#office of social security

[squiddlysq]

Murderbot's interview with Station Security when it first arrived on station went extremely well

[columboscreens]

columbo - caution: murder can be hazardous to your health

[crimeronan]

just burst into tears in a post office and immediately the entire world opened up to me. easy criers must have the best lives what the fuck. i should stop taking my prozac Immediately.

[dxppercxdxver]

navigating changing all my documentation post name change really got me feeling like a bureaucratic wound man

[cavityinmybrain]

SSI is a purposefully convoluted system of bureaucracy that is made to be difficult to understand/navigate and you cannot change my mind.

i should not have to call one office to ask a question about information i was told yesterday in the same office, only to get condescended upon and given a second office to call.

i should not call the second office and get once again condescended to because of the question i had. not only was i condescended to, i was condescended to over questions i did not even ask. and when i had the gall to correct the person on the phone for the question i was actually asking, i was spoken to like i couldn't understand basic information about the program.

the system made to 'help disabled people' is nothing more than a thinly veiled program designed to keep people poor and not asking questions, because you should be grateful for the $943 that you're given a month even if its barely enough to live off of.

[ziskeyt]

if you ever need to deal with social security for any reason as an expat abroad i just hope you aren't abroad in canada as they took all their services out of here and made us use the offices in the us. offices with phones that never pick up and drop calls all the time. anyway after a month i've found out they are processing my name change and it should be finalized by the end of this month, which means i can reregister to vote likely in may. also once i get the updated card that is the last thing i needed to change my name with and i'm finally done with getting all my official stuff for two countries changed. exhausting. technically i could bug the county i was born to get a changed birth certificate but tbh, i am tired of having to deal with this and it isn't necessary so it's fine if it remains unchanged.

[ookaookaooka]

i wanna make a story set in an anarchist utopia but unfortunately utopias are kinda boring to read 😞. but also what if we were kind to each other. what if we only worked when we needed to and only did stuff we wanted to. what if our society wasnt built around punishing everyone as much as possible for everything.

[william-r-melich]

Tik Tok on the Chopping Block - 04/25/2024

Yesterday, Joe Biden signed the Tik Tok Divest-or-Ban bill into law. I covered this bill extensively in my post, "Tik Tok Bill/HR 7521" back on March 16th of this year. This bill forces ByteDance to sell Tik Tok within one year. It's clear to me that this Chinese owned company is controlled by the CCP and is using it to gather information on US citizens and influence children toward committing self-harm and suicide.

Tik Tok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew released the following video statement yesterday. "Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban on you and your voice. We are confident, and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again." He was referring to how they circumvented Trump's executive order to ban the app in the U.S. back in 2020. Tik Tok's position is that through China's Counterespionage Law, its customer data is stored in Virginia and backed up in Singapore. They claim that they have never or ever will share U.S. data with the CCP. Yet the owner of ByteDance previously issued a letter of apology to the CCP about failing to follow the CCP's directives. It's obvious to me that they are more of an arm of the CCP than a private company and we should not trust them. At the same time, I'm also conflicted about trusting our own government. Regardless it's now signed into law, like it or not.

Tik Tok and ByteDance together spent over $7 million since the beginning of this year on TV and digital ads in an effort to stop legislation from passing the bill. A Tik Tok spokesperson said this, "This expenditure reflects work we do to educate policy makers about how legislation could affect our community of 170 million American users." Tik Tok officials lobbied Congress and Biden's executive office last quarter. Biden's executive office contains the National Security Council, the Office Management and Budget, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and other divisions.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this bill last March, Donald Trump and Elon Musk both came out against it. Trump is concerned that it could expand government powers on other platforms, and Musk is concerned about censorship. The bill is intended to remove any foreign influence and investment in social media platforms and websites here in the U.S. The government would have to prove that a foreign entity is directly involved and then initially force divestment, and then later if necessary deplatform the app and shut down their operating websites.

