KPN
KPN's JournalWhat if we didn't suck?': the leftist influencer who wants to campaign for Congress differently
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old progressive TikTok star, wants to do campaigns differently. So the very online candidate for a solid blue congressional seat in Illinois is channeling her energy into in-person events.
The entry fee for her campaign’s kick-off event was a box of tampons or pads to be donated to The Period Collective, a Chicago-based non-profit that distributes free menstrual products to low-income communities in the area. The debut was such a success, she said, they filled her campaign manager’s SUV with donations. (“I want him to get pulled over so bad,” Abughazaleh quipped in a video for her YouTube series How to Run for Congress.) It’s part of her pledge to disrupt politics as usual and run a campaign centered on mutual aid and community organizing instead of a candidate-centered “vanity project” that relies on expensive TV ads and “grifty” fundraising texts.
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In the week after Abughazaleh launched her campaign, she said it had raised more than $300,000 and received more than 1,000 volunteer sign-ups.
“I am sick of waiting around for someone to do something,” she said, speaking via videoconference from her apartment in Chicago, where she has a set-up for recordings and interviews. “There is no mythical, perfect candidate that’s coming out of the woodwork to save us.”
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Illinois’s ninth district, anchored in Chicago’s North Side and stretching west, is one of the most reliably blue congressional districts in the state and has been represented by Jan Schakowsky since 1999 – the year Abughazaleh was born. In the interview, Abughazaleh said her candidacy was not intended as a “referendum” on the 80-year-old Democrat who has not said yet whether she intends to seek re-election. Nor is it a leftwing challenge, she said, acknowledging Schakowsky’s progressive rec
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/08/influencer-congress-race-illinois
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Good to see. Much more in the article. I find this quite exciting and hope others will as well.
Democrats still misunderstand working-class voters - to their peril
In a recent report titled Renewing the Democratic Party the thinktank Third Way warns: “For the first time since the mid-20th century, the central fault line of American politics is neither race and ethnicity nor gender but rather class.” The policy shop even organized a meeting of heavy-weight Democratic party leaders to develop a new strategy for how they might win back the working class.
While Third Way’s advice, collected in a widely circulated memo, has some useful insights, more than anything it demonstrates establishment Democrats’ failure to understand the nature of working-class woes. In fact, the revival of populism, left and right, can be understood as a revolt against the world Third Way helped midwife. After all, they embraced an economic model – defined by free trade, deindustrialization, mass global migration and stagnant wages – that was responsible for the left’s breakup with the working class in the first place.
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Third Way now advocates that Democrats embrace a brand of pragmatic populism. They recognize the need to critique “corporate excess and corruption”, they counsel Democrats to avoid “dismissing economic anxieties” and instead acknowledge “real struggles like high prices and stagnant wages”. They even suggest that Democrats fight “for systemic reforms rather than just defending the status quo”. At the same time, they stress that Democrats are hurt by “reflexively attacking wealthy business leaders”. They warn against “vilifying the rich” and “demonizing” corporations. And insist that Democrats be pragmatic “pro-capitalist” reformers. They argue that candidates ought to own “the failures of Democratic governance” they don’t count among these, the broad failure of liberal economic policy to improve the lives of most voters. And while the authors of the memo are right to notice that “Democrats lack a cohesive, inspiring economic agenda”, they don’t offer any ideas for economic renewal.
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... Third Way’s economic proposals – summed up by the demand for “middle-class tax cuts”– are a last gasp effort at preserving that order. Until, and unless, progressives can campaign in ways that address the root causes of workers’ cultural, social and economic concerns – that is, until the left can provide a compelling case for how to exit the global race to the bottom – the result will be a string of narrow majorities and narrow defeats.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/01/democrats-working-class-voters
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This opinion piece in The Guardian this morning sums things up well in my view. Hopefully, we as a party can be open minded and embrace this view rather than berate it as anti-D Party.
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?
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.
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-2025-2The 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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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