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Has “crackhead” become the disparagement de jour? Should addiction be treated any different than other disabilities? William Halliday was a recovering addict and his employer, Geoffrey Van Toen, would not let him live that down. Halliday had a second job as a sales agent for Van Toen Innovations, an automobile broker, checking with car dealerships to get the best deal for Van Toen’s clients. He had been in 14 residential addiction recovery programs in 23 years, having relapsed and been hospitalized many times. He had experienced homelessness, joblessness and been estranged from family and friends. When he began working for...

On May 31, the Associated Press reported that Medicare looks a little better and Social Security doesn't look any worse. The Medicare inpatient care fund should last until 2026, two years longer than previously estimated, and Social Security will be solvent until 2033, as predicted last year. Depending on the media outlet this information was reported as positive ("It's not as bad as we thought") or gloomy ("Only two decades left to come up with solutions"). What wasn't reported so much as glossed over was the fact that the Social Security Disability Insurance program's trust fund will be exhausted by...

(CNSNews.com) - The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,978,040 in May, up from 10,962,532 million in April, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.

The number of Americans receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) more-than doubled over the past two decades, from 5.2 million to 11.7 million by the end of 2011. The number of residents receiving disability insurance from the Social Security Administration (SSA) varies from state to state. In West Virginia, close to one in every 10 people aged 18 to 64 was receiving SSDI benefits from the federal government, more than three times the rate in states like Utah and Alaska.Click here to see the states with the most Americans on disabilityThe proportion of eligible workers applying for disability benefits also...

You know what the IRS is really great at? Breaking its own laws. In addition to targeting conservative groups, the corrupt government agency has also been singling out disabled veterans. They do this by using banks to launder and then stealing the veterans’ disability checks. Shameful. The Veterans Disability Act of 2010 exempts VA disability from withholding of any sort. But the IRS has been stealing disabled veterans’ money anyways. Kevin Lake is a 60% disabled veteran of the Iraq War. A few months ago, he noticed that his VA disability check had not been deposited, and that his bank...

The latest Social Security Administration data document that Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) rolls reached a record high of 8.85 million in March 2013, an increase of 1.6 million or 21 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. This recession-induced growth exacerbates the long time trend in SSDI program growth that has resulted in its real expenditures increasing sevenfold, from $18 billion (2010 dollars) in 1970 to $128 billion in 2010, a trend the CBO reports will result in program insolvency as early as 2016. This long running disability epidemic, which hit its pandemic stage in the...

This map of Britain (at link) reveals the “work-shy” spots around the country where people claiming incapacity benefit claimants are actually fit enough to work. The Government introduced tough new health tests for those who claimed to be too unwell to get back into employment two years ago. Since then, some 203,000 (30 percent) out of 700,000 receiving the old Incapacity Benefit were declared fit to find work. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said Birmingham had the biggest number of claimants capable of work. Of 14,640 claimants, 5,180 were fit. …

Lesley University is not nearly so isolated, but it has the same mandatory policy about its student cafeteria. There was a problem however. Several students had Celiac disease. They needed to eat gluten free in order to not get sick. So naturally they told the college and the college allowed them an exception to the mandatory cafeteria plan, letting them keep the money and use it to buy gluten-free food off campus. Right? No, the students sued the college to mandate that the college accommodate them. I don’t feel sorry for Lesley because, frankly, I still bear a grudge against...

It happens all the time. I head out to the nearest mall to work through my weekly honey-do list. After spending five minutes securing a parking spot, I walk to my destination. As I pass the handicapped parking spaces located a hop and a skip from the entrance — the spaces reserved for people in wheelchairs, or really old people with walkers, or other genuinely handicapped people — I notice a car pull into one. It’s one of those Seinfeld moments, and I turn into George Costanza. Almost. The first thing I do is stop and take a look at...

