Disabled veteran angered over treatment by United Airlines

 

reposted from the service dog news

• July 20, 2012
• By: Penny Eims

Sarge and Jim

A disabled veteran and founder of the non-profit organization, Paws and Stripes, is still reeling from poor treatment that he, and his service dog, received from airline employees on a recent trip to Tennessee.

The man at the heart of the turmoil is Jim Stanek, a man who served three tours of duty in Iraq and who still suffers from PTSD and the effects of a traumatic brain injury.

The airline in question is United Airlines.

Not quite one week ago, Stanek and his service dog, Sarge, were traveling via United Airlines when they encountered unbelievable behavior from several airline employees at the Dulles Airport on their return flight home.

While at the airport, while dealing with flight cancellations and delays, two separate airline employees kicked his service dog and one United Airline employee asked him if he was “retarded,” after Stanek asked for help with reading a reservation email.

The employees who kicked the service dog claimed that they were “startled” by her presence. One of the kicks was hard enough to cause the frightened dog to leap into Stanek’s lap.

Finally, after 48 hours of delays, insults and mistreatment, two helpful United Airlines employees witnessed Stanek’s struggles and they were finally able to come to Stanek’s aid.

The employees were able to get Stanek booked onto another airline and facilitated his ability to finally get back home. By the time he was boarded for the final leg of his journey, his traumatized dog was a quaking mess.

Today, Stanek is amazed and disheartened over the callous behavior by the employees that he encountered.

Stanek would like for United Airlines to look into their practices and learn from the gross mistakes that took place during his recent travels.

He is hopeful that there will be greater understanding by airline employees for those individuals who have disabilities that are not as apparent as a missing limb – disabilities like his own traumatic brain injury and PTSD.

Watch Jim Stanek’s video recount of his ordeal here.

United Airlines contact information at this link.

Follow Paws and Stripes at this link

The knight wasn’t the only thing dark in theatre 9 century cinemas Aurora Colorado last night

When I write about child molestation I use terms like monsters and animals and evil, but here’s the problem evil comes in all forms and each one acts out in its own special way.

The latest batman movie has long been awaited by fans all over the world, its predecessor is one of the highest grossing movies in motion picture history.

Last night at theatre 9 in the century cinema complex aurora Colorado the crowd was no different, the only thing higher than the expectations was the nervous energy.

Fifteen  minutes into the movie suddenly a smoke grenade was set off, and the  crowd thought wow special effects.  Then suddenly  out of the side fire door stepped a Kevlar clad heavily armed man and they thought wow special effects actors love the costume but what’s with the gas mask?

All these thoughts took only a split second, because he no sooner appeared than he fired the shotgun into the ceiling and the AK-47 into his victim. Pandemonium broke out and over the next few minute special wonderful people with families and loved ones and children(including a 3 month old baby) and friends ceased to be 12 so far have lost their lives and 38 are in hospitals in the area and the entire country is in shock.

This wasn’t a crazed lunatic with a police record, this wasn’t a anti government militia man this wasn’t al-Qaida or Taliban this was a clean cut looking PHD candidate in neuro science from the university of Colorado. This monster  looks like every mothers dream for future son in-law material but evil none the less.

The media have flocked like seagulls on a hot dog roll , and the commentators and the retired FBI and legal analysis’s are all flapping their gums like they were there. That always annoys the crap out of me only the people in that cinema and 51 people in particular  know the terror. Twelve of those are dead 38 are lucky to be alive and one disgusting piece of trash put them there. They are the only ones that know what terror and thinking you’re about to die really feels like and their families know what it likes to suddenly question why them not me.

I’m waiting for the NRA to act in their normal manner and blame the human and say guns are fine, but it takes a human to pull the trigger and without fully automatics being available they would have no trigger to pull.

Let’s leave the discussion about guns as a whole for another day, but there is no legitimate reason for any private non law enforcement or military personnel to ever own let alone handle a fully automatic weapon.

