philiprocco.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

ICPSR at University of Michigan has been one of the longest-running secure data archives in the world and is stepping up to the challenges being presented in the current U.S. environment to keep government data as a resource for researchers and policymakers. isr.umich.edu/giving/suppo...

submitted 15 hours ago • 4 comments

NEW — The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 282 just emailed its ~8,000 employee members strongly advising them NOT to reply to the “What did you do last week?” email from OPM/Musk.

submitted 9 hours ago • 74 comments

NSF employees were unlawfully reclassified from career to probationary, and then fired. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

submitted 11 hours ago • 9 comments

You really can’t call yourself an empiricist if you take Musk et al at their word that “efficiency” or “lean operations” is the goal here.

submitted 8 hours ago • 0 comments

My guess: Republicans will not have the votes to do the huge Medicaid cuts that have been proposed. By contrast, it seems like they could get a minimum coalition for writing in work reqs in as allowable under 1115 or some variant thereof. Punting to states, blame avoidance, &c.

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

Trump and Musk are effectively cutting Social Security payments by closing local offices A single SSA office closure leads to a 16 percent fall in the number of disability insurance recipients in a local area

submitted 15 hours ago • 9 comments

good time for academics to join AAUP

submitted 15 hours ago • 0 comments

🚨BREAKING: @democracyforward.org sues on behalf of unions, retirees to block access to personal and sensitive data at SSA. This case comes after SSA commissioner stepped down due to concerns about DOGE accessing data. Visit www.democracydocket.com for details.

submitted 15 hours ago • 224 comments

Trump & Musk are teeing up their biggest target yet: Social Security. They're using "fraud" as a political tool to justify the attack. Social Security has long been the rock of the welfare state. It comprises 40% of income for older adults. It's so popular, the GOP loves it just as much as Dems 1/

submitted 15 hours ago • 6 comments

Elon is hiring criminals to work for DOGE because it is a criminal conspiracy

submitted 17 hours ago • 29 comments

I would be interested in an article connecting Penn’s 2025 rush to obey people who clearly want to hurt it with its complete failure to resist the 2024 monstering it got from House Republicans. Weak/ destructive trustees? Harvard comparison would be a bonus.

submitted 18 hours ago • 2 comments

This is a good headline in the same that it would a good headline to say “Jeffrey Dahmer had unusual dining habits.”

submitted 21 hours ago • 0 comments

At this point a Republican congressman could get on stage and say “Listen up—I am a Nazi! I think Hitler is good! I think it would be a good idea to build some camps!” and the NYT would lead with “Debate Over Puzzling Remarks From Rally Outburst”

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

I’d like to see a bit stronger language of this sort in the COPE guidance. publicationethics.org/guidance/cop...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

This is going to go on at many universities - the uncertainty will lead to fewer graduate programs. It will hobble scientific research which appears to be the goal.

submitted 1 day ago • 10 comments

Ah yes “the electoral connection”https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2025/02/21/republican-lawmakers-no-show-as-western-wisconsin-farmers-complain-of-trump-chaos-disruption/

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

This lede alone is one reason I don’t want to hear another “yes but” or “well actually” response to the argument that we’re in a constitutional crisis.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Seems to me that over $1 billion in property tax relief might be a big headline coming out of Evers' budget.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

If Evers' proposed film production tax credit gets through I would welcome collaborators on a Deadwood-style show about the 1845 Milwaukee Bridge War.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

In 2024, the NLRB filed a complaint against Tesla for interfering in a union drive at their Buffalo, NY assembly plant. Today:

submitted 2 days ago • 78 comments

Has been days since I've been able to download any USAspending.gov data. Anyone else having this problem?

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

This is not about efficiency. Giving federal employees purchase cards saves money - it reduces layers of paperwork and red tape. Imagine running a business where you stopped employees from purchasing anything. The goal is to shut down government by other means.

submitted 2 days ago • 79 comments

I was on a call with some twentysomethings -- I'm giving a talk at a convention -- and likened my speaking style to Chris Farley's Matt Foley character. Crickets—they'd never heard of it before. It got worse... they'd also never heard of Chris Farley. What the fuck are we doing

submitted 3 days ago • 31 comments

You don't have to squint too hard to guess how proposed Medicaid cuts might rhetorically get mapped to "waste" (regulatory rescissions, certain FMAP policies), "fraud" (increased redeterminations/paperwork requirements), and "abuse" (work requirements, state-directed payments/provider taxes)

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Great analysis here by @ashihipar.bsky.social: newrepublic.com/article/1906...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Le Opposition

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Still a banger of an edited volume. summary chapters at the end quite useful for present purposes.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Why am I not surprised that it’s a chancery court trying to bring back prior restraint?

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

A defiant Mayor Eric Adams, standing in front of a dozen elderly members of the clergy, gives a speech to the assembled media in which it gradually becomes clear that he believes all of the events that happen in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats "really happened, right here in New York."

submitted 3 days ago • 69 comments

Please stop saying it saved money until you understand the value of what was cut. They are downsizing, and if the stuff getting cut had real value, its not a saving.

submitted 3 days ago • 294 comments

Social Security Administration email making me feel…much worse!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Delayed reaction times to the Trump assault on government will, if nothing else, reveal that far more of the state is ‘submerged’ from public awareness than political scientists have, to date, shown.

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

We need to get some UMass-Amherst Econ students going over these spreadsheets

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

Pittsburgh is a research hotbed, and uncertainty about federal funding for science is rattling local labs and teams. If your Pittsburgh-based research is threatened or on hold, @publicsource.org wants to interview you. DM me for contact options.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

NLRB case "backlogs occur because many employers violate the law. And many employers violate the law because the penalties for doing so are so weak that breaking the law is the profit-maximizing choice." www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-futili...

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

For many places, this change puts a huge in their budget—one too large to fix with cuts (without significant deterioration of service). I assume most places will eventually re-adopt the tax.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.” I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.

submitted 4 days ago • 46 comments

“A lot of these contracts have data deletion clauses,” a researcher told me. “The fact is that they won’t be able to reopen them if they change their mind. They’re not just paused. They’re terminated and we’re losing the information.” hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

submitted 4 days ago • 12 comments

No, federal spending and employment are not “out of control.” Not that facts will influence the current idiotic discourse, but you gotta try. A few words with graphs by me: lbo-news.com/2025/02/16/n...

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

One of the purposes of DOGE is to give a sheen of respectability to lies about government. A 10 minute conversation with someone who understands Social Security data - or just Cobol - would have debunked this, but the lie is more valuable to their goals than the truth. www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

submitted 5 days ago • 31 comments

Preview of coming attractions. www.ft.com/content/27bc...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments