stop fighting functioning labels adapt the Paralympic classification system to the service of non-athlete inclusion

 

 

    A September 28, 2023 blast email, signed by resigning executive director Julia Bascom, from autistic self advocacy network ASAN promoted the work of ASAN to small grassroots donor prospects.  

   

 

As we have since our beginning, we have fought to make sure that all members of our community are included, and rebuked constant attempts to bring back functioning labels or funnel some people into segregated “services.” We have challenged autism organizations led by non-autistic people who adopt "acceptance" aesthetics without changing their actions. We’ve weighed in on autism-specific therapies, and in 2022, ASAN released detailed ethical guidelines for genetic research. Day in and day out, we tell policymakers that “Nothing About Us, Without Us” isn’t an impossible ideal but rather the minimum our community deserves, and that disability rights, neurodiversity, and autism acceptance are for all autistic people. 

As I look towards the future, I know we have much more work to do–and I know that ASAN is in a strong position to undertake that work. I know that our community is strong, and I know that when we fight together to make the changes we need, we can win.

I also know that it is time for me to take a step back. As I shared last year, I developed Long COVID in May of 2022. Like millions of other Americans, I am facing the reality of a new disability, a lack of effective treatments and services, and an inability to continue working. I will be stepping down as Executive Director at the end of this year, and the ASAN Board will conduct an open search for a new Executive Director. More information on the search process will be available in the coming months. While the search takes place, my current deputy Avery Outlaw will serve as ASAN’s Interim Executive Director. I am confident in Avery’s leadership, and we will spend the next three months working to ensure a smooth transition.

This is a bittersweet transition for me. I love ASAN, I love the autistic community, and I love the broader self-advocacy movement created by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I have been doing this work since I was a teenager, mentored by the self-advocates who survived and closed my home state’s major institution. I love this work, and I go to bed every night thinking about how much more there is to be done. I take great joy and comfort in the fact that our movement is tangibly stronger than it was when I was a teenager. As Executive Director, I have met countless self-advocates doing incredible work to build a better world for our community: training health care providers, fighting to end subminimum wage in their states, supporting AAC users, creating resources for families, defending gender-affirming care for trans autistic people, protesting restraint and seclusion, creating local peer support networks, running for office, leading transformative research, preserving our history, cultivating autistic culture, building deep partnerships across movements, and so much more. I know our community will keep showing up for the next generation of autistic kids every day, and I know ASAN will keep doing everything we can to equip our community with tools for systemic advocacy and powerful change.     

Over the past year as I’ve navigated medical leave, ASAN’s incredible staff have kept us running. We’ve fought back against attacks on trans autistic people, released several new resources and started drafting even more, trained people who use community living services on their rights, continued the fight to #StopTheShock, weighed in on critical regulations and federal policy developments, and held a major symposium with autistic people, researchers, and autistic researchers to discuss a research agenda that reflects our community’s needs. I’m confident that ASAN will continue to thrive in my absence because we’ve already shown that we can. 

We often say at ASAN that when we were first founded, people were shocked if a single self-advocate was in the room. Now, policymakers and those in power may not want us there, but they’ve learned to expect we’ll show up anyway. We’re slowly but surely approaching critical mass, rocking and flapping our way toward the day when all policy impacting autistic people is led first and foremost by autistic people ourselves. That work is so much bigger than any one person. It has been an honor to be a small part of this movement, and I cannot wait to see what our community does next.

