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Fraggle Rock: Back To The Rock has been nominated for two  Directors Guild of Canada  Awards . And the nominations are:  Outstanding Directorial Achievement, Family Series: J.J. Johnson, Episode 102 "Red and the Big Jump" Best Sound Editing, Comedy or Family Series: John Douglas Smith, Kayla Stewart, Paul Talbott, Kelly McGahey, Taylor Brockelsby, Kevin Banks – Episode 112, Into the Trash You can see the full list of nominees at the  Directors Guild of Canada . Winners will be announced  November 5th  at the West Coast DGC Awards in Vancouver.

     The White House has announced that William G. Dauster has been nominated to be a public member of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds. Dauster is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served in various staff positions in the Senate and White House. I'd call this a ceremonial position except that there really isn't any ceremony involved. Social Security's Office of Chief Actuary prepares the annual report on the Trust Funds. The Trustees sign off on it. I suppose someone in this position could ask questions of the Actuary or issue public pronouncements but I doubt that anybody would care. The position is little more than a formality.

     The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a hearing for February 5 on three nominations. One of them is the nomination of Jason J. Fichtner to be a member of the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB).

     From the New York Times (emphasis added): A judicial nominee slated for a key Senate committee vote on Thursday helped devise an illegal Education Department effort to use private Social Security data to deny debt relief to thousands of students cheated by their for-profit colleges, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. The plan, outlined by Steven J. Menashi when he was acting general counsel under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, was ruled by a federal judge to violate federal privacy laws . She ordered the department to stop the practice. In the memo, President Trump�s appeals court nominee, who left the Education Department to join the White House legal team, outlined the department�s plan to use earnings data from the Social Security Administration to forgive only a small percentage of debts shouldered by 30,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain that the Obama administration found misled thousands of s...