In his coverage of the Department of Labor’s weekly report on unemployment claims this morning, the Associated Press’s Christopher Rugaber, after noting how initial claims filed by Communications Workers of America members who are on strike against Verizon (more on that later) inflated this week’s and last week’s results, wrote that “excluding the work stoppage, layoffs appear to be stabilizing. That should help ease fears that the economy is on the verge of a recession.”

The following chart, which excludes those workers’ claims during the past two weeks, doesn’t exactly give wholehearted support to Rugaber’s key contentions:

Unless Chris’s crystal ball is better than mine, a 10,000-claim, one-week jump is not a particularly strong indicator of “stabilizing,” let alone a justification for contending that the news should ease recession fears — and this is before the current week gets revised. In 23 out of the past 24 weeks, the initially reported claims number has been revised upward. Including the one week where there was no change, the subsequent-week revision has averaged over 4,000 claims.

Now let’s look at those CWA/Verizon initial claims. Here’s what Rugaber wrote about them:

… last week’s non-seasonally adjusted total included about 8,500 of those employees, the department said. About 12,500 striking workers filed claims two weeks ago.

About 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike Aug. 7. Unions representing the workers ended the strike earlier this week.

Typically, workers who walk off the job aren’t eligible for benefits. But states have specific rules governing labor disputes.

… Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Inc., calculated that without the strike, applications would have dipped to 397,000 two weeks ago and risen to 407,000 last week. (The official all-inclusive totals are 412,000 and 417,000, respectively — Ed.)

It turns out (HT to emailer Bill Sloat) that only one state allows striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, something I would think that those among Rugaber’s readers who probably figured out on their own that less than half of those striking were collecting benefits would liked to have known (bold is mine):

Why Verizon Strikers Filed For Jobless Benefits

U.S. workers are usually denied jobless benefits when they go on strike. After all, they walked off the job.

Except in New York. The state is the only one in the U.S. that in some cases allows striking workers to receive unemployment benefits, according to a union official.

Apparently, thousands of workers at Verizon Communications (VZ) are trying to take advantage of the rare law. During a two-week strike that ended Tuesday, about 21,000 union members filed applications for unemployment compensation, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

Those workers might be eligible for the $405 maximum weekly benefit New York provides. The state labor office was unable to immediately say who is eligible and under what circumstances.

Interesting — and outrageous. Go on strike in New York, get a check. Only 16,000 of the 21,000 mentioned live in New York; the other 5,000 filed in other states, and will presumably have their claims denied. Assuming seemingly safely that the large majority of the 16,000 workers living in New York were eligible and entitled to collect the $405 maximum benefit, the weekly cost to the state before workers agreed a few days ago to come back as negotiations continue was about $6 million.

If Empire State Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo was really serious about getting the state’s house in order, he’d put a stop to striker eligibility for unemployment benefits. I’d love to be surprised, but I’ll bet it’s not even on his radar.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I reacted to Karl Denninger’s inexplicable rips at Steve Jobs at this comment at another post this morning.

My summary there: “… to deny Jobs his rightful place in the business pantheon is crazy. Yes, he is/was an annoying jerk in many ways. No, he’s not Einstein, but he is/was one of the most imaginative, innovative, market-savvy guys we’ve ever seen, or ever will see.”

I would also add that Jobs probably got breaks he didn’t deserve from the SEC several years ago. (Update, 8 p.m.: Commenter Greg also reminded me that Jobs in his later years engaged in uncalled-for censorship at Apple’s iTunes and App stores; hopefully, the company will abandon these efforts, but I’m not optimistic. I’ve long thought that for all his brilliance, a guy like Jobs with real political power would be a very dangerous man indeed.)

People who live in Greater Cincinnati may remember a parody campaign on a local FM station many years ago. It “advertised” mythical products and services, like the Negative-Calorie Cookie; McMaisonette (a fast-food version of a local 5-star restaurant); and the “Encephalographic Printout Device,” which would print out your thoughts while you slept so as not to lose brilliant overnight insights. The tag line of the fictitious firm, Brute Force Cybernetics (BFC), meant to be a poke at capitalism in general, was that it was “the company that creates a need, and then fills it.”

