Category: History

Some Info To Use When Lobbying Our Congresscritters (and people in the grocery line, too!) Regarding Social Security

Setting the Record Straight on Social Security

by Kathleen Romig Director of Social Security and Disability Policy February 20, 2025

Social Security has broad support across party lines, income levels, and generations. After 90 years, Social Security remains one of the nation’s most successful, effective, and popular programs.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has strict controls over who receives a Social Security number (SSN) and what documentation is required to prove identity, U.S. citizenship, and immigration status. The agency assigns a unique Social Security number to each eligible individual, and it pays a single Social Security benefit to each qualifying individual with a Social Security number. Only U.S. citizens and some lawfully present non-citizens may receive Social Security benefits. Social Security’s payment accuracy rate is very high — well over 99 percent — and it has many safeguards against improper payments, including rigorous protocols to stop paying benefits to people who have died.

Misinformation and false statements from President Trump and “Department of Government Efficiency” head Elon Musk claiming otherwise are causing confusion and risk undermining a trusted program that is rigorously administered, and which 69 million people currently rely on and nearly everyone will eventually use.

Here are the facts.

Social Security Number: What Is it and Who Is Eligible?

  • The Social Security Administration only provides new or replacement Social Security cards to people who meet strict authentication requirements. Applicants must fill out an application for a Social Security card (SS-5) and take or mail original documents to a local Social Security office for processing. Applicants must provide at least two documents that prove age, identity, and U.S. citizenship or lawful immigration status. Almost all U.S. citizens are assigned Social Security numbers at birth through SSA’s enumeration at birth program.
  • Some non-citizens with lawful immigration statuses may receive Social Security numbers. To receive a work-authorized SSN, non-citizen applicants must prove that they have a current, lawful work-authorized immigration status (such as lawful permanent resident status, also known as having a green card). Social Security cards issued to non-citizens with temporary work authorization are labeled “VALID FOR WORK ONLY WITH DHS AUTHORIZATION.” To receive a non-work SSN, applicants must prove they are lawfully present in the U.S. (for example, on a student visa) and provide the valid, non-work reason for which they need an SSN. Social Security cards issued to non-citizens without work authorization are labeled “NOT VALID FOR EMPLOYMENT.” People who are without lawful immigration status are not eligible for an SSN.
  • The Social Security number is a unique identifier, meaning that one number is assigned to one individual. It was designed this way to keep track of each worker’s earnings so that SSA could determine eligibility for Social Security and the benefit amount, which is based on a worker’s earnings.

Social Security Benefits: Who Gets Them and How Are They Calculated? 

  • Social Security has a payment accuracy rate of over 99 percent. Only 0.3 percent of Social Security benefits are improper payments, which are typically caused by mistakes or delays.
  • SSA has many safeguards to ensure accurate payments, including strict documentation and eligibility requirements, quality reviews, and regular reviews of medical eligibility for disability beneficiaries and financial eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. SSA works with its Office of Inspector General (OIG) to root out rare cases of outright fraud, in which applicants or beneficiaries deliberately falsify information to get or keep undeserved benefits. SSA and OIG team with state and local authorities in Cooperative Disability Investigations to investigate suspected fraud and to prosecute violations of the law.
  • Only U.S. citizens and some lawfully present non-citizens may receive Social Security benefits. Social Security benefits are based on the earnings on which people pay Social Security payroll taxes. As of 2004, non-citizens must have had work authorization for their earnings to count toward Social Security eligibility and benefits. In addition, the Social Security Act has prohibited the payment of benefits to non-citizens who are not “lawfully present” in the U.S. since 1996.
  • SSA only pays one Social Security benefit to each qualifying Social Security number holder. A person may receive a Social Security benefit based on their own work history or based on their relationship to a worker — for example, the surviving spouse of a deceased worker. Beneficiaries who are eligible in multiple ways (for example, as both a worker and a surviving spouse) only receive one benefit that is reduced under the “dual entitlement rule,” which caps the total benefit amount at the highest single benefit for which the person qualifies. In no case does the same individual receive multiple Social Security benefits, nor does SSA pay Social Security benefits to people without SSNs.
  • SSA has rigorous protocols to stop payments to beneficiaries who have died. State vital statistics agencies report deaths to SSA via the Electronic Death Registration system, typically within days. SSA also collects death data from funeral home directors, family members, and financial institutions. Across all sources, the agency receives nearly 3 million death reports each year, preventing over $50 million in improper payments each month. To catch any deaths that may have escaped reporting, SSA regularly checks to be sure its oldest beneficiaries are using their Medicare benefits — if not, they verify that the beneficiary is still alive. And in the extremely rare cases where benefits are paid to people over 100 years old, SSA has a policy to stop payments by age 115.
  • Only 0.1 percent of Social Security benefits are paid to people over 100 years old. DOGE head Elon Musk has been circulating a table he claims shows Social Security beneficiaries at very old ages, but he is grossly mischaracterizing its contents. These numbers appear to be drawn from SSA’s Numident database, a record of every Social Security number application since the program started. The Numident typically does not contain death dates for people born before 1920 — before Social Security was established and long before electronic records were kept. A 2023 OIG report explains that “almost none” of the people born before 1920 in this dataset are being paid benefits. As a result, SSA explained that adding death dates to these very old records would be “costly to implement [and] would be of little benefit.”