With gratitude, 
Julia Bascom
Executive Director
Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

PO Box 66122 [1038 Vermont Ave, NW suite 618 moved to suite 500 mostly virtual since March 2020 covid shutdowns prior address was 2013 H St 7th floor]
Washington, DC 20035

 

 

  This link scolding The Lancet for supporting a new diagnostic category of "profound autism" started another battle in the war against "functioning labels."  This war against functioning labels started as  the change in diagnosis was being discussed, between DSM 4 and DSM 5, to create a single diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder ASD that combined a newer diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome from DSM 4 into one ASD medical diagnosis, by May 2013, when the DSM 5 was finalized.  "Profound autism" that The Lancet called for, as a diagnosis, used to be called low-functioning autism to distinguish the label from high- functioning autism often used synonymously with Asperger Syndrome. 

https://autisticadvocacy.org/2021/12/functioning-labels-harm-autistic-people/?emci=75da0abd-0e5e-ee11-9937-00224832eb73&emdi=dd876c11-185e-ee11-9937-00224832eb73&ceid=7855600

 
 This classification scheme

 

    

 

, used to assure fair competition in 6 winter and 22 summer sports of the Paralympics, should be adapted in state and federally-funded vocational rehabilitation assessment by Federal Education Department oversight policy.  Paralympics classification is the use of functioning labels done right.  Individual difference between people with disabilities is acknowledged without segregating people or presuming incompetence or competence.  The diversity of strength and weakness individual profiles is respected between people living with the same disability. 

To save taxes of big corporations the big Paralympic-sponsoring corporations elevate athlete competition equalization over non-athlete competition equalization in helping more autistics find jobs and/or long term services and supports and home and community based services without paid work.

 Adapting a classification scheme to assure fair competition for people with disabilities with elite athletic ability to the equitable and fair inclusion in the workplace or paying for home and community based services without paid work of people with disabilities without elite athletic ability will cost money that usually means taxing the corporate sponsors of the Paralympics.   

 

Ari N actual connections to the Israeli government had nothing to do with George Soros

 

 

 Ari Ne'eman's mother Rina has written columns here supporting whatever position the Israeli government holds in its intransigence against a 2 state solution to Israel's conflict with Palestinians.

Ari wrote a column with a ‘both sides’ perspective making a false equivalence of left & right antisemitism by erasing power Jews have since the zionist movement created Israeli inequality, injustice and apartheid.  Fierce resistance to nonzionist Judaism focuses on the IHRA antisemitism definition that combines Judaism with zionism.  Part of that definition includes, as one of its 7 of 11 examples, the 3 D test (demonize to delegitimize with double standards) of Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky a former Soviet Jew refused permission to emigrate to Israel until 1986.
Ari learned the hasbara (explaining Israeli government positions in support) well from his mom.

In July 2013 Ari N. replied to disagreeably (trolled) a condolence tweet by twisting his political disagreement with a person into false allegations of prejudice against Jews.  The reply was deleted.  Here is a copy and paste 

 

 
Ari Ne'eman


@aneeman
·
Jul 20, 2013


Replying to
@busboysandpoets
@busboysandpoets
 
@AlJazeera
 Let's not forget anti-semite on that list of descriptions.

 

 

of what was posted.

 By 2013 William Daroff, who has changed jobs since 2013 and is the current CEO of the President's Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations disclosed his personal and professional relationship with Ari Ne'eman.

Two weeks ago, I was privileged to participate as a speaker at ADVANCE: The Ruderman Jewish Disabilities Funding Conference, along with more than 100 Jewish leaders. The conference, which was co-sponsored by The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), focused on the proposition that our Jewish values propel us to welcome, embrace, and engage individuals with disabilities and their families into the mosaic that makes up the American Jewish community.
The agenda allowed attendees to focus on issues from birth to end of life, including education, employment, housing, and communal life.  Each session featured experienced panelists who guided funders through conversations about developing opportunities to ensure individuals with disabilities can participate meaningfully in the Jewish community.  With the help of Pascale Bercovitch, an Israeli paralympic athlete, who opened our minds to the potential of people with disabilities; Joseph Shapiro of NPR, who reminded us of the challenges the disability community faces defending its civil rights; and Rick Guidotti of Positive Exposure, who showed us the impact the visual arts can have on our perception of people with disabilities; the momentum achieved as the conference ended was palpable.
One focus of that momentum was in the realm of advocacy.  I joined Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, Founder and President of Laszlo Strategies; Allan Bergman, President and CEO of High Impact Mission-Based Consulting and Training; and Ari Ne’eman, President and Co-founder of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, in a dialogue with conference attendees on the importance of advocacy on issues impacting the disability community and the critical role public charities and private foundations can play in advocating on those issues.  JFNA and our partners – including advocates representing a broad range of Jewish communities, religious streams, social service providers and public policy organizations – work day in and day out with policy makers on Capitol Hill and in the Administration to further the goal of ensuring individuals with disabilities can lead healthy, independent lives.  Public charities and private foundations should be engaged in these efforts as well.

