'Heartbreakingly Devastating': US Reportedly Plans to Approve $680 Million in Arms to Israel

I am so completely heartbroken. And infuriated with Biden. Just outraged! This is pure psychopathic madness. Just utter brutal insanity. It is this horrifying genocide that will forever be the legacy of Joe Biden and his administration. Period. — Molly 

The Israeli military launched an airstrike on the al-Qassam Mosque and its surroundings in Gaza City's Nuseirat refugee camp on November 27, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

"The Biden administration seems to be ready and willing to keep piling more and more, despite Gaza descending into what President Biden just yesterday described as 'hell,'" said Amnesty International USA.

By Jessica Corbett

Just hours after a cease-fire between the Israeli government and Lebanese group Hezbollah took effect, the Financial Times revealed that "U.S. President Joe Biden has provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel," which has also spent the past nearly 14 months decimating the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the British newspaper reported that "U.S. officials recently briefed Congress on the plan to provide thousands of additional joint direct attack munition kits to Israel, known as JDAMS, as well as hundreds of small-diameter bombs."

The Biden administration's decision to advance the sale was subsequently confirmed by Reuters, which reported that "the package has been in the works for several months. It was first brought to the congressional committees in September then submitted for review in October."

Human rights advocates critical of Israel's assaults on Lebanon and Gaza—which has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—responded with alarm to the new reporting.

"If these reports are true, it's heartbreakingly devastating news," said Amnesty International USA. "These are the weapons that our research has shown were used to wipe out entire families, without any discernable military objective."

Amnesty highlighted a trio of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have halted some arms sales to Israel. Although they failed to pass the Senate last week, the group was among several that noted over the course of three votes, 17, 18, and 19 senators supported halting weapons sales, "sending a clear signal that U.S. policy must change."

"Yet, the Biden administration seems to be ready and willing to keep piling more and more, despite Gaza descending into what President Biden just yesterday described as 'hell,'" Amnesty added Wednesday. "Sending more weapons that have been used to maim and kill with impunity doesn't just put in jeopardy Palestinian lives and the elusive cease-fire the president is seeking, but also President Biden's own legacy."

The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project declared Wednesday that "President Biden is spending the final days of his presidency going against the will of most Americans, U.S. law, and international law."

"The weapons included in this package have been used by Israel in numerous apparent war crimes," the organization noted. "On July 13, 2024, Israel attacked a so-called 'safe zone' in al-Mawasi, in which internally displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing at least 90 people and injuring hundreds more. A CNN investigation found that Israel carried out this attack with at least one JDAM."

John Ramming Chappell, an adviser on legal and policy issues at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, similarly stressed that "these are the very same weapons that for months Israeli forces have used to kill Palestinian civilians and violate international humanitarian law."

"Continuing arms transfers risks making the United States and US officials complicit in war crimes," he said. "These arms sales are unlawful as a matter of both U.S. and international law. They are immoral. The congressional committees of jurisdiction can and must place a hold on the sales."

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, pointed out that "aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity is itself a crime for which U.S. officials may (and should) face prosecution at the ICC."

Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, though Palestine is. Both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security adviser have attacked the warrants for Israeli leaders.

In a speech to Israelis on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that one of the reasons for the cease-fire in Lebanon "is to give our forces a breather and replenish stocks. And I say it openly, it is no secret that there have been big delays in weapons and munitions deliveries. These delays will be resolved soon. We will receive supplies of advanced weaponry that will keep our soldiers safe and give us more strike force to complete our mission."

According to the Financial Times:

U.S. officials have denied there is any explicit link between the cease-fire deal and approval for the latest weapons delivery. While the cease-fire deal includes a so-called side letter from the U.S. to Israel, setting out Washington's support for a certain freedom of Israeli action, people familiar with the text said it included no guarantees of weapon sales.

U.S. officials also deny that there have been deliberate delays to weapons shipments, aside from shipments of 2,000-pound bombs, which Biden paused earlier this year over concerns about their use in densely populated areas of Gaza.

The Times of Israelreported that Biden's State Department declined to confirm the advancement of the package but said that U.S. support for Israel in the face of Iran-backed threats is "unwavering" and all weapon transfers are carried out in line with federal law.

"We have made clear that Israel must comply with international humanitarian law, has a moral obligation and strategic imperative to protect civilians, investigate allegations of any wrongdoing, and ensure accountability for any abuses or violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law," the State Department said.

