To you, I am sure I cannot as well. I'm no miracle worker, and never claimed I could help the blind to see. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html Great read, in it's day (192, and more relevant today (over 80 years later), than it ever was or has been. Whether you wish to believe it or not the practice is obvious to anybody willing to drop their blinders, and get off the bandwagon for a moment or two. The systematic study of mass psychology confirms that when you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. To obtain conscious cooperation professional politicians only understand two things, money, and power. The rich/elites have both. The unconscious cooperation takes a lot more creativity and manipulative deceitfulness. IOW the manipulative force must coax the mark into believing the situation is beneficial to their own private needs and/or goals, and in either case you are marketing the idea, as a commodity. In any case you have been programmed into believing it must be a liberal concoction based on your own bias through social conditioning, but you refuse to accept the fact that a republican, more to the point a neo-con president, a non-conservative, signed the bill into law, then 20 years later his son, also a non-conservative republican neo-con, complicated the intrusive legislation even more by making it even more intrusive, and complicated. Why? Or so the actual benefactors (the rich/elites) of our economy, endeavor to perpetuate, hope. Even if and when it is not our best interests as a whole to do so.
bureaucracies exist to justify their own existence. if any real work gets done, it's just a coincidence. ..
That's great and all, and whatever you think of me (and I don't care in the slightest), I'm fully aware of how Government can be manipulated by all sides to do its bidding. That's why I'm in favor of shrinking it, and removing its influence over all those issues that so many seem to think Government needs to be influential. This has nothing to do with my statement, as I said 'liberal'. If you do not think I believe that both Bushes had serious liberal streaks (as well as broad stupid streaks), then you misjudge. You've offered nothing indicating that this wasn't a liberal idea. In fact, the brainchilds of the ADA were Lex Frieden and Mitchell J. Rappaport - both liberals (or: feel free to debunk the criticism of Republicans that Rappaport delivers on that link). Regardless: how do you know that the signing and modification of the ADA (and then ADAA) isn't just misguided stupidity? The fact is that it was a liberal machination, because liberals just loooove to push this "let's make everyone's access to everything equal" nonsense. Yes, yes. Let's just blame the rich en masse. This couldn't just be a really stupid unintended consequence of really stupid and naive legislation - enacted by a Government far too big for its own britches. No sir. This was a solution in search of a problem, and people who felt put upon and needed to leverage the power of Government for their own pet cause - and it found willing accomplices on both sides of the aisle eager to collect political points. Liberal stupidity is what instigated it, but the overarching point is that Federal Government being as big as it is made it possible to co-opt it. Shrink Government, and this sort of stupidity never happens.
The law isn't the law. Administrative rules are the law. What happens is Congress passes a law. In the old days, Congress would write the entire text of the law and it was passed based on what was seen before hand. Today, large bills simply direct government agencies to write administrative rules. For example, Obamacare consists of 3000 pages giving instructions on how to write 30,000 pages of administrative rules. You don't even get to see what is in the bill even after it is passed. Now these administrative rules are amendable without Congressional Consent, so even if the ADA didn't require mirrors in public restrooms to be within 4 inches of the splash guard of the sink when it was first pass, they certainly include them now. The ADA was never meant to be for retrofitting except for government owned buildings. There wasn't 20 years of compliance time because the Administrative Rules eventually morphed into something that local permitting now sees as an absolute requirement. The burger place may have been okay 3 or 4 years ago and now they are not. So filing an ADA complaint because you are a vegan, or you didn't get correct change, just pissed off or any number of other ludicrous thing becomes the norm. The law was never meant to be a death sentence to a business. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% for the ADA. But even I know that the thoughtless application of the ADA in a one size fits all mentality is just plain dumb. For example, I was on a citizens advisory panel for seismic upgrades to our historical downtown fire house. The project was delayed (putting our citizens at risk) for three years because they had trouble designing an ADA required elevator to the fourth floor of the fire house. The only thing on the fourth floor is the firemen's sleeping quarters which are off-limits to everyone but the firemen. It hasn't gotten to the point where we are required to hire handicapped firemen. I was in a wheelchair at that time and I fought harder than anyone to get the elevator removed from the plans because it was utterly stupid. I am a strong advocate of handicap access, but there are smarter ways to achieve your goals than marginalizing yourself. Killing businesses in this economy is not the way to go.
CA has moronic ADA laws....unlike federal laws, our state laws allow you to sue (shakedown) a business that doesnt comply, without ever giving them a chance to comply..... it really needs to be changed
The(*)Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a law that was enacted by the(*)U.S. Congress(*)in 1990. It was(*)signed into law(*)on July 26, 1990, by PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush, and later amended with changes effective January 1, 2009.
I'm not sure what exactly California has enacted on a state level for ADA laws, but the restaurant owner should have fought it. I do ADA inspections as one part of my job, and can tell you that lawyers, contractors, architects and engineers usually aren't as up-to-date on regulations as you would think...unless they are specifically an ADA Architect, etc. Federal ADA law will usually always trump state level law in cases like this, and the owner would probably have been able to obtain a waiver based on "undo hardship" to his business if the cost of the modifications would outweigh the businesses income. Also, typically, structures built before the enactment of the ADA in 1990 would be exempt from the law unless they make a modification to the existing structure. For example, people always tend to think this means if you put in a new toilet you would also have to modify the plumbing system. However, the ADA only applies to the structure you are modifying, not items within the structure (such as toilets, handrails, etc.). In other words, you do not have to redo plumbing systems and electrical systems if you are only replacing an item within the structure. That being said, if the business were to move a wall or any other "permanent" structure, then yes, he would have to modify the attaching system at that point only. ADA would only come into the fold if a business was either structurally moving the location of a public area...for example, if they moved the restrooms to a new location. There is also the point that business owners can make "reasonable accomodations" to meet the needs of their customers, such as lowering sections of counters (ADA only requires that a section of a counter be at a certain height when modifications are made to an already existing structure) or something similar. I would be really interested to see California's ADA laws, because 9 times out of 10 Federal ADA laws will triumph, and I'm guessing the business owner would have had a pretty good case to not make the modifications based upon the businesses revenue and age of the structure.
