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The Social Security Administration improperly paid children in juvenile detention facilities $1.7 million, according to a new audit. The inspector general for the agency found that just four states accounted for the improper disability payments. The estimate for fraudulent payments was "conservative" since the audit did not compile all data from the four states reviewed...*snip SEE POST #1* "While SSA had established overpayments for 274 of these juveniles, we identified 273 instances where SSA was unaware of all or part of the confinement period. We determined that 158 of these juveniles were confined for 6 months or longer without SSA's...

The Social Security Administration made $37 million worth of benefit payments to dead veterans, according to a new audit.The inspector general for the agency reported more retirement and disability payments could be made to deceased individuals if action is not taken to correct the government's death record system.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,The point is the present system cannot endure.Despite all the happy talk about "recovery" and higher growth, wages have gone nowhere since 2000--and for the bottom 20% of workers, they've gone nowhere since the 1970s.Gross domestic product (GDP) has risen smartly since 2000, but the share of GDP going to wages and salaries has plummeted: this is simply an extension of a 47-year downtrend.Last month I posted one reason Why We're Doomed: Our Economy's Toxic Inequality (August 16, 2017). The second half of why we're doomed is stagnant wages. Why do stagnating...

The Social Security judge who rubber-stamped more than 1,700 bogus disability applications as part of the largest disability fraud ring in American history was sentenced to four years in federal prison Friday. David B. Daugherty left the Kentucky courtroom in handcuffs after Judge Danny C. Reeves rejected the government’s recommendation of a year in home confinement, and instead gave him the maximum time allowed on the charges he pled guilty to. The judge also ordered Daugherty to pay $93 million in restitution to the government, according to witnesses in the courtroom. Daugherty was part of the disability fraud ring orchestrated...

There’s nothing so classy as a policy wonk reveling in vindication. And I’m nothing if not classy. But there’s a bigger purpose to be served. What I – and more importantly, my co-author Syl Scheiber – were vindicated about is a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that perceptions of a “retirement crisis” are in part driven by bad data. Specifically, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) is very poor at measuring the incomes that Americans derive from private retirement plans, including IRAs, 401(k)s and lump sum distributions from traditional pensions. As a result, retirees look poorer and more...

It is no secret that what the major media seem to care most about is radically different from what concerns average Americans. While the inside the Beltway crowd continues to focus on alleged collusion between President Trump and Russia, real concerns like the future of Social Security are ignored.The Social Security Board of Trustees, a six-member panel who serve the federal government by offering a short-term and long-range forecast on the health of the Social Security program, has issued a new report, which says that while the retirement program will be "cash flow positive" through 2021, it is still in...

House Republicans greeted current and future federal employees with two controversial body blows in recent days — one amounts to a pay cut and the other would allow new feds to be fired for “no cause at all.” The House Budget Committee approved a spending plan that would save the government $163.5 billion over 10 years by taking that amount from federal employees. (snip) Republicans call their plan “Building a Better America.” But the Americans now working to build a better country through their federal jobs would be called on to sacrifice again, as they have repeatedly over the years....

The government is out today with its annual update of Social Security’s sick finances: --The system is $12.5 trillion under water, up from $11.4 trillion a year ago. --Absent law changes, checks to retirees will have to be chopped 23% beginning in 2035. --To fix just the retirement pay program, Congress could kick up the payroll tax by 2.8 percentage points. Fixing Medicare’s disastrous finances would be in addition. --The retirement operation is running an $86 billion annual deficit. That’s the difference between the money coming in from Social Security’s share of payroll taxes (12.4% of covered payroll) and the...

Social Security's unfunded liabilities total $12.5 trillion in present-dollar terms over a 75-year timeframe, the administration's trustees reported Thursday, an increase of $1.2 trillion from last year's estimate. The trustees report showed that Social Security's combined trust fund can only pay scheduled benefits through 2034, a projected date that is unchanged from a year ago. Medicare's trust fund, though, is in better shape than previously estimated and will run out a year later than previously anticipated, in 2029. At those dates, beneficiaries would face the prospect of an immediate cut in benefits unless policy were changed in some way to...

Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time understood the importance of the design of a system. Commenting on the incredible power of levers he noted, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.” With a properly designed system almost anything is possible; with a poor one, almost nothing.

