The Chronicles of an Unelected Bureaucrat: Laugh or Cry?

Mess Heard Round The World

[00:00:00] Well, uh,

um, I, I, I had said on one of my social media, um, pages that this episode of Ayanna Explains it all would be me just laughing into my microphone for an hour. And, uh,

when I said that, I didn't think that it could get any worse, but it's gotten so bad that all I can do is laugh. It is a mess. It is a mess at the federal government. It is a mess. I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it.  [00:01:00]

 Hey everyone. Welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains It all. The podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. My name is Ayana Faki and this will be my very first attempt at doing video. And audio podcast episode, very first attempt. It's probably going to be rough, the, the video that is because I've never done it before and, but I'm using my very, very, um, handy dandy app descrip, which I love, and they've integrated all of these different things into their desktop app so that people can do video podcasting because that's, that seems to be where the world is.

Moving to video podcasting. I'm not necessarily comfortable doing video podcasting. As you can see, I don't exactly have the background [00:02:00] set up. I'm in my office, my office where I do all of my personal. Computing and my work computing. And you can see behind me is you can see behind me is all of my stuff, my degrees and certificates and my desk, my other work desk behind me.

And I am sitting at my fun desk, my fun desk where I keep my bills and my podcast equipment. So I'm gonna try this, we'll see how it works out. I had to put on clean clothes and makeup to do this. So we'll see if it, um, how successful I will be. I hope I will be very successful. I mean, the lighting is, is interesting.

 Lighting is not my thing. Okay? I'm not, I'm not a I a light I person. Let's see. See that? You see the different colors? It's still so ridiculously bright.

If I turn it away, it's still bright. You know what? That might not even be this light. It's probably my [00:03:00] bedroom. The bedroom light. This used to be a bedroom. Now it's my office. I converted it to an office.

 I feel like I could pay somebody to come in and, and set up everything for me and make it look, uh, make it seem like a professional setup.

And as long as I don't ever touch it, it'll be that way forever, and it'll be fine. But, uh, let me see. I have to fix my microphone also because that gain is a little bit high. Uh, yeah. Welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains It all the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior.

I am your podcast host, Ayana Faki, coming to you from the very confused state of Ohio. And by confused, I mean, is it gonna snow today? It snowed yesterday and then next week it'll be in the sixties, but then it'll be in the forties, and then it'll be snowing, and then it'll be freezing, and then it'll be raining, and then it'll be.

The sun will come out and it will shine bright and [00:04:00] beautifully, which is something that I really need because I am being crushed. I'm being crushed by the darkness. But tonight we do the, uh, what is it? Daylight savings. Time is beginning or ending. What's it when you fall forward an hour, is that the end of daylight savings or the beginning, whatever it is.

It's six 50 on March 8th, 2025. And this time, tomorrow when it should be six 50, it's gonna be seven 50. So whatever, I don't know. But, uh, it's Ramadan, this is the official first week ending, ending the first week of Ramadan. The days are shorter obviously because of this time of year, but it has been a very beneficial Ramadan.

I'm so happy, so delighted to be able to have the opportunity to fast. And to participate in this rewarding and auspicious month. I love it so much. I'm glad to be here again. And I've done an episode on Ramadan in the past and I've done a Ramadan reload where I've added additional information. Go back and listen to the first [00:05:00] season of Iion, explains it all, and you will get all of the nuggets, all of the information about what Ramadan is and how I observe Ramadan.

It's basically the same all around the world, but there are things that people culturally add to their celebrations, like the type of food. Um, some people get really dressed up when they break their fast for their, their Iftar parties and dinners and things like that. I am very low key. I do everything very low key. Eating healthy at home, um, keeping my protein up, keeping my fiber up, keeping my water consumption up. All those good things. But anyway, anyway, Ayana explains it all. Is the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. And the podcast is available on multiple streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, which is our flagship, Amazon Music iHeartRadio, um, pod Chaser, good Pods.

But if you go to our [00:06:00] website, www.ayanaexplainsitall.com, you will be able to find all of the places that Ayana explains. It all is available. All of our social media links, you will find every episode of this show available for streaming.

You will find all of the transcripts. You will find all of the show notes. Show notes. I often use to, um, list the references that I use in my episodes because sometimes I rely on others to tell the stories. When I want to explain something, I gotta make sure I give credit to the people who said the words before me, right.

I also have a blog. I started a blog for the show. It's relatively new. But there's also that, there's also ways to support the podcast, including, you can send me a tip, if you want to send donations, gifts, donations, you can email me at Ayana explains it all@gmail.com.

That's also how you can reach out to me for collaboration. If you want to [00:07:00] come on the podcast, that opportunity is also available. I would love to have a co-host for an episode, a guest co-host for an episode. Reach out to me and let me know. We can talk about anything, anything you wanna talk about, anything.

But also I want you all to share this podcast with, people you know, people you love, people you don't love. People you don't love need to hear this too. Let people know that there is a black Muslim lady lawyer with a podcast where she discusses various human interest topics. Yes, I talk about Islam, but that is not the focus In my show, I talk about parenting, I talk about lawyering, I talk about the economy, I talk about government.

I talk about here history. I talk about race, I talk about psychology, mental health. I talk about women's health. I talk about what bugs me the most about being alive in general. So it's a very diverse podcast. I am a person who is of diverse interest and. Even though I am Muslim, the focus of my podcast [00:08:00] is not Islam as a religion.

