Category: Uncategorized

Project 2025

During the campaign, Donald T**** disavowed any knowledge of the Project 2025 document, claiming he’d never read it, and had no idea what was in it. Now that he’s the President-elect, he has changed his tune, admitting that it has been the MAGA’s playbook all along. 

So what is Project 2025? Titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” It is the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page blueprint for an ultra-Right takeover of the US government. Project 2025 also suggests legislation to make changes that are presently outside of executive control. 

Project 2025 has been talked about and discussed in bits and pieces. But in order to get an idea of the magnitude of what T**** and the MAGAs have in store, its really should be taken as a whole. To do this, I asked an AI program to give me a 1000-word synopsis. Here it is. 

KEY OBJECTIVE

Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation initiative to create a governing agenda for Donald T****. The leaders of the project state that its goal is to deconstruct the administrative state. The project also sets as its goals to restore the family as the centerpiece of American life, defend the nation’s borders and secure “God-given” individual rights.

UNITARY EXECUTIVE

A critical aspect of Project 2025  is the concept of the “unitary executive.” This refers to the placing the entire federal bureaucracy, including all Cabinet level positions and traditionally independent agencies, under direct presidential control.

CIVIL SERVICE

The Project proposes the elimination of civil service protections for thousands of government employees who could then be replaced by political appointees who are beholden to the executive. It also proposes dismantling or significantly overhauling several federal agencies,

LABOR AND EMPLOYMEN

Staffing requirements for certain government workers would be eliminated. The project proposes eliminating card check elections while accelerating the process to decertify unions. It would reduce overtime protections for 4.3 million workers. It supports banning public sector unions entirely and that Congress authorize state and local government waivers from federal labor laws like the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

The  project proposes cutting federal funding for renewable energy and increasing fossil fuel production. It would downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration due to its efforts to battle climate change. It would also slash federal funding for renewable energy research and investment, close the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.

SOCIAL ISSUES

The Project would declare that “men and women are biological realities and married men and women are the ideal, natural family.” It targets for elimination all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the federal government, labor and, employment. It proposes outlawing same-sex marriage and restricting the rights of LBGTQ+ citizens across the board. 

HEALTH CARE

The Project calls for dismantling or outright eliminating the Affordable Care Act. It would also restructuring Medicare and Medicaid. and advocates, among other things, repealing the $35 per month cap on insulin costs for seniors on Medicare, ending Medicare’s $2,000 per year cap on out-of-pocket drug costs and the federal government’s ability to negotiate drug prices. 

EDUCATION

The Project recommends dismantling the Department of Education to facilitate school choice and increase local parental control over schools. It would eliminate the Head Start program. It would also eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program enacted and end the Biden-Harris SAVE initiative.

IMMIGREATION

The Project proposes implementing mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship and separating immigrant families. It advocates dismantling the asylum system and recommends eliminating the Department of Homeland Security. It also recommends eliminating the prohibition against apprehending migrants in sensitive places like schools, playgrounds and churches. And it would authorize active-duty military personnel and the National Guard to help with arrest operations on the border. And it would continue to build a wall on the Mexican border.

ECONOMY

Project 2025 proposes massive cuts to both corporate and personal income taxes. The authors suggest the next administration should consider abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to gold-backed currency.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

The abortion drug Mifepristone would be removed from the market entirely or limited to the first seven weeks of pregnancy. 

The Project recommends enforcement of the Comstock Act of 1873, which it claims would ban the mailing of abortion drugs. It would also penalize states that require abortion coverage in private insurance and disqualify any provider of elective abortions from Medicaid. The plan recommends that the next president replace the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force with a “pro-life task force.”

GENDER IDENTITY

The report calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to declare that “men and women are biological realities and married men and women are the ideal, natural family.” It would eliminate terms like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from all federal rules, regulations, contracts, grants, and legislation, thus effectively stripping  LGBTQ+ individuals of legal protections against discrimination and violence.