At National Review, the American Enterprise Institute’s Nick Schulz understands how BFC’s sarcasm, though genuinely humorous and unfortunately descriptive of the mindset of many who incorrectly see themselves as entrepreneurs, was off the mark in regards to Jobs. In the information and services age, truly great entrepreneurs like Jobs recognize a need or want (even if the public doesn’t yet recognize it), and figure out how to meet it:

Jobs is a great entrepreneur for another reason. Lots of ninnies can give customers products they want. Jobs gave people products they didn’t know they wanted, and then made those products indispensable to their lives.

I didn’t know I needed the ability to read the Wall Street Journal and The Corner on a handsome handheld device at my breakfast table, on the Metro, on the Acela, or in any Starbucks I entered. But Steve Jobs did. I didn’t know I wanted to mix and match my music collection on a computer and take it with me wherever I went, but Steve Jobs did. I didn’t know I wanted a portable multimedia platform that would permit me and my kids to hurl angry birds out of a slingshot at thieving pigs. But Steve Jobs did.

All those successes were made possible by failure after failure after failure and the lessons learned from those failures.

Examples of failure Schulz cited include the pre-floppy disk Apple I and Apple II; the “Lisa,” the pre-Mac GUI computer which had a 3.5″ drive from which one could not manually eject an inserted disk; and Jobs’s attempt at his own company, NeXT Computer, “which was a big nothing-burger of a company.” He didn’t mention a couple of other biggies: the MessagePad and the Newton (think of very primitive PalmPilots).

Schulz also imparts an important and much larger lesson (bolds are mine):

There’s a moral here for a Washington culture that fears failure too much. In today’s Washington, large banks aren’t permitted to fail; nor are large auto firms. Next up will be too-big-to-fail hospital systems. Steve Jobs is a reminder that failure is a good and necessary thing. And that sometimes the greatest glories are born of catastrophe.

I would rephrase Schulz’s contention to read that Washington fears officially recognizing and carrying through with the consequences of what everyone else clearly sees as failure.

Robert X. Cringely, who probably correctly pegs Jobs as “the greatest CEO of our time” (Jobs indeed may have created more wealth in the form of shareholder value than any CEO in history) has a great write-up at InfoWorld. Read the whole thing, and thank your lucky stars that Jobs didn’t listen to any of Cringely “don’t do it” suggestions.

From the Department of Labor:

Special Factor: As a result of a labor dispute between Communications Workers of America and Verizon Communications, at least 12,500 initial claims were filed in the week ending 8/13/2011 and at least 8,500 initial claims were filed in the week ending 8/20/2011.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending August 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 417,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 412,000. The 4-week moving average was 407,500, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 403,500.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 341,436 in the week ending August 20, a decrease of 4,536 from the previous week. There were 384,955 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

Without the Verizon strikers’ claims, before the seemingly inevitable subsequent upward revision to this week, after applying the respective seasonal adjustment factors, and assuming the “at least” numbers above don’t go much higher, claims would have been about 397,000 last week and 407,000 this week. So we’re still basically stuck at 400,000, and maybe heading the wrong way. (10:40 a.m. Note: This corrects my estimates of 402,000 for both weeks as originally posted; that’ll teach me to do calcs before the coffee kicks in.)

I’m in the camp that doesn’t understand why workers on strike are allowed to file for unemployment compensation, which is meant for people who lost their jobs and can’t find work, not those who won’t work. To individual workers who argue that they don’t have control over that, my response is: A. You’re the one who won’t cross the picket line; B. You’re the one who decided to leave your ability to earn an income in the hands of someone else; and C. Did you actually vote for or against the strike, or does your union limit you to an “authorization” vote?

Anyway, here’s the updated “stuck above 400,000″ graph:

___________________________________________

UPDATE: Expectations were 405K (ForexPros), 405K (Bloomberg), and … 405K (Reuters).

UPDATE: From Dow Jones, we learn that apparently New York is the state where you can be on strike and get unemployment benefits (HT to Bill Sloat in an email) –

Why Verizon Strikers Filed For Jobless Benefits

U.S. workers are usually denied jobless benefits when they go on strike. After all, they walked off the job.

Except in New York. The state is the only one in the U.S. that in some cases allows striking workers to receive unemployment benefits, according to a union official.