Our work comes at a critical time. The unemployment rates we associate with the slow recovery from the Great Recession pale in comparison to the persistent lack of employment opportunities for the disability community.
 




 The disincentive for individuals receiving disability benefits to work in order to maintain those benefits, and the inability for those relying on those benefits to build assets, makes upward mobility even more difficult.  The growing challenge for non-profit agencies to provide home- and community-based care makes independent living for many individuals with disabilities an impossibility. The challenges are daunting, but for the Jewish community, it is an opportunity, both in the context of Jewish values and the continuity of our faith, to welcome those who have been marginalized back into our community.
As we continue to advocate for improved policies and initiatives that improve the quality of life for people with disabilities and their families, we encourage all to recognize and support these critical needs. We know that only through a happy marriage of public and private initiatives and program funding can we truly achieve success on behalf of those with disabilities and their families.
William Daroff is Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America. Follow him on twitter at @Daroff.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Daroff is the Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington Office of The Jewish Federations of North America.

The Ruderman Foundation funded programs to improve accessibility in Jewish schools and synagogues from 2011 until 2021 in memory of Morton 

According to the Ruderman Family Foundation website, Ruderman and his wife met less than two weeks before his death with more than 100 leaders of programs supported by the foundation in Israel that focus on improving the lives of those with disabilities, including eight members of Israel’s Knesset. The foundation brought Knesset members to the U.S. in the spring to learn about American Jews.

Ruderman “was a true Zionist,” said his son, Jay, of Rehovot, Israel, who remembered that his father went to Israel when the first Lebanon War broke out in 1982. “He said he would deliver mail, pick oranges or do whatever was needed to help the country. My father’s love for Israel and his frequent trips there are probably the reason I’m living and raising my family there today.”

Ruderman.  The donor decisions were made by Morton's son Jay Ruderman.  

Support for the inclusion of Jews with disabilities by member organizations of the President's Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations has an unpleasant history of a $100,000 discrimination settlement paid by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in 2011 to a hearing impaired teacher.  By 2013 the JFNA and indirect President's Conference member JCCGW had recovered the cost in one fundraising event.  In 2017 the JCCGW honored its president Steve Rakitt, who lived with the same hearing disability the JCCGW settled with the former preschool teacher, Carol Schuman, for discrimination, when Rakitt left his job. 

 Two years after the Ruderman Family Foundation stopped donating to advance the issue of Jewish Disability Inclusion and Awareness the misuse of the disability inclusion issue in the American Jewish 'pro-Israel'/liberal zionist community continued in the summer of 2023 when Christina Aguilera performed a concert in Israel at Live Park in Tel Aviv. 

 

Israeli media have reported that a former Israeli soldier, Eden Ben Zaken, will join Aguilera on stage during her concert.

Ben Zaken has lent her music and fame for military propaganda. A video for one of her hit songs features her performing alongside Israeli soldiers who have disabilities, portraying the apartheid state’s army as joyful, liberal and inclusive.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM9VhkFDcpg

This propaganda serves to whitewash the Israeli military’s crimes, especially how it has deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians causing thousands of serious injuries and permanent disabilities – and then obstructed their medical care and rehabilitation.  

Feb 2020 twitter attack on Ari and Steve blames political left not right for inequitably slow pace of autistics' inclusion

    On February 12, 2020 the above two since deleted tweets were posted as an attack on Ari Ne'eman and Steve Silberman for their connections to the Israeli government.  

 Ari and Steve laughed off the attack in these two since deleted tweets. 

