Rise of Fascism in the United States [SPLIT]

[rareboy]

The US at least has a leader elected by the people.

Thank God we have a parliamentary system that prevents any prime minister from thinking they are a king and depends on the confidence of the members of parliament who are all directly elected and hold the power.

 

[rareboy]

You might want to read up on the Electoral College.

Yes. A system where states with more cows than people end up electing the president.

It is so surprising how many US citizens have such a poor understanding of the electoral college.

 

[ravenstone]

Thank God we have a parliamentary system that prevents any prime minister from thinking they are a king and depends on the confidence of the members of parliament who are all directly elected and hold the power.

When the people of Canada have a parliament. I think the Liberal Party has to let them meet by the end of this month unless they have more tricks up their sleeves to stay in power.

 

[rareboy]

You don't have a clue how this works, do you?

This isn't about tricks. What a silly statement.

Trudeau resigned. We have a new leader of the Liberals who will be looking to drop the writ for election pretty soon. And I dare say is looking forward to running against Polievre.

No one is 'clinging' to power at this point. It belongs to the majority party in the Commons until an election is called. The Prime Minister is just first among ministers. They aren't God. They aren't dictators. They serve at the pleasure of the House and in a multi-party parliamentary system this requires a certain deftness and sophistication that US politicians don't have.

Certainly, Trump doesn't understand how any of this works either when he suggests Trudeau is clinging to power.

He sounded like an idiot with his stubby fingered comments about this.

 

[ravenstone]

You might want to read up on the Electoral College.

Trump won the popular vote also.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I respect your opinion, but I do believe we had rot and decay under Biden. The US now that it is turning against the globalist agenda will see a Golden age while other Western democracies will continue to rot.

Yes, we did. And it preceded his term.

The Congress has been abrogating its authority since before 9/11, but at an accelerated rate since then.

As for any globalist agenda, WE have been the prime mover of globalism. WE passed laws that encouraged multinationals to flee tot foreign shores to get cheap labor, futher tax breaks, WE dominated countries and declared who could and could not acquire nuclear weapons, WE used weaker neighbors to host black sites to enable illegal torture, WE provided food aid and medicine to 3rd world countries as a means of helping our global agenda, WE set up agriculture in the US to require sub-standard labor and livivng conditions for migrant labor, WE built up GUAM when other bases grew less welcoming as China expanded in the South Seas, and WE manipulated countries like Iran, Iraq, Panama, Cuba, the Philippines, and others to access their natural resources.

And, we haven't abandoned all that. Acting obnoxiously to allies isn't walking away from globalism. It's simply behaving recklessly, banking on not needing alliances, which is folly.

I respect the differences of opinion that are common in politics, and believe we should all be able to discuss them without denigrating the opposing speaker. Thatt is the thing I find the worst about our president the movement he so proudly "leads". It's justifying nasttiness and meanness, and it has spread. Biden made personally insulting comments WHILE president, and the devolving dialogue is to the shame of the US.

 

[rareboy]

 

[rareboy]

The US at least has a leader elected by the people.

Tell us again about the actual leader of the US who was not elected by the people?

 

[KaraBulut]

Oh, look. The FTC suddenly is understaffed and can't work on its actions against Amazon Prime.

Put a million in... have your newspaper not endorse... and see what you get in return?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/12/ftc-asks-to-delay-amazon-prime-deceptive-practices-case-citing-staffing-shortfalls.html

• FTC attorneys asked a Seattle judge to delay the start of a trial over its Amazon Prime “dark patterns” case.
• The agency cited staffing and budget constraints as factors for why the trial should be pushed back.
• The FTC’s request to delay due to staffing constraints comes amid a push by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce spending.

 

[rareboy]

 

[KaraBulut]

Ah, and they promised they wouldn't be coming for your Social Security or Medicare.

After Rep Larson called out Republicans, the SSA backed off on plans to close SSA local offices and shut down the phone lines that 40% of retirees use to work with the SSA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/12/social-security-phone-doge-elderly-disabled/

The Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team was weighing the change to root out alleged fraud.

The shift would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades to access earned government benefits.

However, Social Security and White House officials said the administration will still move ahead with another far more limited element of the original proposal: Customers will no longer be able to change a direct deposit routing number or other bank information by phone.

“Approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information,” the agency’s press office said in a statement hours after The Post published its article. The “current protocol of simply asking identifying questions by telephone is no longer enough to prevent fraud.”

