Well, I'm glad you made it safely to Washington. However, I'm very sad to hear about the arbitrary bullshit from the Social Security Administration. As near as I can tell, this is basically everyone's experience with these programs. All the adjectives you used, cruel, capricious, and just arbitrary. They write their own rules, they don't pay attention to the rules they're supposed to follow. It's just utter bullshit.
Thanks you for your comment. Yep, SSA has quite a reputation program to say the least and sometimes it's hard to figure out whether they act on incompetence, outright malice, or both. Luckily I was later able to get legal representation for this situation, and, like so many of the other legal experts Ive spoken with, the attorney representing me, thinks my case is solid. It's normally quiet difficult to get legal representation for post-entitlement situations like what I'm dealing with, as they usually wouldn't incur suficient legal fees for most attorneys to even bother with, and most disability recipients wouldn't have the funds to pay the fees anyways. I got connected with this attorney through a nonprofit advocacy group called The Northwest Justice Project. Now I feel a lot more hopeful of getting the situation resolved. In fact, my attorney also found some evidence, in support of my separate discrimination complaint that I'm filing against SSA, so I think I can get this entire situation straightened out soon and hopefully even get the SSA employee in question appropriately reprimanded.
I am outraged at this despicable practice! Will you receive interest on the payments which were not made? Or be reimbursed for any attorney's fees? I wish this level of scrutiny was given to some of the bs that congress passes!
Thank you for reading and commenting. I wish there was some way to legally make SSA compensate the attorney who will be representing me. Thankfully my legal representation will come at no cost to me as it's being provided by a non profit agency that assists with these sorts of legal issues. But the decision was so obviously baseless, not to mention, I think it was a case of weaponization of SSA policy and I wish there were some way of holding the culprit accountable. Unfortunately, even though I'm much more confident of winning my appeal, I doubt anyone in that office will be held accountable.
It's times like this where I have wondered why I don't just work for SSA. I seem to know the laws better than most of the people working there.
It is unacceptable that there is no accountability.
I assume most of the people who work in the SSA have no clue what it is like to be disable and dependent on them for their well-being. This is no way excuses their behavior though. I believe AARP (American Association of Retired People) have advocated for changes in the difficulty of navigating the SSA, but I don't know how successful they have been.
Yep, so many organizations like the AARP have advocated for improvements over the years and a number of potentially effective bills have been introduced to Congress but they never advance very far. After the DOGE cuts and last year's big ugly budget bill things have really been set back and I don't know what hope there is of getting everything on track anytime soon. So much of the problem has been the many years of austerity that have gotten especially worse under Trump 2.0.
Thank you for writing this, Allan. I felt the weight of it in every paragraph. Not just what happened but the fear that comes from knowing how much power these systems have over your life. I'm sorry you're dealing with this and grateful you took the time to make this experience visible for the rest of us.
You're welcome. Thanks for reading and for commenting. For the life of me, I will never understand what kind of people could work in those SSA officers and operate with such outright incompetence, if not corruption, and seemingly think nothing as to how their decision impact the lives of so many people.
Thankfully, I was later able to get hooked up with legal representation from the NW Justice Project and the attorney I'm working with is convinced that I have a solid case and can easily get this situation cleared up.
In the future I hope to do more research and writing about reforming our systems of disabied income support. I'm a major proponent of an unconditional basic income but I don't see it as a solution to completely obviate the need for government disability payment systems. I do think that having some form of UBI in tandem with a reformed targeted disability payments could be nothing short of revolutionary for many disabled people, particularly among the neurodivergent population.
That's encouraging news about the attorney! Sheesh I hope the process moves quickly from here and that you're able to get the outcome you deserve. Thanks again for sharing your experience 😺
No problem. Thanks for the positive thoughts. I'm now a lot more confident about the prospects of getting everything straightened out and will definitely be glad when it's all done and over with, that's for sure.
Hi Allan: Welcome back to the less wild west. I won't call it the deep thinking west, but deeper than a bunch of other spots in North America. The only non-typical-wild-west town in Kansas, in my experience, is Wichita. But, pricey as hell.
