Social Security Needs Plan to Deal With Baby Boom Influx: Baby boomer retirements, combined with a "retirement wave" of the Social Security Administration's most experienced staff, could create a perfect storm of backlogs and long lines unless a comprehensive plan is developed, a report to Congress concludes. The Government Accountability Office report, "Social Security Administration: Service Delivery Plan Needed to Address Baby Boom Retirement Challenges," found that staffing in field offices has already dropped more than 4 percent and that field offices kept up only by deferring work they considered low priority. Even so, field office work fell 1.3 percent from 2005 to 2008, and customer satisfaction dropped from 84 percent to 81 percent. "SSA estimates that retirement and disability filings will increase the agency's work by about 1 million annual claims by 2017. Further, SSA will experience an agency-wide retirement wave in the coming years—he agency projects that 44 percent of its staff will retire by 2016." GAO recommends that SSA develop a "service delivery plan" to handle the changes.
Improving the Situation in Somalia: The United States must immediately strengthen its diplomatic presence on the Somali peninsula if it hopes to reverse rampant anti-Americanism and bring about a peaceful end to the Somali conflict. The recommendation is included in the report "Somalia After the Ethiopian Occupation: First Steps to End the Conflict and Combat Extremism" from the Center for American Progress's Enough Project, which focuses on the crises in Sudan, Chad, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. The report says the Obama administration "must make a clean break" with Bush administration policies that placed "short-term counterterrorism goals ahead of a more comprehensive strategy." The report calls on the United States to put its counterterrorism goals in the area in a broader context, focus more on human rights, emphasize good government, and reinforce zones of peace.
Opium Crop Drops: Two new reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show that global opium poppy growing is declining. The reports, "South East Asia Opium Survey" and "Afghanistan Opium Winter Assessment," show that in the area of Southeast Asia once known as the Golden Triangle, the opium problem is now basically limited to the region of Myanmar. The area now accounts for some 5 percent of the world's illegal opium, down from more than 50 percent in 1990. Nonetheless, Myanmar remains the world's second largest source of opium. In Afghanistan, 18 provinces that were opium free in 2008 are expected to remain so this year. However, opium growing continues to be concentrated in the seven most unstable provinces in the south and southwest. According to the UNODC, 92 percent of the world's opium came from Afghanistan in 2008.
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