Categories
Government People

Dear Buddy Carter: Do you believe in the rule of law?

Buddy, I have a question for you:

Do you believe in the rule of law?

I ask this question because we elected you to Congress to be our representative among Congressional lawmakers. That’s what Congress is, you know: lawmakers.

Yet in the few months since Trump has been in office, he and his cohort have been breaking existing laws to a degree never before seen in our country.

He has grabbed people off the street and sent them to a prison known for its enslavement and torture. He has cancelled grants to universities solely because they won’t let him control every last aspect of their operation. He has terminated student visas because they have written opinion pieces in newspapers he doesn’t like.

Trump has turned the Department of Justice into a revenge machine, telling it to open investigations on people who have done nothing more than deny his lie that he won the election in 2020.

He has sent people into agencies and they have openly broken security laws, including grabbing data they have no need for or legal reason to have. And when someone has exposed this behavior to you, in Congress, his life was threatened.

If a law firm has defended someone Trump doesn’t like, he has threatened them with dire consequences if they don’t adhere to his demands, all of which blatantly violate the Constitution.

He has gone after universities and threatened them—threatened them!— if the universities don’t give up their freedom of speech, and their own ability to govern themselves. And when Harvard bravely said no, all grants to the university were pulled—even though these grants were for research that help us live better and longer.

Trump has frozen funds that the country has guaranteed, both to agencies overseas and to our own domestic organizations and states. Funds that are necessary for medical care and medical research; to monitor storms and recover from them; to help communities better prepare for storms and other catastrophes; to help schools better serve their students and ensure all of the students are fed and educated equally; to support small businesses and farmers; to help the hungry, the sick, and those harmed by circumstances beyond their control.

Funds that you, in Congress, allocated and control. Supposedly control.

He openly and laughingly mocks our judicial system, and I include the Supreme Court in this, though this higher court’s timid responses to Trump’s outrageous acts have not shown it in at its best. But even when they finally pushed back, ever so slightly, he laughed at it. Not only laughed at it, he was joined by one of South America’s most brutal dictators in that laughter. His new best friend.

Now, he threatens to not only send migrants to a brutal life in another country, he threatens to send citizens, too. And we already know he’ll do so without giving anyone the benefit of legal representation in a court of law.

He’ll just send armed thugs into the street, dressed in plain clothes and wearing hoods and driving in black SUVs to grab people off the street and put them on a plane and then hold up his hands and go, “Oopsie! Made a mistake! Well, can’t do anything about it now, they’re in foreign control!”

We were warned that we were approaching a Constitutional crises, when the President of the United States held himself above the laws of the land. We waited in hope, and some fear, to see what he would do when courts intervened.

We now know what he’ll do: disobey the courts. We are no longer approaching a Constitutional crises, we’re in one, and we now wonder if, at the end of four years, will we even have a country left? Will we even be allowed to vote for who we want? Or will we receive notes pasted on our doors, threatening us if we don’t do as Trump asks?

And in all of this—all of it!—not one peep from you. Not one mild expression of concern. Not even a single, “well, we might want to reconsider this.” No, all you have done is appear on radically right newscasts as a way of pretending you don’t need a Town Hall, and then spent the time praising Trump.

So I ask you now, do you believe in the rule of law? You are our elected representative to Congress, to the body of lawmakers that have kept our country free, safe, and secure for 250 years. And as a lawmaker, isn’t it your sworn duty to ensure that laws are kept and not broken? Or is your allegiance to Trump so strong that you don’t care about the laws, or the harm that will come to the people in your district because these laws are broken? All that matters to you is Trump?

It’s a simple question, Buddy: Do you believe in the rule of law?

Sources

Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man ICE mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison?

Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands

How the Education Department cuts could hurt low-income and rural schools

Trump directs DOJ to investigate former administration officials who criticized him

USDA cancels $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers

FEMA cuts $30 million grant earmarked to improve flooding, drainage issues in Savannah

Public libraries in Georgia brace for federal cuts

Academic medical centers say funding cuts jeopardize health research

A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

Video shows Tufts graduate student grabbed off the street by federal immigration officials

Core Democratic groups are preparing to be targeted by the Trump administration

The Trump administration’s defiance is proving Justice Sotomayor’s point

Lawrence on Trump attacking the rule of law: We are all Harvard. We are all Abrego Garcia.

