Disability Insurance, Where Social Security is Broken

Ezra Klein:

But Social Security’s disability program is area of obvious dysfunction that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention. Damian Paletta has a great Wall Street Journal piece this morning that highlights just how out of control the program has gotten by focusing on one judge, David Daugherty:

In the fiscal year that ended in September, the administrative law judge, who sits in the impoverished intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, decided 1,284 cases and awarded benefits in all but four. For the first six months of fiscal 2011, Mr. Daugherty approved payments in every one of his 729 decisions, according to the Social Security Administration. …This breakdown is one reason why Social Security Disability Insurance — one of the federal government’s two disability programs — is under severe financial strain. It paid a record $124 billion in benefits in 2010 and is on track to become the first major entitlement program to go bust. Government officials said last week it is expected to run out of money in 2018

Since welfare reform took place, this tends to be the place where people end up when they are looking to be on the dole.  That is very problematic, since disabled people do need assistance, and being associated with goldbrickers doesn't do them any good.  Apparently, in Tennessee, attorneys advertise about how well they can get you onto disability.  One good thing for the disabled, many of the people who go on disability but aren't disabled are white, so that makes disability less of a target for conservatives, since it is their base, and not black or brown people abusing the system.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's naked capitalism post has a number of good links.  Among them are a story about how Fox News spreads their propaganda, another article about Australia's economy on the brink with evidence that Chinese commodity consumption may be slowing, a good Krugman column and a story about how regulators and banks are making the economy more fragile in enacting the Dodd-Frank "reforms."  I wanted to highlight Indiana Supreme Court: citizens have no right to resist unlawful police entry, at the Evansville Courier-Press:

People have no right to resist if police officers illegally enter their home, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a decision based on a Vanderburgh County case.
The ruling overturned centuries of common law, a fact the court acknowledged in the decision, noting that some scholars trace its origin to the Magna Carta in 1215.
The court issued its 3-2 ruling on Thursday, contending that allowing residents to resist officers who enter their homes without any right would increase the risk of violent confrontation. If police enter a home illegally, the courts are the proper place to protest it, Justice Steven David said.
"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
The court's decision stemmed from a Vanderburgh County case in which a man yelled at police and blocked them from entering his apartment to investigate a domestic disturbance. Evansville resident Richard Barnes shoved a police officer who entered anyway, and was shocked with a stun gun and arrested.

Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann said the ruling brings Indiana up to date with what already is recognized in many other states.

In some ways, this fits in with the "sovereign citizen" story.  In an abstract way, it is correct that since the Magna Carta, people have the right to protect themselves and their property.  Unfortunately, the methods of resistance may make a bad situation much worse.  I get a bad feeling about this ruling from the perspective of police abuse of power, but at the same time, if police surprise someone in a raid, and the person starts shooting at the "intruders," this is going to end badly.  It is a delicate balancing act, which needs some restraint on both sides of the issue.  Referring to the "sovereign citizens," it is clear that these guys are often going to react very badly to run-ins with police or the courts, and police expecting violent reactions in routine police business makes them more trigger-happy.  It is hard to decide how to handle a domestic disturbance case, when somebody's temper has already flared prior to police involvement.  This ruling is interesting, while being somewhat disconcerting.

Ohio State Investigates Car Sales

And the walls came tumbling down.  I'm definitely not going to lose any sleep if Tressel is sent packing.  OSU fans are remarkably quiet right now.  I remember a friend who was the editor of The Lantern, when talking about Lorenzo Styles, saying, "Lorenzo, Styling in his Benzo," back in the Cooper era. 

