It Won’t Work
Skippy linked to a story about the Social Security Administration closing all of its local offices by 2025. It won’t work, because their system still requires people to produce documents to cover certain circumstances.
I tried to sign up on line, and couldn’t because I had to provide proof that I was in the military during a specific time period, so I had to take my DD-214s to the local office.
I had to go to the office recently with a death certificate to prove my Mother was dead. Those death certificates are $10 apiece, and they just had to see it, so mailing it to a processing center is not my idea of a good deal. After the ongoing dispute we have with the VA over forms that were sent to them, mailing things to a central location is not something I would recommend.
They think that people will be able to access everything they need by using the Internet or a ‘1-800’ number. The major weakness of the plan is that it assumes that everyone who needs to contact Social Security has Internet access or a telephone.
I am now managing the low-income apartments that my Mother managed, and I can tell you for a fact that only half of the people in the apartments have a telephone, and only one has Internet access. The telecomms have priced their products out of the budgets of minimum wage workers. None of the people with telephones can afford to be put on hold waiting for the ‘next available’ person.
The whole time I was sitting in the waiting room at the local Social Security office their television system was telling me to use the Internet next time, which was really annoying since they directed me to the local office.
The people in Washington don’t seem to understand how limited and expensive Internet access is in this country, or how expensive phone service has become. There is no way they understand that a loaf of bread and half-gallon of milk cost an hour’s wages for too many people.
13 comments
Yeah, this is a real problem. The people who get to make the rules — they, their friends, neighbors and co-workers take all sorts of luxuries for granted — internet access, smart phones, reliable transportation, credit cards, taking care of personal business during work hours, decent food, household appliances, medical care, on and on. They can’t even imagine life without all this stuff. So they don’t.
I was watching TDS, Jon had a segment on the VA again. This time it was the recent Congressional hearing. Someone representing VA was asked if perhaps updating their IT systems might help. He replied that they haven’t been updated since 1985 (or maybe ’86) and they have requested upgraded systems many times! Bloody hell! No wonder they are in a mess! If that’s any example… It’s a miracle anything works there!
Hell, PJ, there are huge stretches of the country where the only phone or ‘Net service possible is via satellite, and who can afford that? They live in their own little privileged world that believes that $200K/year is middle-class, and the only people making minimum wage are teenagers.
What in hell or they using, Kryten, Burroughs? Are they backing up on 8-inch floppies? That isn’t a system, that’s a museum exhibit. No wonder they can’t find anything, they use sundials for system clocks.
Yeah, really! And you know… I really do have to despise US politicians, even more than my own. I mean, they are all full of BS, but US politicians take base faced, unashamed two-faced double-standards to levels not seen since Armstrong walked on the moon!
Especially now that one of the GOP poster boys, Eric Cantor, was soundly defeated by a nobody! LOL (Although, he’s an extremest TP nobody)!
So, they now passed a bill to help the VA, that has been before them in one form or another for decades! It’s not great… but it’s a start.
VA bills progressing quickly in Congress
And many of these poor Vet’s are thanks to the GOP morons war in Iraq, and it was not only all for nothing, they have actually made things far worse. Now you have a militant extremist, Dr. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that makes Saddam seem like a pacifist rapidly taking over Iraq. And apparently, he’s doing it with about 7,000 militants, and US weapons * vehicles that were either left behind, or left by the Security Force that the US spent billions training and equipping, whose response was to dump everything and run. So, USA does it again! Woohoo.
Iraq disintegrating as insurgents advance toward capital; Kurds seize Kirkuk
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: The Isis chief with the ambition to overtake al-Qaida
One bright spot for Americans… You truly do now have a serious Terrorist to worry about! And the USA created him. Way to go! He hates the USA even more than Saddam or Bin Laden! 😀
You know, when I was posting on Loaded Mouth about the Iraq war during the Bush crisis, I did a piece that mused about how a Country (USA) that so obviously has forgotten (if it ever really knew) what Democracy was, could spread Democracy to other Nations. The USA has a long and almost perfect track record of total failure in that regard, so a sane rational person might think they the USA may want to think about it for awhile and stop!
