Start Seeing Disabled People

Michael Berube has a truly excellent post up this morning on disabilities, public policy, and Katrina. An excerpt:

[Y]ou may have already heard that the ghouls who infest (and govern!) our body politic are planning to pay for Katrina cleanup by lining the oily pockets of Cheney’s Halliburton kleptocrats and taking the money from public radio and other “liberal” causes. And you may have heard that Medicaid is going to be slashed to the bone and beyond. But unless you work with a disability organization, I bet you didn’t know that Medicaid is the major funding source for hundreds of disability-advocacy organizations, from residential to vocational to medical facilities across the nation. In other words: hundreds of people with disabilities were killed in Katrina. The health crisis associated with Katrina will have a disproportionate impact on—indeed, will produce—still more people with disabilities. And the crony-capitalist kleptocrat kleanup of Katrina (with Karl Rove in charge of budgetary oversight) will be paid for by cuts in services to people with disabilities. When I say people with disabilities are invisible even in their visibility, this is what I mean.

Really, you should go read the whole thing. It's an area desperately in need of more attention.