 

 
 Ari Ne'eman has connections to the Israeli government that autismgadfly and tclementsuk didn't mention.  Mostly they were public support for political positions that support whatever position the Israeli government holds that prolong, rather than resolve, their 75 year conflict with Palestinians.  

tclementsuk wrote this column.

This post full of word salad of political partisan labels like “third positionist” and "syncretic" serves to obfuscate Clements resentment of less help than he needed for his brother with intense needs autism with severe disabilities.  Clements blames neurodiversity activists not (Tory) Conservative Party PMs back to Margaret Thatcher like John Major, David Cameron 2010 and 2011 austerity (search for UK Uncut movement) and Boris Johnson lies about Brexit EU withdrawal helping NHS. The Conservative Tory party was  complicit over the long term with “New Labor” neoliberal Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown  in parliament majorities for weakening NHS or other state funded independent living supports.

The independent living supports were weakened  to the point that Langdon had to privatize them inequitably for only a few people with intellectual disabilities and help their  fundraising efforts with time buy tv production from Channel 4 UK Kitchen Impossible tv episode. 

Chronic and severe disability and long term care are the next activist struggle. More work remains after disability rights activists helped win the public policy activist wars for equitable financing of acute primary care that’s medically necessary to medically stabilize physically sick people with socialized medicine/ national health care.      Chronic and severe disability and long term care and rehabilitation with long term services and supports LTSS and home and community based services HCBS must be provided in home and community based settings according to a new Settings Rule.  The providers of those LTSS must be chosen by the person with a disability according to a new regulation on where to provide (home and community based services) HCBS.  The promise of the #justiceforJenny (actual name Margaret) Hatch scotus precedent and #freebritney (Spears) from guardianship formed the legal concept of supported decision making needs to be made universally available, not limited to two test cases, by codifying the 1999 scotus case Olmstead vs LC (Lois Curtis) and EW (Elaine Wilson) like other demands to codify Roe vs Wade and Obergefell vs Hodges.  And the cost of those LTSS in home and community based settings needs to be socialized not privatized. Expanding medicaid and medicare benefits is the best way to pay for LTSS and home and community based services according to the settings rule.  One way such caregiving services failed to be provided was the cut from $250 Billion to $0 in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  Originally $450 billion was proposed in the Senate version.  That cut would best be blamed on fiscally conservative Democratic Congressmembers compromising with even more fiscally conservative Republicans.  It was the third time since 2011 the 'caring economy' lost federal support.  The first was the loss of the CLASS Act in 2011 in the 'sequester' and 'fiscal cliff' budget battles and the second was the loss of the Disability Integration Act by 2020.

more future homeowners created to vote for more resale profit supremacist county executives like Marc Elrich

 

 

    A week left in the 9 member council and executive Marc Elrich's first term and Marc got an end of term good news bump.  The Leeland Apartments are converting to a limited equity cooperative.  Wondering what the co-op fees will be to shift the landlord's deferred maintenance costs to the new owners.  Maybe the landlord and property manager will keep their roles under co-op board contracting out management to the same management company.  The fees are a better cash-flow situation than waiting for tenant turnover, or forcing turnover with high rent increases at lease renewal time.  And each sale the co-op fee will rise for new resident owners like rents. 

 

 

 

   The equity won't be as limited as it appears at conversion time when the original converting residents sell.  They'll profit handsomely at the cost of affordability for future residents like the individual civic association members and single family home resellers do to the point that many single family neighborhoods have been under house by house redevelopment into bigger single units.  The new owners seek to repeat the resale profit they paid to the sellers.  Or maybe some Leeland co-op owners will rent out their units until the next seller's market.  The rents will represent owners 'timing the market' with rental income and most maintenance costs rolled over into rent increases at tenant turnover.   Making money from real estate rental or resale income isn't subject to the same 'rule' not to 'time the market' as equity (stock) or debt (bond) investment markets that include mutual funds, many held for retirement, as well as individual securities.  

