Though the winter remains our current meteorological companion, it is during this season that the efforts to ensure that in August of this year in an hospitable locale our national summit for social justice is empirically realized.

Thus, what is it that we must address to guarantee that this event shall occur? Initially, permit me to formulate what I believe are the most appropriate agenda components.

Item One: From sources that are established global theologies, and secular humanist proscriptions as well as those ideologies that undergird various forms of democratic theory, to fashion the specific normative predicate, i.e. the value system upon which all institutional structures shall be constructed to create and sustain a nation in which social justice is both ascendant and enduring.

Item two: To formulate those systems of macroeconomics and politics that both translate the previously cited value system into operational reality, that unceasingly ensures the capabilities of our populace to implement and retain those laws, policies, and programmatic initiatives to sustain a society that is maximally equitable and affords each individual the opportunity to achieve the full spectrum of their human potential and by so doing contribute to the collective welfare that is societally extant.

Item three: To construct a strategy which utilizes the entirety of those elements and organizations and the persuasive influence they represent to become vigorous and unceasing proponents of the social justice agenda we have fashioned in the quest to fully implement throughout our culture this prescription for an equitable America.

Item four: To devise a specific chronology of deployment that reflects the duties and responsibilities which each member of this progressive coalition agrees to assume, as well as the human, institutional, and financial resources required to implement this national campaign.

In order to accomplish the previous goals a sustained series of activities must be commenced at this moment. Among the specific tasks required to achieve this result during the summer of 2019 are the following:

To initiate a dialogue with various elements of the progressive coalition that is currently extant, including such entities as non-profit social welfare agencies, advocates of community economic development, proponents of criminal justice reform, organizations committed to comprehensive solutions to immigration challenges, those on the forefront of the imperative quest to mitigate global warming, and other institutions whose raison d’etre reflects initiatives to eliminate racism, sexual harassment and the misogynistic abuse of women in this society, and other social pathologies.

Integral to this continuing dialogue will these discussions address the desire of this “community of activists” to participate in this summit and the specific roles, duties, and responsibilities during this unfolding event they wish to discharge.

In concert with these individuals we shall form a planning committee that will formulate the agenda of activities, i.e. plenary sessions, discussions, seminars, and other presentations of which this event shall be comprised.

Simultaneously, we at the Fund For An Equitable America shall initiate a fund generation effort to obtain the resources required to sponsor this event, as we concurrently engage in discussions with various institutions throughout the nation to select that locale most appropriate in terms of receptivity, as well as geographical and logistical considerations, and scheduling availabilities to ultimately determine the site for this summit that would be most optimal.

It is our hope and expectation that at the conclusion of this event armed with a specific and comprehensive vision of a socially just society and the strategy to implement this paradigm, that in concert with those discussions and conversations in which our electorate is engaged throughout this year and more intensively throughout 2020, that our recommendations and suggestions shall enrich and enlarge the parameters of that dialogue and provoke our fellow citizens to consider in a posture of audacious contemplation the prospective reality that the transformation of this nation is feasible and within our grasp if we can summon the volition and the requisite exertions required to actualize a national future of unprecedented equity, opportunity, and interpersonal harmony.

This is the noble and imperative task to which we must allocate our labors and “the better angels of our nature” if we wish to rescue this culture from its contemporary tragic trajectory and its ultimate unraveling either in the crucible of armed and insurrectionary conflict, or a descent into the disintegrative reality of a fascist state in which an infinitely augmented democracy and any hope for its vibrant and seminal realization is forever foreclosed.

The quadrennial madness of the quest for the presidency is upon us. Beyond the perpetual hubris and prevarication that fuels his statements and actions, Donald Trump will pursue in perpetuity his wish to never be absent from either the White House or the airwaves and of course his twitter account that social media source of dissembling, hate, and malevolence, unceasingly spews his deformed perspectives.

With regard to the Democratic candidates though certainly more enlightened and compassionate and infinitely more competent than our current chief executive, we will be inundated during the course of this electoral cycle with innumerable proposals and policy recommendations to remediate our cultural malignancies and the mammoth inequities with which our society is riddled.

In some partial manner though various elements of these suggested legislative or programmatic initiatives may ameliorate aspects of the contemporary tragedy that is at the epicenter of our national existence, you may be certain that what is forthcoming from these candidates will in no substantive, and more importantly comprehensive context reflect a sufficiently broad and inclusive vision of what is required to transform this nation from a polity which is the captive of a miniscule coterie of plutocrats and all that flows from that reality as it relates to the distribution of wealth and influence and the perpetuation of those among us who dwell in poverty and others who are clinging desperately to the lowest rungs of middle-class membership.

At this critical moment in the history of our republic what is required to in some authentic and sufficiently capacious conceptual manner address the enormity and the severity of those forces and institutions that are responsible for the maintenance and enlargement of those decisions and determinations that continue the erosion of our financial welfare and the unceasing diminishment of our capabilities, is an exercise of unparalleled intellectual audacity.

