I've Been Collecting Disability from the Long Island Rail Road, All the Live-Long Day…
Alan Vanneman tips us toward this story of a different sort of government-funded bailout:
As former [Long Island Rail Road] workers were arriving to file new disability claims, investigators showed up and closed the office in Westbury, eventually carting out nine file boxes and five personal computers.
The raid came two days after The New York Times reported that nearly all career employees of the railroad—from 93 percent to 97 percent of retirees every year since 2000—retire early and soon after begin getting disability payments from the federal agency [the Railroad Retirement Board, which adminsters such claims]. The retirement board almost never turns down a claim, and since 2000 has paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars in disability checks to former Long Island Rail Road workers, The Times found.