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Category Archives: Commentary

Cruel And Vindictive By Design

(This post originally published on 47 Watch)

Recent administrative changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) reveal a concerning pattern of decisions that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations while being implemented in ways that limit public awareness and oversight. Two specific policy reversals highlight this trend: the reinstatement of 100% benefit withholding for overpayments and the termination of “Enumeration at Birth” contracts in several states.

The Overpayment Recovery Rate Reversal

On March 7, 2025, the SSA quietly announced it would revert to withholding 100% of monthly benefits from recipients with overpayments, effective March 27, 2025. This reverses a significant reform implemented just one year prior, in March 2024, when the agency reduced the default withholding rate from 100% to 10% of monthly benefits.

The 2024 reform had been implemented specifically to prevent vulnerable beneficiaries from facing homelessness or inability to pay for basic necessities when their entire benefit was withheld. As former Commissioner Martin O’Malley stated, the previous practice was “unconscionable” when it left people “facing homelessness or unable to pay bills, because Social Security withheld their entire payment for recovery of an overpayment.”

Data from the SSA showed the 2024 policy change had measurable positive impacts:

  • The number of people newly placed in full withholding plummeted from 6,771 in February to just 51 in September 2024
  • Approximately 200,000 beneficiaries were able to maintain 90% of their benefits during repayment
 

While beneficiaries can still appeal for hardship waivers to reduce the withholding rate, the appeals process now faces significant delays — reportedly up to 200 days due to staffing shortages at SSA offices. This administrative bottleneck creates a de facto policy of 100% withholding for extended periods, even for those who would qualify for reduced rates.

Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek has framed the reversal as fulfilling the agency’s “significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people,” estimating the change would increase overpayment recoveries by approximately $7 billion over the next decade.

The Enumeration at Birth Contract Terminations

In a separate but similarly concerning move, the SSA terminated “Enumeration at Birth” contracts with several states, including Maine, in February 2025. These contracts, which had been operating efficiently since 1980, allowed parents to register newborns for Social Security numbers through a simple automated hospital process.

The termination means parents must now physically visit Social Security offices with their newborns and documentation to apply for numbers — a significant burden in rural states like Maine with sparse populations and limited SSA offices. After public backlash and pressure from congressional representatives, Acting Commissioner Dudek issued an apology and claimed he would “reinstate” the contracts.

However, as numerous administrative experts have pointed out, federal contracts cannot simply be “reinstated” after termination. The entire contracting process must start over, which is:

  1. More expensive than maintaining the original contracts
  2. Time-consuming, especially with reduced SSA staff
  3. Creates unnecessary burdens for new parents in the meantime
 

Notably, the contracts were terminated in six states, all of which have Democratic representatives in Congress, suggesting potential political targeting. Maine’s governer — Janet Mills — is also embroiled in a fight with Trump and his administration over rights of transgender citizens.

The terminations were supposedly conducted to save money (approximately $77,000 for a five-year contract base), but will likely result in higher administrative costs, less efficient service delivery, and more work for already-strained Social Security offices.

The Pattern of Administrative Weaponization

Both policy changes share several concerning characteristics:

  1. Quiet implementation: Both were announced with minimal publicity, with the overpayment policy change released late on a Friday, a classic tactic to minimize media coverage.

  2. Disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations: Both changes primarily affect those least equipped to navigate bureaucratic hurdles — elderly and disabled beneficiaries in the case of overpayments, and new parents in rural areas for the Enumeration at Birth terminations.

  3. Administrative roadblocks to relief: While both policies theoretically offer pathways for relief (appeals for overpayment withholding, visiting SSA offices for birth enumeration), administrative realities like extended processing times and limited office locations create de facto barriers.

  4. Questionable fiscal justifications: Both changes are justified as fiscal responsibility measures, yet both may ultimately cost more in administrative overhead and downstream social costs than they save.

  5. Appearance of political targeting: The pattern of states affected by the Enumeration at Birth terminations, along with reports of partisan “hotlines” to expedite certain cases, suggests potentially politically motivated implementation.

