Charity vs. Gum-Flapping

Special Olympics has found a way to get kids and young adults with disabilities to feel something enormously important: Able.

Three decades ago, as part of a community service requirement, I spent one day each week working with physically and intellectually-challenged adults at Easter Seals in Little Rock, Arkansas, organizing sporting events and speech and drama activities.

Most unforgettable were the beaming smiles of pride when they got a chance to show what they could do — the pinnacle of which was their participation in Special Olympics. I’ve always loved sports, but never as much as at those wonderful games.

In the decades since, my family has regularly given to the Special Olympics what financial support we could afford. And helping in our small way to spread an awesome amount of joy always feels great.

Can you imagine how I must have felt, then, hearing U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a billionaire, testify in favor of cutting all $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics last week?

John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, called the cut “outrageous” and “ridiculous.”

Special Olympics has found a way to get kids and young adults with disabilities to feel something enormously important: Able.

In the decades since, my family has regularly given to the Special Olympics what financial support we could afford. And helping in our small way to spread an awesome amount of joy always feels great.

John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, called the cut “outrageous” and “ridiculous.”

And then she lit into Sen. Durbin, “So let’s not use disabled children in a twisted way for your political narrative. That’s just disgusting and it’s shameful.”

In the exchange between DeVos and Durbin, however, a truth tumbled out into view. Asked if this funding cut had been her idea, Mrs. DeVos made clear it was not. She had merely been the messenger, i.e. the whipping-girl, for what was quite obviously a politically untenable position taken by someone else in the administration.

That’s when our buck-stops-somewhere-else president ended the controversy by announcing he had “overridden my people” to save the day for truth and justice by making sure the money spigot remains at full flow.

But let’s return to the kerfuffle long enough now to answer my initial question: how did I personally feel about the wealthy DeVos suggesting — or at least, publicly defending — a $17.6 million cut to Special Olympics funding?

Grateful . . . for her extremely generous contributions to Special Olympics — one of four charities to which she donated her entire 2017 federal salary. I admire people who give their own money to charity more than those who demand to “give” other people’s money.

Lots of real people have experienced real benefit due to the generosity of Sec. DeVos and her family, which is reportedly the 88th wealthiest in the country. But in this day and age when “billionaire” is a bad word, let’s also note that Forbes’s wealth rankings also give Mrs. DeVos’s father-in-law, Richard DeVos — who co-founded Amway Corporation — the highest score for being self-made.

And I’m thankful for Betsy DeVos’s sense of fiscal responsibility. Or somebody’s sense. Government should not do for people what they can do for themselves.

Let’s fund this wonderful program ourselves, without the government forcing (taxing) one cent from others.

Check, cash or credit card is always preferable to mere signals of virtue, the gum-flapping of politicians.

The “Special Olympics” is certainly a worthy charitable cause, but why does it get any government funding AT ALL??

How many other “pure charities” get federal funding (by “pure charity”, I mean those who don’t provide some public function like housing).

I suspect that the only reason the “S-O” gets federal dollars is because the founders were well politically Connected (Kennedy relatives).

If any charity should be able to generate enough publicity to attract donations, the “Special Olympics” certainly ought to be able to.

So the sponsors or sponges quickly figured out if they took a few disabled children for a public event they could rake in a lot of guberment dollars to enrich themselves.

Way back when there was a guberment program to help poor children. They had businesses hire these kids for work at 4 hrs a week to give them an income. The kids were paid $15 a week or $60 a month. So 5 kids made a total of $3,600 a yr. the guberment lady overseeing this was paid a salary of $35,000. a yr.

They ought to...and they do. It’s the ultimate halo effect charitable cause.

It should also be pointed out that the Special Olympics have access to the finest facilities if so requested...tracks, stadiums, etc. Most/all of these are already taxpayer-funded eg university campuses.

Virtue signaling is the lefts version of ‘charity’. Much cheaper than actually ponying up. Of which they are notoriously resistant.

Great post. My wife and now adult children have participated like the author. Great program - but, a $17.6 million dollar cut is not a crazy or mean-spirited idea. This program will self-support in good style . . . especially with the remaining largess of the Feds.

Your soliloquy sounds nice, and I’m sure Betsy DeVos appreciates you giving her a pass, but our tax dollars also pay for millions upon millions of abortions, endless and senseless wars around the globe, propping up and supporting sexual perversion and pedophilia, to name just a few.

With the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, going to these God-forsaken ‘programs’, the last thing anyone can do is justify hanging these vulnerable ones out to dry.

And you post this on a Sunday too - shame!

I worked the Special Olympics hosted at Keesler AFB for a number of years and found it very rewarding...of course, some of the time came out of some duty days for prep time which is a way of having tax payers foot it...same with Toys for Tots and our support of the Salvation Army at Christmas time...rather they really clamp down on all the welfare deadbeats and other big time leeches than start with the more worthwhile events.

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