I'm all for private companies operating platforms that allow freedom of expression, but not if they're being operated by a foreign adversary like China's CCP. Yet I'm always very skeptical of our government and their tendencies to over-reach in order to go after their political opposition. Especially with this current bunch in charge. All we can do is to stay informed and hopefully for the sake of our freedom and security vote in Republican majorities in both the house and senate, and get Donald Trump back into office, in my opinion.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Sharon Parrott

It’s tempting to ignore a budget resolution released just days before the start of the fiscal year that it’s meant to guide, and amid the chaotic debate around a short-term extension of government funding to avoid a shutdown. But House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington’s proposed budget is important for what it illustrates about House Republicans’ disturbing vision for the country: health care stripped away from millions of people, higher poverty and hunger, capitulation to climate change, more tax cheating by high-income people, and large-scale disinvestment from the building blocks of opportunity and economic growth—from medical research to education to child care. It would narrow opportunity, worsen racial inequities, and make it harder for people to afford the basics. It reflects the wrong priorities for the country and should be roundly rejected.

Chair Arrington made clear in his remarks the intent to extend the expiring tax cuts from the 2017 tax law, which included large tax cuts for the wealthy. In addition, the budget resolution itself would pave the way for unlimited, unpaid-for tax cuts that could go well beyond those extensions. The extensions alone would give annual tax breaks averaging $41,000 to tax filers in the top 1 percent and cost more than $350 billion a year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. The budget reflects none of these costs and fails to explain how—or whether—they will be offset.

A shocking share of the spending cuts Chair Arrington specifies target people with low and moderate incomes, including $1.9 trillion in Medicaid cuts and hundreds of billions in cuts to economic security programs, such as cuts to assistance that helps people afford food and other basic needs. Just last week the Census Bureau released data showing that poverty spiked last year, more than doubling for children. Rather than proposing policies that could reverse this deeply troubling trend, the budget proposal would deepen poverty and increase hardship.

The budget would also make deep cuts in the part of the budget that is funded annually through appropriations bills. Disingenuously, the budget resolution shows that these cuts total more than $4 trillion over ten years—but hides the program areas that would be cut, labeling them “government-wide savings.” But this year’s House Appropriations bills—which include substantial cuts—make clear that cuts would fall on a wide range of basic functions and services that support families, communities, and the broader economy, including Social Security customer service, support for K-12 and college education, funding for national parks and clean air and water, rental housing assistance for families with low incomes, and more.

Chair Arrington claims the budget’s deep and damaging program cuts are in the name of deficit reduction. But the failure to identify a single revenue increase for high-income people or corporations—and in fact, to potentially shower them with more unpaid-for tax cuts—is an extreme and misguided approach. Moreover, calling for a balanced budget in ten years is merely a slogan that has little to do with addressing our nation’s needs—and the budget resolution resorts to gimmicks and games to even appear to get there, including $3 trillion in deficit reduction it claims would accrue from higher economic growth it assumes would be achieved by budget policies.

A budget plan should focus on the nation’s needs and lay out an agenda that broadens opportunity, invests in people and families, reduces the too-high levels of hardship and financial stress faced by households across the country, and raises revenues for those investments. But the Arrington budget blueprint would shortchange much-needed investments and lock in wasteful tax cuts to the already wealthy for the next decade.

House Republicans are pursuing a damaging agenda at every turn—first threatening the nation with default, and now demanding deep cuts in an array of priorities in this year’s appropriations debate, risking a government shutdown, and proposing a budget blueprint that would take the country in the wrong direction.

[panicinthestudio]

Further reading:

HKFP: Explainer: How, and why, the gov’t banned protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’, May 17, 2024

[dappersautismcreature]

WHATS HAPPENING WITH BAGEHRA I SAW HER GO LIVE?? IM BACK

[ihopethatyoureasleep]

being queer and taking ubers is just like. sometimes you're getting picked up from the clinic after your boyfriends hrt appointment and getting side eyed by a older man as he turns up his religious broadcasting, and other times you get into the car of a butch lesbian with an oregon license plate who helps you put ur stuff in the trunk and tells you about how they speed past cops

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: August 2

“Weapon" by Grant

[sniffanimal]

Legal name changes are sooooo annoying to cover all your bases about. Every institution is only open 9-4 on weekdays and guess what my exact work schedule is? Go on, guess

[waugh-bao]

*

[xxxemilyg1996]

*can't work due to a disability

*doesn't have health insurance because can't work

*applies for social security disability income

*get told you need years of medical records to qualify

*can't regularly go to the doctor, because you don't have health insurance

*can't pay out of pocket because you can't work due to said disability

*gets a lawyer, they say you're too young to be disabled and won't represent you

Congrats you've just wasted 2.5 years of your life not being paid or having any money or health care because the government and people who are supposed to sue the government on your behalf would rather you just died instead