Yeshiva World News

Beginning on 23 Tammuz 5773 (July 1, 2013) the 53 and 53A bus lines in Yerushalayim will stop operating. They will be replaced by the number 9 line which will begin from the Jerusalem Central Bus Station and continue to Romeima to Geula, Machane Yehuda, city center, Shaare Chessed, Rechavia and ending in Givat Mordecai. This will permit residents of Romeima and Machane Yehuda area communities to meet.

The advantage of the new line is that it will run on both Sorotzkin and Zayit Ra’anan Streets and connect the Geula area via Tzefanya, Ezra and Nechemia Streets. The line will also provide improved inner neighborhood service beginning from Sorotzkin in the area of Petach Tikvah and Shamgar Streets.

According to Baruch Brandwein, who heads the Romeima Community Council, he has received many requests for service covering these areas and he and his people have done their best to implement such a line.

For Har Nof residents, the 60 line will be canceled and it will be replaced by the existing 74 line, which will enter Har Nof. This will provide an increase in the frequency of buses as well as providing new service on motzei Shabbos and Yomim Tovim.

The 52 and 55 lines will change their route inside Har Nof in both directions. Leaving the neighborhood, the bus will run from Rosenthal, Chai Taib, Shaulzon, Katzenelbogen, to the depot and then on its route.

Entering Har Nof, the bus will run from Katzenelbogen to Shaulzon, Chai Taib, Rosenthal, to the depot.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

Among the young officers who received their pilot’s wings on Thursday, 19 Tammuz 5773 were a number of Shomer Shabbat pilots. They were among the graduates of the Israel Air Force’s Flying Academy Class 166.

Giving a boost to the dati leumi camp is the fact that 13% of the graduates were in Bnei Akiva and 16% in the Israel Scouts. 54% live in cities, 35 from yishuvim, and 10% from moshavim. 35% of the new pilots live in northern Israel. There are no females among the graduates.

Three of the graduates were talmidim in hesder yeshivot and five attended IDF preparatory yeshivot.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem / Photo: IDF Spokesman)

The Environmental Protection Agency has displayed a lack of urgency in the wake of a deadly Texas fertilizer plant explosion and must regulate potentially explosive chemicals immediately, legislators said Thursday.

The Chemical Safety Board, one of several federal agencies investigating the April explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. that killed 15 people, presented its preliminary findings to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It reported that the decades-old standards used to regulate potentially dangerous fertilizer chemicals are far weaker than those used by other countries.

“The safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizer storage falls under a patchwork of U.S. regulatory standards and guidance — a patchwork that has many large holes,” according to the report presented to the panel by Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board’s chairman.

The board, which has no regulatory authority, recommended in 2002 that the EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration add reactive chemicals such as ammonium nitrate to the list of substances they regulate. That never happened, and the risk management plan that the plant in West was required by federal law to fill out focused exclusively on the potential for a leak of anhydrous ammonia, another fertilizer chemical it stored and sold.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California who chairs the committee, said new legislation was not necessary to permit the EPA to begin regulating the safe handling of ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals.

OSHA, according to other experts who testified, already requires ammonium nitrate to be stored separately from other combustibles and in a room with fireproof walls, but the agency had not inspected the West plant since 1985. The facility was not in compliance, and if it had been, the accident could have been avoided, testified Sam Mannan, a professor and expert on process safety from Texas A&M University.

About 30 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the plant detonated about 20 minutes after the fire was reported, causing a blast so massive it registered as a small earthquake, flattened swaths of the small town of West and killed 10 emergency responders. The firefighters, the Chemical Safety Board reported, were unaware of the dangers of the chemical that is often used as a cheap alternative to dynamite in mining operations and has been used in terrorist bomb attacks.

The testimony was punctuated by Boxer’s sharp rebukes of the EPA. She vowed at the end of the hearing to work with the agency “much more closely than they’d like” to ensure the regulations are updated, and quickly.

Boxer demanded that Barry Breen, the agency’s deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, provide a timeline for updating the regulations. She pointedly disagreed with his assessment that the board’s 2002 recommendations were not clear.

