Steve:

Not certain whether this will be of interest to you but I will be
of Social Security recipient age soon and wanted to obtain information (in
person) regarding collecting my potential benefits. I reside in Seattle
so, I went online to determine the closest Social Security office. I had
already been told by a neighbor that the office in my neighborhood had
closed. I found an alternate office listed and went all of the way over
there, only to find it shuttered and closed with a notice on the door
directing people (including disabled veterans) to go to the downtown
Seattle office (i.e., the Federal building). I learned later that all of
the peripheral SSA offices in the city have been closed down (just within
the last couple of months). So now, EVERYONE has to go through the metal
detector and imaging machine as well as present a valid driver's
license/ID. I find it interesting that all of the neighborhood offices
have closed down in light of the reports that SSA has purchased 174,000
rounds of hollow point bullets intended for 10 US cities, one of which is
Seattle. It was so strange to be treated like some airline passenger in
order to simply obtain information. I don't like giving out my e-mail
address to the government entities but I guess that going online is
preferable to dealing with armed guards wearing bullet-proof vests. One
additional note: The City of Seattle evidently is flush enough to pay for
assorted inane projects as well as to hire additional police officers (in
spite of the recent lawsuit the SPD had lodged against them by the Justice
Dept) and although I realize this is Federal government, given the recent
open-ended $40b/month QE3, I do not believe that this consolidation was an
economy move. Just wanted to confirm that those hollow-point bullets
earmarked for Seattle are going to be sent to a single location (the
downtown Federal building) here.

K

Sep 18, 2012