Tag: disabled persons

Fact check: Biden makes false claims about the debt and deficit in jobs speech | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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During a Friday speech about the September jobs report, President Joe Biden delivered a rapid-fire series of three false or misleading claims – falsely saying that he has cut the debt, falsely crediting a tax policy that didn’t take effect until 2023 for improving the budget situation in 2021 and 2022, and misleadingly saying that he has presided over an “actual surplus.”

At a separate moment of the speech, Biden used outdated figures to boast of setting record lows in the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities. While the rates for these three groups hit record lows earlier in his presidency, he didn’t acknowledge that they have all since increased to non-record levels – and, in fact, are now higher than they were during parts of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Here’s a fact check.

Biden said in the Friday speech that Republicans want to “cut taxes for the very wealthy and big corporations,” which would add to the deficit. That’s fair game.

But then he added: “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two-and-a – two years. Well remember what we talked about. Those 50 corporations that made $40 billion, weren’t paying a penny in taxes? Well guess what – we made them pay 30%. Uh, 15% in taxes – 15%. Nowhere near what they should pay. And guess what? We were able to pay for everything, and we end up with an actual surplus.”

Facts First: Biden’s claims were thoroughly inaccurate. First, he has not cut the federal debt, which has increased by more than $5.7 trillion during his presidency so far after rising about $7.8 trillion during Trump’s full four-year tenure; it is the budget deficit (the one-year difference between spending and revenues), not the national debt (the accumulation of federal borrowing plus interest owed), that fell by $1.7 trillion over his first two fiscal years in office. Second, Biden’s 15% corporate minimum tax on certain large profitable corporations did not take effect until the first day of 2023, so it could not possibly have been responsible for the deficit reduction in fiscal 2021 and 2022. Third, there is no “actual surplus”; the federal government continues to run a budget deficit well over $1 trillion.

CNN has previously debunked Biden’s false claims about supposedly having cut the “debt” and about the new corporate minimum tax supposedly being responsible for deficit reduction in 2021 and 2022. The White House, which declined to comment on the record for this article, has corrected previous official transcripts when Biden has claimed that the debt fell by $1.7 trillion, acknowledging that he should have said deficit.

As for Biden’s vague additional claim that “we end up with an actual surplus,” a White House official said Friday that the president was referring to how the particular law in which the new minimum tax was contained, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is projected to reduce the deficit. But Biden did not explain this unusual-at-best use of “surplus” – and since he had just been talking about the overall budget picture, he certainly made it sound like he was claiming to have presided over a surplus in the overall budget. He has not done so.

Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, said in response to the White House explanation: “Well he didn’t say ‘budget surplus’ I suppose. But in federal budget conversations, the word surplus has a very specific meaning. It doesn’t mean ‘additional,’ it means revenues exceed spending.” He noted earlier Friday that there hasn’t been a federal budget surplus since 2001.

It’s worth noting, as we have before, that Biden’s Friday comments would be missing key context even if he had not inaccurately replaced the word “deficit” with “debt.” It’s highly questionable how much credit Biden himself deserves for the decline in the deficit in 2021 and 2022. Independent analysts say it occurred largely because emergency Covid-19 relief spending from fiscal 2020 expired as scheduled – and that Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits. In addition, the 2023 deficit is widely expected to be higher than the 2022 deficit.

More on the corporate minimum tax

When Biden spoke Friday about “those 50 corporations that made $40 billion, weren’t paying a penny in taxes,” he was referring, as he has in the past, to an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis published in 2021 that listed 55 companies the think tank found had paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year.

But it was imprecise, at best, for Biden to say Friday that we made “them” pay 15% in taxes. That’s because the new 15% minimum tax applies only to companies that have an average annual financial statement income of $1 billion or more – there are lots of nuances involved; you can read more details here – and only 14 of the 55 companies on the think tank’s list reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion. In other words, some large and profitable companies will not be hit with the tax.

