Deficits

                                                                                   written 1 September, 2024

                                                                               published 8 September, 2024

 

            When the "outgoing" is greater than the "incoming", a deficit arises.  In political discussion, this usually refers to the US fiscal deficit, which has risen from $5.7T in 2000, to $35.3T today.  Bush the younger spent $4.3T on the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Obama spent $9.6T bailing out the economy after banks crashed housing.  Trump spent $8.1T on tax cuts for the wealthy.  Biden spent $7.6T keeping the economy out of depression during the COVID pandemic.  Republicans spent on wars and billionaires, and Democrats spent on keeping the economy alive, both parties showing their core concerns.

            The deficit is large and growing, with real economic consequences, but it is really only a fiction.  Money is a concept, of value only by virtue of collective social agreement.  As a concept, money can be conjured into existence.  When money is deposited into a bank, the bank can then loan out 10 times as much, created on nothing more than "trust".  These days, most money has no physical existence, living only as electronic data.  The 8 percent that is "hard" currency has little physical value of its own.  

            While the fiscal deficit draws most attention, especially during campaign years, other deficits have greater real-life impact, and unlike money, solutions can't be created out of nothing.

            The US loses topsoil 5 times faster than it is being created, for a net deficit of 58B tons over the last 160 years.  Healthy topsoil has 200B organisms per cubic foot, essential for plant nutrition and water retention.  As this living system degrades, and the soil erodes, growing food becomes more difficult and expensive, and what is grown has declining nutritional value.  Yet commercial farming focuses on making money to service their debts, which takes priority over restoring topsoil.

            Another deficit is ground water, which provides drinking water for half the US population, and 50B gallons a day for agriculture.  Ground water aquafer recharge rates vary, some as slow as thousands of years.  As population and agriculture production increases, using bigger pumps on deeper wells, larger ground water deficits occur, and land subsides as much as 5 inches per year in some areas.  The changing climate has affected rainfall patterns, bringing flooding and droughts, making ground water extraction more critical and precarious.

            All physical systems begin to deteriorate as soon as they are constructed, demanding periodic servicing to identify problems and make needed repairs.  This is an ongoing expense, which is often deferred due to budget limitations, or desires to appear more "profitable", creating a physical deficit that grows with time.  The long-term consequences can be disastrous and expensive. 

            The US has over 90,000 dams, with an average age of 60 years.  Engineering and seismic designs have progressed enormously in that time period, so what seemed "good design" at the time is now more questionable.  Add in the consequence of "deferred maintenance", and over 2,000 are in poor condition, endangering life if they fail, requiring over $80B to repair.  As rainfall becomes more extreme, the stress on these dams increases.

            The US has over 600,000 bridges, with 40 percent over 50 years old.  Due to age and neglect, 46,000 are structurally deficient and in "poor" condition, yet they carry almost 180 million vehicles a day.  Mitigation will cost over $100B, and the current rate of repair is half what is required, resulting in increasing risk over time.

            This is just a partial list of real-world deficits that affect our social wellbeing.  These problems stem from the growing focus on maximizing "profit" over every other concern.  For instance, stock buybacks are on the rise, which benefit the shareholders, but reduces the capacity of the industry to maintain their infrastructure or modernize their operations.  As wealth accrues disproportionally to the very wealthy, who then use their political clout to reduce their taxes, cities and states are under increased budget pressures to defer essential planning and maintenance.

             The common factor is lack of whole systems planning and the belief in exclusive gain.  Making money by ignoring the consequences, and getting "someone else" to pay the cleanup cost, is considered "good business".  Our culture honors those who accumulate more than everyone else, but complains when things fall apart, which happens because the world is totally connected.  This is a deep societal dysfunction, with thousands of years of history.  Change may seem slow, but it is inevitable, because the alternative is collapse.

The Unity Challenge

                                                                                       written 25 August, 2024

                                                                                published 1 September, 2024

  

            The text of "Course In Miracles" speaks from the perspective that the root of all human dysfunction is the belief in separation, because it is in conflict with a world that is fundamentally unified and whole.  Aldous Huxley found that every spiritual tradition on the planet has some form of the Golden Rule, consistent with unity reality.  In addition, quantum mechanics supports unified material reality, and the resulting transformative technologies validates that.