Apparently, thousands of workers at Verizon Communications (VZ) are trying to take advantage of the rare law. During a two-week strike that ended Tuesday, about 21,000 union members filed applications for unemployment compensation, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

From Fredericksburg, VA:

Aug 25, 2011 / 05:54 am

The pro-life advocacy group 40 Days for Life has announced the launch of its biggest campaign ever this fall, with over 300 locations worldwide participating in the event.

The growth has “been a joy to see and I think it shows that people want to respond to the crisis of abortion,” director Shawn Carney told CNA.

The Sept. 28 through Nov. 6 campaign – which includes fasting and peaceful prayer outside of local abortion facilities – will take place in 48 U.S. states, 7 Canadian provinces, Australia, England, Spain and, for the first time, Germany and Argentina.

“Forty Days for Life is nothing but an invitation – it’s built on the basics,” Carney said. “It’s prayer, it’s showing up at these places where the babies are lost and it’s fasting.”

The 300 locations where the campaign will be held include over 70 new sites, he added.

The initiative began in 2004 and consisted of Carney and his wife and friends in Bryan, Texas. It soon grew to such an extent that the group launched nationally in the fall of 2007 with 89 locations across the U.S.

Over the last four years more than 400,000 have joined to pray and fast for an end to abortion and over 13,000 church congregations have participated in 40 Days for Life campaigns. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Some of this has been rattling around the tubes for a day or so, and a tipster told me it was on a Fox News program today, though I can’t find it at the moment. So I’ll take a shot at winging it.

As is the case with just about everything in life, there has been an attempt to blame yesterday’s earth-shaking East Coast disruption on somebody. Early reports indicated that the earthquake’s fault line ran deep under the White House, indicating that it might all be Obama’s Fault.

Paul Krugman argued that this couldn’t be, because in his view Obama has never done enough to shake up or stimulate anything noticeable. He suggested looking under the Capitol, arguing that it must be Congress’s Fault, particularly in the Republican House, as nobody had detected any fault during the previous four years of Democratic Party control there.

Further investigation revealed that the fault line extended all the way to New York City. “Aha!” they said in Washington, in a sentiment strongly echoed by former Ohio governor Ted Strickland. “It has to be Wall Street’s Fault.”

But many in Washington quickly realized that there was no real way to prove how it all began, and that we would all be better off agreeing that it was really Nobody’s Fault. It just sort of happened, just like the figurative “Coming Economic Earthquake” which will be visiting us shortly, and which the late Larry Burkett predicted so many years ago.

But that left the Obama administration, Democrats in Congress, and the Democratic National Committee completely dissatisfied. They insisted that, like everything else which has happened in the past 10-1/2 years, the earthquake’s onset simply had to be Bush’s Fault.

An Investors Business Daily editorial makes the case that the Obama administration has people on board who are every bit as grisly as those who carry out China’s one-child policy:

The vice president gives a thumbs up to Beijing’s policy of sustainable growth through forced population control. This is no gaffe. The White House endorses this policy. Just ask the president’s science adviser.

… Biden’s remarks at Sichuan University in China clearly embrace the progressive belief that people are a plague on the Earth — not its greatest resource.

… In a previous book, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” co-authored with Thomas Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, (the president’s top science adviser John) Holdren writes that large families “contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children” and “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility.”

On page 837, he writes, it has “been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

_______________________________________________

Dan Bloom writes in the Taipei Times that it’s “High time for China to tear down those gates.” He also included his column in a BizzyBlog comment overnight, which means readers will be able to find it here for future reference if it goes away at the main link.

Read the whole thing, in either place.

______________________________________________

Commenter dscott alerted me to this asserion (HT Hot Air) by in all likelihood, a hoaxster posing as (debased) Nobel Prize economics winner Paul Krugman: “… but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.”

Allah at Hot Air referred to a September 14, 2001 column actually written by Krugman to show similar “reasoning.”

But there’s something else in that  2001 column’s second paragraph which is mind-boggling, namely this sentence:

Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could even do some economic good.

There it is. The country’s leading advocate of unrestrained Keynesianism admits that the predominantly Keynesian things done by Franklin Delano Roosevelt for almost an entire decade utterly failed to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

_______________________________________________

Speaking of the consequences of out-of-control Keynesianism:

This morning Moody’s cut Japan’s credit rating to Aa3 from Aa2 with a stable outlook.

