest an enlightened approach to those with physical or mental disabilities when the Americans with Disabilities Act, was signed into by George H.W. Bush in 1990, asserting the equal rights and protections of the disabled.
That law is the basis for the “Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” an international agreement which 38 Republican senators refused to ratify last week.
One hundred and twenty-five countries have ratified the United Nations treaty, which would have made American standards of dignity for the disabled the global standard. But the United States, shamefully, did not.
These are the same senators who would force a woman to give birth to a fetus shown to have Down Syndrome or some other disability that would give that child a short and perhaps painful life, but would also deny that child the ability to receive basic services and assistance in global society.
The 38 Republican right-wingers – several of whom had previously supported, even co-sponsored the legislation to ratify the treaty – were egged on by none other than the former senator and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum – who has a child with severe disabilities; another child was born with a fatal condition. But Santorum champions the cause to deny a woman’s right to choose and has shown nothing but disdain for public education. He ginned up the lie that signing the treaty would mean the United States would give up its sovereignty to the United Nations and that parents would somehow lose their ability to home school their kids.
“There is not a clear definition of ‘disability’ in the treaty, which means some committee at the U.N. will decide after ratification who is covered… CRPD gives too much power to the U.N., and the unelected, unaccountable committee tasked with overseeing its implementation, while taking power and responsibility away from our elected representatives and, more important, from parents and caregivers of disabled persons,” Santorem crowed rather manifesting the panic and paranoia of the right wing.
“Another example of this U.N. overreach is the treaty’s “best interests of the child” standard, which states in full: ‘In all actions concerning children with disabilities, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.’ This provision is lifted from the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was also not ratified by the United States Senate. This would put the state, under the direction of the U.N., in the position of determining what is in the best interest of a disabled child, replacing the parents who have that power under current U.S. law.”
Actually, what Santorum said was nonsense, but that doesn’t stop the right-wingers from fear-mongering the image of blue-helmeted troops invading home-schoolers’ living rooms.
The Republican senators actually dared to kiss the cheek of Senator Dole, who sponsored the Americans With Disabilities after he was wheeled onto the chamber’s floor for emotional effect, then spit in his face as they rejected the treaty.
These Tea Party fanatics – fundamentalists no less lethal to civil society than the Taliban – also refused to ratify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty until Obama forced their hand in the 2010 lame-duck session. The same cock-eyed reasoning is why the US Senate didn’t ratify the Kyoto Treaty. And now, they are also pushing to block ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
It is a shame and a travesty, and it speaks volumes about who these people are – what they stand for, and what we can expect in the next Congress.
“Consider yesterday’s failure, the disabilities convention, at the hands of the Tea Party,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor. “This shouldn’t have been a battle, but extreme elements of the Republican Party picked a fight where there was nothing to fight about.”
“This treaty, already ratified by 125 countries, would hold foreign nations to the same high standard of treatment the U.S. already maintains for people with disabilities,” Reid said. “And it would safeguard American citizens traveling, working and serving abroad.”
People like my niece and her American manic-depressive classmate.
“This is one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate and it needs to be a wake-up call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people,” said Sen. John Kerry. “We need to fix this place because what happens and doesn’t happen here affects millions of lives. Today the dysfunction hurt veterans and the disabled and that’s unacceptable. This treaty was supported by every veterans group in America and Bob Dole made an inspiring and courageous personal journey back to the Senate to fight for it. It had bipartisan support, and it had the facts on its side, and yet for one ugly vote, none of that seemed to matter. We won’t give up on this and the Disabilities Treaty will pass because it’s the right thing to do, but today I understand better than ever before why Americans have such disdain for Congress and just how much must happen to fix the Senate so we can act on the real interests of our country.”
“This treaty will happen,” Kerry vowed.
For his part, Santorum also vowed to keep fighting.
“CRPD is not dead,” he warned his supporters. “Many of its supporters are pushing to bring it up in the next Congress. Our nation has a choice: ratify a document that may cause great harm to our country and at most will allow us a seat at a table at some U.N. committee with member countries that have horrific records on protecting the disabled. Or we can lead on our own on this great issue of human rights and dignity for the disabled. The choice is clear. We must continue to oppose CRPD.”
Indeed, with this crowd of right-wing fundamentalists Tea Party Republicans, it is unlikely that the Americans With Disabilities Act would have passed at all, especially when you consider the misguided complaints that Santorum and the others lodged against the United Nations treaty. Because while the U.N. treaty would not have impacted U.S. law one iota, the Americans With Disabilities Act – and its related measure, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act never would have gotten through these senators – especially Rick Santorum.
After all, IDEA requires public schools to provide the least restrictive environment for students, and these people see “public” education as “brainwashing” – all that science and reasoning stuff.
