Disabled Veteran Quotes

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Sure, society understands visible shackles-- they get the symbolism of the wheelchair, of prosthetics, of a bumper sticker reading disabled veteran, but they still struggle for comprehension of the profound, invisible shackles that an illness such as [Chronic Fatigue] puts on a person's body.
Peggy Munson (Stricken)
Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I’m not ashamed of my illness. I’ve been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too.
Stanley Victor Paskavich (Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries)
What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies. It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to solicit foreign policy advice from someone who owns shares in a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to read a foreign policy speech written by someone on the payroll of a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to appoint a national security adviser who has taken money from a Russian propaganda organ. It is not patriotic to appoint as secretary of state an oilman with Russian financial interests who is the director of a Russian-American energy company and has received the “Order of Friendship” from Putin. The point is not that Russia and America must be enemies. The point is that patriotism involves serving your own country. The
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
Many people say that psychiatrists just want to push drugs. Well I seriously have to say, without medication, I’d be locked up in a VA hospital somewhere.
Stanley Victor Paskavich (Stantasyland: Quips Quotes and Quandaries)
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed is as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he has hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
They were not medical problems to rehabilitate. We were not medical problems. I was never going to undo the damage polio had done to my nerve cells and walk again, nor was this my goal. The disabled veterans coming home from the Vietnam War were never going to grow their limbs back or heal their spinal cords and walk again. My friends with muscular dystrophy were never going to not have been born with muscular dystrophy. Accidents, illnesses, genetic conditions, neurological disorders, and aging are facts of the human condition, just as much as race or sex.
Judith Heumann (Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist)
Go to war, come home as a sickened veteran, and be denied your earned disability payments to live a life of extreme poverty and hardship.
Steven Magee
Camp Patriot is a God-centered nonprofit organization that provides outdoor adventure excursions for wounded and disabled veterans.
Robert W. Vera (A Warrior's Faith: Navy SEAL Ryan Job, a Life-Changing Firefight, and the Belief That Transformed His Life)
FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II)
Today, more than 23 million veterans walk among us. Nearly 3 million receive disability compensation, and many more owe their lives to an anonymous corpsman or medic. Millions of Americans and their families are profoundly grateful.
Scott McGaugh, Battlefield Angels: Saving Lives from Valley Forge to Afghanistan
Discrimination is the most polite word for abuse aka denying equal opportunity by anyone in power based on age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation.
Ramesh Lohia
You know being and ex serviceman and a Disabled Gulf War Veteran. You could play Taps on a Jews Harp and I'd still cry
Stanley Victor Paskavich (Return to Stantasyland)
Every heart knows its own sorrow and the greatest casualty of war is to be forgotten,
Miguel Reece (The Disabled Veteran's Story: The Sacrifices of Our Veterans and Their Families)
The corporate controlled military does a great job of ruining peoples lives.
Steven Magee
In Cleveland, a black mob attacked a disabled army veteran. They first saw him on a bus, then followed him when he left it. They kicked him, punched him, and knocked him down -- all the while saying ‘Knock that boy out! White boy. Cracker. Knock that white boy out.  He lived. [356] And oh yeah: The reporters say “teen mobs” do that a lot in Cleveland, before, during and after Black History Month. Though they never seem to get around to writing about it.
Colin Flaherty ('Don't Make the Black Kids Angry': The hoax of black victimization and those who enable it.)