I’m not some inexperienced gun hating greeny, when you grow up in outback Australia just like in any agricultural community you are taught gun handling and safety from an early age.  Even more than that as a young person I was in the navy reserves in my native Australia, I was trained in the marksman ship school with the Belgian made SLR 7.62mm fully automatic rifle. This is the  weapon that the British and Australians  carried as their weapon of choice  in the Vietnam war, and  my training was over 1,000 yards on the run dropping and firing a full clip(19 in the magazine one in the barel) every 100 yards( to qualify I had to put 19 bullets into a 2 inch circle from a thousand yards without any power sights simply the rear and front barrel sights while at full run ). I  not only earned my marksman ship quals, but shot for the Navy in the Simpson cup against air force and army as a sniper.  Simpson cup is a yearly title for best snipers in the armed forces  so yes I know the high of handling the deadliest weapons on earth and what it taught me was that I would never ever touch a gun again let alone  point it at any living being let alone a breathing human ever in my life.

There is no hunting that requires the ability to fire 600 bullets a minute,  there is no hunting that requires you to have a weapon like this so let’s get them off the streets.  Let’s get them off the shelves and out of the hands of disgusting beings like this loser.Just maybe if we can get them off the streets not withstanding the  wars we have no part fighting in this generation might have a fighting chance of growing old.

My   prayers and the prayers of my wife go out to the families of all those he took from this world,  and may the wounded of body have a quick recovery and the wounded of spirit  know peace in their souls. blessed be shalom.

Footnote- the number of victims as of 200pm EST has risen to 71, one weapon an AR-15 was so powerful one bullet passed throught the sound proofing the upholstery and the wall itself and wouned a client in the cinema next door.

At a critical moment, a new special education chief for NYC schools takes over

 Reposted from a story by Geoff Decker, at 8:45 am

The new head of special education at the Department of Education thinks long-planned reforms to the way city schools educate students with special needs are likely to be “very rocky” when they roll out this fall.

But Corinne Rello-Anselmi believes that not making radical changes would be far more damaging.

That’s what she told a group of parents who sit on a special education advisory board Thursday evening. It was Rello-Anselmi’s formal introduction to the board, the Citywide Council on Special Education, since taking over this month as deputy chancellor of special education and English language learning.

She replaces Laura Rodriguez, the first person to hold that position. Under Rodriguez’s leadership, the city launched sweeping reforms designed to integrate students with disabilities into classroom settings alongside their peers.

Those reforms have been underway in some schools for two years. But for most schools, the changes are taking effect only this year, bringing a new level of scrutiny to the special education deputy position.

The parent advisory board largely supports the principle that is guiding the reforms: that more inclusive classroom settings are better for students with disabilities. Research has shown students with special needs who spend less time in so-called “self-contained” special education classrooms have higher attendance, higher test scores, fewer behavioral problems, and higher graduation rates.

But board members have also joined a growing chorus of parents and advocates who say they are concerned about whether schools are prepared to handle the changes, which will bring students with disabilities to neighborhood schools that have served few students with special needs in the past. The parents and advocates fear that schools that have served few students with special needs will not be equipped to provide the appropriate services to meet academic goals stated on new students’ individualized education plans.

Jaye Bea Smalley, CCSE’s co-president, said at Thursday’s meeting that she didn’t believe the reforms were misguided or that they were being rolled out too quickly. She said her fear lay in something more fundamental.

“It’s just that I don’t think our school system really will allow for it to happen,” Smalley said.

During the meeting, Rello-Anselmi said she “personally” believed that the rollout would be “very rocky.” But she said reducing city schools’ reliance on segregated special education settings where student achievement tends to be very low would be worth the disruption.

In an interview after the meeting, Rello-Anselmi called her new job the culmination of “my life’s work” and indicated that she did not think she had been selected simply to carry out an existing initiative. Rello-Anselmi has spent more than three decades working in special education, first as a teacher and principal at P.S. 108, where she said the school eventually integrated eight self-contained classrooms.

“The journey of those years really was about setting a fully inclusive environment for all kids,” she said.

Most recently, Rello-Anselmi oversaw a branch of the Department of Education’s school support structure. The branch included dozens of schools organized under a cluster of 12 networks, three of which participated in the pilot of the special education reforms. Working with those schools gave Rello-Anselmi a firsthand look at how schools adopted to the mandate to serve higher-need students, she said.

“I saw a lot of how schools reform their practices to be more inclusive and it worked because it was supported by the network,” Rello-Anselmi said.