These administrative changes highlight how consequential policy shifts can occur not through legislative action but through bureaucratic decisions that receive little public attention or congressional oversight. As these policies take effect in the coming weeks, their impact on vulnerable Social Security beneficiaries and new parents will become increasingly apparent.

Senator Susan Collins’ Betrayal of Maine Demands Accountability

I sent this as an op-ed to the Portland Press Herald but have no delusion they will ACK it or post even a small part of it.

As a longtime Mainer and independent voter, I have watched Senator Susan Collins’ career with cautious optimism, hoping her self-branded image as a moderate willing to cross party lines might translate into principled leadership. Instead, the first six weeks of 2025 have crystallized a painful truth: Collins has become a hollow figurehead, enabling the most destructive elements of Donald Trump’s agenda while abandoning the Mainers she swore to represent. Her recent actions—from rubber-stamping unconstitutional power grabs to greenlighting devastating cuts to healthcare—demand either immediate course correction or resignation.

Collins’ vote to confirm Russell Vought as White House budget director epitomizes her moral bankruptcy. Vought, architect of the “Project 2025” blueprint to concentrate unchecked executive power, openly advocates allowing presidents to ignore congressionally approved spending—a direct threat to Collins’ own role as Senate Appropriations Chair. Her justification—“Presidents deserve broad discretion”—ignores that Vought’s ideology undermines the Constitution’s separation of powers. This is not moderation; it is complicity in authoritarian overreach.

Her tepid opposition to Trump’s FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, further exposes her impotence. While Collins criticized Patel’s “aggressive political activity”, her lone dissent failed to sway colleagues, allowing confirmation of a man who published an “enemies list” of federal employees. Maine deserved a leader who marshals bipartisan resistance to such extremism, not symbolic gestures devoid of consequence.

Collins’ support for the Senate GOP’s February 2025 budget framework reveals her allegiance to party over constituents. The bill slashes $300 billion from Medicaid—a lifeline for 400,000 Mainers, including rural hospitals already teetering on collapse. Her vote alongside Josh Hawley to reject amendments protecting Medicaid contradicts her 2024 boasts about healthcare funding. This hypocrisy will have dire consequences: Maine’s elderly, disabled, and low-income families face reduced coverage, while hospitals risk closure under reimbursement cuts.

Equally alarming is her silence as Trump’s administration weaponizes budget processes to dismantle agencies. Despite chairing Appropriations, Collins has done nothing to stop Elon Musk’s illegal shutdown of USAID offices in February 2025—a move that locked employees out of critical systems. When asked about Musk’s unconstitutional spending freezes, she offered only vague hopes for judicial intervention. Mainers deserve a fighter, not a bystander.

Collins’ failures are not newfound. Her 2020 defense of Trump’s catastrophic COVID-19 response—claiming he “did a lot right”—ignored his months of denial that left Maine vulnerable. Her 2022 vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, despite his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, shattered trust with pro-choice Mainers. Now, as constituent letters flood newspapers pleading for accountability, Collins remains aloof, refusing town halls for over two decades.

Her 2025 appropriations role compounds these betrayals. While securing $5 million for wood heaters, she overlooks existential threats: the Kennebec River dredging project, critical for Navy destroyers, remains underfunded, jeopardizing Bath Iron Works jobs. Meanwhile, her committee advances Trump’s deportation raids and education cuts, policies anathema to Maine’s values.

Collins faces a choice: justify her actions with substance or step aside. If she believes slashing Medicaid strengthens Maine, let her hold a town hall in Biddeford and explain it to families relying on insulin coverage. If Musk’s USAID shutdowns align with constitutional duty, let her debate Angus King on live television. Absent such accountability, her continued presence in office insults Mainers’ intelligence.

The 2026 election looms, with forecasters already labeling her seat a toss-up. But Maine cannot wait. We need leaders who prioritize people over political survival, who confront power rather than coddling it. Susan Collins has forfeited that mantle. It is time for her to reclaim it—or make way for someone who will.

