Recently, Planet Money at NPR, wrote a hit-piece accusing the disabled of fraudulently obtaining benefits through SSI and SSDI. Contagion followed and other pundits compounded the NPR error by repeating the falsehoods. But now we have WSJ ‘piling on’ to blame the disabled for leaving the workforce and creating a sluggish economy. The disabled are the designated ‘bad guys.’

A dramatic investigation aired this week by This American Life raised concerns about federal disability insurance with its portrayal of the system as dysfunctional, financially unsustainable and ballooning out of control.

But experts say the program omitted key evidence that the doubling of workers on disability insurance since 1995 has been driven by genuine need.

In a piece meant to be a summary of six months of studying a spike in disability claims, NPR has ostensibly written a media white paper to expose moral turpitude among the recently disabled. The piece is titled “Unfit For Work.”

The kind of conclusions the writer for NPR arrives at are specious at best, and malignant at worst. The implicit assumptions are that many abled persons are applying for and receiving disability insurance benefits and that this is due to loss of jobs in a recessionary economy.

The most striking feature of the U.S. economy over the last three decades has been the upward redistribution of income. The top 1.0 percent of households has managed to pocket the vast majority of gains over this period. That is a sharp contrast with the three decades immediately following World War II when the benefits of much more rapid growth were broadly shared.

I’m a bit surprised we don’t see more news articles like this one from the AP last Sunday (October 14) about a man attempting to rob a bank of $1 so he could be sent to a Federal Prison. How bad must it be to want to rob a bank so that you can get sent to prison? My guess is the three hots and a cot and health care sounded mighty appealing if the option was starving on the street.

The simple fact is we have a price problem, not an overuse problem. The main source of our cost problem is that we allow hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and labs to charge radically higher prices than any other country. Programs to marginally reduce the amount of care people need could help, but it doesn’t even touch the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Three national polls out today all confirm that the Presidential race still remains extremely close. The Fox News poll is the best for Obama, showing him with a four point lead. In the NPR poll, Obama leads Romney by just two points; but the CBS News/New York Time poll finds Romney actually ahead by a single point.

California has two nuclear power plants. San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego, has been offline for months as everyone tries to find an excuse for the alarmingly rapid wear on new reactor tubing. (Being shut down, however, did not prevent a fire from breaking out this week when a pipe ruptured and released radioactive steam.)

But as of Thursday, Diablo Canyon, the nuclear plant to the north, is also offline–thanks to. . . uh, salp?

National Public Radio told listeners that, “Like the U.S., Europe Wrestles With Health Care.” If the wrestling in Europe is anything like the U.S., then we must be talking about professional wrestling. (“Hit him over the head with a chair!”)

Private equity companies absolutely do not have to increase the value of a company to make a profit. They can end up making a profit on their investment even if they take the company into bankruptcy and leave it much worse off than it was before the takeover.