The mostly-conservative pocket of conspiracy theorists known as “birthers” (people who believe President Barack Obama is not a legitimate US citizen due to his place of birth) have latched on to a new piece of “evidence” in the “case”- this time alleging that the President was issued a Social Security Number in the state of Connecticut despite having no ties to the state.
Right-wing website World Net Daily alleges that President Obama’s SSN (Social Security Number) begins with the digits 040-049, numbers typically given to residents of the state of Connecticut. The site further claims that Hopey’s SSN was issued in 1979, but his first instance of employment was in 1975 at a Hawaii Baskin-Robbins. WND says:
The question is being raised amid speculation about the president’s history fueled by an extraordinary lack of public documentation. Along with his original birth certificate, Obama also has not released educational records, scholarly articles, passport documents, medical records, papers from his service in the Illinois state Senate, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and adoption papers.
The theory seems to hinge on the idea that President Obama had a different SSN that he used to work in high school, and that he later illegally obtained a second SSN for unknown purposes. The original WND post relies heavily on the assumptions of an Ohio based private investigator named Susan Daniels. Daniels theorizes:
“There is obviously a case of fraud going on here,” Daniels maintained. “In 15 years of having a private investigator’s license in Ohio, I’ve never seen the Social Security Administration make a mistake of issuing a Connecticut Social Security number to a person who lived in Hawaii. There is no family connection that would appear to explain the anomaly.”
Does the Social Security Administration ever re-issue Social Security numbers?
“Never,” Daniels said. “It’s against the law for a person to have a re-issued or second Social Security number issued.”
The site claims that not only is there a fraud being perpetrated by the President in collecting more than his fair share of SSNs, but Google is in on it , suppressing search results for pages that expose the subterfuge:
Internet giant Google today was hushing up the new dispute over President Obama’s strange Social Security number by diverting searches for news reports on the issue to unrelated stories about Elena Kagan, oil, Tampa and the Federal Reserve.
Google spokesman Jake Hubert told WND that it appeared to be a “bug in the snippets.”
None of the sites covering the Obama Social Security Number brouhaha have suggested any reasons why the President might have obtained a Connecticut Social Security Number.
[via Mediaite ]