When Checks and Balances Fail: The State’s Role in Preserving Constitutional Order

Today, my Senator — Susan Collins — failed in her oath and duty to uphold the Constitution. She voted for the appointment of a traitor to head national intelligence, and is supporting someone for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) who openly wants to dismantle the foundations of American government. She has done nothing to oppose the Administrative coup we’ve been witnessing since POTUS 47 took office. She is now, fully, a willing collaborator. The Executive branch is now nigh irreparably and wholly corrupted, and the Congress is — effectively — on a leash wielded by the POTUS.

The American system of government was designed with multiple layers of protection against the concentration and abuse of power. While we typically focus on federal checks and balances, states play a paramount role as independent sovereigns in our federal system, particularly when federal safeguards falter. Understanding these state powers is essential for maintaining constitutional governance.

The architects of American federalism deliberately created a system where states retain significant independent authority. This includes control over their law enforcement agencies, National Guard units, and the ability to refuse state resources for federal actions. Perhaps most importantly, states maintain the power to prosecute federal officials who act outside their legal authority and violate state laws. These powers weren’t accidents of history — they were deliberately preserved to prevent federal overreach.

Individual states become even more effective when they work together. Through formal interstate compacts and informal coordination, states can create powerful counterweights to federal overreach. This might involve sharing intelligence about illegal federal activities, coordinating legal responses, or pooling resources to resist unconstitutional actions. When multiple states stand together, their collective influence often exceeds the sum of their individual powers.

States control critical infrastructure and resources that federal authorities rely upon to function effectively. This gives states significant practical leverage through their ability to withhold cooperation on federal programs or impose economic consequences on entities that support illegal federal actions. While these powers should be used judiciously, they provide states with concrete tools to resist federal overreach.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of state resistance to federal overreach depends on democratic legitimacy and public support. State officials must be willing to uphold their constitutional oaths, local law enforcement must maintain order under state authority, and citizens must engage in civil resistance to support legitimate government. This democratic foundation is what transforms state powers from theoretical authorities into practical tools for preserving constitutional order.

It’s important to note that state resistance powers come with significant responsibilities. States must exercise these authorities carefully and only in response to genuine constitutional violations, not mere policy disagreements. The goal is to preserve constitutional order, not to create chaos or unnecessarily disrupt legitimate federal operations.

The distributed nature of American governance remains one of our strongest protections against tyranny. While a corrupt federal official might attempt to misuse power, success would require complicity from state and local institutions across the country. By understanding and preserving state powers to resist federal overreach, we maintain essential safeguards for constitutional governance.

The system of checks and balances becomes most critical precisely when it appears to be failing at the federal level. In these moments, state powers of resistance — exercised responsibly and with democratic support — provide crucial backup systems for preserving constitutional order. Understanding these powers helps ensure they remain available when needed most.

Unfortunately, the “Trump 25” states form a solid base of support across four geographic regions:

  • Southern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas
  • Outer South/Industrial Midwest: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana
  • Plains/Agricultural Midwest: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri
  • Mountain states: Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah
  • Plus Alaska
     

Several states are taking concrete actions to support federal initiatives:

  • Texas has signed agreements allowing National Guard to make immigration arrests
  • Indiana and Nebraska have directed law enforcement to cooperate with ICE
  • Tennessee approved measures creating state immigration enforcement positions
  • Florida, Texas, and Nevada governors indicated readiness to mobilize National Guard units
     

Republican-led states are advancing legislation to:

  • Expand cooperation with federal immigration enforcement
  • Support deportation efforts
  • Enable information sharing between state and federal agencies
  • Create new state-level enforcement mechanisms
     

This is just the beginning of their willing capitulation to a corrupt regime. It will only get worse.

I call on Maine’s Governor, Janet Mills, to work with the remaining states to do whatever it takes to uphold democratic principles and the rule of law. Without such a coalition, we will most certainly lose our Republic.

Something For The Fediverse Readers

If you’re on Fosstodon, please pop a note to the admins there to ban this blog as well (it’s using the WordPress federation features). We would not want their sensitive sensibilities to be offended by equally “offensive” stuff I have and will post here, as I seem to have done via @hrbrmstr (which they’ve banned without recourse).

