Puerto Rico's Democrat Governor Says Their Municipal Bond Debts Are "Not Payable"

weaselzippers

U.S. taxpayers to the rescue!

Via NY Times

Puerto Rico’s governor, saying he needs to pull the island out of a “death spiral,” has concluded that the commonwealth cannot pay its roughly $72 billion in debts, an admission that will probably have wide-reaching financial repercussions.

The governor, Alejandro García Padilla, and senior members of his staff said in an interview last week that they would probably seek significant concessions from as many as all of the island’s creditors, which could include deferring some debt payments for as long as five years or extending the timetable for repayment.

“The debt is not payable,” Mr. García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”

It is a startling admission from the governor of an island of 3.6 million people, which has piled on more municipal bond debt per capita than any American state.

A broad restructuring by Puerto Rico sets the stage for an unprecedented test of the United States municipal bond market, which cities and states rely on to pay for their most basic needs, like road construction and public hospitals.

That market has already been shaken by municipal bankruptcies in Detroit; Stockton, Calif.; and elsewhere, which undercut assumptions that local governments in the United States would always pay back their debt.

Keep reading

Thank You NYT and Dapandico.

1.3 Million Got Disability Payments For 'Mood Disorders' Including 33% of Beneficiaries In Puerto Rico.

Oh Noes!

Social Justice Sociologist Denounces "Bedtime Reading Privilege"

"But I’ve come to the conclusion that the West is unfairly advantaged by having so many sociologists, critical race theorists and social justice warriors. If we all deported them to poor countries, they could finally catch up to us in the field of social justice.

As much as it might pain us to lose these demented parasites respected academics, it’s the right thing to do. No longer will we enjoy our vast advantages in sociology and theories on gendered icebergs (yes it’s a thing). The rest of the world will now be able to benefit from having a declining economy and an academic environment that consists of crazy people denouncing others for thoughtcrimes."

Thank You Mr Greenfield.

Are you in Puerto Rico?

Would you like your own Mood Disorder Disability Check?

Psychologists In Puerto Rico.

Psychiatrists in Puerto Rico.

Is Disability The New Welfare?

Townhall has;
Is Disability The New Welfare?

• Jonah Goldberg 

The government in Britain recently did something interesting.

It asked everyone receiving an "incapacity benefit" -- a disability program slowly being phased out under new reforms -- to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients (878,000 people) didn't even bother and dropped out of the program rather than be examined. Of those tested, more than half (55 percent) were found fit for work, and a quarter were found fit for some work.

But that's Britain, where there's a long tradition of gaming the dole. Americans would never think of taking advantage of the taxpayers or misleading the government. Well, except for the couple dozen people who have pleaded guilty to scamming the Long Island Rail Road's federal disability system in a $1 billion fraud scheme. A billion bucks would pay for a lot of White House tours.

Though hardly isolated, the LIRR scandal is an obvious black-and-white case of criminality. The real problem resides in a grayer area.

In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of some kind, 0.65 percent of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64 were receiving Social Security disability insurance payments. Fifty years later, in a much healthier America, that number has grown nearly nine-fold to 5.6 percent.

In 1960, 134 Americans were working for every officially recognized disabled worker. Five decades later that ratio fell to roughly 16 to 1.

Some defenders of the status quo say these numbers can be explained by the entry of women into the U.S. workforce, the aging of baby boomers and the short-term spike in need that came with the recession.

No doubt those are significant factors. But not nearly so significant as to explain why the number of people on disability has been doubling every 15 years (while the average age of recipients has gone down) or why such a huge proportion of claim injuries can't be corroborated by a doctor.

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health notes in his recent book "A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic" that 29 percent of the 8.6 million Americans who received Social Security disability benefits at the end of 2011 cited injuries involving the "musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue." Fifteen percent claimed "mood disorders."

It's almost impossible, Eberstadt writes, "for a medical professional to disprove a patient's claim that he or she is suffering from sad feelings or back pain." And that's assuming a doctor wants to disprove the claim.

In an illuminating and predictably controversial expos for "This American Life," NPR's "Planet Money" team tried to figure out why, since 2009, nearly 250,000 people have been applying for disability every month (while we've averaged only 150,000 new jobs every month).

The answers fall on both sides of the gray middle.

