Trump White House takes down website pages about disabilities

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Trump White House takes down website pages about disabilities

By Valerie Strauss January 20 at 3:55 PM

During the Obama administration, there was a page on the White House website that had information about federal policy regarding people with disabilities. Its URL was https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/disabilities . Not under the Trump administration. The Trump-run White House website which went live moments after Fridays inauguration of President Trump says: You are not authorized to access this page.

The Obama White House website page labeled Contact the Disability Issues Outreach Team The White House isnt there any longer either. Click on it and it now says: The requested page/disability-issues-contact could not be found. And the Obama White House websites fact sheet about expanding opportunities for people with disabilities is gone too. (You can see the former disabilities page here.)

Archiving website pages from past administrations is common practice, and restructuring websites from administration to administration is, too. What is interesting here is that the website team didnt find the time to make sure there were replacements for the disabilities information they were taking down before Inauguration Day.

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.
Follow @valeriestrauss

https://twitter.com/valeriestrauss

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/20/trump-white-house-takes-down-website-pages-about-disabilities/

[underpants]

1. Bannon is an "ableist"

I had never heard of that until he joined team Snowflake.

Preference to those without disability. Basically looking at any one with any "weakness " as being inferior or a second class human.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Ableist, is he? Bannon looks unable to walk up a steep hill to me.

[Ken Burch]

10. I'm thinking he was on a three-day schnapps-and-Wagner binge.

n/t.

[Ken Burch]

7. In the tradition of that failed Austrian painter he worships.

[underpants]

8. Yep

[ProudLib72]

3. I hope

one of the tRumps or his cabinet picks develops some crippling disease that puts him in a wheelchair. Of course, tRump would just replace him immediately.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. I doubt Trump would care.

I figured these days were coming.

I'm slowly going blind and I'll probably end up homeless just about the time that I'm "legally blind" and aid is cut off. Either homeless or blind I could handle, but probably not both without getting killed.

The writing's been on the wall for years from Heritage Foundation sponsored propaganda. It's heartless and the country has become more heartless as well.

[LeftInTX]

12. Deplorables also get old and they develop disabling conditions

Or women who choose against abortion and bring a child into the world with a congenital deformity such as Zika, Downs syndrome or neural tubal defects? What do those mother's do?

What about a child with cerebral palsy due to premature delivery or due to medical malpractice or maternal conditions that cause it? What about children on the autism spectrum? What about children with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder?

Trump hates children!!!

[Buckeye_Democrat]

16. Or quadriplegics or any other number of problems.

I hope that the most vulnerable will still get care, but Republicans have been incessant in their fight to push off these people on volunteer programs they pretend exist on every corner, and, quite honestly, too many liberals seem more concerned about debating bathroom usage issues and the like.

[LeftInTX]

17. I don't believe Bush pushed aside disabled people. I think even Reagan was more compassionate.

The Republican Texas governor is a paraplegic. (A tree fell on him)

I hope you get the care that you need and or not left out in the cold.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

18. Maybe it won't ever get that bad for the most vulnerable, but it sure seems...

like there's a constant and gradual push in a heartless libertarian direction. Republican control at pretty much all levels of government, from local to federal, is pretty distressing.

Thanks.

[cstanleytech]

24. Aye I have also met some who claimed that before the government the volunteer programs did great

at things like feeding the poor and all I could do is wonder where the hell they pulled that piece of fiction out of.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

25. Private care might have been partly feasible a long time ago...

when most people lived on farms!

Families could handle some disabilities sufficiently back then.

We've been dealing with economic forces that have changed that support apparatus for a very long time. Not to mention there's some disabilities that are beyond the means of family and friends.

[cstanleytech]

28. Aye I know it seems some people either cannot grasp or refuse to grasp that when your have

populations that exceed a certain point that volunteer support like that breaks down and then you end up with things like packs of homeless children roaming the streets.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

30. Libertarian principles were tried in Chile and it was a disaster.

Well, except their rich became richer.

Yet adherents still cling to it.

I like this pic!

