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CBS News is running a two-part investigative story on the short-comings of the Social Security Administration, highlighting the ridiculous length of time disability claimants have to wait before receiving benefits, and the hardships they’re forced to endure in the interim.

It goes out tonight (Monday) on the 5.30 (Central) broadcast, with the second part on Tuesday night.

Social Security employees have been advised of the broadcasts in this internal email from SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue:

Commissioner Broadcast
Monday, January 14, 2008 12:36 PM
COMMISSIONER’S BROADCAST–01/14/08

A Message To All SSA And DDS employees

Disability Story

I wanted all of you to know that the CBS Evening News is doing a two-part investigative series on the disability backlog tonight and tomorrow night.

Part of what CBS will report is precisely what I told Congress in May of last year. I testified, “The length of time many people wait for their final disability decision is unacceptable. Further I said, “For some, the long wait for their day in court leads to homelessness and the loss of family and friends. Sadly, people have died waiting for a hearing.”

It appears from their promotional materials that the stories will focus heavily on the problems — as you might expect from an investigative report. What is less clear is whether they will report on the solutions we have already started implementing.

Let me assure you we did our best to convey to CBS that we are attacking the problems with urgency and that we have made real progress in the past year despite declining resources and increasing demands. As I told CBS, we have dedicated employees who are doing their best to address these problems.

* Keep New:
* Posted on: Mon, Jan 14 2008 5:03 AM
* Updated: Mon, Jan 14

Isn’t it amazing how they’ve always “just started to implement solutions” whenever bad publicity comes the way of government departments?

Having some knowledge of the dreadful working conditions presently being experienced by the grass roots SSA workers, forced to work long, stressful, hours and still unable to cope with the ever-increasing workload and diminishing staff numbers,^[1] I can state categorically that responsibility for this sad state of affairs falls directly on the shoulders of senior management and the US Congress, who continue to show an utter lack of concern for the welfare of those so much less fortunate than they are, and whom they are legally charged with protecting.

Yet another disgrace that passes largely unnoticed in this compassionate and democratic nation.

^{[1] – Sparrow Chat, 8th January, 2008, ‘A Call For Change’}

Update: If you missed Part 1 on Monday – Click here.

Or, HERE for Part Two.

Filed under: Right to survive

Regular readers of Sparrow Chat will be aware of my objections to ethanol as a substitute for oil-based gasoline. I’ve expressed concern on numerous occasions that ethanol is not a suitably “green” alternative, merely a convenient way for high profits to be made and a means of by-passing the importation of crude oil.^[1]

George W Bush recently described plant-ethanol production to replace gasoline as a “win-win” situation; a ‘green” fuel for vehicles with little engine modification required (just what the motor manufacturers ordered), huge profits for the producers and processors (the farmers who grow it, and the multi-national companies that process it) and the carbon-based gases emitted from the engines that use it are only what the plants who made it absorbed in the first place.

So what, you may ask, is the problem?

Sustainability is the problem. As a species we use so much of the stuff there’s insufficient room to grow food for ourselves and our vehicles. Even if, as politicians have promised (ha!) ethanol can be produced from grasses rather than corn or palm oil, the demand for these high profit crops will ensure vast areas of rainforest are stripped to grow the stuff.

It’s happening already. In Indonesia, huge swathes of rainforest are being cleared to produce palm oil. In Tanzania, the UK-based Sun Biofuel Plc^[2] are having over 11,000 villagers evicted for jatropha biodiesel.^[3]

Today, the European Union has finally admitted they were wrong to push ethanol as a viable alternative to gasoline.

A BBC report^[4] states:

“Europe’s environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe’s road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.” [my bold]

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the BBC:

“We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully…….we have to have criteria for sustainability, including social and environmental issues, because there are some benefits from biofuels.” [my bold]

Quite how the whole of the European Commission failed to notice that the environmental and social problems associated with biofuel production were “…..bigger than we thought they were…..” is difficult to fathom, given the amount of scientific evidence available to confirm them.

If Sparrow Chat was able to make such an assessment nearly a year ago, it seems inconceivable ‘expert’ politicians weren’t aware of it.

Of course, the truth is they were well aware, but pressure from the corporate masters and a greed for profit caused political blindness, until the situation became so desperate they could no longer justify ignoring it.

In the United States, no such admission has been forthcoming.

Here, corporate pressure on government, and a president ignorant of all but his own ego, will likely prevent any action to stop this systematic rape of the planet and its inhabitants (a crime likely to prove equal to, if not eventually dwarf, that perpetrated in Sudan over the last five years) making it unlikely the disastrous expansion of agro-fuel production will be curtailed during the office of George W Bush.

While the EU is to be cautiously applauded for finally submitting to humanity and common sense over this issue, so long as governments are bought and paid for by our Corporate Monarchs, the slogan, “Profit Before Planet” will continue to resound throughout the corridors or power.

^{[1] – Sparrow Chat May 3rd, 2007}

^{[2] – Sun Biofuels plc (Tanzania)}

^{[3] – BioFuelWatch.org.uk}

^{[4] – BBC News ‘EU Rethinks Biofuels Guidelines’}

Filed under: Planet Before Profit

“Thousands of elderly and disabled refugees who have found safety in the United States in recent years may soon find out just how cold and equivocal America’s welcome can be. These vulnerable newcomers are subject to a federal law that cuts off their disability benefits if they do not become citizens within seven years.

The refugees fled war and persecution in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Somalia, and they bear the scars — many have lost limbs or their eyesight. They have built new lives here, with government help, including essential Supplemental Security Income benefits that will be withdrawn if they don’t get their citizenship papers.

While many have done so, thousands have found it impossible to meet the deadline. Some are old and infirm and have not yet been able to pass the language and civics test. Many others are caught in a bureaucratic trap: the notoriously hapless citizenship agency, overwhelmed by security paperwork since 9/11, has not finished their background checks in time.

The Social Security Administration estimates that more than 21,000 immigrants since 2003 have been cut off from disability checks for missing the seven-year deadline, and that about 35,000 more will be pushed off that cliff in the next five years unless something is done.

If you wonder who could possibly object to helping this small, fragile population, the answer is almost nobody. A bill to extend the limit to nine years passed the House last July by voice vote, with no objections, and it was to be offered for unanimous consent in the Senate. That is until Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, exercised his right to place a “hold” on the bill, sending it into limbo, where it remains.

What is Mr. DeMint’s problem? Is it hostility to immigrants or anything that smells like government assistance, even for the poor and disabled? He won’t say. Congress and the White House must insist on an explanation and press Mr. DeMint to lift his hold. Vulnerable people who have found refuge here must not be forced further into poverty because of a palsied bureaucracy’s inflexible deadlines — or one senator’s obstructionism.”

^{New York Times}

Senator DeMint’s problem is that he is ranked No 1, as the most conservative senator in the Republican party. In fact, he makes Rick Santorum look almost Democrat Blue by comparison:

Apart from stymieing this particular bill, in April 2007 Senator DeMint lodged a similar objection to a bipartisan bill to aid Hurricane Katrina and Federal Flood victims. Under Senate rules, DeMint’s objection was sufficient to shelve that legislation also.

It would appear that true American conservatism rules out any idea of helping those less well off than oneself.

But then, we knew that already, didn’t we?

Filed under: Cold as a DeMint