To effect the realization of those innovations that shall reverse these trends and augment the quotient of social justice that is extant, to which I have previously referred no less than an imperative process of social engineering is required.This is the moment in our country’s chronology when we must begin anew the process that animated the establishment of our nation more than two centuries ago, when our founding fathers provoked by a ferocious desire to create a government that would by its embrace of certain democratic notions and the institutional constructs necessary to operationalize these concepts came together in the city of Philadelphia during a sweltering summer to engage in these crucial discussions and deliberations

These constructs have served us in the support of America’s continuance for more than two centuries, though in retrospect there was much that distinguished this experiment in representative democracy that was defective and deficient, from its inception, and more relevantly in the those final decades of the twentieth century and throughout the current time frame have we witnessed the further diminishment of our opportunities and mobility of much of our populace and the ever-receding efficacy of our citizens to create and implement those initiatives which would liberate them from their impoverishment and their impotency to effect more salubrious public policies.

In recognition of these grim and tragic societal circumstances since the advent of the new millennium various scholars and activists throughout this nation have been united by the quest to formulate a response to the inquiry “What systems of government and economics might we create and implement which would both rectify the egregious inequities that are extant in the United States, and simultaneously usher in an era of our national life and consciousness in which considerations of social justice are operative and ascendant?”

Among those individuals and institutions engaged in these intellectual musings and speculations are Norman Kurland, The Democracy Collaborative, my organization The Fund For An Equitable America, and many others.

Though much has been accomplished by these efforts the optimal result i.e. the formulation of a comprehensive vision for a socially just America remains unfinished at this moment. What in my view is required is a national symposium that gathers these individuals together for an extended period of time for the purpose of formulating and finalizing a document that reflects both the normative frame of reference and the institutional structures to execute these values that may then be submitted to the citizens of our nation for their consideration as an option that contains the potential to transform this country into a society which will augur a new era for all of us in which poverty, economic insecurity, lack of opportunity, racial injustice, and other forms of prejudice and discrimination are consigned to the dust bin of our history and we may embark on a path that shall lead us to a future of collective equity, individual material security, and the potential to actualize the personal potentials that inhere within us all.

In a subsequent post I shall address what in my view are the requirements in a logistical, financial, and chronological regard that must be addressed to accomplish this national summit for social justice during the summer of 2019 and the prospective role and participation that those of you who believe in the critical validity of this activity may play to ensure its realization.

In his opinion editorial of today Robert J. Samuelson suggests that the manifold lethal capabilities of our military might has been diminished in recent years by among other primary causes the reduction of those financial resources which previously nourished these defense components and their concomitant capacity to emerge victorious in those conflicts to which they were committed.

Moreover, he further posits the assertions that the welfare state and the programs that comprise it expend approximately 70 percent of our annual federal budget and that the constituency of support for this monetary allocation is both enormous and sustained, while the numbers of those Americans who are strident advocates for significantly augmented defense expenditures are meager by comparison.

From his perspective the immediate requirement is obvious, i.e. to enhance the magnitude of tax revenues that flow to the defense budget and by so doing we shall restore our status as the sole global superpower and thus deter potential adversaries from initiating military operations that contravene our policies, and in those instances when imperative to ensure that victory is the result of any armed engagement in which the U.S. is a participant.

This analysis suffers from a host of invalid presumptions and assertions about the contemporary political circumstances in which we find ourselves as the new year looms imminently, e,g, that the current levels of taxation may not be increased to permit additional improvements and the purposeful evolution of cybertechnologies at our disposal, and that the sole legitimate objective which the “welfare” component is to maintain the viability of those who are the beneficiaries of these programs of financial support.

In the period which Samuelson cites as a relevant time frame those in the nation’s most affluent quintile and most specifically those that comprise the wealthiest 1% of our populace have been the beneficiaries of congressional legislative initiatives which various presidents have signed into law, that have significantly reduced the obligations these plutocrats were compelled to provide to the federal treasury.

To suggest that this societal reality reflects in any manner whatsoever an equitable arrangement of “progressive taxation” is an absurd and cruel joke. Legislation is possible though highly unlikely to be introduced by those in the Congress who depend upon the contributions of their wealthy patrons to sustain their longevity in the House or Senate.

Moreover, though much of what reflects the domestic agenda of support for our nation’s impoverished should be provided in their current modes and formats, surely additional funds that are modest in magnitude could be allocated that have as their objective the formulation of policies and programs which have as their raison d’etre the goal of substantially diminishing and ultimately eradicating poverty, thus ultimately rendering superfluous these federal efforts.

The blueprints of this audacious endeavor may be found among the policy prescriptions which I and others have formulated at the Fund For An Equitable America, and within the intellectual musings of such organizations as The Democracy Collaborative which proceed from the central assumption that our society requires a rearrangement of those institutions that are macro economic and political in character if the creation and sustainment of a culture in which social justice is to become and remain ascendant.

The primary political task before us in this the new year is to mobilize a national constituency of our citizens that will demand the adoption of the principles to which I allude, and shall engage in a campaign of activism and unrelenting effort and agitation and if required civil disobedience to compel those who wield power in our republic to remediate the grievous inequities and oppressive and discriminatory social policies to which so many of our citizens are subjected.

For a fuller exploration and analysis of these realities and the antidotes to their efficacy and continuation, I would suggest that you acquire “America’s Future: Requiem Or Renaissance: An Agenda For The Transformation Of Our Nation And Ourselves.” Rosedog Press, 2015.

Contained within this document are the strategies and tactics which individual citizens and institutions committed to a national future which translates into reality the promises contained in the founding rhetoric of this nation, and which in this moment in our history is being readdressed and morally enlarged and ethically augmented by a host of our fellow Americans who are functioning in some de facto regard as our Refounding Fathers and Mothers.

