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Over the last months, Sparrow Chat has commented a number of times on the appalling state of the US Social Security Administration.^[1] Increasingly heavy workloads on the shoulders of fewer and fewer employees has led to unacceptable delays in payments to disabled claimants, ridiculous waiting times at field offices, and a general submersion into gross inefficiency at all levels.

Now, it seems the monstrosity that is the SSA may be finally waking up to the rot in its system, though whether that will result in any improvement is a matter for conjecture.

Below, is an excerpt from the minutes of a 17th January, 2008 conference call of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations Executive Committee. NCSSMA is an organization of Social Security management personnel:

“The state of field offices was a hot topic of discussion. Conference call participants weighed in with comments about the impact our resource shortage is having on the Field Offices and the Teleservice Centers [TSC]. Field/TSC employee morale is at an all time low and the number of employees retiring is growing. Employees do not feel supported by the agency, and so are more prone to retire as soon as they can. Many have over 30 years of service but are at the end of their ropes because there is no hope in sight. …Some of the regions expressed the concern that new hires seem to be targeted for urban offices with little done for suburban or rural offices. New managers are overwhelmed with the decreased staff and increased workloads. Managers are increasingly involved in processing direct service workloads and tabling traditional management activities as they have no other way to provide the public service. Rising expectations from area, regional and national components to clear work are unrelenting, with new reports, listings and additional workloads being piled on field office employees. The pain needs to be felt by other components including ADO [Area Director’s Offices] and regional employees. There is a sense of doom – Field Offices are being left to wither without any assistance. …With the usual dedication, employees have been very creative in their approaches to handling staffing losses with all pitching in across the board and doing the best they can. Maybe it is time that we quit trying to prove that we can do the same amount of work, or even more, with fewer resources. The despondency and anxiety in the field and TSCs continue to grow, but our staffing losses do not seem to concern Central Office.”
[my bold]

Admittedly, the NCSSMA is only an SSA management association, but if discontent is being loudly voiced at this level, there is hope of pressure on those higher up the ladder to make improvements in service and staffing more of a priority.

Unless, of course, the rundown of Social Security over the last five-ten years has been a deliberate political ploy, designed to provide an excuse to the nation that the only sure way to fix it – is to privatize it.

Should that turn out to be the case, and privatization of Social Security is allowed to proceed, it will prove a disaster for those most in need of its help; the disabled, the sick, and the elderly.

^{[1] Sparrow Chat posts on the state of the SSA can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.}

Filed under: Social Security

I first came upon what you are about to see on a blog I read regularly. The opening lines of the post read:

“This is the most heartbreaking video I have seen in a long, long time. I cried and cried.”

The lady who writes this blog isn’t prone to crying without very good reason, but even so, I doubted it would have a similar effect on me.

I was sadly wrong.

The situation described in this video did not come about in the last eight years. The blame for it goes back much further than that. Yet, George W Bush is at least as much to blame as all the presidents before him; all the senators and members of Congress who betrayed their own people so shamefully by allowing this situation to arise, and fester, and grow like a great, suppurating, carcinoma in the body of a once-proud nation.

This video makes no political statement, yet of itself it is a condemnation of all who lead, or have ever led this country – both Democrat and Republican alike.

Watch and remember – then, be sure to remember again this coming November, before you cast your vote for the next president of these dis-United States.

Unless, of course, you’re one of those Americans who just doesn’t care.

^{My thanks to “WiseWebWoman” for the link to this video.}

Filed under: Real US heroes

We have to face facts; we’re the has-beens. They label us the “baby boomers’ – a reference I find utterly insulting – and prepare to pension us off with as little retirement money as they can get away with. Considering we’ve all paid enormous amounts into the system for sixty-odd years, I find that equally disgusting.

George W Bush and his predecessors have been robbing the Social Security fund for years – “borrowing”, they call it. If any of us had done that we’d have been banged up, and the key chucked in the nearest river.

But then, they have different laws for ordinary people.

Frankly, I think our generation stinks. We’ve looted the planet, stolen from each other on an international scale, filled our lives with material pleasures, polluted the atmosphere, and sold ourselves off to a God far more important – even to the preachers, who should know better – than the one most of us purport to offer allegiance to.

We sold our souls to MONEY.

Judas Iscariot did that. He set us all a fine example. We followed it, unswervingly.

We were the products of our fathers returning from the battlefields; the first thing they did on arriving home. Some say the second thing they did was take off their boots, but knowing my mother she’d never have allowed dirty boots between the sheets, so I’m quite sure that wasn’t the case in our house.

Since that time we’ve managed to virtually destroy the planet.

Our generation got its kicks out of fast cars and cold wars. Television first introduced us to the entertainment value of violent conflict. It wasn’t exactly interactive, but unlike our fathers, we didn’t have to leave our living rooms to experience it.

We marveled at the God of Finance that took us to the moon, then raised the glorious specter of expanding military might into pristine space; the wonder of the nuclear age that gave us bountiful energy, Hiroshima, Chernobyl……and Hell, we’ll bury the waste for our kid’s kids to worry about.

Now, we’re the has-beens, the ‘baby-boomers’ about to break the social security bank. It’s just something else our kids will have to fix.

So, get on with it, you younger generation. If you pull together you may just succeed where we failed.

And, boy, did we fail – en masse!

Choose a leader from your own generation. Right now, there’s only one. Don’t go for Hillary Clinton, she’s a ‘baby-boomer’ too. For God’s sake forget John McCain, he’s old enough to be grandfather to all of you.

You know that old adage: ‘the older you get the wiser you get’? Take a look at us and realize how wrong it is.

You need young leaders, not old has-beens. Barack Obama is your only choice. He can lead you to glory. Maybe, just maybe, with your help he can save the world.

On the other hand, he may let you down. He may sell you down the river as swiftly as the ‘baby-boomer’ politicians did to us. He may fall in with the corporates and poison this planet till it’s as hot, foetid, and uninhabitable as Venus.

But, if he does fail you, if he sells you down the river, you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

It’ll be the one thing you won’t be able to fault us for.

Filed under: Cocked it up