ESPN:

Ohio State's director of compliance is reviewing at least 50 car sales to Buckeyes athletes and relatives to see if they met NCAA rules, The Columbus Dispatch reported Saturday.... The Dispatch reported that a car salesman who received game passes from Ohio State athletes handled many of the deals at two different dealerships. Ohio State has since taken the salesman, Aaron Kniffin, off the pass list.
Athletes are prevented from receiving special deals not available to other students. They are not permitted to trade autographs for discounts. Both dealerships display signed Ohio State memorabilia in their showrooms.
One car, a 2-year-old Chrysler 300 with fewer than 20,000 miles, was titled to then-sophomore defensive player Thaddeus Gibson in 2009. Documents show the purchase price as $0. Gibson said he did not know why the title showed a zero for the purchase price and said he was still paying for the car.
State law requires dealers to report accurate information about all car sales for tax purposes.
School officials have seen no evidence of players getting special treatment in vehicle sales, Douglas Archie, associate athletic director for compliance, said in a statement Saturday.
"Consistent with our standard procedures, we are nevertheless reviewing these sales to assure ourselves that our policies were adhered to," he said.
Pryor's mother and brother also purchased cars from the dealerships. Kniffin loaned his own car to Pryor for a three-day test drive to Pryor's home in Jeannette, Pa.
Kniffin and the owner of one of the dealerships he worked for, Jason Goss, have attended seven football games as guests of players, including the 2007 national championship game and the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.

Also:

A graphics-based T-shirt produced by a Tampa, Fla., company is among other recent efforts at Ohio State's expense, according to The Blade.
The shirt by Smack Apparel, "Tressel's Tattoo and Pawn -- Turning a Blind Eye Since 2001," is a hot sell in Ann Arbor and other big college football towns, the report said.
"We knew that Michigan fans would eat it up, and they have," said Wayne Curtiss, Smack Apparel's owner.
Another T-shirt company has twisted the Big Ten's new division names, with the front displaying "Legends" along with a pair of Joe Paterno-style, heavy-framed eye glasses.
But the back of the shirt carries a similar punchline as the Michigan billboard. It's imprinted with "Liars" instead of "Leaders" and carries an image of Tressel's familiar sweater vest.
"People see it as something that's fun and something that's funny," Curtiss said, according to The Blade. "We just take a situation that has fans talking, and then try to have some fun with it. We hope people can laugh and take it the right way."

Socialist America

Barry Ritholtz:

To those of you who irrationally fear the US is turning into a Socialist state, I say unto thee: YOU ARE TOO LATE! We’ve already turned into a red nation of commies!
At least, that seems to be how some folks see it.  It is a quite a bit more accurate to describe the current circumstances: “The deep recession left the US with a highly elevated long-term unemployment rate;  There are lots of families who currently receive government aid so they can buy buy food for themselves and their children.”
Most Americans seem not to want to admit it, but we have fairly Socialist, rather Christian tendencies as a country. You know, things like charity, feeding the poor, broad government assistance to reduce senior and childhood poverty, etc.

I'm not sure why people don't want to admit this.  Lots of people want to claim that the U.S. is a Christian nation, but they don't want the government to provide any social services.  They often claim that churches also provide these services, and better than government.  I would point out that the churches provide additional services, but they never will be able to carry the load the government carries.  How may people do you know that would donate to their church or favorite charity, all the money they would take home if the government wasn't taxing them as much?  I'll go with none.  How many people would give any more money to charity if they weren't benefitting from the tax deduction?  I'd guess very few. 

And really, what is so bad about trying to help people out?  I know, some people take advantage of the system and some programs make it economically rational for people to not work more, but a larger percentage of people only grudgingly take government help.  And when you add it up, there is a heck of a lot of governmental largesse being extended to corporations.  These bastions of capitalism are doing a pretty fair job of taking advantage of socialist policies.

That is one reason why I think Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is so out of line with American tradition.  Many conservatives like the idea that America is a Christian nation.  One of the big tenets of Christianity is altruism.  Many atheists are also altruistic, even though they are not Christian.  Ayn Rand hated both Christianity and altruism.  To her, selfishness is a virtue.  Many of her fellow-travelers like the idea of being selfish, but they also like the idea of a vengeful God who will strike down all the sinners.  I don't think that Jesus guy would go along with their message.

Going with What's Hot

VoxEU on the gambler's fallacy and the hot hand fallacy, via Mark Thoma:

There are two plausible but apparently contradicting intuitions about how people over-infer from observing recent events.