Hiding The Unemployed: Disability And The Politics Of Stats Wendy McElroyApril 26, 2013 Some statistics cannot be understood without being set within a political framework, because they reflect politics as much as, or more than, they do reality. The unemployment rate is an example and a cautionary tale. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the seasonally adjusted official unemployment rate for February fell to a four-year national low of 7.7%. While the White House cautiously congratulated itself, Republicans quickly pointed to what is often called the real unemployment rate; it stood at 14.3%.The BLS looks at six categories...

The nation's disability rolls continued to climb sharply, as 76,983 workers enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program in April, according to new data from the Social Security Administration. More than 300,000 have joined the program so far this year. The number of workers on permanent disability is now a record 8,865,586, a net increase of one million in just three years. Today, 6.5 workers are on disability for every 100 who have a job. That's double the ratio from two decades ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Social Security's disability program is overwhelmed by so many claims that judges sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny just to keep up with the flow of cases, according to a lawsuit filed by the judges themselves. The Social Security Administration says the agency's administrative law judges should decide 500 to 700 disability cases a year. The agency calls the standard a productivity goal, but the lawsuit claims it is an illegal quota that requires judges to decide an average of more than two cases per workday. "When the goals are too high, the easy way out...

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government. The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. The vast majority of...

The White House said Friday it is proposing a 13.6 percent increase in funding for the handling of veterans benefits, an effort to reduce the Veterans Affairs Department’s massive backlog of disability claims. ~snip~ The number of pending claims filed by veterans seeking compensation stood this month at 885,000, 70 percent of which have been pending for more than 125 days. Veterans can wait a year or more for a decision at particularly overloaded regional offices, among them Baltimore...

Almost as many people signed up with the federal government's permanent worker disability program as got jobs in March, according to two sets of government data, continuing a troubling trend throughout the Obama recovery. Last month, 81,804 workers left the workforce to join the Social Security Disability Insurance program. So far this year, nearly a quarter million workers have joined the program. Over the past four years, 4 million left the workforce to go on disability. Even after accounting for those who dropped out of the program because of death or retirement, the ranks of the disabled have shot up...

(CNSNews.com) - The federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which takes in money via a federal payroll tax and pays it out in disability benefits, ran a record $31.2 billion deficit in calendar year 2012, according to the Social Security Administration. That means the trust fund has run a deficit in each of the first four years of the Obama presidency. For fifteen straight years before Obama took office—from 1994 through 2008—the Disability Insurance Trust Fund ran a surplus. In 2007, for example, it ran an $11 billion surplus and in 2008 it ran an $889-million surplus.

(CNSNews.com) - The number of American workers collecting federal disability payments climbed to yet another record of 8,853,614 in March, up from 8,840,427 in February, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. That means there are more than 3 times as many Americans taking disability payments as there are people living in the city of Chicago, which according to the Census Bureau has a population of 2,707,120. March was the 194th straight month that the number of American workers collecting federal disability payments increased. The last time the number of Americans collecting disability decreased was in January...

The greatest irony here is that those older arthritics fall into another group besides "most likely to file for disability". That group is "the Republican party". Here's how people in different age groups voted in 2012.

To all freepers on social security disability, when checking my direct deposit into bank account. I was reduced by $136.65. Has this happened to anyone else.

The government in Britain recently did something interesting. It asked everyone receiving an “incapacity benefit” — through a disability program slowly being phased out under new reforms — to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients (878,000 people) didn’t even bother and dropped out of the program rather than be examined. Of those tested, more than half (55 percent) were found fit for work, and a quarter were found fit for some work. But that’s Britain, where there’s a long tradition of gaming the dole. Americans would never think of...

A Rhode Island couple has revealed how they were moved to tears when Pope Francis kissed their disabled eight-year-old son in front of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday. Paul and Christina Gondreau of Johnston and their five children, including son Dominic who suffers from cerebral palsy, attended Easter Mass at the Vatican. An usher directed Dominic and his mother to an area designated for handicapped children, said Paul Gondreau, a theology professor at Providence College who is teaching this semester in Rome. When the pope's vehicle arrived, the usher motioned to the driver to stop...

