Re: the individual responsibility act of 1996

[Marta Russell <ap888@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis,

I did not know anything about this ad you mention here -- I don't
think that the disability press picked up on it either but it
doesn't surprise me.  One of the reasons that the GOP went along
with the ADA was because it was marketed as a way to get disabled
persons off the disability rolls into the workplace and save the
government millions in entitlement spending.  The ADA has failed
miserably in this regard.  Too bad Frank didn't mention that
businesses fight tooth and nail disabled employees' requests for
reasonable accommodations on the job -- business takes these
requests before the courts and they WIN in about 92% of the
cases. The ADA has been a windfall for employers so far.  So here
you have the GOP desire to get disabled persons off benefits head
to head with a business-biased court system that is thwarting the
goal.  Remember that there is NO afffirmative action for disabled
persons.  The right to an accommodation is no right at all, it is
dependent upon the employer's calculus and their power to thwart
providing a reasonable accommodation.  This quad is self employed
for good reason.

Marta

Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> >power went up and there was increased danger of inflation.  So
> >what did Clinton and Gop do? They forced millions of low wage
> >earners into the market and have pushed for reforms that allow
> >disabled persons to work (such as the Ticket to work and work
> >incentive improvement Act -- TTWWIW) to bring more workers from
> >the reserve army into the workplace.
> >
> >I wrote an article about this that Mike Yates edited and
> >hopefully it will appear soon in the Review of Radical Political Economy.
> >
> >best,
> >Marta
>
> This reminds me of something I forgot to bring up in the final days of the
> New Jersey Senatorial campaign, the one that my old boss at Goldman-Sachs
> spent 60 million dollars to win against his Republican opponent Robert
> Franks. Trying to undercut Corzine's obviously bullshit pitch as a friend
> of the poor, Franks ran an ad that showed disabled people praising him for
> passing legislation that would allow them to work without sacrificing
> income from Social Security Disability Payments. One of the two main people
> in the ad was a guy who was in an Internet workshop I gave out in NJ about
> 4 years ago. To his credit, despite being a quadriplegic, he had developed
> a consulting business out of his home. What I could not stomach was the
> idea that the Republican Party would exploit him in this fashion. I tried
> to find a response to this ad from a disabilities activist on Lexis-Nexis
> that I had read a while back, but could not locate it. I expect Marta to
> have something to say about this if I know Marta!
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

--
Marta Russell
author, Los Angeles, CA
http://disweb.org/
Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html