Allow me to go off topic here as I want to express why I wish our government would be wiser with our tax dollars that would benefit us and other Americans.

That’s an incredible amount of $$ being shipped over to the war in Iraq, one that we will probably never win - a la Vietnam War. My question is: How much more are we going to dump into Iraq before we all realize that we will never win the battle there?? My feeling is that the Insurgents = Viet Cong and are ruthless and pretty cunning.

I wish Bush would wake up and realize that we have domestic issues that really need some serious looking at here at home! We can’t continue to throw away our tax dollars away on every war overseas–no wonder many of our domestic governmental programs such as social security, medicaid, and so on will be in dire straits in the future because we are mortgaging our kids future for this war that is unwinnable. I’d like the government spend the 170 Billion on domestic programs that really benefits all of us.

170 Billion on the war means 300 million of us coughed up a bit over $566 per INDIVIDUAL and its in addition to the other 140 Billion we have already spent before this new bill was signed by Bush.

This cost is not including those who have died in the war and countless injured.

Don’t assume that I, as an army brat son of a two star general, is against the soldiers in the Iraq war. I feel the Iraq war was waged for the wrong reasons as we should have continued fighting the Afghanistan war against the Taliban and Bin Laden. I believe Bush lost his focus on what we were fighting for: 9/11 victims in the World Trade Center. The shift really has costed us. If we had kept our focus on Bin Laden, who knows…we could have captured him a while back if we had kept our resources and men in Afghanistan instead of Iraq.

Sorry for the topic shift but I firmly believe that our money could have been spent more wisely domestically instead on Iraq.

In sum, the real question is: how many more $$$ and lives must this country spent on Iraq –one that we are losing?

There, I said what I’ve been feeling for a long while.

*stepping off the soapbox*

You know what would be helpful? A list of some sort of the tax breaks available.

I think it would empower us all a bit more if we could address our potential employers’ concerns outright as soon as we sit down at the interview. I don’t know about anybody else, but I for one would like to be able to say “Okay, I know you might have some concerns about whether or not you’ll be able to make the accomodations needed to hire me. But here’s how you can do it.”

A person who can run a potential employer through a list of tax breaks, incentives, places to contact, etc, has GOT to be a leg up on an applicant who cannot provide this information.

Any idea where to get such a list?

“Your last sentence in your article doesn’t make sense: hearing people DON’T normally experience barriers in their communication, per se. Accessibility is automatically a given for them to the point that it is a non-issue for them.”

“In other words, they focus on the deaf or hard of hearing person’s inability to sound as good as any hearing person.”

That’s precisely my point. It looks like we agree with each other.

“Lastly, I am not sure I subscribe to your belief that businesses will be the ones to magically lose all negative attitudes and biases if they were to receive some of that $55 billion.”

$55 billion towards education, tax incentives or even towards creating more deaf movie stars so we can track them through PerezHilton will not magically make our problems go away.

When they encounter deaf or hard of hearing people, they don’t think in terms of “barrier”: they think in terms of “how much does this deaf/hard of hearing person sound like me?” In other words, they focus on the deaf or hard of hearing person’s inability to sound as good as any hearing person.

Your sentence also perpetuates a myth that hearing people “don’t care about deafness.” They do. It’s evident in how much hearing people are willing to spend money on programs designed to eradicate deafness–i.e., cochlear implants, research programs, etc., and very little (in comparision) on sign language programs, research related to sign language/Deaf culture, and so on.

Lastly, I am not sure I subscribe to your belief that businesses will be the ones to magically lose all negative attitudes and biases if they were to receive some of that $55 billion. I think it’s more of a chicken-and-egg approach: the society has to be the one to lose its negative attitudes & biases against deaf and hard of hearing people, and this will eventually show up in businesses. Businesses with existing negative attitudes & biases don’t usually welcome deaf or hard of hearing people as employees.

Indeed, businesses ALREADY receive tax breaks if they hire deaf and hard of hearing employees, and they have had these tax breaks for several years now. There are tax breaks for businesses that use interpreters, there are tax breaks for businesses that provide accessible technology, and that’s just the tip of iceberg.

I agree that the $55 billion should, of course, as you say, go to education. But I would suggest that some of this $55 billion would be better used in getting Hollywood to produce movies, commercials, etc that are Deaf-culture-friendly and show ASL in a positive light. Doing this would educate the masses very quickly, and if this was done often, it would ensure that the masses don’t forget what they have learned and this would give them time to ‘absorb’ the knowledge in their social consciousness to the point where it comes out through the society and then to the businesses.
-Michele Ketcham

I have never worn my biaural hearing aids when consulting doctors or applying for a job. Never. Ever. Why? Simply because they
would get a wrong idea that I could understand a spoken language or could lipread when they see me with the aids.
As I have said before and I will say again that I only wear the aids for environmental awareness.

So for the last 30 years prior to my retirement, they had never increased my salary, I have never received a better salary. :-) Zeus! Would that I could collect reparations. :-)