Issues You May Know, 25 April 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
In an abundance of bullshit.
"No poisoning people" is a good regulation, actually.
Efficiency and Abundance Lowering costs or shifting them? - Dylan Gyauch-Lewis and Revolving Door Project Apr 14, 2025 It can absolutely slow the building process and add additional costs. But the unspoken tradeoff is that we are more likely to—intentionally or unintentionally—harm and exploit people without it. What happens without these processes can be seen in projects that skirt them; in Memphis, Elon Musk’s xAI data center went ahead and expanded on-site fossil fuel turbines without a permit, and the community is now being exposed to dangerous air pollution and carcinogenic chemicals like formaldehyde.
I recommend getting familiar with this agenda – hopefully in an abundance of caution.
The Lever Apr 4, 2025 “Abundance” Is How Dems Lose To Trump - Ezra Klein’s new book is supercharging elites’ campaign to deter Democrats from challenging billionaires and corporate power. David Sirota We could pass all the federal permitting reforms Klein and Thompson could dream of, but if powerful fossil fuel interests continue to call the political shots, we’ll never achieve the clean energy build-out we desperately need.
Sounds to me like this abundance stuff is more invisible hand of the free market trickle down economics pushing goodies for business tyrants and problematic industries. Not a fan of this type of public policy.
The Peanut Butter Grandma.
With talk of food safety it's time to re-up one of the most compelling and inspirational podcasts I've ever listened to. It was several years ago now but I remember listening to this, where I was, what I was doing, like it was yesterday. And I have elaborated on this about how a few people really can make a difference – Don't wait for everybody.
PA State Rep Abigail Salisbury speaks about the harms of RFKJr's remarks on autism.
Salisbury: Defending Those on the Spectrum - Pa. House Video Apr 23, 2025
Listen to Pennsylvania House of Representatives state Rep Abigail Salisbury explain the harm of RFKJr remarks. Abigail Salisbury is the 2nd (known) autistic member of the Pa. House. Rep Salisbury also gives a good history lesson as well as a personal history. It's really worth a listen!
"We do not need to dream of work to have value. Because people have an inherent value because they are people. Whatever diagnosis they may have and whatever capabilities they may have to achieve in America today. We don't have to write poetry. We don't have to have a job. We don't have to pay as many taxes as you want us to do in order to have value. We have value because we are people."
– PA State Rep Abigail Salisbury
We really need to put the brakes on these eugenics type plans coming from RFKJr.
My letter to reps (including state level - states could potentially restrict use of some health data):
We need to put the brakes on proposed intrusions into our medical records. Jay Bhattacharya and RFKJr don't need to have us in registries sorted by health conditions. I thought Republicans were AGAINST this sort of CENTRAL GOVERNMENT scheme? Pass a law or something to put a stop to this now.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
This David Grier person belongs nowhere near the health records of anyone.
The data mining that RFKJr wants to do with the health insurance records of Americans is going to go to a guy who chemically castrated autistic children and called it treatment.
STAT - Vaccine critic’s apparent selection to head HHS autism study shocks experts - Like RFK Jr., David Grier has long clung to debunked assertions, scientists say By Helen Branswell March 26, 2025 Geier and his father, a physician who lost his medical license in multiple states, have promoted claims that use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines led to an increase in autism diagnoses. A raft of studies has refuted the allegation, and autism rates have not declined in the more than 20 years since thimerosal was phased out of most vaccines in the United States. For a time, the two treated autistic children with unproven therapies, including a drug licensed for prostate cancer that induces chemical castration. In the early 2000s, Geier and his father were granted access to vaccine safety data maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the grounds they were conducting a study into adverse events following receipt of a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. But their access was later terminated after officials concluded they were instead trying to mine the data for evidence that the DTaP vaccine triggered higher rates of autism in children who received it and to manipulate the data in ways that could have undermined the confidentiality of the people whose information was in the database. (emphasis added)
The HHS agency is walking back the declaration to gather health records and create an autism registry. Obviously the public outrage and probably letters to Repubilcan lawmakers was bad enough to make them back peddle. But I still think we need a shadow government operation to specifically keep a close eye on what’s going on at this vast health agency.
More people marked dead in the Social Security system by doge than previously known.
I heard about the 6,000 immigrants the Trump administration inappropriately put in the SSA Death Master File, but this is 4 million citizens who've been marked as dead and probably have had their finances turned upside down for no good reason by the doge youth hacker team.
