Social Security disability on verge of insolvency 0
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.
Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.
The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants ? many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved ? and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years.
New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.
Much of the focus in Washington has been on fixing Social Security’s retirement system. Proposals range from raising the retirement age to means-testing benefits for wealthy retirees. But the disability system is in much worse shape and its problems defy easy solutions.
The trustees who oversee Social Security are urging Congress to shore up the disability system by reallocating money from the retirement program, just as lawmakers did in 1994. That, however, would provide only short-term relief at the expense of weakening the retirement program.
Claims for disability benefits typically increase in a bad economy because many disabled people get laid off and can’t find a new job. This year, about 3.3 million people are expected to apply for federal disability benefits. That’s 700,000 more than in 2008 and 1 million more than a decade ago.
“It’s primarily economic desperation,” Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said in an interview. “People on the margins who get bad news in terms of a layoff and have no other place to go and they take a shot at disability,”
Associated Press
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UN torture official accuses US of rule violations 0
AP
Bradley Manning, left. Right: Juan Mendez.
In response to the growing controversy over the inhumane detention conditions of Bradley Manning, the U.N.’s top official on torture, Juan Mendez, announced last December that his office would formally investigate whether those conditions amounted to torture.? Since then, the?Obama administration has steadfastly rejected Mendez’s repeated requests to interview Manning in private: something even Bush officials allowed for?”high-level” Guantanamo detainees accused of being top Al Qaeda operatives?(see p. 3).? Now, Mendez is publicly accusing the?Obama administration of violating U.N. rules by refusing him private access to Manning:
The United Nations’ torture investigator on Tuesday accused the United States of violating U.N. rules by refusing him unfettered access to the Army private accused of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Juan Mendez, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for torture, said he can’t do his job unless he has unmonitored access to detainees. He said the U.S. military’s insistence on monitoring conversations with Bradley Manning “violates long-standing rules” the U.N. follows for visits to inmates. . .
Mendez said the U.S. government assured him Manning is better treated now than he was in Quantico, but the government must allow the U.N. investigator to check that for himself.
Mendez said he needs to assess whether the conditions Manning experienced amounted to “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” while at Quantico.
“For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr. Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid,” Mendez said.
During the Bush years, the pronouncements of the?U.N.’s rapporteur for torture were widely hailed in progressive circles, but caring about what the?U.N. thinks — like concerns over detainee abuse — is so very 2006.? After all, look over there:?it’s Michele Bachmann [speaking of things that are very 2006, Human Rights Watch (remember them?) has issued a report detailing that the Obama administration is in flagrant breach of its treaty obligations (remember those?)?by continuing to shield Bush torture crimes from all forms of accountability]. ?As for the?Obama administration’s strange refusal to allow a private U.N. interview with?Manning — something even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was allowed by the?Bush Pentagon in 2006 with the ICRC?– hasn’t the Government taught us that you have nothing to hide if you’ve done nothing wrong?
*?*?*?*?*?
In response to the front-page stories earlier this week in both The Washington Post and The?New York Times reporting that President Obama was advocating cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, some insisted that these stories should not be believed because they relied upon (multiple)?anonymous sources.??Yesterday, Obama himself made as plain as he could that these stories were entirely accurate, as he said in his Press Conference:
And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors, but make sure those programs were there for not just this generation but for the next generation. . . . I mean, it?s not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing. And if you?re a progressive who cares about the integrity of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, and believes that it is part of what makes our country great that we look after our seniors and we look after the most vulnerable, then we have an obligation to make sure that we make those changes that are required to make it sustainable over the long term. . . . With respect to Social Security, as I indicated earlier, making changes to these programs is so difficult that this may be an opportunity for us to go ahead and do something smart that strengthens Social Security and gives not just this generation but future generations the opportunity to say this thing is going to be in there for the long haul.
For all but the most hardened and irrational apologists, that should settle this matter permanently:?Obama is a full-scale advocate for cutting the crown jewels of the New Deal.? Yesterday, The?Huffington Post reported — based on “five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations — including both Republicans and Democrats” — that Obama had also offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. ?When?Joe Lieberman proposed something similar a short time ago, he was viciously denounced in Democratic circles as “needlessly cruel,” among other things; indeed, when?Lieberman merely blocked a lowering of the Medicare eligibility age during the health care debate, he was denounced with equal vigor.? Will there be any similar resistance from those circles now that it is Barack Obama doing this??
