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Rebecca Piazza

@rdpiazza.bsky.social
887 followers 540 following 7 posts

Service delivery / Product / Public benefits / Civic tech. Strongly held opinions about DC statehood and Midwest casseroles.

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Reposted by Rebecca Piazza
Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.
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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Destroying government records is illegal and the people doing it should face grievous consequences. The attorneys overseeing it should be disbarred.
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Luke Farrell @lukef.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Today in the @missouriindependent.com I shared how new Medicaid red tape imposed by Republicans will kick over 10 million people off their healthcare, including more than 180,000 people in Missouri ‼️ missouriindependent.com/2025/06/06/r...
missouriindependent.com
Republicans' new Medicaid red tape will push Missouri to the brink and block healthcare for millions • Missouri Independent
The budget bill passed by the U.S. House will kick millions of people off of Medicaid by piling on new red tape.
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Free-quent Flyer @freequentflyer.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Interesting heuristic here: since the overwhelming majority of people are employed, almost by definition the majority of people who lose SNAP benefits to paperwork requirements will be people who have just lost their jobs. An odd group to target for an austerity campaign!
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Agriculture text is out. Will go through it in this thread. tl;dr: this'd be the largest SNAP (nutrition assistance, formerly food stamps) cuts in history. It would severely worsen food insecurity in America.
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Kayla B @queenofthesouth.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
My daughter’s speech therapist went out of business because Medicaid reimbursement rates were too low. We do not have Medicaid. I’m going to keep posting this until people understand that when Medicaid gets cut *everyone* loses services.
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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 06/05/2025
When government capacity is intentionally reduced, anyone with needs out of the ordinary is the first feel the failure
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Robert Gordon @robertgo.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Some news about RIFs within HHS's procurement staff. I oversaw HHS procurement policy as an assistant secretary for a year and know folks still there. Heavy sledding alert, but TLDR: Enormous cuts make contract bloat and fraud far likelier. 1/10
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Rebecca Fielding-Miller @rebeccafieldingmiller.com · 22/03/2025
Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women. More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications. I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.
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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 21/03/2025
I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired. It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Where Vincent Vega can’t get over the bargain of a five dollar shake
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Angela ColterGEIST 👻 @angelacolter.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
18F alum here. While I appreciate the well-deserved attention the 18F team is getting, let's address a fundamental misunderstanding of why 18F was so effective in working with other govt agencies to improve their digital services and why starting a consulting company is not a substitute. 1/
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 01/03/2025
Every year, OPM runs the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to find out how feds feel about their jobs. It's a big deal for agencies, who all want to be top-ranked. (IIRC, NASA usually wins.) This year, OPM is skipping it. www.chcoc.gov/content/2025...
chcoc.gov
2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and Compliance with Recent Executive Orders | CHCOC
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Dan Hon @danhon.com · 02/03/2025
... and one of the reasons why you haven't heard of 18F is because 18F's successes are really down to the agencies, departments, and programs. Because they're responsible for the tech. And you want them to be responsible, not a small authoritarian unaccountable cadre that works in secret.
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 01/03/2025
18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was demolished by Musk’s team shortly after midnight. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 billion.
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Mourning 18F’s elimination as a former employee but even more so as a former 18F agency customer. Unlike DOGE, 18F did the hard work of cultural transformation and sharing their methods with other Feds as they helped improve services. They weren’t just techies, they were teachers.
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I want to read this piece!
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I would much rather have a crossing guard by my neighborhood school who occasionally smokes pot on the weekend than no crossing guard, which is the current situation. This risk calculus seems wrong. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
washingtonpost.com
Drug test failures fueling shortage of school crossing guards in D.C.
More than two in five who apply to be crossing guards test positive, largely for marijuana, a drug D.C. legalized a decade ago.
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Reposted by Rebecca Piazza
Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
The point of excluding categories of people from the military like this is to send the message that they are unworthy of citizenship, it is pure bigotry and the assumptions behind it are disproven by the honorable service of the people being targeted in the first place bsky.app/profile/bran...
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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Don’t make me tap the sign (cc RFK Jr)
If you think a food is so unhealthy that it should be banned for food stamp recipients, you should support banning it for richer people too. Otherwise, you either support poisoning the middle class, or you're just trying to further control and complicate poor people's lives
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
This is like if the mob got to fire every federal agent investigating organized crime bsky.app/profile/make...
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Ami Fields-Meyer @fieldsmeyer.com · 06/02/2025