According to my Business Insider email, “Moody’s attributed the downgrade to large budget deficits and the build up in government debt since the 2009 global recession.” Japan went down the Keynesian path bigtime in the 1990s, which created “The Lost Decade” and a zombie economy. Moody’s actions shows that things are still deteriorating.

We are sooo heading in the direction of Japan — and sadly, though I’d love to be wrong, that may be the optimistic scenario.

_______________________________________________

Name That Party: In complete contrast to how the establishment press handles scandal and/or bad behavior by Democrats, either failing to identify their party or delaying the disclosure for as many paragraphs as possible, we have this Associated Press report from New Jersey:

NJ GOP lawmaker quit over wife’s Carl Lewis email

A freshman Republican lawmaker resigned because his wife sent “an offensive and racist” email to the Democratic state Senate campaign of nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis, a GOP official acknowledged Monday.

Pat Delany stepped down from the state Assembly this month and said he wouldn’t seek a full term in November because of his wife’s missive to Lewis’ campaign, Burlington County Republican Chairman Bill Layton said. Delany originally cited an unspecified family issue as the reason for his abrupt resignation.

We have four Republican references in the headline and first two paragraphs. Good luck ever finding that in a report about a scandalized or foot-in-mouth Democrat.

In terms of the underlying issue, which is legendary Olympian Carl Lewis’s eligibility to run for political office in New Jersey:

… records show that he voted in California through 2009, which Republicans contend made him a legal resident of that state.

Either that, or he was voting illegally in California. Take your pick, Carl.

This item was covered in expanded form Wednesday evening at NewsBusters.org.

Earlier this evening, Vice President Joe Biden, through a spokesperson, backed away from his Sunday comment at a Chinese university about that nation’s “one-child” policy, wherein the state allows couples, with relatively rare exceptions, to have only one child. This of course has led to a horrible abortion death toll. A Laura Ingraham email I received this evening, corroborated by a China’s population minister cited by CNN in 2008, carries an estimate of 400 million deaths (CNN said it “prevented 400 million children from being born”). It has also led to what is probably an historically unprecedented male-female gender imbalance in the neighborhood of 43-60 million.

Biden’s comment (transcript; video) was:

You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

Biden’s backoff in the wake of intense Republican, conservative, prolife and Chinese dissident criticism is in an AFP report carried at ChannelNewsAsia.com, is far from satisfactory, and contains (in bold) what can only be considered a spectacular fib in the circumstances. To its credit, AFP also found a prominent Chinese activist for a mainland perspective on the impact of Biden’s Sunday remark:

Under fire, Biden blasts ‘repugnant’ China policies

Under fire from angry Republicans, US Vice President Joe Biden’s office said Tuesday that he firmly opposes “repugnant” Chinese population control practices like “forced abortion and sterilization.”

“The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization,” Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff told AFP by email.

“The vice president believes such practices are repugnant,” she said after Republican White House candidates blasted Biden for recent comments he made about Beijing’s “one-child” population control policy during a visit to China.

Biden told an audience at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, Sunday that “your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family.”

… Barkoff pointed out that Biden, who was discussing the ratio of active workers to retirees, had also called the policy “unsustainable” and said “he was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.”

… The vice president’s statement also drew fire from a leader of the repressed Tiananmen Square protests, Chai Ling, who has become a born-again Christian and activist against the “one-child” policy.

“At best, it is a statement of ambiguity that gives permission to China to continue its brutal and coercive birth planning policy,” said a statement from her advocacy group, All Girls Allowed.

“At worst, it is an endorsement of the exorbitant fines, severe beatings, and forced abortions and sterilizations that are performed on thousands of Chinese families every day — an ongoing Tiananmen massacre every hour,” she said.

While it’s nice that AFP is reporting Biden’s (pathetic) attempt to backtrack, it’s likely that what he said would never have been news in the pre-New Media World:

• The Associated Press’s original coverage of Biden’s university appearance (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) made no reference to his “one-child” comment. As of 10:30 this evening, based on the results of its main site on “Biden China” (not in quotes) the AP still has nothing on what Biden said, or even the groundswell of reaction to it.
• A New York Times search on “Biden China” (again not in quotes), as well as a reading of the paper’s reports (here, here, and here) on Biden’s trip, surfaced nothing relating to his original one-child remarks. The first identified item is from Reuters, indicating that it is very likely that it also ignored Biden’s comment in its other reporting.
• One of the Times’s items just noted has an inadvertently humorous title: “China and U.S. Choose Safe Site for Biden Visit.” Guys, there is no safe place to let Joe Biden speak.

