Merry Christmas

 

Afraid Of Voters

      From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):

Friday, December 12 is the deadline for public comments on a policy the Trump Administration secretly adopted in May, giving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) access to personal data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on nearly every U.S. resident. DHS has been encouraging states to use this data to reverify the citizenship of voters, and DHS says state voting officials have already queried these data tens of millions of times. A court order recently forced the Administration to disclose the arrangement and allow public input.

The Administration policy raises significant legal, privacy, and other concerns. One of the most serious is that Social Security data don’t have complete or up-to-date citizenship information, so using them to verify citizenship will almost inevitably lead to errors — potentially disenfranchising U.S. citizen voters ahead of the midterm elections. …

For people not receiving Social Security benefits, SSA has long stated that its citizenship data are incomplete, can be outdated, and “do not provide definitive information on U.S. citizenship.” While SSA data can be helpful in proving that someone is a citizen — for example, to meet Medicaid’s citizenship requirements — the data have several well-known shortcomings in proving that someone isn’t a citizen. …

Merry Christmas

 

Representation Rates At Initial, Reconsideration and Hearing

     From Social Security. As always, click on the image to view full size.

Disparities In Disability Determination

      Social Security has posted numbers on initial allowance rates by state and region on disability claims for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2025. As always, click on the image to view full size. Note the disparities between and within regions. You were much better off filing a disability claim in the Kansas City region than the San Francisco region.

 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas

 

Man Charged With Threatening To Blow Up Field Office

     From WWNY TV: 

A Watertown [NY] man is accused of threatening to blow up a government office in the city.

City police charged 32-year-old Edmanuel Rivero-Vazquez with making a threat of mass harm.

During a meeting with staff at the Social Security Administration office on Bellew Avenue on Wednesday, Rivero-Vazquez allegedly threatened to blow up the building. ...

Eye Rolling Comments From Trump

      Donald Trump is saying that he likes the idea of Australia’s defined contribution retirement program instead of U.S.’s defined benefits plan. Defined contribution means you have no guaranteed retirement income. Maybe you get more than a defined benefits plan. Maybe not. The risk is yours. Also, how does a defined contribution handle disability and survivor benefits? Maybe those contingencies never happen in Trumpworld. Oh, and there’s also the little problem of how we would transition from what we have now to a defined contribution plan, a problem that has no conceivable solution.

     Talking about the U.S. switching to a defined contribution plan is a sure sign that you know virtually nothing about Social Security.

     At least I’m talking about eye rolling comments from the President rather than the problem he has keeping his eyes open.