Join us in this struggle to accomplish this transformation for nothing less that the very soul of our republic is at stake. Finally, to all of you who have found your way to this post I wish you a joyous holiday season and a new year replete with an overarching and transformational national consciousness and the institutional underpinnings which make it operationally feasible.

 On Saturday October 6th, 2018 our nation shall celebrate the Fourth Annual American Assessment Day event. It is an activity which I inaugurated in 2015 as a central modality of my publication, “America’s Future: Requiem Or Renaissance? An Agenda For The Transformation Of Our Nation And Ourselves.” (Rosedog Press).

This undertaking requests of all our populace on the first Saturday of the month of October, to engage in a process of both political and social evaluation, and an infinitely more personal exercise in exploring the various circumstances and interpersonal relationships which are extant within the nuclear family environment in which we find ourselves.

The initial endeavor requires an analysis of the major public and private commercial enterprises in this society with specific reference to the policies and operations of these entities as well as the profile of political advocacy/contributions they support and provide, to determine whether in some quintessential regard they reflect a raison d’etre that supports the maintenance of those normative and institutional realities that are responsible for the extraordinary inequality, the grievously diminished efficacy of our citizens to impact governmental decisions at all levels of our republic, and the perpetuation of those structural circumstances which perpetuate the impoverishment to which approximately 50 million of us are consigned.

The companies that are engaged in the preceding spectrum of behaviors that are both unethical and are enormously harmful to both the social capital and the future prospects of our democracy’s capacity to remain intact and more importantly recapture an ascendant climate in which a dynamic and vibrant ethos of social justice is transcendent, must be penalized for their actions by the rejection of any continuing commercial transactions on behalf of the purchase of their products or services by our citizens.

Perhaps when confronted with the stark and inescapable choice of either sinking beneath the waves of insolvency for their behaviors or adopting those policies and modes of operations that are moral, support environmentally self-sustaining methods, seek to positively impact the mitigation of both inequality and poverty, and are agents and catalysts for enlightened and beneficial governmental decisions that augment the welfare and opportunities of the overwhelming majority of Americans, they will opt for the latter course of action.

The assessment process to which I referred reflects a period of activity which is divided into two segments. The mornings exertions address the practices of those preeminent public corporations and those private companies such as hedge funds and other financial entities that stand astride our economy, in order to evaluate those organizations that engage in ethical commerce and should therefore be supported by American consumers as a reward for those practices.

In those instances in which commercial institutions who by virtue of their greed and cupidity and frequently harmful policies and activities which negatively impact our environment, the prospects of their employees relative to attaining both a secure footing in the middle-class, and the prospective future of a retirement which affords them the ability to exist during that period in a posture of relative comfort free from the depredations of inadequate financial resources, should be subject to the immediate and total discontinuance of any further purchases by our citizens of their entire inventory of products and services, to demonstrate that immoral behaviors will be rejected and their perpetrators grievously penalized.

This “macroeconomic/political” investigation will absorb much of the morning and perhaps extend into a portion of the afternoon to allow for a thorough examination and the formulation of those decisions that will be implemented during the ensuing year by those individuals who engage in this analysis.

The second exercise in which those who comprise the various nuclear family structures addressing these agendas will undertake is the equally vital task of exploring the tone and tenor of those interpersonal dynamics and interactions that are extant within their respective domestic arrangements, for the purpose of both disclosing those sources of conflict and impairment that exist in these families and the corresponding unhappiness, resentments, and deformities to various individuals which these pathologies foster.

Armed with these insights it becomes feasible to amend and replace those elements within these households to rectify these affective conditions and circumstances and produce an atmosphere that will serve as a source of harmony, increased self-actualization, and the collective spiritual and psychological evolution of its participants.

As the universe of those among us who engage in this annual evaluative effort increases, the eventuality of consigning to insolvency a continuing augmentation of those major commercial entities who currently stand astride this society and through their political efficacy and financial capacities perpetuate the mammoth inequality and the virtual incapacitation of all levels of government except in those determinations and decisions which these oligarchs seek to retain their hegemony in this republic, will be accomplished.

These hegemonic entities will ultimately be compelled to seek the protection of bankruptcy and as a result cease to exist as operational entities, or adopt those policies and practices that shall resuscitate both the political impact  which the majority of our citizens may yield (that reflect their economic and governmental interests and priorities) and by so doing substantially diminish the inequality that is extant at this moment in the life of our country, and simultaneously substantively reduce those who are consigned to the basement of our culture, in inhospitable structures of hopelessness,  misery, and the cruelest state of impoverishment.

The principal benefits which will be derived from the exercise to which the afternoon is devoted will produce within the nuclear family structure and the interpersonal dynamics of those within it, an infinitely more humane, liberating, and self-actualizing sequence of individual and collective possibilities,that unleashes the fullest possible spiritual, psychic, and intellectual potential that will awaken and sustain a robust and vibrant atmosphere of peace, serenity, maximum individual creativity.

It is my hope that you will join with me in these exertions this Saturday and by so doing both elevate the quotient of social justice which currently obtains in both the macroeconomic and political realms of our nation, and within the interpersonal dimensions of your life and that of your family as well.

Ah the innumerable distractions in which we are continuously engulfed!!! Currently, a Marvel comics cinematic episode is generating obscene profits and most recently yet another installment of Mission Impossible is currently being screened in theaters throughout the land.