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/setting-the-record-straight-on-social-security

Peace & Justice History for 2/21

February 21, 1848
“The Communist Manifesto,” written by 29-year-old Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, was published in London (in German) by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League.

Friedrich Engels Karl Marx
The political pamphlet — arguably one of the most influential in history — proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever.
Read the Manifesto 
February 21, 1965
Malcolm X, an African-American nationalist and religious leader, was shot and killed in New York City by Black Muslims with whom he had broken the year before, as he began to address his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City’s Washington Heights. His home had been firebombed just a few days earlier. He was 39.

Radio story on the late Manning Marable’s biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention 
More on on Malcolm’s assassination
MalcolmX.com 
“In 1964, after his break with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and following his trips to Africa and to Mecca, Malcolm was seriously questioning black nationalism. He was also beginning to recognize that MLK’s non-violent methods, far from being passive, were actually creating more change than the separatism of the Nation of Islam.
In this same period MLK was beginning to recognize that Malcolm was advocating self-defense, not violence.
In March Malcolm and Martin encountered one another by chance at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Subsequently Malcolm spoke at several rallies in support of the civil rights movement, and in February 1965, two weeks before his assassination, he went to Selma to meet with King.” –Grace Lee Boggs

” You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”–“Prospects for Freedom in 1965,” speech, January 7 1965.
February 21, 1972
The trial began for Father Philip Berrigan and six other activists (the “Harrisburg Seven”) in Pennsylvania. They were charged with conspiring in an alleged plot to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Proceedings later ended in a mistrial.

Daniel Berrigan, above, and his brother Philip in the documentary, “Investigation of a Flame.” The film focuses on the Catonsville action.
Remembering Fr. Philip Berrigan 
February 21, 1975
Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, Mitchell aide Robert Mardian, and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 21⁄2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up. They were variously convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, fraud, and perjury.
See the new film, Frost/Nixon, for perspective on some of
the issues behind Watergate
 Charlie Rose interview with Peter Morgan, the screenwriter (and author of what was originally a play) and Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, the lead actors
February 21, 2011
Two Libyan Air Force fighter pilots defected to the Mediterranean island of Malta rather than carry out orders they had received to bomb civilian countrymen. Two helicopters with seven others landed in Malta to escape the violence. Colonel Muammar Qadaffi had ordered the attacks in attempt to quell the growing protests against his 42-year dictatorship.
Libya’s ambassadors to China, India, Indonesia and Poland, as well as Libya’s representative to the Arab League and most, if not all, of its mission at the United Nations resigned the same day.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february21

Peace & Justice History for 2/20

The Republican President has been in office one month today, and we’ve seen some of today’s history repeat itself already. Republicans are working very rapidly.

