Social Security Wants Candidate to Refund $22,000 in Disability Pay

Roger Batchelder is a Peace & Freedom Party candidate in the 50th Congressional District.

He’s a veteran of various activist movements: anti-war, pro-civil rights, anti-death penalty.

He also has been receiving monthly Social Security disability checks for a decade after being diagnosed with clinical depression and chronic fatigue.

After learning that he has a part-time job with a rental car outfit, Social Security has now notified Batchelder that his $742-a-month checks will end in June.

What’s more, the government wants Batchelder to refund $22,337.40. That’s the amount of disability payments he has received since he began earning about $400 a month from his part-time job.

You might think that running for Congress and receiving disability checks for a psychological disorder might be incompatible.

Not at all, says Batchelder, 43, who lists himself on the ballot as a “peon.” He says his fight with the Social Security Administration has shown him just how heartless the government can be:

“It’s a symbol of cost-cutting at the expense of human consequences. A lot of people are worse off than me, but I’m more intelligent and articulate so I feel a responsibility to speak out.”

He says he is unable to work full time. But that’s not a bar to serving in Congress: “Better a part-time human being than a full-time person who is anti-human.”

Jon Snyder, spokesman for the San Diego office of Social Security, says Batchelder is entitled to a two-step appeal, which is under way.

He says that if Batchelder had reported his part-time job income sooner, he would not be stuck now with a whopping refund demand. Anyone making more than $300 a month can be struck from the rolls.

As for the charge that Social Security is penalizing people for trying to work rather than just subsist on the public dole, Snyder says:

“That’s more of a political question than I can answer. Those are the rules and regulations we have to live by.”

Those are the rules and regulations Batchelder says he hopes to change, for himself and others:

“Mine is a symbolic and educational campaign.”

To Protect and to Plumb

Here are two different approaches to the same job.

* To serve and protect (and provide some plumbing).

When San Diego cop Cindy Brady responded to a call from a 75-year-old University City woman who’d been ripped off by some supposed friends, she realized the woman needed more than just help from the police and social service agencies.

The woman also needed running water in her kitchen. She’d gone without for two years.

Some days later, Brady returned on her off-hours, accompanied by her husband.

John Brady is a U.S. marshal but has plumbing skills on the side. Mission accomplished.

* Get them before they get you .

A lengthy article in this month’s edition of The Informant, the official publication of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., is titled “Citizen’s Complaint?: You Don’t Have to Just ‘Take It.’ ”

It explains how cops can file defamation suits against citizens who lodge brutality complaints:

“As long as police officers are to be used as political footballs, start looking out for number one. Get a belt clip for a micro-recorder or throw a standard size one in your bag.

“Suspects tend to get the mouthiest when they’re behind the cage and en route to detox or jail, so flipping the switch on the machine sitting next to you shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, it makes great play at line-up the next day.”

The author is ex-cop Donovan Jacobs, whose aggressive actions were blamed by some for starting the brawl in which Sagon Penn shot and killed Officer Thomas Riggs, and wounded Jacobs and a civilian ride-along.

Mediating, Orating, Fund-Raising

In town.

* Twenty-three mediators from South Africa are meeting today with the San Diego Mediation Center, a leader in the field.

* Patricio Aylwin Azocar, president of Chile, is in San Diego today for a speech.

* Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young is set to attend a fund-raiser Tuesday for Councilman Bob Filner, who’s running for Congress.