Hey David! What is happening to CONNECT??? An open letter

Phil Robinson · Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 755 Location: MA

Dear David

Is CONNECT drifting way off course from what was its original purpose which I as an individual thought was to provide a forum for advocates, claimants and people in the various components of SSA and other agencies tangentially related to the following:
questions from advocates concerning betterments of practice operations and advocacy.
Opinion commentary on proposed rules and regulations
commentaries and questions on decisions made at various levels of the DIB process .
A place to compliment and sound off about the agency.
A learning experience

I'm as political as the next person and being from Massachusetts probably a great deal more than most
my interest is the people my wife and I represent (me in a very limited manner for the past year).

No one gave a damn about the FedRO experiment except those of us in NE. That experiment ended a while ago and yet there are still claims sitting there. We got our last one a month ago and had it allowed OTR last week.

There is no yelling and screaming about that jackass in there as COSS and no pressure on the committees with oversight of SSA. No concerted campaign to get the agency back to at least reasonable staffing.

The field offices (DO) are understaffed and making errors at a rate which is uncounted. The phones ring and are not answered. When answered they are answering machines and there is no follow through. Each office and / or region is its own little fiefdom running on its own rules with no regard to the Law or the CFR.

We currently have six clients with overpayments which upon investigation (time consuming and frustrating in our attempts to get information which are all going to go to hearing because there was no follow through of reported work on the part of claimants. Some of these are for 60,000 and 70,000 dollars because of a single months overage years ago.

I was never a believer in conspiracy theories but I am now convinced that the period starting with Clinton and carrying through with Bush II where smaller was better and reform meant cutting programs down and privatizing every job that could be done has just about destroyed SSA among others. The agency we tussle with almost every day of the week has a culture developed by the Congress and years of neglect to deny and delay. To protect the trust funds from thievery every claimant is examined as if each one is attempting to raid the treasury.

In each claim we handle we are doing much of the work that the agency used to do. We are seeing claimant denied with no information in their files because of lack of follow through on the part of DDS
and ODAR.

We are not giving up but we are a hell of a lot less polite when speaking with agency employees who are clearly not doing what they are paid to do.

Olan Barnes · Joined: 17 May 2004 Posts: 1405 Location: Michigan

I love to have civil debates of a political nature and give my two cents in on SSA issues from time to time as a retired DDS employee and a Rep who had to cut my post retirement short but I have noticed a reduction of SSA postings. I would suggest that Phil (who I have known for a long time) put a thought provoking comment or question in on a specific issue to stir the s*** up a bit and we would get some comments. A number of folks I have not heard from in a long time (Lamplighter for instance) might also give their comments - diversity so to speak.

BTW I feel for you but SSA folks are doing the best they can for the most part - minus any bad apples - that is my union background showing through. Rolling Eyes

David Traver · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 03:51 am Post subject:

A part of the problem is the software. It is damn hard for the average user to get an account and start posting. Hopefully I will clean that up in January.
So, in 2009 I hope to increase the accessibility to the site, and get Connect up to speed with updated software. I have not updated it for a while because it works, (don't fix it if it is not broken) but it is not as friendly as I would like. I'd love to have folks, especially disabled claimants, be able to drop by and make an extemporaneous posting here and there. However, an open board is quickly swamped by automated board spam from Russia and China inviting us to enlarge our private parts and showing us where to stick them after we do. The good old days of 2001 and open posting boards are long dead.

Also, most of the plaintiffs' lawyers seeking assistance with legal questions have gone over to a private list serve so as to not give any aid to the Agency when debate legal issues. That's a wise move on their part. Why give away the farm to SSA in a case when you know that the SSA attorneys you are fighting read the same blogs and boards as you?

Similarly, there is a private board or two for non-attorney reps. There is also a private board for ALJs. I suppose there is also a private board for DDS types. So, the representative and ALJ communities have decided to huddle alone in their little worlds, generally disregarding each other. As noted before that can be a good idea where tricks and strategies are discussed, but usually it is not.