It's not about my life as a Muslim, it's about me just being a human being and my observations about what's going on in the world. So, uh, in that sense, I'm able to reach a wider audience, although I know that there are people who are very interested in learning about Islam and uh, the life of Muslims, especially in America.

You can learn about that here too. I'm a Muslim woman who talks about everything. Everything.

Because at the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, I am just a human being after all. Let's get down to business. Uh, I'm going off script, but I don't even really have a script.

I just wanted to, to get in a couple of thoughts on what's going on with my employer, the executive branch of the United States Federal Government. It is a mess. It's a mess. One thing I need people to understand is that yes, it has always been [00:09:00] a mess, like from its inception, it's been a mess. It started from a war, right?

 Have you ever gone to work? And every time you go to work, every time you go to work, you get an email telling you to quit, resign, don't come back.

We don't like you, we don't appreciate you. We think you're lazy. We think you're taking advantage of us. Um, you're not wanted. And then you go online and you read those same comments from people who support that kind of rhetoric. And you see people, uh, just bashing you, just bashing you. And that's, that's what, uh, federal employees are dealing with.

We're dealing with not only the public bashing us, but also our own employer, which I, I, I, I don't understand. I do not understand. There are over 3 million civil servants in the federal government. There are also elected officials in the federal government, the Senate and Congress and the President, [00:10:00] obviously.

But why, why are you getting on TV and getting on the internet and telling us to that? We are, we don't deserve to have a job. We don't deserve to work and earn a paycheck. We don't deserve to be where we are, as if number one, you know us, you, you obviously don't, you don't know what we do. You have no idea, uh, what our job functions are, but that is disgusting and despicable.

You're looking down on people who have done nothing wrong.

That's the real measure of a person. How do they treat others who can do nothing for them? How do they treat others who have done nothing to them? You're starting to see a lot of bad people being revealed because they have decided to attack those who have done nothing to them. I've done nothing to Marjorie Taylor Greene, [00:11:00] yet she seems to think that I don't deserve my job and I should not be earning a paycheck.

Uh, the president calls us a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, says that we are taking advantage, tells all these lies about our employment. He has advisors and people through the Department of Government Efficiency that made a BS. Who says that there are, uh, employees who are 150 years old, drawing paychecks but also that we're basically wasting money, that our jobs are not needed.

They don't even know what we do. Every single job, that falls under the umbrella of the federal government is needed.

Every job. There are people who work as contractors with the federal government whose jobs are desperately needed. Every job is necessary. Every person is worth something. Every [00:12:00] job is worth something to the American people. All of us are where we are because we earned that position. When people talk about a meritocracy, well, it doesn't get any more meritus, merito, however you say that.

It doesn't get any more meritable than the people who work in the civil service. When I tell you the hoops that we have to jump through to get these jobs, not only do you have to be incredibly intelligent, you also have to have what they call knowledge, skills, and abilities that you have to lay out when you apply for the job.

Then you have to demonstrate those knowledge, skills, and abilities. You, for most of these positions, you have to have a college degree and you have to have job experience, and then when you get the job after, I don't even know how many rounds of interviews. You, uh, it's different for every position. [00:13:00] You have to be trained, not just when you get the job.

Like my training was three weeks, was three full weeks away from my job site. And then every six months after that, well actually it was every month. Was it every month? And then they switched it to every quarter, every month we would be trained on something new, something different, something new. But also we had to keep up with, and we still have to keep up with all of the legislation changes that take place at the federal level, at the federal level, um, circuit court law that we have to keep up with.

Um, the law's always changing. The, I work for SSA, the law is always changing. The policy, the, the regulations, the different office policies, it, they're forever changing. They change every week, and we have to keep abreast of them. We have to remember them. We have to note them, we have to study [00:14:00] them.

I'm talking about big chunks of the law change at least every year, and that is to improve the business process, but also to improve the s service that we give to the American people to make this, the process more fair for the American public. Everything that we do keeps an eye toward making it fair for the American people.

That was until this year. It's not about making things fair to the American people anymore. No, that's, that's not their focus anymore. Now the focus is, well, these employees and these programs and these offices and these jobs are costing the government so much money. So if we cut down on all of this employment of people that we have to do, then we'll save the government so much money, a load of crap, a load of crap.

We are not the ones costing the federal government money. We're not, we just aren't. But we are the ones who have become the target for [00:15:00] the disdain that people have for government.

They always look at us and go, oh, it's your fault that the government is, is going bankrupt, and it's your fault that nothing's getting done. And it's your fault that things are going wrong your fault that people aren't getting their passports on time. And it's your fault that people aren't getting their social security payments on time.

And it's your fault that the phones aren't getting answered and people just need someone to blame. But I tell you what, I'm not gonna be it. No, I'm not gonna be your problem. Your problem is with your elected official. Because year after fiscal year, every time we ask our government, our elected officials, the people who set the budget at the legislative level for more money to do our jobs effectively for the American people, we are told no, our budgets don't increase my particular agency.

Hasn't really been able to hire new people for some time. We get a lot of [00:16:00] transfers from other agencies, but as far as hiring new people, uh, we don't really do it. A lot of other places, uh, have done it. The VA for instance. The VA is firing, um, 70,000, 80,000 employees, those employees perform vital, vital, very important functions for that agency. And lemme tell you something else.

