Issues You May Know, 28 March 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Lancaster County Pennsylvania gets a Dem state senator for the first time since 1889.
It was a close race, and probably helped by a lot of people discovering how much politics actually affects their lives with all the mayhem going on in the federal government. But I think it’s more than the national situation. This is a county that’s been taken over by some fringe right-wing extremists on the local level.
I posted about this in my newsletter and my tumblr last year: From pandemic denial conspiracy fictions, to anti-trans… extremists took over yet another school board in Pennsylvania.
Lancaster Online - ‘Shock and disbelief’: Democrats’ victory in 36th state Senate race stuns Lancaster County JAXON WHITE | Staff Writer March 27, 2025 It had been a running gag in Lancaster County politics these past few months that maybe county Commissioner Chairman Josh Parsons would flub the 36th Senate District race. The sheer improbability of that suggestion made it funny. Maybe Republican voters would take for granted their heavy advantage in the 36th and not turn out at the polls. (Unlikely.) And maybe anger at President Donald Trump would motivate Democrats to vote in droves in the special election. (Unlikely.) But on Tuesday night, those jokes were no laughing matter for the GOP. Come 10:15 p.m., James Malone, the two-term, part-time mayor of East Petersburg Borough, had pulled off the most significant political upset in Lancaster County history by defeating Parsons in a county that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the state Senate since 1889.
Trump's plan to silence and go after seniors for "fraud" if they dare complain when Social Security misses payments.
Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick actually said: "let's say social security. didn't send. out their checks this month. my mother in law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. she just wouldn't. she thinks. something got messed up and. she'll get. it. next month. a fraudster. always makes the loudest noise, screaming. and. yelling and complaining. anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen. yeah, because whoever screams is the one stealing."
This is to soften people up and get them to shut up when the cuts come, because that’s what Howard Lutnick absolutely openly says they’re doing.
The New Republic - Malcolm Ferguson/ February 20, 2025 Trump’s Commerce Secretary Confirms Plan to Gut Medicare—and More Howard Lutnick has revealed Donald Trump’s true plans. “Back in October … I flew down to Texas, got Elon Musk to [set up DOGE], and here was our agreement: that Elon was gonna cut a trillion dollars of waste fraud and abuse,” Lutnick told Jesse Waters of Fox News Wednesday night. “We have almost $4 trillion of entitlements, and no one’s ever looked at it before. You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicaid and Medicare are wrong. So he’s gonna cut a trillion and we’re gonna get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against America and we’re gonna raise a trillion dollars of revenue.”
Obviously most seniors will notice and will be in financial distress if Social Security payments are missed. This is not a maybe. They’re trying to scare these people into not complaining about it, but one way or another it’s going to have an effect in the world.
More Elon Musk dog crew connection to organized cyber crime.
Reuters - Exclusive: DOGE staffer 'Big Balls' provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show By Raphael Satter March 26, 202511:00 AM EDT Musk has championed the teen on his social media site X, telling his followers last month that "Big Balls is awesome." Beginning around 2022, while still in high school, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN, that provided network services, according to corporate and digital records reviewed by Reuters and interviews with half a dozen former associates. Among its users was a website run by a ring of cybercriminals operating under the name "EGodly," according to digital records preserved by the internet intelligence firm DomainTools and the online cybersecurity tool Any.Run. The details of Coristine's connection to EGodly have not been previously reported. On Feb. 15, 2023, EGodly thanked Coristine's company for its assistance in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Outrageous data center bullying.
People are being asked to destroy the value of their property by putting huge power lines through them, claiming it’s akin to an eminent domain issue or “community” when really it’s about one utility company catering to just one customer - a data center.
Big Take: When a Small Town Gets a Big Data Center Feb 27, 2025
The thing that I don't like about the framing of this podcast is that it's inevitable, that people have to just accept it, that we all as a society have to just accept AI (or cryptocurrency) as a given, even if you "like green spaces" and saying you have to balance that with "being a tech leader" and I think that's utter bullshit. We don't have to do things this way. And AI hype is way way way overblown. They even mention in the podcast that Microsoft is now cancelling data center projects, probably because they've figured out that AI hype is a lot of nonsense going nowhere doing nothing.
