Free Republic

Employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) destroyed veterans’ medical files in a systematic attempt to eliminate backlogged veteran medical exam requests, a former VA employee told The Daily Caller. Audio of an internal VA meeting obtained by TheDC confirms that VA officials in Los Angeles intentionally canceled backlogged patient exam requests. “The committee was called System Redesign and the purpose of the meeting was to figure out ways to correct the department’s efficiency. And one of the issues at the time was the backlog,” Oliver Mitchell, a Marine veteran and former patient services assistant in the VA Greater...

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis reportedly pays the salary, health insurance premiums and living expenses for Reverend Gil Gustafson who was convicted for child sex abuse back in 1983. According to the Star Tribune, in addition to all these payments by the church, Rev. Gustafson is also paid disability by the state. The church says that in July 2006 Rev. Gustafson was declared “disabled” based on his pedophilia. He collects disability checks on top of his salary from the church as a "consultant." After Rev. Gustafson admitted he molested Brian Herrity for five years, he was fined...

If you're 60 and older, every additional hour a day you spend sitting is linked to doubling the risk of being disabled -- regardless of how much moderate exercise you get, reports a new Northwestern Medicine® study. The study is the first to show sedentary behavior is its own risk factor for disability, separate from lack of moderate vigorous physical activity. In fact, sedentary behavior is almost as strong a risk factor for disability as lack of moderate exercise. If there are two 65-year-old women, one sedentary for 12 hours a day and another sedentary for 13 hours a day,...

A “blind” Wisconsin man’s $175,000 Social Security disability fraud scheme ended when federal agents caught him driving a speedboat, according to the inspector general. Lawrence Popp, 58, was sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday for defrauding the Social Security Administration... Popp, a wealthy businessman, continued to work and go on lavish vacations in the Cayman Islands while collecting disability benefits for five years. A record 10,988,269 people received federal disability benefits in December 2013, according to the SSA. A 2012 report from Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) found that more than 25 percent of benefits are awarded with...

More than a hundred people were indicted today for fraudulently obtaining Social Security disability benefits, constituting one of the biggest such fraud busts of all time. At a news conference in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, federal and local officials described a 26-year-old scheme through which 102 people — including 72 New York City Police retirees and eight retired New York firefighters — allegedly collected Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) fraudulently. A number of the 102 indicted have already been arrested. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said at the news conference that about half of the participants fraudulently claimed they...

More than 100 retired New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers were charged today with falsely claiming to be suffering from depression and anxiety as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks, New York prosecutors said today. The alleged scam won awards up to $500,000 for the uniformed personnel and cost taxpayers millions of dollars, according to the indictment. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said the suspects "cynically manufactured claims of mental illness as a result of Sept 11th... dishonoring the first responders." Police Commissioner William Bratton said, "The retired members of the NYP indicted in this case have...

Scores of retired New York City police officers, firefighters and prison guards were charged Tuesday with faking psychiatric problems to get federal disability benefits—with some falsely claiming their conditions arose after the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors said. Four ringleaders coached the former workers on how to falsely describe symptoms of depression and other mental health problems that allowed them to get payouts high as $500,000, said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The ringleaders made tens of thousands in dollars in secret kickbacks, Vance said. Among the retirees arrested were 72 city police officers, eight firefighters, five corrections officers...

Contestant of British reality show "Celebrity Big Brother" ex-heavyweight boxing champ, Evander Holyfield caused an outrage with degrading anti-gay comments and has now been warned by the show makers. Holyfield in conversation with Luisa Zissman said that being gay was not normal, and that they could be treated by a doctor just like the physically disabled. "The Bible lets you know, that's wrong, that's right. If you were born and your leg were turned this way, what do you do, you go to the doctor and get it fixed back right... All I'm trying to tell you, you know how...

This is how even the most well-intentioned laws go through three stages.1. The ideal – This is what the law is supposed to do2. The bureaucratic – The bureaucrats get hold of it and make into an incomprehensible morass of regulations that everyone is in violation of.3. The lawyerly – The lawyers find every loophole in the law and begin cashing inIn California, most laws skip right to Stage 2 which is how things like this happen. In 2012, Jon Carpenter filed 257 lawsuits in L.A. County — more lawsuits than there were court days — under the Americans...

The number of Americans on disability now exceeds the number of people in New York City. More than 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office. 10,988,269 are now receiving federal disability benefits. CNS News reported: The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,988,269 in December, up from the previous record of 10,982,920 set in November, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record...

For the 202nd straight month, the number of Americans receiving disability benefits rose. The end of 2013 saw another record set - 10,988,269 Americans now on disabilty, up 6,000 from the end of November. CNS News: The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record of $1,146.43 in December, up from a previous high of $1,130.34 in December of last year.Spouses of disabled workers also got a record average monthly benefit of $308.13 in December, up from a previous high of $304.31 in August. Children of disabled workers also received a record average monthly benefit of...

The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,988,269 in December, up from the previous record of 10,982,920 set in November, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record of $1,146.43 in December, up from a previous high of $1,130.34 in December of last year. Spouses of disabled workers also got a record average monthly benefit of $308.13 in December, up from a previous high of $304.31 in August. Children of disabled workers also received a...

Alison Davis was born with spina bifida. She later developed conditions including osteoporosis, arthritis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Coping with these permanently disabling and painful conditions dominated but did not define her life. Indeed, they led her to champion the rights of the vulnerable, the disabled and the unborn, first as an atheist and then as a Catholic. Her early adult life was marked by a determination to live as normal a life as possible, despite having to use a wheelchair. She studied sociology at university, where she stopped believing in God. Writing about this period of her...

Ellen Richardson went to Pearson airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she’d paid about $6,000. But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry. “I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others. The Weston woman...

Military members, retirees and veterans have a few more reasons to be wary of politicians who say their top priority is to cut federal spending. The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a report of more than 100 options for reducing budget deficits. It’s a timely product as House and Senate conferees strive to negotiate by mid-December a new debt-cutting deal to replace automatic budget cuts of sequestration. More than a few of the CBO options are fresh ideas to roll back compensation for categories of veterans or to raise TRICARE fees for military retirees, on suggestions that the government...

The United States is the world leader regarding the rights of people with disabilities. But a United Nations treaty seeks to use Americans’ concern for the disabled to undermine U.S. sovereignty.It’s time for proponents of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to come clean about this treaty. They claim, falsely, that it would help Americans with disabilities who are traveling abroad. But as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said at The Heritage Foundation recently: "Ratification is not going to materially change the degree of compliance by foreign nations, but it is going to open avenues to undermine...

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...