The federal government’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation projected last year that the tax would shrink deficits by about $222 billion through 2031, with positive impacts beginning in 2023. Gardner said Friday that he fully expects the tax to play a role in reducing deficits going forward, but he said its deficit-reducing impact “might be lower than expected” in 2023 because the Treasury Department – which has been the subject of intense lobbying from corporations that could be affected – has taken so long to implement the details of the law that the Internal Revenue Service ended up waiving penalties on companies that don’t make estimated tax payments on it this year.

Regardless, Gardner said, “The minimum tax did not reduce the deficit at all in fiscal years 2021 or 2022 because it didn’t exist during those years.”

Early in the Friday speech, Biden boasted of statistics from the September jobs report that was released earlier in the day. But then he said, “We’ve achieved a 70-year low in unemployment rate for women, record lows in unemployment for African Americans and Hispanic workers, and people with disabilities – folks who’ve been left behind in previous recoveries and left behind for too long.”

Facts First: Three of these four Biden unemployment boasts are misleading because they are out of date. Only his claim about a 70-year low for women’s unemployment remains current. While the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities did fall to record lows earlier in Biden’s presidency, they have since increased – to rates higher than the rates during various periods of the Trump administration.

Women: The seasonally adjusted women’s unemployment rate was 3.4% in September. That’s a tick upward from the 3.3% rate during two previous months of 2023, but it’s still tied – with two months of the Trump administration – for the lowest for this group since 1953, 70 years ago.

African Americans: The seasonally adjusted Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in September, up from the record low of 4.7% in April. The current 5.7% rate is higher than this group’s rates during four months of 2019, under Trump.

Hispanics: The seasonally adjusted Hispanic unemployment rate was 4.6% in September, up from the record low of 3.9% from September 2022. The current 4.6% rate is higher than this group’s rates for every month from April 2019 through February 2020 under Trump, plus a smattering of prior Trump-era months.

People with disabilities: The unemployment rate for people with disabilities, ages 16 and up, was 7.3% in September, up from a record low of 5.0% in December 2022. (The figures only go back to 2008, so the record was for a period of less than two decades.) The current 7.3% rate is higher than this group’s rates during eight months of the Trump presidency, seven of them in 2019.

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August 2, 2023
Sony’s PlayStation Access controller offers a new social lifeline for gamers with disabilities | CNN Business

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CNN
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Grant Stoner said that he has loved playing video games his entire life, and that his earliest memory is of playing Super Nintendo in his parents’ bedroom at roughly 3 years old.

“Gaming, for me, has always been a social activity,” Stoner, a Pittsburgh native who has spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a neuromuscular disorder, told CNN. “Because I’ve never really, physically, been able to participate in schoolyard events or sporting events or what have you, so I would bond with family and classmates through gaming.”

For people with disabilities, Stoner said gaming has served as a lifeline for forming friendships and community. But for years, he adds, the technology underpinning the gaming sector has been notoriously not inclusive.

“Disabled people would have to be very innovative, and either design or create their own adaptive setups with like, different maybe 3D-printed objects or in my case, a Popsicle stick,” Stoner told CNN. He said his brother used to attach a Popsicle stick to the trigger of one of his gaming controllers to find a way for Stoner to keep playing even when he lost strength in his fingers.

Stoner’s struggles are all too familiar for Paul Amadeus Lane, who told CNN he learned how to play games using his chin, lips and cheeks to push buttons on a controller after an accident left him quadriplegic and without finger mobility some 30 years ago.

Lane also recalls how his social circle changed after his accident, and isolation crept in after he could no longer do things like play basketball or go for a drive.

“Gaming can help with those social barriers out there, especially with social isolation,” Lane told CNN. “And put us in an environment where we can have some enjoyment without being judged because of our disability.”

Lane said he remembers getting a call back in 2021 to help advise Sony with a “secret project,” and was overjoyed to find out the tech giant’s gaming arm was quietly working on creating a controller specifically for people with disabilities. Sony Interactive Entertainment is the maker of the wildly popular PlayStation consoles and a lineup of fan-favorite PlayStation games. Microsoft’s Xbox gaming unit released an Adaptive Controller for Xbox back in 2018 to much celebration from the disability community, but people with disabilities still found wide gaps trying to play games on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles.