Do Not Purchase Kucht Appliances

I’ll follow up with a more detailed post in a ~week or so, but if you are considering purchasing a Kucht appliance, please, please reconsider your decision. They have repeatedly lied to us (I have proof) and are incapable of manufacturing functioning equipment.

Thanks to them, we are out thousands of dollars and are in the process of contacting the Maine AG and having our personal legal counsel help us to recoup our losses. I’m just thankful our “professional” oven didn’t harm any of our family as it continued to malfunction and degrade whilst the Kucht representatives just ignored us.

Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud On Juneteenth

I realize you have to be living under a rock in the U.S. to not know that yesterday, was Juneteenth (a portmanteau of “June Nineteenth”). Still, I feel compelled to explain that said date marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. (See, Texas has always been kinda horrible when it comes to basic human decency). The arrival of said troops came ~2.5 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The day honors the end to slavery in the United States.

GreyNoise (my employer) — like an increasing number of organizations in the U.S. — observes Juneteenth as a company-wide holiday, and I’ll be spending part of today pondering that word, “end”, in the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

There are two major political parties in the U.S. and one just decided, this past Juneteenth weekend, we no longer need the Voting Rights Act of 1965. March 7th of that year was a Sunday, known today as “Bloody Sunday” (it turns out there have been far too many of those kinds of Sundays). It was a day when Alabama state troopers beat & whipped voting rights advocates with nightsticks, and also used chemical weapons on them, in an effort to keep in place discriminatory practices that were extensively used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote.

The act banned literacy tests for voting, required federal oversight over voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections. (In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court.)

I’m fairly certain (~95%) — regardless of the party in power — we’ll see the current Supreme Court overturn the state poll tax decision within the next 5-10 years (thankfully, constitutional amendments are a bit harder to wipe way). You can definitely say goodbye to the voting rights act if Republicans gain control of Congress and especially if they regain Congress and the POTUS seat.

Both of those events will make it possible for ~21 states to become even more evil than they already are, and set the stage for a few, awful decades.

I know gas is expensive.

I know food is more expensive than ever.

I know some shelves are bare.

I know lines are longer.

I know we’re still in a pandemic.

I also know that I don’t want to see the devolution of America back to when it was so “great” that we cheered on police when they were treating innocent, peaceful citizens like armed, enemy combatants, and ensured the reign of evil men by making it impossible for large swaths of Americans to vote.

In the fall of 2022 and fall of 2024, we’ll know if we, as a nation, care more about convenience than conscience.

Which side of Juneteenth will you be on when the time comes to choose the path forward?

Escaping Groundhog Day

Before digging into this post, I need to set some context.

Friday, May 13, 2022 was my last day at my, now, former employer of nearly seven years. I’m not mentioning the company name1 because this post is not about them2.

This post is about burnout and the importance of continuous monitoring and maintenance of you.

Occasionally, I mention3 that I’m one of those Peloton cult members. Each instructor has a pull-list of inspirational quotes that they interject in sessions4, and I’ve worked pretty hard across many decades curating mental firewall rules for such things, as words can have real power and should not be consumed lightly.

Like any firewall, some unintended packets get through, and one of Jess King’s mantras kept coming back to me recently as I was post-processing my decision to quit.

My biggest fear is waking up tomorrow and repeating today.

Many events ensued, both over the years and very recently, prior to giving notice, which was three weeks before my last day. Anyone who has built a fire by hand, by which I mean use a technique such as a bow drill vs strike a match, knows that it can take a while for the pile of kindling to finally go from docile carbon to roaring flame. For those more inclined to books5 than bivouacs, it’s also a bit like bankruptcy:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

That’s how I’d describe finally making the decision.

Personal Observability Failures

Observability is a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge of its external outputs.6 I’m using that term as many folks reading this will have come from similar technical backgrounds and it has been my (heh) observation that technically inclined folks seem to have a harder time with emotional language than they do with technical language. I certainly do.