Breen’s testimony provided an overview of the chemicals included in the EPA’s risk management program, but did not directly address the explosion in West.

“That was the most vague testimony I’ve ever heard,” Boxer told him. “I don’t sense in your voice any type of shock or desire to move forward … I don’t detect any urgency.”

The board noted that a 1985 review of the dangers of ammonium nitrate stated it shouldn’t be stored near a source of heat or other combustibles.

“This principle has not been fully adopted across the U.S., and was not implemented at West Fertilizer,” Moure-Eraso wrote.

The Chemical Safety Board investigates major industrial and chemical accidents, including the 2012 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Its goal is to make recommendations that would help avoid similar incidents.

The plant in West was built in 1961, on what was then the outskirts of the rural farming community. Over the years, residences sprang up nearby, along with a nursing home and several schools. All were damaged or destroyed in the blast. The board said had the explosion occurred during the day, when students were still at school, the outcome would have been worse.

Mannan and Paul Orum, a consultant with the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, said regulations should require a certain distance between critical infrastructures and facilities that store and handle hazardous materials.

Some agencies do have other rules on ammonium nitrate, but none apparently applied to the facility in West.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has rules for using ammonium nitrate as an explosive. And the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s regulations are meant to ensure the chemical does not land in the hands of criminals or militants.

Codes written by the National Fire Protection Association are also not strong enough, the CSB states. For example, the codes allow the chemical to be stored in wooden bins, even though other countries, including the United Kingdom, instruct the chemical should be placed in non-flammable containers, preferably concrete.

Either way, West Fertilizer was not required to comply with the fire code. They are merely recommendations, and Texas has not adopted a statewide fire code. Some smaller counties are prohibited by state law from adopting their own.

Federal agencies must “review and improve the comprehensive safety oversight of ammonium nitrate fertilizer distribution. The time for that effort is now,” the CSB concludes.

(AP)

Customs officials in Ben-Gurion International Airport apprehended an unemployed 66-year-old man trying to smuggle 24 high end Cuban cigars into Israel. The man flew from Cuba to Budapest, then to Tel Aviv.

The experts report the value of the cigars in the “tens of thousands of NIS”. They add the man receives unemployment from Bituach Leumi and appears to travel to Cuba every three months and receives assistance from someone regarding a visa.

In Cuba he buys the cigars which he gives to his friends as gifts. He was slapped with a 120,000 NIS fine which includes taxes and penalty fees.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

Federal regulators have accused former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine of misusing customer money while he was CEO of brokerage firm MF Global, which collapsed in 2011.

A civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission seeks to ban Corzine from trading in the futures market and demands he pay unspecified penalties.

The suit charges that MF Global violated U.S. laws in the weeks before it collapsed by using customer funds to support its own trading operations. About $1.2 billion in customer money vanished when the firm collapsed.

Corzine bore responsibility for the unlawful acts by MF Global because he controlled the firm and its holdings and “either did not act in good faith or knowingly induced these violations,” the lawsuit says.

In a conference call with reporters, CFTC Enforcement Director David Meister said Corzine failed to do enough to “prevent the firm from dipping into customers’ funds to stay afloat.”

MF Global has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty as part of a settlement announced Thursday. The money will come from bankruptcy proceedings.

Corzine has disputed the allegations by the CFTC, which regulated New York-based MF Global. He did so again Thursday through his lawyers.

“Mr. Corzine did nothing wrong, and we look forward to vindicating him in court,” attorney Andy Levander said in a statement.

James Giddens, the court-appointed trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy, called the settlement with the CFTC “appropriate.” He said the $100 million penalty will be paid only after the firm’s customers and creditors have received all their claims.

The CFTC also filed civil charges against Edith O’Brien, the firm’s former assistant treasurer. Last year, O’Brien was summoned to a congressional hearing into what happened in MF Global’s final days. She declined to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Attorneys for O’Brien didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.

The lawsuit seeks to bar Corzine and O’Brien from working for any firms that trade commodities or other investments regulated by the CFTC. Corzine and O’Brien would also be barred from trading any such investments on their own. They could still trade stocks and bonds.

