Sam Husseini

“Much of the increase in electric bills was predictable because of Exelon’s acquisition of Pepco. Was noted at the time, in 2015, that was approved by at least one key government employee who ended up getting a position funded by the industry. This kind of revolving door is just one part of how corporate power takes over our lives and gouges regular people. So long as our political system is so corrupt, technology will not be used for human benefit, but for private profit and constant manipulation of the public. These threats are increasing with so-called AI. My opponent, Glenn Ivey, holds between $100,000 to $250,000 in stock in NVIDIA which designs the chips for data centers. This kind of brazen conflict of interest should be illegal. Public servants shouldn’t have their private fortunes tied up with industries that are set to do a great deal of harm to the public. ““For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”” Data centers clearly pose a threat to the environment, our electric supply and costs, and ultimately to our base of knowledge. They should be more than just stopped. This should be a wake-up call for the public to seriously assert itself and stop letting corporations run rampant, simply trying to regulate their worst excesses. Corporations are creations of the state by charter, but they have been granted legal ““personhood”“—including First Amendment rights—by a perverted reading of the 14th Amendment which gave citizenship to formerly enslaved people.”

“Government jobs that help humanity should be preserved and nefarious efforts by the Trump administration to attack Maryland’s local jobs and science must be vigorously confronted. The closure of the NASA library is a travesty. Were I representing this district when that happened, I’d have more than just issued a statement against it. I’d have held a mock book burning at the Capitol to protest it. This is especially important given reports of so-called AI companies literally destroying books they are scanning and effectively monopolizing. The Trump administration is proposing a massive $1.5 trillion military budget. That should be greatly scaled down. US government aggression around the world violates domestic and international law and fosters a dynamic of science being misused for destructive purposes. We should find ways to strengthen the economy by building up more co-ops in the district. There should be mechanisms to try to convert businesses in danger of closing to some sort of co-op. Greenbelt is home to major co-ops and should be able to help such groups proliferate throughout the district so more people can benefit from such resources. “

“A recent Yale study found that expanding Medicare could cover everyone, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the insurance company system it would replace. Just this step – an enhanced Medicare-for-All – would be a major enhancement to the health and well-being of people in the district and everyone in the US. We must resist moves to privatize Social Security, which does a great deal to keep the elderly out of poverty, however we must also recognize its shortcomings, for example, lots of Black men work their entire lives but live on average nine years less than the entire population. Serious healthcare coverage and access through enhanced Medicare-for-All would be a serious step toward that, but it means taking on the massive insurance companies, as well as corporations that now run hospitals, which used to be run by churches and other non-profits. Criminal corporations such as Purdue Pharma profited enormously off of people’s opioid addictions. Facebook and other Big Tech firms similarly prey on human weaknesses – including children and the elderly—by fostering addictive behavior. It’s imperative that we superfund the corporate-crime police. The agencies which should be going after corporate criminals are often underfunded and lackadaisical. They must be well funded and aggressive in going after the perpetrators of white collar crime, which kills more than street crime.”

“Once again, this year districtwide public school students’ standardized math test scores proficiency 13.7% vastly well below the statewide 27.1% proficiency rate. Countywide education performance remains stagnant year-over-year. The same holds true for standardized science tests, which are only given to fifth and eighth graders, each falling below the statewide average by more than half percentage points. The numbers are alarming: only 1 in 7 district students were proficient in math. The school board’s solution is even more alarming: change the testing and make it shorter. The racial disparities in math are an atrocity to social justice, Hispanic / Latino students across all grades have a proficiency rate of 10%, while Black students’ rate is 14%. We are failing racialized students and failing public education in a direct path to privatizing education, while increasing the funding for military, and sending billions of our tax dollars to genocidal Israel to destory schools. We must seriously fund our schools, creating an environment of inquiry and wonder. They shouldn’t resemble prisons. They shouldn’t be presided over by a ““CEO”” as they are now. I’m a very lucky beneficiary of an excellent public school education – I ended up going to the Bronx High School of Science in New York. We should develop strong magnet schools to foster excellence in scientific education in Maryland. This means putting our money where our mouth is, making class sizes smaller.”

“Across the district and especially in peri-rural areas we need to drastically halt land grabbing via privatization. For far too long Maryland Land Ownership, has become Privately Owned 86.20%. The damage is so bad that only 2% of Maryland land is Public Federally Owned and 11.7% Public State Owned. Historically even our municipalities have long allowed privatization landgrabbing, with only 4.6% remaining city- and county-owned (public). We need to establish legislation that stops land grabbing. We have to prioritize putting an end to resource extraction, disguised as agricultural expansion and urban redevelopment, by smart growth resettlement agendas funded by corrupt political interests. Much ““development”” in the district has been at odds with Nature or common sense. Many of the buildings along Route 1 don’t even have decent street offsets. There are some great parks in the district, but there should be a wider network of proper wetlands. The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center should be preserved, and by all means kept out of the hands of so-called developers. I’m an admirer of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright who wrote endlessly about the meaning of democracy in our country — which he called Usonia, partly out of respect to other counties in the Americas. He developed the notion of an ““organic architecture”” — buildings which conformed to Nature and the immediate environment rather than just pouring so much concrete that you could try to impose your will upon Nature.”

“There’s been a huge drop in Congressional hearings drawing on the knowledge of experts in various fields. This allows lobbyists and special interests to cut deals behind the scenes. Given my own background – a major in applied math and logic and computation from Carnegie Mellon University, with significant study in the philosophy of science – I would delight in talking with various scientists to ensure the best possible policy making process. People are waking up to the threat of Flock cameras, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Antony Loewenstein in The Palestine Laboratory show how Israel has used technology of death and surveillance against the Palestinian people – and how this acts as an incubator for rolling out those horrible uses of technology against others. Individuals from Israel’s Unit 8200, the analogue to our NSA, have gotten into various Big Tech firms, which pose their own threats – like Oracle and Palantir, working with ICE and other agencies. Scientists must live up to their responsibility, mindful of documents little known today like the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which stated: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

“Government funding should be based on actually advancing science and serving humanity, not reflecting military or corporate interests. The NIH and USAID doubtless fund good initiatives, but they also backed horrific ones, like efforts to make pathogens more deadly. This dangerous lab work—euphemistically called “gain of function”—likely led to the Covid pandemic. This cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars. And it comes from a whole structure of dangerous lab work. This was clear with the false flag anthrax attacks after the 9/11 attacks 25 years ago. The anthrax letters were labeled “Death to America / Death to Israel / Allah is Great” and there was massive propaganda that tried to tie them to Iraq. But scientists like Barbara Hatch Rosenberg found that the anthrax actually came from Fort Detrick here in Maryland or an allied lab. Congress incredibly never investigated this attack upon it. The fear this fostered led to Cheney/Bush ramming through the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, the so-called PATRIOT Act and ICE. The anthrax attacks ironically led to a vast INCREASE in more dangerous lab work. As a journalist, I’ve written extensively about this: husseini.substack.com. I’ve also seriously investigated the Ebola 2014 outbreak which likely originated in US labs in Kenema, Sierra Leone. Those labs were headed by scientists named Robert Garry and Kristian Andersen who would sign a widely cited propaganda article claiming Covid couldn’t have come from a lab.”