Senate GOP block UN treaty on disability rights

[pampango]

Republicans blocked Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) request to vote on the United Nations' treaty for persons with disabilities. Harkin asked for unanimous consent to debate the treaty for two hours and then hold an up-or-down vote that would require two-thirds of the Senate’s support for adoption. But Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) objected.

“Another sad, irresponsible day in the United States Senate,” Harkin said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “There is no controversy over this. “Is this just another blatant form of discrimination against people with disabilities?”

Harkin pointed out that the treaty has bipartisan support. He said only Tea Party extremists who hate the United Nations oppose it.

Supporters of the treaty argued that the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities would simply require the rest of the world to meet the standards that Americans already enjoy under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. More than 150 other countries have adopted the treaty.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/218040-senate-gop-block-un-treaty-on-disability-rights

How much do you have to hate the UN (that liberal One World Government in-the-making) and love national sovereignty (and the conservative policies it protects) to oppose a UN treaty on disability rights? "Tea party extremists" seem to hate all forms of international cooperation (treaties, organizations) - apparently under the belief that it infringes on the right of the US to keep its relatively conservative policies on labor rights, persons with disabilities, gun ownership, the environment, etc.

[Fred Sanders]

1. America, piranha nation, greatest threat to world security in a generation as fascism takes hold in

a landscape of officially permitted corruption and the monetization of free speech.

With a military capable of having it all.....if it falls into the right hands.

Care to wager how much coverage this international travesty by the leader of the free world gets from the purchased mass media?

[pampango]

2. This UN treaty is "strongly opposed by America’s very politically organized homeschooling movement."

The slew of other treaties that U.S. presidents have signed but the Senate has not ratified include measures to prevent enforced disappearance, torture, cluster munitions, and discrimination against women. The U.S. and Somalia are the only countries that haven’t ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Obama certainly isn’t the first president to see a seemingly logical treaty torpedoed by congressional isolationists, but the logjam keeps building.

Part of the problem with passing treaties is that while most Americans don’t care either way, those opposed to them care a lot. The Law of the Sea is a particular bugaboo among those who fear U.S. sovereignty is being eroded by international law. The child and disability rights treaties are strongly opposed by America’s very politically organized homeschooling movement. The two-thirds requirement for ratification makes it fairly easy for a concerted lobbying campaign to scuttle a treaty.

It would certainly be preferable for the U.S. Senate to ratify treaties that signaled its commitment to addressing pressing global issues and didn’t—despite the arguments of opponents—do anything to contradict U.S. domestic law. But it doesn’t surprise me that the White House is looking for an alternative route to address an issue as pressing as climate change.

In June, rather than announce that the U.S. would sign the U.N. treaty on landmines, a step that disarmament advocates have been hoping for since Obama’s first term, the administration simply announced that the U.S. would “no longer produce or acquire antipersonnel land mines or replace old ones that expire.” This essentially moves the U.S. closer to compliance with international norms without having to send along yet another treaty for the Senate to leave on a shelf.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/08/28/obama_s_new_international_climate_change_strategy_how_do_you_negotiate_treaties.html

[jwirr]

3. So homeschooling is used for persons with disabilities? When we stood on street corners to demand

that our children be allowed to go to public schools we should have just gone home and taught them ourselves? Going outside the home for schooling is not just about education. It is about socialization, being about to be around other people and experiencing different things.

Home schooling and private schools are all helping to destroy the public schools and programs for those in special ed.