Omorosa and “the Donald” sink to previously uninhabited nadirs of mutual insult and condemnation. Democrats seek to finalize an electoral message that shall in its efficacy mobilize those in the “resistance” to reclaim a majority in the House of Representatives, and the much more daunting task of retaking the Senate as well, in the mid-term elections that draw ever nearer.

As the summer commences its inevitable trajectory toward autumn Americans engage in travel, relaxation, and rejuvenation, and a myriad array of pleasurable distractions and diversions which annually comprise a most deserved vacation period, that requires little of us other than our presence and a predisposition to dispense with substantive intellectual inquiry.

The unceasing venomous disputes that rage among us that are reflected in the fevered swamps of social media and among those who hold forth each day on Fox and CNN and other electronic outlets where ad hominum and gratuitous attacks dominate the dialogue.

Cable television regales us with an ever-expanding menu of entries that glorify and extol the grotesque materialism of the Khardashians and others in our populace who live with a vacuity and a moral obtuseness that is unparalleled.

Netflix, and even more recent competitors for our visual and auditory loyalty extend the frontiers of sexual license and barbaric cruelty, as a national audience sheds its normative sensibilities and a capacity for an empathetic acknowledgement of the tragic human circumstances in which so many who live among us our ensnared.

However, among all of the preceding realities that are extant perhaps the most disturbing contemporary fact is the insularity, self-absorption, and apathy that is embodied in our cultural consciousness and in our companionate disregard and dismissal of those ethical obligations incumbent upon us as citizens of a sorely aggrieved and unraveling society.

For irrespective of the theologies we embrace or the values we cherish which have as their sources humanistic prescriptions, at their epicenter are those crucial obligations that our lives and our labors must be committed to the exertions required to transform the content and quality of life of the tens of millions of Americans who live in squalor, misery, and hopelessness.

Thus on this day the midpoint of August I ask of all who encounter this treatise the following interrogatory: Will you commit your energies and your fealty in the months that remain in this the year of 2018 to an engagement with an organization or entity be it local or national in its scope of operation and influence which seeks as its objective the diminishment of poverty in the United States?

Will you provide whatever material resources are feasible to this cause? Will you attempt to persuade those within the orbit of your family and the circle of your friends and acquaintances to replicate your involvement with institutions of their choosing?

Penultimately, will you unstintingly embrace the central concept that contains two elements of undeniable veracity, i.e. that our society possesses the requisite financial and intellectual capabilities to eradicate poverty; and that all that is necessary to achieve this most laudable and imperative objective is the collective  explicit volition of our citizens and their derivative commitment to do so.

Finally, will you pledge that you shall not cease your activity in this effort until this reality is reflected as the most prominent organic and transcendent dynamic that is operative in this the American democratic experience.

Let us all dedicate or recommit ourselves to this glorious and noble task and commence our efforts immediately.

What precisely does the content of an equitable strategic plan for this nation contain and embody? It most assuredly cannot be found in the current prescriptions which the national leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties advocate. Neither may it be glimpsed in the ceaseless pronouncements, opinions and commentary of pundits, news anchors, and their guests that comprises so much of the interminable babble and rhetorical incoherence of which the content of our air waves is constituted. Nor may it be discovered in the assertions and recommendations which so many of our resident intellectuals propound in academic settings be they think tanks or universities.

The common failing among all these recipes and suggestions for the remediation of this nation’s principal afflictions is that they suffer from the disease of incrementalism,and are enfeebled by the ailments of timidity and intimidation by those whose financial largesse maintains these organizations, and whose irreducible financial and political interests are implacably opposed to any initiatives or innovative scholarship, which demands at its epicenter the transformation of the institutional predicates upon which this culture presently resides.

The fundamental premise which animates my perspective and energizes my cognitive exertions proceeds from the primary belief that the construction of an equitable America cannot be accomplished within the present confines of those macro-entities both economic and political which govern the operational dynamics of this country.

The core components of the operational definition of the concept of an “equitable society” demands a formal public declaration as an article of national policy, that we are committed to the formulation and implementation of a multi-year strategic commitment to the eradication of poverty.

In addition it requires the elimination of all forms and manifestations of racial and ethnic bigotry and the accompanying systems of discrimination both economic and enshrined in public policy, legislative enactments, and regulatory decrees, as well as the summary deletion of the ethos and modus operandi of racist-tinged and prejudicial approaches to law enforcement within our minority communities.

Moreover, it requires that substantial private sector or public infrastructure development activities may not occur in a manner that is harmful to environmental and ecological imperatives which support the maintenance of our supplies of potable water, clean air, and both retard and diminish those actions and processes that contribute to global warming, or precludes the participation as coequal partners and financial beneficiaries, the residential populations which these construction projects shall impact in some substantive regard.

So too does this essential value proposition necessitate the inclusion at its epicenter of the restoration of our populace to its previous locale of hegemony in our system of politics, and the simultaneous substantive reduction within these institutions of the dominion of the miniscule few who have amassed extraordinary affluence and the corresponding efficacy, to both shape the content of our public dialogue and civic discourse and imprison the overwhelming majority of our citizens in laws and policies that both enshrine and perpetuate their privileged positions, and ensure our continued occupancy in postures of relative penury and political impotence.

A society in which an equitable dynamic is ascendant must also presuppose a system of public education throughout its entirety i.e. from the initial introduction to students of a grammar school curriculum throughout the culmination of a high school syllabus, that reflects a content of instruction that shall impart the information required to equip students with both the information and cognitive capacities to successfully negotiate the challenges which residency in this nation demands, e.g. to formulate those decisions in the civic and personal realms of their lives in order to function as responsible citizens, and create and navigate a personal pathway toward a self-sustaining and fulfilling existence.

