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Social Security
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
In mid-December 2015 I applied for Social Security benefits. Before I could do that I had to visit the Social Security Administration (SSA) office in Hoboken NJ with my social security card and US passport, to have my status changed from ‘resident’ to ‘citizen.’ I was told to wait 24 hours before completing the on-line application, which I did. One day after submitting the application I received a voice message from the Hoboken office, telling me that I had to come into the office with my passport or naturalization certificate, to have my status changed. A phone number that I could call was left. Since I had just been in the office to do exactly what I was now again told to do I called that number, where a friendly recorded voice told me to leave a message and that I would be called back. I didn’t get a call back in the next couple of days, but instead I got a letter from the Hoboken office telling me once more that I had to come in with my passport or naturalization certificate. There was a number on that letter, which I called, but unfortunately I got the SSA office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on the phone.
Obviously the Sioux Falls office could not help me, so the next morning at 8 am I called the number the Hoboken office had left in its voice message. To my surprise I got someone on the phone, who told me it was all a mistake and that my benefits were safe, which I got confirmed in a letter a couple of days later. Then, early in January, I got a letter telling me that I had to pay a surcharge on my Medicare premium because of my taxable income in 2014. Since I retired in 2014 and my 2015 taxable income was considerably lower I made an appointment with the Hoboken office to have my reduced income recorded. I brought copies of all my 2015 tax return documents to the office, and was told that the appropriate changes would be made. A couple of days later I received two letters from the Hoboken office, each in a different format advising me that the surcharge had been removed. Two days later, however, I received a letter from the SSA central office informing me that the surcharge was still in effect. Now knowing what to expect I didn’t respond but waited until three days later, when I received a letter correcting the previous one.
The moral of this story is that generally the SSA doesn’t get it right the first time, but that there is at least a chance they’ll get it right the second or third time. Since the agency’s mistakes, if left uncorrected, affect your income and health care coverage, it is very frustrating to deal with them, but you have no choice but to stay on their case until you have the right decision in writing. And even then you must make sure that premiums and payouts are processed correctly.
The SSA is hardly to blame for its guffaws. Like most federal agencies it is overtaxed – not in the least because of the large number of retiring baby boomers – and underfunded, because of the Republican mantra that government is the problem, not the solution. As a result it has too few employees, who are often inadequately trained and just trying to make the best of it.
Based on my experience the back office operation, not the front desk, is the SSA’s problem. I received very competent service once I was in the Hoboken office and talking with a customer representative. The way those communications were initially processed was inadequate and sloppy.
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Relevantie & populariteit
Vanaf vandaag wordt mijn weblog gearchiveerd door de Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Ik schreef daar eerder iets over. (Media 149)
Inmiddels heb ik wat meer informatie ontvangen. Alles wat ik sinds 10 februari 2007 geschreven heb, zal duurzaam opgeslagen worden. (2773 stukjes). Daarna zal ieder jaar alles opnieuw overgenomen worden om het te behoeden voor verlies door bijvoorbeeld technologische veroudering. Volgens de K.B. blijft het daarom ook beschikbaar voor toekomstige generaties.
Welke sites worden uitgekozen? Ook daar heb ik inmiddels een antwoord op.
(Voor de ouderen onder ons: Harvesten is het verzamelen en uitwisselen van metadata)
De K.B.:
‘’Er bestaan twee basisstrategieën voor webarchivering. De eerste strategie is gericht op het automatisch harvesten van een grote hoeveelheid websites (meestal een nationaal domein). De tweede strategie gaat uit van een specifiek selectiebeleid. Het automatisch harvesten is relatief goedkoop in vergelijking met de selectieve benadering, waarbij meer handmatig werk verricht moet worden. Daar staat tegenover dat bij het harvesten van een beperkt aantal sites meer aandacht besteed kan worden aan technische details en het mogelijk is om websites tot op het diepste niveau te archiveren.