February 20, 1942
The vast majority of teachers in German-occupied Norway refused to comply with the forced Nazification of the school system. The government had ordered display of the portrait of German-installed Minister President Vidkun Quisling (formerly head of Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian fascist party) in all classrooms, revision of the curriculum and textbooks to reflect Nazi ideology, and teaching of German to replace English as their second language.The teachers organized and 12,000 of 14,000 nationwide wrote the same letter on this day to the education department refusing membership in the newly formed Nazi teachers’ association. Two days later clergy throughout the country read a manifesto against Nazi control of the schools.

Vidkun Quisling (on right), Germany’s puppet leader in Norway,
allowed Germany to invade his country and declared himself Prime Minister. In Norway his name has become synonymous with traitor.
How the teachers pushed back 
Norwegian teachers prevent the Nazification of education 
February 20, 1956
The U.S. rejected a Soviet proposal to ban nuclear weapons tests and deployment. The U.S. continued atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific and Nevada until 1963.
February 20, 2011
Nearly 40,000 pro-Democracy Moroccans demonstrated peacefully in
57 towns and cities across the country. Though there was sporadic
violence later that night, Interior minister Taeib Cherqaoui called the earlier efforts “the healthy practice of the freedom of expression.”

Peace & Justice History for 2/19

As well, Feb. 19th is the annual Day of Remembrance of Pres. Roosevelt’s E.O. 9066, interning Japanese-Americans.

February 19, 1919
A Pan-African Congress was organized by W.E.B. DuBois in Paris, France, to coincide with the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. DuBois, sociologist, historian, novelist, playwright, and cultural critic, served as special representative of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and was assisted by Blaise Diagne, a member of the French Parliament from the West African colony of Senegal.

W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the NAACP and convener for the Pan-African Congress in Paris.
The Congress’s aim was to call the issue of “international protection of the natives of Africa” to the attention of the United States and the European colonial powers who were making momentous decisions on the nature of the post-war world.
DuBois was a moving spirit behind the growing struggle for self-determination among Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora, and the Pan-African Congresses helped to bring the issues of this struggle to world attention. The Pan-African Congress was re-convened in 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945.

Attendees at the Pan-African Congress.
More about W.E.B. DuBois 
More depth on the Pan-African Congresses
February 19, 1942
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ten weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, issued a directive ordering all Japanese Americans (Nisei) evacuated from the West Coast of the U.S., and forcing them to live in concentration camps. Executive Order 9066 authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders “to prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.”

San Francisco Chronicle February 27, 1942 Photo by Dorothea Lange

Japanese American residents board the bus for Camp Harmony, 1942.
There was strong support from California Attorney General Earl Warren (later U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice), liberal journalist Walter Lippmann and Time magazine—which referred to California as “Japan’s Sudetenland”

Japanese-American child on bus to concentration camp. photo: Dorothea Lange
112,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry were relocated, losing their businesses, homes, and belongings to the white residents of their former neighborhoods.This day is referred to as the “Day of Remembrance.” It has been commemorated every year for 67 years to remind Americans of that miscarriage of justice, and to ensure such things do not happen again.
Children of the camps 
Note: In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted
of spying for Japan, all of whom were Caucasian
Day of Remembrance 
“Not Enough People Know About Day of Remembrance” 
February 19, 1972
Paul McCartney’s song, “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” was immediately banned from airplay by the BBC.
Opening of the song:
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Great Britain you are tremendous
And nobody knows like me
But really what are you doin’
In the land across the sea
Tell me how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers
Would you lie down do nothing
Would you give in, or go berserk?
  