Thursday’s lawsuit is striking in that regulators have seldom charged individuals with financial crisis-era misdeeds. They have instead imposed fines and penalties against companies, often with no one having to admit blame.

Nearly 90 percent of the money belonging to the firm’s U.S. customers has been recovered. Many farmers, ranchers and business owners used MF Global to hedge their risks against fluctuating crop prices.

The CFTC need not show in court that Corzine personally authorized the use of customer money, said Anthony Sabino of the New York law firm Sabino & Sabino, which specializes in white-collar crime. Top executives can be liable for “failure to maintain internal controls” or “failure to supervise,” Sabino said.

Under a 2002 anti-corporate fraud law — which Corzine co-wrote as a U.S. senator — CEOs of public companies must personally certify the accuracy of their company’s financial statements.

“When the Titanic went down, you didn’t blame the cook; you didn’t blame the guy in the engine room,” Sabino said. “You blamed the captain. And Corzine is the captain of the ship called MF Global.”

The CFTC has “a very substantial case” against Corzine and MF Global, Sabino said.

Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, predicted that Corzine and the CFTC would eventually settle but not before a drawn-out battle.

That the CFTC filed suit against such a major defendant signals confidence that they have a strong case, he suggested.

“A defeat in a case like this, in such a high-profile setting, would come at some cost to the reputation of the agency,” said Mintz, now at McCarter & English in New Jersey.

It isn’t clear how much money Corzine is worth. He spent roughly $100 million of his fortune to win a U.S. Senate seat and the New Jersey governorship. In 2005, the last full year that he was a U.S. senator, he was estimated to be worth between $125 million and $175 million.

MF Global sought bankruptcy protection in 2011 after a disastrous bet on European countries’ debt. Under Corzine’s leadership, the firm bet $6.3 billion on bonds issued by Italy, Spain and other nations with deeply troubled financial systems. Those bonds plummeted in value in the weeks before MF Global’s failure as fears intensified that some European countries might default.

The firm’s $41 billion bankruptcy was the eighth-largest in U.S. history. It was also the first collapse of a Wall Street firm since the 2008 financial crisis ended. Critics have long complained that regulators have failed to aggressively pursue much bigger financial firms, whose high-risk bets nearly toppled the financial system.

Corzine, 66, had been a CEO of Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs before entering politics in 2000. He served as a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey and later governor of the state. He took the top job at MF Global in March 2010 after losing his 2009 bid for re-election as governor to Chris Christie.

MF Global was a small commodities broker when Corzine arrived. His vision was to transform the firm into a full-scale investment bank, similar to Goldman. The CFTC’s lawsuit says he sought to do so by generating revenue from aggressive trading strategies.

The plan worked for a while even as the firm’s investments grew increasingly risky, the lawsuit said. In the second half of 2011, its investments put heavy strains on its cash flow and capital. By October 2011, the lawsuit says, sources of cash were drying up.

Corzine and other employees communicated with one another, by email and sometimes on recorded phone lines, about the firm’s “dire situation,” the lawsuit says.

It says a treasurer of the firm’s parent company, MF Global Holdings Ltd., told a chief financial officer and another employee in a recorded conversation on Oct. 6, 2011, that “we have to tell Jon that enough is enough. We need to take the keys away from him.”

Corzine “disparagingly nicknamed the Global treasurer ‘the Gravedigger,’” the lawsuit says

Corzine stepped down as MF Global chief in November 2011, a few days after the firm filed for bankruptcy protection.

Three reports on MF Global’s collapse, by a House panel and two court-appointed trustees, placed most of the blame on Corzine. It said his risky strategies caused the failure.

Shareholders of MF Global have sued Corzine and other top managers. The investors say they lost about $585 million in just a week as the firm foundered. They accuse MF Global and the executives of making false and misleading statements about the firm’s financial strength.

Giddens, the trustee, also joined a lawsuit filed by MF Global customers against Corzine and the other top executives.

Corzine testified at three hearings of House and Senate committees in December 2011 after lawmakers subpoenaed him. It was a rare sight in Washington: A former member of Congress being called by former colleagues to testify publicly about potential violations of law.