As of Wednesday, officials in Gaza said the death toll had hit at least 44,282 Palestinians with another 104,880 people injured.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2024-us-arms-to-israel

EXCELLENT — Native Americans Hold National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving

"We must re-evaluate what we've been taught about the history of this land and recognize that genocide, extraction, and exploitation of our lands and communities continue today." Just imagine our society being radically transformed into one which "organizes itself according to need and not to profit." Just imagine. — Molly 

A speaker is introduced at the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts on November 28, 2024. (Photo: screenshot/hate5six/YouTube)

"'Thanksgiving' is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation," said the Indigenous Environmental Network.

By Jessica Corbett

In contrast with Thanksgiving celebrations across the United States on Thursday, Native Americans held a National Day of Mourning, promoted accurate history, and championed Indigenous voices and struggles.

Despite rainy conditions, the United American Indians of New England held its 55th annual National Day of Mourning at Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Kisha James, who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and also Oglala Lakota, shared how her grandfather founded the event in 1970 and pledged to continue to "tear down the Thanksgiving mythology."

"The past influences the present" and "the settler project" continues with racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, James told the crowd. "The Pilgrims are not ancient history."

James took aim at fossil fuel pipelines, oil rigs, skyscrapers, corporations, the U.S. military, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of immigrants, and declared that "no one is illegal on stolen on land."

Jean-Luc Pierite, a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and president of the board of directors of the North American Indian Center of Boston who helped organize this year's gathering, toldUSA Today that "while we are mourning some tragic history but also contemporary issues, we are also expressing gratitude for each [other] and building this community space."

"Coming together as a community for a feast and to express gratitude—that's not something that was imported to this continent because of colonization," Pierite said. "Indigenous peoples have had these practices going back beyond, beyond colonial contact."

This year's event in Plymouth included speeches about the suffering of Palestinians—as Israel wages a U.S. government-backed war on the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 44,330 people, injured 104,933, and led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—and of people impacted by extractive industries.

"The message from Indigenous peoples internationally has been consistent: that we need to center the development of traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, and move away from fossil fuel extractive economies," said Pierite. "At this time the world needs Indigenous peoples."

In New York City, police arrested 21 pro-Palestinian protesters who blocked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route.

According toABC 7:

For the second year in a row, the group ran in front of the Ronald McDonald float to briefly stop the parade.

This year, they jumped the barricades at West 55th Street just after 9:30 am.

Many sat on the ground, locking arms and chanting "Free, free Palestine!"

Others held a banner behind them, reading "Don't celebrate genocide! Arms embargo now."

Video footage shared on social media shows members of the New York Police Department grabbing protesters and their banner, and throwing at least one person face-first into the road.

Multiple Indigenous groups circulated messages about Thanksgiving on social media Thursday.

NDN Collective said that "as Indigenous peoples, we reject colonial holidays rooted in the genocidal erasure of our existence. We demand #LANDBACK to reclaim sovereignty, repair ties with Mother Earth, and protect Indigenous ways of life—honoring them for generations to come."

The Indigenous Environmental Network similarly highlighted that "'Thanksgiving' is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation."

"We must re-evaluate what we've been taught about the history of this land and recognize that genocide, extraction, and exploitation of our lands and communities continue today," the group argued.

Brenda Beyal, an enrolled member of the Diné Nation and program coordinator of the Brigham Young University ARTS Partnership's Native American Curriculum Initiative, wrote about the history of Thanksgiving on Wednesday for The Salt Lake Tribune.

"Our history books mark 'the first Thanksgiving' in 1621 when at least 90 Wampanoag men, led by Massasoit, walked in on a Puritan harvest feast," Beyal detailed. "Approximately 150 years later, all 13 colonies celebrated a day of solemn Thanksgiving to celebrate the win of the Battle of Saratoga in December of 1777. [U.S. President] George Washington called for a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789 to give gratitude for the end of the Revolutionary War."

"Then, in 1863, [President] Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday to be held in November of every year," she continued. "During the same year that Lincoln canonized Thanksgiving, the Shoshone experienced the worst slaughter of Native Americans in U.S. history while winter camped on the Boa Ogoi (Bear River) near what is now Preston, Idaho. More than 400 men, women and children were massacred."

