$20,000 Price On Eric Conn's Head

     The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of Eric Conn. They say his GPS ankle bracelet was found in a backpack on I-75 in Lexington, KY.

They Call This The Waterfall Chart

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One Of The Many Changes Since The Dictionary Of Occupational Titles Was Published

     The abstract of Surveillance-system Monitors in the Work Force Kincaid Vocational and Rehabilitation Services in the Journal of Forensic Vocational Analysis:

A labor market survey was conducted to assess the responsibilities and skills of Surveillance-system Monitors as they exist in the current labor market. A tri-modal approach was taken. First, 58 job vacancy advertisements were reviewed to analyze the physical requirements of Surveillance-system Monitors as they exist in the labor market today, along with other factors that contribute to the skill-level of this position. Second, the position of Transportation Security Officer was reviewed via the job vacancy advertisement and job description video (accessed through the Transportation Security Administration website). Third, employers of Surveillance-system Monitors, and employees currently performing work as a Surveillance-system Monitor, were contacted at various establishments including colleges, hotels, and malls in the New Jersey and Texas State areas. The results indicate that the physical and cognitive requirements of Surveillance-system Monitors have changed significantly since the last major revision of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles in 1991. The essential functions of Surveillance-system Monitors now require use of others skills, longer training, higher aptitudes, and greater physical demands. The research conducted for this study returned a 0% prevalence of Surveillance - system Monitors as it is conventionally described in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.

     So what's the status of the DOT replacement? Is this reason it keeps being delayed the fear that there won't be any unskilled, sedentary jobs left? By now could there even be any other reason? This delay may not look too good if Democrats get control of the House of Representatives after the 2018 election and start asking questions and demanding documents.

Mathur To Take Over As CIO

     From FCW Insider: 

The Social Security Administration has tapped an IRS veteran to take over as CIO [Chief Information Officer]. Rajive Mathur is taking over as the agency's deputy commissioner for systems and CIO in June, according to an agency spokesperson.  

Mathur comes from IRS, where he served as director of online services and was a leader in such public-facing tax products like Get Transcript, Direct Pay and Where's My Refund.

Why So Many No-Shows?

     Sam Johnson, the Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, asked Social Security's Inspector General to look into the question of how many no-shows and postponements there are for hearings before the agency's Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). Here's some of the response:

In FY 2016, the national hearing no-s how rate was 9 percent. The New York, New York, Hearing Office had the highest no-show rate at 15.9 percent while the Franklin, Tennessee, Hearing Office had the lowest no-show rate at 1.2 percent. In FY 2016, the national postponement rate was 8 percent. The Anchorage, Alaska, Hearing Office had the highest postponement rate at 20.4 percent while the Ponce, Puerto Rico, Hearing Office had the lowest postponement rate at 2.7 percent. Our interviews with office managers representing hearing offices with the highest no-show and postponement rates identified a large number of unrepresented claimants and a transient clientele as reasons for no-shows and postponement.

     Here's an interesting chart from the report, showing a significant rise in the no-show rate in recent years:

     Why would the no-show rate have gone up significantly over the last few years? My guess is that it's related to an increase in the rate of claimants who are unrepresented. I'm pretty sure there are more unrepresented claimants now than there were a few years ago. Normally, attorneys only get a fee if they win. Attorneys avoid cases they think they are unlikely to win. It's become harder to win cases. As a result, attorneys tighten their intake criteria leaving more claimants unrepresented. For reasons I've never understood, Social Security never releases information on the percentage of claimants who are and aren't represented. However, I know that my firm and every other firm I know has tightened its intake criteria.

     By the way, the implosion of Binder and Binder probably affected the availability of representation in New York City. Also, by the way, Anchorage is notorious for being the harshest hearing office in the country. As a result, claimant representation in Alaska has collapsed.

Fighting Fraud By Denying Disability Claims In The Heartland

     A television station in Kansas is running a piece on a young woman in Kansas diagnosed with lupus who is fighting the denial of her Social Security disability claim. Here's a little excerpt:

The backlog started snowballing about 10 years ago, around the time Jason Fitchner became acting deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

He says that during the Great Recession, a lot of people who had disabilities applied but weren’t necessarily unable to work. 

“But they’re on the margin,” Fitchner says. “They can work, but when the recession happens, those are the first people who tend to lose their jobs, and then they apply for disability insurance.” ...

This spring, the agency introduced changes to fight fraud and streamline the application process, including a new fraud-fighting measure that removes the special consideration given to a person’s long-time doctor. ...

[F]ormer administrator Fitchner, now a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, says the agency is obligated to weed out any fraud it can, including the admittedly rare cases of treating physicians tipping the scale in favor of their patients. ...

     Not surprisingly, Fitchner, who works for a right wing think tank, is pushing the narrative that those who apply for disability benefits aren't really disabled, just unable to find a job. Right. I've been laid off. Instead of looking for work, even though I'm healthy, I'll just apply for Social Security disability, put up with years of delay and probably never get on benefits. Even if I do get on benefits, they'll be far less than what I was earning when I worked. That makes sense. He's also pushing the narrative that refusing to consider the opinion of a claimant's treating physician has something to do with preventing fraud. That's nonsense. Social Security is just trying to bootstrap itself into a stronger position when it defends its decisions in federal court. Folks like Fitchner like to claim that fraud is rampant among Social Security disability claimants even though the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) can't seem to find more than a handful of cases each year. Of course, to Fitchner that would just be proof that OIG hasn't tried hard enough. The existence of widespread fraud is an idée fixe for people like Fitchner. They try to justify their belief regardless of the evidence.
     By the way, the woman whose story is featured in the article has systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and now has esophageal problems. Fitchner wouldn't know it but that combination sounds a bit ominous.

Social Security Is Paying Benefits To 66 Million People And This Is All The Fraud OIG Can Find?

 

From the Semi-Annual Report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG)

Can We Talk About Real Problems?

      There have been many, many media pieces on the Trump budget proposals that promise big cuts in the number of people drawing Social Security disability benefits. Here's one from CBS and another from Bloomberg.

     The thing that gets me is that the Trump budget proposals on Social Security disability are unlikely to have an effect upon the real world. They mostly rely upon vague proposals to return many disability recipients to the workforce. It's not like this hasn't been tried before. The Social Security Act is littered with work incentive after work incentive to the point that almost no one understands how they all work. Certainly, claimants don't understand. The oldest work incentives date back to the 1960s. Everything has been tried. Nothing worked. Nothing will work. The vast majority of Social Security disability recipients are too sick to work and have no realistic hope of getting better. I doubt that any new work incentive could be passed and if it was, it wouldn't work. However, the news media likes to talk about these proposals because they fit into a narrative that the Trump administration is heartless. It may be but these proposals are more a sign of fecklessness than of heartlessness.

     Meanwhile, almost no one pays attention to Social Security's operating budget. This has an effect on the here and now. The agency is starving for operating funds. As a result, backlogs increase, telephones don't get answered and wait times at Social Security field offices soar. That gets little attention because it's boring but real people are suffering right now. All of this could be improved dramatically by adding another billion dollars to Social Security's operating budget.

     Please, let's pay more attention to the operating budget and Social Security's service delivery problems. They matter. They could be solved so easily.