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.

Categories
Events of note Government Places

What’s worse than Trump/Vance on Ukraine? Congressional Republicans

I watched a partial video of a town hall by Roger Marshall, junior senator from Kansas. The topic was the Russian/Ukrainian war, and the Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy debacle on Friday.

Here’s how Republicans are spinning what happened with Trump and Vance when they ambushed Zelenskyy.

  1. The war did not have a beginning, it just magically happened.
  2. If it continues, it will be World War III, and let’s throw in nuclear to scare people.
  3. Europe should have stepped up. This is Europe’s fight, not ours.
  4. A million people have died.
  5. This is all Biden’s fault
  6. Trump just wants to have peace

This is the stuff you scrape off your boot after walking through a barnyard.

  1. The war did have a beginning. Putin was the aggressor. And when he promised not to be aggressive, he lied and became even more aggressive. What Putin wants is a Ukraine loyal to him, and he will accept nothing else.
  2. Putin is the one tossing out the threat of nuclear weapons, which to me, makes Russia a threat regardless of what’s happening in Ukraine.
  3. In close to three years, Europe has spent $138.7 billion on Ukraine, while the US has spent $119.7 billion. Europe stepped up.
  4. It’s difficult to count the numbers of dead and wounded. Russia isn’t honest with its counts, and Ukraine doesn’t have counts from occupied territories. But the likely number, though tragic and high, is not a million.
  5. This is Putin’s fault. According to Marshall, Republicans wanted funds for Ukraine but Biden said no. In actuality, it is primarily Congressional Democrats who fought for funds for Ukraine, while the GOP bickered among themselves. The only time the GOP pushed Biden to support Ukraine is shortly after he took office when they were the minority party. Once they took over the House, their interest in helping Ukraine drastically declined. It was up to the Democrats to put real money on the table.
  6. Trump wants tax cuts for the rich. Anything that takes money away from this one single goal is trash to him. Our government, our allies, our healthcare, people’s lives…if it takes money away from tax cuts for the rich, it’s trash to Trump. And Trump likes Putin, because Putin makes him feel special.

We supported Ukraine because it was a country with a true democracy invaded by a totalitarian aggressor intent on domination. And we have long known that Putin is a danger to more than Ukraine. I just never thought I would live to see a US President openly embrace Putin.

Sources

Marshall Town Hall video

Putin uses NATO as an excuse for his war against Ukrainian statehood

Bluff and bluster: Why Putin revised Russia’s nuclear doctrine

How much has the US given to Ukraine?

Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims at Cabinet meeting

Republicans try to out-hawk Biden on Ukraine aid

Can Biden keep U.S. aid flowing to Ukraine amid GOP chaos in House?

Why are some Republicans opposing more aid for Ukraine?

What is the death toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

 

Categories
Government People

Dear Buddy Carter

Trust.

Once won, not easily lost. But once lost, forever gone.

In his first month in office, Trump’s greatest harm has been to trust.

Our allies are no longer our allies, but our enemies, and trust between us has been shattered.

We supported Ukraine…until we didn’t, and somehow Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the fault of…Ukraine?

We have insulted our neighbor Mexico, and threatened tariffs that would harm our country as much as it.

We have derided Canada, this country’s closest friend. We have demanded they halt a nonexistent migrant flood or suffer devastating consequences…only to say, Ooops, we didn’t mean it, a week later.

We embrace dictators and celebrate oppressors, while dismissing democracy as some quaint old custom.

Trust has also been broken between government worker and employer. After months satisfying job requirements, and then packing up home and family to move near their job, employees are being summarily fired—not for any good reason, or for lack of ability, or even because the job isn’t necessary. No, the jobs are lost solely because some kids working for a man who is, and is not, working for, and is not working for, the Trump administration needs a bullet point for his “what I did last week.”

We’ve also lost the trust of individuals and organizations, both foreign and domestic. USAID was suddenly cut, stranding US workers in dangerous situations. We let food rot on our docks rather than send it to those who are hungry. A bipartisan government agency that amounted to less than 1% of our budget but resulted in positive outcomes throughout the world is gutted because it’s low-hanging fruit in some kind of DOGE numbers game that more closely resembles Path of Exile 2 than sound fiscal policy.

We’ve lost the trust of US farmers and companies who provided the goods USAID supplied, and whose bills are going unpaid because someone who does not know what they are doing is just stopping everything. It’s so easy to turn something off. Just flick a switch. And then walk away from the result.

