The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Protect them from evil: major government fail

    By artappraiser on Wed, 10/19/2011 - 11:47pm |

    The horrors of the story out of Philadelphia, of the gang who imprisoned and tortured developmentally disabled people in dungeons in order to collect their SSI checks, just keep coming and coming. It could encompass as many as 50 victims over 5 states, and past deaths. See here, here, here and here for some reporting on it, if you can stomach it.

    Then here's another kick in the stomach:

    ....Weston was legally disqualified from cashing the victims' government disability checks because of her criminal past.

    But she apparently did anyway, enabled in part by a lack of accountability and follow-through by government agencies and police.....

    Weston had been convicted in the starvation death of a man nearly 30 years ago, though it's unclear how much prison time she served.

    The Social Security Protection Act of 2004 generally bars people who have been imprisoned for more than a year from becoming representative payees, those who cash someone else's check. Yet a 2010 report by Social Security's watchdog found that staff members do not perform background checks to determine if payees have criminal records.

    The report from the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General said that people who apply to become payees are supposed to answer a question on whether they've ever been convicted of an offense and imprisoned for more than a year. But the report noted that the agency recognizes that self-reporting of such information "is not always reliable."

    The inspector general said that in the cases it reviewed, about 6 percent of non-relative payees had been imprisoned for longer than a year and "may pose a risk to the beneficiaries they serve."

    A Social Security spokesman declined to provide details of the agency's investigation into Weston but said the agency recently strengthened oversight of payees.

    from 2 more teens under protection in Pa. basement case, by Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press, October 19, 2011

    Comments

    It is all evil but what that woman did to her niece is really beyond comprehension.  That was beyond greed.  It was pure malice.  What a shame Ohio killed all those big cats.  Turning her over to them for sport and food is the closest to justice that I can think of.


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 10/20/2011 - 5:53pm

    I think I have viewed this plot on at least one Law & Order and probably several when I come to think of it.

    To go back to Bachmann, there are 25 or so kids she 'fostered' and would have home schooled them if the authorities had not demurred.

    I do not know the answer to this felony you describe.

    We can never have enough safeguards in place in our social service system to ensure this never happens again.

    I read several links of people who are using computers in order to receive SS checks due to the deceased.

    We are only forced to depend upon local authorities to confirm where these checks are going and to whom.

    Local may be Federal or State in nature.

    As you have pointed out to me several times, anecdotal evidence does not always lead us to solutions.

    Your links and article sicken me. As I assume they would sicken many.

    And it leads me to other issues such as laws on the books concerning mortgages--for instance--and the laws on the books as opposed to those who are appointed or employed to audit.

    George W would appoint racists to the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. That rendered all Civil Rights Legislation moot.

    And when these 'supervisors' in a platonic sense failed, nobody was really prosecuted.

    In the environmental arena, w would appoint members of the energy corps to positions that were supposed to monitor corps like Exxon...etc. This ended up as a travesty of justice and once again, no one went to jail.

    My fear is that anecdotes like yours would send a message that all social programs are shite because bad guys abused the program.

    I do not know the answer to this quandaray.

    It is a matter of focus.

    And the repubs only wish to cut programs for the poor, the disadvantaged, the powerless on the basis of anecdotes.

    the end

     


    by Richard Day on Thu, 10/20/2011 - 7:11pm