GA got a load of offline responses (emails, texts) to yesterday's inquiry- and this post by Eric Kurta:
That's Michael Holmes.... An overpaid school bus driver (making $50K a year back in 2008 - the average bus driver was making $31K), currently on disability for back pains that don't seem to prevent him from sitting through long council meetings or seeking physical confrontation outside city hall."On disability"? Oh no! That's terrible. Poor guy. I didn't know he was disabled.
GA's got a friend who slipped on an icy sidewalk a couple of years ago, cracked a rib and crushed some vertebra. Can you imagine? He was a skinny son of a bitch, maybe that's why. Well, to make a short story long, he had 2 surgeries and was in a body cast for months until his ribs knitted. His back? Never the same. It's got more cracks than the Great Wall of China. Sometimes my friend sleeps sitting up the pain is so bad. And he walks with a cane. Without the cane he's got a pronounced limp. His wife, a vain and selfish woman, took the kids and left him, and then his house was foreclosed. His new home? A 1986 Honda. What shitty luck. All because of a fall which left him permanently disabled.
limp (lmp)
intr.v. limped, limp·ing, limps
1. To walk lamely, especially with irregularity, as if favoring one leg.
2. To move or proceed haltingly or unsteadily: The project limped along with half its previous funding.
n.
An irregular, jerky, or awkward gait.
Ready for a happy ending?
Pain and all, my friend went back to work.
That's right. He has one of those jobs where you do a lot of sitting down. And driving. Lots of driving.
As for his rotten wife, she had a change of heart, brought the kids back to his newly-purchased McMansion on a suburban NJ cul-de-sac. But he lives with chronic back pain, takes medication for it.
So, GA's heart goes out to poor Mike Holmes.
Disabled and all.
I wonder what he takes for the pain? My friend with the broken back takes Vicodin- which has nasty side effects.
Nausea, vomiting, constipation, lightheadedness, dizziness, or drowsiness may occur. Some of these side effects may decrease after you have been using this medication for a while. If any of these effects persist or worsen, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly."Not a complete list of side effects?" Wow. What else could happen- your head could fall off? Maybe it dissolves your feet?
Seek immediate medical attention if any of these rare but serious side effects occur: fainting, seizure, slow/shallow breathing, unusual drowsiness/difficulty waking up.
A very serious allergic reaction to this drug is rare. However, seek immediate medical attention if you notice any symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, including: rash, itching/swelling (especially of the face/tongue/throat), severe dizziness, trouble breathing.
This is not a complete list of possible side effects. If you notice other effects not listed above, contact your doctor or pharmacist.
Jeez, that's what some disabled people have to put up with- daily medication for chronic pain.
Of course, chronic pain limits one's activities... like standing for long periods of time, walking up and down stairs, reaching for stuff, shopping in large electronics outlets... awful. And of course being too disabled to work, like poor Mike Holmes.
Thanks goodness the taxpayers of Hoboken are taking care of him!
Another GA mystery solved.
The FBI would be in charge of false claims of disability.
ReplyDeleteSomeone really should look at every city worker who is currently out on disability to see if they are really disabled. I find it hard to believe this tool can't do something useful in town to justify getting that check he gets every couple weeks.
ReplyDeleteRed: Insurance fraud has long been part of the skill set of public servants "working the system." (Russo's illegitimate coverage as another example.)
ReplyDelete"Disability," especially the "convenience" of same leading up to imminent retirement, has long been part of the whole malingerer-trading-as-public-servant m.o.
MBB knows of one health care provider who was stiffed for thousands of dollars of insurance monies that various City & Hudson County public servants pocketed for services rendered (for legitimate healthcare issues), when the State Health Benefits program erroneously paid the insureds, instead of the provider. That entity is also part of the problem. Attempts to collect from the insureds were met with various threats, including one of the thieves initiating a bogus malpractice suit, courtesy of a Secaucus goon-attorney attached to the Democratic machine there.
When claims errors such as these are made by the State Health Benefits program, there is generally no responsibility taken, even when the union contract is clearly violated. The State Insurance & Banking Commission---tasked with oversight---also seems yet another level of the same corruption, trading as bureaucratic ineptitude.
One might speculate a widespread pattern of fraud. Holmes is perhaps just one small example. One can only hope the FBI's investigation is sufficiently comprehensive.
We all pay for this type of crime and hopefully our visitors from Newark will notice this type of abuse in addition to the stolen emails. Just over nine weeks ago, the feds finally arrested those "disabled" workers from the LIRR involved in doing the same thing: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/nyregion/charges-in-lirr-disability-scheme.html?pagewanted=all
ReplyDeleteWhen Mrs. Richard G. Mason's sycophants tried to create the non-story of parking problems so eagerly covered by that cesspool of yellow journalism known as FOX, a recent arrival to Hoboken, a real-estate agent who chose to jump on that bandwagon, admitted in a letter to the Reporter to committing insurance fraud by using her parents address for her auto insurance and couldn't understand why she was being ticketed as a non-resident.
Another brilliant mind in the real estate industry.