PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH RIP

HE CROSSED THE AISLE TO CREATE THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

President Bush the senior, the one known for his "Thousand Points of Light," worked tirelessly to create far-reaching legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities.

Many of the most-famous Civil Rights and related legislation, to right longtime wrongs for African Americans and other people of color, was passed in 1964 with the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House. 

But Bush, a Republican led bipartisan backing to finally, more than a quarter century after the 1964 federal Civil Rights legislation, protect the rights of people with disabilities.

More than 50,000 Americans are impacted by some degree of disability.

Bush worked with Justin Whitlock Dart, the co-founder of the American Association of People with Disabilities, who is regarded as the "Godfather of the ADA."

Dart got polio in 1948 before entering the University of Houston, where he earned undergraduate degrees in history and education in 1954.

The university refused to give him a teaching certificate because of his disability. 

The university is now home to the Justin Dart Jr. Center for Students with Disabilities, a facility designed for students who have any type of temporary or permanent health impairment, physical limitation, psychiatric disorder, or learning disability.

People with disabilities still have the highest rate of unemployment and underemployment of any minority group in America.

And the current evil version of the GOP threatens, constantly, to dissolve the ADA.

But today, we pause from our vitriol -- toward the party whose president stole the office and makes no apologies for ridiculing people with disabilities -- because (old school) GOP stalwart George H.W. Bush worked with both parties for the good of all people.

EXTREME PREJUDICE AND BIGOTRY

TOWARD PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Why is it that people are so quick to want to strip away the rights granted by the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Why is it if one thing goes wrong – say one law firm of ambulance chasers slightly abuses the ADA’s intent in a lawsuit…

Or one construction project screws up its wheelchair access…

…and otherwise fairly smart, rational and compassionate people want to dump the ADA?

How is it that every other thing on the planet has flaws and unintended consequences, but people can accept those imperfections?

If we treated flight like the ADA, the first time an airline plane crashed, we’d ban all flight forever.

The first time a person committed fraud, we close all the banks and stuff our money under the mattress.

Medicine would still be in the dark ages, because the first surgery, antibiotic, etc. that didn’t work perfectly, we’d shut all exploration into those fields for eternity – because, gasp, a percentage of people die in surgery or have bad reactions to pharmaceuticals.

Why is it that everyone reading this agrees it is nonsense to stop a good thing because it has a few warts, or because it doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time?

But otherwise right-headed politicians, leaders and everyday people read about one case of possible ADA abuse, one case of a cheap skate business owner (falsely) claiming they went broke modifying their building.

And everyone is ready to strip away the only civil rights legislation, weak and watered down as it is, ever enacted to help 50+ million people with disabilities.

WTF.

It makes no sense.

Please share this with a dozen people, so we can pull our heads out of our collective asses when it comes to being so prejudiced against the ADA.