Discussion Questions for Clubs and Classes
1. Affirmative Action: Whether such programs, in balance, are better for society or cause more harm.
A. Whether criteria for measuring the efficacy of affirmative action programs could be
generated and, if so, what the nature of those criteria would be.
B. Whether it is possible to measure the success or failure of affirmative action
programs.
C. Whether affirmative action programs in the Federal government should require the
explicit approval of an authorizing official and, if so, who that official should be (e.g.,
the president, a congressional panel)?
2. Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs: Whether Social Security disability cases could be
better resolved by senior attorneys acting as arbitrators.
A. Could Social Security disability claimants file an appeal to a Federal district court if
denied benefits by the government with the Federal district courts then referring cases
to a senior attorney for arbitration, skipping the current administrative law judge
adjudication process altogether?
B. Should such arbitration be binding or nonbinding (which would allow a subsequent
appeal to a Federal district court)?
C. Would such a dispute resolution process eliminate the need for an Appeals Council,
possibly saving taxpayer money while cutting bureaucracy?
D. Whether the record should ever be closed in a Social Security disability case or
whether new evidence should always be allowed.
3. Appeals Council: Whether membership on the appellate body should qualify a person for
membership as a Federal Social Security administrative law judge or whether it should be the
other way around.
A. Whether membership on the Appeals Council is open to manipulation such that
political appointments can be made, and, if so, whether the Appeals Council is used as
a vehicle for making ensuing political appointments to Federal Social Security
administrative law judge positions.
B. Whether only qualified administrative law judges should be eligible for appointments
to the appellate body, the Appeals Council.
C. Whether, in balance, it would be better to have Social Security appeals filed directly
with Federal courts rather than filed first with the Appeals Council.
4. Book Cover: Who are the characters on the cover, and what are they doing?
A. Do you recognize yourself in those characters or others?
B. Are they going to push that boulder up that hill?
C. Are you currently pushing any boulders up any hills, or have you in the past?
D. Did God say that existentialism is dead?
5. Career Hell: Are there effective mechanisms for coping with work stress if your career goes to
hell?
A. Suppose your boss is Blabzilla. Can you out blab your boss? Are blab wars ever
winnable?
B. Suppose one or more of your colleagues, possibly including the head of the office or
another manager, has workplace meltdowns, conducts verbal assaults on personnel at
work during work hours, or otherwise engages in hostile actions, including making
accusations and engaging in name calling. What coping mechanisms are helpful and
appropriate in such a hostile work environment?
C. Suppose you observe workplace irregularities, possibly including time and
attendance problems, phantom overtime, absentee management, racism, sexism, or
false data reports. Would you report these? Would you testify in court? Would
whistleblower statutes provide adequate protection from retaliation?
6. Childhood disability: Whether there should be a childhood disability program that is based on
the assumption that conditions of comparable severity to those that would disable an adult could
be identified?
A. Whether studies can be done that would show that benefits paid pursuant to the Title
XVI childhood disability program are spent on the child.
B. Whether studies could be done that would show that families with special needs
children have more expenses than families without special needs children.
C. Whether replacing the current Title XVI childhood disability program with a program based on
medical care would be a better option.
1. Whether such a program would reduce, if not eliminate, fraudulent or fraudulent-
like payments in the childhood disability program.
2. Whether such a program would save on overhead, reducing time spent on cases
while simplifying adjudication.
D. Whether a comprehensive national health care program for children could make
childhood disability concepts obsolete.
E. Whether a comprehensive national health care program for all citizens, including
children, would be a better option.
1. What health care areas should be included in a national health care plan (e.g.,
physical, chiropractic, optometric, hearing, mental, medications, massage, and
substance abuse)?
2. Whether a national health care program would increase or decrease freedom.
3. Whether all residents should be included, not just citizens.
7. Democracy: Whether democracy is better conceptualized as an absolute or a continuum.
A. If conceptualized as a continuum, how many points should be on the democracy
scale? 1-5? 0-10?
B. What factors would earn points on the democracy scale?
1. Multiparty, two-party, or one-party systems. Free press. Independent judiciary,
courts, police. Civilian control of the military. Subsidized public education.
Separation of powers. Secret elections. Universal enfranchisement of adults.
Bicameral legislature. Federal system vs. confederation. Independent unions. Free
travel. No debtor’s prisons. Term limits. Religious freedom.
2. Should all factors be weighted the same, or should they be weighted differently?
C. What would its rating be if the democracy scale were applied to the United States?
D. Could a democracy scale be used to compare other countries? What countries would
you compare?
8. Disability Definition: Whether disability is a social construction?
A. Should the process of obtaining Social Security disability benefits be simplified,
possibly by using other definitions of disability?
B. Whether Social Security disability benefits should be abolished.
1. Should a different program replace Social Security disability?
2. Could that program be an income maintenance program?
3. What would be included in an income maintenance package?
(Medical? Education? Public Transit?)
C. What is the ontological status of money in today’s society?
D. Whether the Social Security disability program should be required to establish
quantitative goals for measuring which applicants are among the more impaired and
which are among the less impaired.
9. Economy: Whether it would be wise to turn over management of a significant segment of the
U.S. economy (e.g., medicine, retirement, disability) to a large government bureaucracy.
