Steve Heronemus

Trump’s Christmas Gift to People with Disabilities

Indentured service and separate but equal systems haven’t actually gone out of fashion. They have just been regifted to a different group of minorities. One of the richest people in the country (allegedly) convened his Sessions at the Department of Justice to, in his best Alabaman, “I Declare” that Abbie Normal non-beautiful “employees” can be kept out of sight of the Normies and get paid in charcoal briquettes.
On December 21 2017, the DOJ put people living, and working, with disabilities on the Naughty List by rescinding an Obama-era regulation with the cuddly name Statement of the Department of Justice on Application of the Integration Mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead v. L.C. to State and Local Governments’ Employment Service Systems for Individuals with Disabilities. Since government never chooses to call something by its honest or understandable name, I will translate for you.
The Statement…… was guidance clarifying the Americans with Disabilities Act intended to end the practice of segregating people with disabilities into institutions and move us into living in the general community when it’s appropriate and reasonable. That guidance was generally interpreted as also applying to the workplace, where many employers, under the guise of training and education programs, had kept us in virtual sweatshops and paid sometimes under $1/hour. The Statement……  was used by disability advocates to eliminate segregated workrooms and demeaning below-minimum wages that often keep people from being able to enter the common workforce.
Let me be clear. People with disabilities is now the only segment of free society subject to legal wage discrimination. 
Let me be more clear. THIS IS WRONG! 
The whole point of the ADA is to integrate people with disabilities into mainstream society. We, that is the we with physical, emotional, intellectual and learning disabilities, statistically exhibit half the turnover, one-third the medical costs, and ¼ the time off expenses of the typical person. We not only get the job done, we are rock stars. We deserve to be included with, and paid like, everyone else. 
Period.