States can’t trust that the federal government will follow through on commitments made. States can’t prepare communities for future hurricanes, or clear old mines and reclaim the land, or even ensure their citizens are employed because someone from DOGE thought they’d pad their ‘score’ board.

We’ve lost trust in the US government’s health system, once the finest in the world. Why? Because it’s now led by people who think Cheerios is more harmful than cancer, measles, and e.Coli.

Medical researchers can never trust our government’s commitment to long-term research efforts because the same silly kids who again do not know what they are doing, just stopped funding of efforts that could and would save lives.

Their reason? Because they can.

We can’t even get a break by going to one of our national parks, because we can’t trust they’ll be open because of job cuts.

As for yourself…Congressional Republicans have lost our trust because all of you have not made one move against all of these actions. Buddy, you’re normally a talkative kind of guy, but I’ve not heard a peep from you other than introduce a bill to buy Greenland and call it Red, White, and Blueland. Even though the actions the Trump administration take are blatantly illegal and threaten the Constitutional balance that has kept our country strong for 250 years.

When questioned, some Congressional members assure us that the courts are on the job. The courts will pick up the slack for Congress. Yes, sir, trust the courts.

The same members then move to impeach members of the courts.

When fear of Trump overrides the fundamental obligation Congressional members have to their constituents, Congress might as well not exist.

Trust. In just one month, so much trust has been destroyed. There may come a time in the future when more responsible leadership will work to bring together the remains of trust.

But the world will never look at this country the same way again. Government employees will never believe that doing a good job in a necessary task guarantees stability again. Businesses, farmers,  and nonprofits will never be able to depend on fiscal promises given again. Medical researchers will never know if the study they start now will actually be allowed to finish.

And we can never again fully trust that when we need the government, it will be there for us.

And you, Buddy. Will we in Georgia ever be able to trust you again?

Trust. Once broken, gone forever.

Sources

Trump says Ukraine started the war that’s killing its citizens.

Historian Anne Applebaum breaks down what Trump’s alignment with Russia means

US joins Russia to vote against UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine

Trump says Canada and Mexico tariffs are ‘going forward’ with more import taxes to come

Nearly $500m of food aid at risk of spoilage after Trump USAid cuts

Billions of dollars at stake for farmers hit by Trump funding freeze, pause on foreign aid

Small businesses struggle to find their footing one month into Trump 2.0

Iowa pauses work restoring dangerous abandoned mines over federal funding uncertainty

Savannah’s Springfield Canal stormwater project likely casualty of Trump cuts

Amid Chaos, New Report Reveals 40 Percent of DOGE Cuts Save No Money

The Blinding Contempt of the DOGE bros

600 civilian employees at Tinker Air Force Base face termination amid workforce shakeup

A closer look at RFK, Jr.’s stance on ultra-processed foods

Kennedy says panel will examine childhood vaccine schedule after promising not to change it

Trump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s order

Canceled meetings and confusion: NIH grant funding in limbo despite court injunction

Elon Musk says federal employees must either document their work — or lose their jobs

Fired federal workers hunt for new jobs but struggle to replace their old ones

Federal Personnel Office Tells Agencies That Musk’s Directive Is ‘Voluntary

Fired in Trump’s chaotic purge, an Army vet says he’s never felt more betrayed

GOP lawmakers confronted by constituents angry with Trump-Musk cuts

Trump’s GOP allies bombard judges with impeachment threats

Musk calls for impeachment after Baltimore judge blocks Trump’s DEI executive order

Concern grows as Arizona national park closes visitor centers

 

Messages to Representative Buddy Carson, First District, Georgia

Categories
Government Programming Languages

Rocket go up. Rocket come down.

One consistent thing about Musk and DOGE is the continuously promised use of Large Language model AI technologies to do…something.

The most recent case is Musk’s promise to use AI to analyse the five bullet responses to his “What did you do last week?” question…which government workers may or may not have been told to respond to or not respond to. Maybe. Yes. No. Maybe.

(BTW, there’s a lawsuit for that.)

Remember my reference to GIGO? Garbage In, Garbage Out? When you’re automatically collecting and analyzing data from many different groups with jobs that have no commonality working with hundreds of agencies enforcing rules, regulations, and requirements—all of which come from laws built on top of other laws. which may contradict each other in any number infinitesimal ways…well, the resulting mess will be pure GIGO. Particularly when answering may or may not happen individually, by employee, or by department. Especially when directions in how to respond come via X-witter twip.

