Friday, March 21, 2025
46% Says Agency Cuts Have Gone Too Far - 17% Say Not Far Enough
About 223,000 Workers Filed For Unemployment Last Week
The Labor Department released its weekly unemployment report on Thursday. It showed about 223,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending on March 15th. Here is the official Labor Department statement:
In the week ending March 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 223,000, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 220,000 to 221,000. The 4-week moving average was 227,000, an increase of 750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 226,000 to 226,250.
DOGE Is The Newest GOP Weapon To Attack And Kill Social Security
Perhaps you, like me, have been confused about the crazy cuts Elon Musk and his DOGE minions have been doing. They claim they are just trying to cut waste and fraud out of government. But the way they are going about it doesn't make it seem that way.
For instance, cutting jobs from agencies without regard to what an employee does or how well they do that job doesn't cut any waste and/or fraud. It just makes an agency's harder to do. And even if their vastly inflated cost-cutting was true (it's not) they haven't been cutting enough out of the budget to pay for even half of the huge tax cuts they are planning for the rich (and super-rich). It just doesn't make sense.
Until now.
They have finally arrived at their real target - Social Security.
Republicans have never liked Social Security. They voted against it when it was passed in 1935, and they have been trying to get rid of it in the 90 years since then.
But the problem is that Social Security is one of the most successful programs created by the government. It has reduced poverty among seniors from nearly 40% to only about 10% (and provides at least a subsistence level of income to that remaining 10%). It provides an income for disabled people who cannot work. And it provides survivor benefits for families. It is critical for millions of Americans, and it has never added a penny to the national debt. Justifiably, it is a very popular programs with Americans.
Because of its popularity, Republicans have never been able to abolish the program - but they keep trying. President Bush (the second) wanted to privatize Social Security (putting seniors at risk by putting their money in the stack market). There was a huge blowback, and that was not done.
Recently, the Republicans have bee chipping away at Social Security (raising retirement age, trying to lower the cost-of-living adjustment, etc.) - hoping to damage it and make it unpopular enough to finally abolish it. They have also been trying to convince Americans that the budget cannot be balanced and national debt lowered without Social Security cuts (even though Social Security doesn't affect the budget or national debt since it is paid for through the Social Security Trust Fund).
DOGE is just the their newest weapon to attack Social Security. It gives the GOP some cover by letting DOGE do the dirty work, and letting DOGE attack a variety of agencies. But only Social Security (and to a lesser extent Medicare and Medicaid) has the huge budget that Republicans want to get their hands on.
DOGE can't actually abolish Social Security. But it can seriously damage the programs - to the extent that the agency won't be able to deliver the checks on time, won't be able to help recipients make needed changes, and won't be able to effective register new retirees and others. And once the agency can no longer function effective, the congressional Republicans will step in to "save" it. They will do that by substantially cutting benefits, or privatizing the program. Probably the latter, because that will benefit moguls on Wall Street.
Make no mistake - this is what the whole thing is about. It is the latest effort by Republicans to get rid of Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid). By robbing these funds, they will have the money for huge giveaways to the rich (and especially the super-rich oligarchs).
They have always been the party of and for the rich. They really don't care about the needs of the poor, the working class, or the middle class. This attack on Social Security proves that.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
A Majority Don't Trust Russia To Keep Its Word On Ukraine
The chart above is from the Gallup Poll -- done between March 3rd and 11th of a nationwide sample of 2,219 adults, with a 2 point margin of error.
Donald Trump says he trust Putin to keep his word. But the American people don't trust him. They also think Trump is likely to broker a peace that is too favorable to Russia and unfavorable to the Ukraine.
Musk's Attack On Social Security Is Dishonest And Cruel
Trump said he would not come after Social Security. He lied. His henchman, Elon Musk, is in the process of seriously damaging Social Security. The following is part of a post by economist Paul Krugman:
We often think of Social Security as a retirement program, which it is; most Social Security beneficiaries achieve that status simply by reaching retirement age. But the program also helps Americans with disabilities that prevent them from working or limit their ability to work, and for millions of people these benefits are a crucial lifeline.
Now the Social Security Administration, following orders from Elon Musk’s DOGE, appears set to subject disabled Americans to immense hardship. And everything we know indicates that this act of cruelty is mainly motivated by a combination of ego and spite.
The story so far: On March 12 the Washington Post reported that the Social Security Administration was considering ending phone service for Americans filing retirement or disability claims. The SSA quickly backed off that idea — sort of. The day after the Post report, however, the agency circulated an internal memo — acquired by the newsletter Popular Information — laying out a plan that would be almost equally destructive.
Under this plan, beneficiaries would still be able to call the SSA. But they would have to verify their identity either over the internet or through in-person visits to field offices.
Bear in mind that we’re talking about older and/or disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to access the internet and physically unable to visit SSA offices — which would in any case be overwhelmed by the increased traffic, given that the agency is already facing large staffing cuts. So this would be a move of almost cartoonish cruelty, and a nightmare for millions of Americans.
Why do this? The alleged justification is to combat fraud. But ProPublica has acquired audio of a closed meeting held with Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting administrator, in which he acknowledged that fraudulent benefit claims are not, in fact, a serious problem.
So what the Musk is going on here? This plan would save some money, not by eliminating fraud, but by effectively cutting off aid to Americans who are legally entitled to that aid, and specifically those who need it most. But I don’t think the savings are the point.
My guess, instead, is that it’s an ego thing, that Social Security has become to Musk what Canada has become to Donald Trump. Both men at one point said something stupid, something that would have turned them into laughingstocks if there weren’t so much fear in the air. But both men have been unable to let go, doubling down in what amounts to an attempt to redeem their initial foolishness. . . .
Musk’s big blooper was his claim that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks. This claim probably reflected the failure of young Musk staffers — what Dudek called the “DOGE kids” — to understand how the SSA’s databases work, combined with a complete lack of common sense. I mean, if there really were huge numbers of dead people receiving Social Security payments, don’t you think someone else would have noticed?
In a normal political environment, getting something that big that wrong would have destroyed Musk’s credibility and led to his permanent exile from any role in setting policy. But this is America in 2025, so Trump amplified the already-refuted claim when addressing Congress, and Musk seems more powerful than ever.
Furthermore, Musk refuses to give up his Social Security smears, making the completely implausible claim that fraudulent use of Social Security numbers accounts for 10 percent of federal spending. And I’d argue that that the plan to effectively cut off many disabled Americans is best seen as part of a desperate effort to find or pretend to find Social Security fraud, retroactively justifying Musk’s big mistake.
Still, does the plan have to be this cruel to the most vulnerable Americans? As I see it, the cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
After all, gratuitous, seemingly gleeful cruelty has been a hallmark of DOGE’s operations. Even if you think DOGE’s mass layoffs — some quickly reversed when it turned out that critical workers were fired — make sense, think of the way they are being carried out. In general, workers are being fired with no warning, no chance to make plans for the future, and often face insulting (and false) claims that they were poor performers.
It's hard to escape the sense that DOGE staffers are actually enjoying this. And why not? We’re mostly talking about poorly socialized young men suddenly given the power to ruin other people’s lives, taking their cues from a leader who has declaredthat “the fundamental weakness of Western society is empathy.” So why should we be surprised that the DOGE kids’ rampage through the government looks more and more like a remake of Lord of the Flies?
There will, I expect and hope, be a huge backlash if the plan to effectively cut off millions from benefits goes through. But don’t count on Musk — or Trump — to change course. These are men with fragile egos, who never, ever admit being wrong.
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