My youngest son shared this with me. Excellent. Chilling. And it illuminates and proves unequivocally that Trump plans to implement Project 2025 if he is elected. People need to know and understand this. Everything is at stake in this upcoming election. — Molly
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
The “Party of Lincoln,” as Republicans call themselves, seems intent on undermining just about everything President Abraham Lincoln lived and died for. This includes Republican efforts to upend the way elections are run, by restricting who gets to vote, how voting is conducted and how votes are counted and certified. The outcome of the tight presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will hinge on the votes in a handful of swing states. From Georgia to Arizona, Nevada to Michigan, Republicans are mounting an all-out assault on the election process that journalist Ari Berman refers to as a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”
“It appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins,” Berman said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “They’re doing exactly what Trump wanted them to do in 2020. Trump made Georgia the epicenter of the attempt to try to overturn the election. He asked local and State Board of Elections and election officials not to certify the election. They refused to do so; they followed the law. It seems like in 2024 they’re going to extraordinary lengths to try to implement the measures that failed in 2020, to try to rig the election for Trump.”
Georgia Republicans altered how counties count and certify votes. The Democratic Party of Georgia, the Democratic National Committee, and ten Democratic county election officials from across Georgia have sued, seeking to roll back the changes. Their lawsuit argues, “Georgia’s State Election Board has passed a host of last-minute rules that threaten to sow chaos and impede the vote-canvassing process.”
Berman warns, “These state and local election boards have been taken over, in some cases, by election deniers, by MAGA extremists…The administration of elections matters so much because you can cast a vote, you can have your vote counted, but it doesn’t actually matter until votes are certified.”
In Texas, the Republican-controlled state government has for years tried to restrict voting in districts where Democratic candidates do well. Donald Trump won Texas by over 5 percentage points in 2020, but Biden won the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, El Paso as well as the Rio Grande Valley.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week that he has purged over one million voters from Texas voter rolls. This increasingly common tactic inevitably removes legally-registered voters, often through faulty data screens that target likely Democratic voters.
Meanwhile, Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s currently agreed to do community service to avoid a felony criminal securities fraud trial, and survived an unrelated impeachment trial in the Republican-controlled state senate, has been raiding non-profit organizations that provide services to immigrant and Latino communities.
Last week, under Paxton’s orders, the homes of a dozen members of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, were raided and searched by Texas authorities, including SWAT teams. One activist’s door was broken down. Texas House candidate Cecilia Castellano, running for an open seat to represent Uvalde, the town devastated by one of the worst school shootings in US history, had her home raided. Government agents took her cell phone and, weeks ahead of election day, threw her campaign into chaos.
LULAC said in a statement, “Attorney General Paxton’s actions clearly aim to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.” LULAC has called on the Justice Department to investigate Paxton over the raids.
Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, said on Democracy Now!, “In the last U.S. Census, they reported 12.1 million Latinos in the state of Texas. For the first time, Latinos actually outnumber non-Hispanic whites, which is at 12 million. When you take into account not just the Latino population in the state of Texas, but the African American and Asian population…the minority community in Texas now stands at over 60%. Texas is and has been a majority-minority state. So, we see these, effectively, as tactics for the Republicans to actually stay in control of the government in Texas.”
If further evidence of Republican attempts to subvert the will of the voters were needed, Pluribus News, a non-profit news organization, reports that Republican-controlled state governments are altering language on progressive state ballot initiatives to confuse or mislead voters. Arizona, for example, inserted “unborn human being” in place of fetus or embryo in the ballot initiative intended to guarantee the right to an abortion. Voters in Florida and Ohio will face similar confusing language in their ballot initiatives.
In President Lincoln’s final public address, three days before his assassination, Lincoln advocated that the right to vote be granted to formerly enslaved Black men (as only men could legally vote, until 1920). The Republican Party of today, desperate to suppress the votes of people of color, could not be further from the Party of Lincoln.
Such an excellent, wise, and urgent article from David Korten!! I have read most of David's books, have seen him speak multiple times over many years, and recommend his work to everyone.
If we wonder what drives poverty, wars, violence, and the suffering and anger and desperation that drives millions of Americans to be pulled in by the likes of someone like Donald Trump, we must understand that the status quo — of neoliberalism and the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks words) that we've lived under for so long — must go. It must! — Molly
David writes: "According to Oxfam, just from December 2020 to January 2024 the richest five men in the world more than doubled their combined fortunes from US$405 billion to US$869 billion... Eliminating extreme levels of wealth and poverty requires a radical transition from our days of rule by the kings and queens of the imperial era, for whom billionaires are modern stand-ins. As we have put kings, queens, and monarchy behind us, so too we must put billionaires and conventional profit-maximizing corporate forms behind us."