While US Constitution and free market capitalism set the the foundations for American prosperity, it took a rugged, passionate, free people to build it. From George Washington to George Washington Carver to millions of other Americans, the United States was carved out a continent of forests that seemed to go on forever, fertile plains, vast mountain ranges and scorching hot deserts.  Over time American frontiersmen and settlers forged a country that seemed to have all of God’s blessings in abundance. Conditions were rarely easy for most Americans throughout most of our history. Coal miners spent 12 – 16 hour shifts...

Videos showed Christopher Inserra, a New York police officer on disability for an arm injury, flailing both arms while performing with his heavy metal band, Cousin Sleaze, according to court documents. He was charged Tuesday with mail fraud. NEW YORK — A New York police officer was charged Tuesday with mail fraud for allegedly claiming disability benefits for two years while at the same time performing and touring with his heavy metal band, Cousin Sleaze, according to court documents. Christopher Inserra, an officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was the lead singer with the Brooklyn...

When President Clinton signed "welfare reform" into law in 1996, he promised to end welfare as we know it. Now, some new reporting suggests we've created a new kind of welfare -- only most Americans aren't aware of it. The number of people who depend on checks from Social Security's disability programs has soared in recent years, according to NPR's series "Unfit for Work: the Startling Rise of Disability in America." The reports, which began over the weekend and continue this week, raise the question: How disabled are the recipients, really? As you might imagine, they have touched a nerve....

The startling rise of disability in America In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government. The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the...

March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. That's how the saying goes. And oh, how it rings true for my family. It is Lent, of course, a time for the faithful to pray, sacrifice and fast. And it is in our prayerful reflections and daily acts that we prepare ourselves for Easter and new life. March is also Trisomy Awareness Month. For my family, this has become a time to celebrate the life of our daughter Bella. Bella was born almost five years ago with trisomy 18, a severe genetic condition that I believe makes every...

I Was a Danged Fool! For twenty-two or so years before my retirement I had chronic back pain -- sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. When the pain was enough to take my breath away, I’d swallow a few ibuprofens, acetaminophens, or whatever over-the-counter pain relief I had on hand and carefully hobble off to work. Once or twice I self-prescribed bed rest for a day. But generally, if I could make it to the breakfast table, I could make it to work, figuring that the pain would subside as the day wore on. It NEVER ONCE occurred to me...

Eric Harroun is an Arizona native who rioted with rebels in Cairo and fought in Syria for Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra. **SNIP** Harroun's descent into Islamic fanaticism seems to have begun sometime after his discharge from the military. With seemingly no way to pursue his lifelong dream of being a soldier, he fell in with two Iraqi brothers, Maadh and Hayder Ibrahim, who he met while attending Pima Community College in Tucson, and began to identify himself as a Muslim, according to people who know him.

This is an amazing story about a man with Down syndrome who has reached the American dream. Since he was a young child, 26-year-old Tim Harris dreamed of having his own restaurant.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, suggesting some traction in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 344,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims figure was revised to show 4,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to fall to 360,000. Claims have seen large swings in recent months because of difficulties smoothing the data for seasonal fluctuations, making it hard to get a clear pulse of the labor market's...

I've looked at SSI Disability from both sides now, from in and out, and still somehow it's the scammers, the duped, and the resentful I recall. I have been involved in hundreds of SSI Disability cases. I have worked in the system providing mental status exams, called consultative examinations, in two states. I have done dozens of private psychological evaluations for people trying to get on Disability rolls. I have sent reams of case notes and reports to the Disability bureaucracy on behalf of therapy clients. There have been memorable examinations. One was of a sassy prostitute. She said she...

Jennifer Morbelli’s baby had a name. The baby registry was complete, filled with already-purchased items like the book “I’ll Love You Forever.” The nursery was set up. Jennifer Morbelli’s baby, Madison Leigh, was a wanted child—and only seven weeks shy of birth. Instead, mother and child both died last week from a botched late-term abortion. After learning that Madison had severe birth defects and a short life expectancy, Jennifer and her husband turned to Leroy Carhart, one of the only doctors in the country who performs third-trimester abortions. On February 7th, Jennifer was rushed to the emergency room. (When hospital...