            Unity is a challenge because it presumes reality without limits, where everything is included, the definition of infinity.  Unity transcends physical manifestation, in the same way national borders are experienced as irrelevant when Earth is viewed from the moon.  

            But like all concepts, living the experience of unity is the important part, where the real work lies.  For thousands of years, our cultures and economies have focused on material differentiation, with attendant chronic suffering, overlooking the foundation that binds reality and gives it purpose.  So, we have lifetimes of patterning to overcome.  

            It is important to differentiate between spirituality, which is any internal investigation of a transcendent reality, and religion, which is an organization, usually defining a specific structure for the transcendent.  Throughout history, religions, which can be of help with spirituality, have repeatedly been co-opted, succumbing to the egos of men who strive for economic power and social domination for their organization.  They insinuate themselves between the individual and unity, limiting and defining what a transcendent reality is, rather than helping expand each person's experience.

            By drawing dogmatic lines, defining what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable".  some parts of reality are excluded, and the whole idea of unity is denied, the root of all evil.  The excised parts then become the objects of hate, or fear, furthering the nature of the divide, giving self-righteous justification for misogyny, racism, nationalism, and classism.  

            The worst offenders are those most caught up in orthodoxy and fundamentalism.  They worship a little god.  These are the people who hate deviation from their organizationally approved dogma, and will kill in the name of their deity to insure religious "purity".  

            However, every spiritual tradition has mystics, who understand all words are concepts, which can only be metaphors at best, and that any concept is incomplete.  Mystics are open to learning from all traditions, and most especially from the living of life.  

            At the individual level, when the line is drawn at the self or the body, everyone and everything "outside" is something to fear as a "predator", or something to dominate as "prey".  Internal self-worth is then determined by external forms like clothes, cultural beauty standards, and material possessions, leading to life-long acquisition of things.  But things never really fulfill for long, because the yearning is for the internal experience of the connected unity, which nothing "external" can ever satisfy.

            Embracing inclusive reality demands complete social and economic reconsideration.  For example, every meal I eat, something has to die that I might live.  In unity, we are connected, so I need to have gratitude for their contribution to my life, and assure that their lives have dignity and respect, as I expect that for myself.  In a unity awareness, every person involved in growing, processing, preparing, and delivering the food must thrive if any of us thrive.  Since all life depends on the health of the planet we share, respect for the entire planet is essential for the survival of any of us.  

            The root of suffering is being at war with a fact.  The contrast between a unity awareness and our existing society is profound, which explains why suffering is endemic.  Our economy has extreme wealth disparity, where a few people have billions, while millions lack essentials to survival, such as clean water, nutritious food, adequate shelter, and access to health care.  Our society is extremely polarized, with each side convinced the other is an "existential threat" to our way of life, and some are willing to resort to violence to assert their perspective.  Yet unity requires understanding that all these folks are connected, demanding a response different from fear or attack.

            This election, we are faced with two clear alternatives.  The GOP preaches fear, division, and retribution, the traditional consequences of the illusion of separation.  The Democrats preach working together for the benefit of all.  Without a doubt, there is plenty to complain about with the Democrats, but they are moving toward a unity reality.

 

Three Forces

                                                                                       written 18 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 25 August, 2024

            Three powerful forces currently stress civilization: climate change, peak oil, and shifting economics.

            In 1995, atmospheric CO₂ content was 358 ppm, 78 ppm above the pre-industrial baseline.  The scientific community was still debating if the climate crisis was serious, but quickly reached consensus: it is real and will demand attention.  Today atmospheric CO₂ is 424 ppm, and the impact is already here.  Ask anyone who has had their home burned up, flooded out, or blown away.  

            The fossil fuel industry knew about this 50 years ago, but chose to fund denial, because of the money involved: $7 trillion each year, about $13 million every second.  The GOP works for billionaires, so they support this denial, with the Project 2025 goal of eliminating any effort to respond to climate reality.  But those of us who live in the real world, and want a habitable planet for our descendants, must deal with it.

            The second force arises from the fact that fossil fuels are finite.  1972 was the peak US domestic production of conventional oil (everything except deep water, fracking, and tar sands).  At that point, we lost control of the price of oil, OPEC took over, prices tripled within a decade, causing the worst inflation in US history, beginning decades of hollowing out the American middle class.  In 1973, minimum wage of $1.25/hour could buy over 6 gallons of gas. Today, minimum wage of $15/hour can buy less than 3 gallons of gas.