Buddy Carter is Georgia’s First Congressional District Representative

 

 

 

Categories
Government People Political

Dear Buddy Carter

I was going to write to ask if you support the rule of law, but I was sidetracked by your latest newsletter. I was also going to write that appearing on ultra-conservative podcasts and radio shows and a carefully staged tele-town hall will not take the place a live town hall, but then I read your newsletter’s heading:

We’ve got your six

Evidently, you found one person who is willing to come out and talk about Biden being awful to vets, and no worries, Trump and Doug Collins will be there for the veterans. That’s what “we’ve got your six” implies.

In reality, though, Musk, Trump, and Collins’ actions have been particularly devastating to veterans. First of all, there’s the plan to cut 80,000 VA jobs. Most of these jobs will be health workers, and all of these cuts will have massive impact on what healthcare the VA can provide to veterans.

In addition, you are aware that up to 30% of government jobs are held by veterans, aren’t you? And that many of these veterans are disabled? So all that job cutting that Musk brags about comes with a heavy price for those who served in the military. Not only are they losing their access to good healthcare, they’re losing their jobs, too.

Why? Well, it seems as if most of this ‘cost cutting’ is to cram through a tax cut that primarily helps people like you, and Musk, and Trump. You know…rich people. And this tax cut will add a massive $37 trillion dollars to the national debt. That’s 37 with a whole bunch of zeros behind it. Darn, son, that’s a lot of money!

So, to make this seem less overwhelming, you all pretend there’s a lot of waste and fraud in government and you’re shutting down programs that help the less fortunate and firing good government employees who are just doing the job they were hired for and pretending *you’re making it all more efficient…when what’s really happening is you’re all making a huge mess and among those most particularly hurt are the veterans.

Cuts to VA healthcare, to the Veterans Crisis Line, increasing veteran unemployment…stop me when you get to the part where Collins and the rest of you are ‘helping veterans’. What’s worse is that cuts to other agencies will also hurt veterans: cuts to USDA funding for food banks and schools and to help small farmers, cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP, cuts to Social Security—all of these will, in one way or another, hurt veterans.

And the hurt will pile up. What we’re seeing now in the few town halls Republicans have had will be nothing compared to what will happen in a couple of years when all this slash and burn of the federal government really starts to kick in. And trying to bring up Biden as the cause of all of it just won’t play to the crowd at that time. Most folks really aren’t that stupid.

No wonder you’re afraid to have a town hall. But you go ahead parading that one person who says Biden let the veterans down. I’m sure that veterans in your district will be interested in hearing what you have to say as they file for unemployment and try to get in to see a doctor. But I’d go light on the “we’ve got your six” claim, if I were you.

*I say “you’re” because you’re part of this. You’re a member of Congress and Congress has the power to tell the administration to stop what it’s doing, but instead, you’re just telling Trump and Musk to go right ahead…any destruction they do is fine by you.

5 reasons federal cuts are hitting veterans especially hard

Fired Veterans Call Widespread Trump and Musk Federal Job Cuts a Betrayal of Their Service

For Veterans Fired by Trump, the Sense of Betrayal Runs Deep

Trump adviser Alina Habba says veterans fired by DOGE are perhaps ‘not fit to have a job at this moment’

Veterans becoming face of Trump’s government cuts and Democrats’ resistance

CBO: Extending 2017 tax cuts could add $37 trillion in debt

New report shows that extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations will hurt working families

Categories
Government Savannah

Savannah’s Social Security office is still safe but OSHA is out

Recently I did another run through of the doge.gov listing of office closures. The five Social Security offices in our region that were to be closed had been narrowed to one, in Columbus, a week ago. In today’s list of lease closings, however, none of the five are now showing up with closures.

The removal of the Social Security offices from the terminated lease list could be because of the new changes to Social Security, requiring a lot more physical visits to offices. There has been criticism of increasing office visits for Social Security at the same time DOGE/Trump are closing the offices and the agency is planning on reducing staff.