So, once again, the USA makes things worse, and spends trillions doing it. And the USA prides itself on being a Capitalist Nation? Really? Of course, for all those with a vested interest in the MIC, that is true. For people who want decent education, health, food and all those mundane unimportant things… Not so much.
USA. “Destroying the World, one Nation at a time!”(tm)
Actually, democracy is the big problem in Iraq. There are many more Shiia than Sunni, so they see no point in sharing. They felt oppressed under Saddam, so now it’s time for payback. In democracies the most competent and honest people don’t get elected, the winners are the most popular. Without a strong counter-balance to the political leaders, like a respected judiciary, minorities get screwed.
A working democracy takes a long time to build, and it has to be something that people want. You can’t impose democracy on a country, unless mob rule is your goal.
These Iraqi soldiers make the ARVN look like the epitome of courage. 20,000 Iraqi soldiers dropped their rifles and ran when confronted with maybe 400 insurgents? For realz? WOW. Such ineptitude and *only* for the low, low price of, uhm, many trillions of dollars!
it will be the Shiia militia and Iranians who will defend Baghdad. The Iraqi army only exists on paper and the minds of the Chiskenhawks. The army wasn’t being paid, supplied, or fed, so it isn’t surprising that it refuses to fight. The top commanders are someone’s relatives, not military leaders.
The Iraqis won’t fight, so there is nothing the US can really do except slow down ISIS with air cover.
Q: How do you spell ARVN?
A: Iraqi Army!
Well, at least Obama doesn’t need to worry about getting Congressional permission to arm the Syrian rebels now, since ISIS just seized over $2B worth of American-made weapons and ammunition when they seized Mosul and ISIS is the same folks that are fighting Assad in Syria…
Ah, yes, and they used the weapons supplied by our ‘allies’ to combat Assad to take the US materiel.
Well, at least they don’t have to worry about going about in the unarmored versions of US vehicles, like the US forces that invaded Iraq, as this is all upgraded equipment. It will still break down frequently, just like all recent US equipment.
Actually, comparing the Iraqi Army to the ARVN is doing the ARVN a disservice. The ARVN was faced with a real professional army armed with the best equipment the Soviet Union could provide. They had a reason to run once they ran out of bullets at the end of the war due to the embezzlement or cut-off of US aid. Meanwhile, two divisions of the Iraqi Army in Mosul, approximately 30,000 soldiers, were faced with 800 rag-tag guerrillas armed with AK-47’s and RPG’s attempting to take Mosul from them. And these 30,000 soldiers, despite having tanks and helicopters and plenty of bullets and being faced with a bare handful of jihadi dipsticks, uniformly dropped their weapons and ran in an act that makes the ARVN look downright courageous.
The Iraqi army is not popular in Sunni areas, and they would have been facing problems with the population of Mosul as well as ISIS, but it is probable that the officers were the first to leave, so there was no reason for the lower ranks to hang around and get shot at. The officers are pretty much all political appointees with no real military experience.
The Shiia militias will be much more effective, sspecially with Quds advisors. The Badr Brigade militia was created by the Quds Force from Iraqi Shiia in exile in Iran during the Saddam era.
We have sent a carrier group into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea, so it looks like DoD is preparing to provide air cover. The Kurds will probably form their own country after this display of incompetence on the part of the Iraqi government.
The US has an amazing track record of never being right in the Middle East. Flipping a coin would produce better results.
The US has a 50 year track record now of never being right when intervening in other countries, from Vietnam forward. One reason why I think Poppy Bush was underrated — sure, he was a nasty piece of CIA work, but he knew better than to dig the US into a hole that would take a decade to dig the US out of in the Middle East, he intervened enough to restore the status quo and not one bit more. And promptly got thrown out of office for his crime of being sensible.
They have Tony Blair and Paul Wolfowitz back on the TV talking about this was caused by the US not invading Syria and throwing out Assad. The ‘plan’ never fails, people fail the ‘plan’. Every cheerleader for the Iraq War is being given time to spew even more of their dreck. This is want happens when criminals are prosecuted – they become ‘celebrities’.