I get it about the bureaucracy. During my 4 decades of private practice of clinical psychiatry, mostly in WA state, I saw how the system of assistance produced more problems than it solved. And, how it blatantly repeatedly reinjured already traumatized humans. Adding a huge extra burden that made all aspects of life heavier, harder, fearful, rather than hopeful, less complex, supportive, and contributing to healing processes and further recoveries of many types. I am a witness to how much torture goes on to discourage assistance. It had a huge burnout effect on me, as an advocate, especially between 2014 and 2021.
It is immoral, period. It has gotten more and more immoral as the powerful seek to vacuum up every penny possible (or, I guess, now, every nickel possible). I do not know how workers in the government's gauntlet are not suffering a moral injury.
On a lighter note (sorta). In recognition of how cannibalistic the toxic-capitalist-government complex has become, I have nominated the color Soylent Green for the Official Pantone Color of the Year for 2027. A color to remind us of what is really going on and the many different ways to eat humans that retail, technology and the rich have discovered.
Take care, best wishes, and "stay low and move fast." Ron
Hello Ron, thank you for commenting and for the welcome back to the PNW. Save for the preventable and senseless snafu with my disability benefits, I'm actually glad to be back in Ellensburg again. I've always liked Ellensburg and have so many fond memories of it.
Lawrence Kansas was a fairly nice town but like Which, very expensive to live there.
I've had the same thought before about the risk of moral injury that might occur through working for a sector that merely provides basic lifeline support for the disabled while at the same time, further traumatizing and breaking them down, thus further entrenching their disablement. Only capitalism can be this cruel.
So often I have encountered SSA personnel of whom I felt like I understood prevailing laws better than they did and have wondered why don't I just apply for their job. But then I think, no, my capacity to care about the actual correctness of my decisions how these might affect clients might be a major hindrance to my succeeding in that sector.
On another note, I was able to get legal representation for my case so this gives me hope. Every legal expert I've spoken with, including the person representing me, has said that the caseworker handling my case was egregiously in the wrong.
Well, I'm glad you made it safely to Washington. However, I'm very sad to hear about the arbitrary bullshit from the Social Security Administration. As near as I can tell, this is basically everyone's experience with these programs. All the adjectives you used, cruel, capricious, and just arbitrary. They write their own rules, they don't pay attention to the rules they're supposed to follow. It's just utter bullshit.
Thanks you for your comment. Yep, SSA has quite a reputation program to say the least and sometimes it's hard to figure out whether they act on incompetence, outright malice, or both. Luckily I was later able to get legal representation for this situation, and, like so many of the other legal experts Ive spoken with, the attorney representing me, thinks my case is solid. It's normally quiet difficult to get legal representation for post-entitlement situations like what I'm dealing with, as they usually wouldn't incur suficient legal fees for most attorneys to even bother with, and most disability recipients wouldn't have the funds to pay the fees anyways. I got connected with this attorney through a nonprofit advocacy group called The Northwest Justice Project. Now I feel a lot more hopeful of getting the situation resolved. In fact, my attorney also found some evidence, in support of my separate discrimination complaint that I'm filing against SSA, so I think I can get this entire situation straightened out soon and hopefully even get the SSA employee in question appropriately reprimanded.
I am outraged at this despicable practice! Will you receive interest on the payments which were not made? Or be reimbursed for any attorney's fees? I wish this level of scrutiny was given to some of the bs that congress passes!
Thank you for reading and commenting. I wish there was some way to legally make SSA compensate the attorney who will be representing me. Thankfully my legal representation will come at no cost to me as it's being provided by a non profit agency that assists with these sorts of legal issues. But the decision was so obviously baseless, not to mention, I think it was a case of weaponization of SSA policy and I wish there were some way of holding the culprit accountable. Unfortunately, even though I'm much more confident of winning my appeal, I doubt anyone in that office will be held accountable.
It's times like this where I have wondered why I don't just work for SSA. I seem to know the laws better than most of the people working there.
It is unacceptable that there is no accountability.