The same GIGO applies to every stated use of AI that Musk and DOGE claim will root out waste, Fraud, and abuse (WAF). The same applies to all their claims about ‘modernizing’ the government computer systems.

The idea of being able to reduce decades-old government systems to something that can either be understood or redefined automatically is equivalent to reducing SpaceX software systems to “Rocket go up. Rocket come down.”

I took a deep dive into the systems used in our government agencies. There’s a surprising amount of openly available data about each.

For instance, we know about COBOL used with government systems, but are you aware that the core element of the Treasury fiscal system is down-to-the-metal Assembly code?

More modern systems utilize Java, and many are created using C and C++. However, in 2025 government completed a two year study about what language it should be using because C and C++ are inherently insecure.

Their answer? Rust.

After more than two decades of grappling with memory safety issues in C and C++, the software engineering community has reached a consensus. It’s not enough to rely on bug-finding tools.

 

The preferred approach is to use “safe” programming languages that can reject unsafe programs at compile time, thereby preventing the emergence of memory safety issues.

 

The TRACTOR program aims to automate the translation of legacy C code to Rust.

More here.

I find it interesting that SpaceX primarily uses C and C++. However, it also uses a smattering of Python, Node.js, and FORTRAN so maybe there’s hope the company’s programmers can pick up Rust.

Speaking of FORTRAN … ah, the king of complex computations. Unlike COBOL, FORTRAN will never die…it will just kind of linger for a long, long time. Not as long as C, but long.

FORTRAN was big with the military at one time, along with other languages, many of them proprietary. In the early 1980s, the military created their own language, Ada (not to be confused with Air Defense Artillery), a cousin of Pascal and Module 2.  I don’t know Ada, but I do know Module-2—none of which should be confused with the Module 2 of the coursework for ADA, or the Americans for Disability Act.

(The government is really big on acronyms. So much so, it keeps a list. Well, it keeps many lists. But no worries, there’s a guide.)

FORTRAN is still utilized in government systems, such as those used by NOAA with a callable interface to their MADIS API. In fact, did you know the Commerce department supports 53,752 searchable data sets in their Commerce Data Hub? Who knows the backend language used for each, but they provide either a REST or SOAP interface. And JSON!

NOAA has 46,861 data sets, alone. I wonder what kind of private enterprise would be willing to provide the same?

And these are data sets that DOGE and Trump’s admin haven’t destroyed, yet. Which really peeves me. As a software engineer who primarily worked with data, destroying any data is a sacrilege. It’s also a massive waste of government funding. We, the citizens of this country, paid for the data and documents. We, the citizens of this country that actually pad taxes, paid for the data and documents.

What kind of people would destroy data? Good data, useful data? Not the kind of people I’ve worked with in almost 40 years of software engineering.

Anyway, the point is made: the federal government systems are incredibly large, complex, and most don’t even share a common programming language. The DOGE kids may be wiz bang at making rockets go up, and rockets come down, but these Big Egos have never met Big Iron. They’ve never had to deal with legacy systems like those of the federal government. They’ve likely never had to deal with legacy systems, period.

More importantly, they have no respect for anything outside their experience. They have no respect for the complexity of the systems, the importance of them operating without fail, and all that wondrous data.

They’re lost and it shows by the crude chopping block approach to save a few bucks, and that will cost us double in the long run. And it shows by the number of errors that continue to show up on their cute little scoreboard.

They are outclassed.

I know big systems. I worked on one once for Boeing Military. It was in FORTRAN. I’ve also worked on other big systems, but most of them were in Java or C or C++. I’m fond of Node.js, but I’ve not worked with a big system with it. I’ve only incidentally seen systems created in COBOL. But…I know big systems.

And you couldn’t pay me to walk into any one of the IT departments for these government agencies with a little Starlink-connected laptop and cyber-insecure cloud app, and pretend to be some kind of über intellect who is going to automagically change things for the better. And I know there is more than one old code warrier like me out there nodding their heads in agreement.

Note: not making fun of SpaceX programmers. They do excellent work. But programming new software for a spaceship is not the same as understanding decades-old and complex federal systems created in dozens of programming languages, each of which has to follow law, not logic. Not the same thing.

 

Categories
Government Legal, Laws, and Regs Medical

Dear Buddy Carter

Your compatriot, Rich McCormick, had a town hall recently. It did not go as well as he hoped, especially considering the continued chaos in the federal government. Still, he did what a Congressional representative should do, and met with the public he represents.

