shrieking "slippery slope" all the time
That's what I did when I went skiing.
I personally would still be able to get married, because the rules for SSDI are different than the rules for SSI
Right, because SSDI is Middle-Class People Disability, whereas SSI is Poor People Disability.
2: It just has to do with whether you've ever worked, right?
Right, because SSDI is Middle-Class People Disability, whereas SSI is Poor People Disability.
Not to be confused with SDI, which is for disabling incoming nuclear warheads.
You have to have gotten a certain number of paychecks.
NPR's story the day after the Apple encryption story broke was an interview with an ex-NSA (or equivalent) guy, and because it was NPR, he made sure to sound serious and thoughtful in saying exactly what you'd expect. But his quote about slippery slopes was, "that's what you claim when you have weak facts" or some such. And I'm thinking, after the last 15 years, you assholes are the last people on earth who get to complain about slippery slope arguments. In your internal meetings, you probably complain that slopes are too gradual, and you wish for slippery cliffs.
Assholes.
My stepdaughter gets SSI - it helps fund her vast stuffed animal collection.
I knew someone who was on SSI whose husban was also disabled who was in the process of getting divorced. The legal separation piece was a nightmare. She was completely without income for a while.
If you've worked enough to qualify for SSDI, you can still be poor enough to get SSI. Sometimes it's important to make sure that you don't save too much money (more than $2k), because you lose your Medicaid benefits if you do. You'll keep Medicare, but you experience a huge jump in cost sharing.
Reason 999 we need more generou Medicare/single payer without means testing.
Well done to heebie's value add to the OP
We just got one of those questionnaires checking to see if she still qualifies -- questions like, "Have you talked to your doctor about whether you can work now?" -- hard to figure out the right answer for her.
4: I don't see what any of this has to do with Strategic Simulations, Inc., easily the best publisher of 80s/90s video game adaptations of Dungeons and Dragons.
9: Ugh, again. If only we could be Canada.
I had to go on SSI for a few years after my divorce. I suffered severe depression and could not work. But I still didn't qualify for SSDI. All thankfully in the past now.
Can you have prolific experience? I probably meant some other word.
The Medicaid expansion population gets in based on income only, no asset test, which is good, but perversely it amended almost nothing about the previous eligibility categories which did and still do have asset tests, and are often people in more need than the expansion population (like the disabled).
Can you have prolific experience?
I think it would involve offspring.
15
That super sucks. I have income-based medicaid, which is awesome (I don't have to blow through my savings for health care, Thanks Obama!), but it sucks that this doesn't apply to other categories. 2k is nothing in savings.
My father is great at bureaucracy. He's always done his own taxes, re-files and disputes health insurance reimbursements, etc. I was a little surprised he didn't file SSDI for my mother's Alzheimer's, since it meant she retired at 58, but as it turns out, he struggled so much with the Medicare/Social Security paperwork when she turned 65 that it might not have been worth it. I was really surprised thst it's so opaque even for someone who is very familiar with all the ins and outs of federal paperwork.
Unfogged villain Eugene Volokh of all people has a useful taxonomy of slippery slope arguments, along with a theory of how to distinguish legitimate ones from bad faith / desperation / ninth place debate teams.
I know I pop up from lurkerhood every time someone mentions trouble with a federal bureaucracy, but: E. Messily, call your congressman. Or senators. They have caseworkers who deal with the SSA daily, they know the paperwork, and they're there to help you. In general, if you've filled out a federal form once and were told you did it wrong, call them next.
(And for everyone else: your congressman can help with things you'd never think of. Once our office got a call from a constituent at the local airport who was supposed to fly to Germany, but didn't realize her passport was expired until she tried to check in for her flight. Our local staff were able to get an expedited passport for her the next day at the regional passport center. Which, admittedly, was in another state, but she changed her flight to fly through the city where her new passport was, and then on to Germany. Congressional caseworkers: miracle mongers.)
Also, E. Messily, your local congressman is awesome and has one of the most carved up ridiculous districts, consequently.
21: Agreed, he is awesome! He's like the immortal congressman--redistricted three times, and still doesn't lose... He was the only survivor of the 2003 Delay restricting. E. Messily, if he's your congressman, you should definitely call.
Do I have to be registered to vote here for him to be my congressman?
I guess I should do that anyway. Civic engagement or whatever.
Isn't 23.1 a supreme court case right this moment?
23: No. Just use whatever your local address is when you contact them. You don't have to be registered to vote at all; they serve any "resident" of their district. If you have a permanent address elsewhere, you can contact that district's rep instead, if you still receive mail at that address. But they certainly don't check voter registration records.
24: Sort of, yes! The case is whether district apportionment should be done based on "people" or "voters". Obviously, areas with lots of people who aren't eligible to vote get more House districts if you count people instead of voters. This can cut both ways: cities with lots of immigrants or felons without voting rights (mostly Dem areas) but also rural areas with lots of immigrant farm workers, military bases, or large prisons (prisoners count as residents of the community where the prison is, not residents of their home community, for the census).
Until about a year ago I thought when people said "I'm gonna call my congressman and complain about this", they meant "I'm gonna call my friend the congressman and complain, because I'm rich". Did everyone else learn in school about these congressional employees whose job is to help people? You never hear about it in the news and it's certainly never mentioned in political campaigns.
26: I don't remember exactly when I first learned about them, but yeah, I thought it was common knowledge. I think "I'm gonna call my congressman and complain about this" has always been one of the dumber and more pretentious idle threats.
Calling your Congressman makes sense to voice your opinion on a political issue. (It's less effective than giving them big wads of money but more effective than blog commenting, probably.) It makes sense to ask for help cutting through some kind of red tape. (Effectiveness no doubt varies and is probably much lower for problems with state government than with the feds, but it can't hurt to try.) But it's completely pointless to call them to complain about bad service or an official decision, unless that service or decision was made by a staffer of the same Congressman.
You never hear about it in the news and it's certainly never mentioned in political campaigns.
Here's an article about the general topic. Passports are a common problem. I haven't been able to find news articles about specific instances of this stuff happening, but I assume it would usually be minor human-interest stuff, and often skipped to avoid looking like puffery, unless it was a really weird story.
Ex recto I would guess it doesn't come up much for two reasons. First, it's not news when things work well and a problem gets solved with a phone call. And second, it doesn't really reinforce either side's political narrative too well. The left doesn't want to remind people of what a chaotic mess big government can do. The right might want to, but passport delays aren't the kind of tyranny the average wingnut is afraid of, and getting help navigating one government process from another government office doesn't have a clear villain.
Different offices are more or less proactive in talking about casework services, but some are very active. I know some offices that actively promote (with the permission of the constituent) success stories to local TV stations for feel-good stories--local veteran gets medals he earned but never received, disability backpay for local resident, compensation for crop losses, passport in 12 hours to go see dying parent in China, etc.
But I don't know that anyone is very good at explaining that this a specific function of congressional offices, that's separate from the staff who go to ribbon cuttings or community meetings, and separate from Capitol Hill legislative staff. Many congressional caseworkers are social workers (one of ours is actually a former ordained minister), rather than political or policy folks, and their whole job is to solve problems like these. No political connections necessary, and even the congressmen and senators you love to hate the most probably have pretty good casework operations.
The justification is that the constitution provides a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and this is a way for reps and senators to facilitate that petitioning. But also, one of the best ways to secure a vote for life is to get someone's grandmother the new wheelchair she needs. Especially for reps and senators who are not from the dominant party in their state, casework successes can serve as a powerful connection with voters that doesn't rely on any shared politics or ideology.