Connect is now the one of the only remaining places where they all come to get a glimpse of what the others are thinking. Our readership is steady and the recent job posting I presented got an equal volume of good responses from the SSA and DDS Attorneys, plaintiffs' attorneys, and the representative communities. Also, a very large number of people use Connect every day to get access to the Rulings, etc. So, while the posting side of Connect is not working up to speed, the reading side is still happening with gusto.

I disagree in part with some of your contentions. I don't think that anybody who seriously reads Connect thinks that the SSA is getting a free ride. For example, I am always happy to point out that VE's make up most of their testimony and some ALJ's turn a blind eye to the ongoing lies. They are both wrong to do it.

See e.g. http://ssaconnect.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,2/page,viewtopic/t,7089/

I have long complained that SSA's entire adjudication process is a farce that is statistically and morally no better than a coin flip in allocating scarce resources to the disabled and the disadvantaged. DDS is the main culprit in that evil practice. Conversely, I have complained that insurance companies abuse their disabled customers by shoving their cases down SSA's throat to collect corporate welfare. That is an argument that has not endeared me to the community of representatives and lawyers that help shove the LTD merry-go-round in circles for the insurance companies as those companies grab at the brass ring hanging from SSA's nose while sitting upon the backs of the disabled.

But generally, I think that Connect is doing okay. 10,106,669 hits and more than 20,000 postings since I took over the Connect site on May 11, 2004, tell me that somebody is making good use of our doodlings here.

I am especially grateful to the Connect community for the outstanding and ongoing civility we show to each other. The prior Connect board went down in flames, as have several competing boards. The noxious types have taken their flames elsewhere and the result is a place of spirited debate where misunderstands occur, but apologies are usually quickly made. That's pretty cool. It's also very rare in the world of discussion boards of any type. It is likely that I am the most contentious voice on the board, and for that I say please pardon me, especially to Lamplighter, whom I pissed off royally some time ago.

Thanks for your friendship, support, and concern. Suggestions are always welcome and occasionally implemented.

Happy New Year.

Dave

By the way, check this out: http://ssaconnect.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,2/page,viewtopic/t,226/
and this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040711081111/http://www.traverlaw.com/

Insider (Ret) · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 06:00 pm Post subject:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or is that the other way around? Whatever. Rolling Eyes

Thanks for the links to the not-so-distant past; nice to look back. I agree with your assessment of where the prolific posters of the past have gone and why the nature and number of posts has tapered off recently. In some cases, folks have just moved on to other stages in their life, and what mattered so dearly and was so critical to comment on has changed. It's life, I suppose.

JOA · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1904

Over the last few months a considerable number of the things I've posted have gone without even one response. This could, of course, be related to content. But another way to look at this phenomenon it that it reflects an increase in entropy. The old flames are gone. But maybe what we're seeing is the heat death of Connect.

I've no interest in blogging. So far as I know, there are no competing boards for someone with my particular professional interests. But if there were, I'd be looking for livelier company.

Robert Petruzzelli · Joined: 03 Jul 2004 Posts: 50 Location: Cherry Hill, NJ

Dear J,

I felt the sad tone of your message. You despair that you don't get the "rise" out of us as you once did. There should be no doubt that content is partially to blame....let me put it this way....sometimes I read what you wrote and say out loud, "what the hell is he talking about!?" (Now, don't be nasty and say you felt the same on reading one of my Appeals Council Memos) I'd try to respond but it's way over my head (or under it, I'm not quite sure) and figure that "it is better to be be silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt".

David points out that there are other outlets for posting where "strategies" might get discussed and that has certainly siphoned off some of the back-and-forth that used to go on here. However, CONNECT is still a place I check to see what's going on in the wild, wacky, wonderful world of Social Security and your messages are never set aside for later reading.

About the NOSSCR presentation we kicked around briefly, can't do it. I have a daughter graduating during the conference and I am not sure I attend any part of the meeting (but will try).

Happy New Year