While Rello-Anselmi said she intended to carry out the reforms that began before her, she already had ideas about how to change her office’s approach to providing information to the public. So far, the department has provided only scant information about how the reforms have played out at the pilot schools, and at a City Council hearing last month, Rodriguez acknowledged that her office was not keeping track of certain data points that advocates were asking for.

Rello-Anselmi said she could not explain why those data points had not been part of the department’s assessment of the reforms. But she said she would make sure that they will be in the future.

“I can’t answer to that because I wasn’t part of it,” she said. “But the DOE always looks at how we are doing, so there will be a greater emphasis on looking at what is happening in terms of meeting the needs of students and how they’re progressing socially and academically. By that I mean we’ll be looking at things like suspension data, we’ll be looking at achievement data.”

Wisconsin Lawmaker Introduces Law To Classify Single Parenthood As Child Abuse

Photo via Grothman’s website.

Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman(R-West Bend) has introduced a bill demonizing single parents by classifying them as child abusers. 

Senate Bill 507 specifically requires “the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.”

A third of Wisconsin parents are single parents, but this law affects even more than that. The way the law refers to “nonmarital parenthood” also makes this applicable to non-married couples, including same-sex couples. S.B. 507 reads:

Section 1. 48.982 (2) (g) 2. of the statutes is amended to read: 48.982 (2) (g) 2. Promote statewide educational and public awareness campaigns and materials for the purpose of developing public awareness of the problems of child abuse and neglect. In promoting those campaigns and materials, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.Section 2. 48.982 (2) (g) 4. of the statutes is amended to read: 48.982 (2) (g) 4. Disseminate information about the problems of and methods of preventing child abuse and neglect to the public and to organizations concerned with those problems. In disseminating that information, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

Grothman isn’t just some fringe nut-job. He’s the assistant majority leader and a staunch ally of Gov. Scott Walker. Unlike Walker, Grothman is not up for recall because activists were unable to get enough signatures. State Rep. Donald Pridemore (R-Hartford) co-sponsored the bill. (He is not up for recall either.)

Grothman is not a fan of welfare policies. In a flyer detailing his family policies (embedded at the bottom of this post), he says, “The Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.” He touched on those issues after introducing SB507 last week. The Cap Times writes:

“I guess as long as this state is going to fund a group called the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, at least that group could use the money that they have to publicize something that’s politically incorrect, but I think has to be said in our society,” Grothman said at a public hearing on the bill last week.Noting that 41 percent of children born in the U.S. last year were born to single parents, Grothman said: “It’s a very politically difficult thing to deal with because over time you’re having more and more families that are not old-fashioned families. There are even people who make fun of old-fashioned families.”

State Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) said this bill is an assault on women. “What this bill does is call out and chastise women who have babies and are unmarried,” she told The Cap Times. Human Development and Family Studies Professor Dave Riley told The Badger Herald that family type has far less impact than the family process and that research shows that “leaving a conflictual marriage actually improves parent-child relationships.”

SB507 is now with the Senate Public Health committee, and The Cap Times says it’s not likely to get a committee vote, since the committee chair Pam Galloway (R-Wausau) is facing a close recall election.

And here is Grothman’s stance on families, wherein he explains “How The United States and the State of Wisconsin are Working to Encourage Single-Motherhood and Discouraging Children in 2-Parent Families.”

WI State Sen. Glenn Grothman on Families

MIA’S THOUGHTS- It is mindless dribble like the suggested law above that poison the well, when we try to actually get healthy laws for our communities. By this idiots reckoning a single  hardworking mother who’s cheating dog of a husband ran off with the secretary could be charged with child abuse. A wealthy hard working single woman who has no interest in ever marrying, but because of her lifestyle could offer a wonderful home to an orphan would be charged with child abuse.Even more sinister and what I think is really under this is, that when gays are adopting quite often one partner adopts the child and they co- parent that gay couple could be charged with child abuse.

What about elderly grandparents raising the child of their daughter, who has either died or is unable raise the child therefore  they are a single parent?

You might say I’m over simplifying it, but if this idiot can even dare to put this law forward where would it end? My opinion it must end now witht his law being struck down and struck down fast.