For those who do not wish to pursue educational objectives beyond high school, a national structure of vocational training, apprenticeships, and intern programs, must be provided which ensures those who enroll in these endeavors at their conclusion that their involvement in various career trajectories will culminate in the comfort and security which membership in the middle-class reflects, in both the immediate and longer term.

For those in this society who have been reared in dysfunctional nuclear families and have as a result gravitated to such self-destructive practices as drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of pathological or masochistic behavior, appropriate and adequate interventions are mandatory which seek to remediate these patterns of activity and instill the requisite traits of self-respect and law-abiding conduct, rather than those adjudications whose primary motive is punishment and retribution for those guilty of anti-social acts.

Those corporations and other sources of economic “disruption” and technological innovation will be required prior to the implementation of substantive alterations of manufacturing or commercial processes and procedures, to prepare and disseminate an evaluation these prospective deployments shall trigger in regard to the displacement of the current number of employees, the estimated increases in productivity, the anticipated recipients within the organization of these revenues, the support and retraining programs which exiting workers shall be afforded, and the environmental impact which these systemic revisions shall precipitate.

In those instances in which it is the intent of these organizations to allocate these savings for the purpose of repatriating their shares of stock from public markets and or increasing either executive compensation or dividends to shareholders, an identical allocation must be provided to all employees in the form of increases in compensation, and the proportional equity distributions which their periods of service etc. warrant.

Obviously the preceding enumeration of factors and variables are not exhaustive and thus are certainly incomplete. However, in that so much of what constitutes an equitable reality the composition of an equitable existence in some fundamental regard is contingent upon those economic pillars which support our families and those material opportunities to which individuals have access.

The contemporary allotment of wealth in this nation suffers from an extreme inequality which creates among so many of our fellow citizens a consciousness of anxiety, enormous stress, and profound apprehension, about the present financial realities as well as the despair and demoralization which an objective consideration of future trends and probabilities that we can anticipate awaits us, if the preceding compilation of injustices and inequities are not remedied.

In the very near future it is my intent to provide to the readers of these posts what is perhaps the most important aspect of achieving an equitable society, i.e. the strategic dynamics and specific actions of a political and economic character, that shall when implemented in some continuous, disciplined, and unstinting manner, result in both the remediation of so much that is ethically compromised and morally bankrupt, and the transformation of a culture which once concluded shall in its institutional essence and its daily operation, reflect the fabric and atmosphere of an America in which social justice is vibrant and transcendent.

Insular silos of  media information  in which we immerse ourselves; patterns of residential segregation that reinforce our biases and intensify our normative presuppositions; the continuous inundation by those sources of social media that provide presumptions and assertions about our cultural reality whose values we embrace, that rarely if ever present opposing visions and interpretations of our political institutions  and our economic system and the various dynamics and influences and the cumulative impact which they exert on our nation.

So too do we bear tragic witness to the continuing fragmentation and dissolution of those forces that created and sustained our families, communities, and the universal commitment to our national purpose, are the ascendant contemporary truths about our society in this the winter of 2018.

These forces in concert with the rampant activity of inexorable “disruptive” technological innovations, which accelerate the velocity of automation and shall relegate tens of millions of Americans in a future that looms imminently to the realm of the superfluous, who serve no valid economic purpose and will thus be consigned to an ever-expanding universe  of  poverty, sustained solely by the anemic and wholly inadequate largesse of government and private charities.

And what transcends these realities is the mammoth chasm of inequality that is the current hallmark of the intrinsic quality of life in which we as citizens of this nation are embedded, where an infinitesimal few are so engorged with wealth and so many of us wage the daily struggle to retain our financial viability, where the legacies of racial injustice remain potent and unimpeded, and the virulent and toxic products of gerrymandering and governmental policy in operation in so many political jurisdictions of this country, continue their imprisonment of both minorities and the rural poor in cages of penury and acute suffering.

In the final analysis however it is the unequaled potency of both major public corporations and their  humungous private counterparts  within the financial sphere of  our economy  such as hedge funds and those banks that have been accorded the “spurious” designation of “too big to fail”, that are culpable beyond all other elements of those entities that comprise our nation’s institutional superstructure, for the continued malaise and dysfunction which plagues us.

For it is these organizations who by use of their enormous monetary capacities skillfully utilize these resources to distort and subvert those prospective innovations and defeat and neutralize those attempts and overtures which contain the potential to restore the hegemony of the substantial majority  in this polity, who seek to democratize our political processes and diminish the inequities and injustices which are in pervasive evidence throughout virtually every aspect and facet of our national life.

It is in the intrinsic interest of these entities to foment and perpetuate divisions and fissures in our society and to stimulate the acrimony and contention which reflects our current political dialogue, and stoke the fires of discord and enmity that are the hallmarks of a poisonous divisiveness, and the perspectives of so many among our citizenry who brand opponents as enemies, divergent view points as blasphemy, and dissimilar interpretations of social reality as the pathological musings of the intellectually and morally bankrupt.

