Can Anyone Find Them?

      MarketWatch has a piece that’s more remarkable for its headline than its content: Dead people claiming Social Security? Here’s one — but we’re still looking for the other 19,999,999.

“All 1,300 Branches Shut Down In Weeks”

      You wouldn’t believe all the stupid articles I see online on a daily basis. Maybe you would since you probably see of them. I’m talking about pieces with headlines saying something like “Millions To Receive New Social Security Payments This Week.” Those articles concern only regularly scheduled payments. Here’s a new one titled “Social Security Confirms All 1,300 Branches Shut Down In Weeks For Temporary Closure.” Sounds like it could be a big deal but the piece is about the Memorial Day holiday! I’ll bet most of these brain dead items are written by AI.

The New Yorker Magazine On The Sorry State Of Affairs At Social Security

      The New Yorker magazine has posted a long article on the sorry state of affairs at Social Security. Here’s one paragraph from the piece:

… Every previous Administration had launched pilot projects and fiddled with the system, but they had given managers like Jean sufficient notice and resources to train their people. Bisignano’s S.S.A. appeared to lurch from one initiative to another. Last February, it had discussed, then denied discussing, the possibility of cutting the workforce in half. It had eliminated, then partly reinstated, the option of making direct-deposit changes by phone. It had said that it would stop issuing public-policy updates, except via X, then continued to send e-mails and publish news on its website. It discouraged walk-in service, then told field offices to make the option available. It instituted a strict clawback policy for accidental overpayments, then reverted to a gradual one that gave beneficiaries a financial buffer. Changes made in response to doge’s accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse were abandoned: there was no good reason to block employees’ access to news sites, no need for redundant “I.D. proofing.” The Administration listed field offices for closure, then delisted them, though some rural outposts, in Iowa, Montana, and West Virginia, offer only phone service owing to the loss of staff. The agency is on a “slow march to implosion,” Jean said. “We’re living in a world of nobody knows anything, and nobody has any details about anything.” …

          There is this coda tacked on at the end of the piece:

 The New Yorker is committed to coverage of the federal workforce. Are you a current or former federal employee with information to share? Please use your personal device to contact us via e-mail (tammy_kim@newyorker.com) or Signal (ID: etammykim.54).

Who Could Argue?

       From Fortune:

For all the talk about Social Security being in crisis, what hasn’t been stressed enough is the leadership crisis. From December of 2023 to until the current leader’s Senate confirmation of May 6, a parade of four commissioners and acting commissioners cycled through the position. These chiefs departed fast in part because they got frequent hammerings in Congress over the agency’s poor phone and face-to-face service to beneficiaries. 

Enter Frank Bisignano. The Jamie Dimon protegee had a storied career in banking, and was appointed to lead SSA last spring (he has since added the job of IRS CEO to his resume, which you can read about here.) 

But the changes he has quickly enacted at SSA—drawing heavily on his time in the private sector—are real, and they’re impressing even the Administration’s fiercest critics.  … 

No matter what your political party, few could argue that an agency in need of efficiency finally has a leader at the top who is moving the needle. 

An Agency Response

      Social Security has a response to the “fake news” Washington Post article about the deterioration of service at the agency published by the Daily Caller, a far right wing publication. (The Daily Caller was the best you could do?)  It amounts to saying that if you just rely on what is presented in Social Security’s press releases, you have to admit that things are getting better and better. “Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?”

SSA Responds To Post Article

      Newsweek has an article on Social Security’s response to the story in the Washington Post on the deterioration of service at Social Security. Maybe they gave Newsweek a more substantive response that’s poorly reported but what I’m reading is no more than bluster. Why are they responding to Newsweek anyway? Everybody else rolled their eyes at the agency’s response?

Read About The Wonderful Work Bisignano Is Doing

       There’s a Bisignano puff piece in the Washington Examiner, I suppose that it will please the paid shills commenting here. Does anyone, even on the right, take the Washington Examiner seriously. It’s self consciously a propaganda outlet. No, it’s not a right wing equivalent of the Post. It’s almost a caricature.