  Marc Elrich's lack of concern for future residents 

 

 April 5, 2022

Neighborhood defenders in Silver Spring found a supporter in Marc Elrich, then an at-large council member who now serves as county executive and is running for re-election. In an October 2011 council discussion about Chelsea Heights, Elrich rejected the idea that the county needed to prioritize future residents’ housing needs.
“It’s all good and well to talk about everybody who’s coming here. The only problem is, we’re elected by people who actually live here,” Elrich said. “This idea that somehow, the most important thing for us to do is change the way things are to accommodate something in the future, seems a bit out of place.”
Homeowners in the room applauded.

 

was in action and will get him, or his endorsed successor in 2030, more of the same resale profit supremacist votes, small matched donations under public financing and volunteer hours.  

 

  Maybe Marc's twitter supporter @MoCoMillenial living in "the Takoma Park trapezoid" who supported apartment to condo or co-op ownership conversions with the option of owners being single unit (small business) landlords in 2019

 

   now tweeting as shashleeeek301

                        

   will be able to buy their rental unit in a similar conversion. 

 

  No, shashleeeek301 already owns a condominium in the 'Takoma Park trapezoid" as a HENRY (high earner not rich yet) who supports Elrich for the same reasons as

the accurate stereotypes of Marc Elrich supporters that shashleeeek301 denies.  All those stereotypes are true since Marc Elrich ran for council in 2006 with help of civic association resale profit supremacists at the Montgomery Civic Federation and more hyper-local groups fighting new housing until it's built and it's prices or rents 'conform to neighborhood character' with existing housing costs nearby.  MoCoMillenial / shashleeeek301 will likely repeat the cycle of getting 50-100% profit and credit 'the county housing market' not how resale profit supremacists like her and Elrich rigged the county housing market by their class privilege to be engaged civic activists who do not need to move often when they change jobs.  That allows building more deep community relationships with elected officials and candidates to be the dominant influencers on planning, land use and transportation policies.  

 

Marc Elrich is wrong that transportation improvements don't reduce poverty

 

 

 

Here is the link to where then-councilmember Marc Elrich, sitting in the audience telling a transportation planner, under the guise of asking a question, that the planner was wrong in applying the knowledge in the presentation to Montgomery County.   In reality Marc Elrich was wrong.  Elrich's factually wrong statements come at 1:24:30 and run to 1:26:49 of the video.  Wealthy people can privatize costs of transportation by remote work that poorer people cannot because the work isn't able to be done remotely. 

 

 Marc Elrich also denied Montgomery County was a city to protect the resale value supremacist single family homeowner electoral base organized into civic, not homeowner, associations, on the edge of central business districts like Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Gaithersburg with town center urbanism in Kentlands, Germantown and Olney. The difference between a civic and homeowner association is if ownership of property requires a fee or is voluntary.  The Civic Federation (montgomerycivic.org is one umbrella group of civic associations) member groups are a good starting point for learning the voluntary power centers in planning and land use in Montgomery County.  If the homeowner association membership is required as part of ownership the fees privatize public services, like trash and recycling collection or recreation facility operation or common area maintenance that the voluntary civic associations get with their, and HOA member, property taxes.   

The 3 screen shots above show how Marc Elrich was wrong.  The screen shots from archive.org are the only trace left, after the 2022 elections, of notmarcelrich.org that was a terrific web site.  The info should be reused in 2025 and 2026 when Marc Elrich runs for his third and final term.  Council members and executive terms are limited in Montgomery County, Md because of the 2016 term limits referendum.  It passed in a tax revolt to prevent property tax revenue from exceeding the inflation rate by unanimous council vote after the council complied with the restriction.  That was the third referendum by anti-tax increase activist and county perennial Republican candidate Robin Ficker after requiring a super majority (before 2006) and unanimity (2008 ballot question) to prevent raising property tax revenue over the inflation rate.  Robin Ficker supported another anti-tax candidate Mark Fennel in a special election won by Nancy Navarro, unfortunately term-limited off the council in 2023, to be the single vote against tax increases after the 2008 unanimous council requirement to raise property tax revenue above the inflation rate.  Voters for the Ficker question in 2016 literally couldn't take yes for an answer.  They actually were no better on fiscal policy issues than Republicans. 