The VA is the second largest employer in the federal government. The Department of Defense is the first largest. And honestly, I'm, I'm okay with the VA being one of the largest employers in the federal government.

A department that serves veterans, it should be the largest employer in the federal government. It should be, it should be the largest considering that they serve the healthcare needs of veterans from every [00:17:00] branch of the US Armed forces, people who are well into their late nineties at this point.

People who have served in wars, people who have served decades, who have provided decades. There are young people, people in their their twenties, people in their thirties and forties, people with families, people, a lot of kids, spouses that should absolutely be the largest employer in the US government.

They do everything from, uh, benefits to healthcare needs, to mental health, needs to arranging care. That should be the largest employer, but it's not. Why? Because they were allowed, even though they were allowed to hire a bunch of new people in the last, I would say, one in the last 12 months, last one to two years, because they needed it.

They needed to expand their employee base [00:18:00] because they are like SSA, they are woefully understaffed. Even though they were allowed to hire new people, all of those probationary employees have been let go. Every, uh, cabinet head was instructed to through OPM, by the way, which is weird because OPM can only hire and fire OPM employees, but OPM said, Hey, get rid of every probationary employee, even though they were desperately needed, even though they were desperately needed, especially at the va where there is a shortage of nurses and doctors, there's a shortage.

Now, people will give you various reasons for why that shortage exists. It, it may be because of the benefits, because of the pay. It may be because of how people are treated when they come to the federal government. A lot of factors go into it, A lot of factors. People wanna make money. You don't come to the federal government to make money.

You don't, you don't get into civil [00:19:00] service to make money. You're not going to be paid as well. As you would be in the private sector. I'm an attorney in the federal government and I make, hmm, I wanna say two to three times less than what someone at my level of experience, and I've been an attorney for 21 years, my level of experience would be making in the private sector right now, I could be making well over 200, $300,000.

Some people are making over $400,000. I should be making well over that. I've just peaked over one, uh, 35 and I've been working for these people for 20 years. You don't get into the federal government to make money. I didn't get into the federal government to make money. I absolutely did not. I love the life of public service.

I feel like that's always been my calling to work in pub public service, even though I've wanted to do. [00:20:00] Private practice and be that high powered attorney. You know, people really gas you up when you're in law school or, or when you're a little black girl and you say you wanna be a lawyer, people really gas you up.

Say, oh, you're gonna be a high powered attorney. You know how to argue. Like that's all you do when you're an attorney, right? Is argue. I don't argue at all. I make persuasive statements persuasive. I am a persuasive legal writer. I do a lot of writing and reading and analyzing information and applying law to a set of facts.

I do that every single day. I do no arguing whatsoever. I do a lot of instructing, telling people what is and what is not. But people really gas you up and say, you're gonna be this one who storms into the courtroom and you're gonna be making money handover fist, and you're gonna be driving a benzs and you're gonna have all of these celebrity clients and, and whatever.

What? I don't have anything like that. I drive a Toyota, a very sensible Japanese vehicle. [00:21:00] Built in New Jersey, but I didn't get into this because I needed money or I didn't get into this because I thought, well, this is gonna make me rich, make me wealthy and powerful new. I got into it because I was a single mother who needed a job that was going to allow me to be a single mother.

Being in the federal government has made it easier for me to be a mom who had to raise kids by herself. It did. They, it's a very supportive environment. I talked about this uh, in a previous episode. It's a very supportive environment, very family oriented. The family life balance was terrific. When I turn off my computer, I don't have to think about my job again until the next day.

Although sometimes I think about, maybe I shouldn't have put that paragraph at that particular page. Maybe I should have said something else on this [00:22:00] particular line or on this particular topic in this particular, uh, uh, decision or whatever. But I don't have to think about that until the very next day.

You know why? Because we're not allowed to turn on our computers once your day is over. Once our day is over, that's it. You log off and you go about your day with your family. Some people get off work at three o'clock. Some people start their work day at like 5 30, 6, 6 15, and they're done.

They're finished with work by like two or whatever. I'm not doing the math in my head. Please leave me alone. But I, I'm, I, I, I made it this way and I haven't gotten out of this, but I start later because I used to have to put my kids on the school bus or take my ski my kids to school. And so I would start my work day later and I still do that, but at six o'clock I'm done.

And I don't have to think about this again until the next day. And because we're not allowed to work on the weekends either, [00:23:00] unless we're, unless you're, uh, a judge, for instance, you might be working on the weekends. But me, I don't have to work on the weekends. There's rarely overtime for my agency.

Again, because our budget is so small, even though we do very important work, very, very important work. If there is no money available for overtime, there will be no overtime. There's no, Hey, just work a couple of more hours, no. Mm-hmm. Nope. Log off. Go home. Or for me log off and go, go downstairs in the kitchen and, and cook dinner.

That's exactly what I do. I go straight from my desk. Sometimes I have to pray and I go straight to the kitchen and I start cooking dinner. And it used to be that I had to help my kids with their homework. And now my, uh, my daughter is 17 years old and she's a junior in high school. My son is 20 years old and he's a junior in college.

They don't need my, uh, physical help [00:24:00] as much anymore, but I'm still available to, uh, drive my daughter all over the state of Ohio, drive my son to and from school, and do all of those things, do all of the things for my household that I need to do. I'm still available to do that. And having to, to, to do this alone, having a job that made it easier for me to be a single mother was important to me.

