Teacher suspended for posting Obama youth YouTube video

The video called "Obama Youth - Junior Fraternity Regiment" shows children in military uniforms who speak of being inspired by Obama and chant "Yes We Can". They also highlight points from Obama's health care plan. The teacher works at a charter school.

Joyce McGautha, head of the Urban Community Leadership Academy, was quoted by Fox News saying, "People are upset that possibly taxpayer money is being used to support one particular candidate via Chicago-SunTimes.com

The video can be seen below:

The health care issue

Paul Krugman writes an interesting piece about how the candidates' health plans would affect insurance coverage, pointing out that McCain's plan to deregulate insurance companies would make obtaining coverage difficult to impossible for those with health issues, a topic those of us with disabilities need to consider.

Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000). via nytimes.com

Another article about health care on the presidential election campaign trail

and here's what the candidates had to say recently on the health care issue

Police arrest of UK man with a disability in the news

Martin James claims police wrenched his arms behind his back while arresting him after he called a newspaper to take a photo of a police van blocking the sidewalk near his home. He called the paper to complain about the way the van was parked by an officer who is a neighbor.



He told magistrates in Llanelli that during the photo-shoot on 19 May an off-duty officer approached him and shouted: "Get off my road, get off my land".

He claimed the row escalated and police wrenched his arm behind him, as they restrained him.

"I was screaming in pain," he said.

"They treated me worse than an animal - they just threw me into the police van onto the floor."

At Carmarthen police station, he claims he was "brutally manhandled" by officers.via news.bbc.co.uk

Officers denied the mistreatment and claim that James was out of control, shouting abuse. They also deny that they threw him in a van. The above photo, taken at the scene, shows officers pulling James' arms behind him. A court ruling is pending.

Free Family Caregiver National Teleclass

The National Family Caregivers Association is offering a free teleclass to assist either professional or family caregivers in learning how to communicate effectively with health care providers. This free two part class will take place on November 6 and 13 at 2pm. Details can be found here.

via NJCIM list serve

An example of accommodation

So many of the accommodations I need as a person with quadriplegia go beyond physical access, such as ramps or accessible bathrooms. Due to dexterity issues, I commonly ask employees for other kinds of assistance - for example, when I go into Starbucks to get a beverage, I ask them to put a straw in it for me since I can't get the paper cover off of the straw, etc.

Often I have to ask numerous times because employees pass the request by word of mouth and it becomes like the telephone game, where by the end of the line the request is lost. But today I saw an employee handle it very well. On my cup, a Starbucks employee wrote the words Put straw in (a closeup on the right is shown and a photo of the cup on the left is pictured). I appreciated this since I didn't have to repeatedly ask for assistance in a crowd, where it can be difficult to be heard. A simple, but effective, solution.

Keeping Zac in prayer

The Sunderland family has sent out a request for prayers for the safety of their 16 year old son, Zac, who is navigating the world solo in a yacht. (I often link to Zac's blog posts on my sidebar).

He's run into some safety issues and his parents are concerned and are asking everyone to keep Zac in prayer, so I'd ask readers to join me in doing that.

UPDATE: Zac is okay after encountering an unknown vessel in waters known for piracy. Quite the adventure, and everyone is glad to hear from him!

The Condition: A book review

I'm reading The Condition by Jennifer Haigh, which is available on Bookshare for members and Amazon. It'a a novel about family dynamics, but deals with them over a number of years, which is an interesting approach. As the novel begins, thirty five year old Paulette's and Frank's children are in their teens and preteens. They are just noticing that their daughter Gwen is not developing as quickly as her cousins are. The book then skips to when the children are in their 30's, after Paulette and Frank have divorced. Billy, the oldest, is hiding a secret; Gwen, who was diagnosed with Turner Syndrome*, struggles with her relationship with her mother and vice versa; and Scott, the youngest and labeled the most "difficult" child, sees his own issues in his son.

I haven't finished the book yet, but find the family and relationship dynamics that are described concerning Gwen and her parents more interesting than in most books I read that deal with the issue of raising a child with a disability or illness. For example, Frank is a scientist and he's always seeking out the latest treatments, then questioning what was done or not done. Paulette, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with appearance - how Gwen dresses to minimize her looking like a boy due to her small stature, for example. She also pushes her daughter into awkward social situations, like a nightmare blind date with a six foot plus basketball player, trying to normalize things (she thinks she knows what normal is). Although there is no question that, despite the dysfunction, family members love each other, the book realistically portrays how not allowing Gwen to live with Turner Syndrome and be herself causes everyone more pain in the end than is necessary. My understanding is that this gets somewhat resolved, but I'm not done reading the book yet.

What's most interesting is that the author shows that if these dynamics didn't swirl around "the condition", they would probably be about something else, considering the petty concerns of the characters at the opening of the novel. Very good read.

*Turner Syndrome results in short stature and loss of ovarian function. Please click above link for further information.