The Work Ahead

Starter list of the work ahead:

Regarding rampant sex crimes against children aka Epstein associates, arrest and prosecute every culpable molester/rapist no matter how rich or powerful they may be.
Ongoing genocide in Palestine and threat of war in Iran:
- Stop all funding and other support to Israel.
- Return Israel’s boundaries to the 56% of Palestine established in 1948
Ukraine. Give full-fledged U.S. military support to Ukraine. Impose additional restrictions on Russia including a full maritime services ban on oil, prohibiting LNG transshipments, banning additional IT/industrial software, targeting more financial institutions, and further restricting third-country intermediary trade. Expose and prosecute embedded Russian operatives in the U. S. government. Give currently impounded Russian funds of $300 billion to Ukraine for rebuilding.
Provide a public accounting of all U.S. military operations and presence around the world, with justification/purpose and cost. No more secret agendas.
Terminate the Mars Exploration Project until such time as our government is no longer in budget deficit. Cut back on other space exploration projects.
Take over any and all U.S. government projects that pay Elon Musk or his companies and make them nonprofit government programs, primarily SpaceX, for aerospace services, satellite communications, and electric vehicle incentives, totaling billions in contracts, loans, and tax credits over the past two decades. Major shifts include launch of military satellites, NASA missions, and purchasing Starlink services.
Restore Premium Tax Credits (PTCs) for Affordable Care Act (ACA); implement universal health insurance.
Restore U.S. partnerships with international agencies including 66 organizations, conventions, and treaties, including major entities like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also the World Health Organization (WHO), the Paris Agreement on climate change, and various arms control agreements.
Reverse all Trump actions exposing/selling national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, watersheds, national monuments, and other previously protected areas.
Restore water protection gutted by Trump including efforts to change the Clean Water Act, the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule which stripped federal safeguards from over 50% of wetlands and 18% of streams. He also reduced protections for ephemeral streams, narrowing the definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS), and rolling back regulations on toxic coal ash disposal.
Hazardous chemicals regulation must be restored immediately.
- EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding
- PFAS (“Forever Chemicals”): The Trump administration failed to designate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as hazardous substances, delayed setting drinking water standards for them, and allowed new, potentially toxic PFAS chemicals to enter the market with minimal review. In 2025, the EPA was reported to be weakening earlier, more stringent PFAS limits.
- Air Toxics (Mercury, Benzene, Ethylene Oxide): In 2025, the administration invoked emergency provisions of the Clean Air Act to grant two-year exemptions to chemical manufacturers, medical sterilizers, and coal plants, allowing them to release toxic chemicals like mercury and ethylene oxide into the air. This included reversing a 2024 rule aimed at reducing ethylene oxide—a known carcinogen—by 90%.
- Pesticides (Chlorpyrifos): Trump’s EPA reversed a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic pesticide linked to brain damage in children, allowing it to remain on the market.
- Asbestos and Industrial Chemicals: The administration delayed or weakened proposed bans on trichloroethylene (TCE) and methylene chloride, which are known carcinogens and toxic to workers. They also initially moved to weaken regulations on asbestos, a mineral that causes mesothelioma.
- Chemical Safety at Plants: Rules designed to prevent accidents and explosions at chemical manufacturing plants were delayed or weakened, even in the wake of chemical plant accidents, such as those that occurred after Hurricane Harvey.
- “Corporate Self-Policing”: The EPA under Trump often shifted to relying on industry-provided data, and, as of 2025, removed requirements for scientific review of certain chemical risks.
Reverse/mitigate data removal by Trump and/or DOGE included topics related to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), long COVID, HIV/AIDS, vaccines, transgender and gender identity-related topics, foreign aid, environmental justice, emergency management, employment, and the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
Trump’s unvetted DOGE coders put the personal info of millions of Americans in jeopardy. Serious reconstruction of privacy must be undertaken immediately.
Tariffs imposed by Trump must be eliminated immediately.
Remove Trump’s name on national monuments and organizations.
Restore effective manpower levels in all federal agencies.
IRS and other agencies must be realigned so that there is no influence of church/religion upon government functions. This is of special importance in education. Re-establish separation of church and state by eliminating federal and state tax dollars provided to private/religious schools. Nationwide educational standards must be restored and enforced even for homeschooled children. No exceptions.
Congress must immediately:
- legalize abortion nationwide.
- resurrect the 2024 Bipartisan Border Bill (S.4361) and pass it.
- abolish the Electoral College
- establish national referendums on issues of national importance/interest
- remove unnecessary/partisan restrictions on voting
- require non-partisan redistricting in all states
- overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) decision by the SCOTUS.
- demand a thorough review/return of any illegally-taken persons kidnapped and deported and/or imprisoned under Trump’s immigration actions.
- require the return of money Trump coerced from media, universities, and other entities.
- reverse any government actions meant to implement Project 2025
- develop legal means to require stiffer ethical standards for the president and vice president and SCOTUS members as currently required for elected officials (primary federal conflict-of-interest statute (18 U.S.C. § 208) including ban on stock trading for Congress and executive branch. Strengthen the Emoluments Clause with clearly defined penalties and methods of enforcement.

