If you wondered where the recent Wall Street Journal articles came from, well, here is your answer. Is this person on to a huge scandal or just someone with a huge axe to grind? Why were the local papers not interested in this story? Why was Social Security's Office of Inspector General apparently not interested in this story until part of it appeared in the Wall Street Journal? Why was only the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal interested in the story? Why, for that matter, is the Wall Street Journal staying away from some of the elements of this alleged scandal?
No one in mainstream media wants to touch this story because ALJ David Daugherty and Attorney Eric Conn are VERY WELL liked and powerfull in the tri-state area of WV-OH-KY.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Daugherty spent years in Huntington as a county circt court judge before going to SSA.
When the mainstream media does address the problems, they all but take the approach that Daugherty is being picked on and Conn is a local hero for the disabled.
And, when they did finally write and or aired the WSJ story, they made sure everyone knew it wasnt the local media that broke it.
Its going to take an investigation by the feds (including the US Attorney) to bring all of this to light so changes can be made.
My hats off to WV News website for breaking this wide open beginning back in Dec 2010. And, it took someone mailing that article to the WSJ to get someone in mainstream media to write about it!!!
Josh Harding
People complained for years about the problems with Judge Daughrty and lawyer Eric Conn. Complaints went from Greg Hall to Judge Andrus. Neither wanted to address it.
ReplyDeleteComplaints went on up the latter but still nothing. Even Judges complained.
Thanks to this WV News-Blog, your SSA blog and also the Wall Street Journal, it may now become public knoweledge.
They should throw both these guys in jail for a long long time. This stuff disgusts me. All of us who bust our backsides to make a living doing this kind of work and play by the rules don't stand a chance when there are others rigging the system.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see there's still some investigative journalism left, if only on a local level.
ReplyDeleteThe mainstream media is mostly hacks--it took the National enquirer to expose the John Edwards scandal, with the result he might actually go to jail. Anyway, neither the media nor the public cares at all about the Social Security Adm itself. THis kind of thing has gone on for years--abuse of power, retaliation against whistleblowers--and will continue. Only when some human interest anecdote is milked for publicity does the media pay any attention at all to the inner-workings of SSA. It's business as usual.
ReplyDeletethis story finally hit the nail on the head -- it is all about the numbers. favorable, unfavorable, doesn't matter. as long as the cases got moved along, ODAR gets the credit and management gets bonuses. nevermind the fact that the favorables were unjustified and the unfavorables are indefensible and get remanded. this whole system needs a shake up and congress needs to finally step in and end this perverse incentive.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree its about the numbers. At the same time, they need to get rid of the Judge Andrus's, Eric Conn's and Daugherty's in the SSA
ReplyDeleteNew information surfaced yesterday that shows the attorney accused of collusion with the Huntington WV ALJ Judge(s) was barred back in 2002 from the US Appeals Court for Veterans Claims.
ReplyDeleteSeems he got caught again in this most recent scandal.
http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/06/attorney-accused-in-wv-social-security.html
" They should throw both these guys in jail for a long long time. This stuff disgusts me. All of us who bust our backsides to make a living doing this kind of work and play by the rules don't stand a chance when there are others rigging the system."
ReplyDeleteGive me one shred of objective, empirical evidence, other than bare accusations, that Conn and Daugherty "rigged the system".