“I was really, really happy, because I didn’t think Sony would ever tackle something like this,” Lane told CNN.

After years of tinkering and consulting with gamers who have disabilities like Lane, Sony Interactive Entertainment unveiled a first look at its Access controller for gamers with disabilities earlier this month. The Access controller is now available for pre-order and will be released on December 6, with a price tag of $89.99.

The controller can be endlessly customized to meet the diverse needs of players with disabilities and Sony has the goal of helping these gamers play more comfortably for longer. The circular device can be configured with swappable button and stick caps to suit a range of mobility needs.

In a Q&A posted on Sony’s PlayStation company blog, Alvin Daniel, the senior technical program manager for the Access controller, said the development team quickly learned that “no two people experience disability in exactly the same way.”

Daniel said his team tapped the help of players and accessibility experts to build a controller that could be as inclusive as possible. With the help of players and accessibility experts, Daniel wrote, “we did a really deep dive to try to understand what it was we wanted to help solve. And this came down to a very interesting insight: instead of looking at conditions, or impediments, instead, look at the controller.”

“Look at the standard controller as it exists today. And ask yourself the question, ‘What prevents someone from effectively interacting with a standard controller?’” he added.

The result is a Sony-designed device that gamers can tailor to meet their individual needs, that gamers don’t have to hold in order to use and features buttons that are much easier to press. Lane, who is among the group of gamers who has been able to try out the unreleased controller, said he was especially excited for how it gave him the ability to play racing games again for the first time since his accident.

“I wasn’t able to play racing games because of just the dexterity that you needed with your hands and just how fast things are moving,” Lane said. “And then when I was able to try out Gran Turismo, I was like, I can game and play racing games again!”

“I haven’t driven in over 30 years,” he added. “It takes me back to when I was driving.”

Stoner said he’s excited about the PlayStation Access controller, and especially encouraged that the price point is relatively low compared to other options on the market. And while he’s been heartened to see an industry-wide push toward inclusive innovation in gaming, he emphasized that there is still work to do.

“The industry needs to understand that the Xbox controller, the PlayStation controller, while they’re great and while they’re very beneficial, they cannot help everyone,” he said. “This is not a perfect solution.”

“We need to keep innovating around games – the software aspect and the hardware aspect – because nothing that we have currently is fully accessible to every disabled person,” he added. “I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, just because of how individualistic the disabled experience is, but currently, there’s always more work to be done and the industry needs to remember that.”

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August 2, 2023
Alabama death row inmate cannot be executed due to intellectual disability, appeals court rules | CNN

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CNN
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An appeals court has ruled the state of Alabama cannot execute man with an intellectual disability who was sentenced to death for murdering a man in 1997, upholding a lower court’s decision.

The US Eleventh Court of Appeals’ decision on Friday means that 53-year-old Joseph Clifton Smith cannot be executed unless the decision is overturned by the US Supreme Court.

In a statement released after the appeals court decision, Amanda Priest, communications director for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, said, “Smith’s IQ scores have consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled. The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional.”

“The Attorney General disagrees with the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling, and will seek review from the United States Supreme Court,” the statement concluded

In 2021, a US District Court judge ruled that due to his intellectual disability, Smith could not “constitutionally be executed,” and vacated his death sentence.

The judge referenced the district court’s finding that Smith’s “intellectual and adaptive functioning issues clearly arose before he was 18 years of age,” according to the 2021 appeals court ruling, which agreed with the lower court.

Smith confessed to murdering Durk Van Dam, whose body was found “in an isolated area near his pick-up truck” in Mobile County in southwest Alabama, according to the court’s Friday ruling. Smith “offered two conflicting versions of the crime,” the ruling says – first admitting he watched Van Dam’s murder and then saying he participated but didn’t intend to kill the man.

The case went to trial and the jury found Smith guilty, the order states. During his sentencing proceedings, Smith’s mother and sister testified that his father was “an abusive alcoholic,” according to the ruling.