De KB heeft gekozen voor een selectieve benadering, omdat die zich beter verhoudt tot de doelstellingen van de KB, de beschikbare middelen en de gekozen juridische aanpak. De KB baseert zich bij de selectie op het Collectiebeleid van de KB. Binnen dit kader maakt de KB een beredeneerde selectie die bestaat uit een dwarsdoorsnede van het Nederlandse webdomein. Primair zullen websites met wetenschappelijke en culturele inhoud geselecteerd worden, maar daarnaast ook websites met een innovatief karakter die exemplarisch zijn voor de huidige trends op het Nederlandse deel van het web. De KB kijkt bij de selectie ook naar maatschappelijke relevantie en populariteit. Sites die het meest worden geraadpleegd door Nederlandse internetgebruikers en/of sites met een hoge ranking krijgen prioriteit bij opname in het webarchief. Een volgende stap zal zijn om samenwerking te zoeken met andere kennisinstituten om op die manier de selectie te verbreden en daarbij gebruik te maken van de inhoudelijke expertise van deze organisaties’’.
Luister HIER naar Harvest van Neil Young
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Two Documentaries
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
This week I watched two magnificent documentaries, ‘Fighting ISIS,’ produced by VICE, and ‘The Diplomat,’ about the life of Richard Holbrook, directed by his son David. In ‘Fighting ISIS’ Ben Anderson provides a look into the three fronts in the fight against ISIS in Iraq, the one in the east manned by the Kurds, the one in the south manned by the Iraqi army and Shiite militias, and the one in the west manned by Sunni tribes. Anderson’s film is a highlight of both very dangerous and very illuminating journalism. He shows how, apart from the air campaign against ISIS, US operations in Iraq only benefit the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias, both controlled by Iran, respectively indirectly and directly. The images of Kurdish fighters trying to hold their border against ISIS without adequate weaponry and effective US support are already disturbing, but really heart-breaking are the images of Sunni fighters in the Anbar province, parading in desert fatigues and doing their target practice with only six antiquated guns for sixty men, which means that they would inevitably be slaughtered if they got into a military confrontation with ISIS.
It is not really astounding that these Sunnis are still willing to defend their territory against ISIS, considering that they are defending their way of life, and it is even less astounding that they feel betrayed by both the Iraqi government and the US, which funnels all its military support through the Iraqi army and therefore is in a factual alliance with Iran, at least on the Iraqi side of the fight with ISIS. In ‘The Diplomat’ David Holbrook covers his father’s whole career, from his first assignment in Vietnam before America got drawn into a war there, through the war between Croatia and Serbia and the Kosovo conflict, to his last assignment as the State Department’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan. The last part of the documentary tells the story of the failed US handling of the war in Afghanistan, from the George W. Bush administration’s fatal decisions in the beginning of that war that allowed the Taliban to re-establish control over large parts of the country, to the Obama administration’s decision to send in thirty thousand troops in an attempt to undo the earlier damage.
Taken together, the two documentaries tell a tale that’s critical of Barack Obama’s current efforts to fight both ISIS and the Taliban. At the time of the surge, Holbrook warned the White House that American troops would be stretched too thin and might often be exposed to overwhelming force, and that’s exactly what happened in Afghanistan. Unfortunately Obama preferred to listen to General Petraeus’s predictions rather than Holbrook, who had seen a similar drama unfolding in Vietnam.
Worrysome is that the White House apparently took complete control over foreign policy and effectively shut out Holbrook, and to a lesser extent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the point of even prohibiting that any reference to Vietnam be made. It makes you wonder if Obama is now just trying to buy time and prevent things from getting worse before the end of his presidency.
In the last debate of the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton did not show clear signs of grasping these problems, and Bernie Sanders is still daydreaming about the Saudis fighting ISIS with US and Russian support. They should both go see those documentaries as soon as possible.
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The Trump Presidency
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Forecasting anything related to Donald J. Trump is a hazardous enterprise, and most political analysts have burned
themselves badly trying to do so. Initially it was assumed that the Trump candidacy was only a public relations stunt, and that the necessary papers would never be filed. Then Trump’s rise in the polls was seen as a temporary fluke, similar to Herman Cain’s leading the GOP contest in 2012. Every time Trump crossed a line, from discrediting John McCain to hurling racist insults at Mexican immigrants to misogynistic comments about Megyn Kelly to proposing to keep all foreign Muslims out of the US to skipping the last GOP debate, the beginning of his demise was predicted but he came out stronger, so that we now have to consider him the most likely Republican nominee. A remaining question, however, is how he gets there. Lawrence O’Donnell has launched the intriguing theory that from now on Trump will not participate in any more debates, neither during the primaries nor during the general election. His arguments are that Trump can generate enough publicity on his own, and has nothing to gain but a lot to lose from future debates.