CONCLUSION

Project 2025 represents a comprehensive and ambitious attempt following the election of Donald T**** to reshape the federal government along ultra-conservative lines, and offers a roadmap for effective, one party conservative governance. Emphasizing swift action through executive authority, it also aims to impose conservative Christian cultural and social values on the entire nation. Relying heavily on the concept of the “unitary executive,” it would allow Donald T**** to govern ostensibly by fiat. 

And that’s Project 2025 in a nutshell, the MAGA’s plan to usurp governmental power and rule in their own image. The implications for the democracy are dire and chilling. Short of taking back the reins of government from T*** and the MAGA movement at the ballot box which could take years, there is only one way to fight against their impending ultra-Right coup. Only one path forward. 

RESIST. 

#OnePathForward

#Progressive-commentary

The cold-blooded murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United HealthCare is a deeply immoral thing. In spite of the vitriol coming out from under the rocks of the social media world attacking him and the industry he represented, it solves nothing and cannot be countenanced nor alibied because his company made $22.3B last year selling medical insurance instead of high-quality widgets. 

At the same time, we cannot lose sight of the fact that tens of thousands of Americans die every year because of the health insurance industry. I also mourn for them. But I don’t see any press or media coverage or concern for their deaths.

The case can be made that United HealthCare merely follows the laws written by Congress; they simply play by the rules. And that would probably be correct. But we cannot ignore the fact that those rules allow the the health care industry to net hundreds of billions every year while patients go bankrupt from medical debt. But the real culprit here isn’t even Congress or the money in politics.

Unlike every other nation in the world that is part of the Western economy (and many that aren’t), America, the richest nation in the world, does not offer its citizens universal health care. That’s because we have been lied to for decades by Conservatives, – whose job it is to protect and provide for the enhancement of the profits of American industry – that universal health care is really “socialized medicine.” And that anything remotely connected to socialism reeks of communism and is evil. And for the most part, we have believed this travesty. 

Therefore, we have allowed its consequences. 

At the time of this writing we do not know the motive of the shooter in the murder of Mr. Thompson. Officials are sure it was a targeted action, and from the words found etched on the assassin’s ejected bullet casings, we can reasonably assume Thompson’s killing had something to do with the company he headed and the inequities of the system it represents. And if that is the case, should we wish to search for the the real culprit in this heinous act of murder, we have only to look no further than the mirror.

The culprit is  us.

#Progressive-commentary

#OnePathForward

Donald T**** and the MAGA-Republicans have their panties in a bunch, shouting :hypicris because President Biden pardoned his son even though he had previously said he would not. Some few Democats are concerned about the “optics”.

Hunter was guilty of tax evasion and lying on his tax forms in 2018 and 2019. He has since paid the taxes he owed plus interest, and the fines. And he failed to check a box on a Federal application for a firearms purchase stating that he used illegal drugs. He plead guilty to these charges (nb: Hunter did nothing that millions fo other s have done, and for the same reason.).

 By the usual and accepted standards, Hunter Biden doesn’t deserve incarceration. Virtually no-one is prosecuted for not checking a box on a Federal form, and tax evaders who pay their back taxes with interest and fines are commonly give non-criminal penalties. It is clear that he was treated differently, and it takes no great stretch of the imagination to comprehend why.

But consider this. We have a 34-count convicted felon who is about to walk into the White House. This man has never acknowledged doing anything wrong, claimed the events which led to the charges never happened and that the trial was a rigged, political hit job.

And I’m thinking that maybe these self-righteous Republicans ought to take a close look in the mirror. The obvious moral dilemma of their desire to lock up the minor repentant criminal and send the unrepentant convicted major criminal to the White House based on political motives is both obvious and compelling.

For these T****azoid MAGAS, it is clear that minor infractions of the law must be punished to the maximum if it involves Democrats, but major criminal conduct and convictions are just fine with them as long as it’s their Lord and Master, Donald T****. 

There is a human ,element in this which that has never properly been addressed. A dispassionate look makes it easy to understand why President Biden pardoned his son even after having said more than once that he wouldn’t. Consider for a moment: He lost his baby daughter Naomi when she was just one year old, and his oldest son Beau when he was 46. His earlier assertions to the contrary not withstanding, the President was not about to allow the possibility of his remaining son, Hunter, to languish in jail because of his political opponent’s petty vengeance. 