Smith had struggled in school since as early as the first grade, the order says, which led to his teacher labeling him as an “underachiever” before he underwent an “intellectual evaluation,” which gave him an IQ score of 75, the court said. When he was in fourth grade, Smith was tested again and placed in a learning-disability class – at the same time as his parents were going through a divorce, the court said.

“After that placement, Smith developed an unpredictable temper and often fought with classmates. His behavior became so troublesome that his school placed him in an ‘emotionally conflicted classroom,’” the ruling states.

Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school entirely, the ruling says, and he then spent “much of the next fifteen years in prison” for burglary and receiving stolen property.

One of the witnesses in Smith’s evidentiary hearing held by the district court to determine whether he has an intellectual disability was Dr. Daniel Reschly, a certified school psychologist, the ruling says.

The court ultimately determined that Smith “has significant deficits in social/interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent home living, and functional academics,” the ruling says.

In its conclusion, the appeals court wrote: “We hold that the district court did not clearly err in finding that Smith is intellectually disabled and, as a result, that his sentence violates the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment vacating Smith’s death sentence.”

“This case is an example of why process is so important in habeas cases and why we should not rush to enforce death sentences—the only form of punishment that can’t be undone,” the office of Smith’s federal public defender said in a statement after the appeals court decision.

“Originally, this same District Court denied Mr. Smith the opportunity to be heard, and it was an Eleventh Circuit decision that allowed a hearing that created this avenue for relief,” the statement said.

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May 19, 2023
‘A whole new world’: Georgia debuts all-terrain wheelchairs at its state parks | CNN

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CNN
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Wheelchair users will now be able to explore Georgia’s state parks with free all-terrain wheelchairs.

The new fleet of wheelchairs are part of a collaboration between the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Aimee Copeland Foundation, launched by Aimee Copeland, a social worker who in 2012 lost her both of her hands, one foot and most of one leg due to a rare bacterial, flesh-eating infection. The organization works to improve accessibility for disabled people, particularly through outdoor recreation.

“All Terrain Georgia is the pride and joy of Aimee Copeland Foundation,” said Copeland in a news release from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “It’s been a long time coming and we’re honored to offer this life-changing program to the community.”

The all-terrain wheelchairs allow wheelchair users to navigate more difficult terrain than they might be able to in an everyday wheelchair, according to the release. The chairs will be free with reservation at 11 state parks and historic sites in Georgia.

The new wheelchairs were unveiled at Panola Mountain State Park, southeast of Atlanta, on November 4. Users will need to reserve the wheelchairs in advance and also have a designated “buddy” with them at all times.

Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites Director Jeff Cown emphasized the importance of providing access to the outdoors for everyone in Georgia.

“Our mission is to provide outdoor opportunities for every Georgia citizen and visitor,” said Cown in the release. “I am proud to partner with the Aimee Copeland Foundation to offer access to visitors with mobility or physical disabilities.”

Georgia follows in the footsteps of Minnesota and Michigan, which have also introduced free all-terrain, electric-powered wheelchairs at their state parks.

Cory Lee, the writer of a blog focused on traveling as a wheelchair user, told CNN that he’s excited to explore Georgia’s state parks using the new chairs.

“It’ll open up a whole new world for me and for other wheelchair users,” he said.

He added that many of the Georgia state parks he has visited are “lacking in accessibility.”

“Some of them only have one accessible trail,” he said. “Now, there will be so many other trails that I’m able to do. I’m really looking forward to getting out on those trails soon.”

Lee added that state parks should still focus on adding more wheelchair-accessible routes if possible. Getting out of his everyday wheelchair and into the all-terrain wheelchair can be challenging.

Still, the all-terrain wheelchairs “are really a phenomenal resource,” he said.

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November 12, 2022
Opinion: I have a disability that is obvious — and one that’s not | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Ben Mattlin, a Los Angeles-based writer born with spinal muscular atrophy, is the author of several books about disability. His latest, called “Disability Pride,” will be out in November from Beacon Press. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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My wheelchair hides my worst disability.

Most people probably think that having spinal muscular atrophy — a neuromuscular weakness I’ve had since birth — is the nastiest thing that ever happened to me. It isn’t. It isn’t even my most irritating, aggravating or vexingly incurable medical problem.

