David Widdowson

I work in politics and play frisbee. Currently seeking an MPP at AU. rt’s are not endorsements, opinions my own, etc. I don’t even know man…

[ettingermentum @ettingermentum]

Pennsylvania and New Jersey both individually having more Squad members than California. What does this mean.

[Dr. Adam Hamawy @HamawyForNJ]

New Jersey -- we made history tonight.

Healthcare not bombs.

Abolish ICE.

Unrig the economy.

[James Line @jameslineky]

I’ve been in campaign offices that look like this

[Ben Rhodes @brhodes]

Why is it controversial for Zohran to skip a parade bc of his principles but not for Democratic politicians to march with a fascist bigot like Smotrich?

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

The family of a child who was repeatedly raped by a man who Ken Paxton let off with no new jail time is speaking out:

“The fact that Attorney General Ken Paxton allowed this man to get away with molesting and sexually abusing [our] son for three years is completely disqualifying.

Adam Hoffman could have faced life in prison. Instead, Ken Paxton and his office offered him a deal that kept him off the sex-offender registry and included no new jail time.”

[Mike Konczal @mtkonczal]

Tired: Relitigating economic policy decisions of 2021-2022.

Wired: Relitigating them from 2020.

Specifically here's @arindube and I coming around to the idea that the UI superdole (as opposed to payroll support) likely drove the big USA-specific wage and productivity takeoff.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

Reporter: Ken Paxton has taken to calling you ‘Talafreako’

@JamesTalarico: If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles. This is the guy who just released Adam Hoffman from jail, an admitted child rapist, after one of Ken Paxton’s wealthy lawyer friends got involved in the case.

Ken Paxton even kept him off the sex offender registry. Adam Hoffman was supposed to serve 25 years to life, but instead he served less than a month. As of this week, he’s now back on our streets because of Ken Paxton’s corruption.

Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America, and it is costing Texans, it’s endangering our children, and it must end. The Epstein class has no place in Texas.

[James Medlock @jdcmedlock]

We really need to repeal the pass-through deduction

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

@StatisticUrban Cost disease itself isn't an issue, the productivity-pay gap is. I actually recently wrote an article on the subject if you want to learn more.
https://t.co/1MQWBpt9f9

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

https://t.co/iyy9SUnBE7

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

@jdcmedlock @StatisticUrban Yeah, cost disease isn't an issue, it's the productivity-pay gap that is. We just currently have an economy that allows most of the productivity gains to go to capital owners.

[Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine]

They want you to own nothing. They want you to rent your car, your house, your entire life from them, from a billionaire class that owns everything around you.

That's their ideal future, and we can't let them have it.

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

https://t.co/iyy9SUnBE7

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

Very excited to finally be published in American University's policy journal, the Public Purpose Journal. I'm so proud of and passionate about my research on cost disease and the need to raise wages for low-income earners. Link in comments if ya wanna read!

[David Widdowson @WiddowsWeb17]

@pschofie79 Either some of this data is wrong or this is only an issue at private colleges. Helland and Tabarrok found that the admin and research shares of spending at public unis was basically flat between 1980-2014.

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

This sounds nice, but it's a great way to undermine the welfare state.

The strongest welfare states in the world (the Nordics) tax everyone, including nurses. And they give everyone universal healthcare, childcare, pensions, education in return.

When the middle class has skin in the game, they defend the system. When welfare is 'just for the poor', it becomes a poor program: stigmatized, underfunded, easy to gut.

That's why billionaires keep pushing this idea. The real scandal isn't that this nurse pays $12k.

It's that Jeff Bezos pays $0.

[Cole Sandick🌹🇵🇸🇺🇦🇸🇩 @ColeSandick]

It’s pretty simple. The general protocol for governance in America is that you come up with a policy, then you run it by donors, lobbyists, special interest groups, focus groups, consultants, etc before implementation. Zohran does none of that shit and thus things get done fast.

[Andrew Perez @andrewperezdc]

Retiring Blue Dog Rep. Jared Golden just cast the deciding vote to kill a war powers resolution he *cosponsored*

[Veronica 💫 @vronirwin]

Have had a very weird past 48 hours.

Initially I reached out to 3 Dems recently endorsed by super PAC Leading the Future about whether they’d be accepting: Ritchie Torres, Rob Menendez, and Val Hoyle. Seemed like a pretty reasonable question I’d expected they were prepared for, since I was asking 4 days after the endorsement was announced. The PAC is funded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, venture capital investors Andreessen Horowitz, and others, and their critics claim the PAC is anti-regulation.

Hoyle’s office initially gave me a fairly critical statement distancing themselves from LTF, and I wrote up a simple story. The statement wasn’t that surprising, since Hoyle had vehemently opposed federal preemption of state AI laws before - and LTF likes preemption.

Then I reached out to LTF for comment. This is standard practice for reporters, to ensure everyone has a chance to say their piece, They gave me a fairly straightforward statement. Candidates and PACs aren’t legally allowed to coordinate, so I didn’t expect some big, orchestrated response. All pretty normal.

It was after that that things got weird. Hours after I initially talked to them - but about 7 min after hearing from LTF - Hoyle’s office reached out to ask if they could change their quotes. Suddenly they were more appreciative of LTF’s endorsement, saying that she would “refuse to ignore industry” but wanted to advocate for workers. They sent me a Google doc and I watched them write and rewrite the statement multiple times.

Then she appears to have ‘preempted’ our story with a series of X posts and videos. (Credits @ShakeelHashim for that joke lol)

I’m not sure what made them change their tune so dramatically, long after the working day was done. But their about face seems symptomatic of a changing political environment, in which AI is becoming a more salient political issue and candidates must be careful how they talk about accepting support from AI PACs (LTF and others). Hoyle has received almost $300k in support from a LTF affiliated PAC - a nice boost for any political candidate - but can’t lose her pro-labor bona fides either.

More details and analysis in my latest for @ReadTransformer (link in reply)

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

When we came into office, we uncovered a $12 billion budget deficit.

Today, I’m proud to say we brought it down to zero.

We didn’t close the gap on the backs of working people.

We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets and making historic investments in public housing.

Call it Pothole Politics. Call it Democratic Socialism. It's government that delivers for the people who make this city run.

That’s what New Yorkers deserve. And that’s what we will keep fighting for every single day.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured -- they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews -- but they found the courage to do so. One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused. Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they're equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape. Here's a gift link to the article: https://t.co/aMMHId49OO