“I’ve Lost My Free Will, And Now You’re Trying To Give Me A Lollipop”

      From the Washington Post:

Brace yourself before you call the Social Security Administration, as several million people do each month.
The average wait time is 68.9 minutes.
On the line, your experience will consist of a repeated 5-minute segment of announcements and better-than-usual hold music.

Go ahead, listen. Don’t worry, you can take yourself off hold at any time. …

Because the internet can still be a place that connects you to your curiosity, some people go in search of the full song and its lyrics that float over the melody.  …

Imagine that — a piece of music that breaks free in small ways from our DOGE-enhanced existence. So we went to East Harlem to meet the musician behind it and played him the Social Security hold loop, on speaker.

“That’s horrible!” David D’Alessio howled. He sat with his face in his hands, at his kitchen table.
It was the first time he heard his song — his life’s credo — used as off-the-shelf hold music.
 He felt trapped, imagining himself as a caller. “I feel like I’m being punished,” D’Alessio said. “I’ve lost my free will, and now you’re trying to give me a lollipop.”

D’Alessio, 54, is an independent musician who put out three albums during a career of over 30 years.  …

He was 35 and had just had a bad breakup. “I was pretty dark about what I was doing, where I was going, who I was,” D’Alessio said, “You know ... the whole nine.” He was stuck.
That’s when “Throw Yourself In Front of It” emerged. First came the melody — the same one piped through millions of phones now. … 

By 2014, he figured it was time to make money from “Throw Yourself in Front of It.” D’Alessio recorded an instrumental version with drums, bass and layers of vocals. That was posted online in a music catalogue for purchase, as the company writes, by “visionary music supervisors in TV, film and advertising.”  As copyright lawyers would put it: the use of D’Alessio’s instrumental version was offered online, non-exclusively, in perpetuity, to anyone who would pay an up-front licensing fee. …

Slowing Down In Woodlawn

      From WBAL in Baltimore:

With the government shutdown in its 36th day on Wednesday, businesses around government facilities are feeling the effects. Businesses near Woodlawn's Social Security Administration are seeing a decline in customers since the shutdown as some federal employees are either furloughed or working without pay.

Pioneer Pit Beef usually sees a line out the door. Not during the shutdown, though. 

"This is why you see today we have no line here," said Jesus Cruz, the restaurant's owner. "Normally this time, lunchtime, we have a lot of people waiting in line. We have about 15 to 20 people waiting in the line before we even open.”

Cruz said his business has decreased by as much as 40% due to the absence of its main customers: federal workers at the Social Security Administration.”Only a few of them come here," Cruz said. "Maybe one or two a week, and they let us know that the rest of the people are off from the department." ...

     By the way, let me say how much I appreciate the sacrifices of those working without pay as well as those furloughed. You deserve better. The nation deserves better. 

How Close Are We?

     Social Security employees are about to miss another payday due to the government shutdown. Commercial aviation is being affected by air traffic controllers and TSA employees calling in sick. The Trump Administration is threatening to not pay furloughed federal employees for the time during the shutdown.j

     There are reports of localized problems at Social Security but nothing extensive. Everybody has their breaking point. The perfunctory email shown here won’t help much, if any. How close are we to major problems at Social Security?     

  

How SSA’s Databases Will Be Misused — Even Leland Dudek Says So

      From Pro Publica: 

This year, when states began using an expanded Department of Homeland Security system to check their voter rolls for noncitizens, it was supposed to validate the Trump administration’s push to harness data from across federal agencies to expose illicit voting and stiffen immigration enforcement. 

DHS had recently incorporated confidential data from the Social Security Administration on hundreds of millions of additional people into the tool, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. The added information allowed the system to perform bulk searches using Social Security numbers for the first time. ...

Experts say adding Social Security data to SAVE could help election officials verify, en masse, if voters are U.S. citizens, but it shouldn’t be used to make final determinations that people aren’t citizens.  

That’s because multiple audits and analyses have shown that SSA’s citizenship information is often outdated or incomplete, especially for people who became naturalized citizens. With the 2026 midterms about a year away, Caren Short, director of legal and research for the League of Women Voters of the United States, said she fears the expanded use of SAVE will lead to errors. ...

Still, Leland Dudek, acting SSA commissioner until early May, told ProPublica he doesn’t trust that DHS will accurately flag noncitizens as officials try to cross-match data and files from multiple systems. 

“They are probably going to make some massive mistakes,” he said. ...

That's Nice

      From the Coosa Valley News:

As the effects of the ongoing government shutdown continue to ripple through local communities, one Rome [Georgia] restaurant stepped up this week to show appreciation for federal workers feeling the pinch. Marco’s Pizza, operated by local franchise owner Claude Corbin, provided lunch to employees at the Social Security Office in Rome as a gesture of support and solidarity. ...

Happy Dia De Los Muertos

 

Image created by Chat GPT

User Fee To $123

      Social Security is publishing the full list of cost of living adjustments in the Federal Register on Monday. You can read the list today. One that is of particular interest to some readers of this blog is the maximum user fee charged to attorneys representing Social Security claimants. Beginning in December it will be $123.

Après Moi Le Déluge

      From Government Executive:

…  Shares in Fiserv, a financial technology company that processes credit and debit card payments on behalf of businesses and financial institutions, fell more than 40%, or $30 billion in market value, on Wednesday, after CEO Mike Lyons withdrew earnings forecasts originally issued by his predecessor, Bisignano. The stock price fell another 7.1% Thursday.

According to trade publication PaymentsDive, Lyons said that Bisignano’s earnings targets “would have been objectively difficult to achieve, even with the right investment and strong execution.” But instead, Fiserv had in recent years deferred needed investments and cut costs in pursuit of shoring up short-term profit margins. …