Corzine’s testimony offered little to satisfy lawmakers or MF Global customers who lost money. Yet his explanations would be hard to disprove, legal experts said.

He said he never intended to “misuse” client money or to order anyone else to do so. Corzine also rebuffed an assertion that he knew about customer money that might have been transferred to a European affiliate just before MF Global collapsed.

O’Brien, the former assistant treasurer, was subpoenaed to testify at a hearing last year about an email she sent that appeared to contradict testimony from Corzine. The email said Corzine ordered a transfer of customer money to cover an overdraft in the firm’s bank account in London.

“On the advice of counsel,” she told Congress, “I respectfully decline to answer based on my constitutional right.”

(AP)

Background:

About ten days ago, YWN-ISRAEL reported that Dayan HaGaon HaRav Tzion Boaron (בוארון), a member of the Chief Rabbinate Supreme Court, appears to be heading for the Chief Rabbinate race to become the next Rishon L’Tzion.

Earlier this week, YWN-ISRAEL reported that Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita has selected one of his sons as the party’s candidate, HaGaon HaRav Avraham Yosef. Being that Rabbi Boaron enjoys widespread support, Shas officials see his candidacy as a threat to Maran’s choice.

Israel Radio reported on Thursday morning, 19 Tammuz 5773 that someone with authority met with Rav Boaron and tried persuading him to bow out of the race, telling him “your candidacy brings grief to Maran Rav Ovadia.” The reported stated a “senior dayan and employee of the Ministry of Religious Services were involved.”

Kikar Shabbat reports that person is Petach Tikvah Chief Rabbi Binyamin Atias in addition to Shas leader Aryeh Deri. The rav reportedly told them both that he has no intention of backing out of the race and plans to remain till the elections.

Rav Boaron denies reports that he was threatened in any way but does confirm officials tried to persuade him to drop out of the race.

Rav Boaron is supported by outgoing Rishon L’Tzion HaGaon HaRav Moshe Shlomo Amar Shlita in addition to having considerable support among the voting body of 150 people.

Kikar also adds that Rav Avraham Yosef visited the home of Rav Boaron last week, asking for his support. He was told that he [Rav Amar] is still chief rabbi; he will not come out in support of any of the candidates. Kikar adds the real reason is that Rav Amar stands behind Rav Boaron.

Deputy Minister of Religious Services (Bayit Yehudi) Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan told Israel Radio if the facts in the report are indeed accurate, it is a very serious matter, one that will involve the legal system and the Commissioner of Civil Service.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

The Obama administration gathered U.S. citizens’ Internet data until 2011, continuing a spying program started under President George W. Bush that revealed whom Americans exchanged emails with and the Internet Protocol address of their computer, documents disclosed Thursday show.

The National Security Agency ended the program that collected email logs and timing, but not content, in 2011 because it decided it didn’t effectively stop terrorist plots, according to the NSA’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command. He said all data was purged in 2011.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Thursday released documents detailing the collection, though the program was also described earlier this month by The Washington Post.

The latest revelation follows previous leaks from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is presumed hiding at a Moscow airport transit area, waiting to hear whether Ecuador, Iceland or another country might grant him asylum. He fled Hong Kong over the weekend and flew to Russia after being charged with violating American espionage laws.

The collection appears similar to the gathering of U.S. phone records, and seems to overlap with the Prism surveillance program of foreigners on U.S. Internet servers, both revealed by Snowden. U.S. officials have said the phone records can only be checked for numbers dialed by a terrorist suspect overseas. According to the documents published by The Guardian on Thursday, the Internet records show whom they exchanged emails with and the specific numeric address assigned to a computer connected to the Internet, known as the IP, or Internet Protocol, address.

The program, described in a top secret draft report from the NSA inspector general, described the efforts of then-NSA Director Gen. Mike Hayden to fill gaps in intelligence gathering after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One NSA officer quoted in the report described “NSA standing at the U.S. border looking outward for foreign threats” and “the FBI looking within the United States for domestic threats. But no one was looking at the foreign threats coming into the United States. That was the huge gap that NSA wanted to cover.”

