February 18, 2025

Why am I paying federal taxes? I don't want and especially don't need any of this shit.

All my life I've felt that paying federal taxes actually made my and my loved ones' lives better. But not anymore. So why am I now paying taxes to hurt me, my neighbors, and well, the American people generally as well as people in other countries near and abroad?

Can't I just boycott this federal government, boycott this IRS?

Can we all do that?

February 14, 2025

Trump administration directs agencies to fire recent hires en masse

The Trump administration is moving to aggressively fire nearly all recent hires still in their probationary periods, a move that could lead to the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of staff. 
The Office of Personnel Management has instructed agencies across government to terminate employees in their probationary periods—typically those who were hired into government for within the last one or two years, depending on their hiring mechanism—while allowing for limited exceptions, according to a source familiar with the directive. OPM previously asked agencies to compile lists of their probationary period employees and in some cases federal offices sent warnings that firings may be imminent. 

At the Forest Service, for example, 2,400 recent hires are being let go, according to Andy Vanderheuel, who represents the workers as part of the National Federation of Federal Employees. The agency is excluding firefighters, law enforcement, meteorologists who forecast avalanches and bridge inspectors from the firings, but is otherwise dismissing every recent hire in the competitive service. The termination notices were going out Thursday evening on the west coast, Vanderheuel said, and expected on the east coast Friday morning. 
The Veterans Affairs Department announced Thursday evening it had dismissed 1,000 probationers, though it said it exempted those directly providing care and benefits to veterans and the number was just a fraction of its 43,000 employees in their trial.
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/02/trump-administration-directs-agencies-fire-recent-hires-en-masse/403017/
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Heartless. I know a young man who moved here to Oregon from North Carolina in August to accept a career position as a forester with the Bureau of Land Mgmt. He’s been so damned excited to have this job. Heartbreaking that young, capable, enthusiastic young people like him are having their lives upended by these scum. Having made a similar journey to work and have a rewarding, wonderful career in my chosen field with the dame agency, this makes me sngry as hell.

February 13, 2025

Well, it sounds like the "buyout" is just another huge fiasco that costs the taxpayers money.

https://www.businessinsider.com/75-000-federal-employees-trump-elon-musk-doge-buyout-2025-2

The annual federal workforce attrition rate far exceeds that number -- probably by 50,000 or more. So, it's probably a good bet that most if not all of the 75,000 employees that took the buyout were planning to leave anyway.

Way to go Musk!

February 13, 2025

State Department removes mention of 'armored Teslas' from its 2025 procurement list, replaces it with 'armored electric

The State Department has scrubbed mention of armored Teslas from its 2025 procurement forecast. The procurement document previously contained a line item that read: "Armored Tesla (Production Units)" — a reference to products from Elon Musk's electric vehicle company, Tesla. It was listed as a five-year contract and valued at $400 million, making it the biggest item on the list.

The document was titled "Department of State Procurement Forecast Year 2025 (Revised 12/23/2024)." The Tesla line item had last been revised on December 13.

As of Wednesday night at 9:12 p.m. EST, the line item has been revised. It now reads "Armored Electric Vehicles." It's still listed as a five-year contract worth $400 million. The document is now called "Department of State Procurement Forecast Year 2025."
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News of the $400 million State Department contract with Tesla was reported by Drop Site News on Wednesday.

https://www.businessinsider.com/state-department-buy-400-million-worth-armored-teslas-2025-2

Hmmmm. Time for another call to my Congressionals.

February 13, 2025

The Housing Loophole That Lets Wealthy Investors Raise Rents on Poor Tenants

As the U.S. struggles with a housing shortage, investors continue to exploit a gap in an affordable housing law to raise rents on 115,000 apartments. Congress has repeatedly failed to act.

Four and a half years ago, a newly formed corporate entity purchased a low-income housing complex with 264 apartments in Phoenix. The property had received more than $4 million in federal tax credits and, in exchange, was supposed to remain affordable for decades. The company then used a legal loophole that stripped the affordability protections from the apartments. The maneuver appears to have been lucrative for the company, which bought the property for under $20 million and flipped it two years later for $63 million. Today, advertised rents there have gone up by around 50%.

Similar stories have been playing out across the country for years, as developers and real estate investors take advantage of an obscure section of the tax code known as the “qualified contract” provision. It allows owners of low-income rental properties that have received generous tax credits to raise rents far sooner than the law typically requires.
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The loophole has remained open for decades despite widespread agreement among regulators and advocates about its harm. Congressional efforts to repeal the provision have failed — most recently in 2023 — though state reforms have trimmed its effects. ... The statute is part of the law defining the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which has become the primary catalyst for new affordable rental housing in the country. The program offers developers a tax subsidy worth potentially millions of dollars in exchange for keeping units affordable and renting them only to poor and working-class tenants.
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Affordable housing proponents have long called for repealing the qualified contract provision. But congressional efforts to do so have fizzled, in part due to lobbying from developers and private equity firms with interests in low-income housing, according to a former congressional staffer involved in the repeal effort.

https://www.propublica.org/article/affordable-housing-investors-loophole-rent-tenants

More in the short read at link above.