Remember bike and pedestrian death vigils every March 1 for Disability Day of Mourning ask what's missing from DDOM vigils

 

 

 

 This tweet at the link below

https://twitter.com/wash_cycle/status/1564605862378934275?s=21&t=3GwtxjK7yA54-v32VdBJkg 

and rustedaspie's snarky reply on a forced concision platform 

https://twitter.com/nyr194/status/1565316719400390657?s=21&t=3GwtxjK7yA54-v32VdBJkg 

inspired this blog post.

  All I’m saying is that the pace of good social change both accounts, wash_cycle and nyr194, likely agree on is too damn slow and I am calling out the slow pace of transportation policy and budget spending change.

 

 

 

   Jacob Cassell was tragically joined in the world to come by Sarah Langenkamp.  Both came from, or started, rich families who lost someone to a driver hitting a biker.  The housing costs in the areas Cassell and Langenkamp lived in shows both families are rich.  The deaths get more attention from local corporate and social media and local activism.  

 

   Will what was done on route 187 Old Georgetown rd (where Cassell was killed) between June 2019 and July 2022 leading to a separate bike lane with barriers happen to route 190 River Road (where Langenkamp was killed)? The cost of converting one lane in each direction of Route 187 was spread over 3 fiscal years for spending affordability.  The repaving work was done in the last month of a fiscal year June 2019.  The plastic sticks separating the bike lane from the car lanes were placed in July 2022.  That was the first month of a new fiscal year.  

 

  If someone were killed on route 193 University Blvd east of Amherst Ave (that was a summer 2021 test of a separated bike lane) will the same design happen as both class and racial equity in pedestrian and bike safety infrastructure? 

 

 

  Hate Ralph Nader for his 2000 third party (Green with Winona LaDuke VP) and 2004 independent (not Green Party) presidential campaigns splitting general election votes for Democratic Party nominees Al Gore and John Kerry or alleged 'business climate' damage from trial lawyer support of state-based Public Interest Research Groups and Public Citizen at least the title of this book "Only the super rich can save us"

 

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9781583229231&cm_sp=mbc-_-ISBN-_-all

 

is sadly still true - domestic discretionary spending still effectively operates on an inequitable basis by class and race.   

Part of the money raised from this memorial will fund activist groups trying to change road design policy to make roads safer for bikers and pedestrians. 

 https://www.gofundme.com/f/sarahs-bike-safety-memorial-fund

 

 

 

 

A stark contrast exists in the annual vigils on March 1 since 2013, after a start on March 31, 2012, for Disability Day of Mourning DDOM.  Those vigils don't call for any specific policy changes.  Some policy changes the DDOM organizers fail to link mourning vigils to include funding for respite care or initiatives to reduce wait lists for all types of social and human services that people with severe disabilities who have intense needs need to live in communities of their choosing.  

  Ending the 'institutional bias" of federally and state funded Medicaid is the ultimate goal with varying results state by state.   People with severe disabilities who have intense needs (formerly called low functioning) would be helped to reach their goals of independent living at a faster pace if DDOM Disability Day of Mourning organizers took a lesson, by connecting public policy change to preventing filicides, from bike and pedestrian death vigil organizers.  

 

Rustedaspie wrote more about the mistake Disability Day of Mourning vigil organizers make by erasing intersections of public policy change from mourning murder victims many times

 

http://selfadvocacyskepticism.blogspot.com/2017/02/unbreakable-link-between-adequately.html

http://selfadvocacyskepticism.blogspot.com/2017/02/crimes-filicide-against-individuals.html

http://selfadvocacyskepticism.blogspot.com/2017/02/economic-intersectionality-between.html

http://selfadvocacyskepticism.blogspot.com/2017/01/integrate-disability-day-of-mourning.html

 on this blog.  