[cstanleytech]

33. Exactly.

What I think some of it is caused by is that there are just alot of sociopaths in this world with Trump and most of the Republicans in DC and in most elected offices around the country being perfect examples of the kind that enjoy inflicting pain and hardship on others.

[DK504]

35. They seem to "think"

that their disabilities will still count. Have to wonder what they will do when it is all taken away.

[LeftInTX]

9. I hope Trump himself develops some crippling disease or multiple diseases

I hope he goes deaf and blind. I hope he has to have a leg amputated. I hope he gets gangrene.

[elmac]

14. Maybe his little worm will dry up

and fall off. Not even Tic Tacs could save him.

[LeftInTX]

15. LOL!!!!! But we would never find out. It needs to be something grossly visible!

[dalton99a]

4. Figures.

[cstanleytech]

29. Yup thats the vileness of Trump all right. nt

[Matthew28]

6. Trump is a republican

They hate the disabled, poor and the old. Only the wealthy and powerful do they like.

[democrank]

11. Yet another heartless Trump move

[Mc Mike]

13. Repugs working on the important issues. Like shutting down those website pages.

So they're too busy to fill positions like Special Presidential Envoy For The Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, or any of the National Security Council positions that combat terrorism, or any of the National Nuclear Safety Administration positions.

There's not enough time to do everything, have to prioritize.

[smirkymonkey]

19. Heartless bastards!

[Hortensis]

20. The rough beast takes power. Remember when cons howled about

making crosswalks navigable for those in wheelchairs and with other disabilities? Almost every crosswalk in the nation had been built or repaired after WW2, Korean War, Vietnam to be a barrier, but the same sorts who support Trump now at that time cooed over "our boys" and "our vets" out one side of their faces while they howled their outrage at this liberal scheme from the other.

In their defense, sort of, both sides were bizarrely sincere.

[FailureToCommunicate]

21. Not surprised. And under questioning his education pick had no idea what "IDEA" was

It's gonna be an awful four years.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. This breaks tRump's inaugural promise to include ALL Americans. . . . nt

[mulsh]

23. The petition section is unmolested. I suggest you go there, sign a few as I just did. who knows with

any luck it will get me on the administration's Enemies lists.

[otohara]

26. Done - We Are Now Invisible

can't mock people who don't exist.

[Else You Are Mad]

27. Most of the deplorables believe...

that it is the disabled person's fault because they have done something to piss of God and deserves to be disabled.

[Girard442]

31. It's part of an overall strategy.

Remove all the safety nets. Make people as insecure and fearful as possible. Don't take chances. Don't make waves. Don't be the nail that sticks up and gets hammered down. If some people have to die early in abject misery -- a feature, not a bug.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

34. For an example of a time when things were different:

Justin Whitlock Dart, Jr. (August 29, 1930 – June 22, 2002) was an American activist and advocate for people with disabilities. He helped to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, co-founded the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), and is regarded as the "Godfather of the ADA"; although, he never reckoned that the cognitively disabled were, at all, truly, disabled.

Background

Dart came from a wealthy Chicago family. His father, Justin Whitlock Dart, Sr., was President of Dart Industries. His mother, Ruth Walgreen Dart, was the daughter of Walgreen founder Charles R. Walgreen and his wife, Myrtle Walgreen. Justin's brother Peter Dart also developed polio.

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

Activism

During his time at the University of Houston, which was then segregated, Dart organized the first student group to oppose racism.

After graduating, Dart was a successful entrepreneur who founded three Japanese corporations, but in 1967 he gave up the corporate life to devote himself to the rights of people with disabilities, working in Texas and Washington, D.C. as a member of various state and federal disability commissions.

[Rex]

36. Does Trump has some hidden issue with people that have disabilities?

He has so many other issues, but there seems to be a pattern emerging. How creepy.

[zstat]

37. Starts with selecting the weakest, remove the information, then reduce medicare, then reduce SS

The sick, frail, disabled. Where are we heading? What are we doing? What year is this? 1933?

[LiberalLovinLug]

38. Just the beginning

https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled

The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily “unfit” Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany’s broader genocidal policies.