The day after officially giving notice, I went — as usual — to the DatCave to begin the day’s work after getting #4 and $SPOUSE ready for school(s). After about an hour, I looked down and noticed I wasn’t using my wrist braces.

I should probably describe why that was a Big Deal™.

For the past ~2.5 years I’ve had to wear wrist braces when doing any keyboard typing at all. I’ve had a specific RSI7 condition since high school that has, on occasion, required surgery to correct. Until this flare-up started, I had not needed any braces, or had any RSI pain, for ages8.

But, ~2.5 years ago I started to have severe pain when typing to the point where, even with braces, there were days I really couldn’t type at all. Even with braces, this bout of RSI also impacted finger coordination to the extent that I had to reconfigure text editors to not do what they usually would for certain key combinations, and craft scripts to fix some of the more common errors said lack of coordination caused. I could tell surgery could have helped this flare-up, but there’s no way I was going for elective surgery during a pandemic.

Seeing full-speed, error-free, painless typing sans-braces was a pretty emotional event. It was shortly thereafter when I realized that I had pretty much stopped reading my logs (what normal folks would might say as “checking in with myself”) ~3 years ago.

Fans of observability know that a failing complex system may continue to regularly send critical event logs, but if nothing is reading and taking action9 on those logs, then the system will just continue to degrade or fail completely over time, often in unpredictable ways.

After a bit more reflection, I realized that, at some point, I became Bill Murray10, waking up each day and just repeating the last day, at least when it came to work. I think I can safely say Jess’ (and Phil11‘s) biggest fear is now at least in my own top five.

Burnout, general stress, the Trump years, the rise of Christian nationalism, the pandemic, and the work situation all contributed to this personal, Academy Award-winning performance of Groundhog Day and I’m hoping a small peek into what I saw and what I’m doing now will help at least one other person out there.

Personal Failure Mode Effects And Mitigations

There’s a process in manufacturing called “failure mode and effects analysis”12 that can be applied to any complex system, including one’s self. It’s the structured act of reviewing as many components, assemblies, and subsystems as possible to identify potential failure modes in a complex system and their causes and effects.

Normal folks would likely just call this “self-regulation, recovery, and stress management”13,14.

My human complex system was literally injuring itself (my particular RSI is caused by ganglia sac growth; the one in my left wrist is now gone and the right wrist is reducing, both without medical intervention, ever since quitting), but rather than examine the causes, I just attributed it to “getting old”, and kept on doing the same thing every day.

I’ll have some more time for self-reflection during this week of funemployment, but I’ve been assessing the failure modes, reading new recovery and management resources, and wanted to share a bit of what I learned.

Some new resources linked-to in the footnotes, and found in annotated excerpts below, that I have found helpful in understanding and designing corrective systems for my personal failure modes are from Cornell.

  • Don’t be afraid of change: For someone who is always looking to the future and who groks “risk management”, I’m likely one of the most fundamentally risk-averse folks you’ve encountered.

    I let myself get stuck in a pretty unhealthy situation mostly due to fear of change and being surface-level comfortable. If I may show my red cult colors once again, “allow yourself the opportunity to get uncomfortable” should apply equally to work as it does to watts.

    Please do not let risk aversion and surface-level comfort keep you in a bad situation. My next adventure is bolder than any previous one, and is, in truth, a bit daunting. It is far from comfortable, and that’s O.K.

  • Take care of your physical needs: Getting a good night’s rest, eating well, and exercising are all essential to being able to feel satisfaction in life. They’re also three things that have been in scarce supply for many folks during the pandemic.

    I like to measure things, but I finally found the Apple Watch lacking in quantified self utility and dropped some coin on a Whoop band, and it was one of the better investments I’ve made. I started to double-down on working out when I learned I was going to be a pampa15, as I really want to be around to see him grow up and keep up with him. I’ve read a ton about exercise, diet, etc. over the years, but the Whoop (and Peloton + Supernatural coaches) really made me understand the importance of recovery.

    Please make daily time to check in with your mental and physical stress levels and build recovery paths into your daily routines. A good starting point is to regularly ask yourself something like “When I listen to my body, what does it need? A deep breath? Movement? Nourishment? Rest?”