"This Thursday, my family and I will gather for a meal of thanksgiving. I have extended an invitation to whomever needs a place to rest, feast, and give gratitude. There is room at my table," she explained. "Ultimately, it is my hope that we as a nation can continue to consecrate days of remembrance, where we can both celebrate and mourn, acknowledge and repair, and find ways to be thankful, even with a wounded heart."

Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Diné/Dakota writer Jacqueline Keeler addressed the future under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who won another term in the White House this month.

"In my book Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands, which was published after Trump's first term, I delved into the settler colonial mindset that the Pilgrims landed with on these shores, and contrasted it with the perspective of the Indigenous people of the United States," Keeler noted.

"Origin stories define people by articulating the terms of their relationships with our Mother, the Earth, as well as other living beings, and each other. In my book, I proposed that these stories could act as algorithms," she continued. "The 'origin story' algorithm for settler colonists was straightforward; they came to other people's lands, occupied them, and sent the wealth back to their ruling 1%. Based on that origin story, you can predict what Trump and his base will do next."

"My question at Thanksgiving time," she concluded, is "how do we create a new origin story that includes everyone and puts us on a path to come together as a people—in harmony with each other and the Earth, our Mother."

Lakota historian Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and co-founder of the Indigenous group the Red Nation, appeared on Democracy Now! on Thursday to discuss the origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future, which focuses on seven historical moments of resistance that form a road map for collective liberation.

Estes examined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's battle against the climate-wrecking Dakota Access Pipeline. "I actually look at a physical map that was handed out to water protectors who came to the camp. And on that map there was, you know, where to find food, where to find the clinics," he said. "To me, that provided, you know, a kind of interesting parallel to the world that surrounded the camps."

"You had the North Dakota National Guard, the world of cops, the world of the militarized sort of police state. And in the camps themselves you had sort of the primordial sort of beginnings of what a world premised on Indigenous justice might look like. And in that world, you know, everyone got free food. There was a place for everyone," Estes noted. "The housing... obviously, was transient housing and teepees and things like that, but then also there was health clinics to provide healthcare, alternative forms of healthcare, to everyone. And so, if we look at that, it's housing, education—all for free, right?—a strong sense of community."

"Given the opportunity to create a new world in that camp, centered on Indigenous justice and treaty rights, society organized itself according to need and not to profit. And so, where there was, you know, the world of settlers, settler colonialism, that surrounded us, there was the world of Indigenous justice that existed for a brief moment in time," he said. "And in that world, instead of doing to settler society what they did to us—genociding, removing, excluding—there's a capaciousness to Indigenous resistance movements that welcomes in non-Indigenous peoples into our struggle, because that's our primary strength, is one of relationality, one of making kin."

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/native-americans-hold-national-day-of-mourning-on-thanksgiving

Lakota Historian Nick Estes on Thanksgiving, Settler Colonialism & Continuing Indigenous Resistance

 Such an excellent interview! — Molly

Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

Please go here for the original interview and full transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/28/nick_estes_thanksgiving

EXCELLENT — C.J. Polychroniou: Defeating Trumpism With a People's Agenda

An excellent article by C.J. Polychroniou who gave us the gift of numerous interviews with Noam Chomsky over the years. He provides a vision of the many answers that have long been needed to radically transform our economy and nation away from the imperialist white-supremacist neoliberal capitalist patriarchy that has brought us to the chilling place we are at today. As important as it is to repeatedly shine bright light on the problem, it is equally as vital to again and again illuminate the solution. — Molly

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to supporters at a campaign rally in Queensbridge Park on October 19, 2019 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty

We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests.

By C.J. Polychroniou

A clear consensus has emerged that the economy was the key factor behind Trump’s stunning victory. However, that may not be a very accurate description about what led a disaffected electorate wanting to see Trump back in the White House as the U.S. economy had been in a rather good shape from the second quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2024 and was in fact outperforming all other advanced economies by a wide margin. Indeed, surveys had consistently shown that the majority of voters had negative views on the economy at large, thus revealing a disconnect between economic numbers and public sentiment. Unemployment was the lowest it had been in decades, consumer spending was up, and inflation had cooled off. Yet voters still thought the economy was trash.