However, the offices may only be temporarily removed from the list. Because of the nature of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ DOGE lists, I now download the JSON (data in a specific machine format) for the lease closures every time I check. This way I can verify that at one point an office was on the closure list but isn’t now…but could be on the list again, in the future.

What is on the list now, is the closure of the OSHA office in Savannah. As the header graphic notes, the Savannah OSHA offices covers all of the Savannah, coastal Georgia, and southern parts of the state—including the new Hyundai plant, where another worker recently died.

The Savannah office also covers both the Savannah and the Brunswick ports, as well as several chicken processing plants, which are considered to be highly dangerous environments for workers.

It’s unknown at this time whether the other two OSHA offices in Georgia will somehow have to pick up the slack. Considering the location of these offices (the Atlanta area), it will be difficult for OSHA to operate in the southern and coastal areas of our state without the Savannah office.

 

Categories
Events of note Government Media Savannah

Savannah fiddles while the US burns

Next Monday the annual Savannah St. Patrick’s Day parade makes its way down our historic streets. The parade is now celebrating its 201st anniversary, an extraordinary achievement. And though it has had a reputation for being one of the biggest “kiss me I’m Irish” bashes in the country, the wild parties and uncontrolled drinking in the squares is now a thing of the past. Not to say there won’t be parties, and it is St. Patrick’s day, so yes, there will be drinking…but families need not fear bringing down the kiddies to celebrate.

Among the parade participants will be marchers from the armed services, including 200 soldiers from nearby Fort Stewart. Unlike past year’s, the military and the city are working hard to prevent the ambush of red-lipsticked attacks by women—a ‘tradition’ that really is dated and frankly, not fun, cute, or acceptable. My personal preference would be to create a law that any attempted smoocher breaking parade boundaries has to stay behind after the parade and help with clean up.

I won’t be attending the parade. I’m still recovering from a serious case of the flu, and I’m no longer that comfortable in large crowds. I may be half Irish, but I’d rather have a cup o tea and a shamrock cookie at home.

And frankly, even without the flu, I am in no mood to celebrate.  Not after watching what’s happening at the federal level the last few months. I’m also not sure I could look into the faces of the soldiers as they march past and not feel shame at what this country is doing to them.

Women and soldiers of color have had their service degenerated by their new Secretary of Defence boss. They’ve had healthcare removed because of political ideology. They’ve watched excellent commanders stripped of their commands solely because of their sex or the color of their skin.

Comrades-in-arms who have served with distinction beside them are being summarily dismissed from their careers because of anti-trans bigotry—a bigotry that is expanding to all members of the LGBTQ+ community.

And what can they look forward to, once they leave the military? If they need therapy, they’ll have to crowd into a cubicle with their therapist and hope a white noise machine keeps their discussion private. If our soldiers need other veteran care, including health, they’ll be waiting months because of a planned decimation of the Veterans Administration. In addition, veterans have long enjoyed greater access to good jobs in our federal government. Now these same veterans are losing their jobs by the tens of thousands.

And those still serving? They don’t know if they’ll be doing publicity work at the border, or instructed to give some of our nation’s most important secrets to frat boys and foreign operatives. They’re being told our closest allies are really our enemies and that ‘woke’ is a greater risk than Russian cyber hackers.

How can we face the soldiers on St. Patrick’s day, and pretend all of this is not happening? To ignore that these soldiers lives are being brutally unraveled but have no fear, the city will keep them safe from lipstick?

I understand the need for balance. One can’t live in a state of anger all the time, and that the St. Patrick’s parade is an important economic event for our area. But living in Savannah the last two months is like living in the fabled village of Brigadoon—cut off from the rest of the country by a determination not to acknowledge what’s happening to the country and its impact here.

People are being laid off here. Funds are being frozen here. Federal offices are being shut down here. Because of NOAA closures, we’re at greater risk from hurricanes. Our fishing industries will be impacted. Are Fort Stewart support personnel among those being fired? Can we even depend on FEMA the next Debby or Helene?

What impact will the obsessive focus on deporting longtime and law-abiding migrants have on our local economies?

