Posted on 10/13/2016 4:19:18 PM PDT by grundle
A federal investigation will likely force the University of California-Berkeley to take down the online courses and lectures it offers for free — all in the name of “equality.”
Rebecca Bond of the Department’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to UC-Berkeley fretting that the free courses were not sufficiently accessible to people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The letter demanded that UC-Berkeley retool its online content so that “individuals with vision, hearing, and manual disabilities can acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as individuals without disabilities with substantially equivalent ease of use.” Most egregiously, the letter instructed the school to “pay compensatory damages to aggrieved individuals for injuries caused by UC-Berkeley’s failure to comply with [the ADA].”
The letter did not touch upon how, precisely, one can receive a refund for a free service.
Last week, Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education Cathy Koshland released a statement on the Department’s letter. She wrote that UC-Berkeley has never received clear regulatory guidance on how to comply with the ADA, yet the Department has decided to punish the school anyways. Her statement implied that the Department’s actions will probably force the school to simply stop offering its content online for free.
Much of the content on UC-Berkeley’s YouTube channel, which has nearly 300,000 subscribers and over 40 million views, comprises recordings of lectures given on campus. The expense required to write complete captions of professors’ remarks and descriptions of all content written on blackboards would be prohibitive—there are 13,800 hours of content on the YouTube channel alone. It is much easier to simply take the videos down.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Fuck Off Fascists should have been the only response.
Isn’t social justice just grand?
It sounds as if Baracks favorite college professors did not like the competition.
It sounds as if Baracks favorite college professors did not like the competition.
And of course the labor unions.
Translation: the Teacher’s Union is scared crapless that their jobs may be supplanted by online education.
MIT has great courseware online. Shh! Don’t tell the Bolsheviks at DoJ....
Feddgubb versus the American people.
Again
It is not good enough that millions of poor people might be able to improve themselves at little to no cost to themselves, no because not everyone can take advantage of this great gift as easily as others might it is better that no one be given this opportunity.
I find it Amazing that Berkeley would even entertain the idea of Listening to this little Puke Government Lawyer.
With all the High Pollutant Lawyers and Judges that came from UC Berkeley, you would think this could be easily quashed and the lawyer Permanently Disbarred for screwing with the wrong school.
When you encounter a BULLY, Punch him right square in the Noise as hard as you can, right out of the gate.
The obama administration specifically and the democrats in general hate the idea of the free exchange of ideas.
They’re prepping the nation for the coming age of “Knowledge is Ignorance.”
Free courses are racist because not enough minorities sign up for them
Remember a couple years ago the justice department was trying to recruit mentally defective lawyers for senior positions.
It seems like they found some.
Death of online courses?
Bush’s fault. (this time it is true)
"Rebecca Bond of the Department’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to UC-Berkeley fretting that the free courses were not sufficiently accessible to people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act."
Patriots, please get into the habit of first checking every edict of the unconstitutionally big federal government against the few and specific powers that the states have delegated to the feds expressly via the Constitution, Section 8 of Article I the best place to start. And if no clause is found to reasonably justify an action then consider the following.
The Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the Constitution’s silence about a specific issue, the politically correct equality rights of disabled Americans in this example, means that the issue is uniquely a 10th Amendment-protected state power issue, not the business of the corrupt feds.
In this example, low-information UC Berkeley officials are probably looking at the threat of the loss of federal funding if the school doesn’t comply with so-called federal civil rights laws, such officials probably clueless that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes. This is evidernced by the excerpts below from the writings of respected constitutional experts.
“The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphases added].” —Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
(Note that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes.)
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
So UC Berkeley needs to wise up to the idea that any federal funding that the school might lose if it doesn’t comply the the fed’s unconstitutional edict is arguably state revenues that the corrupt feds stole from their state by means of unconstitutonal federal taxes as the Supreme Court has clarified.
Next, and with all due respect to disabled Americans regarding so-called federal equality policing, similarly as with intrastate schooling, since the states have never amended the Constituton to expressly protect specific rights of disabled people, the Constitution’s silence about disabled Americans means that the feds actually have no constitutional authority to be the self-appointed equality police on behalf of disabled Americans.
In other words, until the states should decide to amend the Constitution to expressly protect disabled people, it’s up to the states to make laws to protect such citizens.
And although the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress has the constitutional authority to stop the lawless Obama Administration from harrassing the sovereign states over politically correct equality issues but stubbornly refuses to do so, this action is just another example of the unconstitutonally big federal government trying to expand its powers in little, relatively unnoticeable steps which James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had warned patriots to be on their guard against.
”I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention to ratify the Federal Constitution (1788-06-06)
”To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” —Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791
”The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.
Remember in November !
Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will also put a stop to unconstitutonal federal taxes and likewise unconstitutional inteference in state affairs as evidenced by this disabled Americans issue.
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
I had not been aware of that. But I googled and found this help wanted ad by the Justice Department from 2010 for "Trial Attorney, GS-14/15" who have "mental retardation."
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