That dubious honor goes to … ulcerative colitis (UC).

My UC is more or less well-managed, thanks to a lot of effort. But its symptoms are maddeningly erratic and unpredictable. It’s considered an autoimmune disease, a still-evolving classification thought to include lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease, Graves’ disease, Lyme disease and many more, according to Meghan O’Rourke’s “The Invisible Kingdom.” These and other chronic illnesses disrupt the lives of nearly 200 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — not including another 16 million with long Covid, according to the Brookings Institution.

Such disorders are often considered “invisible” because they’re not apparent to onlookers. But that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt and don’t impact people daily. That’s why, in 2014, the Invisible Disabilities Association designated the third week of October as Invisible Disabilities Week, to help raise awareness and build support for those of us who are coping with complex chronic diseases.

Frankly, when you also have the opposite sort of debility — one that’s highly visible, as I do — it’s easy to forget about or at least minimize other infirmities. That is, until an awful flareup reminds you.

A lot of disabled people like me have multiple conditions, some of which may go undiagnosed. The CDC estimates that more than 38% of disabled American adults are also obese, 16% also have diabetes and 12% also have heart disease.

Many people, even including many in the disability rights movement, often overlook less visible disabilities, including mental illnesses. But they’re just as important — and as stigmatizing.

In fairness, I’ve been complicit in keeping my less obvious malady under wraps. Despite publishing several books and essays about almost every embarrassing detail of my life as a proud disabled person — someone who has learned to love his emaciated arms and legs and crooked spine — I’ve unwittingly neglected to divulge the full extent of my ongoing battle with gut inflammation.

The reasons for this deception seem obvious: First, it’s embarrassing and, second, it’s no one’s business. But perhaps in acknowledging the beast, I can hereby soften its fangs.

After all, ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory bowel ailments such as Crohn’s disease are nothing to be ashamed of. Like all autoimmune diseases, they can be treated but not cured. Doctors offer a number of therapies, including aminosalicylates (pills, suppositories or enemas), antibiotics and steroids. Perhaps the most effective treatments are immunosuppressants, which lower your ability to fight infections, something I really don’t want in the age of Covid.

Surgery only helped me to a degree. Years ago, after a life-threatening colitis-related Clostridioides difficile infection, I had my colon removed. Ever since, I’ve sported a colostomy pouch under my clothes. The little bit of my rectum the surgeon left can still become inflamed, however, and leak odorless mucus that intermittently stains my pants. I have no control over it. Flareups can be excruciatingly painful, too, like a bad cramp that presses against the bladder. And yes, accidents do occur every now and then.

But usually, the only outward sign is a frown on my face, and maybe my grumpy mood. The fact that I’m always sitting helps. No one knows if my pants are soiled. But if I ever have to get out of my chair — at, say, the dentist or to board an airplane — I panic. I envision dying of shame.

In online forums you read about various pseudoscientific remedies — raw kombucha, aloe vera jelly, even belly exercises. Believe me, I’ve tried many of them. But I have doubts about advice from strangers. Which may be another reason I’ve kept my intestinal affliction on the down-low. I don’t want to attract hucksters.

A more honest explanation is that very little of my life is private, so I’ve been protective of the few secrets I have. Anyone who sees me instantly knows a number of big and personal facts about me. For instance, not only can’t I walk, but I clearly need help with all manner of daily activities. Wrongheaded assumptions are common, too, of course — such as, that I can’t make up my own mind at restaurants. But even if I can’t pretend that walking is an option, I can make believe my bowels are fine.

Make no mistake: My spinal muscular atrophy impacts my whole life. But that’s not all there is to me. And when it comes to what can most upend my day and my sense of well-being, there’s no contest. Ulcerative colitis is far more intrusive because it sneaks up on me, and nobody understands when I suddenly wince for no apparent cause.

I only wish more people realized that disabilities come in all types — even if you can’t tell by looking. Learning about invisible disabilities is an important first step in creating a better understanding and, ultimately, building a more inclusive society.

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October 16, 2022