• The “gamblers fallacy” claims that people expect rapid reversion to the mean.

For example, upon observing three outcomes of “red” in roulette, gamblers tend to think that “black” is now due and tend to bet more on “black” (Croson and Sundali 2005).

• The “hot hand fallacy” claims that upon observing an unusual streak of events, people tend to predict that the streak will continue.

The “hot hand” fallacy term originates from basketball where players who scored several times in row are believed to have a “hot hand”, i.e. are more likely to score at their next attempt (e.g. Camerer 1989).
Recent behavioural theory has proposed a foundation to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the two types of over-inference (Rabin and Vayanos 2010). The intuition behind the theory can be explained with reference to the example of roulette play.
A person believing in the “law of small numbers” thinks that small samples should “look like” the parent distribution, i.e. that the sample should be representative of the parent distribution. Thus, the person believes that out of, say, 6 spins 3 should be red and 3 should be black (ignoring green). If observed outcomes in the small sample differ from the 50:50 ratio, immediate reversal is expected. Thus, somebody observing 2 times red in 6 consecutive spins believes that black is “due” on the 3rd spin to restore the 50:50 ratio.
Now suppose such person is uncertain about the fairness of the roulette wheel. Upon observing an improbable event (6 times red in 6 spins, say), the person starts to doubt about the fairness of the roulette wheel because a long streak does not correspond to what he believes a random sequence should look like. The person then revises his model of the data generating process and starts to believe the event on streak is more likely. The upshot of the theory is that the same person may at first (when the streak is short) believe in reversion of the trend (the gambler’s fallacy) and later – when the streak is long – in continuation of the trend (the hot hand fallacy).

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Manning, Obama and U.S. Moral Leadership, by Glenn Greenwald:

On December 15, when I first reported the inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention, I did not assign any blame to -- or even mention -- Barack Obama. Although, as Commander-in-Chief, Obama was technically responsible for Manning's treatment, there was no evidence that he even knew about it, let alone planned it. But since then, the Manning controversy exploded into national prominence and Obama has explicitly defended the treatment, leaving no doubt that it directly reflects on who he is as a leader and a person.
For that reason, as The Guardian reports this morning, a letter signed by "more than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars" that "includes leading figures from all the top US law schools, as well as prominent names from other academic fields" -- featuring "Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America's foremost liberal authority on constitutional law"; who "taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign"; and "joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago" -- not only denounces Manning's detention but also the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner's personal responsibility for it:

It is truly embarrassing how Obama is allowing the military to treat Manning.  The entire "War on Terror" has been terrible for civil liberties, and the fact that the U.S. has engaged in torture is criminal.  People in leadership should be on trial.

Living an Objectivist Life

Alyssa Bereznak describes life with her Ayn Rand-obsessed father (h/t the Dish):

What is objectivism? If you'd asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father's home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." As a little kid I interpreted this to mean: Love yourself. Nowadays, Rand's bit is best summed up by the rapper Drake, who sang: "Imma do me."

Dad wasn't always a Rand zealot. He was raised in a Catholic family and went to church every week. After he and my mother got married in 1982, they shopped around for a church. He was looking for something to live by, but he couldn't find it in traditional organized religion.
Then he discovered objectivism. I don't know exactly why he sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it's based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer's thirst to always be right. It's not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.