            2005 was peak global production of conventional oil, which amplified the economic crash in 2008.  But in the US, fracking for oil boomed, and the US again became a global leader in exporting oil.  Conventional fields, like the north slope of Alaska produced for almost 50 years before reducing to a trickle today.  A much more expensive fracked well depletes by 85 percent in just two years, and a new well has to be developed.  Therefore, while oil is produced, it is more expensive.  Industry now reports US fracking production is coming to an end, as the few profitable fields are about exhausted.  2018 was the peak in global oil production from any source.  However, the global depression from the COVID pandemic has so far masked the full economic impact.

            There is a third force driving change.  While fossil fuels get more expensive as the easily developed reserves are depleted, renewable power get cheaper every year, as the scale of production increases.  Solar dropped from $100/watt in the 70's to $0.11/watt from China today.  Solar and wind are the cheapest power to produce, and battery costs are dropping while duration and capacity increase.  In addition, the renewable hardware is a fixed cost, with free energy for the life of the equipment.  Electric vehicles are three times more energy efficient, need less maintenance, and the power can be produced anywhere, down to the level of individual homes.  No fossil fuel can compete with these economic realities.   

            At some point soon, this increasing cost disparity will make fossil fueled transportation economically obsolete.  China is already selling medium range electric cars for $11,500.  Low cost electric scooters are expanding globally.  The City of South Pasadena shifted their entire fleet of police cruisers to Tesla.  Even though the initial vehicle cost was higher, the savings in fuel and maintenance costs, plus the higher resale value of Teslas as used cars, saved the city money overall.

            In "Clean Disruption", Tony Seba talks about how this economic shift will be a "disruptive technology", similar to the impact of the shift from horses to automobiles, film to digital cameras, or land lines to smartphones.  The changes will be sudden, massive, and socially transformative.  As the saying goes, the stone age didn't end because we ran out of rocks, it was supplanted by a more efficient and versatile technology.  Seba sees this shift happening by the end of this decade.

            Our existing electrical systems have not begun to respond to these three forces and the coming shift.  In Ukiah, the utility has yet to add any new local renewable production, nor begun to address the challenge of grid capacity limitations.  Public EV charger installations are happening at 1/10 the needed rate.  The situation in the county is the same.  Whether due to climate denial, lack of awareness, or budget limitations, the result will be the same: complete unpreparedness in the face of the coming changes.  We are challenged to do better.

How Rapidly Things Change

                                                                                       written 11 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 18 August, 2024

   

            The first debate of the 2024 election season was June 28th.  Biden's performance was dismal.  Republicans believed they were a shoo-in for election.  Democrats were discouraged and started to clamor for Biden to drop out. The media focused on the presidential "cult of personality", not the party platforms. 

            However, information about the massive GOP Project 2025 was beginning to be noticed.  This radical theocratic authoritarian plan had been under development for two years, but only 1 in 7 had even heard about it, according to Representative Huffman, who is part of a group working to educate the voting population.  

            Wanting to help, on July 14th I wrote the first of four articles on Project 2025, choosing my primary topic of interest: the climate crisis.  The GOP plan believes the climate crisis is a hoax, and intends to destroy any efforts to deal with the climate, choosing instead to invest heavily in their billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry.  That same week, the RNC Convention officially nominated Trump for president, and he picked Vance as his pliable "mini-me", for vice-president.  The Democrats were feeling more desperate, and calls for Biden to drop out got louder.

            On July 21st, I wrote my second Project 2025 article on women, describing how the plan intends to curtail women's rights, pushing them back a century, returning to being chattel for men.  The male dominated GOP assumes women will just "get over it".

            That day Biden announced he would drop out of the race, threw his support to Harris, and the Democratic political world exploded with enthusiasm.  Donations flowed in at unheard of rates, volunteers for the campaign jumped by a factor of one hundred, and registration of new voters surged.  Within a few days, Harris had lined up enough convention delegates to assure a unified convention, and there was a noticeable change in the energy of the entire campaign.  Everything had flipped.

            Trump is now the tired old man in the race, facing a fresh young opponent, his worst fear, a mixed race woman prosecutor!  It was weeks before Trump could even acknowledge Biden was no longer his opponent, and Vance suddenly became a liability, not an asset.