Please feel free to comment with your additions to this list, or edits you think are needed. It will take all of us. Step up.

Our Job as Citizens

As a nation operating under the concept of self-rule, we the people have to talk coherently about the issues. Mass shootings doesn’t solve our problems, but rather exemplifies our current failures as citizens. How did we get to this point?

Does the 2^nd Amendment really grant the right to assault rifles and 100-round ammo clips? No, it does not. Nor do gun hoarders constitute a “well regulated militia.”

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

How did we not understand that waging a drug war against our own people would embed domestic violence in our society? Did we learn nothing from alcohol prohibition when, for fifteen years, underworld gangs selling illegal alcohol used their wealth to purchase weapons and political protection? How could Reagan and Congress think it was a good idea for “surplus” military weapons and equipment to be sold to our city police forces and used in commando tactics within our neighborhoods? How could we not see the horrible outcome of spending more money on prisons than education?

https://money.cnn.com/infographic/economy/education-vs-prison-costs/

We have to talk about immigration—what will stop the mass migration of people to our borders? For over a century, our corporations have been aided and abetted by our military to plunder Latin America for its natural resources and cheap labor. We have blood on our hands in the same tradition as Spain for its 300-year devastating occupation of the same lands. Doesn’t it make more sense to invest more heavily in helping solve problems in these countries so the people don’t have to leave home in order to have an economic future free from violence? What kind of future are we creating for ourselves by destroying Latino families and traumatizing innocent children?

We have to talk about climate change. How can anyone still believe this is fake news? Are there truly so many people who don’t grasp the science of this issue that our entire nation’s public policy can get away with denying climate change exists? What happens when water supplies dry up, crops die on the ground, and there isn’t enough food?

https://www.who.int/globalchange/mediacentre/events/2011/social-dimensions-of-climate-change.pdf

The impacts of climate change will increasingly affect the daily lives of people everywhere in terms of employment and livelihoods, health, housing, water, food security and nutrition, and the realization of gender equality and other human rights. Impacts are expected to hit those living in poverty the hardest, partly due to their more prevalent dependency on the very natural resources affected by climate change and also because they have less capacity to protect themselves, adapt or recuperate losses.

New York Times: A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai Aug. 6, 2019

We have to talk about population—we can’t continue blindly producing more people who need food, jobs, and a place to live when all of those resources are simultaneously shrinking.

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people on the planet. Now in 2019, there are 7.7 billion. By the end of the century the UN expects a global population of 11.2 billion.

In 2015, there were approximately 141 million births. In the same year, around 57 million people died. It’s clear why the global population is increasing: there are many more births each year than there are deaths. Around 2.5 times as many.

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

If we think we have an immigration problem now, just wait.

Each of us bears a responsibility to learn the facts on these and any other issues facing us as individuals, communities, and as a nation, engage in discussion with others with the goal of finding common ground, and then participate in the implementation of solutions through community action and voting.

Another War With The Indians

This past weekend I attended my 50-year class reunion. I blogged about that last time around. While I was there, I visited the fabulous Coleman Theater, a restored 1930s opera house that graces the main street of Miami Oklahoma. The guided tour through its opulent staircases and gilded facades included a narrative about George Coleman himself.[1]

What lingered in my mind afterwards and grows ever more prominent in my thoughts even now is about how Mr. Coleman made his money. You see, in 1904 that area of Northeast Oklahoma was found to harbor vast deposits of lead and zinc. During the years of production, Oklahoma mines produced 1.3 million tons of recoverable lead and 5.2 million tons of recoverable zinc.[2] The discovery of such potential wealth undoubtedly helped drive the state’s push for statehood in 1907.

George and initially his brother Albert made such a success of this mining operation that they earned a million dollars a week. No wonder George could import African mahogany and commission a massive chandelier of Venetian glass, sparing no expense for a theater that would remind him of his summer home near Versailles. After Albert’s poor health forced his relocation to Colorado, George expanded his empire to build cattle ranches and finance local businesses.

This fabulous exploitation of natural resources supplied industrial processes which, for example, galvanized steel against corrosion. Zinc is also used to make die-cast alloys, brass and zinc oxides and chemicals. Prior to the early 1900s, lead was used in the United States primarily in ammunition, burial vault liners, ceramic glazes, leaded glass and crystal, paints or other protective coatings, pewter, and water lines and pipes. The first and second world wars placed such demand on the mines that crews worked around the clock. Automobiles boosted demand for lead not only for batteries but also as a fuel additive.