The draft added that the sweeping phone and Internet data-gathering programs were meant to speed up the process of surveillance of a terrorist suspect overseas, because “the average wait time was between four and six weeks” to get a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “Terrorists could have changed their telephone numbers or Internet addresses” before the NSA received permission to spy on them on U.S.-based phone or Internet systems.

Alexander said at a Baltimore conference on cybersecurity that the NSA decided to kill the Internet data gathering program because “it wasn’t meeting what we needed and we thought we could better protect civil liberties and privacy by doing away with it.”

He said the program was conducted under provisions of the Patriot Act, and that NSA leaders went to the Obama administration and Congress with the recommendation to shut it down.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said the program has not resumed.

The Washington Post had described the Internet surveillance in an earlier report, without publishing the documents or releasing as many details. The Post described it as part of four secret surveillance programs — two aimed at phone and Internet metadata, while two more target contents of phone and Internet communications.

Alexander, who has been up on Capitol Hill frequently for hearings and meetings since the NSA phone and email surveillance was made public, laid out a broad defense of the programs.

He said he worries that more leaks are coming, adding that “every time a capability is revealed we lose our ability to track those targets.”

While never mentioning Snowden by name, Alexander said his irresponsible releases of classified information “will have a long term detrimental impact on the intelligence community’s ability to detect future attacks.”

He declined to provide more details on what the NSA is doing to prevent such leaks in the future. He has said that the agency is changing passwords and improving its ability to track what system administrators are doing.

On Thursday, he said he was looking at how the leak happened and the people involved. He said the NSA can’t do its job without contractors because it doesn’t have all the talent or access it needs to do the job.

(AP)

As a result of the ongoing thefts and break-ins that plague Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, rabbonim of the community have decided that a private security company must be brought in, Hamodia reports.

During recent weeks, there have been break-ins every Shabbos, as well as during the week and as a result, families fear leaving their homes unoccupied. The report adds that even families who permit using their apartments for guests attending a simcha on a Shabbos that they are away have also been targeted when the guests are out attending the simcha.

Askanim in the community have met numerous times with police and other officials and while police are making an effort, it appears they lack the manpower to bring a halt to the break-ins. Askanim met with rabbonim as they worked to devise a plan.

It has been decided that every family will have to pay at least 15 NIS monthly towards increasing security patrols. A letter has been sent to community residents informing them of the decision of the community rabbonim, informing them of the decision and telling them one may use ma’aser funds to pay the security tax.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

Anthony Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., and a political ally of President Barack Obama, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate Thursday to be transportation secretary.

The Senate voted 100-0 in favor of Foxx.

As secretary, the 42-year-old Foxx will oversee the agencies within the department that regulate the nation’s aviation, rail, transit and highway systems, as well as auto safety. He replaces outgoing secretary Ray LaHood, who campaigned against distracted driving and led the Obama administration’s efforts to boost the economy by improving the nation’s transportation.

The mayor won national recognition when Charlotte hosted the Democratic National Convention last year. Foxx calls Obama a friend and was a key surrogate in North Carolina for the president during his re-election bid last fall.

As mayor, Foxx has pushed for expanded use of streetcars and a light rail extension, helped build a new runway at Charlotte Douglas International Airport and helped create a new regional freight distribution center that will link planes, trains and trucks to East Coast ports. He has also unveiled a pilot program for electric vehicle charging stations.

“Anthony knows firsthand that investing in our roads, bridges and transit systems is vital to creating good jobs and ensuring American businesses can grow and compete in a 21st century global economy,” Obama said in a statement.

Foxx takes over the department in an era of constraint as federal agencies are grappling with across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to ratchet up next year. At the same time, years of pushing off expensive repairs and improvements to roads, airports, air traffic control systems, rails and ports have left the nation with an overstrained transportation system. The gas and diesel taxes that pay for federal highway and transit aid to states haven’t been raised since 1993. Inflation and increases in the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks have reduced revenues and threaten to bankrupt the federal Highway Trust Fund.

