Michigan Disability Resistance

It’s important to realize that Trump and his administration have made it perfectly clear that the most vulnerable Americans — starting with the disabled — are not among his top priorities because…dare I say it — we made his life a living hell while he was running for President. And no one should ever, ever cross him or else. Now, thanks to his election, insurance companies, state-funded programs, and anyone in charge of moving policy that helps the most vulnerable are bracing for major changes. Many are leaving their positions or fall into a state of paperwork paralysis.

Insurance companies deny procedures, equipment, and medicine because they know that by the time consumers get through an appeal process, their Obamacare or the patient, whichever comes first, will be dead and gone.

State-funded PCA waiver programs are happy to implement “cost saving” new rules, like adding on a 3.5-hour mandated training for new personal care attendants who work for $9.50/hour with no benefits before they are hired. It’s like asking a person who is about to apply for a job at McDonald’s to go to a 3.5 hour, UNPAID, training BEFORE filling out an application.

Chronic illness can alter your body in ways that aren’t always easy to come to terms with. And while you’re working to accept changes like weight fluctuations and scars, other people may pepper you with questions and comments that make you feel even more self-conscious. But that isn’t fair — people with chronic illnesses have the right to feel confident and proud of their bodies and know they’re still beautiful, inside and out.

If you’re interested in a list of Twitter accounts for the current US Senate (114th Congress), here’s what I’ve found.  The accounts are assigned to one of three categories:

1. Official Senator accounts, where the tweets are identified as coming from the senator or seem to be in first person,
2. Senate staff accounts, where the tweets are identified as not coming from the senator or speak of him/her in third person, and
3. Campaign / other accounts, where it could be the senator’s private account, the campaign account, or some vestige of a previous account.  It may not be active.

At this time, many incoming senators do not have official Twitter accounts or their account names represent their former positions.  I expect this to change over the next month or so.  Consider this list provisional for now.

Bergstrom believes that calling bullshit on data, big or otherwise, doesn’t require a statistics degree—only common sense and a few habits of mind. “You don’t have to understand all the gears inside a black box in order to evaluate what you’re being told,” he said. For those who were unable to enroll in INFO 198/BIOL 106B this spring, here is some of his and West’s advice:

• Recognize that bullshitters are different from liars, and be alert for both. To paraphrase the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, the liar knows the truth and leads others away from it; the bullshitter either doesn’t know the truth or doesn’t care about it, and is most interested in showing off his or her advantages.

• Upon encountering a piece of information, in any form, ask, “Who is telling me this? How does he or she know it? What is he or she trying to sell me?” (Journalists have their own versions of these questions.) If you’d ask it at a car dealership, West suggested to the students, you should ask it online, too.

Airbnb hosts have already been found to discriminate against guests with "black-sounding" names, and now it sounds like host discrimination extends to guests with disabilities as well.

A study by researchers at Rutgers, highlighted in The New York Times today, found that guests who disclose a disability are less likely to be approved for a room and more likely to be outright rejected.

Those figures dipped further for guests with cerebral palsy and spinal cord injuries, falling to just 43.4 percent and 24.8 percent, respectively.