The U.S economic system does stink, no matter what the numbers show, and the political system is totally dysfunctional, which explains why so many voters were not fazed by Democrats’ core message that Trump posed a threat to democracy. They were probably wondering where democracy was to be found when economic elites run the show. Forty-five years of neoliberal economics have exacerbated capitalism’s inherent tendencies toward economic inequality, created a permanent state of economic insecurity, and led to the rise of an oligarchy.

It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump...

The United States is the most unequal society in the developed world. The rich are growing richer with every passing year while the middle class shrinks, and the poor are left to their own fate for survival. Massive social inequalities and economic disparities destroy trust and confidence in government and leave people thinking that the future is unavoidably grim. This is the primary reason for the rise of ethno-nationalism and authoritarian populism in the developed world, including of course Trumpism in the United States. It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump who promise a return to a golden era.

The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal. In that regard, there is nothing fascistic about Trump when it comes to the economy. Statism lies at the heart of fascist ideology. The state is the all-powerful entity for fascists. The question of state-controlled planning of the economy is of paramount importance to fascism. For fascists, the state should not control all the means of production, as is the case with traditional socialism, but should dominate them.

The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal.

Trump’s proposals for the economy are seen as a mixed bag. That’s because while he has proclaimed himself a champion for deregulation, he is in favor of protectionist trade policies. But Trump’s trade policy should not fool people that he is not a neoliberal. With protectionist trade policies, Trump, as with the way he runs his own business, only sees the short-term advantages in economic policy. Moreover, protectionist trade policy does not depart from neoliberalism. As has been acutely pointed out by British political economist Tom Wraight, Trump simply uses “the coercive power of the state to force other nations to conform to market-based economic logic.”

Trump has promised an anti-regulation blitz from Day One upon his return to the White House on virtually all aspects of the economy, including environmental and public health regulations. After spending months lying to voters about his knowledge of Project 2025, Trump has picked scores of people who worked on this ultra-reactionary policy manifesto for top posts in his administration. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for the economy, if fully implemented, would create a far more unequal and harsher society as it entails policies that will lead to massive cuts on all social programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food assistance, and calls for massive disinvestment in public services and a host of new tax cuts for wealthy households and corporations.

Project 2025 is the ultra-right wing game plan for the full completion of the neoliberal economic vision and political nightmare that started nearly half a century ago. It will produce far greater social dislocation and greater economic anxiety than any other time since the onset of the neoliberal counterrevolution. Most of those who voted for Trump on the basis of their perceptions about the direction of the economy and their belief that the country is on the wrong track will be deeply disturbed by the new economic and social realities that will emerge in the United States during the second Trump reign and will hopefully rethink their support for Trumpism. The problem is that the Democratic Party is either incapable or unwilling to offer citizens a new vision for the United States, one that will end the rule of oligarchy, restore democracy, and put people and the planet above profit.

Here are some policies that should be included in a socio-economic agenda for the specific needs of the people in the twentieth-first century United States of America:

1. Implementing Universal Health Coverage (UHC). That is, a publicly administered system that guarantees that all people have access to the full range of quality health services when and where they need them. Financing of UHC could come entirely from broad-based tax revenues. Coverage would be universal and automatic. Covered services would include inpatient, outpatient, dental, mental health, and long-term health, as well as prescription drugs. All three levels of the U.S. government (federal, state, and local) would be involved in the health care system.

2. Getting rid of all challenges and obstacles of union organizing, which include making illegal threats to close a plant if workers select a union to represent them and threatening workers with loss of jobs or benefits if they join a union. Current U.S. law makes it difficult for workers to join unions and even excludes certain categories of workers.

3. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining with active participation in social dialogue. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining will secure the best economic compensation possible for workers.

4. Undertaking a large-scale federal program of social housing construction. The United States faces a deep and persistent housing affordability crisis that demands active government intervention. It is beyond naïve belief to think that the market can fix the housing crisis. Repairing the house market with market-oriented solutions such as liberalizing zoning rules and other regulations have never worked. They do not lead to a major increase in housing supply or in more affordable housing. A strong housing safety net should also be introduced to address the problem of homelessness and ensure home security for the most vulnerable.

5. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 or even $20 per hour. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has been stagnant since 2009 and maintaining it is a scandal of grand proportions. No decent society, let alone the richest country in the world, should accept having such a thing as the “working poor.”