DAILY BEAST - DOGE’s Social Security Cuts Create Chaotic ‘Day of the Dead Living’ RESURRECTION DAY Elon Musk and his DOGE foot soldiers effectively killed the financial lives of “countless” citizens through their database meddling. Michael Daly Special Correspondent Published Apr. 23 2025 “We have people who did not receive benefits come in every day with their ID and say, ‘I’m not dead, I’m alive!” says Rennie Glasgow, a claims technical analyst with 15 years of experience at the agency who handles the most challenging cases at the Schenectady office. These supposed dead are not to be confused with more than 6,000 living immigrants the Trump administration moved to the SSA Death Master File (DMF) in an attempt to force them to self-deport by depriving them of the ability to work legally. Many more American citizens were wrongly consigned to the DMF after Elon Musk’s DOGE goons bullied their way onto the SSA’s databases and mistakenly decided that “countless” people listed as 120 years old and older were receiving benefits. “[DOGE staffers] went into the system and they killed off people,” Glasgow told The Daily Beast. “About 4 million people, they marked them as dead. But they’re not sure if those people were supposed to be marked as dead, so they’re sending us an email saying, ‘If these people come into the office with their identification, you can reinstate them.’”
My letter to reps:
How are we supposed to even know if we were marked dead by DOGE in Social Security if we're not yet receiving Social Security? Is there someone planning on correcting the records of these 4 million people beyond waiting for them to go into offices when they figure out Social Security has them marked as dead? Who's going to make whole the people whose lives have been disrupted like this? This level of disruption is absolutely unacceptable.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Scare tactics in online ads.
Online marketing is a mess. I've been seeing a lot of scammy commercials online. One advertisement makes it sound like that people are having their houses stolen outright when that's not really how it works, and title fraud in real estate is most common in high end areas and especially empty lots and non-primary residences. And the service they're selling isn't going to prevent it if it did happen, it's just a monitoring service.
FTC - Home title lock insurance? Not a lock at all By Larissa Bungo Senior Attorney August 26, 2024 If you’ve seen ads for home title lock insurance, they might have you worried. After all, the ads say thieves can steal the title to your home. But then the ads tell you to buy title lock insurance to supposedly prevent home title theft. Stop. Take a breath. It’s just a ploy to scare you. First, know that “title lock insurance” is not title insurance. If you’re a homeowner, you might remember buying title insurance when you first bought your house. It protects you against challenges to the title, like a lien you didn’t know about. But “title lock insurance” is different — and it’s not insurance at all. Instead, it’s a service that claims to monitor your deed to protect you against title fraud. You’d only find out AFTER your title got transferred to someone else without your authorization. So much for the lock. Title fraud is identity theft: someone pretends to be you and transfers your deed to someone else. Title lock insurance (again: not a lock, not insurance) wouldn’t stop that. And you can check your title for free with your state’s land records office, and some areas even have a free notification program that allows you to sign up for alerts about any legal changes, like ownership of a property.
This article has a podcast attached if you prefer:
Home Title Monitoring Services Mislead About a Rare Crime by Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan Last updated July 1, 2024 In another ad, company pitchman (and former House Speaker) Newt Gingrich warns: “If you don’t check your home title every 24 hours, that’s all the time criminals need to steal it.” Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), told Consumers’ Checkbook that title monitoring is “a product in search of a problem to solve.” He described Home Title Lock’s advertising as “misleading and fraudulent,” and blasted the company for using “scare tactics” to exploit vulnerable people.
Because lab leak truthers are pandemic deniers.
Since there's a resurgence of lab leak truthing, and I see questions about how people can believe that stuff, yet don't take covid seriously, and how that doesn't seem like it should square... I thought people knew by now what this conspiracy theory propaganda entails, but if you don’t know…
I have an explainer on it!
Lab Leak Truthers are Pandemic Deniers. Chloe Humbert Oct 14, 2024
MAGA is actually still obsessed with covid.
I keep seeing these op-eds that float the idea that "liberals" or "leftists" are unusually focused on covid. I object to the framing of these pieces mostly because it's perfectly rational to take steps to avoid infectious diseases. Nobody would say someone on a one night stand using a condom is "obsessed" with HIV or STDs. So framing medical masks as an unusual fixation is bizarre when covid continues to circulate, we've had a really bad flu season, and there are now measles outbreaks in multiple states.
And the reason I know MAGA is actually fixated on covid is because I occasionally watch right-wing MAGA videos by far right pundits and various right-wing content creators, to find out what they're saying for myself. And on these videos, the ads are largely prepper stuff, supplements target marketed to men apparently with masculinity concerns – but the largest portion of the commercials seems to be bogus covid remedies, especially the debunked treatment ivermectin in "kits" being advertised. I saw an ad after the election with Tom Homan promoting some kind of EMP protection. And as recently as a few months ago, bogus covid kits with ivermectin were the sponsors on livestreams by right-wing religious organizations broadcasting Trump speeches. And remember, people wouldn't keep advertising these kits or even making them if there wasn't at least some level of continued demand. So we know that MAGA is still thinking about covid.
And yet I rarely seem to see The Atlantic running op-eds hand-wringing about the far right's obsession with nonsense quack "alternative" covid remedies, or lamenting how MAGA is fixated on covid prevention and treatment.
Place credit freezes to prevent fraudsters taking out credit in your name.
Here's a video from a library to share with your friends and family:
Freeze your credit to protect yourself - Putnam County District Library - Mar 5, 2025