The next time you drive into a Walmart parking lot, pause for a second to note that this Walmart—like the more than five thousand other Walmarts across the country—costs taxpayers about $1 million in direct subsidies to the employees who don’t earn enough money to pay for an apartment, buy food, or get even the most basic health care for their children. In total, Walmart benefits from more than $7 billion in subsidies each year from taxpayers like you. Those “low, low prices” are made possible by low, low wages—and by the taxes you pay to keep those workers alive on their low, low pay. As I said earlier, I don’t think that anyone who works full-time should live in poverty. I also don’t think that bazillion-dollar companies like Walmart ought to funnel profits to shareholders while paying such low wages that taxpayers must pick up the ticket for their employees’ food, shelter, and medical care. I listen to right-wing loudmouths sound off about what an outrage welfare is and I think, “Yeah, it stinks that Walmart has been sucking up so much government assistance for so long.” But somehow I suspect that these guys aren’t talking about Walmart the Welfare Queen. Walmart isn’t alone. Every year, employers like retailers and fast-food outlets pay wages that are so low that the rest of America ponies up a collective $153 billion to subsidize their workers. That’s $153 billion every year. Anyone want to guess what we could do with that mountain of money? We could make every public college tuition-free and pay for preschool for every child—and still have tens of billions left over. We could almost double the amount we spend on services for veterans, such as disability, long-term care, and ending homelessness. We could double all federal research and development—everything: medical, scientific, engineering, climate science, behavioral health, chemistry, brain mapping, drug addiction, even defense research. Or we could more than double federal spending on transportation and water infrastructure—roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, dams and levees, water treatment plants, safe new water pipes. Yeah, the point I’m making is blindingly obvious. America could do a lot with the money taxpayers spend to keep afloat people who are working full-time but whose employers don’t pay a living wage. Of course, giant corporations know they have a sweet deal—and they plan to keep it, thank you very much. They have deployed armies of lobbyists and lawyers to fight off any efforts to give workers a chance to organize or fight for a higher wage. Giant corporations have used their mouthpiece, the national Chamber of Commerce, to oppose any increase in the minimum wage, calling it a “distraction” and a “cynical effort” to increase union membership. Lobbyists grow rich making sure that people like Gina don’t get paid more. The
Elizabeth Warren (This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class)
Any movement that seeks to end police violence has no choice but to work to undo the racism and ableism and audism which, together, make Black Disabled/Deaf people prime targets for police violence. For instance, Darnell T. Wicker, a Black deaf veteran, was killed by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, on August 8, 2016 (note that the lowercase d indicates that Darnell Wicker was deaf, not culturally Deaf). Body camera footage shows officers shooting Darnell Wicker multiple times within one to two seconds of issuing verbal orders on a dark night. However, Darnell Wicker relied on speech-reading to communicate.
Alice Wong (Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century)
What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies. It
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON
Patrick W. Corrigan
The human consequences of Reagan's budget cuts went deep. For instance, Social Security disability benefits were terminated for 350,000 people. A war hero of Vietnam, Roy Benavidez, who had been presented with the Congressional Medal Of Honor by Reagan, 'Was told by Social Security officials that the shrapnel pieces in his heart, arms, and leg did not prevent him from working. Appearing before a congressional committee, he denounced Reagan.
Howard Zinn (A People's History Of The United States Sm)
Unfortunately, for the past decade American soldiers have returned to a country that displays many indicators of low social resilience. Resources are not shared equally, a quarter of children live in poverty, jobs are hard to get, and minimum wage is almost impossible to live on. Instead of being able to work and contribute to society—a highly therapeutic thing to do—a large percentage of veterans are just offered lifelong disability payments.
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
Anthropologists like Kohrt, Hoffman, and Abramowitz have identified three factors that seem to crucially affect a combatant's transition back into civilian life. The United States seems to rank low on all three. First, cohesive and egalitarian tribal societies do a very good job at mitigating effects of trauma, but by their very nature, many modern societies are exactly the opposite: hierarchical and alienating. America's great wealth, although a blessing in many ways, has allowed for the growth of an individualistic society that suffers high rates of depression and anxiety. Both are correlated with chronic PTSD. Secondly, ex-combatants shouldn't be seen -or be encouraged to see themselves - as victims... Lifelong disability payments for a disorder like PTSD, which is both treatable and usually not chronic, risks turning veterans into a victim class that is entirely dependent on the government for their livelihood... Perhaps most important, veterans need to feel that they're just as necessary and productive back in society as they were on the battlefield... Recent studies of something called 'social resilience' have identified resource sharing and egalitarian wealth distribution as major components of a society's ability to recover from hardship. And societies that rank high on social resilience...provide soldiers with a significantly stronger buffer against PTSD than low-resilience societies. In fact, social resilience is an even better predictor of trauma recovery than the level of resilience of the person himself.