What to know about Social Security office closures driven by Musk's DOGE

Across-the-board cuts at the Social Security Administration are prompting questions about how the benefits of millions of recipients may be affected

abcnews.go.com

Across-the-board cuts at the Social Security Administration are prompting questions about how the benefits of millions of recipients may be affected.

Among the potential changes are layoffs for more than 10% of the agency’s workforce and the closure of dozens of offices throughout the U.S. It's all part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency, inspired by President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk.

Some of the public-facing locations listed for closure were already slated to be shuttered due to lack of use. The SSA says work in other non-public sites up for closure is being consolidated.

Resist. Get pissed off. Call your Congressional representative and demand they hold town halls. Show up at town halls and ask hard questions. Remind them that they are up for re-election in a couple of years.

 

[KaraBulut]

This is not from The Onion... it's actually on the Department of Justice website.

Justice Department Dismisses Suit Against Denka, Delivering on President Trump’s Mandate to End Radical DEI Programs

The Justice Department, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dismissed a lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (Denka) concerning its neoprene manufacturing facility in LaPlace, Louisiana. The dismissal fulfills President Trump’s day one executive order, “Ending...

www.justice.gov

Today, the Justice Department, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dismissed a lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (Denka) concerning its neoprene manufacturing facility in LaPlace, Louisiana. The dismissal fulfills President Trump’s day one executive order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” signed to eliminate ideological overreach and restore impartial enforcement of federal laws. Concurrently, EPA withdrew its referral of the case to the Justice Department to align with Administrator Lee Zeldin’s pledge to end the use of “environmental justice” as a tool for advancing ideological priorities.

The Biden Administration had sued Denka because families living in neighborhoods around the plant had high levels of cancer. It just happened, as is often the case, that the neighborhood was largely black families. Stopping cancer in black people is DEI in the Trump Administration.

US sues chemical company over cancer risk to minority area

Federal officials are suing a Louisiana chemical maker, alleging that it presented an unacceptable cancer risk to the nearby majority-Black community and demanding cuts in toxic emissions.

apnews.com

Federal officials sued a Louisiana chemical maker on Tuesday, alleging that it presents an unacceptable cancer risk to the nearby majority-Black community and demanding cuts in toxic emissions.

Denka Performance Elastomer LLC makes synthetic rubber, emitting the carcinogen chloroprene and other chemicals in such high concentrations that it poses an unacceptable cancer risk, according to the federal complaint. Children are particularly vulnerable. There is an elementary school a half-mile from the plant.

The former DuPont plant has reduced its emissions over time, but the Justice Department, suing on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the plant still represents “an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare,’' including elevated cancer risks.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Ah, and they promised they wouldn't be coming for your Social Security or Medicare.

After Rep Larson called out Republicans, the SSA backed off on plans to close SSA local offices and shut down the phone lines that 40% of retirees use to work with the SSA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/12/social-security-phone-doge-elderly-disabled/

What to know about Social Security office closures driven by Musk's DOGE

Across-the-board cuts at the Social Security Administration are prompting questions about how the benefits of millions of recipients may be affected

abcnews.go.com

Resist. Get pissed off. Call your Congressional representative and demand they hold town halls. Show up at town halls and ask hard questions. Remind them that they are up for re-election in a couple of years.

I'd like to see documentation of this actual fraud in SSA. Not just allegations. I certainly do not believe mass numbers of dead people are receiving payments. Who is getting payments, where is it going? I know for a fact, at least here in MO and I assume everywhere, SSA is informed when a death certificate is issued. When my parents passed, they did receive a deposit after their death, but SSA took it back pretty darn quick as soon as they were notified. I know, because I was handling the finances.

You can change direct deposit on the SSA website though. I don't see security issues online. One thing you can't do online though is change voluntary federal tax deduction. You can do it over the phone, but I mailed in a W4 to stop it all together about 2 weeks ago. The way things are going, who knows if I'll even be able to get the refund next year. So save it up front. We'll see when I get the next deposit.

 

[KaraBulut]

I'd like to see documentation of actual fraud in SSA. Not just allegations. I certainly do not believe mass numbers of dead people are receiving payments. Who is getting payments, where is it going? I know for a fact, at least here in MO and I assume everywhere, SSA is informed when a death certificate is issued. When my parents passed, they did receive a deposit after their death, but SSA took it back pretty darn quick as soon as they were notified. I know, because I was handling the finances.