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David Korten | August 30, 2024
“We have sufficient for everybody’s needs, not for greed.” Gandhi
We can indeed meet everyone’s needs. But to do so, we must deal with our current greed-driven global economy. We must not only assist and build up opportunities for those at the bottom, we must also bring down the wealth of those at the top. Fortunately, there are many ways we can do that.
Oxfam’s January 2024 Inequality Inc. briefing paper sums up the extent of our problem.
According to Oxfam, just from December 2020 to January 2024 the richest five men in the world more than doubled their combined fortunes from US$405 billion to US$869 billion. One billion dollars is 1000 million dollars. These five individuals averaged $174 billion each in financial assets. For the first half of the year 2023, the world’s 500 richest people—all multi-billionaires—averaged a growth in their individual assets of $14 million each day.
During this same period nearly 5 billion of Earth’s people—more than half of all humans—became poorer and more desperate in their daily effort to acquire a means of living. Nearly half of the world’s people now struggle to live on an income of less than $6.85 per day. Less than the cost of one McDonald’s cheeseburger with a cup of coffee. That may be adequate for one lunch, but no breakfast. No dinner. No place to live. No family. No medical care.
Some inequality is natural and inevitable. Our current inequality is beyond obscene. Modern societies have become so focused on money that we ignore the consequences of prioritizing financial return over all other indicators of economic progress. The resulting growth of the financial assets of the already wealthy and the debts of the already indebted creates an ever-widening gap between the two. This deepens the suffering of the poor and dilutes the potential for building up the middle. The rich gain increasing temporary advantage, seemingly unaware that they are destroying Earth’s capacity to sustain life. The result is a future with no winners.
Bear in mind that much of the growth in billionaire wealth is unrelated to any contribution to the wellbeing of people and nature. Rather it comes from predatory financial games, such as the creation of derivatives and cryptocurrencies that produce nothing of real value. And private equity strategies that strip successful businesses of their assets for short-term personal gain—often at the direct expense of the less advantaged.
Eliminating extreme levels of wealth and poverty requires a radical transition from our days of rule by the kings and queens of the imperial era, for whom billionaires are modern stand-ins. As we have put kings, queens, and monarchy behind us, so too we must put billionaires and conventional profit-maximizing corporate forms behind us.
The United States defines the challenge. Since our founding, we have presented ourselves to the world as an exemplar of political democracy. We have indeed made substantial progress since our founding by white male slave owners who crafted a constitution that enshrined slavery and gave the vote only to white male property owners like themselves. After years of struggle, we have come a long way, yet remain far from our goal of a true middle-class democracy in which everyone has enough, and we each have an equal voice in decision making.
To achieve that goal, we must radically revise our tax codes and abandon economic policies grounded in neoliberal economic theory. The neoliberals promise that tax breaks for the rich will spur economic growth, create good jobs, and produce wealth that will trickle down and benefit everyone. We have tested that theory. Turns out that rather than trickle down, the wealth rushes to the top.
Most of the actions that produce the current failure are legal under current law. Legal restructuring requires being clear that our goal is a strong middle-class democracy in which everyone has secure financial assets, a good job with a living wage, and dependable retirement in return for doing productive work, including care for children, the elderly, and the incapacitated. There is no place in this future for kings, queens, or billionaires. The rules must prohibit unproductive financial games, such as growing derivatives and cryptocurrencies and engaging in private equity plunder schemes.
Here are some basics. Working out the details will require extensive public debate and experimentation.
One such basic is a global tax on all financial transactions involving short-term purchase or sale of significant financial assets—sometimes referred to as a Tobin tax. This should be followed by a global initiative to tax the profits of transnational corporations currently sequestered in international tax havens. Such a tax is currently proposed by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his capacity as chair of the G20. In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar have been joined by 16 congressional colleagues in signing a letter urging President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to support Lula’s initiative. One estimate suggests this measure could collect $4.8 trillion in otherwise lost global tax revenues over the next ten years.
Appropriate actions at the national level will be more varied and complex depending in part on distinctive local practice. In the United States, for example, it is common practice for billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to borrow against their vast stock holdings to fund their extravagant lifestyles. By not selling their stock holdings, they avoid capital gains taxes. U.S. tax policy must address the need to tax extreme unrealized growth in the market value of financial assets.
