Tag: Accountability

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted #Project2025

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

While controversy swirls around last week’s mass firing of 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs’ employees, a far greater threat to veterans’ health care is going completely unnoticed. Powerful leaders in Congress have quietly unveiled their plan to gut VA-delivered care, wrapped in the misleadingly titled “Veterans’ ACCESS Act.” If veterans don’t act fast, they will lose the VA health care system they know and depend on.

The bill appears innocuous enough, with aspirations of accountability. But don’t be fooled. Hidden in its depths like a ticking time bomb is a provision intended to dismantle the integrated VA health care system faster than you can say “privatization.”

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Follow the money, which will hemorrhage from the VA to the private sector. The likely outcome is that the VA will close its inpatient services and instead become a sprawling assortment of outpatient clinics. If that sounds familiar, it is the plan laid out in the Project 2025 playbook. Veterans are being hoodwinked that the VA facilities they rely on won’t be impacted. Don’t buy it for a second.

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted

Previously:

What’s in Store for VA Disability Benefits with New Office of Management and Budget Chief?

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DOGE Sets Its Sights on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Due Dissidence

The Republican record on Social Security: Getting worse all the time

Related:

‘$2 Trillion By 2026!’ Elon Musk’s Ambitious Push To Reinvent Government Spending With Silicon Valley Powerhouses

Social Security at Risk? The Impact of Trump and Musk’s Reforms

Cutting Social Security Disability Benefits Can Backfire Horribly

FAIRNESS OF REAGAN’S CUTOFFS OF DISABILITY AID QUESTIONED

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

Elon Musk’s DOGE Allies Search Medicare Agency Payment Systems For Fraud

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did (archived)

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.

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As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits [Social Security Disability Insurance], and veteran’s pay.

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On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Previously:

Cloud Software Group: As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

Elon Musk’s DOGE Allies Search Medicare Agency Payment Systems For Fraud

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems, according to people familiar with the matter.

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CMS in particular is a highly politically and economically sensitive agency. It is the nerve center of much of the nation’s complex healthcare economy, with outlays of about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2024, or about 22% of the federal total. With around 6,710 employees, it oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans and Medicaid, for lower-income enrollees, among other areas. Many veteran CMS staffers have worked there for decades.

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Dr. Mehmet Oz, the high-profile physician and former television host, has been nominated to lead CMS, but hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate. Several CMS officials who are expected to work under Oz have already taken over at the agency.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Allies Search Medicare Agency Payment Systems For Fraud

Related:

As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Trump nominates Dr. Oz, who campaigned on privatizing Medicare, for Administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Trump 2.0: The further dumbing down of America officially begins

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Donald Trump School Choice Executive Order: Here’s Who’s Impacted

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to expand school choice across the country. While this policy could allow more students access to alternatives outside of public schooling, critics warn it might divert essential funding from public schools and exacerbate educational inequalities.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which provides a comprehensive measure of students’ academic achievement across the country, overall student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The percentage of eighth-graders reading below NAEP Basic is the highest in the assessment’s history, and the percentage of fourth-graders scoring below NAEP Basic is the largest in 20 years.

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Recent audits revealed that private school parents, and now voucher recipients, have used the funds for a slew of, at best, questionable expenses, including kayak lessons, horseback riding lessons, home gyms, televisions, and more. Earlier audits conducted prior to the most recent expansion revealed similarly questionable uses.”

Related:

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‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security