Warning: Witch Hunt Ahead

     Former Representative Charlie Melancon (D-La) warns that budget hawks have the Social Security disability programs in their sights as a target for a "witch hunt."

Ethics Complaint Concerning Attorneys Working For Non-Attorney Group

     I have received an anonymous report of an anonymous attorney ethics complaint filed with a state bar against some named attorneys who represent Social Security claimants in the employment of a non-attorney outfit. Representing clients as an attorney as an employee of a non-attorney is, in my understanding, itself a violation of attorney ethics rules. The complaint also alleges that the non-attorney group engages in practices which are considered unethical by attorneys. I will not give more details about an anonymous complaint.

     The complaint is interesting but I think it would be investigated more thoroughly if had not been filed anonymously. I know that Social Security has told its Administrative Law Judges not to file ethics complaints against attorneys which could explain why this is being filed anonymously but there is a detail, which I'm not to reveal here, concerning the material I received which suggests that it was not filed by any Social Security employee.

     There are many, many newly minted attorneys who are desperately seeking employment.  I feel for them but if you are representing Social Security claimants in the employment of a non-attorney group, you had better think about your situation from a legal ethics point of view. This is from the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct, which has its counterparts in every other state:

A lawyer shall not practice with or in the form of a professional corporation or association authorized to practice law for a profit, if:

     (1) a nonlawyer owns any interest therein, except that a fiduciary representative of the estate of a lawyer may hold the stock or interest of the lawyer for a reasonable time during administration; or

     (2) a nonlawyer has the right to direct or control the professional judgment of a lawyer.

OIDAP To End

      From an e-mail sent out by Mary Barros-Bailey, Chair of Social Security's Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP), which has been working on creating a successor to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT):

After over three years serving as the Chair to the Occupational Information Development Advisory Panel (OIDAP), this will be my last Message from the Chair.  On 21 May 2012, the Social Security Administration (SSA) decided that because of fiscal issues associated with the current Federal financial crisis, they would not extend the OIDAP charter beyond its expiration in July.  We are the last Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) panel at SSA at this time.

     Occupational information is crucial in disability determination under the Social Security Act. Social Security's effort to create a new occupational information system is going forward full speed ahead. The only thing that is happening is that Social Security is dropping the pretense that there is anything independent about this. Abolishing OIDAP will make it even more difficult for the occupational information system it develops to be seen as credible by the courts, Congress and the public. It's hard for me to imagine Social Security submitting its occupational information system to independent review.

The Wealthy Get A Free Ride

     From a letter to the editor published in Sunday's New York Times:

In a nation that prides itself on fair play and equal opportunity, it seems incongruous that people with wealth-based income — interest, dividends, capital gains, rent — are excused from paying Social Security (traditionally 12.4 percent) and Medicare taxes (2.9 percent) on that income. Equally odd, they do not pay Social Security tax on wages above $110,100. Shouldn’t these taxes be paid on all income? Taxing the “earned” and not the “unearned” seems rather un-American, doesn’t it?

     Now wait for the sharp reaction from the paid shills who are the most ardent posters on this blog.

Most Social Security Representation By Attorneys

      From Aspects of Disability: Decision Making: Data and Materials issued by the Social Security Advisory Board.

SSAB Issues Report: Allowance Rates

     The Social Security Advisory Board has issued a 130 page document titled  Aspects of Disability: Decision Making: Data and Materials. It is filled with charts which one can use to make many different points. I'll post several but let's start out with this one. You can make a lot of different points based just upon this chart alone but one you cannot easily make is that it has become less difficult to get on Social Security disability benefits in recent years. Hearing allowance rates went up slightly but only because allowance rates went down at lower levels. Recently, all allowance rates have gone down a bit.

     The difference at the hearing level between dispositions and decisions is the cases dismissed for technical reasons such as filing the request for hearing too late or failing to appear for a hearing.

Threats In Tennessee

     From WKRN:

Police arrested a man after he made threats against workers at the Murfreesboro [Tennessee] social security office on Monday. 

Suspect Brian Bottoms is accused of telling an employee "He might just have to do something destructive" after he learned he could not get money he thought he was owed to pay child support....

In 1995, Bottoms and his brother were arrested after they threatened to kidnap the former publisher of The Tennessean John Seigenthaler and WLAC radio talk show host Les Jameson. 

Officers raided the brothers' home and located three pipe bombs. ...

Agents searched his car [yesterday] and found cleaning supplies, a cinder block and a guitar.

Alan Simpson Doesn't Listen And Doesn't Know When To Shut Up

     From Michael Hiltzik at the L.A. Times:

Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming), perhaps our leading avatar of misinformation about Social Security, sent us a lengthy email on Friday responding to our series of posts criticizing his error-rich take on the nation’s preeminent social insurance program.

You can read his entire email here. Be forewarned: It’s a dizzying compendium of ignorance, myths, irrelevancies, and historical revisionism, leavened with a healthy dollop of defensiveness.

      Hiltzik goes on to completely demolish Simpson's absurd arguments that Social Security was never intended as a retirement program and that the lower life expectancy at the time of adoption of the Social Security Act is some crucial fact.