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NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 NEWS) – Shortly after U.S. Army Scout Steve Blackman retired from the military three years ago, he says he slipped into depression. “I was falling into a very dark place. I didn’t know if I was going to make it out.....[snip]”

I'm probably too young to have so many pet peeves. The list seems to get longer every year. So, naturally, the longer I teach, the longer my list of class rules seems to get. In addition to rules of class conduct, I also have to develop rules concerning over-disclosure of information in emails and office visits. Such over-disclosure is always geared towards one goal for the student: transforming personal deficiencies into legitimate disabilities in an effort to attenuate workload expectations. Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed by these excuses, I take time out in class to reiterate the rules concerning over-disclosure. Note...

When parents are awarded DI, the likelihood that one of their adult children will participate in DI rises by 12 percentage points over the next decade.The extent to which welfare dependency is perpetuated from one generation to the next is a question of great social importance for which there is only limited empirical evidence. In Family Welfare Cultures (NBER Working Paper No. 19237), Gordon Dahl, Andreas Kostol, and Magne Mogstad analyze this question using data from the Norwegian disability insurance (DI) system. They study the outcomes of appeals by claimants who were initially denied DI benefits. Judges are randomly assigned...

A discrimination lawsuit filed against liberal Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee (D-TX) has been allowed to proceed, granted by a federal judge, despite Lee’s attempts to halt the proceedings according to the Washington Times on Tuesday. The lawsuit was filed by former legislative director Mona Floyd and said in court papers that Mrs. Jackson Lee, a 10-term congressional representative from Houston had refused to accommodate her debilitating eye condition called monocular vision. Floyd’s lawsuit complaint was based on Lee saying to her, “I don’t care anything about your disability.” The Washington Times reported that Lee’s legal team wanted to have the...

I wanted to share a quick story about something that happened in our household today and 3 days ago with a friend of mine as well of 23 years. My wife is on permanent disability for the remainder of her life due to a number of health reasons from on and off cancer battles to other sustained health issues that prevent her from working. My friend Cory injured himself on the job a few years ago breaking his back, right knee, and shoulder. Both have been getting around $1,000.00 a month in disability. My wife puts that money towards the...

These days, being seen as a victim can be useful. You immediately claim the moral high ground. Some people want to help you. Lawyers and politicians brag that they force others to help you. This turns some people into whiners with little sense of responsibility. Joe Biden's niece was arrested recently for throwing a punch at a cop. The New York Post says she's addicted to alcohol and pills, but rather than take responsibility for her actions, she blamed them on the "pressure she faces" because her uncle is vice president. Give me a break. America was founded by people...

WASHINGTON – A retired Social Security judge in West Virginia collaborated with a lawyer to improperly award disability benefits to hundreds of applicants, according to a report released Monday by congressional investigators. The report accuses retired administrative law Judge David B. Daugherty of scheming with lawyer Eric C. Conn to approve more than 1,800 cases from 2006 to 2010. "By 2011, Mr. Conn and Judge Daugherty had collaborated on a scheme that enabled the judge to approve, in assembly-line fashion, hundreds of clients for disability benefits using manufactured medical evidence," said the report by the staff of the Senate Homeland...

A good report from 60 minutes on how the federal disability system is being gamed at mega taxpayer expense: Steve Kroft reports on the alarming state of the federal disability program, which has exploded in size in the last six years and could become the first federal benefits program to run out of money.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6 2013 Disability, USA - Steve Kroft reports on the alarming state of the federal disability program, which has exploded in size in the last six years and could become the first federal benefits program to run out of money. James Jacoby and Michael Karzis are the producers. Watch a preview

Fans of Walt Disney World were fuming last spring following reports of people gaming a system that allowed disabled park guests to advance to the front of lines. Now it seems the entitled few have ruined it for everyone. Disney Parks has just announced a change in policy: People with disabilities will no longer be ushered to the front of lines. It “certainly has been problematic, and we wanted to curb some of the abuse of this system,” Disneyland Resort spokeswoman Suzi Brown told the Orange County Register. Further, a statement by Disney, provided to Yahoo Shine through a spokesperson,...

In response to Just How Distorted is the U.S. Unemployment Rate Number?, reader Bjorn asked "care to take a guess on the percentage of fraud among the population receiving disability compensation?" Fraud Incentive My Reply Follows: I suspect fraud is in the neighborhood of 25-50% (and higher would not surprise me one bit). The reason is that States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud. This all goes back to 1996 when president Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it". He did indeed do just that, and fraud is the result. Why? The federal government...