Predatory capitalism has made us a wreck of a nation. How many fewer homeless would we have were it not for this alone? What hope is there for improvement with the gang of predatory capitalists now in control of the WH, Congress and the Supreme Court?

February 9, 2025

Who is helping Elon Musk gut the US government? The billionaire's cost-cutting 'Doge' staff includes

wealthy executives, far-right ideologues and young engineers.

To undertake this unprecedented and potentially illegal gutting of public funding, Musk has assembled loyalists who largely lack government experience and who range from tech elites to Maga diehards, according to a review of the people publicly associated with Doge.
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Doge has not released any detailed account of who is working at the unofficial agency, and Musk, along with other staff, is technically a “special government employee”, which allows him and others to evade ethics and financial disclosures that would normally apply to government workers. The Doge team has taken steps to avoid public scrutiny, including limiting their online footprints. A lawsuit filed by unions of federal workers alleges that Musk’s allies in Doge have held calls and interviews in which they have withheld their last names in an effort to escape media scrutiny. These interviewers have also allegedly refused to answer questions while talking to federal employees.
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Musk shared a letter on X sent to him from the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor for Washington DC that vowed to pursue “any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people”, which includes identifying them.
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Several people at Doge come directly from Musk’s private companies, including the Boring Company, Tesla and xAI. One executive taking a lead role overseeing the effort, according to multiple outlets, is Musk’s longtime lieutenant Steve Davis. Allies of the world’s richest man have also been placed in key positions at the General Services Administration – which handles government real estate and federal IT structure – and the treasury department. The former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd is now in charge of the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, with 404 Media reporting that Shedd told workers he wants to implant artificial intelligence throughout government systems to write software and automate services. Musk himself has said he wants to deploy AI to review government payments for potential waste.
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Government watchdog groups have condemned the lack of transparency around Doge’s operations. “It’s inappropriate for the federal government to purposely hide the identities of senior officials who are shaping the policies and servicing the public,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight. “These officials must be held accountable for their work, both by their colleagues and the public. It’s also crucial that these officials abide by ethics and transparency requirements to assure the public they are serving in the best interest of our communities.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/08/elon-musk-doge-team-staff
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Much more than can be summarized here ... and more than a lot to be concerned about in this article. Downright frightening.

I hope there is someone or some organization that is actively creating a registry of who exactly are assisting in this outright dismantling of our federal government. It will be needed when the time comes that we the people can exact appropriate accountability and penalty from them for their crimes ; and that time will come eventually.

July 4, 2024

Common Sense -- Thomas Paine, January 1776.

“These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Seems fitting on this Independence Day.

February 18, 2024

What happened to Atticus? Does anyone know?

Looking for for him to give him one of my left over hearts, I ran across this, a classic and one of his last threads in his journal and thougjt I’d share:

3;15 am

I remember how a cigarette I shouldn't have been smoking lit up a dark room with each drag.
And how summer nights smell when the world is asleep except for a distant hound and whatever stirred him.
You can't lie to yourself when it's just you to listen and you stand naked before your conscience.
The dawn may bring a wiser you because of what you've seen in the dark.

February 16, 2024

US unions target the housing affordability crisis as their 'biggest issue'

Organized labor across the country is now setting its sights on housing costs as rents and mortgages continue to soar. As housing has become a top issue in strikes and protests in recent months, US unions are pushing for change and backing innovative solutions for the housing affordability crisis.

Housing has been a big issue in the recent rolling strikes by thousands of Los Angeles hotel workers. In Oregon, 400 Yamhill county government employees went on strike in November because, the union said, “many workers are not able to afford housing”. In the Twin Cities, worker dismay about large rent hikes is fueling plans for a multi-union strike by up to 30,000 workers in March. When San Francisco hotel workers hold contract talks later this year, housing affordability will be a top issue.

The affordability crisis has spurred many responses. Last November, the United Food and Commercial Workers and other unions helped win approval of a ballot initiative in Tacoma, Washington, that bans cold-weather evictions between 1 November and 1 April and bars evicting households with students or educators anytime during the school year. The measure also requires landlords that raise rents by 5% or more to offer two months’ relocation assistance to tenants – and for rent increases of 10% or more, three months’ assistance.

Today’s labor activism about housing is in many ways a return to the past. “During the first three-quarters of the 20th century, unions were a strong voice and advocate for affordable housing for working families,” said Peter Dreier, an urban policy expert at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “They built their own union-sponsored housing. They fought for decent public housing. They fought for better code enforcement to rid cities of slums.” Their focus on housing faded in the 1980s as unions declined and laid off many staffers.
>
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/16/unions-affordable-housing

Good stuff!

January 29, 2024

To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. Psychologists may have the answer

Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.

Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance ... tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world. People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth ... are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise ... more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
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We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.

If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.
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When a society valorises status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose. Someone must be blamed for the ensuing disappointment. In a culture that worships winners, it can’t be them. It must be those evil people pursuing a kinder world, in which wealth is distributed, no one is forgotten and communities and the living planet are protected. Those who have developed a strong set of extrinsic values will vote for the person who represents them, the person who has what they want. Trump. And where the US goes, the rest of us follow.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republicanhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republican
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Interesting read. Makes sense to me.