I did the private sector for one year. And I had to do, I believe it was 2200 billable hours. And I just couldn't, I, I couldn't, I couldn't. I was pregnant. I was dealing with people who were just plain old bullies, bull bullies, man. You know, in the public sector you get protection from that kind of behavior from, from managers, uh, and such being bullies towards you because you have the, well, we used to have an Office of Civil [00:25:00] Rights and Education, equal Employment Opportunity Office.

We don't have that anymore. The commissioner decided that that was no longer necessary, which blows my mind. But we also have union protections, which a lot of agencies are trying to get rid of, of unions as well. And, and I'm not surprised by that. Anything that insulates or that tends to insulate employees from the duplicitous actions of their employers, employers want to get rid of.

They don't want employees being protected. They don't, they want to be able to fire you whenever they want, for whatever reason they want. They want to be able to impose whatever kind of restrictions on you that they want. Like if they could replace us all with robots, they would, they would just have a supervisor and then a bunch of robots working and doing everything that needed to get done. Everything would [00:26:00] be automated. I don't understand why you, you, you create a situation where you have to have humans working for you and then you degrade the humans working for you every chance you get degrading people who work for you is not how you get more work done.

Surprise, surprise. Yeah. Every agency has some lazy dorks who don't wanna do their job or who complain about having to do their job. That's a, that's a managerial issue. That's not an issue that all of the other employees have to deal with because one person is lazy.

Suddenly, uh. Everybody's lazy or because one person makes a mistake, everybody has to take the fall for it. No, that's not how it works. Or you are told by the very main guy, the CEO or the president, that employees are lazy and we need to see them working.

So [00:27:00] you, you have to make them come into the office so we can see exactly what they're doing because we know they're wasting time. That's the attitude of a certain person who is currently president of the United States, that people are just lazy. And I don't know how to, um, impart this to anyone who feels the way that he feels.

We're not lazy, but we do have to deal with a lot every day. And suddenly we're being made to account for at least five things that we do every week. They have instituted the, what did you do last week, five bullet points that you have to share with your human resources. Let them know what you do every week.

Well, number one, I would ask why don't, you know, because you have my job description. You have every, uh, managerial review I've ever received the entire 20 years I've been with the agency. Um, you know what I'm [00:28:00] supposed to be doing. You know what my numbers look like because you receive a daily, weekly, and monthly accounting of all of the work that I do.

It's all tracked, and if you had any additional questions, my supervisor. Of which I have one main supervisor, but there are two others plus a hearing office director. They all know, they all know what everyone is doing. Even though we mostly work from home until about a couple weeks ago, all of the managers know what the hell we do every day.

They all know. And then we have these regional heads, regional people who look at the numbers. They look at the numbers, and if some number looks off, they call our managers and ask, Hey, why isn't this person, why are, why are this person's numbers low? What are they doing? So the minute somebody is slipping up, you know it, [00:29:00] and somebody swoops in to fix it because they don't want low performers.

They do not want low performers, especially if you're, if you have the, the benefit of working from home. And you, you work at a high grade and you earn a lot of money. They don't want you low performing. So there's always some, some kind of support if they see you slipping up. There's some kind of support, but there's also a correcting immediately.

There aren't people who are allowed to get away with low performance for longer than a month. I guarantee. I guarantee to you, that just doesn't happen where I work at, so I can't imagine it happens in any other agency. So the idea that we're all lazy and underperforming and need to be fired, like every, every week somebody's sending out an email saying, Hey, you wanna voluntarily resign, you wanna [00:30:00] voluntarily retire, you wanna quit, you wanna be reassigned?

Go right ahead. Please quit. Right out of the gate when Donald Trump got elected, it was the first email we got was, Hey, if you wanna quit, go ahead. If you hear outside noise, that's because the window is open, because I get so hot while I'm sitting here doing this and I can't turn the fan on 'cause the fan makes noise.

But these, getting back to these five things, email, which I basically do the five, the, the, the same thing every day. Right. And it rarely changes. I will tell you exactly what it is I do, because we're not keeping these people's secrets anymore. We're not doing it. It's not, we're not hiding this shit in a, in a shroud of secrecy anymore because I'm tired.

The fact that people don't know what we do is because we hide so much of what we do, we hide it. And, and I'm not talk, talking about revealing personal information or revealing secret covert missions or anything. I'm [00:31:00] talking about telling the American people what the fuck we do every day. I. Because they don't know and because they don't know.

It's led to a lot of ignorance and a lot of ignorance statements being made about our employment and a lot of misunderstanding about what we do. Okay. Now I have worked for the federal government for nearly 20 years. I started off as an attorney advisor and what I do, it encompasses quite a bit, but we have administrative law judges in our office who hold hearings for people who have been denied disability benefits, but also people who have been accused of, well, I won't say accused, but uh, declared overpaid, right?

So we hold hearings for those people when they appeal their denials or when they appeal their overpayment. They [00:32:00] have the initial level of review in the state of Ohio. They have a reconsideration level of review that's again conducted at the state level. And then if they want, they can have a hearing before an administrative law judge.

They, we do all of the evidence gathering. We have evidence gathering at the initial level. We have it at the reconsideration level, we have it at the hearing level, and sometimes, sometimes this is thousands and thousands of pages of medical and other records. It's usually medical records that are the most voluminous.