Source: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2011/07/12/manning/index.html
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U.N. votes for South Sudan peacekeeping force (Reuters) 0
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) ? The U.N. Security Council voted on Friday to establish a force of up to 7,000 peacekeepers for poor, conflict-ravaged but oil-producing South Sudan, which became independent after a referendum.
The unanimous action occurred six years after a 2005 peace deal ended years of war in Sudan, Africa’s largest nation. But the vote also came amid growing fears about conflict in volatile border regions.
The new mission, called UNMISS, calls for up to 7,000 U.N. peacekeepers and an additional 900 civilian police for South Sudan.
“This is a strong signal of support to the new South Sudan,” Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig told reporters.
Wittig, who is U.N. Security Council president for July, said the significant size of the new mission was a “substantial contribution to the security challenges facing South Sudan.”
But Khartoum has made clear it is against a continuing U.N. peacekeeping presence. That has raised concerns about what will happen to places such as northern border state South Kordofan — where the army is fighting armed groups allied to the south — when the U.N.’s UNMIS mandate ends Saturday.
The UNMIS mission, which monitors compliance with the 2005 north-south peace deal, only had a mandate to run until the south’s secession. South Sudan split away from the north on July 9 to create Africa’s newest nation.
Security Council members are working on a draft resolution to wind down UNMIS, a U.N. diplomat said late on Friday.
The draft resolution calls for UNMIS to make the necessary arrangements to withdraw but also calls for U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to consult with the parties and the African Union on options for U.N. support for South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the diplomat said.
The draft resolution also says that it is willing to continue U.N. operations with the consent of the parties until new security arrangements are in place, the diplomat said.
Some delegations are keen to adopt the resolution as soon as possible, potentially over the weekend, the diplomat said.
Ban said a week ago that unless decided otherwise, U.N. peacekeepers will have to cease operations in the Southern Kordofan region as of July 9.
The “liquidation” of UNMIS will start Sunday, U.N.’s special envoy to Sudan, Haile Menkerios, said on Thursday.
About 3,000 peacekeepers will start packing up their duffel bags in preparation to depart, tents will be taken down and security equipment will be collected.
“That’s a huge logistical task,” said Michel Bonnardeaux, the spokesman for U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations.
Most of those troops are in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei, while a few are in Khartoum, Bonnardeaux said.
Fighting broke out between the northern military and fighters associated with the south’s dominant political force, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), in Southern Kordofan on June 5, stoking tensions ahead of the split.
Members of the north’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the northern branch of the SPLM agreed in late June to take steps regarding security arrangements there.
Ahead of the split, there were calls to keep a U.N. peacekeeping presence in volatile areas in order to protect civilians.
“I have urged the Government of Sudan for technical and practical reasons for an extension of the mandate of the United Nations in Sudan, at least until the situation (in Southern Kordofan) calms down. We can not afford to have any gaps,” Ban told journalists at Sudan’s foreign ministry in Khartoum.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in a speech Thursday that the U.S. was “extremely concerned by the government’s decision to compel the departure of the U.N. mission in Sudan from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states and elsewhere in the North.”
NEW MISSION
Leading the helm of South Sudan’s UNMISS is Norwegian diplomat Hilde Johnson, who was most recently deputy director of the U.N. children’s foundation UNICEF and is also author of a new book on Sudan, the U.N. announced on Friday.
The mandate to establish peacekeeping forces in South Sudan calls for reviews after three and six months to see whether conditions on the ground allow for a reduction of peacekeepers to 6,000.
A number of aid agencies have called on the United Nations to increase the number of troops to be deployed to South Sudan. Oxfam has argued that the country has little capacity to protect its own population despite its commitment to do so.
However, several countries have been challenging the U.N. Secretariat to produce evidence that as many as 7,000 troops are still needed, a Western diplomat said on Wednesday.
About 7,000 troops are already in South Sudan but working under the UNMIS mandate.
The U.N. has its biggest peacekeeping mandate in Darfur where, together with the African Union, it has a mandate for some 20,000 troops.
It is also deploying 4,200 Ethiopian troops in Abyei for a six-month period under a mission called UNISFA.
(Editing by Vicki Allen and Paul Simao)
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