About this product: Get the most out of your retirement benefits, and navigate the Social Security and Medicare systems with confidence!
Everyone wants to get the highest possible retirement and pension income - not to mention the best medical coverage. Turn to the completely updated 14th edition of Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions to discover the benefits you're entitled to and how to claim them as easily as possible.
Social Security benefits Find all the latest information and instructions you need to get your retirement and disability benefits, dependents and survivors benefits, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Medicare & Medicaid Learn the nuts and bolts of both programs, plus how to qualify and apply for them. Understand Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage - what it covers, how to apply for it and how to use it with your medigap policy, managed care plan or Medicaid.
Medical coverage options Get the latest information on Medicare and Medicaid HMOs and other managed care plans, and learn about the different types of medigap health plans.
Government pensions & veterans benefits Discover when and how to claim the benefits you have earned.
Plus, the 14th edition has an all-new section designed to help Baby Boomers face the important decisions 2009 will bring. You'll get comprehensive practical information about how and when to claim retirement benefits, including which should be claimed now and which you should delay, and how much you can expect to receive.
About this product: Get the most out of the new Medicare drug coverage!
Everyone wants to get the highest possible retirement and pension income --not to mention the best medical coverage. This book is your guide to finding retirement benefits, figuring out the best time to claim them, and then doing so quickly and easily.
Social Security benefits Find all the latest information and instructions you need to get your retirement and disability benefits, dependents and survivors benefits, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Medicare & Medicaid Learn the nuts and bolts of both programs, plus how to qualify and apply for them. Understand Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage what it covers, how to apply for it and how to use it with your medigap policy, managed care plan or Medicaid.
Medical coverage options Get the latest information on Medicare and Medicaid HMOs and other managed care plans, and learn about the different types of medigap health plans.
Government pensions & veterans benefits Discover when and how to claim the benefits you have earned.
Practical advice for anyone thinking about retirement Find out how much your benefits will be when you plan to claim them. Time your retirement to get the best benefits. Fill out and file important benefit forms. And more!
About this product: Everyone agrees that Social Security's future is in jeopardy-or is it? Long viewed as the "third rail" of American politics, Social Security is a major political issue, and many experts and politicians would like to restructure this program. But too few of us, young and elderly alike, really understand the origins and workings of this popular program. Daniel Béland answers the call for objective information with a short history that provides context and clarity for the current debates.
Covering six decades through the beginning of the current century, Béland chronicles how Social Security and the controversy surrounding its solvency have evolved, offering along the way new insights into its past, present, and future. His balanced perspective will help readers understand and evaluate partisan arguments on both sides of the issue.
Béland reconstructs the political history of Social Security, describes the impact of subsequent amendments to the original act, and offers comparative insights from other countries that can improve our understanding of the debate. He focuses particularly on the relationship between ideas and institutions in policymaking to examine the impact of gender and race on Social Security politics; and he shows that gender has had a more direct impact on Social Security development-especially regarding spousal benefits-and is more important in understanding the politics of reform than has often been understood.
In assessing how Social Security has been sold to the public, Béland reveals how the 1935 act resulted in part from its link with the traditional American belief in the values associated with hard work and self-reliance, while surreptitiously providing some economic security for the impoverished. Today's privatizers argue for changing from a guaranteed benefit to a defined contribution program, seeking to reclaim from liberals the rhetoric about American values in order to alter the very nature of Social Security-effectually turning discourse centered on personal and collective gain against the institutional legacy of the New Deal.
Succinct and illuminating, Béland's work provides concerned citizens with a thoughtful exploration of how the politics of Social Security evolved, while offering scholars new theoretical insights about the welfare state and the role of ideas and institutions in policymaking.
Richard Clarke's dramatic statement to the grieving families during the 9/11 Commission hearings touched a raw nerve across America. Not only had our government failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks but it has proven itself, time and again, incapable of handling the majority of our most crucial national-security issues, from Iraq to Katrina and beyond. This is not just a temporary failure of any one administration, Mr. Clarke insists, but rather an endemic problem, the result of a pattern of incompetence that must be understood, confronted, and prevented.
In Your Government Failed You, Clarke goes far beyond terrorism to examine the inexcusable chain of recurring U.S. government disasters and strategic blunders in recent years. Drawing on his thirty years in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, Clarke gives us a privileged, if gravely troubling, look into the debacle of government policies, discovering patterns in the failures and offering ways to halt the catastrophic cycle once and for all.
