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     The New York Post has published a letter from a woman seeking help with a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) problem. Her circumstances are a bit unusual but the problem or at least the reduced payment problem is common. Here�s an excerpt from the letter: Maria [her disabled daughter] turned 18 in November, and we applied for her disability on Sept. 5, 2019. At the request of the Social Security office, we returned for a follow up on Dec. 5. During the visit, I had explained to the officer that Maria would be paying $325 a month for rent and an additional $145 for utility expenses.   The officer told me not to worry about the delay in receiving payments, and that the Social Security office would pay retroactively to October 2019.   Yesterday, I received an SSI check dated Dec. 27, 2019, for Maria for $514. I have tried to contact both the local office and the main Social Security office to find out why the payment is for the reduced amount and why there is...

     From The Spectator : The Social Security office in Detroit is a dispiriting place done up in industrial grays. It is filled with the long, glum faces of those who molder in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy waiting for some faceless bureaucrat to help them. ... Into this purgatory enters Gus Malone, a raggedy 52-year-old homeless man, along with his invisible dog Timmy. Gus parades Timmy up and down the gray carpet of the waiting room as if it were the competition floor of the Westminster Kennel Club. ... Here, Gus casts a sideways glance up at the government clerk who is sitting behind the bulletproof glass, wanting to be sure she is taking all this in. But it appears that imaginary dogs are as common at the Social Security office as daffodils in spring. The bureaucrat bats not an eyelash at the dog who is not there. Gus has come to the Detroit office to file a disability claim with the federal government, hoping to hit the jackpot of all jackpots...