            On July 28th, my Project 2025 article outlined the plan to cram fundamentalist "Christianity" down everyone's throat, because they believed "God was on their side", despite being a decreasing minority of the population.  The next one described the assault on immigration. 

            Trump and Vance have yet to recalibrate their campaign to the new reality.  At every public appearance they further offend, with abusive and angry outbursts.  Vance is now associated with couches and angry cat ladies, and Trump was so repulsive at the Black Journalist Conference, his staff pulled him off the stage long before the scheduled end time.  

            A few days ago, Harris picked Minnesota Governor Walz as her running mate.  He is down to earth and straight talking, a sharp contrast to Vance.  Walz began the meme that that the GOP candidates are "weird", which seems to have stuck.  The contrast between the two campaigns is striking: joy, excitement, and enthusiasm versus anger, revenge, and insults.

            When Harris/Walz have an event, the venue is packed.  When Vance has an event, the cameras have to avoid showing how few people showed up.  Trump seems to have abandoned the campaign entirely, only phoning in at his few scheduled events.

            While polls have been shown to be inaccurate predictions of political reality, the trend has Harris/Walz pulling ahead.  The Democratic convention, which traditionally gives a further boost, starts next week, on August 19th.

            I find it amazing that this race is still being considered tight.  But many voters don't begin to pay attention until a few weeks before the election.  However, the sudden burst of excitement around Harris, is anything but traditional.  Furthermore, details of Project 2025 are now widely known, with almost two thirds the population aware.  Most of those who have studied the plan are appalled, and Trump is unsuccessfully trying to distance himself from it.

            In addition, Trump is not a healthy man, nether physically nor mentally, so there is no telling what might happen in the next three months.  We are in times of rapid change, and yesterday is no longer an accurate predictor of tomorrow.  Stay tuned, it's going to be an interesting election.  Make sure you are registered, and plan to vote.

Project 2025 on Immigration

                                                                                         written 4 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 11 August, 2024

      

            From a unity perspective, all borders are relative illusions.  The climate crisis proves the physical reality that we really are all in this together.  No one country can effectively deal with the crisis, because weather patterns sweep around the globe, without regard for borders.  

            Similarly, human populations ebb and flow around the world, creating pressure at the borders.  Over time, there have been multiple drivers.  Changing climate, diminishing food supplies, population pressures, wars of conflict, economic collapse, desire for economic improvement, or lust for adventure: all have spurred waves of humans to pull up roots and move.  With very few exceptions, everyone now in America had ancestors who moved here from some other country relatively recently. 

            Immigration has always enriched the US society, bringing people eager to work hard, with drive and creativity, doing essential jobs most legal citizens avoid.  Migrants today pay over $100 billion in taxes.  But immigration has also been a source of conflict with those already here, who fear they will "lose" something.  

            Our economic system is designed to extract wealth and resources from other areas of the planet, for our limited domestic benefit.  US foreign policy supports autocratic governments overseas which favor US corporate resource extraction, resulting in massive structural poverty in those countries.  The US is 4 percent of the world population, but represents almost a quarter of the global economy.  The global average wealth per adult is $85K, but in the US, the average wealth per adult is $551K, a distortion further amplified by local inequity, which is growing everywhere. 

            In addition, the US produced a quarter of all the CO₂ ever added to the atmosphere, driving the climate crisis, which falls disproportionally on countries that never received the economic advantages.  The increasingly extreme economic and environmental global impacts, are powerful drivers of immigration today.  Given we have collected more than our share, is it a surprise people want to come here?

            Being the party of the extremely wealthy, the GOP has always been threatened by immigration.  Trump promises to "terminate every open border policy of the Biden administration", "begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history", and "end birth right citizenship."  Project 2025 outlines more changes in detail.

            Temporary work-visa programs that allow seasonal employers to hire foreign workers will be phase out.  Processing and application fees for migrants will increase.  "T" visas, for victims of severe human trafficking, and "U" visas, for victims of crimes that occur in the US, will be eliminated.  The plan calls for adding a citizenship question to the next census to further "conservative principles". 

            Project 2025 will dismantle the DREAM Act, which grants conditional residency and work permits to immigrants who entered the United States as minors.  It will restrict the DACA program, which allows immigrants who were children in the US in 2012 to be deferred from deportation.  