     By the way, I don’t mean to demean Bisignano too much. In his own way, he’s probably trying to be a good guy. It’s just that he’s working in a horrifyingly incompetent and dishonest Administration that barely hides its contempt for Social Security. He’s far more devoted to puffing up Trump than running a competent agency. I don’t understand why anyone thinks Trump is deserving of blind loyalty but Bisignano is not alone.

Six Myths About Social Security

      With Social Security’s 90th birthday coming up the New York Times has a piece on “6 Myths About It That Won’t Go Away.” Here they are:

Social Security is ‘running out of money

Aging boomers are the problem

Social Security helps drive the deficit

The trust fund is nothing but a pile of I.O.U.s

We need to cut benefits now to pay them later

Waste, fraud and abuse abound

Defining Deviancy Down

      The Washington Post has an article on the emails from Social Security to beneficiaries touting the passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Only at the end does it mention how wildly inappropriate the emails are. Apparently, they regard this as something only of interest to “left-leaning” groups.  It’s much the same with USA Today, CNN and NBC News. Apparently, the New York Times has taken off for the long weekend and hasn’t noticed the emails at all. By Sunday or Monday it may just be old news to them.

Can We Trust Social Security’s Numbers?

From USA Today:

… Over the last several weeks, the agency has stopped making public 34 real-time performance metrics about things like how long they will have to wait to reach a live person on the phone, and how long applications for new senior benefits or social security benefits take to be approved. The metrics have been used for years to show how time-consuming it can be to reach a live person at certain locations or through the national 1-800 number, and as an accountability measure for the agency.

Instead the webpage now emphasizes how quickly problems can be resolved online, and says the "average speed of answer," which excludes callback wait time, is 19.2 minutes.

USA TODAY reporters called Social Security's 1-800 line multiple times over several days and found the wait times to be consistently over an hour. Multiple times they did not reach a live person before the line disconnected with no warning. …

Concerned that the information now available on the website didn't match what her staff was hearing from constituents, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's staff began conducting its own test of the 1-800 number, making hourly phone calls from June 12 through June 20. 

In a letter Warren sent to Bisignano late on June 25, she called the results of her office survey "deeply troubling." Compared to the number available online, wait times averaged nearly an hour and 45 minutes and often exceeded three hours.

Data from the office survey showed that in 50 calls, more than 50% were never answered by a human. The majority ended when the caller was placed on hold and then the call dropped.

Of calls that were answered, 32% had wait times exceeding two hours. The average wait time was 102 minutes. …

  Jen Burdick, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said they haven't seen a reduction in call times.

"Social Security attorneys and paralegals from our office call SSA dozens of times every day. We are uniformly finding that we can't get placed into the queue, either because of system outages, phone disconnects, or AI chatbot issues.  When we do get put into the queue, wait times seem to be up from last year ‒ sometimes more than an hour.  …

     I’m fully expecting no further Congressional hearings on Social Security in this Congress but Commissioner Bisignano could still be subpoenaed to testify about this issue before a Social Security Subcommittee controlled by Democrats in 2027 even if he’s no longer Commissioner. 

For A Different Viewpoint

     If you’ve been wanting a news article to sort of reassure you about the current status of Social Security the Deseret News from deeply Republican Utah has you covered.

Afternoon Roundup

     There are so many news articles coming out about Social Security that it's hard to keep up. Let me share a few that seem notable to me:

• MSN --  Trump’s nominee to lead Social Security Administration to face questions over DOGE cuts
• Paul Krugman --  Social Security: A Time for Outrage
• Government Executive --  Regional boards for federal agency coordination officially disbanded 
• Michigan Live -- AARP calls latest Social Security changes ‘deeply unacceptable.’ Will you be impacted? 
• CNBC --  Senators press Trump Social Security nominee on his views about privatizing the agency
• WSJ -- Dealing With Social Security Is Heading From Bad to Worse

Inside The Work Of A Claims Rep

     E. Tammy Kim at The New Yorker has a great piece going inside the work life of  a current Social Security claims rep. The reporter was not supposed to have this kind of access.

