@katetait
soon to be former federal worker? | economic + political sociologist | inequality + direct action + prefigurative politics + worker co-ops | UNC + New School + Carleton alum | views mine | quit Twitter when it became X, just arrived to Bluesky
Finally, correcting the narrative of fed worker as irrational economic actor, eg, "They'd earn more elsewhere." Nope. In many cases, fed occupations ONLY exist in gov & can't be copy/pasted to the priv sector. In others, they're among the most legitimate use of training.
apnews.com/article/doge...
Nearly half (1.7 million, or 47%) of the increase in cost-burdened homeowners between 2019-2023 were those 65 and over.
As a result, nearly 1 in 4 homeowners (27.6%) aged 65+ were cost burdened. @dmccue.bsky.social @airbrycki.bsky.social @pjwhit.bsky.social
www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/rising-...
I am not making this up: Republicans have introduced legislation… to increase your bank fees.
The administration plans to lay off at least 40% of workers at FHA, the agency that provides mortgage insurance on loans for people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for one. HUD, the parent agency of FHA, will discharge 50% of its workforce as well.
news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
I work in Policy Development & Research at HUD, a division of just over 100.
We lost ~15% of our group last Friday to layoffs, and a similar proportion over the last two weeks to resignations. Those of us remaining are holding our breath.
www.housingfinance.com/news/fears-m...
If the best psychic in the world told me that in the near future I’d be huffing my Valentine’s chocolates because of the government and on the verge of tears over the Social Security Administration, I’d have demanded a refund.
Federal employee terminations will cause widespread economic damage even beyond the hardships for specific employees
How many federal workers live in your state or county or congressional district?
I made an little interactive site to tell you economic.github.io/federal_work...
As both a federal worker (still for now) and researcher, thank you for this.
Communities across the US will bear the cost of federal government employment cuts
How many federal government workers live near you?
economic.github.io/federal_work...
Federal employee here. The shock and awe continues, though so does clumsy implementation & a dim understanding of mostly everything. Chilling nevertheless that Miller has gotten this far.
www.opm.gov/fork
Hey y'all know Google? Ever use it? Just a reminder that the NSF funded the early development of Google. Just a little factoid for you if you find yourself pondering the purpose of federal grant money today
Do this.
When I said I was writing a history of the Civil Rights Division, I didn't mean that it only existed in the past tense.
let's remember that it was an NIH scientist who designed the core of the Moderna Covid vaccine *over a single weekend*
Musk comes from a family that moved to South Africa *for* the racism. He has repeatedly endorsed Great Replacement Theory in the US & Neo-Nazis of the AfD in Germany. He championed the rights of white nationalists and restored Nazi accounts to Twitter.
But I'm sure the Nazi salute was an accident.
"Businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of successful businessmen."
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
...by focusing on ‘I Have a Dream’ and ignoring his dream for fair housing, economic redistribution and anti-imperialism.
In that, Trump’s party has something in common with a lot of Democrats who do the same.” (5/5)
That King is the one we need to remember today. Because that King would not have been surprised that people scared of poverty would find a racist leader palatable. Trump and other Republicans will likely remember King today the way we have come to expect disingenuous actors to do so: ... (4/5)
That King is not the white liberal fantasy of a man obsessed with content of character. It is the harder truth of King the mobilizer and the organizer, who saw poverty as a twin evil of racism. (3/5)
“I fear that we forget how King saw ... multiracial liberal democracy coming to pass. It was not only a project of moral remediation of this nation’s racism. It was also always a project of this nation’s fundamental crises, including inequality and militarism. (2/5)
From Tressie McMillan Cottom today: “Left unresolved, the inherent conflicts of democracy will produce its extremes.” (For some reason in a NYT subscriber-only newsletter, so I’m sharing excerpts.) (1/5)
Late arrival to the Bluesky party, but great to be here. Hi all! 🙂