6. Fighting poverty and inequality. Poverty should not be defined one-dimensionally based on income alone. Poverty should be seen as access to a variety of resources, such as education, health, energy, jobs, rights and personal security. The task of eliminating poverty should include both short-term (cash handouts) and long-term approaches (delivering social services and addressing the structural causes of poverty with initiatives such as the guaranteed-jobs program).

7. Implementing the Green New Deal. Greening the economy is a vital and urgent task to save humanity and the planet from the impacts of global warming but also provides a macro-economic approach to sustainable economic growth. It’s a win-win situation and only vested interests (fossil fuel industry, banks, oil-producing nations) and lack of political stand on the way to transitioning to a green economy.

8. Cutting military spending. The United States spent $820 billion on national defense during the fiscal year 2023. It spends nearly 8.4 times as much on its military as Russia does and more than three times the amount of China. While the U.S. comprises just over 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly 40 percent of global military spending. Between 2001 and 2022, the U.S. spent $8 trillion on war. The notion that such enormous defense spending is important for national security questions is utterly absurd. The U.S. homeland has never been invaded and no nation threatens U.S. national security. The obscene amount of money that the U.S. spends on defense, which different methodologies estimated to be above $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year 2022, is for the building and maintenance of the U.S. empire. The U.S has over 750 overseas military bases, which only provoke geopolitical tensions and harm the United States, as David Vine demonstrates in his book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Money saved from cuts in the defense budget can go towards supporting social programs and/or for reducing the national debt. Arguing for reforms in Social Security and Medicare when the country spends so much money on the military is morally indefensible and will become politically unacceptable if people realize how wasteful and harmful military sending is.

At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services. The neoliberal claim is that economies would perform more effectively, producing greater wealth and economic prosperity for all, if markets were allowed to perform their functions without government intervention. This claim is predicated on the idea that free markets are inherently just and can create effective low-cost ways to produce consumer goods and services. It is all rubbish, of course; nothing but an ideological pretext to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Neoliberalism is indeed not simply an economic doctrine but also a socio-political ideology that places individual self-interest before the common good, displays indifference to social inequalities and economic disparities and subsequently justifies plutocracy.

At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services.

 Trump’s approach to government and corporate interests, which he will undertake with an extra heavy authoritarian twist, will magnify all aspects of the neoliberal nightmare that has engulfed the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations for the past several decades. Unfortunately, a majority of the U.S. electorate refused to see what Trump really stands for and was duped into believing that their great leader is the one to take on the detestable liberal/neoliberal establishment and create in turn a system that works for the average citizens, not just the rich.

The next four years promise to be one of severe cruelty for the most vulnerable people in the United States and a nightmare for the environment. We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests and consigns neoliberal capitalism to the dustbin of history.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-defeat-trump

'By and For the Ultra-Wealthy': Here Are the Billionaires Set to Run Trump's Administration

No surprises here. Those who voted for this man are in for some deep disillusionment and shocking and painful losses in their lives. I have also posted more of an in-depth look into the cabinet choices for the incoming administration here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/shining-bright-light-on-dark-places.html.

Chaos, heartlessness, greed, and sociopathic values and policies and actions will be the norm. And it will be unsustainable. We need to remember here, I believe, that everything is impermanent — including the horrors and heartbreaks that are coming. And may all of this push more and more of us into actions rooted in solidarity with the universal struggle to create a just, sustainable, caring, and peaceful world. — Molly

Linda McMahon and Elon Musk attend the America First Policy Institute gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

"Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans, but as president-elect, he's moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them."

By Jake Johnson

Since winning the presidential election earlier this month, Donald Trump has wasted no time working to fill his incoming administration with billionaires and other ultra-rich individuals who are poised to benefit from the GOP agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and large-scale deregulation.

In separate analyses published this week, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Accountable.US offered overviews of the president-elect's key nominations and their potential conflicts of interest as Trump prepares to retake power in January.

So far, Trump has announced plans to nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to head the Treasury Department, WWE billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Education Department, billionaire crypto banker Howard Lutnick to head the Commerce Department, and billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency—an outside advisory commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations.

"These appointments clearly show the incoming administration will be run by and for the ultra-wealthy," said David Kass, ATF's executive director. "They've already announced plans to spend trillions of dollars to renew the Trump tax bill, to further enrich large corporations and wealthy elites like themselves while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on."