And I have had cases, we started off with paper when I first started with SSA, it was paper files only, and there would be thousands of pages of paper that I would have to read through giant files. Gigantic, sometimes two and three files. [00:33:00] Then we moved to efis. I was one of the first people in my office to be trained on e-filing, and it took them forever to move, mostly all of the files to the e-filing system.

I think they have finally gotten every case onto the e-filing system. It used to be that there was some cases that had to be paper for whatever reason. I think it's because they were district court. Uh, they were at the district court level, and you have to maintain the file in its original, uh, state when it goes to the district court level.

Anyway, so there are, I had one case a couple months ago that was 20,000 pages of medical records, and yes, I read every page I have to because sometimes as they say, the devil is in the details. When I get a case file, I am one of the only people who have read that entire case file, the entire thing.

From top to bottom. Now, that could be over 20,000 [00:34:00] pages. It's usually over 5,000. I do this every day. I do a different case every day. Okay. Sometimes when it's really big, like that 20,000 took me two and a half days, but it's mostly a different case every day Now.

What I do is once the, the judge has the hearing with the claimant, they decide, sometimes they decide before, honestly, they decide whether it's, it's gonna be a yes or a no, whether it's gonna be a favorable decision, an unfavorable or a partially favorable. Yes, you can get a partially favorable. You can get, uh, I think you were only disabled from this date to this date, or you can get a, I think you were only disabled beginning this date, even though you think that you should be disabled from an earlier date.

That entire thing with all of the instructions. Sometimes the instructions [00:35:00] are insufficient. And I have to make it work. I just have to make it work. I just have to figure out a lot of things. It used to be that I would fight, every time I get, I got a pair of instructions from a judge that were insufficient.

I would send it back and I'd be like, no, I can't. I can't. I can't write anything based on this. Now I just fix the fucking thing because I don't have time. We don't, we're not giving time unless it's really bad. Like I've had some that are really bad. Unless it's really bad, I just fix it and do it, and then they can decide if this is what they were thinking.

I don't like to substitute my judgment for that of a judge, but if that's what I gotta do, that's what I gotta do, because they really just want this shit done and out the door.

 I can only have a case in my name for up to seven working days. Really? They only want it in your name for up to five working days. If people understood, if they understood [00:36:00] that there is one person reading everything that was ever written about every single medical impairment that they had, maybe they would be a bit more patient. But they're not. And they're not. So I get these things back from the judge, the instructions and the file, and then the instructions tell me what to do.

And then I have to write a legally defensible decision based on the law and the facts. I have to write it. I have to take the law and apply it to that set of facts, apply it to that evidence, and pop out a decision that the A LJ consign. And that takes, it's supposed to take four to eight hours, four to eight working [00:37:00] hours, depending on the type of decision, a fully favorable can take up to four hours.

That's the amount of time we're given. A partially favorable can only take up to 10 hours, and then an unfavorable is only allowed up to eight hours, unless it's a really big file. And I'm telling you, they're all really big. I don't get, uh, small files. Rarely when I get a small file, I, I don't even know what to do with myself.

It's, it's like a holiday. It's like a gift. I'm like, a hundred pages. What? What have I done to deserve this? But this is how I've been able to learn so much about the human body. I've had to learn, uh, medical abbreviations. I've had to learn what different, uh, diseases are, diseases and disorders. I mean, things that [00:38:00] I wouldn't, I don't have any use for otherwise. Like I, I know about aortic valve disease. I know everything about COPD. I know everything about, uh, hypertension, diabetes especially.

We see diabetes quite a lot. I know about kidney transplants, dialysis. I know about liver transplants. About living wills, advanced directives. I know about, uh, I've seen death certificates know how to read death certificates. I know, uh, about children's diseases and disorders.

Things that I wouldn't have any use for otherwise, unless I was, you know, studying medicine. I have to know all of that. I have to know and understand all of that. Plus, I have to know about administrative law and health law. I have to know all of that. Every time I log on. I have to pour forth information about all of those things every single day.

I have [00:39:00] to store all of that up here. And then at the same time, I have to be told that I'm a lazy piece of shit. Nothing who doesn't deserve a paycheck or a job. All the knowledge and expertise that I have, I'm still told that I'm a piece of shit. This sounds like an abusive marriage, abusive relationship, doesn't it?

To have all of this knowledge and expertise to be essentially an expert in the field of disability law like all of my me and my colleagues are, but then to be also told that we're do nothing lazy, no goods, who don't deserve our jobs. This is how we're treated now and probably how people have secretly felt about us for so long, even though they have no idea what it is we do.

You have no idea. And that is just one part of the job that I do. One part. The other aspect of the [00:40:00] job that I do, because I became a senior attorney in 2009, the other aspect is that once the file, the case comes to the hearing office, I review the file and I either conduct evidence gathering myself, which has been made a lot easier because now hospital systems are using this.

Um, I, I don't even know what it's called, but it becomes the clearinghouse. Like where I live at Northeast Ohio, you have two big hospital machines. You have the Cleveland Clinic and you have university hospital health systems. But under those umbrellas, they have different clinics all over northeast Ohio.