The number of American workers collecting federal disability payments climbed to yet another record high of 8,830,026 in January, up from 8,827,795 in December, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.

Social Security will eventually hit the wall, but Social Security Disability Insurance may hit the wall even before Obama heads off to a permanent vacation on the many golf courses of Hawaii or rewrites the Living Constitution to become Emperor of Post-America. Over the long term, Social Security and Medicare have promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits than the nation can pay for under current policies. But Social SecurityÂ’s disability trust fund is in even worse shape, and current estimates say by 2016 it wonÂ’t have enough money to pay full benefits.The fiscal security of the disability...

School districts that do not provide deaf students "a visual cue" alongside a starter pistol to enable them to compete on the track team or create basketball and tennis leagues for students in wheelchairs will be in violation of federal law and could lose government funding. On Friday, the Obama administration declared disabled students "have the right" to "an equal opportunity to participate in their schools' extracurricular activities." In essence, the Obama administration established the right for disabled students to play wheelchair basketball or wheelchair tennis. The U.S. Department of Education sent a guidance letter to schools, school districts, and...

This is what the State of Indiana Code states: IC 5-16-9-5 Violations; Class C infraction and Class C misdemeanor Sec. 5. (a) Any person who parks a motor vehicle which does not have displayed a placard of a person with a physical disability or a disabled veteran, issued under IC 9-14-5 or under the laws of another state, or a registration plate of a person with a physical disability or a disabled veteran, issued under IC 9-18-18, IC 9-18-22, or under the laws of another state, in a parking space reserved under this chapter for a vehicle of a person...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their monthly jobs report. Now for the BLS Boogie. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 155,000 workers last month following a revised 161,000 advance in November that was greater than initially estimated. The unemployment rate printed at 7.8% which is up from 7.7% in November but the same as the UPWARDLY REVISED print of 7.8%. U6 partial unemployment printed at 14.4%. Labor force participation remained at 63.6%. And the civilian employment to population ratio fell to 58.6, still stuck are 1983 levels. That’s a lot of people for the 58.6% to support! The number of...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment aid fell last week to nearly its lowest level in 4 1/2 years, a sign that the labor market is healing. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 350,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's figure was revised to show 1,000 more applications than previously reported. After spiking in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged the East Coast in late October, the weekly levels of new claims have now dropped to their lowest levels since the early days of the 2007-09 recession....

The Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in cash and paid $773.247 for benefits and overhead expenses, according to official data published by Social Security Administration. The Social Security Administration also released new data revealing that the number of workers collecting disability benefits hit a record 8,827,795 in December—up from 8,805,353 in November. The overall number of Social Security program beneficiaries—including retired workers, dependent family members and survivors and disabled workers and their dependent family members—also hit a record in December, climbing from 56,658,978 in November to 56,758,185...

After the Senate failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Senator John Kerry took to the airwaves with Chris Matthews on Hardball Wednesday, vowing to pass the measure within the first three months of 2013. and demonizing the Republicans who voted against the bill: They argued they were afraid we were giving up sovereignty of the nation and somehow the United Nations would be able to tell us what to do. Neither are true. There is no requirement in this treaty whatsoever that any law in the United States would be changed,...

The US Senate will be voting Tuesday, December 4th on whether to ratify a United Nations treaty on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Beneath the surface of this important sounding effort, is a crafty attempt to bequeath more of our American sovereignty to the authority of the United Nations. America has some of the most stringent protections for those who are disabled. This treaty supposedly makes it a more global effort to support the disabled. Proponents say if the US signs the treaty other nations would be more likely to improve their own efforts with the disabled. But like...

Americans are very generous to people with disabilities. Since passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, millions of public and private dollars have been spent on curb cuts, bus lifts and special elevators. The idea has been to enable people with disabilities to live and work with the same ease as others, as they make their way forward in life. I feel sure the large majority of Americans are pleased that we are doing this. But there is another federal program for people with disabilities that has had an unhappier effect. This is the disability insurance (DI) program,...