This constellation of influences have acquired emboldened and intensified destructive capabilities in recent months and as a result are eroding the very foundations of this republic, the fundamental ideology and consensus which binds us as nation, and the concomitant commitments and robust voluntary support of our common purpose and shared destiny, which for more than two centuries  we as Americans fervently embraced and embodied, and when it was periodically required to protect and perpetuate our democracy gave unstintingly of our selves, our energies, and in in numerous instances in postures of service and  ultimate sacrifice, our very lives, that this  glorious experiment in collective self-determination which throughout its existence has provided liberty and economic  opportunity for so many, might continue to endure.

It is in baleful recognition and demoralizing acknowledgement of these horrific realities that I compose this most recent addendum to the body of information I have provided to visitors to this website since its inception five years ago.

However, beyond stipulating to the existence of these facts and the complete comprehension that if unchecked and ignored these disasterous influences could eventually metastasize into the demise of our freedoms and the inception of a subsequent pernicious era initially of an authoritarian character, and ultimately as the imprimatur of our national life, the irreversibility of a fully rendered and emasculating system that is  fascistic  or totalitarian in its essence could transpire.

In the face of these historically unprecedented  challenges to our viability and our societal integrity and the very continuation of a mode of being however imperfect that has prevailed for more than 240 years, the choices that confront us are stark and unmistakable.

Permitting the dynamics, energies, and influences of corrosion and disintegration to function and flow unimpeded will guarantee our demise as an enlightened bastion of tolerance and freedom that the world has sought to enter as immigrants and emulate in the formulation of their respective systems of government.

To virtually all of our populace that course of action is unacceptable and is in fact morally repugnant. Rather what is required is the formulation of a document that in its capacity to speak to so many among us who in postures of rejection, have determined that the present structure of social reality is neither equitable nor hospitable to the sensibilities  of a robust and vibrant humanistic consciousness.

This declaration must contain those principles that are fundamental elements of a culture in which social justice is ascendant and in continuous transcendent operation. It must furthermore in explicit  terms speak to the immediate eradication of that phalanx of social injustices that have imprisoned those in our nation in enclosures of prejudice, discrimination, and the systematic denial of both educational and economic opportunity, as the result of racial or religious identities or membership.

Moreover, in some quintessential regard it must include those provisions, and proposals that seek as their objective the fullest possible recognition and implementation of primary elements of the sacred promises which our founding fathers enunciated so many decades ago, that as of this date remain tragically unrealized.

Finally, it must present in a comprehensive posture of prospective institutional and policy initiatives, a national commitment to the eradication of poverty in this nation, and contained within that blueprint must their appear the specific recommendations to accomplish the reentry of those in this society who have been cast aside by globalization, the abandonment of corporate activity as the result of relocation, and those who dwell in rural enclaves of the United States who have languished in circumstances of acute material deprivation  and cultural sterility for decades.

This allocation of cognitive energy in the service of enlightened social innovation, this exertion which seeks as its ultimate objective a rendering of those principles that reside at the epicenter of both a Judeo-Christian belief system as well as components which may be found in virtually all systems of theology, and those normative values that are present in the creed of a secular Humanist.

For it is the considered judgement of this author that inherent in that modus operandi and the formulation of a manifesto that reflects and embodies those values, will a sufficiently broad consensus of support and approval for these principles be generated among our populace, that will both transcend our current schisms  and serve as a unifying instrument to both heal the virulent and ultimately irreparable animosities that are extant, and provide the comprehensive pathway to a future that by its actualization will delete so much of our present content of social injustice and the substantive inequities which derive from that reality,  and by so doing usher in an era of unprecedented cooperation and cultural civility.

I have begun the composition of this instrument and it is my intent in the very near future in a subsequent addendum to this website to share its contents with you, and to solicit your comments and evaluation, so that in its final form it may reflect the maximum capability to convert skeptics and win adherents and by so doing commence a dialogue to transform our national consciousness and the subsequent metamorphosis of the American republic. that at this moment is so sorely aggrieved and vulnerable.

 

 

 

 

 

To those who are joyously celebrating recent electoral results in Virginia and New Jersey as an empirical testament to the sufficiency of a posture of “resistance” to the current presidential hegemony, and thus extrapolate that this strategy will be victorious in the mid-term elections of 2018, permit me to disabuse you of that erroneous misconception.

The current reliance on both the politics of resentment and the reinvigoration of ethnic grievances and racial prejudices which catapulted Donald Trump to the White House, by those who comprise a central element of the membership of the Republican party, and the dependence by the Democrats on a mosaic of various entities that fervently champion such  narrow and insular concerns  of which an “identity”  political ideology are composed , are inherently flawed and totally insufficient to either restore this nation’s ascendancy in global affairs or reinstate a modicum of social justice to the content of our domestic social fabric.

In order to achieve the previous objectives it is a crucial necessity that beyond critique and condemnation of  much of the current content of the agenda which this president advocates and is attempting to implement however ineffectively, must a prospective national reality be formulated and presented to the citizens of this republic that contains the potential if fully implemented to transform a culture in which inequality, diminishing opportunity, and the unabated impoverishment of 50 million of us are central hallmarks which distinguish our contemporary social circumstances, into a democracy in which in some intrinsic regard, an equitable dynamic  is rendered and dispensed by those institutions which govern and regulate our political system and our economic activities.