And so instead of dealing with the paperwork from each clinic, now you can just submit a hit request. And all of the records from that [00:41:00] particular, uh, machine, as I like to call them for a particular date range, can be submitted electronically so that we're not having to deal with 10, 15, 20, 30 different medical exhibits that are for the same hospital system, but for a different doctor.

I mean, we still deal with it anyway. We, we have to deal with it however it comes, but it makes it a lot easier for us when we could just go to, uh, a hospital health system and say, Hey, give us the records for this particular person from January 1st, 2023 to January 1st, 2025. And those can be 300 pages, 800 pages, 900 pages.

If a person was hospitalized multiple times or they had one extended hospital stay. But that has made our lives and the claimant's lives a lot [00:42:00] easier because if we get that information, the quicker we get the information, the quicker we can review and get a decision, the longer it takes for us to get evidence.

And there are people who come in who still have not submitted any evidence when they come in for their hearing, and then the hearing has to be reset. Or there are people who come in for their hearing and they are still receiving a lot of medical treatment, and so we give them extra time to submit records.

We're always doing everything geared toward making this easier for the American public. Why somebody would come in and try to fuck that up is beyond me. It is beyond me. That says to me right there that you have no idea what goes on here or how we have been over the years trying to make this easier, equitable.

We've been trying to make it fairer and easier for the American public because we serve hundreds of millions of people. We have been trying to make it easier, and they have decided [00:43:00] that they wanted to make it harder. For instance, there are some states now where people are not allowed to. When a baby is born, they are no longer allowed.

This recently happened to Maine, but it has also happened to, I believe it's Arizona and Michigan, a couple of other states. You cannot fill out the paperwork for a new social security number for that baby, that newborn baby at the hospital. You have to take all of the identifying information to a field office and apply for the social security number in person, which is, why the fuck would you do that to people?

Do you know how hard it is? I, you, you probably don't know. Maybe you've never had to go to a social security field office, right? There's one not far from where I live, but it used to be that you could just walk right in. Now they want you to make an appointment, so you have to take you, your newborn baby. [00:44:00] All of the identifying information you have to wait in line with your baby, fill out the paperwork, hope and pray that you brought all the right things with you. Because that's the other thing. You can get all the way there and they could be like, mm, sorry, we actually needed this. So imagine you're a poor person, right? Or a person who doesn't have transportation, don't have reliable transportation, and you just, you're a woman who just had a baby and they tell you, yeah, we don't do the social security number application in the hospital anymore.

You're gonna have to go to a field office to get it.

So I gotta take all of my, I don't even know what you need anymore to get an SSN for a baby. When, when I did it, I did it at the hospital. I did it at the hospital. I don't know. Do you need like a, I did you need like the, the crib card or [00:45:00] something? Like the crib card from the hospital or the baby band From the hospital?

I have no idea. No idea. Because it takes a, it takes some time to get the birth certificate too. Do you, do you need the birth certificate? Do you need the birth certificate application? Imagine if you don't speak English and there it is. There it is there. Doing this because they don't want some illegal receiving a social security number for their anchor baby.

They don't like the anchor babies. They especially don't like immigrants, especially, don't like people who don't speak English. And so they wanna see you to make sure you're not getting a social security number for a baby that wasn't born in the US so they can ensure that you're not committing fraud.

And this is one of the things that happens to claimants too when they're applying for disability. Some judges want to see you so they can see [00:46:00] how sick you are before they will believe that you are disabled. They need to set their eyes on your poor, unfortunate ass before they can make a proper decision.

There's a lot of prejudice that goes into government, how government decisions are made, but these are things that we have been trying to work through and work out trying to make fairer for people to eliminate the racism and the prejudice. And I've had to correct a lot of people on their effing prejudice.

I encounter it way too often. Because everybody's coming in with their own set of values and, and judgements and, and me, I just do my job. It doesn't matter to me what my values and beliefs are. I'm here to do a job. I'm here to serve the American public despite what I think and believe. You're entitled to something.

The law says you're entitled to something. This is what the law says. I'm gonna [00:47:00] follow the law. But people inject their own prejudices into policy making people make, inject their own prejudices into decision making. It's unfair, it's ridiculous. Not everybody has to live by your beliefs and values, but this is what we're dealing with and this is why, at least in my agency, we have been working hard to eliminate that kind of behavior.

From people who work in our offices, from people who make decisions from people who are, are serving the American public. That was our initiative to make the business process fairer for the American public. And suddenly because equity, he has entered the chat, and equity is seen as the boogeyman and the bad guy, no matter how it's instilled, no matter how it's used, it's been removed.

It's been removed. Now we're not focused on fairness anymore. We're focused on saving the government money. [00:48:00] Well, honey, lemme tell you something. The government only runs because of my money and their money and their money. The government only runs because of tax revenue. This is my money. This is my money and everybody else's money.

We put into a big pool, big pot of money that you all divide up and decide where it goes. For some reason, you're sending most of it to the Department of Defense, which incredibly is not suffering. The budget cuts and employee cuts that all of these other agencies are suffering. The largest employer is the Department of Defense, and it's still the largest employer, but no one's talking about cutting jobs from the Department of Defense.

No one's talking about cutting the budget of the Department of Defense. I can't, for the life of me understand why not cannot for the life of me understand why not.[00:49:00]

I don't know. I don't know. In any event, part of my job, as I get back to what I was talking about, part of my job, when I get that giant file folder, that electronic file folder, is to review.