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
America was at the crossroads between its slaveholding past and the possibility of a truly inclusive, vibrant democracy. The four-year war, played out on battlefield after battlefield on an unimaginable scale, had left the United States reeling. Beyond the enormous loss of life to contend with, more than one million disabled ex-soldiers were adrift, not to mention the widows seeking support from a rickety and virtually nonexistent veterans’ pension system.6 The mangled sinews of commerce only added to the despair, with railroad tracks torn apart; fields fallow, hardened, and barren; and bridges that had once defied the physics of uncrossable rivers now destroyed. And then this: Millions of black people who had been treated as no more than mere property were now demanding their full rights of citizenship. To face these challenges and make
Carol Anderson (White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide)
Thanks to the popular policies of our Party and the Government of our Republic, all our people are provided by the state and society with all the practical conditions they need for adequate food, clothing and housing and enjoy an equally happy life. They are supplied by the state with provisions virtually free of charge and receive the benefits of free education, free medical care and all the conditions they need for adequate food, clothing and housing. Moreover, as a result of the abolition of taxation, this word has disappeared from their vocabulary. In our country the state takes responsible care of the old and disabled people and children who have no means of support. In our country preferential, social treatment is accorded to merited people, including veterans who have been disabled in the fight for the noble cause of the fatherland and the people, and the Party and the state take warm care of them. Our people receive many benefits from the Party and the state. The popular policies of our Party and the Government of the Republic are eloquent proof of the advantages of our socialist system which is centred upon the popular masses. The “welfare policies” pursued in capitalist countries are fundamentally different from the popular policies of a socialist society. They are aimed at disguising the class contradictions in that society and at pacifying the resistance of the working masses. Even if the “welfare policies” are enforced, this is done only in name and cannot improve the life of the working people.
Kim Jong Il (Our Socialism Centered on the Masses Shall Not Perish)
If the tears I've shed for my fallen comrades and this nation were blood I'd be dead... Stanley Victor Paskavich Disabled Gulf War Veteran
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Has the tendency among elected officials to talk of all veterans as though they are disabled and to represent all trauma as weakening rather than strengthening diminished public confidence in our fighting forces?
Jim Mattis (Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military)
Relying on the breadwinner ideal of manhood, those in favor of pension reform began to define disability not by a man’s missing limbs or by any other physical incapacity (as the Civil War pension system had done), but rather by his will (or lack thereof) to work. Seen this way, economic dependency—often linked overtly and metaphorically to womanliness—came to be understood as the real handicap that thwarted the full physical recovery of the veteran and the fiscal strength of the nation.
Beth Linker (War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America)
Where the cutting has been wholesale, and has lasted, is in Congress—Congress: the first branch of government, closest to the people; Congress, which on our behalf keeps an eye on all those unelected bureaucrats. Congressmen and -women have sabotaged their own institution’s ability to do that for us. They have smashed the tools it possessed to help fashion laws in the public interest. They have crippled their own capacity to come to independent conclusions as to the nature of the problems such laws would address. Congress has been disabled from inside. Most of this happened in one of those revisions of the House of Representatives’ internal rules when an election flipped the majority party. It was January 1995, and a last-minute geyser of campaign cash had delivered an upset Republican victory two months before. Newt Gingrich held the gavel. The very first provision of the new rules he hammered through on January 5 reads: “In the One Hundred Fourth Congress, the total number of staff of House committees shall be at least one-third less than the corresponding total in the One Hundred Third Congress.” Congressional staffers are the citizens’ subject matter experts. Over years, these scientists and auditors and lawyers and military veterans build up historical knowledge on the complex issues that jostle for House and Senate attention. They help members, who have to be generalists, drill down into specifics. Cut staffs, and members lose the bandwidth to craft wise legislation, the expertise to ask telling questions in hearings—the ability to hold oversight hearings at all. The Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office all suffered the cuts. The Office of Technology Assessment was abolished—because, in 1995, what new technology could possibly be poised on the horizon? Democrats, when they regained control of the House, did not repair the damage. Today, the number of staff fielding thousands of corporate lobbyists or fact-checking their jive remains lower than it was a quarter century ago.