The U.S. based nonprofit Patriotic Millionaires has proposed some key measures to advance equity. Their publication “Crack the Code: The Internal Revenue Code of 2025,” notes that the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the ultrarich are due to expire in 2025. This creates a need and opportunity for deep rethinking of U.S national tax policy.
“Crack the Code” proposes tax policy grounded in four principles:
1. Treat all income over $1 million in the same manner regardless of how it is generated (ordinary income, capital gains, and inheritance).
2. Provide everyone a full “cost of living” exemption from all income tax up to the income required for a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
3. Impose progressively higher marginal rates of tax on incomes above the cost-of-living exemption, rising to 90% for annual incomes over $100 million.
4. Collect an 8% annual tax on all personal financial assets over a million times the median wealth of the national population.
Application of these various proposals will be a significant advance toward middle-class democracy. We will still have much left to do, but we will have begun to lay the foundation of an Ecological Civilization dedicated to the wellbeing of life on a finite living Earth.
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August 30, 2024
Dear Friends,
One of the major issues of our time – wealth inequality – seldom makes the headlines. While a few politicians, even a few billionaires, continue to raise the red flags, the press, at best, glosses over it, and most in a position to do something about it simply ignore it.
I grew up in a small, prosperous, industrial town with strong labor unions. My family owned and operated a successful local retail music and appliance store. We had local associates of many occupations, but no one I knew identified as either rich or poor. To the best of my knowledge, we were all middle class.
To my mind, the economy of my hometown represented the American ideal. It was the ideal for which I later devoted my life to bringing to the rest of the world. As I traveled the world, I connected with a wide range of economic diversity. It has been stunning the extent to which some of the most caring and generous people with whom I’ve directly engaged have come from or live in extreme poverty, and some from extreme wealth—including some billionaires and their families.
Fortunately, most of the world’s people are caring and trustworthy. Among those who are not, some are poor, and some are rich. Those prone to predatory behavior who present the greatest threat to the wellbeing of Earth and its people are the obscenely rich. Far from being a measure of a person’s moral character—good or bad—wealth is a measure of the power with which people can express their moral character.
As we look at the many dimensions of our current economic failure, we must recognize that to resolve these failures, we must make significant progress toward global equality.
— David Korten
I highly recommend the work of David Korten to everyone.
I am so saddened to hear this news. I loved Rabbi Michael Lerner! He will be deeply missed by so many. And Rabbi Lerner's wise, heartfelt, inspiring legacy of activism and love will live on. Deepest gratitude for this amazing human being. 💗🙏 Molly
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On August 28, 2024, at age 81, Rabbi Michael Lerner passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family and close friends. He will be remembered as a lifelong committed activist who worked tirelessly for social change, promoting the philosophy that meaningful connection, love, and generosity can be a catalyst for social and political transformation.
While obtaining his first Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California Berkeley, Lerner became an outspoken leader in the Free Speech Movement, becoming chair of the Berkeley chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1966 to 1968. While teaching at the University of Washington, Lerner founded the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) and was later tried and acquitted as a member of the “Seattle Seven.”
In addition to teaching, Rabbi Lerner worked as a therapist in the labor movement, creating the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, served as dean of the Graduate School of Psychology at New College of California, and in 1986 co-created with his then-wife Nan Fink, the magazine Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society. With appearances on a variety of shows, such as Larry King Live, C-SPAN, Meet the Press, and Bill Moyers, Lerner’s ideas continued to gain popularity. By 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton incorporated the "politics of meaning" into her writings, a concept Lerner developed with Tikkun’s Associate Editor Peter Gabel. In the spirit of his teachers Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and the neo-Hasidic Jewish Renewal movement, Rabbi Lerner established Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in 1996.
Author of ten books and editor of four anthologies, Lerner’s 1994 book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation became a national best-seller, as did the 1995 book he co-authored with Cornel West, Jews and Blacks: Let The Healing Begin. In 2016, Rabbi Lerner was honored to speak at the memorial of his fellow anti-Vietnam War activist, Muhammad Ali. In 2024, Stanford University created an archive of Rabbi Lerner’s work.
Rabbi Lerner is pre-deceased by his parents Beatrice and Joseph Lerner, and his sister Trish Vradenberg. He is survived by his son Akiba Lerner, daughter-in-law Sunny Lerner, and two grandchildren, Ellie and Jeremiah Lerner. He is also survived by his brother-in-law George Vradenberg, former publisher of Tikkun.
A memorial service will be held at Home of Eternity Jewish Cemetery and Mausoleum in Oakland, California on Sunday, September 1st at 10:30 am.