Paul McCartney and “Wings” rehearse the song 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february19

Peace & Justice History for 2/18

February 18, 1688
Francis Daniel Pastorius and three other Pennsylvania Quakers (members of the Society of Friends) made the first formal protest against slavery in the new world. At the Thones Kunders House in Germantown (now part of Philadelphia) they signed a proclamation denouncing the importation, sale, and ownership of slaves: “. . . we shall doe [sic] to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are.”
More on Germantown Society of Friends 
February 18, 1961

above: Bertrand Russell and Edith Russell watching the actress Vanessa Redgrave address the Committee of 100 meeting in Trafalgar Square, which preceded the anti-Polaris “sit-in” outside the Ministry of Defence on February 18, 1961.
In London, Sir Bertrand Russell, 88, led a march of 20,000 and sit-down of 5,000 in an anti-nuke rally outside the U.K. Defense Ministry, and was jailed for seven days. It was the first public demonstration organized by the Committee of 100, the direct action wing of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

Early CND demonstrator
The CND today
February 18, 1970
Five of the “Chicago Seven” (Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin) were found guilty of crossing state lines to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic convention.

The Chicago Seven
John Froines and Lee Weiner had both been charged with making incendiary devices (stink bombs) but were found not guilty of all charges. None of the seven were found guilty of conspiracy. Attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass and defendants Weiner and Dellinger were sentenced for contempt of court, except for Weiner for more than a year. All appealed.
More on the group Summary of the legal issues 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february18

What I love about this video is that Rev Ed makes a point about using pronouns and one I plan to start doing.  Hugs

Peace & Justice History for 2/17

February 17, 1958
The first meeting of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was held. CND developed the peace symbol which became its logo.

CND history 
February 17, 1975
Several hundred residents of Wyhl, Germany, occupied the site of a nuclear power plant with the intent of halting construction. The contractor had begun building despite a court order to suspend doing so. Police responded to the protesters with dogs, water cannon, and arrests.
By the following week, however, over 25,000 had joined the occupation, and police withdrew for eight months.
This is believed to have been the first such nuclear plant site takeover in the world. The occupation was nonviolent, and a sort of village sprang up with a “Friendship House” and a “popular university.” Local farmers supported the occupiers with food.

Stand-off between anti-nuclear activists and police at Wyhl, Germany
Following the negotiated withdrawal of the occupiers, a panel of judges permanently banned construction of the plant, and the land is now a nature preserve.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february17

Peace & Justice History for 2/16

February 16, 1936
A coalition known as the Popular Front (Frente Popular), comprised of socialists, communists, republicans, and labor groups, narrowly won a majority in the Cortes, Spain’s parliament, defeating the National Front.
February 16, 1959
Fidel Castro was sworn in as Cuba’s youngest prime minister after leading a years-long guerrilla campaign that forced right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.

Fidel Castro
Castro, who had become commander-in-chief of Cuba’s armed forces after Batista was ousted on January 1, replaced the more moderate Jose Miro Cardona as head of the country’s new provisional government.

Fulgencio Batista
More background on Fidel
As reported at the time, including a filmed interview with Castro in English
February 16, 1982
Citizens’ Action for Safe Energy (CASE) succeeded in stopping construction of Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant near Inola, Oklahoma. Public Service of Oklahoma announced the cancellation, the first of its kind solely due to citizen protest.

CASE’s founder, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson, known as Aunt Carrie, and her husband, Robert, spent nearly a decade and all their financial assets organizing folks around Tulsa and the state. The Dickersons’ principal concern was the potential damage to health near the plant, and elsewhere through uranium mining and processing.
Aunt Carrie, her allies and their success 
watch video  (2011)
February 16, 1996 
Seven activists were arrested for blocking the road to the ceremony commissioning the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Greeneville at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Base.
February 16, 1996
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), representing Mexico’s southern indigenous peoples, and the Mexican federal government signed the San Andrés Accords.
Begun in 1994 in Chiapas state, the EZLN had pushed the government for:
• Basic respect for the diversity of the indigenous population of Chiapas;
• The conservation of the the natural resources within the territories used and occupied by indigenous peoples;