One factor has to do with what correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt calls the "Vast Disability Industrial Complex." These are the sometimes shady, sometimes well-intentioned lawyers who fight to fatten the rolls of disability recipients. These lawyers get a cut of every winning claimant's "back pay." The more clients, the bigger the take. That's why they run ads on TV shouting, "Disabled? Get the money you deserve!"

Then there are the doctors. Joffe-Walt profiles one rural Alabama doctor who signs off on disabilities for pretty much anyone lacking a good education on the assumption their employment prospects are grim.

That points to the even bigger parts of the story. As the nature of the economy changes, disability programs are sometimes taking the place of welfare for those who feel locked out of the workforce -- and state governments are loving it. States pay for welfare, the feds pay for disabilities.

There are those who are quick to argue that this is all bogus, there's nothing amiss with the disability system that greater funding and a better economy won't fix. Maybe they're right. One way to find out would be to ask every recipient to get a thorough examination, just as they did in Britain. Maybe the results here in the United States would be interesting too.

Thank You Townhall and Mr Goldberg

One factor has to do with what correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt calls the "Vast Disability Industrial Complex."

Shell Companies Steal Millions In Medicare Fraud

San Francisco blew $200 Million in 1 year dispensing Opinions of Mystic, Dual Diagnosed Incurables, .....

under the watchful eye of a Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Francis G Lu, who actually believes that his Movie Reviews, and disappearing brick and mortar Hospitals non staffed by non-existent Psychiatric Psychiatrists, qualify him to tell the world, ..... that he's an Illuminati.

Contrast San Francisco's $200 Million epidemic of Disease Mongering with the State of Illinois carping that it couldn't Afford to Investigate 85% of the Complaints it got, about Hospitals, ...... because it could only scrape up, ..... even WITH matching Federal Funds, ..... just under a $Half Million.

State Rarely Investigates Hospital Complaints

These are the sometimes shady, sometimes well-intentioned lawyers who fight to fatten the rolls of disability recipients. 

RAMS: Cultural Crapulence In San Francisco

15% for Mood Disorders.

Read the Performance Audit Memo.

RAMS is NOT an Aberration. RAMS is a NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER for Disability peddlers.

Next up is what the SF Disability Machine Baits and Switches its consumers with After it's defrauded them out of their Civil Rights and into ingesting Brain and CNS/Whole Body damaging Pills.

San Francisco's DBT: COMMUNISM, SWALLOW IT!

Sometimes Shady Layers:

Dr FG Lu & The SF Mental Health Board June 13, 2007: Part III

And the Response so far from your Federal Government has Been?

UCSF Tops Public Institutions in NIH Biomedical Research Funds ...

Keep Throwing ever Increasing amounts of other people's money, which we Don't Have, into SF's Disability machine.

And this is likely to Remain un-addressed By the Obama Administration and every Other Agency tasked with addressing it Why?

The Electoral College: San Francisco's Guardian Angel

So, Is Mr Goldberg merely correct, . . . . or do you think it's actually a lot worse, . . . . and that our Industrial Strength 'Mental Health' SCAM is actually devouring our Nation?

1.3 Million Got Disability For 'Mood Disorders' - Including 33% of Beneficiaries In Puerto Rico

CNSnews has;
1.3 Million Got Disability For 'Mood Disorders' - Including 33% of Beneficiaries In Puerto Rico

By Terence P. Jeffrey

August 24, 2012

Subscribe to Terence P. Jeffrey's posts 

(CNSNews.com) - The Social Security Administration released its annual statistical report on federal disability insurance last month, revealing that at the end of 2011 there was a then-record of 8,575,544 workers collecting federal disability benefits and among them were 1,304,851 doing so because they suffered from “mood disorders.”

The incidence of “mood disorders” among disability beneficiaries was not proportionately distributed among the states and territories, according to the official SSA statistics. Some locations had much higher percentages of disability beneficiaries diagnosed with mood disorders than other locations.

In American Samoa, for example, only 3.1 percent of the workers collecting federal disability benefits had been diagnosed with a “mood disorder.” In Puerto Rico, by contrast, 33.3 percent of disability beneficiaries had a mood disorder.