A. Whether the Social Security disability program would be better managed by private
insurance companies.
B. Whether large government programs would be better regarded as experiments, the
results from which should be periodically reviewed.
C. Whether a national health care program could involve private-public partnership,
perhaps including a government option while not eliminating private options, or
whether a single-payer system would be a better idea.
1. In what ways might a national health care plan utilize private health care?
2. Could a national health care plan involve contracts for services with private
providers?
10. Education: Whether more education and training should be required of Federal employees?
A. Whether Federal managers above a particular pay grade should be required to have
masters in government administration degrees or equivalent degrees, including course
work in math, statistics, and research design.
B. Whether educational requirements should be even higher, possibly including
doctorates, for heads of agencies and their immediate underlings (e.g., Social Security
commissioner, regional commissioners, and deputy and associate commissioners).
C. Whether Federal employees, including administrative law judges, should have training
and certification requirements, including objective testing, to ensure subject-matter
expertise.
D. Whether Federal managers should have professional accouterments including a code
of ethics, independent professional organizations, malpractice concepts, and sanctions
for ethical violations.
11. Equal Employment Opportunity Concepts: Whether the nature of harassment and
discrimination in the workplace changed and, if so, how?
A. Whether the Federal government engaged in illegal discrimination in hiring and
promotions in the past based on race and sex and, if so, how to remedy that currently?
B. Whether it is possible to make up for past illegal discrimination by engaging in
current illegal discrimination.
C. Assuming workplace sexual harassment and sex discrimination have changed, how
could that change be measured, and what period or periods should be compared?
D. Are other forms of discrimination and harassment just as bad?
1. What about bullying and harassment based on personality disorders?
2. What about less protected categories, such as nonveteran, flyover country, and
English as a second language?
12. Holiday Schedules: Whether holidays should be updated and modernized to reflect current
values and norms, perhaps on an ongoing basis.
A. Whether any current national holidays should be modified or deleted.
B. Whether any holidays should be added.
C. Would some holidays be better celebrated over a more extended time, perhaps of a
week, while retaining only one day of closures?
13. Leave: Whether employers should provide pregnancy, family and maternity leave in addition
to regular leave.
A. If so, whether the employer should be required to calculate the work deficit and make
appropriate arrangements to cope with it rather than simply dump it on third parties,
perhaps ones who are not as favored?
1. If an employer regularly provides pregnancy, maternity or family leave, should
the ensuing work deficits be considered in the staffing levels?
2. Should personal leave programs be established for employees to use that include
the above categories as well as other categories (e.g., education, grief, stress, pro
bono projects, church projects, creative projects (e.g., writing), or personal
development projects (e.g., mastering chess)?
3. Suppose other categories are not valued as highly as family, pregnancy, and
maternity leave. What criteria should be used to judge which is more important,
who gets to select the standards, and who gets to make the decision?
4. Whether valuing pregnancy and maternity leave more highly than other needs for
leave is sexist?
5. Are there any examples of systematic thinking that has been done on this topic?
B. Whether the Federal government should provide sabbaticals for its employees and, if
so, on what grounds and for what categories of employees (e.g., all, all above a
particular pay grade, professional staff only, or judges only).
C. Whether employers adequately provide for coping with grief, including deaths among
colleagues as well as deaths among friends and family.
14. Substance Abuse: Whether the Social Security policy of denying disability benefits to those
whose substance abuse is a significant cause of the disability should be reversed?
A. Whether persons with substance abuse disorders should be eligible for treatment in an
appropriate program at the expense of the disability program?
B. Whether Social Security adjudicators should have more than one remedy at their
disposal and, if so, whether the adjudicators should be allowed to select the best remedy
for the particular case.
C. Whether the primary remedy for substance abuse cases should be participation in a
treatment program, if not the exclusive remedy?
D. Whether the Social Security Administration’s substance abuse policy reflects thinking
from the 1980s, possibly making it forty years out of date, and whether addicts can just
say no.
E. Whether consideration should be given to other addictions (e.g., gambling or sex).
15. Union Reform: Whether unions function as America’s version of workplace democracy.
A. Whether enrollment and participation in unions would improve if their operational
procedures were updated and modernized.
B. Whether public employee union reforms should include allowing non-dues-paying
bargaining unit members to vote in union elections, rotation of the personnel holding
union offices, and term limits for union officials?
C. Could a democracy scale be applied to unions?
1. If so, what factors would earn points?
2. How would you rate your union or any unions you know about on your
democracy scale?
D. Whether effective reforms of unions would increase participation by the membership.
16. Veterans’ Preference: Whether veterans’ preference in hiring for Federal positions should be
continued and, if so, whether the preference should be applied to Federal administrative law
judge positions?
A. Whether other veterans’ benefits programs are adequate and whether preference in
hiring for administrative law judge positions helps only an elite few?
B. Whether a veteran’s preference in hiring for administrative law judge positions should
be used only as a tie breaker among candidates who are deemed best qualified based on
other criteria?
17. Women in Leadership Positions: Whether objective data confirm folklore that women make
more effective leaders than men.
A. Whether it is possible to study leadership efficacy with unobtrusive measures, given
that awareness of the observation and evaluation process could alter the behaviors
under observations.
B. Whether awareness of a leadership study alters the behavior of those recording data or
observations, making results less accurate.