I can't get over the fact that at a time when there are frequently lines of people waiting to be served at Social Security field offices and many people who try to call the agency end up hanging up in frustration because they have been on hold for so long that the Social Security Administration thought it appropriate to spend good money on a study to answer the burning question, "Can you tell how disabled someone is just by looking at how frequently they're treated at a hospital?"
Honestly, someone ought to be fired over this. Perhaps everyone at Social Security central offices ought to be required to spend some time working on their agency's front line.
Fired? Somebody probably got a big bonus or even promoted for it.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't anybody over the level of a district manager (and even lots of them are suspect, given SSA's proclivity to promote its problem employees rather than terminate their employment). that has a clue anymore these days about anything. Their focus on mostly about keeping as many problems as possible out of the media, not on actually solving them.
The only reason the agency is still barely hanging on is that there are still people who care. But, there are fewer and fewer of them now and I wouldn't be shocked if most of the rest either retire or quit.
With the proposed budget reductions, personnel reductions, and retirement system changes the agency will have difficulty hiring anybody much less keeping them for very long.
Amen Charles
ReplyDeleteI would argue that having a study that essentially says "no, you cannot do this, it doesn't work" might indeed serve to buttress arguments against proposals such as this that no one in this audience knows are coming forward. For example, before I retired, I had more than a few assignments where we were given "valuable insights and things to consider" from staff of various House sub committees that were frankly stupid and indicative of how ignorant those people have become in the last 20 years. (Just look at all the resources wasted on veterans activities that actually support very few vets but took resources away fro other activities. Yup, that's how things like that start.) We had to be circumspect in saying "no this is a stupid idea". But if the National Academy of Science or some 3rd party would instead debunk the idea, we wasted money in the short run and short-circuited a bad idea in the long run and got an independent 3rd party to do so. Of course, like the Proxmire's of the past, Charles is railing against something that on the surface appears to him to be one thing but which indeed may be something he'd support if he understood the political dynamics behind it. Just throwing this out there as a counter point.
ReplyDelete7:55 AM. The solution then is to out all of those with stupid ideas faster than you can say Rand Paul, Tom Cotton or James Lankford. Then again, there might be other reasons these people are elected. Congress not having and voting for good solutions to problems is the MAIN reason Trump was elected. The American people want things fixed. Politicians want issues to run on. If you fix everything, what is left to run on? So, having dumb ideas that fixes nothing is better for them than actually fixing anything!
ReplyDelete