As I see it, thirty years ago, and probably even twenty, a remark similar to Biden’s would have gone virtually unnoticed. Folks like Bill Buckley, Cal Thomas, and James Kilpatrick might have detected it and written a column or two about and might have even brought it up on CNN, but no one at the White House would have felt it necessary for the Vice President attempt to backtrack.

At least on a remark as outrageous as Biden’s latest, that can’t happen any more, even though it’s clear that the AP, New York Times, and others tried to keep it bottled up. Oh, how they must despise the entire situation. Too bad, so sad.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Ditto.

Read the whole thing.

From the Census Bureau:

Sales of new single-family houses in July 2011 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 298,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 0.7 percent (±12.9%)* below the revised June rate of 300,000, but is 6.8 percent (±13.5%)* above the July 2010 estimate of 279,000.

So we’re back under a seasonally adjusted 300,000 homes a year.

Don’t be fooled by the seasonally adjusted comparison to July 2010 above:

The 27,000 homes sold in July 2011 is only 1,000 higher than the 26,000 sold in July 2010. What could be little more than a difference in rounding produced a seasonally adjusted increase of almost 7%.

Seven months into the year, it’s time to see if hitting a new all-time low for annual sales is possible.

The answer is — “very”:

To recover the 23,000-home gap between this year’s sales through July of 185,000 and last year’s 208,000, sales during the rest of this year will have to be 20% higher than last year (138,000 vs. last year’s August-December sales of 115,000).

Even Barack Obama doesn’t believe that’s going to happen. He said so last week:

Confronting the most public anxiety yet of his Midwestern tour, President Barack Obama sought Wednesday to reassure an audience in his home state of Illinois that the economy would recover, but warned that Washington is not the answer to the nation’s economic troubles. He conceded that it will take at least a year for housing prices and sales to start rising, a key marker of an improved economy.

“At least a year” more will mark over four full years in the pits — and, not coincidentally, over four years of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, aka the Fear-Based Economy.

Joe Biden pretends to be a Catholic. This statement Sunday in China (full transcript; related video) proves he is not:

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

Objectively not moral, either.

John Boehner hopes Biden’s meaning got lost in the translation. Uh, no. It’s on tape.

_______________________________________________

Disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has had the tables turned on him (internal link added by me):

Spitzer sued for libel over his Slate column

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was hit with two libel lawsuits seeking $90 million by former Marsh & McLennan Cos executives over a column posted on Slate.com about an insurance bid-rigging scandal.

The lawsuits arose from Spitzer’s August 22, 2010, column, “They Still Don’t Get It,” advocating prosecution of corporate wrongdoers and defending his own enforcement activity against Marsh and insurer American International Group Inc.

William Gilman, a former Marsh executive marketing director, and Edward McNenney, a former Marsh global placement director, contended that they were defamed by the column, which appeared thee months after a judge threw out their convictions on felony antitrust charges. Neither is named in the column.

… Gilman also said Spitzer defamed him in writing by stating that “many employees of Marsh” have been “convicted and sentenced to jail terms,” when none had.

The exact passage from Spitzer’s column is: “Unfortunately for the credibility of the Journal, the editorial fails to note the many employees of Marsh who have been convicted and sentenced to jail terms …” Well, that’s either true of false. If it’s false, I hope the plaintiffs clean him out — y’know, to “teach a lesson,” just like Spitzer claimed he was doing during his years of trial-avoiding corporate shakedowns (because when he tried to go to trial, he got his butt kicked).

_______________________________________________

Priceless editorial opening at Investors Business Daily: “In his weekly radio address and elsewhere over the weekend, President Obama blamed Republicans for ‘holding back’ the recovery by blocking his still-MIA jobs plan.”

_______________________________________________

Fairness Doctrine, RIP, but hold the champagne.

