Hello White House

Unless you go to a lot of trouble, when you visit this or any other website you leave behind some evidence that you were here. It is nothing too personal. I cannot identify individuals who visit. One of the pieces of information you leave behind is the identity of your service provider. This is how I know that I get lots of visits from Social Security employees. For the first time in a couple of years I recently decided to look down the list of service providers for visitors to this blog. There was a service provider listed that I had not seen before, "Executive Office of the President." I wish I could show you the chart on visits from this service provider but Adobe Acrobat is not cooperating and I lack the technical savvy to do it in another way. What it shows is exactly zero visits during the Bush Administration. Starting in June 2009, this has gone up to a fairly stable level of approximately 100 hits per month. This is almost as many hits as this blog receives from the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

I am not under the illusion that President Obama or anyone close to him is reading this blog. More likely, it is one or more people at the Office of Management and Budget or the President's domestic policy staff charged with Social Security matters.