However what must animate this endeavor and the location from which this effort must embark is the critical recognition and embrace of the reality that any vision or paradigm which does not encompass the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans irrespective of their ethnic origins, religious or secular affiliations, places of residency be they urban or rural, or current ideological affinities, or  professional or civic memberships, or the hobbies and leisure involvements in which they participate, is inadequate and will falter and ultimately fail if its transcendent goal is to accomplish the fundamental  reunification of a body politic which is riven, fractured, awash in conflict and basking in the vitriol of a lethal hostility which views those who embrace values or views with which we disagree our not our opponents but our enemies and that as a result a civic discourse of mutual respect and an authentic fervent desire to establish a common frame of dialogue and eventually a locale on which all may stand in agreement is beyond our collective capabilities.

To those who assert that the contemporary realities are so toxic and inflamed and beyond the reach of reclamation, I categorically reject that notion.  What those who comprise the population of the United States at this moment hunger for is a vision of a nation that will both provide redress for those ills and afflictions that beset  us and a future social reality that will in its fundamental essence function in a manner that will finally bestow and inculcate in its daily behavior those principles and promises which were at the heart of the pronouncements and documents that were created by our founding fathers in the sweltering summer in Philadelphia so many decades ago.

By conveying a vision of an equitable cultural future, in which the legitimate grievances of many among us whether they supported the 45th president or his opponent, whether they have been denied economic mobility and a pathway from impoverishment, whether they reside in rural areas in which opioid addiction is pervasive, or in urban enclaves where inequitable law enforcement systems are embedded and where housing is both expensive and dilapidated, whether they are the casualties of a process of globalization and bereft of the educational credentials and skills that are requisite to obtain employment and thus gain access to a comfortable middle-class status, whether they  are mired in debt as the result of loans they assumed to further their educational progress, or whether in some quintessential regard from moribund for-profit entities that advertised curricula for nonexistent occupational opportunities, they are sorely vexed by our contemporary climate of divisiveness and pervasive acrimony and in the center of their consciousness fear that we as a nation have lost our way and are unraveling; it is imperative that the vision we promulgate in response to all these apprehensions and deficiencies contains the capability to redress these injustices and ameliorate these wounds.

For those who are quietly pursuing the construction of those campaign structures that will in the not too distant future become public in their intent and fervent in their operational behavior in the pursuit of the nomination of their respective parties to carry in 2020 the banner of  the anointed candidate who is charged by their political cohorts to garner both the popular and electoral votes required to establish residency in the White House, I implore you to craft a socially just vision and disseminate it to every corner of this nation.  To appeal to members of all parties and those who are not affiliated, to convey the fact that previous loyalties are irrelevant and that all are welcome in this new era of an equitable America.  To solicit all those who wish to join with you in the process of creating a nation where the politics of resentment and prejudice, as well as the politics of identity will no longer be necessary or relevant because a republic in which an equitable paradigm and dynamic is operative will by its very existence remediate those injustices which spawned these political movements and render their continued existence superfluous.

Amid recent reports that the middle class has registered miniscule augmentations to exceedingly modest incomes, though welcome news, these infinitesimal improvements do not impact in any salutary regard whatsoever upon those who remain imprisoned in the squalor of material deprivation.

Moreover, the numerous initiatives which emanate from this administration or any credible opposing source  whether they relate to health care, tax reform, infrastructure repairs, regulatory reform, or revisions in immigration statutes or policies, do not contain a single element within them that is beneficial or therapeutic in its consequences or ramifications for those among us who live in the cruel and dehumanizing  basements of impoverishment.

I am composing this memorandum about the tragic reality of America’s underclass as I prepare when dusk falls in Washington, D.C. to join with my Jewish brethren in the observance of the most sacred of all holidays in our calendar of holy events, Yom Kippur.

This holiday demands of all who share my theological principles that we admit and acknowledge the numerous sins we have committed in the behavior and actions which have been reflected in our daily schedules.

However, beyond the recognition of these slights and failings is there the most important requirement to humbly seek God’s forgiveness for these negative actions, and resolve to attempt in a sincere and continuous regard in the year which looms imminently to comport ourselves in a manner that embodies greater fidelity to the principles and obligations inherent in the practice of our faith.

Beyond the interpersonal realm of my interactions and the personal indignities I have inflicted on others, I am compelled in addition as an American citizen to admit  that I am also culpable as are we all in my view irrespective of the deity we worship, or for those among you who are agnostics or atheists or secular humanists, in the magnitude of those exertions and commitments we deployed to ameliorate the plight of our fellow citizens and noncitizens for whom life is an unending exercise in suffering and hopelessness.

During the holiday to which I alluded which extends from dusk on the 29th of September to its conclusion 24  hours later, we beseech our creator and ask that our humble amends and our fervent entreaties regarding the new year which has now begun, be favorably responded to and that as a result we will be inscribed in the book of life for the entirety of the ensuing 12 month period.

In addition to my prayers as a Jew I wish to add to these normative concerns my promise that I shall redouble my efforts in this new year to more ferociously seek the qualitative alleviation of misery and material deprivation in which more than 50 million of us are mired.

That I shall engage on the 3d annual American Assessment Anniversary which falls this year on Saturday, October 7, 2017 to join with many others in assessing the progress or lack thereof that has been accomplished during 2017, specifically as it relates to those indices which evaluates those policies and activities of major public and private companies within our economy.

Among the most significant  measurements are those that reflect  the magnitude of those in its employ who receive wages and salaries which enable a comfortable middle-class existence, their capabilities to obtain equity positions within these enterprises at minimal cost, and their access to retirement programs which enable the maintenance of this middle class status.