There are other challenges as well. The government is in the middle of replacing the nation’s air traffic control system, which is based on World War II-era radar technology, with a system based on satellite technology. The safe integration of civilian unmanned aircraft into the same skies now limited to airliners, business jets, and other manned aircraft is also complex and technologically difficult.

Regulators are also studying an array of new automotive technologies that hold the promise of dramatically reducing highway deaths. At the same time, they’re trying to prevent what some safety experts call a looming distracted driving crisis as drivers increasingly seek to remain connected behind the wheel.

Safety will be his top priority, Foxx told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee at a nomination hearing a month ago. Since then, a major highway bridge partially collapsed in Washington state, two freight trains collided in Missouri, another freight train derailed and caught fire in Maryland and two commuter trains crashed in Connecticut.

His other priorities, Foxx said, will be improving the efficiency and performance of the existing transportation system, and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure “to meet the needs of the next generation of Americans.”

Foxx isn’t new to Washington. His background includes stints as a Justice Department attorney and a Democratic aide to the House Judiciary Committee.

(AP)

The National Religious Party years ago pushed a bill that would give Israelis a day off monthly, working its plan around rosh chodesh. It was defeated. As a result, the only day off in Israel is Shabbos and many feel that the result is increased chilul Shabbos.

The late MK Rabbi Meir Kahane HY”D was among those who felt Israeli should have Sundays off as is the case in the USA. He proposed moving the national sport, soccer; to Sundays, and this would result in hundreds of thousands of Sephardim opting to go to shul instead of soccer matches. This too did not occur. These efforts were premised on the fact that the half day off on erev Shabbos would not be forfeited, for doing so would also increase chilul Shabbos chas v’sholom.

This time around Minister (Likud) Silvan Shalom may has sufficient support for his plan, to declare Sunday a day of rest and Friday would become a regular work day. Undoubtedly this will be met by fierce chareidi objections, fearing the day off would be at the expense of chilul Shabbos for those unable to get out of work and home in time for Shabbos.

Shalom will on Sunday, 22 Tammuz 5773 convene a meeting with representatives of the Prime Minister’s Office, economic experts, officials connected to Galil and Negev development and others as he seeks to advance his bill. Shalom wishes to have an “American weekend” in Israel instead of the current situation in which many are off on Fridays and those who work end after a half day.

Shalom and supporters of the plan feel this will give residents “a real weekend off”. Shalom believes the move would result in sharp increase in internal tourism as Israelis would be able to go away for a weekend. He is proposing a trial run, perhaps four Sundays over a period of months as a trial to ascertain the feasibility of the changeover.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

Driven to reduce a huge backlog of disability claims, Social Security is pushing judges to award benefits to people who may not deserve them, several current and former judges told Congress Thursday.

Larry Butler, an administrative law judge from Fort Myers, Fla., called the system “paying down the backlog.”

A former Social Security judge, J.E. Sullivan, said, “The only thing that matters in the adjudication process is signing that final decision.” Sullivan is now an administrative law judge for the Department of Transportation.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating why many judges have high approval rates for claims already rejected twice by field offices or state agencies. Two current and two former judges spoke at a subcommittee hearing.

The number of people receiving Social Security disability benefits has increased by 44 percent over the past decade, pushing the trust fund that supports the program to the brink of insolvency.

Social Security officials say the primary reason for the increase is a surge in baby boomers who are more prone to disability as they age. Deputy Social Security Commissioner Glenn Sklar noted that the vast majority of disability claims are initially denied.

“I think the data kind of speaks for itself,” Sklar told lawmakers.

To qualify for benefits, people are supposed to have disabilities that prevent them from working and are expected to last at least a year or result in death.

According to Social Security data, there were errors in 22 percent of the cases decided in 2011, Sklar said. He said some errors were procedural and did not necessarily result in incorrect decisions.

“The true wrong rate would be less than 10 percent,” Sklar said.

Nearly 11 million disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security disability benefits. That compares with 7.6 million a decade ago. The average monthly benefit for a disabled worker is $1,130.

An additional 8.3 million people get Supplemental Security Income, a separately funded disability program for low-income people.