And that leads us to you. Exactly when will you meet with the people who you represent? After all, with all the federal firings and destruction of government programs, folks want to know how this is going to impact all of us.

For instance, the latest program trashed was FEMA’s input into new building standards to ensure homes are better able to withstand natural disasters. This is, after all, a win/win for everyone, including the people you represent. We’re all vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding, and strong winds.

The building industry might whine, but the 1-2% cost in construction is nothing compared to the billions, likely trillions, of dollars saved. All we can hope is that there are local and state governments intelligent enough to know that constructing homes that can’t withstand hurricanes doesn’t magically make the hurricanes go away.

Then there’s the talk about the House Budget, and the targeting of Medicaid. At least we assume the effort will target Medicaid, only…targeting Social Security and Medicare being that whole third-rail thing.

I spent some time getting to know the counties you represent. Especially the counties in the south. I discovered from various maps, including several put out by the state of Georgia that you represent counties they are some of the poorest in the state. Not only that, but many have little or no healthcare access other than some regional rural hospitals.

Yet one of the most important elements to ensure rural healthcare access is Medicaid. Because of Medicaid, hospitals and doctors are paid and can financially continue to operate. Because of Medicaid expansion, people can see doctors sooner, when it’s actually cheaper to treat them, then wait until a life-threatening crisis occurs.

Because of Medicaid expansion, many Republican voter lives have been saved. I wanted to point this out because Congressional Republicans like yourself seem to believe that Medicaid expansion only helps Democratic voters  That’s the only reason why I would think that you’d attempt to decimate Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts for rich folk like yourself.

(You do know that no one is buying that whole tax cut thing is good for the country any more, right? Just wanting to ensure we’re communicating from the same basis of understanding.)

And the talk of work requirements for Medicaid. That’s all hogwash, and a supposedly well-informed member of a health profession would know this. Particularly a member of the health profession who also happens to represent Georgia. You only have to look at the debacle which is the Pathways to Coverage to see how true this is. Even though over 92% of adult Medicaid recipients are working, the complications associated with trying to meet the requirements actually prevents eligible people from signing up.

I suppose this is the intent, though. You can then point to the faulty Medicaid roll out as helping your citizens, at the same time you can gut the expansion and cut the costs by making the rules so arduous and complex, only 1 in 10 can survive the red tape gauntlet.

“We offered, but no one signed up!”

I’d say this is politically brilliant if I wasn’t so overcome with revulsion at the self-serving callousness of it all.

Sorry, that wasn’t very friendly, was it? And I want to be friendly. I want to encourage you to come meet with folks like me, and explain to us why what’s happening in DC is good for us.

But you will have to excuse my cynicism at times. People dying. People sick. People ruined by medical costs. People’s homes destroyed in hurricanes, federal workers lives destroyed because some 19 year old kid is now in control in various government departments….is this what you’re promising for the citizens of Georgia? If not, then there’s a simple solution to getting out the message you want Georgia citizens to hear:

Have a town hall.

Answer questions from the people you represent. Tell us why all the DOGE federal worker cuts are good, and firing people handling the bird flu outbreak is smart, or removing building standards that will actually cut billions in hurricane losses is a win. Explain how Trump can override the Congressional power of the purse and you in Congress are OK with this. Or that Trump can dissolve the independent US Postal service and fire all of its board, in contradiction of laws Republicans helped pass.

(That last one was a new one to me, and I admit even after the last four weeks, kind of knocked the breath out of me.)

We’re just plain folk here in Georgia’s First Congressional district. We’re not politicians or government experts.  We don’t understand all the complicated DC political stuff, because frankly, what’s happening in DC makes no sense to most of us.

Have a town hall. And not by phone, either. Meet us, face to face. We really want to have a talk with you.

Sources

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-rep-rich-mccormick-faces-044356470.html

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/20/nx-s1-5303478/fema-trump-building-codes-floods-hurricane-disasters

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/20/nx-s1-5303475/republicans-medicaid-cuts-trump-hospitals

https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data-portal/social/map?age=001&age_options=ageall_1&demo=00007&demo_options=poverty_3&race=00&race_options=race_7&sex=0&sex_options=sexboth_1&socialtopic=080&socialtopic_options=social_6&statefips=13&statefips_options=area_states

https://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/cong_dist/cd115/cd_based/ST13/CD115_GA01.pdf

https://dch.georgia.gov/divisionsoffices/state-office-rural-health/sorh-maps-georgia

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fired-officials-bird-flu-rehire-rcna192716

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/business/trump-postal-service-privatization/index.html