One of the most frustrating things about debating with liberals is that they continually repeat the claim that, because some action or program is described in some benign way, that the action or program actually DOES the fine and good thing that the description claims. 

DEI is all about "inclusion." It's right there in the NAME! Words are the only thing that matters, you see. 

Reality is not defined by words. Words are supposed to reflect reality. Liberals often get things wrong by starting at the wrong point and working their way backward. 

This story is a perfect example of how things really work much of the time. 

Full story 🎩 @mandy_mclaren: https://t.co/wtWL9xt2oW

— Marilyn Muller (@1in5advocacy) April 1, 2025

Special ED programs are defined in law and are "intended" to ensure that all students get their lawful access to as good an education to which they are entitled. We can quibble about various requirements, but we all agree on the basic principle that kids with disabilities should not be left behind due to arbitrary decisions. 

In reality, decisions about the provision of Special ED services are made in often arbitrary fashion, adjusting numbers based on both the budget benefits and liabilities--extra money flows to schools to boost budgets, and when profitable schools will goose numbers to get that money. Other kids are more expensive than the money that follows them, and kids are denied resources because they are deemed not worth the effort. 

And then there are more arbitrary motives: teachers like some kids and/or parents and dislike others. 

By happenstance a meeting between a parent and teachers and officials was transcribed, and they opened up about their real process: they disliked the parent and decided to "go to war" with him and his kid. They even admitted that kids were being denied services, and decided that because they had the power, they had the right to ruin lives out of spite. 

Pure spite. Obviously, not all bureaucrats do such things, but this sure isn't how liberals talk about these programs--which really exist as playthings for bureaucrats. 

Gaurav Jashnani couldn’t believe his eyes.

The words, laid out in black and white, stung: administrators from his child’s Northampton elementary school seemingly calling him “a pain in the ass” and saying the district would “go to war” with him over his parental advocacy. And even more stunning, they admitted the district doesn’t provide students with disabilities, like his child, with the services to which they are legally entitled.

It was all there, in a transcript of a January special education meeting for his child, that Jashnani, a college professor, was reading weeks later. The unsettling exchanges captured on the transcript took place after he had left the room as the educators unknowingly continued to record themselves, believing the meeting was over.

“What is going to happen to my kid if the principal, the counselor, and the special education coordinator are sitting there saying they’re going to war with me for asking that they provide accommodations to help my child learn?” Jashnani recalled thinking that day in mid-March. “What are they going to do to my child?”

It was the beginning of a saga that would lead to Jashnani reading the transcript comments aloud at a School Committee meeting, spurring a school district investigation and prompting outrage among other special education parents, many of whom reposted a video of his speech on social media.

The discovery has shaken Jashnani’s faith in the public school system: How could administrators in a city as inclusive as Northampton speak that way about parents and their disabled children?

According to special education advocates, it’s more of the same across the state.

In the real world, bureaucrats have enormous control over our lives, and most of the time the people involved are nameless, faceless, and totally unaccountable. Only when the curtain is pulled back--usually by accidents like this--that the true nature of "well-meaning" programs get exposed. 

And, as usual, we are told that this is an aberration by people who don't want to believe the truth. They love the words used to justify the power given to bureaucrats and, in many cases, cover their eyes and ears when reality intrudes. 

In the conversation, one speaker brought up Jashnani’s Facebook presence, while another questioned whether he was part of “Save Our Schools,” a conservative movement that advocates for parental rights in education. (It’s possible the speaker meant to refer to “Support Our Schools,” a local community group pushing for the district to fully fund its schools.)

In another exchange, a speaker compares Jashnani to one of his or her relatives, a man whose advocacy for his autistic son, according to the speaker, makes him “a pain in the ass.”

Further in the exchange, a speaker admits, “We don’t always give kids everything they should get on their (IEP).” Another speaker then refers to Jashnani’s “power and privilege,” comparing him with less advantaged parents.

“We have so many, so many families of kids who need so much more, so much more than we give them, and they don’t know that they can come in and make a fuss,” the speaker said.

In the transcript’s final comment, one speaker brings up Jashnani’s state complaint against the district: “So, yes, this is one of those times that we’ll go, apparently, we’ll go to war.”

This guy could be a conservative, so screw him. Doesn't he know we screw other kids too? Why should his kid get help when we don't like him? So let's screw him even more. 

We have seen this with the USAID revelations--I know many people who cover their ears and mouth "la-la-la" to drown out the truth that USAID was little more than a money-laundering scheme for lefties, just as "green banks" and other subsidies for "clean energy" are little more than ways to funnel money to favored friends of the Democrats. 

Maybe Stacey Abrams has some special skills we never knew about to justify $2 billion being given to her to clean up the air! Look at the program's "purpose." It is great! Don't you want to help poor people save money and clean the air?

Oh, BS. It was a nice spiff for Stacey and her friends. 

It's all well and good that a single story is written about this in the Boston Globe--one that will disappear into the ether after a few thousand people read it and tut-tut, and once it blows over they will shut their eyes to the fact that this is how things really work. 

"It was a one-off." 

Yeah, right. Just as the lawfare against Trump and all those hoaxes were an anomaly and the Justice system isn't stacked against Republicans, and in the EU the bureaucrats are really just concerned about democracy and that is why they are tossing conservatives off of ballots at an increasing rate. 

Another story has bubbled up about the FBI's "pre-bunking" of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. They knew that the laptop was real. They knew that it would appear in the media. They knew it would hurt Biden in the election. So they met with Twitter and Facebook to warn them that it was a Russian information operation. 

To which my liberal friends just say...who cares? Voters shouldn't have cared anyway, so it's good they were denied the truth. 

Sorry, folks, that's corruption. And when nobody holds the bureaucrats accountable for corruption it becomes the whole point of the government's choices. The programs and policy descriptions are the excuses for doing what they want, and not the point of what they are really doing. 

When you give people the power to pick winners and losers with no accountability, those people choose to benefit themselves and their friends. That becomes the whole point of the program. 

It's Banana Republic stuff.