Donations in Rabbi Lerner's honor can be made to American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (“Oasis of Peace” in Hebrew and Arabic), a nonprofit organization committed to supporting Israel’s only intentional Arab-Jewish village (www.oasisofpeace.org/donate).
It is my belief that if we Americans weren’t so chronically propagandized with opinions that we would discover how very much we share in common with the values and truths and needs that we all share as human beings — and regardless of our politics and nationality, race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, and any other difference which has been used to keep us separate rather than connected. Opinions replacing facts — and larger truths, connection and compassion, wisdom and caring — is a deep tragedy in American culture.
Emma Goldman has said, "Ignorance is the most violent element in society."
And Noam Chomsky has sadly but accurately reflected, "Americans are a profoundly propagandized people... The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.”
Just imagine how equalizing the playing field would become if we recognized that all of us, no exceptions, have been propagandized right here in America. It isn't just those Russians and other "lesser" nations over there. We could no longer hurl judgments or name-calling or contempt towards "those f@!king idiots who believe the propaganda of the ______ (fill in left-wing or right-wing, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative)" — because we've been humbled by the reality that we, too, have been fooled. We too have acted against our own best interests. We too have believed that FOX or MSNBC or PBS or _______ (fill in the blank with any corporate funded, rather than independent, mainstream media resource) is the one that is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Fair and balanced, the news you can trust, right? No. Tragically not true. We too have been the unknowing victims of misinformation and harmful status quo narratives that keep us stuck, ignorant, disempowered, and divided.
My youngest son shared this with me this morning. WOW! So chilling. And both shocking and not surprising at all.
As many of you know, I have spent many years working to understand, heal, and transform from the impact of my mother’s malignant narcissism. Her severe mental illness plagued her until age 87 when she was put on antipsychotic medication, no longer drank, had enough memory loss to not remember what would have been unbearable, and was immersed in my love. The miracle of my mother’s partial awakening which freed her from pathological narcissism was a profound miracle — and very rare.
This will not happen for Trump. And as he continues to experience the grave narcissistic injuries that are growing with so many walls caving in around him, he will inevitably grow increasingly psychotic. This is what I witnessed with my mother and deeply understand.
Not everyone may agree with me, but I believe that it is important to recognize the dangers we are facing right now and, as best as we can, be prepared for them. Not with hatred, name-calling, dehumanization, or any form of violence — but rather, as best as we can, with being grounded in integrity, truth, wisdom, courage, consciousness, compassion, strong boundaries, skillful actions which stand up to bullying and injustice and violence, and a fierce commitment to working together towards a highest good for us all.
And we need to VOTE! — Molly
This is a book that I have been recommending to many people. It holds a wealth of information related to the mind-body connection and the diversity of ways that we are impacted by stress and trauma — and how we can heal. It is truly illuminating. And somehow, even though the original edition came out many years ago, I have only discovered this book in recent months. And I am so grateful!
Gabor Maté also affirms my long felt intuition that a lifetime of suppressed emotions makes us more vulnerable to the late stage of this long term denial of who we are: Alzheimer's. This was certainly true for my mother and grandmother. And this is why I have no fear whatsoever of getting this disease myself — I have spent decades now healing and transforming my young lifetime of deep disassociation, multiple addictions, and other forms of trauma. And this deep inner work has empowered me to increasingly live as a fully embodied — rather than fragmented and disassociated — human being. What a profound gift it is to simply be ourselves rather than unknowingly living with layers of obstacles cutting us off from the sacred being we all are.
My ever growing connection with my Self, and learning how to compassionately work with and heal and love my many parts, has also empowered me to be free for 20 years of all symptoms of the fibromyalgia I was once diagnosed with. In When the Body Says No, there are so many connections made between stress and trauma and autoimmune diseases, cancer, Alzheimer's, ALS, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other illnesses which are so prevalent in our culture.
Substance and non-substance addictions, depression and anxiety, despair and disconnection, a whole variety of physical and emotional/spiritual illnesses, and other forms of human suffering which are often rooted in unaddressed stress and trauma are very common in our unhealthy society. AND more and more of us are facing the harmful consequences of our belief systems, actions, internalized pain, generational and ancestral legacy burdens, and hurting hearts. Connecting with the deep support that we need to address, heal, and transform stress and trauma can indeed make us more miracle-prone as Dr. Lissa Rankin frames it. We can heal. We can grow more and more into the rich authenticity and sacred wholeness of who we truly are.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Body-Says-No-Hidden/dp/178504222X
For Dr. Maté's website, please go here: https://drgabormate.com/