And I've done this hundreds of thousands of times, not even kidding. Review a file and say whether it should be paid on the record. Or if it should be set for a hearing. Sometimes a person is receiving their disability benefits because I read their file and I found something that some other person missed at another level, or because I saw a deterioration in a person's condition, or because I noticed that their age range changed and suddenly they [00:50:00] were, uh, more likely to be paid disability benefits.

Sometimes the difference between a yes and a no is someone like me,

and then I send that off to a judge and a judge agrees with me. They usually agree with me and the person. Gets a fully favorable decision in the mail, and that's a fully favorable decision, and they get benefits for however long they get benefits. Sometimes it's 12 months, sometimes it's 24, 36. Sometimes it is for, you know, the rest of their life or until they're no longer disabled, till they're dead. It used to be the case that when, like I said, judges wanted people or people had to come in for their hearing and the judges would look at them and go, well, you got your nails done and your hair done. You're not disabled. And I used to think that that was the most. Flipping ridiculous thing ever. [00:51:00] And I hated having to put that in the decisions.

Now, we are no longer allowed to do that because it is unfair, it's prejudicial to the claimant. Somebody decided, Hey, you know what? Really shouldn't be judging people based on their, uh, personal hygiene. Just stick to the facts. Stick to the facts. But people were allowed to use those kinds of things, especially, I mean, drug use is, it's, it all depends on certain set of factors, right?

If you're do, if you're smoking weed every day, ah, people have, uh, gone taken it easy on weed. It used to be weed, the devil's lettuce, they're smoking weed. They don't deserve benefits. And yeah, there would be times where, I mean, you can't tell a person. Not to do drugs as a condition of receiving benefits, but there were [00:52:00] people, there are judges who strongly believe that if a person is an alcoholic or a drug addict, that they should be forced to go to rehab or forced into sobriety before they're entitled to benefits.

That's not written anywhere in the law. That's just their personal belief. Their personal belief, and that that is what is happening now. That's what we're transitioning into for things like cash, welfare assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, well, they should have to work. They should be off drugs. They should be a, they should be made to take drug tests.

I'm not here to police what the hell a poor person does with their, their social welfare benefits or their disability benefits. None of my damn business, just like I don't want, need you to police what I do with my money. It's none of your business.

And I'm not policing a poor person's food choices. Ain't my life. [00:53:00] That's your life. That's your life. You want someone who doesn't care why, how you ended up there. You want somebody who doesn't care. Who cares about you as a person, not somebody who's gonna sit there and make a value judgment about your life. You don't need that. When you're at the lowest point, the lowest moment in your life, you're at the fucking government social security office begging for money because you're sick.

You don't need somebody looking at you and going, Hmm, yeah. But it says here that you smoked crack and you beat your wife and you were in prison for five years for robbery. You don't need that. You're going to somebody, you're, you, you're, you're, you're hungry and you're going to a, a government office to fill out an application for food stamps, knowing you're probably only get gonna get like a hundred bucks.

You don't need somebody going, well now you [00:54:00] get this money. I only want you buying cabbages and bell peppers and apples and oranges and, um, healthy nuts and greens. Don't want you buying Fritos and crab legs and um, um, frosted plate cereal. You don't need that.

And you don't get that from me. And I've seen a lot of shit. Okay? I've seen a lot of shit and I know full well what people are capable of. But that's not why I am here. I'm not here to judge you based on what you've done. I'm here to provide a service for you. And I do that despite my own values and beliefs.

Day in and day out, but yet I get told that I am a lazy, no, good nothing. Who doesn't deserve a job? Imagine that. Imagine the one person, the one person who makes the difference between whether you will receive something and whether you won't receive something, being told that they are useless. I could prove to you every day, [00:55:00] five bullet points, 6, 10, 11, 12 bullet points of how useful I am to the American public.

Will it make a difference? Will it make a difference if you've already decided that the thing I'm judging, the thing that I'm making the decision about shouldn't even exist in the first place. Elon Musk has called Social security, uh, a scam, a racket, a Ponzi scheme, is what he said. He said that, you know, we don't need forest workers and we don't need scientists and we don't need people to work at poison control.

We don't need people studying diseases. We don't need people who want to prevent diseases. We don't need people to study women's healthcare. We don't need people to, to do research into cancer treatments. We don't need people who work at our national. What do you do? We don't need that. Has he ever been, has he ever been to a national forest, a national park?

Has he ever been, has Donald Trump ever been to one of these [00:56:00] things? You know what these people do? These people are fucking heroes. Sometimes rescuing people from the side of mountains and shit. People who are lost looking for bodies, looking for hikers, missing hikers. Hell just unlocking a damn bathroom when someone got has to pee.

Cleaning it up, making sure it looks like something someplace somebody wants to be. I. Or they're sitting at a microscope for hours, looking at bacteria, looking at viruses, looking at cells, trying to figure out how this thing got here, why it is the way that it is, what we can do to get rid of it, what we can do to make it better so that human beings can live longer so that human beings can survive viruses and illnesses so that when they get something, we can give them this treatment and they'll be okay.

They'll be able to live longer for their families and for themselves, or long enough to work at one of your fucking [00:57:00] shitty ass Tesla factories. God forbid, right? God forbid we have people working at a crisis hotline for veterans. 'cause you know they have it so good. God forbid we have people who are trying to save consumers money.