    I'm sure you've seen some cartoons from The New Yorker but you may not be all that familiar with the magazine. I've been subscribing for more than 50 years. I can tell you that articles in The New Yorker have an national agenda setting impact well beyond what most people could imagine.

Does DOGE Care?

      From some television station in Cleveland:

AVON LAKE, Ohio — An Avon Lake couple tried to change their address but faced issues after dealing with the Social Security Administration (SSA) systems for hours.

Gloria and Walton Britton moved to Avon Lake last month and began changing their address so that credit cards and other bills, including social security, were sent to the right location. They spent days on the phone trying to reach someone to make the address change, but nobody ever answered.

"Hurt, frustrated, disrespected," Gloria said. 

She tried to reach someone at the Social Security administration’s office but said it was impossible.

"I gave up one day after three hours of sitting on hold and didn't even get a call back option," Gloria explained.

The couple even tried to log in through the SSA’s website but could not reach the page where they could change their address or set up an appointment. …

No, You’re The Dummy

      Read this piece in Forbes if you want to either laugh or become enraged. It is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read about Social Security and I’ve read a lot of dumb things about Social Security. The author thinks we can painlessly cut $10 trillion from Social Security but almost all of what he recommends is already in use!  He thinks we can totally eliminate overpayments at SSA. He doesn’t begin to understand the equation. You can go from 99% accuracy to 99.9% accuracy but you’ll spend more than you save getting there. He thinks Social Security engages in no data sharing but it actually engages in extensive data sharing.

     This piece is an example of what many people, especially on the right, think about government agencies, that they’re run by morons and that their performance could be dramatically improved in simple ways. While the people running Social Security may make a few mistakes, they’re not idiots. There are no simple low cost solutions. The idea that there’s $10 trillion out there to be saved is nuts.

I'm Glad There's A Serious Discussion Of This Issue

     From Twitter or officially "X."

NOSSCR Files RICO Suit Against La Grada

     From the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR):

NOSSCR filed suit on Friday, October 18, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against a Spanish company for misleading Social Security beneficiaries and unnecessarily clogging SSA’s phone lines. The complaint alleges that La Grada Online published articles with sensationalized headlines about Social Security benefits, including a false report of a $600 payment increase in June 2024. This misinformation caused a surge in calls to SSA, overwhelming the agency's phone lines and costing NOSSCR members considerable time and money. The complaint further alleges that La Grada Online published another misleading article in August 2024, falsely claiming a "Social Security benefit boost."

The lawsuit accuses Kapital Media Productions of violating the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the Lanham Trade-Mark Act, and Illinois common law. NOSSCR seeks treble damages, attorneys' fees, and an injunction to prevent La Grada Online from publishing further false information about Social Security benefits.  ...

    I see it daily but never post the crap that La Grada puts out. It's obnoxious stuff that unquestionably misleads the public for the purpose of gaining clicks. The problem is titles such as these:

Total change in Social Security checks as of this date – How do I claim the new benefits?

Social Security makes new payment schedule official – List of checks to be paid in November

Last Social Security payment of October for retirees who born between this dates – $4,873 check to be paid this week

Goodbye to Social Security benefits – List of retirees who will no longer receive payments

     I'm not going to help these sleezes by giving links.

    I know just about nothing about RICO. Does NOSSCR have standing?

 

 

This Is Going To Be A Trip For Those Of You Who Have Never Watched John Oliver Before

John Oliver On Social Security Disability

     I've found a video of that John Oliver piece on Social Security disability. I can't say whether this is an excerpt or the whole thing.

    By the way, I wish I could set this up so you click on the image on the left and you go directly to the video but Blogger doesn't make it that easy.

Benefits Come In After TV Station Gets Involved

     I guess this is a dog bites man story but a Virginia man has finally received his Social Security benefits after the intervention of a television station. 

    But Social Security has announced that it's stopped doing this sort of thing. No more expediting a case because of "adverse public relations potential." Of course, I didn't think they'd really stop. Did you? 

    I'm certainly not sorry the man finally got his benefits. He had been waiting far too long. It's just that he's not the only one. Getting media intervention is like winning the lottery. It has little to do with just how bad the delay is.