  • Engage in activities that build a sense of achievement: The RSI made it nigh impossible to engage with the R and data science communities, something which I truly love doing, but now realize I was also using as a coping mechanism for the fact that a large chunk of pay-the-bills daily work was offering almost no sense of achievement16. I’m slowly getting back into engaging with the communities again, and I know for a fact that the it will be 100% on me if I do not have a daily sense of achievement at the new pay-the-bills daily workplace.

    It’d be easy for me to say “please be in a job that gives you this sense of daily achievement”, but, that would be showing my privilege. As long as you can find something outside of an achievement-challenged job to give you that sense of achievement (without falling into the similar trap I did) then that may be sufficient. The next bullet may also help for both kinds of work situations.

    You can also be less hard on yourself outside of work/communities and let yourself feel achieved for working out, taking a walk, or even just doing other things from the first bullet.

  • Changing thoughts is easier than changing feelings: Thoughts play a critical role in how we experience a situation. When you notice yourself first becoming frustrated or upset, try to evaluate what you are thinking that is causing that emotion.

    This is also known as cognitive re-framing/restructuring17. That footnote goes to a paper series, but a less-heady read is Framers, which is fundamentally about the power of mental models to make better decisions. I’d note that you cannot just “stop caring” to dig yourself out of a bad situation. You will just continue to harm yourself.

    Note that this last bullet can be super-hard for those of us who have a strong sense of “justice”, but hang in there and don’t stop working on re-framing.

FIN

I let myself get into a situation that I never should have.

Hindsight tells me that I should have made significant changes about four years ago, and I hope I can remember this lesson moving forward since there are fewer opportunities for “four year mistakes” ahead of me than there are behind me.

Burnout — which is an underlying component of above — takes years to recover from. Not minutes. Not hours. Not days. Not weeks. Not months. Years.

I’m slowly back to trying to catch up to mikefc when it comes to crazy R packages. I have more mental space available than I did a few years ago, and I’m healthier and more fit than I have been in a long time. I am nowhere near recovered, though.

If you, too, lapsed when it comes to checking in with yourself, there’s no time like the present to restart that practice. The resources I posted here may not work for you, but there are plenty of good ones out there.

If you’ve been doing a good job on self-care, make sure to reach out to others you may sense aren’t in the same place you are. You could be a catalyst for great change.

  1. I mean, you do have LinkedIn for discovering things like that ↩
  2. Though you’d be hard-pressed to not think some folks there only listen to Carly Simon ↩
  3. Usually on Twitter (b/c ofc) ↩
  4. Which is part of what makes it a bona fide cult ↩
  5. The Sun Also Rises ↩
  6. Observability ↩
  7. RSI ↩
  8. RSI wasn’t the only negative physical manifestation, but listing out all the things that manifest and got better isn’t truly necessary. ↩
  9. Software systems observability ↩
  10. Groundhog Day ↩
  11. I’m a billion years old, have seen Groundhog Day far more than a few times, and just got the joke (as I was writing this post) that Murray’s character was named “Phil”. ↩
  12. FMEA ↩
  13. Cornell: Emotional regulation [PDF] ↩
  14. Cornell: Stress management strategies [PDF] ↩
  15. Belter creole for granddad (et al) ↩
  16. I feel compelled to note that I was able to perform many, many work activities over the course of nearly seven years that brought a great sense of achievement. For a host of reasons, they went from a stream to a trickle. ↩
  17. Cognitive Restructuring ↩

Announcement: New Substack Newsletter

Just a quick post to note that I’ll still be doing long-form, single-topic posts here on the blog, but I’ve also started an M-F daily Substack newsletter [free], that introduces 1-3(ish) topics per-issue on stuff I find during my daily RSS trawls.

It’s a mix of tech, Mac, linux, data science, science-science, food, and some odds-and-ends that folks seem to find interesting so far.

There are a few issues up in the archive, so you can get a feel for what it’s all aboot.

I may drop some podcasts into there as well.