How about our healthcare? Drastic cuts are threatened for Medicaid, we already know the Veterans Administrations health services are being cut, but we’re in the middle of a measles epidemic and told to slug down some carrots and all will be well. I paid the price this last week for forgetting my flu shot this last fall, but will I even have an option for a flu shot next fall?

Can we have clubs for women or Black people in our schools? Can we even mention the word ‘Black’? We can’t mention the word ‘inclusive’.

And don’t even get me started on the bird flu and the latest brainstorm from RFK Jr. I now predict the next time the bird flu hits one of our major egg producers in Georgia, instead of culling the herd to stop the threat, we’ll be spraying the birds with cod liver oil. Perhaps we’ll start a birdy meditation circle.

Feed them carrots.

The latest hit to our sanity is tariffs. Or I should say, will we won’t we tariff yes tariff no that has tanked the stock market.

Our media is filled with local news, and appropriately so. But what’s happening nationally is a local story. Aside from a too-rare piece that squeaks past the news desk now and again, no attempts seem to be made to connect what’s happening in the halls in DC to what we need to know, in the Savannah/Chatham county region or the greater coastal area.

Our leaders are focused on green fountains, too much traffic, and new ship-clearing bridges, which is understandable, and these are important…but communicating with the people about federal actions and their impacts on us here, locally, is also part of their job. Pretending nothing is happening amounts to a dereliction of duty.

(The only person speaking out seems to be Buddy Carter, and he’s reduced to absurdities in his desperate attempts to appeal to Trump’s ego.)

Worse, the silence from our local leaders signals there is no interest in challenging what’s happening at the federal level; that we will be the good little boys and girls and not rock the boat and hope that some crumbs of federal funds make their ways past the DOGE cuts.

Please, sirs, may we have some more?

While a part of me understands about not provoking either Trump or Musk—both known for their egos and their capacity for petty revenge—please, sirs, may we have some more sticks in my throat and leaves a bitter taste.

But … this didn’t start out to be a story about Trump and Musk and the destruction of our government. This is about St. Patrick’s Day and the famous Savannah St. Patrick’s Day parade. It’s about green beer (we can still say ‘green’) and the running of the squares and kissing the Irish and wonderful food and music.

And this is about watching the soldiers marching past, and keeping them lipstick free. Yes, that’s what this is about.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

 

Categories
Government Medicare Money

Georgia Social Security offices on DOGE chopping list

Recent updates to the DOGE.gov ‘savings’ page now list Social Security Administration (SSA) office closures in the following Georgia cities:

  • Columbus
  • Gainesville
  • Vidalia
  • Brunswick
  • Thomasville

There is no rhyme or reason for these closures, other than it’s a simple checkbox on a computer screen and a complete lack of concern about the consequences.

SSA offices provide opportunities for people to get help about Social Security, disability, survivor benefits, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicare. Not everyone has a computer or the skills to do everything online. In particular, if you’re a victim of identity theft, it’s likely you’ll have to visit your nearest SSA office at some point.

Most offices have so many customers, SSA initiated a pilot program for advance reservations in Florida and Georgia. Closing down this many offices is going to have a significant impact on Georgia residents. If the office closures are paired with a 50% reduction in SSA workers, the agency will not be able to meet the needs of our nation’s most vulnerable people.

And the savings? When you’re talking about 4 trillion in tax cuts, primarily for corporations and the wealthy that Trump and the Republicans want to pass, the office closure savings don’t even rate a blip on the same chart.

  • Columbus – $51,023
  • Gainesville – $506,527
  • Vidalia – $228,757
  • Brunswick – $215,383
  • Thomasville – $289,139

Today, Speaker Mike Johnson went on Meet the Press and stated that he and Musk don’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare, but want to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Yet SSA’s Inspector General found that only about 1% of Social Security payments were improper. And even then, SSA was able to recover 60% of that amount.

Also today, Elon Musk on Jeff Rogan’s podcast claimed that Social Security is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and the real problem is not enough babies and we’re just living too long. What wasn’t said was an acknowledgement of the positive contributions immigrants make to Social Security.

So for there’s no indication that Savannah’s Social Security office is among those to be marked for closure. Yet. I will keep checking for DOGE cuts impacting on the Savannah area.