In my opinion, neither the Congressional Republicans nor their sullied leader have any moral standing to pass judgement on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden’s pardon, or on bond between a father and his son. 

#OnePathForward

#progressive-commentary

Donald T**** is a  man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He is a brazen pathological liar, a depraved and shameless con man, bigot and sociopathic criminal. Under-educated, crude and vulgar. Unsophisticated and unschooled in history, government, science or the arts, he has no respect for the Constitution and In January he will swear to uphold laws for which he has no respect. To make matters worse, he clearly has emotional and cognitive deficiencies as well.

For over 250 years, Americans have presumed to believe that the presidency was more than the man who held that office. Rather, it was one institution of government, with checks and balances to assure that it remained a co-equal one. Clearly, this was not his understanding. So having experienced the incompetence and chaos of his first presidency, in 2020 we righteously voted him out of office. That judgment was vindicated by his criminal attempt to steal the election on Jan. 6 and defy the voice of the people. 

Say what you will about how the Democrats blew what should have been a clear opportunity to retain the presidency. They just didn’t. What happened? Where does the blame lie? Media pundits have advanced a number of theories and assessments. They may all be true, or maybe none of them are. It may not matter. In the end, that answer may defy logical reasoning; his attraction runs much deeper than his fanciful political posturing.  

But the fact is that over a period of four years we had witnessed and learned about Donald  T**** all we needed to witness and learn. And since he made no secret of his plan to usurp power and rule with autocratic authority should he be elected, that left us with no rational excuse for returning to the office of President of the United States, with the operative word being “rational.” 

And I submit that there is only one rational response to this travesty. 

#One Path Forward. 

MANIFESTO

Donald T**** is an aspiring autocrat. His stated goal is to take one-man, strong-arm control of the reins of government. The ultra-Conservative Foundation published a detailed description of this plan in its 900-page “Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise”, the hard-right’s program for a government takeover. If he achieves even half of what he covets, the face of the America will be radically altered.   

  Let’s be clear. T****’s form of populism is a cancer on the American body politic and a stain on the American society. He is a huckster and grifter who has failed at virtually every endeavor he has undertaken, including a previous term as president. Lacking every quality and criterion that defines an honest, intelligent, ethical, genteel man, he is a misogynist, a racist, a bigot, a cheat and a liar with delusions of autocratic grandeur.

His victory in a nutshell: his personal grievances, fantasy political message and dark character matched those of the greater MAGA movement, the Republican Party, and ultimately nearly half the electorate. Almost inconceivably, a convicted felon has been elected President. And incredibly, almost half the women in the country voted for a convicted rapist. By the millions, Hispanics voted to support his extreme immigration-deportation solution which almost exclusively targets them. Pundits will be processing this one for months, but the truths of this election defy rational explanation.  

     Make no mistake. Should T**** and the MAGAs succeed in their Project 2025 agenda, the fate of America will be written in black. For starters, what’s left of the middle and lower classes will be crushed under a tax structure that supports corporations and the rich. To secure the hundreds of billions dollars needed for T****’s economic debacle, domestic programs including Social Security, and Medical will be gutted and millions of Americans will lose their medical coverage as the Affordable Care Act is repealed. The inflationary spiral caused, among other things, by his misguided tariff program that will be paid for by American consumers.

Millions of women in “red” states will lose their right to contraception and abortions. Hundreds of thousands of females will tragically be forced to bear the children of rape and incest. Unknown numbers will perish for lack of vital pre-natal care. Millions of people will be rounded up, housed in hastily-constructed concentration camps and, with barely the appearance of due process, summarily deported.