1. When they're scammed by corporations, when they're scammed by banks, when they have money taken out of their accounts wrongfully by a bank, when they have some insurance company going after them wrongfully, god forbid, we should have people who investigate and prosecute wrongdoing and law enforcement. God forbid we have those people. God forbid we have people who give a goddamn about the American people. They may not work as fast as you want them to, and you know [00:58:00] why? Because they have to do this for hundreds of millions of people.

If we were all only serving one person, yeah, it would go a lot faster, wouldn't it? We have to serve hundreds of millions of people and interests every single day, and not just Monday through Friday, Monday through Sunday, 24 hours a day. God forbid. We have a national weather service where they can predict a hurricane or a tornado or a cyclone and let people know ahead of time to prepare themselves and be ready and move to safety.

God forbid we have those people we own. Wow. We don't need them. We'll just, uh, um, put our finger in the air and, and, and fill the wind on our finger. We'll use one of Elon Musk's giant satellites. Elon Musk is gonna make everything better with his satellites in its rockets.[00:59:00]

We're now seeding control of our entire country over to some man just because he has a lot of money and he's exploding fucking rockets in the air and he's telling us that our jobs are are useless. And he's telling us that the system that people have relied on for decades is a, is a Ponzi scheme, and that we don't need these programs to feed the poor.

We don't need these programs to give people food. We don't need any of this. Nevermind the fact that he could actually just pass out billions of dollars and make this all go away. No, he doesn't wanna do that. He wants you to suffer first. These people want you to suffer. They want you to suffer. They don't wanna help you.

They don't wanna make things better. They don't wanna save you money. They want to make sure more money. Goes into their pockets that has only ever been their interest, is that [01:00:00] more money goes into their pockets. They are not interested in helping the average worker, the average American. They're not interested in making your life better.

They're not interested in making your children's lives better. They're not interested in making your health better. They're not interested in making sure you have access to good healthcare, good access to good insurance, access to good housing, access to a fucking grocery store. They don't care about you, and yet here it is, you're giving all of your time and money and attention to these people and propping them up and saying, oh, they're doing a very good job.

 What have they done for you? What has Elon Musk done for any of you? Has he made your life better? Has he made life better or has he gone in and broken something that was not broken? Has he gone in and made a mess of things [01:01:00] when things were tidy and neat? Not perfect, but tidy and neat. And certainly a lot more fair than they have been in the past. And I worked under W Bush and I worked under Obama, and I worked under Biden.

I've seen bad. I've seen good, I've seen bad. I've seen worse. I've seen better. But if you understood how things were in the past compared to how they are now, if you had any understanding, if you would let go of your ignorance and just understand even the basic functions of government, you would not be getting online and talking shit about federal employees.

 If you knew what people had to endure every single day working in civil service, you would keep your mouths closed. And I have to give it to the people who are very supportive of us, who pray for us. Who [01:02:00] lend us their support, lend us their support in their, in their city government.

The city of Cleveland is setting up an initiative for, uh, fired federal, federal workers. The states are suing the federal government on our behalf. There are lawyers working pro bono for us. Some of our representatives and senators are working hard for us. Some people are having their jobs reinstated, although some of these people also don't wanna fucking work for us anymore because of how they've been treated.

When someone can dispose of you and then talk shit about you, when you've done nothing to them, I don't know why you would wanna go work for them again, except you were desperate for income. Once somebody shows you who they are, believe them. I no longer think that my employer values my work. I used to think so.

I used to think that the American people value the work that we do. I don't think that anymore. I, [01:03:00] uh, hate that it has gotten to that,

but this is how we feel now. This is, and it, it's mental anguish for a lot of people. I've heard people dealing with some pretty harsh realities. Um, people have committed suicide. I certainly have been dialing into my therapist a lot more and she keeps telling me to, you know, just don't react to everything.

But, Ooh, it's getting intense. It's getting intense. It's getting worse. It's getting worse. Even though we work so hard, I work so hard. Like at the end of my workday, I, I don't even wanna look. I don't wanna look at anything.

That's why I'm happy to go and cook dinner because it gives me something else to do where I'm not having to concentrate so hard. I use a lot of brain power. I use a lot of my eyeball power. I mean, my eyes work overtime. My brain works over time. I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna hear [01:04:00] things, and I don't wanna read. I don't wanna read. I've been reading all day. I don't wanna talk because I've been, I've been analyzing shit all day, and I'm tired. I'm so tired after work. I'm so tired. I'm grateful for my job, but I'm tired at the end of the day because I work hard.

We're all working hard. I don't know anybody who comes to the federal government and then goes, you know what? My job is so easy. I have it so easy. But I just want you guys to know that there is another side to what you're seeing in the news, and that is the human being.

1. Behind the job at the federal government. People like me, there are so many more people like me, hundreds of thousands, millions of people like me who value what we do. We value our jobs, we value the service that we provide to the American people, and we hate what is happening. We hate to see what's happening.

We hate to hear what people are saying about us, especially at the [01:05:00] executive level and at the legislative level. It is so unfair and it needs to stop. We need to go back to a time where people were proud and happy of this work, where it was valued, where it was seen as something valuable to the American, uh, to American society. But you know, it is what it is. We live to work and find joy and be grateful and thankful. Another day in Shaw Law, and this has been Ayana, explains it all brought to you by facts, figures, and enlightenment.

Take care.

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