Only Some Progress In VA
posted by Will
Governor Warner is getting my attention. A new policy for Virginia closes expensive institutions and replaces them with efficient and effective community-based services for the disabled and the mentally ill. This should be part of a national debate, and perhaps Warner's budding candidacy will help to do that.
UPDATE: On closer inspection, his proposal doesn't go far enough. If Warner wants to make a point and show his independence in order to garner support in the upcoming cycle, he'll need to be a little firmer with the unions.
Key quote from the article: "New state-of-the art hospitals and training centers for the mentally retarded, costing $290 million, will be built at or near the existing facilities over the next four years, the governor said. Employees now on the job will not lose their positions, [Gov. Warner] said."
Bowing to union pressure to keep institutions open when community-based services are so much more effective and less-soul-crushing than institutions is a failure to compare values. Democratic ideals are in conflict here--union jobs vs. inclusion and equality for people with disabilities. But the deeper ethical issue must trump the union complaints.
No one should live in an institution. Jobs supporting people with disabilities who are helped to live in the community will be available to current institution workers who are concerned about losing their jobs, as well. Let them unionize those jobs. Institutions are wasteful and a throwback to a less enlightened age. Warner is acknowledging that institutions are bad for everybody, but he's keeping some of them open anyway as a "compromise". All it does is compromise his position as a potential candidate with conviction.
UPDATE: On closer inspection, his proposal doesn't go far enough. If Warner wants to make a point and show his independence in order to garner support in the upcoming cycle, he'll need to be a little firmer with the unions.
Key quote from the article: "New state-of-the art hospitals and training centers for the mentally retarded, costing $290 million, will be built at or near the existing facilities over the next four years, the governor said. Employees now on the job will not lose their positions, [Gov. Warner] said."
Bowing to union pressure to keep institutions open when community-based services are so much more effective and less-soul-crushing than institutions is a failure to compare values. Democratic ideals are in conflict here--union jobs vs. inclusion and equality for people with disabilities. But the deeper ethical issue must trump the union complaints.
No one should live in an institution. Jobs supporting people with disabilities who are helped to live in the community will be available to current institution workers who are concerned about losing their jobs, as well. Let them unionize those jobs. Institutions are wasteful and a throwback to a less enlightened age. Warner is acknowledging that institutions are bad for everybody, but he's keeping some of them open anyway as a "compromise". All it does is compromise his position as a potential candidate with conviction.
2 Comments:
Even though Virginai doesn't have unions, this is rie ght. But how many of us can be surprised that Virgina chooses to be rooted in the past, to honor old ideas, to be throwing new money after bad old ideas. Illinois decided to put a few miollino into building "new" junky big group homes on the site of Lincoln developmental center -- and the CHicago Tribune calls it "a Waste" of public dollars. SO why woud it be OK in Virginia? Are its people less interested in civil rights? Less committed to modern ideas? Maybe it is a mistake for Warner to be sucking up to this particular group of voters. Maybe if he wants to choose a topic, he should have picked something where he could show real leaderhsip.
Well, I mostly agree with anonymous, assuming that the "bad old ideas" are institutions, and that "this particular group of voters" refers to institution employees, rather than people with disabilities. It would be refreshing, of course, if for once a politician actually "sucked up" to people with disabilities... As FDR said, "The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little." In this case, it is hope and belonging that must be added to the lives of those in institutions, and not because they have little of it--it is necessary to address the fact that they have none at all. Further, we, as a society, are poorer for not including them.
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