     Racial and sexual discrimination will be tolerated in society if not law. T****’s brand of hatred and bigotry will become the norm, and we will witness the continued emergence into the mainstream of racism, anti-semitism, white-supremacy, fascism, and worse. Same-sex marriages will come under attack; LBGTQ+ citizens will become marginalized, their lifestyles outlawed. The rights of non-white citizens, including the right to vote, will be further suppressed, as will First Amendment rights across the board. Avenues of dissent will be pinched off and those who engage in public criticism of the T**** regime will be prosecuted. Public demonstrations will be crushed by military force as the country is bent to the will of a heavy-handed autocrat unencumbered by the restraint of the rule of law. I’m not making this up; this is what he has promised. 

    For the past decade, Donald T**** has told us who and what he is and how he intends not to govern, but to rule. Yet millions of Americans willfully chose either not to believe or worse, to do so. True, prices for food, gas and some other important commodities which, as he has promised, a president can’t simply “fix,” are squeezing people’s budgets. The American economy is stronger than any other country in the world. It didn’t matter. His simplistic political message was composed of evoking a false nostalgia of a low inflation and high-living economy he did not create, and fighting an immigration crisis that does not exist. Coupled with a dark vision of America’s future, and virtually all of it based on lies, this was T****’s essential message. He repeated this false reality ad nauseam, and it was enough.

But his attraction runs much deeper than his fanciful political posturing. The well of support from his MAGA base of older, mostly under-educated Americans (53% of white women and 59% of white men voted for T****) is internal, gut level, and answers to no logical reasoning. Demographic and inevitable, these people know that by 2050, white people will be in a minority in this country. They believe the ultra-Right’s conspiratorial Replacement Theory which T**** promotes and which alleges that Democrats are allowing millions of Brown people into the country (his “Poisoning America blood” claim) and asserting that they will all vote for Democrats against them. Knowing that they are coming to the end the era of white privilege, T****’s conservative, right-wing followers respond viscerally and are preparing to respond violently to his racist messaging. They are afraid that, when the tipping point comes, people of color will do to them what they have been doing to people of color for over 400 years. T**** and the MAGA-Right channel that fear into votes. 

For in truth, Donald T**** is not a lighthouse shining on a brighter future. To the overwhelming majority of his followers he is, rather, a mirror. He is the emperor with no clothes: misogynist, racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, Islamophobic, under-educated, crude and vulgar, unsophisticated and unschooled in history, science or the arts. His followers recognize these dark, uncomfortable and unholy places in themselves. His arrogant, unapologetic persona is what they would wish to be if they, too, were fabulously wealthy and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame. To them he has become an icon to which they can genuflect, and they follow him almost as a matter of faith.

     Here is the tragedy I see unfolding. Historically, autocratic power only expands its grip. Thankfully, I will not be around to see the worst of this, but my children will. And my grandchildren. And my great-grandchildren. And so will yours. Traditional liberal platitudes like “safeguarding our institutions,” or “keeping democracy alive,” or “we are all in this together” will be of little avail against a rising tide of autocratic rule. 

And do not believe for a moment that once T**** and the MAGAs are established in the White House that they will leave of their own volition. He has already said that he should never have left office after his defeat in 2020, and there is no reason to believe they will voluntarily do so in 2028. What will come is already being scripted by the ultra Right, a suspension of the constitution followed by one-party, dictatorial rule. Derailing and defeating this openly-espoused plot can easily tear the country apart. There will be violence. This is what I fear is in store for America.

     The dilemma is, how should people who love and wish to preserve our democracy respond? As with any dictator, submission to T**** and the MAGAs is unacceptable. That is what tyrants require. But the answer to the existential threat T**** poses cannot be to tell ourselves that he’s not really like that, or that he’s lying as usual and doesn’t really mean it, or that if we simply endeavor to go along to get along, all will eventually be OK. No, that will only lead to ruin. 

      Because if History teaches us nothing else, it teaches us this: There is only one response to what is in store for ourselves, for our families, for our country. There is only one response to the rise of autocratic, dictatorial  rule. Only one way to preserve freedom and a way of life. Only one path forward. 

From the Maccabees in the Holy Land in the 2nd century BCE to the Maquis in France in the Second World War, that path is written large in the annals of human civilization.

RESIST