As long as we have a president who “is seeking to impose his will on the Internet through the executive branch,” guided by a philosophy which wishes “to impose authoritarian controls on what has become the backbone of free speech and expression here and around the world, with the clear intent to change its very nature,” free speech and expression will not be truly safe.

_______________________________________________

The Obama administration has added $4.247 trillion to the national debt in 945 days.

There’s a lot more to that story.

Though exact early-year data isn’t available, the “public debt” portion of the national debt (obtainable with the tool located here) — i.e., the money the government owes to outside parties instead of to government agencies — grew from roughly $3.4 trillion in January 2001 (it was at that level on both September 30, 2000 and 2001) to $6.307 trillion on Janaury 20, 2009, an increase of $2.9 trillion during the Bush 43 administration.

This past Friday, the public debt was $9.973 trillion. Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, it has increased by over $3.6 trillion, going up far more in 945 days than public debt under Bush did in eight full years.

The the public debt-to-GDP ration, obtained by dividing public debt by nominal (i.e., not inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product (GDP), went from roughly 34% to 45% during Bush’s eight years. During Obama’s two years and seven months, it has risen to 66%.

If the rate of increase seen thus far under Obama continues, we’ll hit 90%, the “Maxed Out America” level which many economists consider the public debt-to-GDP wall — when lenders will either stop lending to us or will insist on high interest rates for doing so — in less than three years. Current economic policies continued during the next 17 months are likely to get us to 75% or even 80% by the time a hoped-for new president gets a chance to reverse the slide — if it’s not already too late.

From Madrid:

Aug 22, 2011 / 03:37 pm (CNA).- World Youth Day 2011 organizers have said they are “proud” of the young people who participated in last week’s events in Madrid.

The director of communications for World Youth Day, Marieta Jaureguizar, told Europa Press on Aug. 22 that organizers are“thrilled” that the event took place without incident and that so many young people from all over the world displayed such exemplary behavior.

“We hope that they enjoyed it very much and that it was an important experience for each one of them,” Jauraguizar said. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

To borrow from a certain president’s former preacher, the “chickens are coming home to roost” in Social Security’s disability program. It’s nearly bankrupt, and set to run out of cash by 2017.

In the Associated Press’s writeup (“Social Security disability on verge of insolvency”) of the situation occasioned by a congressional report repeating the obvious, Stephen Ohlemacher surprisingly and correctly retold a bit of the history which readers should find quite interesting, as it largely explains how the program got out of control (bolds are mine):

Congress tried to rein in the disability program in the late 1970s by making it tougher to qualify. The number of people receiving benefits declined for a few years, even during a recession in the early 1980s. Congress, however, reversed course and loosened the criteria, and the rolls were growing again by 1984.

The disability program “got into trouble first because of liberalization of eligibility standards in the 1980s,” said Charles Blahous, one of the public trustees who oversee Social Security. “Then it got another shove into bigger trouble during the recent recession.”

Today, about 13.6 million people receive disability benefits through Social Security or Supplemental Security Income.

Those of us who were around and tried to pay attention during the early 1980s when a very few entities (The New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and three or four wire services) had a virtual stranglehold on national news coverage were led to believe that it was the evil, mean, heartless, cruel, unfeeling, uncaring Reagan administration which on its own initiative was solely responsible for its attempt to trim the disability rolls of people who did not qualify. As Ohlemacher indicates, what really happened was that Team Reagan — silly them — was trying to implement a law which a firmly Democrat-controlled Congress (58-42 in the Senate and 277-158 in the House during 1979-1980) had passed during the final years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

This is reinforced in a 1992 New York Times item covering a government agreement to reopen over New York State-based cases involving over 200,000 claims (not kidding) involving 1980s disability denials, wherein the Times’s Robert Pear chose to do a virtual victory dance in print — and used a Bush 41 slogan to do it (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

U.S. TO RECONSIDER DENIAL OF BENEFITS TO MANY DISABLED

Reversing one of the most widely criticized policies of the Reagan Administration [1], Federal officials have agreed to reopen tens of thousands of cases in which the Government denied benefits to people who said they could not work because of mental or physical disabilities.

… The settlement affects those who were denied benefits at any point in the 11 years since the Reagan Administration began a systematic campaign to purge the Social Security disability rolls. [1] Benefits are supposed to be paid to people who cannot engage in any “substantial gainful activity.”