1/ I suspect we are days away from hearing Elon is "using AI" to “streamline” benefits programs. You should know why fully automating decisions about who gets critical assistance is a terrible idea that will have disastrous consequences. A 🧵 based on work I’ve done with the great @awhf.bsky.social
nytimes.com
Musk Allies Discuss Deploying A.I. to Find Budget Savings
A top official at the General Services Administration said artificial intelligence could be used to identify waste and redundancies in federal contracts.
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Merici @merici.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Hello week 2 of tax filing season! 💥 Direct File is live and you can now import your tax information directly from the IRS. Visit DirectFile.irs.gov to check eligibility and learn more. 👏
directfile.irs.gov
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at how the US media would cover this story if it was happening in a foreign country. Here’s that story that should be written this weekend: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...
doomsdayscenario.co
Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government
Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
There appear to be at least three separately operating heel factions breaking things within the government in wholly different ways right now. There's the Miller-headed immigration one, the DOGE/Elon one, and a Project 2025 OMB one. This dynamic hasn't showed up in mainstream reporting at all.
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Ariel Kennan @arielmai.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Appreciate that @wyden.senate.gov is asking important questions about access to the payments system. Journalists, please raise these up. I hope more actions will be taken ASAP. www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-ne...
finance.senate.gov
Wyden Demands Answers Following Report of Musk Personnel Seeking Access to Highly Sensitive U.S. Treasury Payments System | The United States Senate Committee on Finance
Wyden Demands Answers Following Report of Musk Personnel Seeking Access to Highly Sensitive U.S. Treasury Payments System
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kate conger @kateconger.com · 01/02/2025
“He’s applying the same destructive playbook to the federal government, where the stakes involve not just user experience or advertising dollars, but the basic functioning of American democracy.” www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/e...
techdirt.com
Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous
Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and th…
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Maggie Smith @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
We can help feed each other and clothe each other. We can take each other in and provide shelter. We can raise money. We can know our rights when it comes to ICE, etc. But I can’t fly a fucking plane. “We’re all we have” has its limits. We need government regulations for a reason.
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Rumman Chowdhury @ruchowdh.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
I’ve spent about 2-3 hours each day on calls or chats with my US gov friends. Here’s an anonymized recap of what’s going on. First, I am so very sorry that they are living our last year at Twitter. I never wanted to think about that time again, and I hope my advice is helpful. 1/
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◥◤Kriston Capps 250 @kristoncapps.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
What counts as modern versus traditional or novel versus revivalist is subjective, after all, and a good firm like SOM can design within constraints to deliver a decent project. But this time the goal is to change the procurements process — who selects the firms and even who contractors can hire.
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◥◤Kriston Capps 250 @kristoncapps.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Trump's first federal design order was only briefly lived at GSA and architects got around it by designing classical-ish modern courthouses. This time it will be different. Trump's second order tackles not how federal buildings look, but how they get built: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
bloomberg.com
Trump Architecture Memo Promises to Change How the US Government Builds
Two executive actions issued during the president’s first week back in office would change 60 years of precedent in federal building projects.
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Tired of seeing people cite that “happiness plateaus at $75,000” study without adjusting for inflation. That was in 2010. Inflation adjusted, that’s more than $109K.
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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
the answer to every question of the form "biden said he wanted to do X; why did he not do X" is that the best he held at any point in his presidency is what would be described as a minority government in a parliamentary democracy
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
The next time you hear someone say the CFPB isn’t needed, ask them if they want to go back to a time when lenders could REPOSSESS PROSTHETIC LIMBS www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/new...
consumerfinance.gov
CFPB Finalizes Rule to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized a rule to ban the inclusion of medical bills on credit reports used by lenders and prohibit lenders from using medical information in t...
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David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
It's going to be an incredible few months of the New York Post doing stories about Manhattan Men Victimized By Congestion Pricing and then it instantly being revealed that the person interviewed is a billionaire because they invented "convenience fees" or hold the patent for Sinus Headaches.
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Rebecca Piazza @rdpiazza.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Happy GEHA finally modernized its website but alarmed that it has added benefits usage sections for Individual Annual/Lifetime Maximum. Those were prohibited by the ACA so shouldn’t even warrant a header. Is GEHA planning for them to return under new political leadership?
GEHA health insurance portal image showing benefit usage, including sections for Individual Annual Maximum and Individual Lifetime Maximum
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Christopher Whitaker @civicwhitaker.com · 13/11/2024
#civictech is an enabling function.. some of the biggest wins in our space followed changes in actual law. Clear My Record - a product that helps expunge weed convictions - is only possible because activists and community organized worked for YEARS to change the law. THAT was the hard part.
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