Posted on 05/22/2012 4:32:53 AM PDT by IbJensen
Last week, news was made as today’s deadline approached for commercial and municipal swimming pool owners to install means, by which disabled swimmers could enter the nation’s swimming pools. It is the kind of regulation that would make a great punch line for the conservative version of the Daily Show, if conservatives were that funny. The Obama Administration has recently construed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Standards for Accessible Design to apply to the act of swimming.
Today, this regulation was supposed to go into effect, opening up the owners to $100,000 fines as well as trial lawyer liability. However, thanks to the kindness of the Justice Department, existing pools now have until January 2013 to comply. “Newly constructed or altered places of public accommodation, commercial facilities and state and local government facilities” operating swimming pools will now be required to install permanent structures that lower physically disabled patrons into the pool. These establishments may also be forced to remove “accessibility barriers.”
The premise of this entire concept — allowing bureaucrats in DC to tell Americans how to run their swimming pools is more outrageous than the overly scandalous title to this article. Purchase and operation of these mechanical arms or “elevators” that lower people into the pool cost northward of $10k.
The fact that the Justice Department and the Obama Administration are allowing a regulation like this to go into effect demonstrates two important points — first, democrats are the party of over-regulation and second, democrats are not friends to poor people.
Regulations.
Democrats have spent the better part of the past six years demonizing republicans for seeking less regulations. To be sure, many regulations are necessary. But there is two sides to the regulatory coin and the dark side is a government that is so large and intrusive that it tells us how our toilets will flush, what light bulbs to put in our kitchen and what our community swimming pools will look like. It is academic arrogance by both parties that allow people living in Washington DC to know better than people in their own communities.
This is the type of regulatory nightmare that hurts small businesses like hotel chains. It is the exact opposite of what a government should be implementing during a recession. In fact, many pools throughout the U.S. may now have to shut down.
The poor.
More importantly, this type of act showcases how out-of-step the Administration is with the American people. Growing up in a lower-middle class family, summer time was a time where my mother took my brothers and I to public pools for recreation and to save money by not running the air conditioning at home. In fact, for many poor people throughout every city south of Chicago, a community or municipal pool is the only social recreation that the poorest among Americans can afford.
Many hotels will be shutting down their pools until they can afford to install the robotic limb. Not only does this kind of regulatory overreach hurt small businesses, it hurts the poorest amongst us going into a very hot summer.
For all of the demagoguery we here about republicans being the party of millionaires and billionaires and democrats caring for the poor, no millionaires or billionaires will be required to alter their pools. It will mainly be poor minorities in the south that will feel this kind of heat from the administration.
Liberals (both Rs and Ds) want more regulations, but there is a line that goes too far and the Administration is stomping all over it. It won’t be rich-white-Republicans that will feel the Administration’s pressure on this one, it will be lower class minorities that are hurt the most. And that, is something to be ashamed of.
In fact many small boutique hotels and probably most motels and hotels will be forced to shut down their pools permanently.
Only larger facilities where a pool provides a competitive advantage will bother with the expense.
Will those who get hurt tripping on or over these stupid mechanical hosts get to sue the hotel or motel forced to install them? A litigant's dream come true thanks to the evil Obama empire.
I’m thinking a damned wheelchair ramp is plenty.
Guess who is going to be sued when somebody drowns?
My guess is that Obama will issue an EO exempting pools that have a majority of "protected class" clientele.
it’s a pool, can’t they just fall in?
How disabled? Do you even want to swim in a pool where severely disabled people are swimming? Some of these disabilities impair basic sanitation capabilities.
UnConstitutional on its face as it exceeds the FEDGOVs authority.
This is just the camel’s nose under the tent.
Next, it will be a requirement for all private backyard pools too. Then, all bathtubs and rivers and lakes will incur the regulations too.
Follow the trail of the anti-smoking regulations from their start to the total mess they are today. Step by step...every year...the regulations grow.
Where the hell does it stop? When will the bleeding hearts realize that handicaps can limit what people can do and it is not up to the public to pander to them. It’s out of control...like the blind man who climbed Mt. Everest.
If you believe he did that all by himself, I’ve got a hell of a good deal on gold for you.
I just received the new yearly tax statement on one of my houses and the “old” house that I bought for $20,000 back in 2000 is now suddenly valued at $93,000 by the stroke of the pen of the unqualified tax assessor. Why? Simple; the huge wast of money by the school district (including ADA compliance) and the city’s cost of ADA compliance and modifications to meed current specifications. Also in the mix is paying for trial lawyers to settle ADA cases and individual discrimination lawsuits by the “disabled.”
I am old and would like to young again. I guess I could sue God for making me old or better yet, force him to make me look young again through some type of ridiculous regulation.
The problem is that they can do this with a ‘regulation’ change. Big Problem
Now the hotel has made the pool accessible to handicapped people who otherwise would not have been able to get into the water.
Do they also have to provide a lifeguard to ensure the handicapped person doesn’t drown?
I agree that this shouldn’t be mandated but the robotic arm is a simple and can’t be all that expensive item. I’ve seen it lift a paraplegic vet into the water. This is the same guy who when in his wheelchair, insisted once on opening the door for me at the gym. He gets into the pool and swims twenty laps.
Which Obama “cash bundler” owns the factory that is going to manufacture these devices?
“it’s a pool, can’t they just fall in?”
Too funny!!! Coffee spew.
LOL! It’s the “getting out” that is the problem!
So obamma extended the deadline until after the election?
Yes! My son uses one at the YMCA. They are a simple hydraulic lift. Think “ cherry picker “ for a car engine. He has cerebral palsy and uses a flotation device while swimming. It is excellent excersize for him.
Thank you people for the wonderful comments about the disabled...”can’t they just fall in”, that was nice. Or a ramp to the pool...are they supposed to drive their chair into the water?? Great comment there.
Apparently the Central Socialist Government wants us to hate handicapped people.
I remember some years ago when an engineering building was being altered with a handicapped walkway. After two years I asked the receptionist if anyone ever made use of thie addition. She stated that never had the ramp been used.
How about one of the staff simply assist the person into the pool?
Why does this have to be a federal, shoved down your throat, one size fits all regulation?
Too bad you had to take it so personally, but then having a son who has cerebral palsy isn’t something one would take delight in.
I would agree with you that some of the comments aren’t humorous to you, but can’t you, as a parent take charge of your sons’s entrance into a pool of water and stay with him as he enjoys his swim, or are you like the millions who wait until the Central Socialist Government does it for you?
I take these consequences as proof that "liberalism" is Satanicly inspired. Everything they do, every cause they take up, they twist it to the point where people have to resist in order to preserve their own liberty.
Why do we have negative views of organic food? Of alternative energy?
Name your "good idea" that has turned into a liberal cause that we oppose---
All have been perverted by the left. I assert that they really DON'T CARE about these issues other than they can be used to control others.
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