DOGE Catch-All
- Thread starter nycfan
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ChileG
Iconic Member
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I love the excuses - there is no playbook for the mayhem, so you can’t be critical of the mayhem.
heelslegup
Esteemed Member
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Clinton initiative cut over 377K federal jobs in the 1990s. It's not comparable to Trump's effort
Social media posts claimed Donald Trump and Elon Musk had simply "learned from the master" in their attempts to cut government jobs.
www.snopes.com
heelslegup
Esteemed Member
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Wasn’t sure where to put this.
www.cbsnews.com
Social Security says it will restart clawing back 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries
The Social Security Administration said it will restart a policy that had caused financial distress for some beneficiaries.
www.cbsnews.com
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Thanks — from the link:Wasn’t sure where to put this.
Social Security says it will restart clawing back 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries
The Social Security Administration said it will restart a policy that had caused financial distress for some beneficiaries.
“… Because of public backlash over the 100% recovery policy, the agency last year had capped the withholding rate for someone who had been overpaid at 10% of the person's monthly benefit. On Friday, the SSA said it will start claiming 100% of benefit checks to cover new cases of overpayments, while the withholding rate for people with overpayments before March 27 will remain at 10%, as will the rate for overpayments for Supplemental Security Income, a program for low-income seniors and disabled Americans.
"People who are overpaid after March 27 will automatically be placed in full recovery at a rate of 100% of the Social Security payment," the agency said.
The 100% clawback policy had sparked an outcry after instances in which beneficiaries were hit with surprise bills that demanded repayment within 30 days. In some cases, the bills were for tens of thousands of dollars.
If beneficiaries were unable to immediately pay the bill, the agency could dock their entire monthly Social Security payment, leaving some people financially destitute, as reported by "60 Minutes," KFF Health News and other media outlets,
In many cases, the overpayments were the fault of SSA. A 2022 report by the agency's inspector general found that about 73,000 overpayments that year were due to a lack of "effective controls over benefit-computation accuracy."
… Raising the clawback rate to 100% from its current 10% will increase the amount of recovered funds by $7 billion over the next decade, the agency said. SSA pays out about $1.6 trillion in benefits each year. …”
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The policy change was because the bar outweighed the return — $7 billion over 10 years ain’t nothing BUT as a fraction of the $16 Trillion being paid out over those same ten years, the decision was that slower clawbacks that don’t leave tens of thousands of recipients (many of whom were not to blame for the overpayments arising from an SSA error) destitute was a more humane plan.
The real key should be fixing the process that results in the mistaken calculations (which is at a very low percentage of the total served but still should be improved — and that includes for people being underpaid due to such errors, as well) — but firing up to half the staff and closing SSA offices seems very unlikely to help that.
HandsonFire
Distinguished Member
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Taxation without representation. Blue states paying for red states and red states will be the only ones to benefit. Gee I wonder what this will lead to…
Mulberry Heel
Inconceivable Member
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You know, I'm just going to say what more and more people are thinking - Elon Musk is fucking, batshit crazy. I don't care how wealthy he is, he is among the very weirdest of weird Trumpers and right-wingers. And I don't think he's nearly as intelligent as some had supposed - like Trump he seems impulsive and juvenile, spoiled and petty and utterly without compassion or human empathy, and lacking in self-discipline. Of course when you're as rich as he is you can pretty much do what you want.
tonman
Exceptional Member
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People died needlessly during Covid. Do u really think this administration cares if some people die?
Other than being cool or funny.
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Rachel Maddow reported the other night that some 20 year old staffer, his wife and kid moved into a government office building. I assume that is all for him.
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Why should we not be? Trans people are going to exist, they're going to want to transition, not all will want or be able to afford sex reassigned surgery, so why shouldn't we try to understand the long term health impacts of that?
I went to the site. It looks about as reliable as Project Veritas.
Duke Mu
Iconic Member
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Oligarchs gonna Oligarch.
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Look at the banner in that screenshot. When Republicans can’t get their shit together to raise the debt limit, it will be “Democrats shutting down the government” despite Republicans holding the majority in both houses. They are already tuning up the guitar to play this song.
superrific
Master of the ZZLverse
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Are you a biologist? A medical doctor? How would you know what to study? God, I'm so sick of this armchair science.
Here's a thought: a menstrual cycle is hormonal. Trans men have a different hormonal cycle than women, because of the hormones they are administered. So studying menstruation in XX who take male hormones helps us understand menstruation in general. I don't know if this is what they are studying, but it's certainly a plausible and good scientific reason for doing so.
So many great discoveries were found by people doing stuff others thought stupid. "Why are you trying to determine if light bends around the sun? Who cares? Surely we're not studying this." Good thing we didn't have you making decisions about what to study, because we wouldn't have relativity.
"Why are you studying the interactions between molds and bacteria? How stupid," said people pre-penicillin.
"Surely we're not spending money studying gila monster spit," said people before Wegovy.
"Why are you studying whether or not a single magnet moving back and forth on an infinite magnetic tape can compute algorithms," said people before computers.
If you're not a biologist, this should be your opinion about the propriety of biological research. It happens to be the same as mine. "Hmm, interesting. I wonder what they might get out of that study."