Why is Gavin Newsom giving tech tycoons burner phones?
FOX 5 KUSI - California governor sends ‘burner’ phones to tech CEOs by: Sergio Robles Mar 18, 2025 / 03:11 PM PDT The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom sent prepaid phones to dozens of technology CEOs in the state over the last several months in an attempt to spark more communication with business leaders. The prepaid phones were programmed to include contact information for Newsom and were sent to around 100 people. The information was first reported by POLITICO.
There's no way to interpret this but that there's some kind of corruption going on with burner phones between a government official and various business moguls.
Why is Democrat John Fetterman acting with a lack of decorum while receiving a creepy gift?
Netanyahu gives Fetterman ‘silver-plated beeper’ by Filip Timotija - 03/20/25 9:27 AM ET Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gifted Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) a “silver-plated beeper” during the lawmaker’s visit to Israel, inspired by the country’s covert operation when thousands of devices on Hezbollah fighters detonated last year. “This is a silver-plated beeper. The real beeper is like one-tenth the weight,” Netanyahu said Wednesday after handing the symbolic device to the senator. “It’s nothing, but it changes history.” Fetterman, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel in its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, then told Netanyahu that, “When that story broke, I was like, ‘Oh I love it. I love it,’ and now it’s like, thank you for this.”
Those attacks killed at least 4 civilians according to Human Rights Watch, injured thousands according to DW, and were carried out indiscriminately enough that Amnesty International said they should be investigated as war crimes. Maybe some decorum around the situation is called for from some Democrats. Even if you believe for some bizarre reason that Israel was justified in attacking indiscriminately, surely celebrating collateral damage lacks decorum.
I know John Fetterman thinks he's a hotsy-totsy, but I don't know why.
Donald Trump & Elon Musk are shutting down our campgrounds while they vacation anywhere.
Camping is the only vacationing I do so this is really disappointing. And we know that it will have an impact on the economy of the places affected.
WVIA - Raystown Lake cancels campground reservations amid federal job cuts and hiring freezes WPSU | By Sydney Roach Published March 14, 2025 at 3:58 PM EDT Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County is canceling this year’s campground reservations, citing staff shortages amid recent federal job cuts and hiring freezes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the property, said scheduled recreation and stewardship events also will be reduced and could be canceled. Matt Price, the executive director of the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau, is worried about the impact on tourism and revenue. “Every visitor to our area is a significant economic impact,” Price said. “So when you compound that by thousands of visitors over the course of a camping season, it's a tremendous economic impact.” Raystown Lake historically brings in $1.2 million in revenue every year, according to the county’s visitors bureau. And, each year it draws more than 1 million visitors.
We're lucky here in Pennsylvania, and in upstate New York, that we have a great many state owned and run parks and forests with camping options. But the closure of national land camping options are going to push those people into already crowded state parks and forests campsites.
And how long before the Musk Trump cultural revolution comes for those too? They're already planning on commandeering public lands for their company towns called "network states" where tycoons can have fiefdoms not subject to nuclear safety or worker protections.
This is a disability justice issue as well. As campgrounds shut down, and the parks still open become more crowded, there will be less places for high risk people to go who need to avoid exposure to crowds. And there will be less access to peace and quiet for the wellbeing of anyone who needs it.
My letter to reps:
The closure of federally controlled campgrounds in our state is going to put extra pressure on the state camping options which are already often crowded nowadays because camping is very popular option for many of us for a variety of reasons. The economic impact of these closures makes it curious that politicians would ever be on board with the Musk Trump cuts that are doing this. I worry that this is a corruption scheme to try to steal, liquidate and privatize public campgrounds, and this would be unfair, outrageous, and unacceptable. You MUST stop the defunding of parks and forests.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Parks, forests, and nature, are economic powerhouses, actually. If all you care about is the economics when it comes to parks and public lands, then you should want them, because setting aside and preserving nature is actually very good for The Economy. Chloe Humbert Mar 13, 2025
The mass firing of federal workers is a privatization boondoggle to rip off taxpayers and put us into company towns. It couldn't be clearer that the whole purpose of firing all these staff is to privatize everything by force, and follow through with their plans to form corporate fiefdoms. Chloe Humbert Mar 09, 2025