This week’s charts show total receipts, expenditures, and assets left in the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund. Data from the 2013 Trustees Report show that the disability fund is currently predicted to be three years from insolvency. Under more pessimistic assumptions, the insolvency date is pushed up to 2015. The fact that the DI trust fund is not currently depleted shouldn’t mislead us into thinking we have until 2016 to deal with the shortfalls.Spending on Social Security has more than doubled in the past decade, and DI now accounts for almost 20 percent of Social Security’s budget, up...

While veterans waited longer than ever in recent years for their wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave its workers millions of dollars in bonuses for “excellent” performances that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work to document veterans’ injuries, a News21 investigation has found. In 2011, a year in which the claims backlog ballooned by 155 percent, more than two-thirds of claims processors shared $5.5 million in bonuses, according to salary data from the Office of Personnel Management. The more complex claims were often set aside by workers so they could keep their jobs,...

A family is in shock and a community has united after an anonymous hate letter was written about a young boy living with severe autism. Karla Begley told CityNews her son Max, 13, stays with his grandmother in the morning during the summer time. It was at that home in Newcastle where letter was delivered on Friday. “I was shaking when I was reading it,” Brenda Millson, Max’s grandmother, told CityNews. “It’s awful words. You don’t know why somebody would ever do such a thing.” The typed, one-page letter refers to the young boy as a “nuisance” and a “wild...

We know that the employment situation in the US is terrible with 70% of jobs created since January 2009 being low-paying, part-time jobs. And median household income keeps declining. 20130816_mainstreetmisery After reading James Hamilton’s horrifying paper on the size of off-balance sheet liabilities for America, I thought I would put together the following table to you could see the household share of government debt, entitlements and The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet. householdshare There are 115,310,000 households in America. Government spending in the U.S. as of Q2 2013 was a little over $5.8 trillion. That equates to $50,328.68 per household. The...

By Eric Boehm | Watchdog.orgNew numbers from the Social Security Administration show more than 76,000 workers were added to the disability insurance program in July.Since the beginning of 2013, more than 530,000 workers have been added to the Social Security disability program’s rolls. More than 8.9 million Americans are receiving disability benefits through Social Security, with an average benefit of $1,129 per month. DISABILITY EPIDEMIC: More than 10 million Americans are getting disability payments through Social Security, but the well is running dry. Adding benefits paid to spouses and children of disabled workers to the mix, the number of...

Although disgraced Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. suddenly developed a “mood disorder” as the feds were about to indict him, he qualifies for generous government disability payments because it’s considered a debilitating mental illness. Of interesting note is that Jackson Jr., sentenced this week to 2 ½ years in prison for corruption, never showed any symptoms of a “mood disorder” during his 17 years as a federal lawmaker. The mental illness surfaced abruptly last summer as the congressman, a member of Judicial Watch’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians list, was about to get criminally charged. The feds had been breathing...

A handicap ramp in front of a Fountain family's house is in the middle of a neighborhood squabble. Vincent and Heidi Giesegh say their neighbors are threatening legal action if they don't remove the ramp. They say the next door couple is worried that the ramp will hurt the value of their home. The Giesegh's say they need it for their 16 year old daughter Kirsten who has Cerebral Palsy. "As she goes into her spastic modes, we could just tumble down the stairs and both of us could get massively hurt," said Heidi Giesegh. The Giesegh's neighborhood doesn't have...

PEMBROKE PINES (CBS4) – The security video shows a 14 year-old mental patient being escorted down a hallway when a Pembroke Pines police officer reaches in and grabs the girl. The girl whirls and swats at the officer, and he proceeds to punch her in the face. The officer’s blow to the mentally disturbed teen snapped her head back, and appeared to be delivered with full force. Other officers join in, wrestling the girl to the ground and spraying her with Mace.

More than 76,000 workers went on the federal government's disability program in July, according to the latest data from the Social Security administration, bringing the total number of new enrollees this year to 534,038. Although that is down somewhat from the same month last year, enrollment in the Social Security Disability Insurance program remains sharply higher than it has been historically. Since 2009, an average of about 1 million workers have gone on SSDI annually — a 31% increase from the average enrollment over the previous 10 years. As a result, a record 8.9 million workers are now collecting disability...