Cascading effects on financial freedom.

 One of the sure way to slow down expenses is by practicing frugality.  Even if you do such there are expenses you can not control. Those expenses are necessary expense to protect yourself and your family.  Here are some of them:  Taxes, Insurance, Food, Utilities.   Here in NYC we are facing a number of them. 

1. Implementation of new organization or new social service programs, results in increase number of civic employment which will be funded by an increase in taxes. 

2. Increase in cost of building products therefore increases homeowners insurance. 

3. Reductions of police force and increase in auto thefts, reckless driving causing accidents and increase in auto insurance. 

4. Increase in debts due to taxes and insurance and food and utilities expenses requiring the need for life insurance. 

5. Increase in utility cost to protect profit and fund infrastructure improvements that should have been part of yesteryear’s budget. 

6. Increase in government funding of public transportation so people can ride free or cheaply causing further taxation of hard working people. 

7. You can not have a home or car without the required insurances.  If you have a debt, you need life insurance or your children will be socked to pay off your debt.

8. You can’t do anything about the rising cost of food because we lost our way in growing our food and lost the land to the big Agricultural businesses and cities wants to build and space for growing food becomes a scarcity  

In other words, you don’t get to decide how you use your hard earned money. Taxation and insurance takes away your financial freedom. Wake up NYC. 

Benjamin Franklin 1778 response to a question

 Benjamin Franklin response to a question if the United States of America was a republic or a monarch. He responded “A republic, if you can keep it “.   I would think he is implying that nations have risen and fallen in the past (Roman empire and Chinese dynasty to name a few).  I surely hope the United States of America would continue as a republic if they continue to work for the common goods of the nation. 

Rules that excludes the Deaf from certain careers.

The other day I was talking with my wife and she was telling me about someone who wanted to work on a cruise line but was denied at the very last minute because of a rule that the Coast Guard had in place. I found this article

Coast Guard changed rules and thought that this was one good example of where we should remove barriers in rules and regulation so opportunities are not denied.

So is there a reason why, I as a Deaf citizen of the United States of America, can not join the Army/Navy/Air Force and move up in rank? Is there rules there that explicitly states that you have to have normal hearing or vision in order to be a marine/general/cadet? There are plenty of services that the Army does that can be subsituted with a visual language(morse code comes to mind). People who carry supplies to the troop is one such service. My father was a butcher in the Korean War serving the Top Boss in Germany. A Deaf person can do the same. Here another article that touch on this subject (Deaf unable to enlist)

How about being a doctor or a nurse? Wouldn't it be nice if I could be seen by a Deaf Doctor or Nurse. Naturally there are all kinds of nurses, including those that work with patients that are non-verbal or work in the lab. I did some searching and came across this web site (Assocation of Medical Professional with Hearing Loss). So we just need to put up a fight to make changes.

What about teachers in mainstream programs? Are teachers who are deaf excluded because of some rule that states they need to hear?

I've heard there was some rules regarding driving an 18 wheeler. Looks like the CDL (Commerical Driver License) requires you to have good hearing. Why is that? If we can drive a car, then how different is that than driving an 18 wheeler?

In general, there are probably a lot of regulations that need to be changed.

By Visual Means: Benefit of ASL in early childcare

By Visual Means: Benefit of ASL in early childcare

Benefit of ASL in early childcare

Found this great article.  All the more reason to push for use of the visual language in child's early years.
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/the-benefits-of-american-sign-language.htm

Captioning and DBC

I'm a strong supporter of captioning of web video and I'm also a strong supporter of the cause of the Deaf Bilingual Coalition(DBC). The more I think about these causes, I realized how captioning can help the cause of DBC. I see often times where we are deprived of captioning of web video that entirely in the spoken language and we should continue to advocate for the rights to appreciate them. Take for instance a post by a friend of mine who happened to be Deaf and also know the words to one of John Denver's song by heart. She took upon herself to caption the song. Now this brings joy to my heart.
Earlier I stated captioning can help the cause of DBC. We are so bent sometimes on ensuring our rights to captioning but sometimes we forget the rights of Deaf children of hearing parents. Why don't we also advocate for the rights to literacy of Deaf children by exposing them to American Sign Language(ASL). One way we can do such is to advocate for the captioning of ASL video by saying all video of ASL to also be caption. I often times enjoy watching an ASL VLOG and thought this is an excellent story that the greater public should also know about, yet they will be deprived of it since it is not captioned. If we want to encourage hearing parent to learn ASL so they can also pass them on to their Deaf children, then we should demand that ASL video also be captioned for the hearing people. It should be a two way street for the greater needs of everyone.

Society of Deaf Computing Engineers

I'm contemplating on establishing a computer society where it's members are Deaf or supporters of the society. Here are some visions I have that will benefit from the establishment of such society.

1. Job Announcements/Resume bank for employer to view/post.
2. Discounts on Hardware/Software/Books/etc.
3. Creation of code camps and displaying the work of contributors.
4. Workshops where members can provide educational presentations to benefit members or the public.
5. And more...

It would more likely start out as a group and eventually become a 501c3 organization. Here are a few suggestion of the organization name.

A. Society of Deaf Computing Engineers
B. Deaf Computer Society

I sort of like the first choice but if you have a suggestion then feel free to send them this way.