It's Different In Persia

     President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly appointed Saeed Mortaz (pictured here with Ahmadinejad) to become head of the Iranian Social Security Fund even though there are pending charges against Mortaz for the torture and murder of prisoners.

Start The Backtracking Now

From Huffington Post (with one interjection from me):  

Two separate campaigns have been launched to pressure AARP to stand firm against cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits. The campaigns follow a report by HuffPost that the influential senior citizens lobby will soon be holding a private, principals-only "salon-style conversation" ["Salon-style conversation"? What is this -- 18th century Paris?] with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts. ...

AARP's listening tour officially launches on Monday and is dubbed "You've Earned a Say and We're Listening."

One AARP volunteer who attended a two-day training last week wrote HuffPost to say that the listening tour appeared to be aimed at shifting AARP policy in favor of cuts to benefits....

AARP has expressed an openness to benefit cuts in the past, only to backtrack under pressure from its membership. The organization, in recent years, has become increasingly entangled with its growing insurance operation.

AFL-CIO Says Social Security Benefits Should Be Raised

     From an AFL-CIO press release:

It is time to stop thinking of Social Security as a problem and start thinking of it as a key solution to our retirement security crisis. ...

While Social Security is an obvious solution to the crisis, its current benefit levels are too modest. Social Security’s income replacement rate is one of the lowest of all the industrialized countries. To compensate for the decline of traditional pensions and the loss of retirement savings, Social Security retirement benefits must be increased across the board, which would be especially meaningful for low-income seniors. ...

The reason why the debate in Washington, D.C., has gone so far in the wrong direction is that the enemies of Social Security have spent enormous amounts of money spreading misinformation about the program. The truth is that Social Security is not in crisis. ...

Admin Leave During Investigations Costly

     From the Washington Times:

The Social Security Administration paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to a handful of employees who were placed on administrative leave for more than half a year while officials considered misconduct accusations against them or their involvement in illegal acts.

The agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report dated Friday and made public Wednesday that from October 2005 through January 2009, 17 employees each racked up at least 1,000 hours — or 25 weeks — of paid administrative leave totaling $1.5 million while officials considered their cases.

In one instance, two teleservice employees placed on paid administrative leave in February 2007 were arrested at their workplace “while in the act of blackmailing/extorting other SSA employees.”

AARP Needs To Move Its Headquarters Out of D.C.!

From Huffington Post:

The senior citizens lobby AARP on Monday will kick off a national Social Security and Medicare "listening tour" called "You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening." Through "town halls, community conversations, bus tours and other events," the influential organization promises to offer members a chance to speak out on the simmering debate over the future of Social Security and Medicare. 

The outreach is part of the group's campaign to restore trust it lost during last year's spending debate, when a top AARP official told the Wall Street Journal the organization was open to cuts to the entitlement programs....

But while AARP staffers fan out across the country to hear from members, the group's CEO, Barry Rand, will be listening to a different cast of characters.

An AARP invitation to a secret "Relaxed and Robust Evening of 'Salon Style' Conversation" to be held at a Capitol Hill home on March 27, obtained by The Huffington Post, indicates that the organization is still very much interested in a "grand-bargain" style deal that puts Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table. ...

This year's salon is the third focused on entitlement, and AARP has held at least eight such affairs over the past three years ...

While the overwhelming majority of AARP members are strongly against benefit cuts, the group's team in Washington nevertheless wants to be an influential part of the conversation, and they appear to believe that an openness to cuts is the way to appear serious.

      Why is cutting Social Security considered "serious" in D.C.? The country isn't going to buy it. The solution to keeping Social Security going is obvious and simple -- remove the FICA cap. It's going to happen. It's just a matter of when.

COBOL Isn't Going Away

     Social Security is stuck with a lot of old mainframe computer programs written using the COBOL computer language. The agency is trying to transition from COBOL but an article in Computerworld makes me wonder whether the transition is really necessary or practical.
     In any case, Social Security is not alone in having lots of COBOL code. COBOL remains ubiquitous in large data processing operations.
     If you know someone who wants really good job security, tell them to study COBOL. No matter what anyone says, it's clearly not going away in the foreseeable future.