            Homeland Security grants Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to immigrants already in the US who are nationals of a country experiencing ongoing armed conflict, or environmental disaster, that would prevent them from returning safely.  Project 2025 would repeal all active TPS designations, affecting over 700,000 individuals, many of whom have been in the U.S. for decades.  

            Project 2025 directs the DOJ to assist Homeland Security in collecting information about aliens across the United States, and impose financial punishments on "sanctuary cities" that do not follow federal immigration laws.  It will increase the authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize “the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrants" which could affect over 10 million people.  It would “bar U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.” 

            This harsh authoritarian agenda would create an intrusive police state, and disrupt essential food and service sectors of the economy, without any element of "Christian" compassion

            Think about how this impacts you, or your relatives, or your friends.  Is this a world you want?  Educate yourself about the GOP Project 2025, and then talk about it to everyone you know.  Share this information with people outside our local area.  The more people learn about these GOP plans, the more motivated they become to work to ensure they never comes to pass.  Make sure you are registered, and on election day, get out and vote!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project 2025 on Religion

                                                                                            written 28 July, 2024

                                                                                     published 4 August, 2024

    

            A 2024 Gallup poll on Religion in US found 68 percent identify as Christian (33 percent Protestant, 22 percent Catholic, and 13 percent other Christians), 7 percent as other religions, and 22 percent listed no religious preference (3 percent didn't answer).  This is a sharp difference from 50 years ago when 87 percent identified as Christian, 6 percent as non-Christian, and only 5 percent had no preference.

            In that same time frame, church membership declined from 73 percent to 45 percent, primarily among Catholics and evangelical Protestants.  Weekly church attendance declined as well, with 57 percent now attending "seldom or never".  While this decline is mostly young adults, it includes older adults who previously attended. 

            It is important to distinguish between the message within each spiritual tradition, and the man-made, dogmatic rules of the religious organizations, which arise with growing political and financial power.  I suspect attendance decline represents growing dissatisfaction with the heavy dogma, and outright hypocrisy, that oppresses what is essentially a personal investigation of spiritual reality. 

            There are more than 200 Christian denominations in the US, and over 45,000 globally, all distinguished by the different dogmas they profess.  At the extremes, religious sects fight, and kill, members of other sects, and even members within their own sects, who are defined as "heretics".  Wars between Christian denominations have killed over 100 million Christians, and many more "unbelievers", all in the self-righteous assurance that they do the "work of God".

            It was in reaction to this long-standing religious barbarity that the founders of America prohibited Congress from enacting a state religion (which would prioritize one sect among the many), but saw nothing wrong with having religion in American culture.  But the same self-righteous assurance that has historically led to religious wars, is alive and well in the today's "Christian nationalist" extremism, a foundational part of the current GOP, explicitly expressed in the Project 2025 document.

            The Center for Renewing America, a member of the Project 2025 advisory board, was founded in 2021, by Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official.  They have "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society", and lists “Christian nationalism” as one of the major priorities of a second Trump term.  

            Project 2025 claims that centralized government “subverts” families by working to “replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones,” as evaluated by their narrow biblical interpretation of "natural" versus "unnatural".  For the “well-being of the American family”, it attacks gender ideology, arguing “these theories poison our children", and assaults the "traditional" nature of men and women. 

            The plan calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to “maintain a biblically based, social science reinforced definition of marriage and family,” arguing that “families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society.”  It objects to “nonreligious definitions" of marriage and family as put forward by the Respect for Marriage Act, claiming that all family forms apart from “heterosexual, intact marriage", involve higher levels of instability.  It further claims that Biden’s administration is “hostile to people of faith".

            The religious orientation presented in Project 2025 is inspired by the most conservative arm of Catholicism, and fundamentalist evangelical Protestantism, the two religious sects most in decline in America.  The orientation is judgement, guilt, fear, and punishment, based on dogma, not the spirit of love at the core of Christ's teachings.  This push toward theocratic autocracy is a last gasp of a dying perspective.

            At least 30 percent of America does not even identify as "Christian", and of those who do, the majority are not fundamentalists.  For anyone who lives any form of a spiritual path, you know the foundation is personal and interior, between you and however you view the larger divine.  It is arrogant and offensive to have any one group pushing their specific, limited narrative on everyone else, thinking they have “the one and only truth”.  

