Liberal Overcaution May Cause Employee Resistance To Reopening Social Security Offices

      From The Atlantic:

Lurking among the jubilant Americans venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious. This spring, after the vaccine rollout had started, a third of very liberal people were “very concerned” about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, compared with a quarter of both liberals and moderates, according to a study conducted by the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington. And 43 percent of very liberal respondents believed that getting the coronavirus would have a “very bad” effect on their life, compared with a third of liberals and moderates. ...

For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of deeply felt frustration with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. “If he said, ‘Keep schools open,’ then, well, we’re going to do everything in our power to keep schools closed,” Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as “left of left,” but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. “We went the other way, in an extreme way, against Trump’s politicization,” Gandhi said. ...

“Those who are vaccinated on the left seem to think overcaution now is the way to go, which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines,” Gandhi told me. Public figures and policy makers who try to dictate others’ behavior without any scientific justification for doing so erode trust in public health and make people less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of staying shut down might not justify the potential backlash. ...

      It's obvious that CDC guidelines will change rapidly over the next three months. Let's not fight the science because we're still mad with Donald Trump. We can't keep cowering in fear forever.

     If you're one who believes that we need to remain cloistered even after we're fully vaccinated and the CDC says we can start to resume normal life, what's your endgame? What will be enough to persuade you that it's safe to eat in restaurants, travel, visit in person with family and friends, return to normal workplaces, etc? 

     Covid-19 will never completely go away. The vaccines who have are extremely effective. Like influenza, meningitis, salmonella and other infectious diseases Covid-19 will always be some threat but the world is full of potential threats.

Twenty Minutes To Answer The Phone In 2021

      Here are some numbers from Social Security on how long it's been taking them to answer calls on their 800 number. You can see that it's gone up dramatically over the years. It's currently around 20 minutes. I don't whether they factor in the calls where the system eventually hangs up on the caller. Click on each image to view full size.

Homelessness And Social Security Disability

      The current issue of the Social Security Bulletin, the agency's scholarly publication, includes an article on Social Security Administration Disability Programs and Individuals Facing Homelessness. Below is a graphic from the article. Click on the image to view full size.

Vignette From Representing A Social Security Disability Claimant

• Client: I need to work but every time I try to go back to work I end up in a psychiatric hospital.
• Me: Maybe you shouldn't try to return to work until your psychiatric condition is better stabilized.
• Client: But I HAVE to work. I'll lose everything if I don't work.

     The standard for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is that the patient is dangerous to themselves or to others but for the most part even voluntary psychiatric hospitalizations don't happen unless the patient is dangerous. Thus, almost all psychiatric hospitalizations are a sign that a person has been at significant risk before the hospitalization. 

     I wasn't trying to talk the client out of returning to work because it would hurt the case if the client returns to work. No, just the opposite. Futile attempts to return to work followed by psychiatric hospitalizations make a case stronger. I don't want clients committing suicide. I've had clients commit suicide. That's terrible even for the attorney. I can't imagine what it's like for the family.

     I don't think that most people get just how dangerous it is to one's health to suffer from chronic mental illness.

Most Popular Baby Names In 2020

     From Social Security announcement of the most popular names given to babies in 2020. 

Boys	Girls
1. Liam	1. Olivia
2. Noah	2. Emma
3. Oliver	3. Ava
4. Elijah	4. Charlotte
5. William	5. Sophia
6. James	6. Amelia
7. Benjamin	7. Isabella
8. Lucas	8. Mia
9. Henry	9. Evelyn
10. Alexander	10. Harper

Field Office Addresses And Phone Numbers

      I happened upon a spreadsheet of Social Security field office addresses and phone numbers. This sort of information isn't as easy to find as you might think so I thought I ought to post a link here.

Eric Conn Docuseries Coming Up

      There's a four part documentary series coming up on Apple TV on the Eric Conn saga. The linked article doesn't mention Conn by name. It just says "The new untitled docuseries tells the unbelievable true story of one of the largest scams in government history." However, I understand that the filmmakers recently conducted extensive interviews of those with knowledge about what happened.

     By the way, will it be possible for me to buy access to just this series without subscribing to Apple TV generally? Maybe a trial period?

The Bill Comes Due

      From FEDweek:

As was widely expected, an issue has arisen regarding repayment of Social Security taxes that were not withheld from many federal employees late last year under a Trump administration policy.

Under that policy, the standard 6.2 percent Social Security withholding was not taken from the pay of federal employees who earned less than $4,000 in a biweekly pay period starting last September through year’s end. Employees were not allowed to opt out—many said they wished to—although the Postal Service was free to decline to participate, and did, because of its semi-independent status.

From the outset, concerns arose about the requirement that the amount not withheld over those four months must be repaid (the original deadline of April 30 was extended to year-end 2021). However, because that repayment generally is made through regular payroll withholding, there have been questions about employees who separate before the amount is repaid or who work on an irregular schedule.

According to the NFFE union, those concerns proved justified when the Agriculture Department’s National Finance Center, which administers payroll there and for some other agencies, “issued notices to over 10,000 individuals demanding payment by May 2 or they would incur penalties with interest and be referred to collections.” ...