ATF's analysis, released Monday, shows that the combined wealth of Trump's richest nominees and transition team members—including the president-elect and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the vice president-elect—is over $313 billion. By comparison, the combined net worth of President Joe Biden's Cabinet is an estimated $118 million.

"Even excluding Elon Musk—the world's richest man and Trump's co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency—the average net worth of Trump, his vice president, and top appointees is $616 million," ATF observed. "This figure is over 616 times higher than the mean average wealth of the typical American household, which is a little more than $1 million."

ATF and Accountable.US also highlighted other ultra-rich individuals nominated for key roles in the incoming administration, including drilling enthusiast Doug Burgum, worth an estimated $100 million; Mehmet Oz, worth up to $315 million; and Chris Wright, who as of earlier this month held nearly $47 million worth of stock in his fracking company, Liberty Energy.

Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement Tuesday that "Donald Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans" during the 2024 campaign, "but as president-elect, he's moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them."

"Should the Senate rubber stamp these nominations," Carrk added, "Trump's department heads will be among the biggest beneficiaries of another promised tax giveaway for big corporations and the top 1%, paid for with deep cuts for seniors, veterans, and everyday workers."

Billionaires have already gotten significantly richer since Trump's election victory, according to research published last week by ATF. In roughly the week after Trump's win, the combined net worth of the nation's 815 billionaires jumped by around $280 billion—with Musk's wealth surge accounting for 20% of that gain.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaires-trump-cabinet

Satish Kumar: The Work of Eliminating Violence

Photos are by Molly

 The Work of Eliminating Violence

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.

― Satish Kumar

From The Buddha and the Terrorist

EXCELLENT ― Les Leopold: Revenge of the Deplorables?​

An excellent and deeply important article. Again and again we are faced on every level with the radical changes that are vital if we are to save ourselves, our nation, the planet. This very much includes the long and urgently needed shadow work related to the underbelly of our nation, which I also shared in-depth about here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/reflections-on-next-vital-step-long.html. ― Molly

Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside the Clark County Election Department on November 7, 2020 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Think about it this way, maybe it's the Democratic Party which has become deplorable to the working class.

By Les Leopold

Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color?

More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure.

The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent.

These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

Furthermore, my research shows that mass layoffs, not illiberalism, best explains the decline of worker support for the Democrats. In the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, as the county mass layoff rate went up the Democratic vote went down. The statistical causation, of course, may be off, but the linkage here between economic dissatisfaction and flight from the Democratic Party is straightforward.

Did the Working Class Give Trump 1.9 Million More Votes?

Trump improved his vote total from 74.2 million in 2020 to 76.1 in 2024, an increase of 1.9 million. Did the white working class support him more strongly this year?

No. According to the Edison exit polls, Trump’s share of the non-college white vote dropped from 67 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2024. (For 2020 exit polls see here. For 2024 see here.)

In fact, the largest increase for Trump this year came from non-white voters without a college degree. Trump’s percentage of these voters jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

The Defection of the Border Democrats

Perhaps the most astonishing collapse of the Democratic vote is found in the Texas counties along the Rio Grande. Take Starr County, population 65,000, most of whom are Hispanic. Hillary Clinton won that county by 60 percent in 2016. Trump won it this year by 16 percentage points, a massive shift of 76 percentage points, almost unheard of in electoral politics. Trump won 12 of the 14 border counties in 2024, up from only five in 2016. Interviews suggest that these voters are very concerned by uncontrolled border crossings, inflation, and uncertainly in finding and maintaining jobs in the oil industry.

(I hear whispers among progressives that Hispanic men just don’t like women in leadership positions. Yet just across the Mexican border, Hispanic men seemed quite comfortable recently electing a female president.)

The Big Story Is the Overall Decline of the Harris Vote

Harris received 73.1 million votes in 2024, a drop of 8.3 million compared with Biden’s 81.3 million votes in 2020. That’s an extraordinary decline. Who are these voters who decided to sit it out?

So far, while the final votes are tallied and exit polls are compiled, it looks like they are a very diverse group—from young people upset about the administration’s failure to restrain Israel to liberals who didn’t like watching Harris go after suburban Republicans by palling around with arch-conservatives Liz and Dick Cheney.

