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| ID: | 1617 | | Title: | Their ought to be a law! - http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=186 | | Description: | I see a lot of dissatisfaction with laws enacted by the government and services that these laws provide. This criticism is well-justified.
However, sadly, I’ve seen very few ideas on how to solve the problem. It’s pretty easy to oppose a law. It’s pretty hard to write one which make sense, is fair, can be funded, and may actually even get through a legislative body relatively unchanged. But we need to stop looking just at what is wrong with the system and start to look at what would make it right.
However, the political process is certainly complex, and often is seen as a bunch of “bullshit” that makes no sense. Sure, there is elements of that, but I often see this charge waged by people who don’t really think about what their elected official’s job is.
We need laws establishing services and rights for autistic people. In some cases the current laws are decent, but misinterpreted by courts - and thus need to be rewritten in a less ambiguous way (the Americans with Disabilities Act is one such example). In other cases, there are no laws where there should be laws (it should be reasonably possible to charge a school district employee with criminal child abuse).
I’m throwing this out to get people thinking. What laws do we need? How would you phrase it? How would you give adults that currently are “slipping through the cracks” services?
Remember, there are some things that your legislative body will be concerned about. How would you answer these?
1. Is there a cheaper way to provide the same level of service?
2. How much exactly will it cost? You’ll need to know cost per autistic person and the number of autistic people involved.
3. Can we afford that cost without raising taxes? If tax increases are necessary, how much and who?
4. How much will that cost increase over the next few years? With the current budget projections, will there be money for this? What strings are attached to the funding?
5. Are there other expenses which won’t be necessary if we support this law? (for instance, closing an institution has costs and cost savings)
6. How do we know this law will do what it says it will do?
7. If it doesn’t work, how will we get rid of it?
8. How do we ensure everyone who needs services will get them, but at the same time prevent massive abuse of the system (by consumers, providers, government agencies, and others)?
9. What happens if this law isn’t passed? How did people manage before the law was suggested? In other words, why is it actually needed?
10. Who will run this program? How many people will be required to do it, and what will their salaries and other expenses be? How can the legislative body be assured that they’ll have the money to continue to fund these positions over a long term?
These can be really hard questions to get answers to. That’s probably why not too many good laws are proposed. A lot of people want government money, including us. Unfortunately, there isn’t an infinite supply of money, and hard choices are made. Sure, there’s a lot of waste. But what is the plan to cut waste for this program, and how would you do it exactly? What would the law to cut the waste and repurpose the funds look like?
The other thing to consider - what legislative body? For many entitlements in the US, the money is allocated federally but spent in a State, so State laws are perhaps even more important. Yet other programs depend not on law, but on rule and regulation - in the US, at least, this is a completely different process.
Yep, this stuff is hard. But if no one suggests reasonable laws, we’ll never see reasonable laws.
The question I leave with my readers: What should be changed? How? If we can’t answer these questions, how can we expect our elected officials to answer them? (Source: NTs Are Weird) | | Category: | Autism | | Link Owner: | | | Date Added: | June 17, 2007 04:51:26 PM | | Number Hits: | 0 | | |
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