            Educate yourself about the GOP Project 2025, by searching for "Project 2025 document", or find summaries.  If this is a world you don’t want, talk about Project 2025 to everyone you know, so we are aware of what is coming.  The more people see what is in the plan, the more motivated they become to work to make sure it never comes to pass. 

 

Project 2025 on Women

                                                                                            written 21 July, 2024

                                                                                        published 28 July, 2024

 

            At some point we will view extreme wealth as a hording/addiction disorder, much like seeing a 500 pound person.  "Too Much, and Never Enough" is Mary Trump's book about her uncle Donald.  But, in our culture of personality, the wealthy are worshipped and have traditionally dominated the GOP agenda, despite having unpopular goals.  Social justice progress in the 60's and 70's prompted GOP alignment with "Christian" conservatives, specifically around the issue of abortion.  This resulted in a decades long project to stack the Supreme Court, and in 2022, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion was reversed.

            Much to the GOP surprise, this reversal was not popular with 70 percent of the population.  Trying to distance themselves, they shifted the rhetoric to a States Rights issue.  However, since 2022, all 7 states that had abortion on the ballot legalized it, bringing the total to 29.  2 more of the currently limited or banned states will vote in November.  Idaho, typical of those with an abortion ban, has lost 22 percent of their obstetricians, and 3 hospitals have closed their labor and delivery departments.  Most medical students say they won't practice in states with abortion bans.  But the GOP, driven by a self-righteous agenda, ignores this and pushes ahead anyway.

            Project 2025 is a set of administrative actions the president can take unilaterally, without regard for Congress, individual state decisions, or voter's desires.  The section on Reproductive Rights will remove any mention of abortion from all government laws, policies, and regulations.  Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts writes that a pro-life administration starts by removing the terms “abortion, reproductive health, and reproductive rights, out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, and legislation that exists.” 

            The 1873 Comstock Act, named after Anthony Comstock, a devout Protestant activist who opposed women suffragettes, is still on the books.  It criminalizes the involvement of the United States Postal Service in conveying "abortion-related" material.  Using the Comstock Act, sales of mifepristone, which is used in over 50 percent of abortions these days, will be tracked and criminalized, effecting a national ban on at-home abortions.

            The Department of Health and Human Services will redefine Medicaid to avoid providing reproductive health care and penalize providers who do.  States will be allowed to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans, and disqualify providers of elective abortions.  Medicaid funding will be withdrawn from states that require abortion insurance. 

            Abortion access is currently allowed at VA hospitals, in some circumstances.  The Department of Defense allows abortion for servicemembers.  Hospitals are required to offer abortions in medical emergencies regardless of state bans.  All these will be reversed.

            Project 2025 will reinstate a longtime Republican policy goal, barring nongovernmental organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing abortion services or advocating for legal abortion.  Title X, a federal Family Planning Program, provides low-cost contraception, STD screenings, and prenatal care to low-income people, and has never been used for abortion services.  Project 2025 will eliminate these services.

            The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will cancel programs that are deemed "pro-abortion".  Based on the contested religious theory that life begins at conception, the CDC will “eliminate programs that do not respect human life”, and pivot from "abortion as health care” to “research that supports pro-life policies." 

            Project 2025 is anti-surrogacy, claiming that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them” and aims to end all fetal cell research to “ensure that abortion and embryo-destructive related research become both fully obsolete and ethically unthinkable.”  This includes In Vitro Fertilization, a common aid for infertile couples.

            Religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act would be reinstated, allowing coverage denial of any kind of contraception.  Instead, education on “fertility awareness-based” methods of contraception and family planning (charting ovulation, and avoiding sexual activity) would become mandatory.  Health Resources & Service Administration guidelines would eliminate support of condoms because they are not a “women’s” preventative service.  

            In their arrogance, the GOP is convinced abortion is a passing phase, just a "woman's issue".  Personal empowerment is to be subverted to intensive, pseudo-religious, governmental intrusion.   If you have a mother, wife, sister, or daughter, or are a woman yourself, get educate about Project 2025.  Decide if that is the world you want.  If not, talk to everyone you know about Project 2025, so we all see what is coming, and vote Harris for president!