Further considerations relate to the participation of these employees as members of the Board of Directors, and other policy formulating mechanisms and committees within these corporations, that reflect both the character and content of the workplace environment, and the degree to which its operations embodies a robust democratization of this milieu.

External to these companies and their operations  are their behaviors which reflect environmental stewardship, the support of enlightened and democratizing legislation and public overtures and initiatives which in some innate regard reduce inequality and substantively mitigate poverty.

These tragic circumstances may be found throughout those urban areas and rural enclaves where so many currently languish in states of unemployment, opioid addiction, physical infirmities and psychological pathologies, as well as more diffuse and pervasive states of social dysfunction and the gnawing sensibility that theirs is  a life which our society adjudicates to be superfluous and  thus lacks  intrinsic value and the concomitant  necessity for its continuance.

We must in this new year redouble our exertions and formally declare as a transcendent national objective that we shall martial the totality of our societal resources, material, spiritual, and political to institute and remain fiercely and unrelentingly engaged in a multi-year campaign to eradicate poverty in the United States.

The strategic paradigm which we at the Fund For An Equitable America have formulated contains the capability to achieve this goal and it is our fervent hope that the conversations in which we are involved at this moment shall result in the award of those funds to operationalize this activity as a national demonstration initiative within three rural counties of the state of New York,

Beyond this specific proposal we applaud and vigorously support the efforts of so many enlightened individuals and inspired institutions who are devoting the totality of their resources to transform a culture that has so horribly foundered in its recent history and current trajectory and desperately requires the ministrations of all who are capable and so intensely desire to witness within their lifetimes a nation that with our continuing aid and our unrelenting energy shall ultimately realize the fullness of those promises that were articulated in the City of Philadelphia during a sweltering summer 241 years ago.

Regardless of where you presently stand on the continuum of a religious or secular embrace with timeless theological principles or a normative code which does not contain a deity within its construction, I invite you as my fellow Americans to join with me in this crucial undertaking to create a nation which in its daily existence shall be a testament to a vibrant  portrait of a society in which social justice is both ascendant and describes its fundamental character.

 

 

 

 

In this most contentious era of tweets and counter-tweets, of warring political factions, and ideological hostility, a most wonderful and salutary activity is taking root in three rural counties of New York State in the quest to eradicate poverty in these areas.

Within Allegany, Steuben, and Tompkins counties  elements of both the social political and academic establishment, as well as those who currently dwell in impoverished circumstances, in concert with the Washington, D.C. entity, The Fund For An Equitable America, are demonstrating that fruitful collaboration and inter-party cooperation is both possible and enormously desirable in the quest to achieve significant increments in the magnitude of social justice that is extant in these vicinities.

Providing crucial leadership in this undertaking are three components of Cornell’s Cooperative Extension system within these counties, in tandem with organizations that provide critical services to the destitute residents of these geographical expanses.

What distinguishes this endeavor from all other policy and or programmatic approaches which seek as their goal the elimination of poverty in in rural sections of the United States is the  tri-parte structure of principles that undergirds this initiative.

This typology reflects the explicit commitment to the eradication of poverty in these areas  as an overarching explicit goal of this activity; the strategic planning context within which the entirety of this transformational process unfolds, as well as the paradigm  of a vibrant, self-sustaining middle-class communities which this multi-year process shall create as the result of the establishment of for-profit community based commercial enterprises.

The specific mechanism that animates this dynamic is  the  provision of products and services to non-profit anchor institutions in these counties, e.g. health-care centers and hospitals, universities, county and municipal governments, etc. and most importantly the inclusion of those significant private sector entities as participants in these commercial transactions with this community of local entrepreneurs as well.

It is the preceding variables which exponentially augment the efficacy of more traditional efforts to invoke and operationalize “community wealth-building” concepts that are extant in various locales in this nation.

Moreover, the revolutionary paradigm/protocol that we are in the process of implementing will yield great benefits not solely for those in upstate New York, but shall also be applicable with little revision or alteration in every rural county in this nation in which so many of our citizens currently languish in circumstances of impoverishment, dysfunction, demoralization and most tragically due to this constellation of grim and tragic realities in which they are imprisoned a state of paralyzing hopelessness.

The final tasks that remain to be accomplished in translating our proposal into reality is to obtain the vigorous support of numerous members of the bi-partisan political coalition that represents the citizens of New York at both the local and state levels, as well as those who represents its interests in both the House and Senate as well.

When these letters of support and endorsement have been obtained in the very near future we shall armed with these powerful missives of approbation, engage in a vigorous dialogue with those in the philanthropic community and various governmental programs at the federal, regional, and state levels of government whose mandate is to address in an ameliorative posture the plight of our nation’s poor to obtain the financial resources to render this audacious initiative operational prior to the conclusion of 2017.

To those of you who occupy positions of responsibility in various foundations and philanthropic ventures and are currently engaged in the search for unique paradigms and novel approaches that may contain the potential to greatly diminish if not completely eliminate poverty in America, we respectfully request that you look no further but rather join with us as partners in our most noble and enormously efficacious prescription to administer to the reality of poverty in this country a lethal injection which shall bring to a close this social affliction that has plagued this society since its founding 241 years ago.

What more appropriate time to be engaged in this activity then the present as we as a national community prepare to celebrate our founding as a great republic more than two centuries ago.

Let us complete the tasks necessary to make live in the lives of ALL our citizens the promises our founding fathers enunciated  during that sweltering summer in Philadelphia so many decades ago.