My pet peeve with anyone, especially politicians, using statistics is the lack of rigor they follow before making whatever conclusions. State your sources, assumptions and describe the process you used to substantiate your conclusions. Also acknowledge and own any weaknesses there might be in your process.
MEEP- these are all careful steps which you take when laying out your analyses and conclusions.
Let me be fair -- Sen. Kennedy may have detailed the source of his various claims in a longer paper elsewhere, it's just not in the 15-minute presentation. I just haven't found it yet.
In a short hearing, I get that he's trying to make an effect, not a technical point. If I were to make a presentation, I'd put all the documentation elsewhere.
I did go to Sen. Kennedy's pages on the legislation he is promoting and found links to these:
I wouldn't just assume Senator Kennedy is wrong without asking for clarification about where he got those numbers.
As we are learning more and more every day, the US government is a big cesspit. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the social security office has one set of statistics it shows people and another set that determine which checks are cut. Those kickbacks have to come from somewhere and that part of USAID's $50 billion that is stolen only goes so far...
Elon Musk put out an X post that said the treasury department NEVER says no to an outgoing check request. A lot of them have no documentation attached. No social security number if it's going to a person, no notation as to what department is funding it. He is suggesting that that should change.
And surprise, surprise, a district judge put an EX PARTE order out at 1AM on Saturday morning stopping any Trump appointed officeholder, even the secretary of the Treasury, from looking at Treasury numbers. I wonder what they want hidden?
In the video, Sen. Kennedy simply says that 6.5 million people in SSA system are age 112 or older. I'm not going to re-watch, but he may have said, receiving benefits, but I don't think he did... I think he just mentioned -in-their-system-.
So that's where I was going with it -- he could actually be correct on this, in that you can have multiple individuals using the same SSN (none of them 112+ years old), where the original person who is identified by that SSN would be over 112 years old at this point. And none of them receiving SocSec benefits.
But all this hysteria over even cross-checking makes me very suspicious of everything. I can think of all sorts of simple data checks, and it sounds like NONE of them are being made.
uh-huh
So, I would like to know more about the data tables I pulled from IN ADDITION to where Sen. John Kennedy got his info.
I was planning on doing at least a second part on this, because I deleted something I started, but this post was already long enough. Just because somebody has a SSN doesn't mean they should be getting SocSec benefits -- we were just yelling about this recently!
The cleanup on the SocSec database is one of the first steps to getting other parts to fall in line.
My pet peeve with anyone, especially politicians, using statistics is the lack of rigor they follow before making whatever conclusions. State your sources, assumptions and describe the process you used to substantiate your conclusions. Also acknowledge and own any weaknesses there might be in your process.
MEEP- these are all careful steps which you take when laying out your analyses and conclusions.
Just an appreciative Engineer!! Thanks
Let me be fair -- Sen. Kennedy may have detailed the source of his various claims in a longer paper elsewhere, it's just not in the 15-minute presentation. I just haven't found it yet.
In a short hearing, I get that he's trying to make an effect, not a technical point. If I were to make a presentation, I'd put all the documentation elsewhere.
I did go to Sen. Kennedy's pages on the legislation he is promoting and found links to these:
https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/6/OTB_Improper_Payments_2023_FINAL.pdf
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/04/02/waste_of_the_day_feds_paid_13_billion_to_dead_people_last_year_1021259.html
I am trying to get more info -- I am trying to contact his office directly, and I will see what I can get.
I wouldn't just assume Senator Kennedy is wrong without asking for clarification about where he got those numbers.
As we are learning more and more every day, the US government is a big cesspit. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the social security office has one set of statistics it shows people and another set that determine which checks are cut. Those kickbacks have to come from somewhere and that part of USAID's $50 billion that is stolen only goes so far...
Elon Musk put out an X post that said the treasury department NEVER says no to an outgoing check request. A lot of them have no documentation attached. No social security number if it's going to a person, no notation as to what department is funding it. He is suggesting that that should change.
And surprise, surprise, a district judge put an EX PARTE order out at 1AM on Saturday morning stopping any Trump appointed officeholder, even the secretary of the Treasury, from looking at Treasury numbers. I wonder what they want hidden?
In the video, Sen. Kennedy simply says that 6.5 million people in SSA system are age 112 or older. I'm not going to re-watch, but he may have said, receiving benefits, but I don't think he did... I think he just mentioned -in-their-system-.
So that's where I was going with it -- he could actually be correct on this, in that you can have multiple individuals using the same SSN (none of them 112+ years old), where the original person who is identified by that SSN would be over 112 years old at this point. And none of them receiving SocSec benefits.
But all this hysteria over even cross-checking makes me very suspicious of everything. I can think of all sorts of simple data checks, and it sounds like NONE of them are being made.
uh-huh
So, I would like to know more about the data tables I pulled from IN ADDITION to where Sen. John Kennedy got his info.
I was planning on doing at least a second part on this, because I deleted something I started, but this post was already long enough. Just because somebody has a SSN doesn't mean they should be getting SocSec benefits -- we were just yelling about this recently!
The cleanup on the SocSec database is one of the first steps to getting other parts to fall in line.