These laws had enormous consequence at every level of government and in private enterprise, to equalize access and opportunity, enabling those with disabilities to be part of mainstream society. The dignity and opportunity afforded the millions of Americans with some disability or other – from the infirmities of old age to the deformities of birth – would not be part and parcel of our society, our culture or our values had this crew of Tea Party fundamentalists been in Congress in 1990.
But this should serve to show that Obama and progressives cannot be fooled into believing that the Republicans have in any way been chastened or enlightened by the 2012 elections which saw not only the re-election of President Obama (by some 5 million votes), but the rejection of the Tea Party extremists and the “values” they represent.
The rejection of the U.N. treaty was an exercise for the hardliners to test their power and control after the drubbing they got in the election.
And they will do this style of bullying over and over again – especially using the debt ceiling as their primary “nuclear” weapon – essentially threatening to destroy the nation’s credit rating, and shake global confidence in our economy – as they did so successfully in 2011 (and we will be paying billions of dollars in higher interest payments as a result of the lowered credit rating brought on by the credit rating agencies concern over dysfunctional government – proving the lie that these people care a whit about the debt and deficit; they only care about destroying the social safety net.).
We already hear Grover Norquist egging on his Tea Party compatriots to use the debt ceiling as an ever-present sword of Damocles, or rather, a leash.
Acknowledging that without Republicans, the Bush tax cuts will expire and the dreaded sequester, which will cut $500 billion from defense spending, will automatically take effect, he told Politico’s Mike Allen, “Well, the Republicans also have other leverage, continuing resolutions on spending and the debt ceiling increase. They can give him debt ceiling increases once a month. They can have him on a rather short leash, on a small—you know, here’s your allowance, come back next month if you’ve behaved.”
The image of Barack Obama, president of the United States on a leash? Despicable. Revolting.
Which is why the Senate needs to change the filibuster rules, why Obama can’t give in on letting Bush tax cuts expire for the top 2 percent, why he can’t go along with their demand to raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67, and why he should present Susan Rice as his nominee for Secretary of State if that is what he wants.
These early encounters will set the stage for whether the U.S. can finally get back on the path to economic recovery, whether jobs will be created, whether the U.S. will finally do something about climate change, and on and on
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems (finally) to get it, suggesting that the mindset displayed in blocking the treaty is a bad sign for the fiscal cliff talks.
“These are the same Republicans with whom Democrats are supposed to reach an agreement to protect middle-class families from a tax increase,” Reid said. “It’s difficult to engage in rational negotiation when one side holds well-known facts and proven truths in such low esteem.”
This “mindset” is the reason why the 112th Congress was the least productive in generations. The 112th Congress has passed fewer than 200 laws, well below the 906 enacted January 1947-December 1948 by the Congress famously called “Do Nothing” by President Harry Truman. It is worth noting that the House, when Pelosi was speaker, passed some 400 laws between 2009-2010 which were blocked by the Republicans in the Senate.
“Once upon a time, the filibuster didn’t matter this much. In 1939, the year Mr. Smith went to Washington in Frank Capra’s iconic film, the filibuster wasn’t used even once,” wrote Matt Miller (“It’s the filibuster, stupid,” Washington Post, 9/27/12). “ It was easy to cast it as a way for a noble statesman to make a rare stand on a matter of conscience (though the filibuster’s less savory but more frequent mid-20th century use was for killing civil rights bills). In the old days, moreover, a filibustering senator actually had to hold the floor to make his point.
“That was then. In recent years, the Republican minority in the Senate has used the filibuster more than 300 times. The mere threat of a filibuster shuts down or waters down legislation (from health care to bank reform) every day. It’s no exaggeration to say you can’t get anything done in the Senate nowadays without 60 votes – save for the few things you can shoehorn into special budget “reconciliation” bills that require only a simple majority. And today, the minority can bottle things up quietly without explaining themselves in public, as Jimmy Stewart did.
“The result is the tyranny of the minority that the founders warned against. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 75, noted that “every political establishment in which this [supermajority] principal has prevailed, is a history of impotence, perplexity and disorder.” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that with a supermajority requirement, the “fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.”
It is why the US has not adopted any legislation to mitigate climate change, why the Violence Against Women Act has not been reauthorized, why the Jobs Act was not adopted, why there is no legislation to facilitate hiring veterans, why Elizabeth Warren’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection board was never considered, and any laws that are considered are so watered down as to be ineffectual.
Now Reid has said he expects the rules on filibuster to be changed (though he has not threatened anything close to the “nuclear option” that Republicans threatened Democrats with during Bush II’s term)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who has been working with Reid, has proposed effectively forcing any senators wanting to delay a vote to visibly take to the floor and talk. Once every senator had left the floor and could no longer debate, a cloture vote would be taken that would require only a simple majority rather than two-thirds of the chamber in order to pass muster.
“You’ve got to present your case before your colleagues, before the American public,” Merkley has said.”If you haven’t got the guts to do that, then you shouldn’t stand in the way of the majority vote.”
