They're using our own money to rob us

I was trying to be good during Pesach/Passover and not post anything political, but this is what I've been thinking for a couple of weeks or so--the federal government is using our own money to steal from us. *Our tax money* is paying the employees of the "Department of Government Efficiency" to fire so many people and take away so much funding that entire departments or agencies can barely function. *Our tax money* is paying Justice Department lawyers to represent the Trump administration when it defies the courts and violates the constitution. *Our tax money* is paying for airplanes to transport illegally-deported persons to a foreign prison being paid *by us* to house them. *Our tax money* is what supports the national park system that's going to be sold piece by piece to the highest bidder(s) to drill, mine, and log. *Our tax money* is being taken away from university researchers. I'm sure I missed a few things. I'm just too furious to think of all of them. 😡 The bottom line is that, as James Greenberg said (see below), the Trump administration is strip-mining the entire country--and they're using our own money to do that. 😡 I'm giving up trying to reformat: A new paragraph begins here. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Copied from a Facebook post by James Greenberg (and his paragraphing doesn't work here, either--a new paragraph begins after every [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ]) : "They say Trump governs by chaos. That he acts impulsively, erratically, without a plan. But what if that is the plan? What if the chaos is the cover? What if the daily spectacle—the tariffs, the purges, the budget cuts, the Twitter feuds—isn’t just noise, but a smokescreen for something colder, more calculated? [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Because behind the outrage lies a pattern. Not of leadership, but of looting. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] When institutions are gutted, when rules are rewritten, when the lights go out in the agencies that protect the public—who steps in? Not the small farmer. Not the corner shop. Not the family clinging to a mortgage. It’s the well-connected, the well-capitalized, the politically protected. The ones who know how to turn wreckage into wealth. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] That’s the real game. And it’s happening in plain sight. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Take tariffs. Pitched as a punch to China, they’ve hammered small manufacturers and family farms here at home—people who can’t absorb the costs or reroute their supply chains overnight. Many go under. And when they do? Hedge funds, multinationals, and campaign donors are waiting, checkbooks in hand. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] It’s not protectionism. It’s predation. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] And it doesn’t stop at trade. In his second term, Trump is gutting the civil service—replacing experienced professionals with loyalists. Not to drain the swamp, but to drain the brakes. Environmental protections? Scrapped. Watchdogs? Fired. Procurement rules? Bypassed. With no one left to say no, federal agencies become pipelines for favors, land grabs, and sweetheart deals. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] This isn’t deregulation. It’s a hostile takeover of the state itself. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Housing follows the same script. With tenant protections stripped and public housing defunded, eviction becomes policy. Neighborhoods are emptied. Then come the “Opportunity Zones”—tax shelters wrapped in the language of renewal. The public loses homes. Developers get subsidies. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] And education? It’s being slowly bled out. Public schools are starved, then slandered, then sold off. Vouchers and charters vacuum up resources, while billionaires move in on school buildings, test contracts, and real estate. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Even disaster has become a business model. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] COVID shuttered small businesses by the thousands. Many got nothing. But big tech, logistics giants, and private equity firms made a killing. Now Trump is back to the same script—slashing Medicaid, defunding science, gutting the safety net. Because every crisis is a chance to clear the field. And when the dust settles, only the powerful remain. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] We’ve seen this before. In Mexico, where public cooperatives were crushed by debt, then sold off to cronies. In Russia, where state assets became oligarch fortunes overnight. In New Orleans, where homes, schools, and lives were swept away—only to be rebuilt for someone else. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Trump doesn’t need a governing vision. He just needs the wreckage. Because in the wreckage, rules disappear. Oversight vanishes. And billionaires buy what’s left. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] This isn’t governance. It’s liquidation. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] So don’t be fooled by the chaos. It’s not a distraction. It’s the business model. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] And if we don’t call it what it is—organized looting, sanctioned by the state—it won’t just continue. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] It will become the future. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] https://substack.com/@jamesbgreenberg

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Debbie Freedman's Miriam's Song & Not By Might (2001)

Eliana Light's Dayenu

Galeet Dardashti's Persian-style Dayenu

Moses Isn't in the Haggadah (video)

Sefirat HaOmer (video)

Moadim L'Simchah (1st of several Passover videos)

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A word about the current state of the United States

You may have noticed that I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately--I've been mostly sharing other people's posts and/or videos [on Facebook]. (Sorry I can't find the post about First Nations/Native Americans/Indigenous people being detained by ICE.) That's because there are quite a number of folks who are more articulate than I. But I did want to share a few thoughts, however poorly written. (Sorry about the formatting, which I can't seem to correct.) [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] I can't help feeling that it’s the MAGAs against the rest of us. It has been politely pointed out by others more politically savvy than I that the Republican Party that we once knew and either loved or hated no longer exists—it has been coopted completely by the Make America Great Again cult of Donald Trump. Those of us who believe that the government is, or, at least (and at best) can be, the solution are pitted against those who believe that the government is the problem and are currently hard at work destroying it from within by firing tens of thousands of federal government employees without regard for expertise and/or the effect of mass firings on the economy. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Social Security might as well be renamed Social *In*security—those of us currently receiving Social Sec. have no idea when, or whether, we’ll receive any further payments, and those who should be receiving Social Sec., either now or in the future, have a snowball’s chance in heck of actually getting it, since applying for Social Sec. is being made as difficult as possible. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] Tariffs, which are regressive taxes that affect those at lower income levels much worse than they affect the rich (since an annual increase of, say, $5,000 in expenses means little to someone with an income of five million dollars while being devastating to someone with an income of fifty thousand dollars) are now the law of the land. The wealthy are getting wealthier at the expense of the rest of us—Robin Hood is now robbing the poor to feed the rich. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] The war against “wokeness,” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, is, as a wiser person put it, an effort to resegregate the United States, disenfranchising everyone who isn’t a white, straight, male Christian, and, preferably, a native speaker of English. The MAGAs think blacks and people of color should know their place, gays should go back into the closet, First Nations/Indigenous/Native Americans should stay on the Rez, woman should stay home and make babies, people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses (or acute illnesses, for that matter) should disappear, Americans should speak English exclusively, immigrants should go back where they came from, and we should all go to church, and they’re trying to rewrite the voting laws, marriage and divorce laws, pregnancy and birth laws, equal opportunity laws and other laws to make it so, up to and including trying to ensure that anyone who can’t afford health care doesn’t receive any. [ ¶ ] [ ¶ ] How long can this country sustain, or put up with, this un-American injustice?