… The Administration said its campaign was required under a 1980 law and was essential to control the cost of the rapidly growing disability program. [2] The Government contended that many beneficiaries were able to work, even though courts later found that thousands were helpless because of severe physical or mental problems.

… If the settlement is approved, as lawyers on both sides are recommending, the Government will send out letters offering to re-examine the claims of more than 200,000 people in New York state who have been denied disability benefits since Oct. 1, 1981. [3]

By making substantial concessions in the proposed settlement, Federal officials will avoid a court order that could have been more burdensome and more embarrassing to the Government in this election year. President Bush and the Social Security Commissioner, Gwendolyn S. King, have repeatedly said their policies are “kinder and gentler” than those of the Reagan Administration. [4]

No other aspect of Mr. Reagan’s social policy was so widely criticized by Federal judges, governors and members of Congress as his effort to remove people from the disability rolls, often in defiance of court rulings.

… In the past, Social Security officials often asserted that they were bound only by Supreme Court decisions and that they did not have to “acquiesce” in decisions of lower courts if such decisions contradicted their reading of the law. [5]

… Federal judges repeatedly denounced this policy as lawless. [6]

… That represents a big change from the defiant position [7] taken by the Government over the last decade. In 1989, for example, the Justice Department said the executive branch was not subordinate to the judicial branch and was not required to follow statements in circuit court opinions, which are “merely a weather vane, showing which way the wind is blowing.” [7]

Notes:

• [1] — As noted, it wasn’t Reagan’s policy, it was a policy implementation required by a 1980 Carter-Era law (Pear eventually admits that, as quietly as he can). Again, silly Reagan, doing what the Executive Branch is supposed to do — execute the laws Congress passes.
• [2] — See, the law really was passed while Jimmy Carter was president. It’s amazing how the “heartless” tag never got applied to him or the Democrat-dominated 96th Congress, isn’t it?
• [3] — It seems likely that this action alone, applied countrywide, added hundreds of thousands to the disability roles who had not qualified under rules specified by (yes, I have to mention it again) the Democrat-dominated 96th Congress.
• [4] — Note the obligatory dig, by implication, at Reagan’s allegedly unkind, rough administration.
• [5] — This may seem like an unreasonable position for Social Security to have taken, but it emphatically wasn’t. Remember, each court ruling involving Social Security benefits was an individual matter and as such was meant only to apply to the individual involved in the matter. To have the results of a ruling apply to everyone, the proper post-ruling procedure would have been for Congress to enact a law applying the ruling to identical or very similar individual circumstances. This is no different from the problem, covered in more detail here, that almost everyone wishing to enforce their Communications Workers of America v. Beck rights in demanding that union dues for political purposes not be withheld must still bring an individual action and see it through the court system before the union has to give in. Why? Because Congress has never passed a law implementing the Beck opinion; only a very few states have done so. Until Congress does, individual litigation is the only available route for enforcing that particular Supreme Court decision. Instead of settling with the State of New York, the Bush administration, if it really wanted things to change, should have run a law through Congress to make those changes. Sadly, this is another example of those in charge taking the easy way out instead of following prescribed constitutional procedures.
• [6] — This only shows that federal judges have lost the proper understanding of their role, and of the constitutional enforceability of their individual rulings. The reason the judges could only denounce what Social Security did and not throw Social Security administrators in jail or hold them in contempt was because, as noted earlier, the courts have no enforcement powers over cases beyond those they have individually decided.
• [7] — The Justice Department’s 1989 position may or may not have been “defiant,” but it was definitely based on a proper reading of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

The AP’s Ohlemacher notes the fiscally disastrous results:

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.

… 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” …

So “disability” for many has devolved into a program for those who discover, once they stop working, that it might be better to find a way to continue not working. Critically, Ohlemacher fails to note another motivation: Getting onto Social Security’s disability rolls is a gateway to other federal “entitlements” (food stamps, Section 8 housing, probably free cell phones, etc.).

But the AP writer nevertheless deserves some credit for setting straight just who passed a law trying to get the program under control, and who then got the grief for merely trying to do their job in carrying the law out. Now the chickens, as noted, are coming home to roost.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.