Sarah Chayes (On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake)
A Republican seizure of power based not on the strength of the party's ideas but on massive disfranchisement denies citizens not only their rights, but also the "talisman" of humanity that voting represents. The lie of voter fraud breaks a World War II veteran down into a simple, horrifying statement: "I wasn't a citizen no more." It forces a man, a retired engineer who was instrumental in building this nation, into facing a bitter truth: "I am not wanted in this state." It eviscerates the key sense of self-worthy in a disabled man who has to pen the painful words "My constitutional rights have been stripped from me." It maligns thousands of African Americans who resiliently weathered the Missouri cold and hours of bureaucratic runarounds as nothing but criminals and frauds. It leaves a woman suffering from lung cancer absolutely "distraught" and convinced that "they prevented us from voting," because none of her IDs could penetrate Wisconsin's law. It shatters the dying wish of a woman who, in her last moments on earth, wanted to cast a vote for possibly the first woman president of the United States. But an expired driver's license meant none of that was to be.
Carol Anderson (One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy)
In their ongoing war against evil capitalists, some vengeful Democrats have their eyes on banks, which they blame for making millions of loans that resulted in foreclosures and the 2008 financial crisis. Never mind that it was progressives who forced the government to make these loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit ratings through the Community Reinvestment Act and anti-discrimination laws. They promoted minority home ownership without regard to the owners’ ability to repay, and the result was catastrophic. But being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry—just pass a misguided policy and blame everyone else when it predictably fails. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, emboldened by Democrats recapturing control of the House, issued a stern warning to bankers before the 2019 session began. “I have not forgotten” that “you foreclosed on our houses,” she said, and “had us sign on the line for junk and for mess that we could not afford. I’m going to do to you what you did to us.”62 How’s that for good governance—using her newfound power as incoming chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee to punish bank executives for the disaster she and her fellow Democrats caused? Waters is also targeting corporations for allegedly excluding minorities and women from executive positions. Forming a new subcommittee on diversity and inclusion, she immediately held a hearing to discuss the importance of examining the systematic exclusion of women, people of color, persons with disabilities, gays, veterans, and other disadvantaged groups.63 Why concentrate on policies to stimulate economic growth and improve people’s standards of living when you can employ identity politics to demonize your opponents?
David Limbaugh (Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why The Democrats Must Not Win)
I’m sorry if my words hurt you earlier. I thought I’d been pretty clear about my not wanting kids.” Alex winced, but tried to cover it by tucking her hair behind her right ear. “You were. I remember you saying it the first night. But we clicked on everything else and I guess I thought you might possibly start to rethink your position.” He could understand why she would think that. They had clicked on everything. She’d fit into his house as if she’d always been here. Hell, she fit into his life as if she’d always been there. All of the worries he’d had about her youth had faded. She was more mature for her age than most of the men he knew, and that was the truth. “I don’t want this,” he motioned between them, “to end because of just this one thing.” She frowned. “I hope you didn’t mean that the way it sounded, because that one thing is very important to me. I’m almost thirty-two. As trite as it is to say, my childbearing time is ticking away.” Duncan growled, pissed that he couldn’t articulate his feelings the way he needed to. He was losing her, he could see it in her eyes. “I don’t want the responsibility of children, but I don’t want our physical or emotional relationship to end. I enjoy having you in my life.” She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “It’s convenient, right? Having a woman in your house and bed, falling in love with you? I can’t just be ‘enjoyed’ Duncan, I need more that that. I felt like we had a deeper connection than that.” Scowling, he turned to look at the cold fireplace. Then her words slowly sank in. She’d said she was falling in love with him. Fuck… Alex muttered a curse under her breath and pushed to her feet to pace. Duncan