O’Donnell has good points. Trump’s policy agenda is flaky at best. He would build a wall on the southern border, have Mexico pay for it, and then deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, make the military so strong that nobody would ever challenge US worldwide authority again, erase the trade deficit with China and bring manufacturing jobs back to America, rebuild roads and bridges all over the country, abolish Obamacare, without saying what it would be replaced with, and implement a tax plan that, although not as shameless as the plans of some of his competitors, is just another version of supply side economics. His plans would cost a lot of money, and the only funding source he can identify is the enormous economic growth caused by the ‘great deals’ he would negotiate that would put the US on a ‘winning’ path. None of Trump’s pie in the sky has seriously been challenged in the GOP debates so far, because of the personality cult imposed by Trump, the sheer number and the low quality of his opponents, and the unwillingness of right wing moderators to focus on policy issues instead of schoolyard taunts
Policy issues would inevitably come to the foreground as the number of GOP candidates dwindles, and definitely in the general election. In one-on-one debates with the Democratic nominee Trump could not count on friendly moderators, and it would soon become clear that the Donald is wearing no clothes. So why would he risk a public undressing if he can just refuse to participate in debates and try to bluff his way into the White House without exposing himself?
Most pundits will be inclined to say “Trump cannot do that,” when the possibility of his no longer participating in debates comes up, but they would have said that frequently during the last six months if they had known what Trump was up to and eventually got away with. If there is one lesson to be learned from the recent past, it is that Trump can do pretty much anything he wants to do.
Of course Trump is not in the White House yet, and hopefully the Democratic candidate can stop him. But if he gets there, it will be with a double GOP majority in Congress, and the main conflict will be between Trump and government departments, of which all senior staff will have to be replaced.
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Correspondents(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
An Amsterdam newspaper published an interview with one of the many correspondents of Dutch news media in the US, who was quoted as saying that he is always wary of a situation where a correspondent ‘idolizes’ the country where he (or she) is stationed. Idolizing – which is synonymous with worshipping – a country is hard to imagine, but for practical purposes let’s translate it into a combination of ‘admiring’ and ‘being very fond of.’ The journalist who gave the interview makes clear that he neither admires nor is very fond of America, although he calls New York City ‘fabulous’ and US politics ‘fascinating.’ His problem with correspondents who idolize America is that they cannot be ‘critical’ anymore, because after a couple of years they start identifying with the people of the country where they are stationed. The interview raises some interesting questions, which I assume are discussed in freshman classes in journalism schools every year, for instance if there is such a thing as ‘neutral’ or ‘value-free’ journalism, where the reporter is strictly an observer without a specific interest in his or her topic
The argument reminds me of a settled debate in the social sciences, in which some people a long time ago argued that researchers should never study something they are really interested in, for fear of not being ‘objective.’ That was not a very productive opinion, but it helped clarify a host of methodological issues, and maybe this opinion can be made productive too. I would argue that correspondents who have a love for the US practice better, and in fact more objective, journalism than those who don’t and try to be strictly neutral. Let’s make the current election cycle a case in point: Journalists with the latter attitude might consider Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz ‘equal,’ in a sense that they are all candidates running for their party’s nomination, and therefore treat their ideas and proposed policies as equal too. That would put protecting women’s reproductive rights and fighting excesses on Wall Street on the same level as keeping all foreign Muslims out of the US or giving citizens of all backgrounds unlimited access to guns, and it is hard to see how that is a critical approach.
Correspondents who are fond of America are more likely to analyze the various policy proposals on their social consequences and form an opinion. They would want the most qualified candidate to become president, and although they are still obliged to report on what every candidate proposes, the results of their analyses will shine through in the tone of their reporting, the questions they ask candidates when they have a chance to interview them, and opinion articles they may write.
The result will be better informed, more complete, and yes, more critical and objective journalism. In his book ‘Dialectics of the Concrete’ the philosopher Karel Kosik distinguishes between ‘pseudo-concrete’ concepts that hide the truth, and concrete concepts that have the opposite function. The difference between neutral and ‘engaged’ journalism perfectly mirrors that distinction.
Of course one could argue that the journalists who work for Fox News love America as much as reporters who work for MSNBC. It’s an excellent starting point for a discussion, so let’s analyze their mutual values and the interests they represent, and then draw our critical conclusions.
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