Social Security disability claims are first processed through a network of local Social Security Administration field offices and state agencies called Disability Determination Services. About two-thirds of initial claims are rejected, according to agency statistics.

If your claim is rejected, you can ask the field office or state agency to reconsider. If your claim is rejected again, you can appeal to an administrative law judge, who is employed by Social Security.

In 2007, the average processing time for a hearing was 512 days. Today it is 375 days, Sklar said. The agency has reduced the wait time even as the number of applications has increased.

But the judges who testified Thursday said the quality of their decisions has suffered.

So far this budget year, the vast majority of judges have approved benefits in more than half the cases they’ve decided, even though they were reviewing applications typically rejected twice by state agencies, according to Social Security data.

Of the 1,560 judges who have decided at least 50 cases since October, 195 judges approved benefits in at least 75 percent of their cases, according to the data analyzed by congressional investigators.

“The Social Security Administration has failed to take steps to address the problem of rapid disability growth, probably because the agency has failed to recognize many of the problems,” said Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., the subcommittee chairman.

None of the judges who testified spoke of being specifically ordered to award claims. Three said they had been pressured to decide cases without fully reviewing medical files.

The judges described a system in which there is very little incentive to deny claims, but lots of pressure to approve them. It requires more documentation to deny a claim than to approve one, said Sullivan, the former Social Security judge. Also, rejected claims can be appealed while approved claims are not.

“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure to push cases out the door as soon as possible,” Sullivan said in an interview after the hearing. “There’s a push to pay mentality.”

Butler, the current judge, told the subcommittee, “I think you need to look at the issue of paying down the backlog. It’s not media hype, its real and for six years it’s been going on.”

The union representing administrative law judges says judges are required to decide 500 to 700 cases a year in an effort to reduce the hearings backlog. The union says the requirement is an illegal quota that leads judges to sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny just to keep up with the flow of cases, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the judges’ union in April.

The agency denies there is a case quota for judges and says the standard is a productivity goal.

If Congress doesn’t act, the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money in 2016, according to projections by Social Security’s trustees. At that point, the system will collect only enough money in payroll taxes to pay 80 percent of benefits, triggering an automatic 20 percent cut in benefits.

Congress could redirect money from Social Security’s much bigger retirement program to shore up the disability program, as it did in 1994. But that would worsen the finances of the retirement program, which is facing its own long-term financial problems.

(AP)

According to a report in a Kuwaiti newspaper, National Security Council Director Yaakov Amidror is involved in a power struggle with Minister of Intelligence & Strategic Affairs Dr. Yuval Steinitz. The report cites that Steinitz enjoys the support of Mrs. Sara Netanyahu, and the controversy created by her intervention has led to Amidror’s decision.

The report quotes a Jerusalem source anonymously, which states that Amidror decided to step down as Steinitz decided to infringe on the jurisdiction of his office. It adds that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided not to become involved, “his hands are tied due to the continuous involvement of his wife.’

When asked to comment on the report, officials in the Prime Minister’s Office stated “This report has no basis in reality.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)

The National Council of Young Israel issued the following statement today regarding the United States Supreme Court’s decision to strike down key portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, thereby expanding the benefits that will be available to homosexual individuals who wed in those states that permit same-sex marriage:

“We oppose homosexual marriage and are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that strikes down portions of the Defense of Marriage Act. Pursuant to the tenets of the Jewish faith and in accordance with Torah law, we believe that marriage should only be recognized as a union between a man and a woman, just as it always has been throughout history.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Deputy Minister of Religious Services (Bayit Yehudi) Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan told Knesset TV that the party has yet to make a decision as to which candidate it will back in the race to become the next Rishon L’Tzion.

Ben-Dahan admits that “we are under enormous pressure” to still push through the bill that would permit Rabbi Moshe Shlomo Amar to serve a second term. Ben-Dahan added if this effort is unsuccessful, the party would be proactive towards the election of its candidate for the post in addition to backing Rabbi David Stav to become the next Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Ben-Dahan added that speaking personally; he supports the candidacy of Tzfas Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu for the post of Rishon L’Tzion.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)