I assume most of the people who work in the SSA have no clue what it is like to be disable and dependent on them for their well-being. This is no way excuses their behavior though. I believe AARP (American Association of Retired People) have advocated for changes in the difficulty of navigating the SSA, but I don't know how successful they have been.
Yep, so many organizations like the AARP have advocated for improvements over the years and a number of potentially effective bills have been introduced to Congress but they never advance very far. After the DOGE cuts and last year's big ugly budget bill things have really been set back and I don't know what hope there is of getting everything on track anytime soon. So much of the problem has been the many years of austerity that have gotten especially worse under Trump 2.0.
💜💜💜💜
Thank you for writing this, Allan. I felt the weight of it in every paragraph. Not just what happened but the fear that comes from knowing how much power these systems have over your life. I'm sorry you're dealing with this and grateful you took the time to make this experience visible for the rest of us.
You're welcome. Thanks for reading and for commenting. For the life of me, I will never understand what kind of people could work in those SSA officers and operate with such outright incompetence, if not corruption, and seemingly think nothing as to how their decision impact the lives of so many people.
Thankfully, I was later able to get hooked up with legal representation from the NW Justice Project and the attorney I'm working with is convinced that I have a solid case and can easily get this situation cleared up.
In the future I hope to do more research and writing about reforming our systems of disabied income support. I'm a major proponent of an unconditional basic income but I don't see it as a solution to completely obviate the need for government disability payment systems. I do think that having some form of UBI in tandem with a reformed targeted disability payments could be nothing short of revolutionary for many disabled people, particularly among the neurodivergent population.
That's encouraging news about the attorney! Sheesh I hope the process moves quickly from here and that you're able to get the outcome you deserve. Thanks again for sharing your experience 😺
No problem. Thanks for the positive thoughts. I'm now a lot more confident about the prospects of getting everything straightened out and will definitely be glad when it's all done and over with, that's for sure.
Hi Allan: Welcome back to the less wild west. I won't call it the deep thinking west, but deeper than a bunch of other spots in North America. The only non-typical-wild-west town in Kansas, in my experience, is Wichita. But, pricey as hell.
I get it about the bureaucracy. During my 4 decades of private practice of clinical psychiatry, mostly in WA state, I saw how the system of assistance produced more problems than it solved. And, how it blatantly repeatedly reinjured already traumatized humans. Adding a huge extra burden that made all aspects of life heavier, harder, fearful, rather than hopeful, less complex, supportive, and contributing to healing processes and further recoveries of many types. I am a witness to how much torture goes on to discourage assistance. It had a huge burnout effect on me, as an advocate, especially between 2014 and 2021.
It is immoral, period. It has gotten more and more immoral as the powerful seek to vacuum up every penny possible (or, I guess, now, every nickel possible). I do not know how workers in the government's gauntlet are not suffering a moral injury.
On a lighter note (sorta). In recognition of how cannibalistic the toxic-capitalist-government complex has become, I have nominated the color Soylent Green for the Official Pantone Color of the Year for 2027. A color to remind us of what is really going on and the many different ways to eat humans that retail, technology and the rich have discovered.
Take care, best wishes, and "stay low and move fast." Ron
Hello Ron, thank you for commenting and for the welcome back to the PNW. Save for the preventable and senseless snafu with my disability benefits, I'm actually glad to be back in Ellensburg again. I've always liked Ellensburg and have so many fond memories of it.
Lawrence Kansas was a fairly nice town but like Which, very expensive to live there.
I've had the same thought before about the risk of moral injury that might occur through working for a sector that merely provides basic lifeline support for the disabled while at the same time, further traumatizing and breaking them down, thus further entrenching their disablement. Only capitalism can be this cruel.
So often I have encountered SSA personnel of whom I felt like I understood prevailing laws better than they did and have wondered why don't I just apply for their job. But then I think, no, my capacity to care about the actual correctness of my decisions how these might affect clients might be a major hindrance to my succeeding in that sector.
On another note, I was able to get legal representation for my case so this gives me hope. Every legal expert I've spoken with, including the person representing me, has said that the caseworker handling my case was egregiously in the wrong.