Social Security Subcommittee Schedules Hearing

     From a press release:

U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, today announced a hearing on how disability is decided.  The hearing will take place on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, in B-318 Rayburn House Office Building, beginning at 10:30 a.m. ...

In announcing the hearing, Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX) said, "Americans with disabilities deserve to get the right decision as early as possible, but that’s just not how it currently works.  States struggle on the front lines to make sense of the program’s complex rules to decide who gets benefits.  At the same time advances in treatment, rehabilitation, and the workplace have created new opportunities for those with disabilities to return to work.  Securing the future of the disability insurance program should address these challenges and opportunities while keeping the process fair for both claimants and taxpayers."  

      Could someone tell me what those advances are in rehabilitation and the workplace that create new opportunities for those with disabilities to work? Don't try to tell me the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) changed anything. Have you seen how the Supreme Court has interpreted the ADA out of existence? The ADA is a dead letter. The only people who still think it means anything are those who fought against its approval.
     Have medical advances really created new opportunities for people with disabilities to work? I think that joint replacement surgery and coronary stents would qualify but those are old news. New treatments for stomach ulcers would certainly qualify but that's such old news that few people reading this can even remember the days when stomach ulcers caused considerable disability. (For those who do, remember Billroth II? Dumping syndrome?) Roux-en-Y surgery for obesity might qualify. Better diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea has made a difference but it's not like Social Security was ever putting many people on benefits for this anyway. The medications we have available for HIV are wonderful and certainly allow more people to work but in the past those people would not have been drawing Social Security disability benefits for long because they would have been dead. Spinal surgery has gotten a bit better over the years but it's far from being a reliable solution for back or neck pain. When it comes to psychiatric illness, suffering has been reduced a bit but I don't think many knowledgeable people would claim that this has done much to restore the ability to work. Schizophrenia remains horrible, horrible, horrible. Counter to the advances that enable some people to work are advances that keep disabled people alive longer to draw Social Security disability benefits longer. To what extent do those longevity advances offset advances that enable people to continue to work? And what about medical advances that allow better diagnosis so that some people who were denied disability benefits in the past are now approved? The advent of the MRI certainly put more people on Social Security disability benefits for multiple sclerosis. Lupus is much more easily diagnosed now than in the past. And further, what about the obesity epidemic. It's certainly making more people disabled. And what about crack cocaine? People aren't found disabled as a result of using crack cocaine but it damages people's health to the point that they are found disabled based on physical illness. And then, there's the hepatitis C epidemic. It gets little press but it's a much bigger deal than HIV-AIDS and medicine can hardly treat it! It's producing a lot of disability that was not present in earlier years. My opinion is that the whole notion that disability is being significantly reduced by scientific advances is just wishful thinking. At ground level, it's just not happening.

It's Not Just Social Security ALJs Who Are Inconsistent

     From the New York Times:

A new analysis of hundreds of thousands of cases in federal courts has found vast disparities in the prison sentences handed down by judges presiding over similar cases, raising questions about the extent to which federal sentences are influenced by the particular judges rather than by the specific circumstances of the cases....

In the Eastern District of New York, for example, the 28 judges in the study delivered a median sentence of 24 months for drug cases in the past five years. But there were disparities: Judges Jack B. Weinstein and Kiyo A. Matsumoto gave median drug sentences of 12 months, while the median drug sentence for Judge Arthur D. Spatt was 64 months. 

     I sometimes wonder if we have too much respect for the title "judge." We expect anyone with that title to give us JUSTICE that no one can question. However, JUSTICE is merely a general goal. There is no way to be certain of what JUSTICE is in an individual case or even in the aggregate, whether we are talking about criminal sentences or Social Security disability determination. Justice must be administered by flesh and blood people who have to cope with laws that give them discretion to deal with individual circumstances. Dealing with those individual circumstances is what judging is all about. If we want judges to deal with those individual circumstances, and I think we do, we must expect disparities. Don't expect omniscience when you give someone the title of "judge" because you won't get it.