watched her move, thoughts swirling in his mind. She thought she loved him, but she’d only been here a couple of days. Yes, they’d been together the entire time since she’d been here, but surely she didn’t think she loved him. Maybe she was less mature than he thought. No one could decide to tie themselves to a man that quickly, let alone a disabled veteran destined to have long-term emotional and medical issues. She paused in her pacing, as if coming to a decision. “I think I’m going to go home.” The words fell into the silence and he lost his breath. But he couldn’t blame her. She wanted more than he could give her. Once again, like with Melanie, he was being tossed over for another man, this one just so far unnamed. “If you make your reservations, I can drive you whenever you need me to.” She blinked at him, a strange expression on her face, then she shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it was ending. He couldn’t either. “All right. Goodnight.” Duncan
J.M. Madden (Embattled Ever After (Lost and Found #5))
The legislation I introduced was, according to the veterans’ organizations, the most comprehensive piece of legislation offered for them in many decades. Sadly, despite the strong support of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), and other organizations, my legislation only received fifty-six votes on the floor of the Senate—all of the Democrats, but only two Republicans. We needed sixty votes. It turned out that Republicans loved veterans very much, except when it came to funding their needs
Bernie Sanders (Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In)
But if Hubbard really did cure himself of his mythical injuries by 1947, why was he still claiming a part disability pension? Why did he write to Veterans Administration in October of the same year saying he’d been ‘trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life’ and asking for help paying for psychiatric treatment? Why did he continue to lobby for an increase to his pension over this period of time? And why was it the case that he claimed a disability pension for decades afterwards?46 Some
Steve Cannane (Fair Game: The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia)
Born on March 20, 1971, she celebrated her 100th birthday this past March. During the war she toured the battle zones, where British forces were fighting by giving concerts for the troops. The songs most remembered from that era are We'll Meet Again, The White Cliffs of Dover, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and There'll Always Be an England. During the Second World War she earned the title of “the Allied Forces Sweetheart.” And in 1945 she was awarded the British War Medal and the Burma Star for her untiring devotion to the Crown and the men in uniform. As a songwriter and actress, her recordings and performances were enormously popular. This popularity remained solid after the war with recording of Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart, My Son, My Son and I Love This Land, which was released to mark the end of the Falklands War. In 2009, at age 92, she became the oldest living artist to top the UK Albums Chart, with We'll Meet Again, The Very Best of Vera Lynn. Commemorating her 100th birthday she released the album Vera Lynn 100, in 2017, which number 3 on the charts, making her the oldest recording artist in the world and the first centenarian performer to have an album in the charts. Vera Lynn devoted much time working with wounded ex-servicemen, disabled children, and breast cancer. She is held in great affection by veterans of the Second World War and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the 20th century.
Hank Bracker
The combat during the war was only a part of the horror. When soldiers came home, they were faced with new challenges, new fights to be won. When the anti-war public sentiment was strong, as it was during the Vietnam war, our brave soldiers came home to expressions of disdain and revulsion instead of the respect and honor they deserved. But perhaps the ultimate betrayal for veterans, who willingly risked their lives when their government asked, was making them fight to prove their sicknesses and disabilities were caused by the war in order to receive the free medical treatment they needed, or to be compensated. These were the worst indignities of war.
Helen Picca (The Last Frontier of the Fading West)
Notice the way the dirt feels under your feet, how great the air smells, how beautiful the trees are, how calm and majestic.” He snorted, and she could tell he was fighting not to roll his eyes as he asked, “Calm as opposed to what? All the other trees that run around like headless chickens?
Dana Marton (Silent Threat (Mission Recovery, #1))
You can’t just walk up to a stand of unsuspecting oaks and start touching. They’d think you’re getting fresh with them.
