WHAT IF GOD CAME BACK AS DISABLED!

Would You Recognize Him?

Today, everyone is talking about the remark that President Obama made on Jay Leno's Tonight Show last night, Thursday, March 19, 2009. President Obama in a momentary lapse of judgment made a remark that his bowling skill was to be compared to the Special Olympics. I can't pretend that the remark was not disappointing. It was. However, the remark pales in comparison to the discrimination and disparate treatment suffered on a daily basis by this nation's population of Differently Abled!

As a parent of a special needs adult daughter, who happens to be Deaf, Visually Impaired, and Mentally Challenged, along with some other minor ailments, I can tell you from flat out experience, that the population of the Differently Abled have been the target of far worse abuses than the President's remark.

Far too many are forced onto the Medicaid and Supplemental Social Security roles because far too few want to be in their presence. They suffer from rationed health care and, some states, imposed a CO-payment on their prescription drugs while they live on less than $700 per month and most live on less than that. With their meager incomes or food stamps, they are forced to buy food that is less than nutritious and, for the most part, have no allowance for luxury items like toilet paper, soap or sanitary napkins and often are forced to choose between food and prescriptions. They are continually the victim of abuses and scams by, not only the private sector, but the systems of different governments internationally. They are looked upon as leaches off the financial system of most governments, while their abilities and contributions are either ignored or not valued at all.

We spend far too much money creating programs that provide jobs for politicians' friends and relatives off the backs of the Differently Abled. We provide workshops that pay them $65 per month in Ohio, and, then, the staff spends the day selling them back snacks and soda pop to take their $65 back to the state at $1.10 a can of pop and a $1.00 a candy bar. These programs do little to enrich or improve their lives and are nothing more than baby sitting services, with wild stories of events that go unreported in the interest of the state.

I announced the column topic last week prior to the President's remark based on the experiences that my daughter and others like her encounter on a daily basis that causes people, both sympathetic to the unsympathetic, to literally run away in fear when they encounter someone with such severe challenges. Each time it occurs, my heart breaks for her. And the place it occurs most is the very place it should occur the least: church, where she really loves to be.

It is not that most people intend to be rude or mean (some do), it is more that they are out of their comfort zone than anything else. Others can't be bothered, and still others are repulsed by her presence. I always sit back in amazement that no matter how she is treated, she always welcomes people into her life with a smile and, more often than not, a hug. When people are downright rude or mean to her, I stand back in awe in her ability to forgive, again ready to welcome that person in her life.

There are some well intentioned people that struggle to include her in their life activities, but they are few and far between, and I'm always grateful and thankful that they at least tried. They are more the exception than the rule.

So as long as people are uncomfortable with the Differently Abled and continue to under employ them and force them onto public benefits with all the same wants and desire that you yourself possess, they deserve a living wage benefit, not a program that pays someone else to benefit off of them.

Don't be too hard on President Obama for his momentary lapse in judgment. President Obama and his wife Michelle have spent a lifetime working on behalf of the poverty stricken elderly and disabled or Differently Abled and have done more on their behalf than Sarah Palin or the Republicans have ever done. It was the Republicans that convinced America that the people on Medicaid and Supplemental Social Security Income were lazy and just didn't want to work.

For the most part, the Differently Abled were forced onto these roles and live on a fraction of poverty and are unable to find a job, while the masses convince themselves with myths that they get everything supplied by the government. I'm here to tell you it is not true and that most are left struggling for survival and suffer horribly at the hands of society. Their families are punished a life time for these disabilities as their resources are re-allocated without due process of law to provide reduced benefits, and, far too often, these benefits are politically doled out.

Is this the way you would treat God? For those that have faith, didn't he say what you do for the least of those you do for me! For those that don't believe in God, is this the society that you want to live in? A society where greed and legal trickery rules the day while truth and justice are laid to rest? Remember, there for the grace of God go I.

You are an accident away from being Differently Abled! President Obama, we forgive you! Now help us!

Next Week: Lost Cost Premium Insurance with High Deductibles is NO INSURANCE AT ALL!