Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

I generally do not run stories about privacy and identity fraud issues concerning Social Security numbers. These stories are numerous and have almost nothing to do with the Social Security Administration. However, I cannot resist this one. From the Mobile, AL Press Register:

LifeLock CEO Todd Davis was so confident in his company's ability to protect people from identity theft, he plastered his own Social Security all over the companies ads.

According to Wired, however, Davis' ads backfired and his identity has been stolen 13 times since June 2007, despite his claim that paying LifeLock $10-a-month makes identity theft impossible.

First, somebody used Davis' identity to get a $500 loan from a check-cashing company. Davis was duped 12 more times, with various thieves using the CEO's identity to rack up a $2,400 AT&T bill, receive a $573 bank loan and to accrue several other small debts from utility and credit companies.

In March, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined LifeLock $12 million for deceptive advertising. "In truth, the protection they provided left such a large hole... that you could drive that truck through it," chairman Jon Leibowitz told Wired.

Legionnaire's Disease At Philadelphia Field Office

From KYW in Philadelphia:

An employee at the Philadelphia office of the Social Security Administration has come down with a case of Legionnaire's disease, and health officials are stressing that this is an isolated incident.

The unidentified female worker was stricken early this month. Another employee has tested positive for Legionella bacteria but hasn't picked up any symptoms.

No one is panicking. Social Security spokeswoman Terry Lewis says an investigation has found that there's no reason to believe that the bacteria is lurking the building, at 4th and Spring Garden Streets:

"Because of the fact that Legionnaire's disease is generally through the air or air conditioning systems or water, we had a number of experts come in and do extensive testing of both of those systems and no presence of Legionella was found in either the air or the water."

The Philadelhpia Department of Health says Legionnaire's disease is not uncommon. It handles 25 to 50 cases each year. Symptoms include fever, chills, abdominal pain, and pneumonia.

You may remember that Legionnaire's disease takes its name from a mass outbreak of the disease at a convention of the American Legion. That convention was in Philadelphia. I imagine the people there remember that event.

By the way, how does a radio station in Philadelphia have call letters that start with "K?" I thought that only stations West of the Mississippi started with "K." I know that only the oldest stations have only three letters. There must be some history here.

Plan To Reinstate Recon Not Popular In Michigan

From the Detroit Free Press:

[There are] about 40,000 Michiganders waiting for Social Security to decide their pleas for disability benefits, a backlog among the nation's worst because of the state's lingering economic problems.

The Social Security Administration told Congress last month that it may use Michigan for an experiment to cut the wait. ...

"It's going to make a bad situation worse," said Cliff Weisberg, a Southfield attorney whose firm handles about 2,000 cases a year. "What good is it ... if by the time you get to a hearing, the client is dead?" ...

The agency has boosted efforts to clear the backlog, opening new hearing offices in Livonia and Mt. Pleasant, while allowing Michiganders to appeal their cases to administrative law judges in other states with video hearings. Yet Social Security Administrator Michael Astrue told a U.S. House committee last month that Michigan was still stuck with "some of the most backlogged hearing offices in the country."

That has led Social Security to consider bringing back a step it eliminated in 1999 known as reconsideration. ...

"That's a huge mistake," said Carl Anderson, a Detroit attorney who handles Social Security cases. "The same people who didn't pay the case the first time, didn't pay the case the second time." ...

"I probably rescue something like 12 people a year from homelessness," said Lisa Welton, a Southfield attorney. "There are probably twice that many living in a relative's basement, and a much larger number that wouldn't be living in their homes if their case didn't go through."

The inspector general of Social Security also has questioned the plan. Patrick O'Carroll said at a House hearing last month that if the agency makes the change in Michigan, people who win reconsideration will likely wait only nine months. But people who seek an appeal after reconsideration would wait at least 2 1/2 years. ...

In response to a question from the Free Press, Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter said the decision to bring reconsideration back in Michigan "is currently on hold," adding "a final decision has not been made."

I still like my idea of increasing the time allowed to file an appeal from 60 days to six months. I do not think the reaction would be so negative -- it might even be a positive -- and the effect on the backlogs would be much the same. People will procrastinate in filing appeals but the delay will be their fault instead of Social Security's. If backlogs are increasing at the initial and reconsideration levels, why make them worse by reinstating reconsideration in those states where it has been eliminated?

Budget Trouble Brewing

From the Capitol Insider, a publication of the Disability Policy Collaboration:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) told human services advocates that the FY 2011 appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education could be cut by 2.3 percent. The escalating budget deficit and election year politics will make it extremely difficult to meet rising human service needs.