Dana Marton (Silent Threat (Mission Recovery, #1))
federal government. That includes helping veterans who depend on disability payments due to an injury caused in battle, or immigrants who hit a glitch filing their papers to become citizens, or ill senior citizens who need nursing care.
Kamala Harris (The Truths We Hold: An American Journey)
IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
Secondly, ex-combatants shouldn’t be seen—or be encouraged to see themselves—as victims. One can be deeply traumatized, as firemen are by the deaths of both colleagues and civilians, without being viewed through the lens of victimhood. Lifelong disability payments for a disorder like PTSD, which is both treatable and usually not chronic, risks turning veterans into a victim class that is entirely dependent on the government for their livelihood. The United States is a wealthy country that may be able to afford this, but in human terms, the veterans can’t.
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
Another example, one that touches more people, is the nursing home industry. Numerous studies have shown that living at home, in a house or an apartment, is better psychologically, more fulfilling, and cheaper than living in nursing homes.14 Yet these institutions prosper when federal programs that foster living in the community are cut. There are also funding disincentives that the U.S. Congress, through Medicare and Medicaid, has created to ensure the profit bonanza of nursing homes. According to the activist disability journal Mouth (1995), there are 1.9 million people with disabilities living in nursing homes at an annual cost of $40,784, although it would cost only $9,692 a year to provide personal assistance services so the same people could live at home. Sixty-three percent of this cost is taxpayer funded. In 1992, 77,618 people with developmental disabilities (DD) lived in state-owned facilities at an average annual cost of $82,228, even though it would cost $27,649 for the most expensive support services to live at home. There are 150,257 people with mental illness living in tax-funded asylums at an average annual cost of $58,569. Another 19,553 disabled veterans also live in institutions, costing the Veterans Administration a whopping $75,641 per person.15 It is illogical that a government would want to pay more for less. It is illogical until one studies the amount of money spent by the nursing home lobby. Nursing homes are a growth industry that many wealthy people, including politicians, have wisely invested in. The scam is simple: get taxpayers to fund billions of dollars to these institutions which a few investors divide up. The idea that nursing homes are compassionate institutions or necessary resting places has lost much of its appeal recently, but the barrier to defunding them is built on a paternalism that eschews human dignity. As we have seen with public housing programs in the United States, the tendency is to warehouse (surplus) people in concentrated sites. This too has been the history with elderly people and people with disabilities in nursing homes. These institutions then can serve as a mechanism of social control and, at the same time, make some people wealthy.
James I. Charlton (Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment)
Your clientele will be a mixture of thirds,” he said, driving badly with one hand, holding coffee with another, oblivious to any of the other vehicles crowded around us. “About a third are employed, a third are families with children, a third are mentally disabled, a third are veterans. And about a third of those eligible for low-income housing receive it. In the past fifteen years, two and a half million low-cost housing units have been eliminated, and the federal housing programs have been cut seventy percent. Small wonder people are living on the streets. Governments are balancing budgets on the backs of the poor.
John Grisham (The Street Lawyer)
The vast majority of initial disability applications are denied.
