As far back as July a number of articles in such mainstream
publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer,
The Guardian, The Washington Post and others sounded warnings about the threat of
Project 2025. The 7/19 issue of The Week offered a half-page summary of commentary about the Project 2025 document and its threat to
democracy as we have known it. Dozens of
extreme right-wing institutions and activists under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation (look it up in an
objective online source) produced the 192-page “game plan” to take over the
country after the 2024 election, assuming Donald Trump or some other MAGA
politician takes over the White House.
Columnist Will Bunch stated that the document, “a scheme for dictatorship”
that Trump ludicrously claims he is ignorant of. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he
claims. Nonsense. At least 25 (and growing) of the Project’s 36
authors have participated in either the first Trump administration or his
current campaign inner circle, and Bunch notes, the Heritage’s Project website
features a course taught by current Trump press secretary Karoline
Leavitt. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump wrote, “Trump’s attempts to
disown this blueprint for Christian nationalism simply aren’t credible. He may disagree with parts of it, but Heritage Foundation activists played an
outsize role in directing Trump’s policy in his first term and will be back in
droves in a second.” Project 2025 central goals are,
according to Robert Reich, “precisely what Trump has called for” in his
campaign speeches, including “replacing some 50,000 federal workers with Trump
loyalists, more oil drilling, and mass arrests and deportations of undocumented
immigrants.” He’s downplaying the Project 2025 document to appear “less
bonkers to independents and moderates.” Even a cursory look at the Project 2025 document suggests that the
agenda includes a national ban on abortion, elimination of the Department of
Education, elimination of health care security for seniors and limiting it for
others, and (of course) increasing costs for the middle class while giving tax
breaks to billionaires (at a level even beyond his handouts to the wealthy in
his 2017 Tax
Cuts and Job Act, which still is in effect). The Heritage
Foundation has copies of the Project
2025 document available for sale on its website and as a PDF version of the
192-page tome (which it makes somewhat difficult to obtain, if you are not a
true believer or are unwilling to hand over your personal information and email
address). I do recommend reading the
document to get a sense of the full reality of how much these folks believe
that most Americans want Christian nationalism as a replacement for separation
of church and state and replacement of government agencies with for-profit
organizations (in the belief that for-profit organizations always are the best
way to go for the public interest). In
other words, these folks did not learn the functional and economic costs of
handing over military functions to out-of-control for-profit operations during
the Iraq War. Today is there any caring,
thinking American who believes that hiring for-profit organizations to run our
state prisons results in ethically and economically sound penal
operations? Here is a chance to download
a copy of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership document before
they figure out a way to kill the URL:
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
In the Table of Contents you can find topics for all the
most well known agencies of government.
Each topic includes the Heritage perspective on how that agency can be improved. Translation: gutted. The opening statement found at the beginning
of each topic usually reads somewhat
commonsensical. As you move on to each
subsequent section of the topic, the right-wing dogma becomes more and more
obvious. For Example, the Environmental
Protection Agency topic begins to get substantive in the introduction titled
“Back to Basics.” The section titled “Administrator’s Office and
Reorganization Responsibility” suggests the changes that are coming and “Office Of Air and Radiation (Oar)” in a
supercilious manner makes it very clear that the way the EPA is operated and
conceived of is the result of politically and intellectually confused
decision-makers. As you read what the Heritage Foundation plans are for each
federal agency, you will notice the intention is the establishment of a
theological autocracy which ironically proves the Project 2025 document is functionally akin to the Hitler-Goebbels
playbook in method and is theologically unlike any words or actions of Jesus
found in the New Testament in the Bible.
Throughout my political life I have been an Independent, on occasion
voting for both Democrats and Republicans.
However, in this election I am voting exclusively up and down the line
for Democrat candidates as a functional gesture to help save American Democracy…
11/9 – The Pablo Ablanedo Octet(o) at 4:45 p.m. (MP) – Pianist/composer/leader Ablanedo brings with him top-notch musicians Fernando Brandao (Flutes), Dan Rosenthal (Trumpet), Todd Brunel (Reeds), Eric Hofbauer (Guitar), Bruno Råberg (Bass), and Gen Yoshimura (Drums). It should be a fine time at the Lily Pad, where pandemic regulations apply ($15/kids $5)...
11/10 - Point01Percent presents a strings and percussion quartet set and a sax, piano, drums set starting at 7:30 p.m. (PA) – Curator/percussionist extraordinaire Eric Rosenthal brings a wonderful bassless but wonderful trio of Steve Lantner (piano), Allan Chase (sax), and Luther Gray (drums) at 7:30. Then at approximately 8:30 you get all the bass you could as for with Bruno Råberg providing the string work for Eric Barber (sax), Pandelis Karayorgis (piano), and Eric Rosenthal (Drums). It happens at the Lily Pad, where pandemic regulations apply ($15)...
Quincy Jones died on 11/3 at age 91. His life in music is justifiably celebrated in all news media. He had an extraordinary impact on a wide range of music and musicians. No doubt most of the coverage will focus on his genius in the realm of popular music. However, he did have a great impact in jazz as a trumpet soloist, arranger, composer, and band leader. I choose to focus on him here as a fine example of the productive connection of two jazz musicians from different generations, Quincy Jones (1933-2024) and Preston “Sandy” Sandiford (1909-1986). After studying trumpet with Clark Terry, Jones moved to Boston in 1951 where he had won a scholarship to Schillinger House (now Berklee). While studying there he got a gig playing in a small band at Izzy Ort’s, a strip joint in the Combat Zone. There he got his most important arranging lessons from the pianist, Sandy Sandiford. His memory of his studies with Sandiford offers a wonderful commentary on a constructive connection between two generations of jazz musicians in Boston:
After weeks of work I’d bring the score of my arrangement on “All the Things You Are,” every single note carefully written out for the piano, bass, drums, and the horn players. Downstairs, during breaks, Sandy would check it out, then blow me away by tearing up the whole score and saying, “To hell with a score. Learn how to do it up here in your mind. First write out the chords and rhythm parts, then do the top line for the lead horn parts. Then finish writing out the transposed parts for the whole band and forget the rest of this shit.”
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