My 97 year olf mother passed on recently. I am going through many old photos etc. I have blocked out name and number of my father who was a WWII Vet. Has anyone seen this gov't issue copper social security card before?

Authorities in Florida say a man hid his wife's body in a freezer so he could continue collecting her Social Security benefits. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says, Margaret Dunn died at her home in Sun City Center, Fla. in 2002 and Allan Dunn placed her body in the freezer. He then collected her Social Security benefits until he died in 2010. In all, he improperly collected $92,088 in federal Social Security benefits. According to authorities, upon his death, Mr. Dunn’s sole asset of value was the condominium unit where he and his wife had resided. His heirs, who were unaware...

Back before the Industrial Revolution most people were rural, and they lived off the land. Families took care of their aging families. Parents had big farm houses that encompassed not only Mom, Dad, and children, but Grandma and Grandpa were a part of the mix…possibly even Aunt Hilda if she needed a roof over her head. The whole family worked together to make the living. Even little Johnny had his chore of feeding the chickens. His little sister gathered the eggs, and Mama fixed them for breakfast. Meanwhile, Daddy had already gotten up at the crack of dawn to build...

Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) needs to get his facts straight about social security. You pay 6.5% as an employee, Your employer pays 6.5%. You pay 1.5% to Medicare, Total 14.5%. If you are self-employed you must pay the 14.5% yourself. How could he say, because senior citizens expect their social security and medicare benefits when they retire, they are greedy? “Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming, Co-Chair of Obama’s deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared “Social Security” to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.”

A number of mostly elderly very important persons have been compromised by the global warming hoax. The following wise men signed a tract: “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.” George Shultz - 96James A Baker - 86Martin Feldstein - 77Thomas Stephenson - 74Rob Walton - 72Henry Paulson - 70N. Gregory Mankiw - 59Ted Halstead - 48 The carbon dividend tract was promoted in a Wall Street Journal article published on February 7th and signed by former Secretaries of State, Shultz and Baker. According to Shultz and Baker: “…there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too...

An eastern Kentucky disability lawyer scheduled to be sentenced next month for defrauding the government of nearly $600 million has disappeared, the FBI said. Eric Conn pleaded guilty in March to stealing from the federal government and bribing a judge. He was scheduled to be sentenced next month and had been ordered to pay the government tens of millions of dollars. But Saturday, the FBI said Conn removed his electronic monitoring device, violating the conditions of his bond and prompting the U.S. District Court to issue a warrant for his arrest. David Habich, general counsel for the FBI’s Louisville office,...

The Trump administration, at work on a new plan for tax reform, is reportedly considering a plan to cross into one of the most dangerous territories in American politics: fiddling with the Social Security system. According to multiple reports, the administration is entertaining the possibility of eliminating the 12.4 percent payroll tax, which would require it to find a new dedicated funding source for the retirement checks that millions of Americans count on in their old age. The plan, first reported by the Associated Press, would be part of a major overhaul of the tax code that would make the...

President Trump scrapped potential reforms to Social Security and Medicare while preparing his first budget request, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney, a fiscal hawk and former member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Trump quashed potential changes to Social Security, citing his campaign pledge not to touch the program. “I laid to him the options that Mick Mulvaney would put on a piece of paper,” Mulvaney told CNBC in an interview that aired Tuesday. “And [Trump] looked at one and said, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘Well, that's a change to part of...

A ringleader in one of the biggest Social Security disability fraud cases in U.S. history has pleaded guilty to filing more than 1,700 bogus applications, bilking the government out of potentially a half-billion dollars. But the administration is struggling to figure out how to handle the applicants, many of whom say that even though their applications were falsified, their cases are real and they shouldn’t be punished for having been ensnared by the massive fraud. Eric C. Conn, a prominent lawyer in eastern Kentucky, signed a guilty plea late last month acknowledging the scam, in which he recruited and filed...

A Missouri woman who has attended official meetings on resettling migrants is blowing the whistle on United Nations and federal schemes that she says are quietly flying in huge numbers of unvetted, diseased “refugees” from across Africa and the Middle East — many of whom do not even have a known name — and immediately handing them passports, Social Security numbers, and a vast array of tax-funded benefits. Noting that the overwhelming majority of the migrants she observed were men, she suggested the schemes were an “intentional device” to “invade the United States of America.” Adding insult to injury, said...