Bernkopf and Orban dictators of different sectors

 

 

 This letter printed in the NY Times was written by an autistic man who called another autistic man "obsessed with politics" and assumed another man was lonely and isolated to justify the decision to match another man with a mutual acquaintance who had had no contact with one of the autistic men for about 7 years.  

It takes a dictator to know a dictator.  Both Mark Bernkopf and Viktor Orban manipulate elections in different sectors.  Orban is a dictator in the state sector.  Bernkopf is a dictator in the nonprofit corporate sector.  Bernkopf showed he was a dictator by pushing out another trustee he interrupted in small talk by ignoring the substance of the talk in favor of scolding for raised inside voices.  Bernkopf calls other people "obsessed with politics" and matches mutual acquaintances after making assumptions people are lonely and ‘need a friend to talk to’ about nonpolitical subjects.   Bernkopf denies any wrongdoing when called out by walking away and scolding for being suspicious of others’ motives, or stalking him, and putting other people in an awkward position as third party contacts.  The third party contacts get understandably exasperated too and cut off contact as well.  Bernkopf manipulated a vote to expel a trustee by threatening to resign if he doesn’t get his outcome in a meeting agenda.  Then he hid the dictatorial style by not speaking the threat orally to keep threat out of minutes.  Bernkopf exploited a flaw in Robert’s Rules of Order harming transparency in governance process.  Finally Bernkopf reserved the right to file TOS complaints with google to suppress this blog post being called out online with the pretext of disclosing confidential information. 

 

   

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/opinion/letters/elderly-covid.html






To the Editor:
“U.S. and Allies Spur Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows,” by Max Fisher (The Interpreter, Nov. 17), uses the phrase “illiberal democracy” several times.


The term was used by Fareed Zakaria in Foreign Affairs in 1997 (“The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”) and was popularized by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary to describe his regime.




Let us give that oxymoron a well-deserved rest. Suppression of human rights, repression of the press and government manipulation of elections bear not the slightest resemblance to any form of democracy. “Illiberal democracy” is not democracy; it is dictatorship pure and simple.
And its perpetrators are not merely “authoritarians” or “autocrats”; they are dictators.
Mark Bernkopf
Arlington, Va.

Folks who write letters like these to political trivia columns shouldn’t call others obsessed with politics.  The interest in politics simply differs between process and activism to do more good for more people more quickly.  Calling people interested in activism obsessed with politics as a substitute for disagreement is cruel and unkind.  The process knowledge helps in manipulating votes and bylaw changes to expel people from organizations.  The process knowledge also helps in cutting off contact with people and isolating them to exasperate people to quit participating or expel them for not accepting the original vision of the founder and president of a nonprofit corporation.   Exasperating people to quit and banning people from one's purported 'support group' both happened and cost the 'support group' its shared lending library.  Moderating an email list in 2011 drove away one group librarian and disagreement over whether to rename a dinner and a small talk disagreement and  interruptions in conversation cost the group its third librarian and the book collection.  Covid19, not 'raised inside voices' cost the 'support group' its IRL meeting place in a restaurant. 




https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/junkie/archive/junkie092598.htm?noredirect=on








Question: After a federal judge or executive officer is removed by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, the Senate may then, by a majority vote, bar that official from ever again holding any federal office. Apparently, after removing him from the bench, the Senate did not bar Judge Alcee Hastings from ever again holding federal office, because today he is a member of Congress from Florida. My question: Of all federal judges and executive officers removed by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, how many were subsequently barred by the Senate from ever again holding federal office? – Mark Bernkopf, Arlington, Va.
Answer: Of the 16 federal officials impeached by the House since 1797, seven were convicted in the Senate and removed from office, including now-Rep. Hastings. In three of those seven convictions, the Senate took separate votes to disqualify that person from holding future office. Of those three, the Senate voted to do so twice




https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/91919635/democrats-to-pick-up-4-senate-seats-at-least