Personally, I think many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them. Harris was viewed as both a member of the establishment and a defender of it, and the establishment hasn’t been too considerate of working-class issues in recent decades.

Many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them.

This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues. Since Carter’s victory, these workers have become more liberal on race, gender, immigration and gay rights, as I detail in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers.

Harris’ highly publicized fundraising visit to Wall Street certainly made that clear. And in case we missed that signal, her staff told the New York Times that Wall Street was helping to shape her agenda. It’s very hard to excite working people by arguing, in effect, that what’s good for Wall Street is also good for working people.

The John Deere Fiasco

For me, the symbolic turning point was the Harris campaign’s pathetic response to the John Deere company’s announcement about shipping 1,000 jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump jumped on it right away, saying that if Deere made that move, he would slap a 200-percent tariff on all its imports from Mexico. If I were a soon-to-be-replaced Deere worker, that would have gotten my attention.

The Harris campaign responded as well, but not in a way that would convince workers that she really cared about their jobs. The campaign sent billionaire Mark Cuban to the press to claim such a tariff would be “insanity.” He and the campaign said not one word about the jobs that would soon be lost. Trump promised to intervene. Harris promised nothing.

The sad part is that the Biden-Harris campaign could have at least tried. They had the power of the entire federal government. They could have cajoled and bullied, waved carrots and sticks. In short, they could have easily made a visible public effort to prevent the export of those good-paying jobs by a highly profitable corporation that was spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street and it’s CEO. Here was a chance to defend jobs against overt greed. Instead, they essentially told working people that Harris wasn’t willing to fight for those jobs.

But Didn’t the Working-Class Abandon Sherrod Brown?

I haven’t yet found any comprehensive demographic data about Brown and his working-class support. We do know, however, that he ran well ahead of Harris. Brown lost his Senate race by 3.6 percent in Ohio compared to a Harris loss by 11.5 percent.

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

 Brown knew that he was carrying a heavy load as a Democrat, especially because of the passage of NAFTA, which was finalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency. As Brown put it: “The Democratic brand has suffered again, starting with NAFTA…. But, what really mattered is: I still heard it in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.”

Brown, as a loyal Democrat, was stuck with that dubious brand, and with Harris, as she was clobbered in Ohio. Tom Osborne, the former local labor leader and a refreshing political newcomer, shed the Democratic Party burden by running as an independent in Nebraska. He lost his Senate race by 6.8 percent compared to 10.9 percent for Harris. Brown did better than Osborne but it’s highly likely that both did much better than Harris with working-class voters.

Maybe the Democratic Party Has Become Deplorable to the Working Class

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

• Biden’s ego kept him in the race at least a year past his sell-by date and the Democratic leadership did not have the nerve to act until he completely lost it in the June debate with Trump. (A few of us urged Biden to step aside in November 2023).
• Harris was anointed without going through a rigorous primary process. She failed miserably at that in 2020, and she probably was not the strongest potential Democratic candidate this time around either.
• Refusing to run on a strong progressive populist platform pushed much of the working-class to Trump. The Center for Working Class Politics survey of Pennsylvania showed that a strong populist message was the most popular among working class voters, and that the Harris focus on democracy was the weakest issue for that group. But the Harris campaign doubled down on the democracy issues late in the campaign and paid the price.
• The failure to say anything at all about mass layoffs and stock buybacks was nothing short of political malpractice.
• And placating Wall Street was flat out deplorable.

Will the Democrats learn from this debacle and change their ways? I’m not optimistic. They are the defenders of the liberal elite establishment and have grown very comfortable (and prosperous) in that role.

We may not have all the data we desire or need as yet, but we know this much: something has to change. And that change is not going to come from the old guard of this deplorable Democratic Party establishment.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/deplorable

Pema Chödrön: The Endless Opportunities of a Lifetime

Photo by Molly

 The Endless Opportunities 

of a Lifetime

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

― Pema Chödrön

From Practicing Peace in Times of War

Wayne Muller: Great Healing

Photo by Molly

Great Healing

As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others.  And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

— Wayne Muller

Thích Nhất Hạnh: You Are Like a Candle

Photo by Molly

You Are Like a Candle

You are like a candle. 

Imagine you are sending light out all around you.

All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many 

directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go 

in many directions, and you yourself go with them. 

We are transforming and continuing in a 

different form at every moment.

— Thích Nhất Hạnh