Subcommandate Marcos, leader of the Zapatistas, and two of his officers
• A greater participation of indigenous communities in the decisions and control of public expenditures;
• The participation of indigenous communities in determining their own development plans, as well as having control over their own administrative and judicial affairs;
• The autonomy of indigenous communities and their right of free determination in the framework of the State.
February 16, 2005 
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect after countries responsible for 55% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions had ratified the treaty, following Russia’s agreement to its terms. The agreement’s purpose was to reduce such gases to 12% below their levels in 1990 by 2012 and, thus, slow global warming.  
180 countries had agreed (except for the United States and Australia, two of the world’s top emitters of GHG per capita) to rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol on July 29, 2001, in Bonn, Germany. President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the process shortly after he took office that same year. His reasoning was that, since India and China had not signed on, they would gain a competitive advantage. The U.S. is now responsible for 15.6% of the earth’s GHG (with 5% of its population).
History, background on the Kyoto Protocol

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february16

The DeLegitimitizing of America; “fake news”, fake reality, and the dismantling of the Judicial System.

Delegitimization: To remove the authority, the very veracity of a thing, an idea, a process or a person.

We saw it become more and more used as a word in the 1990’s, raising to a regularly seen word in the modern era.

The idea of a politician lying to the people is as axiomatic and expected as to be enfolded within the very image of the word “politician”. The sad part is not the lie, it is the full purchase of the lie by those who prefer the lie to the reality that they might be wrong.

Nonetheless, the very invention of the modern internet created an unexpected leveling of information sources where the respected scientists and journalists somehow were delegitimized to become equal footing with the internet troll and conspiracy theorist.

My grandfather used the term “talking out both sides of your mouth”. Certain “news” pundits used the politicization of reality to unashamedly become very rich. They sold themselves and whatever morals they once held for this idea that the public doesn’t have the right nor the need for the actual truth.

From a very good 2018 article in the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320 In the future, the term “fake news” might come to be seen as a relic of febrile 2017 (if we’re lucky). But the fight against misinformation won’t go away. Companies and governments are now starting to take concrete action… Google and Facebook have both said that they are going to be hiring a lot of people to review content and enforce their terms of service…” we have instead seen Zuckerberg first accused by the republicans of violation of the 1st Amendment only to then bend the knee to Trump, and the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk to remove such standards and accuracy oversights. We witnessed live the overthrow of journalistic integrity by the very people journalists are meant to hold accountable.

Musk went on to purchase both president trump outright and the “mandate” to purge the government similar to his destruction of Twitter all the while publicly declaring fascism alive and well.

In the midst of this, we have seen the republicans refuse to allow evidence that trump attempted to bribe a desperate foreign head of state to implicate Joe Biden in a conspiracy of fraud, only to then fire and oust the people who did their job in reporting that problem to the government.

The very same republicans who were once cowering under their chairs as the Jan.6th insurrectionists smashed their way in an attempt to keep trump in power and hang Mike Pence, again – if a bit late – for doing his job. They later called it a “tour”, then cheered when the very person responsible for their crimes came back into power and pardoned each and every one of them.

And refused to do their jobs when it was found that trump had stolen boxes upon boxes of national secrets.

Trump violated the law and was – shockingly – expected to account for his actions, garnering sexual abuse convictions, fraud convictions, rico election fraud accusations… and they were ignored. The government employees charged with the thankless task of holding a president to the very laws of the country he once headed were fired, ostracized, threatened. The supreme court was packed with the questionable… yeah, we’ll leave it at that. The Justice Department was put into the hands of his former personal attorney, the one who was refusing to allow him to be held accountable for his crimes, foregoing the very notion that the Justice Department is the “People’s Attorney”.

I’m absolutely out of breath! I’m no where near a complete description and I’m out of breath. I can only wonder if there will ever be a history book describing this, or if we are witnessing the final acts in the decimation of the education of our youth and the idea of facts, reality, justice. What will be left that made America what it is? The Constitution? Already disrespected. The People? They are cowed into hysterical sycophantic abasement on the one hand and bewildered incredulity on the other. I just don’t know what is left and I seriously question what will we become now.

Let’s talk about Trump, steel, aluminum, prices, and inflation….