About this product: Domestic government debt markets play a critical role in managing public debt effectively and reducing the vulnerability of developing countries to financial crises. Many aspects of debt markets - money, primary, and secondary markets; a diversified investor base; and sound securities custody and settlement systems and regulation - interact in complex ways and are affected by previous policies and developments. Developing the Domestic Government Debt Market: From Diagnostics to Reform Implementation draws insights from a joint pilot program set up by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to design relevant reform and capacity-building programs in twelve countries. The experiences of these geographically and economically diverse countries - Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zambia - illustrate the challenges, obstacles, and progress in applying principles of market development. Developing the Domestic Government Debt Market will serve government officials contemplating or in the process of reforming their practices, providers of technical assistance, and practitioners working on building capacity in debt market development. Because effective development of debt markets is one key piece in sound public debt management , readers will also be interested in the companion volume, Managing Public Debt, published by The World Bank in February 2007, based on the same joint pilot program.
Bribery plays a significant role in international criminal activity. Terrorists pay bribes. Money-launderers pay bribes. Those who traffic in people, narcotics, and illegal arms pay bribes. People pay immigration officers not to ask, customs officials not to inspect, and police officers not to investigate. Bribes follow patterns that are not at all mysterious to the officials, salesmen, and citizens who seek them and pay them. Using a series of international cases, Wrage examines bribery, peeling back the mystique and ambiguity and exposing the very simple transactions that lie beneath. She shows how these seemingly everyday transactions can affect security, democratization, and human aid. Examples from around the world help to illustrate the nature of the problem and efforts at combating it.
Bribery plays a significant role in international criminal activity. Terrorists pay bribes. Money-launderers pay bribes. Those who traffic in people, narcotics, and illegal arms pay bribes. People pay immigration officers not to ask, customs officials not to inspect, and police officers not to investigate. At corporate headquarters in the United States, it can be easy to dismiss modest bribes in distant countries as an unfortunate cost of doing business. Bribes follow patterns that are not at all mysterious to the officials, salesmen, and citizens who seek them and pay them. Using a series of international cases, Wrage examines bribery, peeling back the mystique and ambiguity and exposing the very simple transactions that lie beneath. She shows how these seemingly everyday transactions can affect security, democratization, and human aid around the globe.
Bribery and Extortion presents a clear picture of the world of bribery and the havoc it can wreak on whole populations. Wrage covers commercial bribery, administrative and service-based bribery, and extortion. She considers bribery and extortion at both high levels of government and lower levels on the street. Examples from around the world help to illustrate the nature of the problem and efforts at combating it. The book concludes with practical suggestions and an assessment of current efforts to stem the tide of bribery and restore transparency to everyday transactions in all realms.
About this product: Written for federal, state, and local governments, each chapter in this book covers a different aspect of securing government information. Each expert author has agreed to share the secrets and advanced-level information gained by years in the business. Chapters cover identity/access management, identity theft, intellectual property, content security, converged networks, recovery strategies, national infrastructure, and more. Case studies, charts and author analysis, and proprietary research make the book accessible, while the writing style makes complex information intelligible to a wide range of readers.
About this product: A primary goal of this book is to examine, especially in the UK context, whether the responses that are now evolving are getting this balance right and how such a balance can continue to be struck or perhaps enhanced in the future. As a consequence, the book will investigate three aspects of this context. It will seek to assess the nature of responses by key public and private sector bodies in the UK post September 11 for preventing, pre-empting, countering and managing terrorist attack. It will assess the quality of response against a matrix of other factors (types of terrorist networks, tactics and targets of groups etc). And it will compare and contrast the UK's response with cognate states elsewhere (USA/EU).
About this product: In the wake of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government felt the need to establish a special department to handle national security - the Department of Homeland Security. But the idea of national security is not a recent concept, and terrorism is not a new concern. Many Americans think the 9/11 attacks ushered in a whole new danger to the country. In truth, every generation of Americans has experienced some worry that they might be attacked in their homes; even the first colonists feared for their safety. In those days, protecting the homeland mainly meant defending towns and borders from hostile Native American groups. Modern technology allows terrorists to wreak havoc on a much wider scale, but these early experiences planted the first seeds of national security. "The Department of Homeland Security" traces the history of the efforts to maintain national security in the United States and explains how one of the government's newest and most crucial departments is organized.
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