So where did Nicholas Kristof, Chana Joffe-Walt, and Joe Klein get their medical degrees?

The Media always needs a scapegoat. If the War on the Poor was all the rage in the '90s, the War on the Disabled fills the same warped needs now.

Chana Joffe-Walt of NPR and the pro-sweatshop Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times are like the kid in school who picked on the classroom full of disabled students. Kristof and Joffe-Walt are leading a right-wing campaign to cut Supplemental Security Income - a federal program that provides a very small subsidy to people with a disability. And when I say small, I mean small. SSI is one of the least abused federal benefit programs, because it already pays such a small amount that it just doesn't pay to misuse it.

In December, Kristof wrote that poor families in Kentucky were yanking their kids out of literacy classes just so they'd qualify as disabled. Kristof's source? He didn't actually find anyone that was doing anything like this. His source was a lone school district employee, who provided no evidence. Moreover, illiteracy isn't enough to qualify a person for SSI. Plus, SSI rejects 60% of all benefit claims for children.

I love how Kristof just stomps into my state, jots down some unsupported canard he overheard, and parlays it into a right-wing talking point to be repeated endlessly for a nationwide audience. Kristof's bigoted claim about poor Kentuckians was so unsupportable that the Times' public editor Margaret Sullivan publicly blasted him for it. Kristof has also cited a book by Richard Burkhauser - but has failed to mention that the book was published by the far-right American Enterprise Institute, where Burkhauser is a resident scholar.

In March, Chana Joffe-Walt launched a series attacking SSI on NPR's Planet Money and All Things Considered. She grumbled about a "disability industrial complex" that lets people bilk the system - but she provided no evidence of such a swindle. Media Matters called the NPR story "error-riddled" and pointed out that disability examiners usually rely on 4 or 5 medical or school records to determine whether someone can collect disability.

At the time of that story, Planet Money had just inked an underwriting contract with Lincoln Financial - which sells private disability insurance. Lincoln Financial apparently wants SSI curtailed so people buy their product instead.

In April - apparently inspired by the NPR hit piece - the long-discredited Joe Klein of Time magazine bellyached about Social Security Disability Insurance. He called SSDI a "scam" that "has no work requirement." Klein's statement is an out-and-out lie. Most adults who get SSI have a long work history - but requirements for SSDI are tougher. Nobody is eligible for SSDI unless they've worked for years. SSDI is paid for entirely from workers' own contributions.

Other commentators have participated in this scapegoating too. Outrageously, all this goes on while the very rich often get away with never holding a job their whole lives - except in name only. They don't do any real work. They just inherit Daddy's money and accept a cool title. Then they live on the dole by accepting bailout money.

Do Nicholas Kristof, Chana Joffe-Walt, and Joe Klein really think that most people who collect disability aren't really disabled? If that's what they think, then where did they get their medical degrees that would entitle them to make such a diagnosis? Nobody gets SSI or SSDI without seeing a doctor - usually more than one doctor. Doctors make the diagnosis that decides who's disabled. Opinionated media loudmouths don't.

If a person collects disability, they've already seen a doctor. They didn't ask for the goofy opinions of media commentators who know absolutely nothing about disability. If you know nothing about disability, then shut your fucking mouth before you go off half-cocked about "those people" getting SSI. In my day, somebody would shut it for you.

One more point: School districts like to illegally exclude students because of some supposed disability - thus denying them their right to an education. When these kids reach adulthood, I think they have every damn right to collect disability by the truckload - especially since their economic prospects are limited because they were kept out of school. I frankly don't give a shit whether someone else thinks they're actually disabled, because the school using a disability as an excuse to exclude them should be evidence enough. You can't have it both ways by saying someone is too disabled to go to school but not disabled enough to collect SSI. If you think they shouldn't get SSI, then complain to the offending school systems so it doesn't happen in the next generation.

Since NPR is public, I'd like to see its propaganda war reined in. NPR is receiving taxpayer money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to spread false stories against the disabled. This must end. I hope to see a law or an executive order to bar NPR from spreading misinformation like this.

(Source: http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/disabled-are-new-target-for-charges-of-cheating)