CLINTON DID IT: The June 11 column included a query on whether a NYC mayor has ever been elected governor, and I said no. My mistake was that I was looking only at the mayors since the creation of Greater New York in 1898. Daniel Soyer of Brooklyn points out that DeWitt Clinton, who served as mayor from 1803-1807, 1808-1810 and 1811-1815, was elected governor for the first of four times in 1817. Similarly, John Hoffman, mayor from 1866-1868, won the governorship in 1868.
For the record, DeWitt Clinton was ex-mayor when he was elected governor. One interesting note is that he was re-elected governor in 1820 (and later in '24) on the "Clinton Republican" ticket; it's not the kind of party one could envision in modern times. Others readers, including Mark Bernkopf of Arlington, Va.; Jeff Roberts of Ankeny, Iowa; and two Manhattanites, Philip Lentz and Paul Manias, also knew about the Clinton mayor/gov connection. Paul adds that DeWitt Clinton "reshaped Manhattan (literally flattening it and putting down the street grid) and pushed for the Erie Canal, which is what truly shaped New York and NYC more than anyone else into what it is today." And Philip reminds us that Clinton also ran for president, losing in 1812 to James Madison — "continuing another tradition of New York mayors failing to move into the White House."






https://www.krpoliticaljunkie.com/6052-2/






History.  There are many instances of governors who were elected to the Senate but very few that went the opposite way.  Here’s a list of the six successful ones over the past 60 years:  Price Daniel (D-Texas) in 1956, Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) in 1990, Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho) in 1998, Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) in 2002, Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) in 2005, and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas)* in 2010.  I can name at least three senators who tried but failed:  Irving Ives (R-N.Y.) in 1954, William Knowland (R-Calif.) in 1958 and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in 2010.  Any additions to this list?
*Thanks to Mark Bernkopf of Arlington, Va., for reminding us about Brownback.







Here are 2 more letters from the guy who called another person obsessed with politics because the person wouldn’t accept being yelled at that they didn’t know the history [of the Iran 1953 coup and it’s why Iran hates USA and Israel]”.  And fixed up with a mutual acquaintance who tried to evade political subjects and only initiated contact if contact between a person and Bernkopf approached in time more than coincidently.   At least the third person apologized to  Coleman [who raised his inside voice with no admonishment] the same day Bernkopf interrupted the third person who yelled in response-got corruptly voted off the trustee board with hidden resignation threat- and later banned from the group with TOS threats to google to suppress call outs like this post. 


https://boyang-bearings.net/2021/03/officials-missteps-on-covid-then-and-now/




To the Editor:
It is disheartening to read of Dr. Deborah Birx and several of her medical colleagues only now publicly condemning the Trump administration’s negligent handling of the Covid-19 crisis (Live briefing, nytimes.com, March 29).
In a democracy, one of the loudest and most honorable means of drawing attention to a disagreement with one’s superiors is public resignation on account of principle. Dr. Birx, Donald Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator; Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Stephen Hahn, former F.D.A. commissioner; and Adm. Brett Giroir, former assistant secretary for health, owed it to the American people to draw public attention — loud and clear — to the incompetence of President Trump and his health secretary, Alex Azar.
For these former officials only now to protest their disagreements is too little, too late. Had they acted in a timely manner, lives might have been saved.
Mark Bernkopf
Arlington, Va.










https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/opinion/l-in-prison-and-innocent-793310.html




To the Editor:
Your Feb. 2 news article about Peter Limone, wrongly imprisoned for murder for 33 years, including four on death row, is heartbreaking.
It is tragic that his fellow defendant, Louis Greco, died in prison before he could be exonerated and released, and disgusting that F.B.I. agents knew that their informants committed the murder, yet were complicit in framing innocent men.
In recent years, many innocent death-row prisoners have been released. A few of those innocent prisoners came within a whisker of execution; other prisoners have been executed despite the lack of evidence truly proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Ultimately, there is only one argument that will ever end capital punishment in the United States: the execution of an innocent prisoner can never be reversed.






MARK BERNKOPF
Arlington, Va., Feb. 2, 2001