Massachusetts led the 50 states for disabling mood disorders. In that state, 22.8 percent of disability beneficiaries had been diagnosed with a mood disorder. New Hampshire was second with 22.2 percent, and Rhode Island was third with 20.7 percent.

Among the states, North Dakota--with 9.2 percent--had the lowest percentage of disability beneficiaries diagnosed with a mood disorder. Louisiana was second from the bottom with 9.7 percent, and Montana was third from the bottom with 9.8 percent.

In each month since December 2011, SSA has reported, the overall number of Americans collecting disability has continued to rise. In August, according to SSA, a record 8,767,941 American workers collected disability. Also, in addition to the 8,767,941 workers collecting disability payments, there were 1,853,651 eligible children of disabled workers collecting additional benefits and 164,651 eligible spouses of disabled workers collecting benefits—bringing the total number of disability beneficiaries in August to 10,786,510.

Each year, SSA publishes a detailed statistical account of the people who received disability benefits in December of the previous year. This account includes a statistical breakdown of the “diagnoses” that qualified workers to take disability.

Through 2009, this statistical report included a general category called “mental disorders” that was disaggregated into only two sub-categories “retardation” and “other.”  In December 2009, according to the report for that year, there were 7,788,013 workers collecting disability. Of these, 358,737 were categorized as being disabled by “retardation” and another 2,220,390 were categorized as having an unspecified “other” mental disability.

That “other” mental disability category was the single largest category of disabled workers in the 2009 report. It accounted for 28.5 percent of all American workers taking disability payments from the federal government in December of that year. The next largest category was problems with the “musculoskeletal system and connective tissues.” In December 2009, there were 2,146,952 American workers collecting federal disability insurance for disabilities in this category. That equaled 27.6 percent of all workers taking disability.

With the 2010 statistical report on disability insurance, SSA started breaking out the number of workers collecting disability into a wider variety of specific “mental disorders.”

“Beginning with this 2010 edition,” said a note in the report, “tables and charts showing data by diagnostic group provide detail for mental disorders in these categories: autistic disorders, developmental disorders, childhood and adolescent disorders not elsewhere classified, intellectual disability, mood disorders, organic mental disorders, schizophrenic and other psychotic disorders, and all other mental disorders.”

Among the various mental disorders that caused people to go on disability, the 2010 report revealed, the most populated category was called “mood disorders.” In December 2010, according to the report, there were 8,203,951 American workers collecting disability and 1,257,636 were doing so for a “mood disorder.” That equaled 15.3 percent of all workers collecting disability.

In December 2011, according to the 2011 report released last month, 8,575,544 American workers were collecting federal disability insurance benefits. Of these, 1,304,851 were doing so because of a mood disorder—up from the 1,257,636 who had been collecting disability because of a mood disorder the year before.

In December 2011, 15.2 percent of all workers collecting disability nationwide were collecting because of a mood disorder--and when their eligible children and spouses were included, the percentage of disability beneficiaries collecting because of a worker who had been diagnosed with a mood disorder was 14.2 percent.

That made “mood disorder” the diagnostic cause for the second largest category of disability beneficiaries. The largest single cause was problems related to a worker’s “musculoskeletal system and connective tissue.”  In December 2011, there were 2,488,374 million American workers collecting disability for this kind of problem—equaling 29.0 percent of all disability beneficiaries.

According to the SSA report, 11.2 percent of men collecting disability were doing so for a mood disorder and 19.7 percent of the women collecting disability were doing so for a mood disorder.

The Social Security Administration website describes how a worker qualifies for disability because of a mood disorder—which it divides into “affective” and an “anxiety-related” disorders.

For example, one way a potential disability beneficiary can qualify with a mood disorder includes presenting medical documentation of “persistence, either continuous of intermittent, of at least four of the following symptoms: Anhedonia or pervasive loss of interest in almost all activities; or Appetite disturbance with change in weight; or Sleep disturbance; or Psychomotor agitation or retardation; or Decreased energy; or Feelings of guilt or worthlessness; or Difficulty concentrating or thinking; or Thoughts of suicide; or Hallucinations, delusions, or paranoid thinking.”

To see SSA’s full explanation of how a person qualifies for disability benefits with a mental disorder click here.

Thank You CNS and Mr Jeffrey

Mood Disorders, ...... ,

J&J PhRMA Parented ObamaCare: The Administrative State v Property Rights