You can change direct deposit on the SSA website though. I don't see security issues online. One thing you can't do online though is change voluntary federal tax deduction. You can do it over the phone, but I mailed in a W4 to stop it all together about 2 weeks ago. The way things are going, who knows if I'll even be able to get the refund next year. So save it up front. We'll see when I get the next deposit.

It does happen, usually when a relative dies and another relative keeps the payments going into direct deposit bank account that the had shared access to. There was a bizarre incident a few years ago where the relative kept the dead body in the house so that his parent didn't get into the SSDI.

There's another post on the forum where I linked to a (now fired) SSA Inspector General report where they did a deep dive on why there were incomplete SSDI entries. They found that the fraud rate was about 0.8%. I can dig up that post if you're interested.

You can change direct deposit on the SSA website though. I don't see security issues online.

I do a lot of web stuff for older friends because either they don't have access to the internet or they get frustrated trying to figure out where things are. They would much rather pick up the phone and talk to a real person. I have also helped some of their church friends who can't afford to pay for internet access on their fixed income (mostly 100% through SSI payments).

 

[cityboy-stl]

I don't doubt there are some instances of people getting SSA payments for dead relatives. I do doubt the mass numbers Trump and Musk are talking about.

I've seen that 0.8% number before, so no need. But thanks.

 

[KaraBulut]

...I do doubt the mass numbers Trump and Musk are talking about.

Pause for a moment and think about this statement. When does Trump not lie or exaggerate?

 

[cityboy-stl]

I should have said I don't believe the mass numbers. Because deceit is republican policy.

 

[KaraBulut]

The lies have a purpose. They want to discredit a successful government program that has been around for 80 years and that Americans have great faith in. We're back to that privatization nonsense they've been talking about since the Reagan years. The same privatization that got Dubya kicked in the backside for bringing up again in the 1990s.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5189448-trump-musk-social-security-fraud/

President Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are ratcheting up false rhetoric about Social Security, repeatedly claiming the program wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payouts that need to be eliminated.

Their position is confounding experts and worrying advocates, who fear the claims are a pretext for massive cuts to the program down the road.

Trump, Musk and the administration’s allies insist they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse and are not going after benefits as a whole.

 

[bendted]

When a doctor issues a death certificate, doesn't that info automatically get relayed to the SSA? I don't see how "150 year old people collecting" could happen. I suppose if a relative dies at home and you stash the body (as per example above) , but that has to be extremely rare.

 

[KaraBulut]

When a doctor issues a death certificate, doesn't that info automatically get relayed to the SSA? I don't see how "150 year old people collecting" could happen. I suppose if a relative dies at home and you stash the body (as per example above) , but that has to be extremely rare.

It used to be that the funeral home director would submit a form to the SSA. Any time you have a paper-based system, there's the possibility that a form would get lost in the mail or it would be never be entered into the SSDI/DMF. The system is now electronic but it is still dependent upon the funeral home submitting it electronically, although the SSA now uses other databases to compare and find missing death dates.

There's also likely to be a bunch of those numbers in the database that were wrong to begin with. Or when an elderly person signed up for SSI in the 1960s, they may have been unable to find their old number issued back in the 1930s and they just issued them a new SSN, even those the old SSN were on the database. When the person died, their new SSN was updated but the old number was never updated.

The key piece that needs to be emphasized was that these were very old people and Trump never says that those numbers were receiving benefits.

Remember: this is a database that has been around since 1936 when it was paper-based. When that database was put into a computer, someone had to key all of those paper records into the computer and they probably made a lot of data entry errors.

The electronic database has 531 million numbers in it. The Inspector General issued a report that looked at the issue in July, 2023. The report is called, "Numberholders Age 100 or Older Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident". The report found that there were 18,000,000 numbers in the database for people who were 100 or older but only about 40,000 of those numbers were getting checks. The census found that there were 80,000 people over age 100, so SSA is only paying half of the people over age 100 who would be eligible. The SSI system stops paying at age 115, so even if one of those 40,000 people were not reported to the SSI, the checks stop.

One thing that I found interesting in the report: of the 18,000,000 SSNs in the database for people over 100, there were 139,211 of those numbers that were having payroll taxes withheld on $8.5 billion in earnings. Obviously, in a database that big and old, there's gonna be issues.

The report also found that it would cost millions of dollars to hire temporary workers to find records on the 18 million database records and update the database. The SSA said they didn't have the money to hire extra workers to do that, and unless Congress came up with more money, they weren't going to waste taxpayer money researching and updating old records that weren't getting checks.