Social Security's administrative budget is part of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

AFGE Unhappy

The American Federation of Goverment Employees (AFGE), the labor union that represents most Social Security employees, is not happy with the progress of contract negotiations with Social Security. Having to negotiate with a Republican agency head during a time when Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress must be frustrating but, to be frank, the union seems perpetually outraged about something. That seems to be not merely their default mode but their only mode. Take a look at what the union has to say here, here and here.

Also, take a look at this notice withdrawing a story from the union's newsletter. There must be a story behind this. I will guess the story involves a threat of a defamation lawsuit.

OIDAP Extends Time Period For Comments

A notice received by e-mail from the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP):

On May 4, 2010, the Social Security Administration published a Request for Comments on the recommendations contained in the report of the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel entitled Content Model and Classification Recommendation for the Social Security Administration Occupational Information System, September 2009. The comment period is extended to June 30, 2010.

For additional information, or to provide comments on the report, please see the attached notice and visit http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=SSA-2010-0018. If you submitted comments prior to this notice, you will be contacted by project staff to determine if you wish to post your comment to the internet website.

I encourage anyone reading this blog to study the OIDAP report and to make comments. As our Vice President would say "This is a big ___ing deal." OIDAP is dealing with the most important policy issue faced by the Social Security Administration in more than 30 years. Something is going to happen. This is not going away. There is an excellent chance that this will bring about a complete redesign of disability determination by people whose main interest is the contracts they can obtain from Social Security, people who have no idea of the practical effects of what they are doing.

Texas Textbooks And Social Security

From TPM (emphasis added:

With the long-running Texas history textbooks standards fight scheduled to end with a final vote by the State Board of Education Friday, arch-conservative board member Don McLeroy is proposing a new set of changes that read like a tea party manifesto.

The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to "discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio" and also "evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."

Regard The Scuttlebutt As True

Paul Mariani has written an article for First Things on Michael Astrue and his poetic alter ego, A.M. Juster. Mariani is a poet and professor at Boston College. First Things describes itself as "...an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." I think it would be fair to say that First Things expresses primarily a right-wing, Roman Catholic perspective on the world.

Here are a few excerpts from the article titled, "Regard the Scuttlebutt As True" (a phrase of Astrue's invention):

[Astrue] belongs to a type of quiet and careful civil servant that Caesar Augustus would have recognized. As would Phillip II and Napoleon and Gladstone, for that matter. Powerful governments have always needed this kind of man: the senior administrator, the superior public official who (to reverse the entropy the Irish senator W.B. Yeats feared) makes the center hold and keeps things from falling apart. ...

This formal and clever poet must find some such sense of the comic necessary, as he changes places each morning with that formal and intelligent commissioner of Social Security—since, as you’ve probably already guessed, they are one and the same person. Michael J. Astrue is the best poet ever to hold a truly major appointed position in the American government. And A.M. Juster is the best senior civil servant of whom American poetry can boast.

The question, of course, is why this double life of a public persona? Why has this former head of a major biotech firm, a lawyer, and a public servant chosen to share the same shadow as this very private poet with the sensitivity of a W.H. Auden mixed with the scathing wit of a Jonathan Swift? An even more fascinating question is why Astrue has for so long insisted on keeping these two identities separate. Years ago, when the poet X.J. Kennedy asked him why he insisted on using a pseudonym, Astrue told him that the main reason was that he didn’t want to be known as a novelty act—which, in truth, is more a dodge than an answer. ...

While interviewing and researching Michael J. Astrue, I have come to see him as an admirable and even kenotically selfless individual. But poring over his poems and translations, I find something even deeper. There is, undoubtedly, a fascinating and nuanced self that operates on the linguistic and sonic levels in the man’s best poems. Even within their formal edifices, Astrue reveals someone who—like Lord Byron or the late Bill Matthews, and (perhaps more to the point) Jonathan Swift—has learned to manifest his own too human vulnerability while at the same time protecting himself with his savage wit. Think of John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” in which the artist Parmigianino gestures with his hand in the painted convex surface, as if welcoming us, even as the figure in the mirror pulls away. ...

It’s worth mentioning that Astrue, like a surprisingly large number of the old New Formalist crowd, is a serious Catholic, a man who sees his work at the Social Security Administration as nothing short of a vocation to do “both the right and the compassionate thing.” ...

And make no mistake about it: Michael Astrue is a very private person. Even his poetry—clear as it is—offers as many unresolved questions as it provides us with answers. ...

There’s a moral precision about him as a man and as a public servant; without being prissy or showy in his moralism, he sets himself to the Stoic task of seeing that the jobs at hand are those that will be done. When the center holds in the midst of all the mess and madness of politics, it holds because quiet men do quiet work of public purpose.