You won’t be surprised to learn this is a violation of a promise: It was one of the simplest, most poignant promises Barack Obama made in 2008 in his first campaign for the White House: He would fulfill “a sacred trust with our veterans” by significantly reducing the government’s lengthy backlog of pending claims for disability coverage. The goal: All veterans could get a decision on disability claims within 125 days. The results: Records obtained by the Washington Guardian show that as of Nov. 5, the day before Mr. Obama won re-election, 558,230 of the 820,106 veterans seeking disability coverage...

Mental Hospital Voter Sign-Up QuestionedPatients registered without local election officials' OK By Don Carrington Oct. 26th, 2012 RALEIGH — Cherry Hospital, a state-run adult inpatient psychiatric facility in Goldsboro, welcomed a federally funded nonprofit organization to conduct a voter registration drive of mental patients, likely a violation of state law. Moreover, a memo from a hospital administrator indicated the nonprofit, Disability Rights North Carolina, assisted patients in completing absentee ballots, which may have been illegal as well. **SNIP** North Carolina General Statute 163-226.3 makes it a Class I felony for anyone other than the legal guardian or close relative of...

We all know that the employment situation in the USA is horrible. Average duration of unemployment of 40 weeks and a 14.7% unemployment/underemployment rate. We do know that civilian labor force participation has declined from 65.7% in January 2009 to 63.6% in September 2012. That is a large drop in labor force participation. Let’s break it down. Since January 2009: 827,000 more people have been added to the labor force! (Blue line) 8,206,000 more people are NOT in the labor force! (Red line) That is almost a 10:1 ratio of people not in the labor force over those entering the...

The Wellendorf family. Credit The Catholic Messenger. Tiffin, Iowa, Oct 14, 2012 / 01:07 pm (CNA).- Matt Wellendorf’s favorite prayer is the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in song. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist at Mass, he becomes reverent. And he won’t go to sleep before his mother prays with him. Despite a chromosomal abnormality that left him unable to walk or talk, the 27-year-old has a sense of spirituality, said his parents, David and Regina Wellendorf. Most people think those with developmental or mental disabilities have no faith life because they can’t understand religion, David said. “But they’re...

The Senate Budget Committee Republican staff under Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Thursday released a chart that should have you worried: “The numbers reflect the change in the total number of people employed and the total number of people on the two largest federal welfare programs, as well as Social Security Disability Insurance, between 2008 and 2012,” the senator’s report explains. “The employment figure was derived using the total nonfarm and seasonally adjusted number of people employed in December of 2008 (134.4 million) and the number of people employed in September 2012 (133.5 million) as reported by the Bureau...

The backlog of veterans’ disability claims has jumped by 179 percent during President Barack Obama’s first term in office, reaching 883,949 outstanding claims, according to Veterans Administration (VA) statistics. (Click Oct. 1, 2012 link.) The backlog of claims is at near-record highs, with 65.8 percent of claims being backlogged for 125 days or more. The total claims include disability claims by veterans as well as from surviving spouses, children, or parents. As the VA explains, these claims are "based upon the effects of disabilities, diseases, or injuries incurred or aggravated during military service." And the claims by spouses, children, or...

For a country still gasping to recover from the Great Recession, disability payments from Social Security have evolved into a lifeline and an economic trap for millions of unemployed Americans threatening the program with insolvency in just four short years. Created decades ago to help those unable to work because of severe health problems, the $128 billion program stops many from sliding into total poverty and inflicting further damage on the economy. More Americans qualified for disability than found jobs over the past three months, and since 2000, the number of beneficiaries rose by 73 percent, even though the workforce...

A 10-year-old US girl suffering from cerebral palsy is too afraid to leave her house because her neighbours continually mock her disability. Ohio girl Hope Holcomb has regularly been bullied by her nine-year-old neighbour, but recently the boy's father has also begun teasing the young girl with both being captured on film mocking the limp Hope suffers as a result of her illness. "It started last year we had trouble on the bus, she was miserable she didn't want to ride the bus, cried every morning," Hope's mother Tricia Knight told Fox 8 News. "He treats her like crap, and...