Steven Magee
Why do Southerners eat Black Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day? The story of the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas as the first meal on New Year's Day is generally believed to date back to the winter of 1864 - 1865. When Union General William T. Sherman led his invading troops on their destructive march through Georgia, the fields of black-eyed peas were largely left untouched because they were deemed fit only for animals. The Union foragers took everything, plundered the land, and left what they could not take, burning or in shambles. But two things did remain, the lowly peas and good Ol’ Southern salted pork. As a result, the humble yet nourishing black-eyed peas saved surviving Southerners - mainly women, children, elderly and the disabled veterans of the Confederate army - from mass starvation and were thereafter regarded as a symbol of good luck. The peas are said to represent good fortune. Certainly the starving Southern families and soldiers were fortunate to have those meager supplies. According to the tradition and folklore, the peas are served with several other dishes that symbolically represent good fortune, health, wealth, and prosperity in the coming year. Some folks still traditionally cook the black-eyed peas with a silver dime in the pot as a symbol of good fortune. Greens represent wealth and paper money. Any greens will do, but in the South the most popular are collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, and cabbage. Cornbread - a regular staple among Southerners in the absence of wheat - symbolizes gold and is very good for soaking up the juice from the greens on the plate. You should always have some cornbread on hand in your kitchen anyway. Good for dinner and in the morning with syrup. Pork symbolizes bountiful prosperity, and then progressing into the year ahead. Ham and hog jowls are typical with the New Year meal, though sometimes bacon will be used, too. Pigs root forward, so it’s the symbolic moving forward for the New Year. Tomatoes are often eaten with this meal as well. They represent health and wealth. So reflect on those stories when you sit down at your family table and enjoy this humble, uniquely Southern meal every New Year’s Day. Be thankful for what this year did give you in spite of the bad, and hope and pray for better days that are coming ahead for you.
James Hilton-Cowboy
A severe recession in 1980 had inaugurated the era of rising homelessness. But the problem was driven and sustained by many long-brewing problems: the shabby treatment of Vietnam veterans; the grossly inadequate provisions that had been made for mentally ill people since the nation began to close its psychiatric hospitals; the decline in jobs and wages for unskilled workers; the continuation of racist housing policies such as redlining and racially disproportionate evictions; the AIDS epidemic and the drug epidemics that fed it. Also the arcana of applying for Social Security disability—a process so complex that anyone who could figure out how to get assistance probably didn’t need it.
Tracy Kidder (Rough Sleepers)
A protected group or protected class is a group of people qualified for special protection by a law, policy, or similar authority. In the United States, the term is frequently used in connection with employees and employment. U.S. federal law protects individuals from discrimination or harassment based on the following nine protected classes: sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information (added in 2008). Many state laws also give certain protected groups special protection against harassment and discrimination, as do many employer policies. Although it is not required by federal law, state law and employer policies may also protect employees from harassment or discrimination based on marital status or sexual orientation. The following characteristics are "protected" by United States federal anti-discrimination law: Race – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Religion – Civil Rights Act of 1964 National origin – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Age (40 and over) – Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 Sex – Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Sexual orientation and gender identity as of Bostock v. Clayton County – Civil Rights Act of 1964 Pregnancy – Pregnancy Discrimination Act Familial status – Civil Rights Act of 1968 Title VIII: Prohibits discrimination for having or not having children Disability status – Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Veteran status – Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974 and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act Genetic information – Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act Individual states can and do create other classes for protection under state law.
Wikipedia: Protected group
the country is already committed to paying Iraq and Afghanistan veterans disability payments and health benefits in excess of $1 trillion just until they turn sixty-five.
Tom Shroder (Acid Test: How a Daring Group of Psychonauts Rediscovered the Power of LSD, MDMA, and Other Psychedelic Drugs to Heal Addiction, Depression, Anxiety, and Trauma)
At Old Glory, we believe in giving houses, and people, a fighting chance. For over a decade we have been transforming distressed properties into decent places to live, improving property values and saving resources. We have also been providing low income, affordable housing opportunities to people who need it the most – seniors, people on disability, immigrants, veterans returning and adapting, single parents trying to keep their children fed, and struggling families.
Old Glory
I have a lot of sympathy for disabled war veterans, as they are victims of a corrupt government.
Steven Magee
Menashe Mautner, a disabled veteran of the First World War with a wooden leg, fell on the icy pavements of Vienna and lay there three hours vainly asking the passers-by for help. They saw his star and refused.
Paul Johnson (History of the Jews)
I'm Chris McCray, a proud member of the Nationwide Veteran Attorneys management team. My commitment to veterans' rights is unwavering, and I lead our team with compassion and expertise. Under my guidance, our VA disability lawyers in Florida work tirelessly to navigate the intricate landscape of VA claims, offering steadfast advocacy to every veteran we serve.
Chris McCray