I think this hits the nail on the head.  Overall, the philosophy is a justification for being selfish.  Rand doesn't just say that you have to look out for yourself first, she makes it a moral failing to be altruistic.  I have a hard time understanding how so many people who claim to be Christian can also claim to enjoy Rand's books.  She wages jihad against all organized religion to undermine altruism and solidify her own philosophy of the goodness of selfishness.  Maybe I've been brain washed by organized religion, but self-sacrifice for the benefit of others does strike me as virtuous.  The concept that so many self-described Christians can wrap the ideas of their church and the ideas of Rand together seems like serious mental gymnastics.  I think in the end they tie together their disdain for government, their faith in God and their belief in their own personal goodness.  This causes them to believe that if they didn't have to pay taxes, they would help out the less-fortunate through their church and cut out some government waste too.  I call shenanigans.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Tsunami That Struck Fukushima was 15 Meters High, at Bloomberg:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the tsunami generated by last month’s earthquake was as high as 15 meters at its crippled nuclear station, which has been leaking radiation since the surge knocked out backup power systems.
The utility provided its first assessment of the height of the tsunami since the March 11 quake, after criticism from the government and evacuees that it was slow in responding to the disaster. The base of the station is about 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.
“Most of the area around the reactor buildings and turbine housings was swamped,” the utility known as Tepco said in a statement late yesterday.
Almost one month on from the disaster, Tepco is still using emergency equipment to try to cool reactors damaged at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station north of Tokyo after mains electricity was knocked out. The company is trying to prevent further explosions after blasts damaged containment structures, releasing radiation into the air and sea.

15 meters is 49 feet high.  That makes for some very challenging engineering for the location of the backup power.  Engineers have another painful lesson to take into account for when doing design work in coastal seismically-active areas. 

On another note, Washington's Blog (h/t Ritholtz) blames the global elite for the repeated disasters at Fukushima, Deep Water Horizon, and the financial crisis.  His point is that the top 1% are too busy looting from society to notice that they are taking extremely dangerous gambles.  I think it might be a little bit of a reach, but he is right that nobody is willing to take the blame they deserve for these screwups.

Jon Stewart Takes Note of John Kasich

The Daily Show - Gov Hurts
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I have yet to figure out why these Republican governors came in to office knowing that serious sacrifices were going to need to be made, then swore off raising taxes, in many cases cut taxes (benefitting the wealthiest individuals and corporations), then shoved as many things as they could up the hindquarters of state and local workers, and now don't understand why they aren't popular. Maybe I'm just biased, but rewarding the best off in society while screwing everybody else doesn't seem like the best way to "share sacrifice." All of the Medicaid cuts by definition fall on the poor and the elderly. The vast majority of the tax breaks go to the extremely wealthy.

It just seems like Republicans go out of their way not only to screw the least fortunate and benefit the most fortunate, they go out of their way to do it without the least shred of decency, tact or class. They seem to revel in being assholes, and their supporters seem to show more respect for their leaders if they are bigger assholes.

It concerns me that the party which claims that the United States is a Christian Nation governs in the least Christian way possible. When President Obama nominated Justice Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, he was derided by Republicans for saying that he chose her because of her empathy for others. What characteristic is demonstrated more often by Jesus in the Gospels than empathy for the least powerful and influential people in society? If I have to pick the characters in the Gospel best represented by Republicans, it would have to be Jesus archenemies, the Pharisees.  Republicans govern as Christians only in Bizarro World.

Update: Thanks to the sister for bringing the video to my attention.

NFL Ownership

Matthew Yglesias:

Stephen Squibb’s N+1 piece on the NFL lockout sheds light on something I’ve wondered about from time to time. How come you don’t see more teams organized as co-ops the way the Green Bay Packers are? Conversely, how come you don’t see teams organized as regular firms with shares listed on the stock exchange? Apparently it’s against the rules in both cases:

It is this kind of public—a universally available and voluntary association—that the league outlawed in 1961, when it stipulated that “No corporation, association, partnership or other entity not operated for profit nor any charitable organization or entity not presently a member of the league shall be eligible for membership.” The new rules demanded that each team be owned by at least one person with a minimum controlling interest of 30 percent. As the value of each team has risen, so has the height of this barrier to entry, which has recently become so high as to trigger a kind of succession crisis in Pittsburgh. There the problem was that no individual Rooney child had enough millions to buy out any of the others in order to create the necessary 30 percent share. Acting quickly to preserve one of its prized aristocracies, the league declared some owners more equal than others, allowing the combined 32 percent stake of the two Rooney boys to count as that of one individual.