Safely buried underground by Mother Nature, lead never goes away once mined and brought to the surface.[3]

Once the tour ended, I was like, wait a minute. I asked a question of my friend who lives there. “How is it that George Coleman made all this money? What about the Native Americans who supposedly owned these lands?”

He laughed. “They got five percent. There were a few rich Quapaws.”

I’m still grappling with this. While the Colemans and a few connected business associates raked in millions, the local landowners made a few thousand. Worse, one hundred years later we see the real costs of this enterprise. Consider, for example, the nearby town of Picher, a ghost town now, formerly a major national center of lead and zinc mining at the heart of the Tri-State Mining District.

Wikipedia: “More than a century of unrestricted subsurface excavation dangerously undermined most of Picher’s town buildings and left giant piles of toxic metal-contaminated mine tailings (known as chat) heaped throughout the area. The discovery of the cave-in risks, groundwater contamination, and health effects associated with the chat piles and subsurface shafts resulted in the site being included in 1980 in the Tar Creek Superfund Site by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The state collaborated on mitigation and remediation measures, but a 1996 study found that 34% of the children in Picher suffered from lead poisoning due to these environmental effects, which could result in lifelong neurological problems. Eventually the EPA and the state of Oklahoma agreed to a mandatory evacuation and buyout of the entire township.”

080510-picher-bcol1-11a-grid-6x2 — Collapsed mining pit near Picher

Naturally it was the Quapaw and other Native American tribes who suffered permanent damage from this exposure as well as the loss of lands. Even as recently as my school years in that region, it was a regular entertainment to hang out at the chat piles where guys would show off their skill with cars and motorcycles, stirring up clouds of dust as they scaled the steep inclines.

So it’s not enough that the original inhabitants of this continent were forced away from their homes and hunting grounds as white settlers took over. The insult and injury only deepened as we first gave them new lands with the promise they could be assured of controlling it for the rest of time. Less than eighty years later, Boomers, Sooners, and other massive in-migrations of white ownership swept in. And, as a bonus, left the tribes with irreversible damage to the land.

As a side note, this is similar to the standard practice of industry to locate their waste heaps and polluting processes in low-income and minority neighborhoods, both in the United States as well as Third World nations.

Which brings even more into focus the current stand-off in North Dakota over an oil pipeline. According to an Associated Press report, “the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota’s oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets. Announced in 2014, supporters said the pipeline would create more markets and reduce truck and oil train traffic — the latter of which has been a growing concern after a spate of fiery derailments of trains carrying North Dakota crude.

“The Standing Rock Sioux’s lawsuit challenges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings. Filed on behalf of the tribe by environmental group Earthjustice, the suit says the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, and will disturb sacred sites outside of the 2.3-million acre reservation. A separate lawsuit filed Thursday by the Yankton Sioux tribe in South Dakota challenges the same thing.” The lawsuit alleges that the pipeline, which would be placed less than a mile upstream of the tribe’s reservation, could impact drinking water for more than 8,000 tribal members and millions who rely on it downstream.[4]

Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the owners of the project, says the pipeline includes safeguards such as leak detection equipment, and workers monitoring the pipeline remotely in Texas could close block valves on it within three minutes if a breach is detected. Sounds good. Let’s ask the Quapaw how well those kinds of promises work out.

In a last ditch effort to stop the bulldozers, other Native American tribes and other supporters of the resistance have joined the Sioux in forming a human barrier to future work. Tribal leaders identified several sacred ceremonial sites and burial grounds which lie on private land in the path of the pipeline, citing these locations as even more reason to halt the project. The day after tribal officials identified these sites and added them to their lawsuit, pipeline crews bulldozed through them, an allegation which Energy Transfer Partners denies. This led to last Saturday’s clash between protesters and private security guards; law enforcement officials said four security guards and two guard dogs were injured, while a tribal spokesman said six people were bitten by the dogs and at least 30 people were pepper-sprayed.

There’s no end to the examples of white exploitation of resources discovered in supposedly guaranteed Indian lands. It’s an oft told tale of grab the money and run. The 2014 spill of a gold mine tailings pond in Colorado provided colorful images of a golden-colored stream as the pollution entered the Animas River. Workers accidentally destroyed the plug holding water trapped inside the mine, overflowing the pond and spilling three million gallons of mine waste water and tailings, including heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, and other toxic elements including arsenic, beryllium, zinc, iron and copper.[5] Downstream, the impact continues to be felt in three states most particularly in the Navaho Nation where they suffered damage to their crops, home gardens, and cattle herds. Arizona Senator John McCain has estimated that the tribe’s damages could exceed $335 million. So far, they’ve received $150,000.

Absurd that this kind of arrogance would occur time and time again. There is no excuse, no possible gain, that justifies more of the same. While this oil pipeline in North Dakota is not planned to cross Sioux land, any leak will compromise their water supply. There is no such thing as a foolproof technology. Sooner or later, the pipeline will fail.

It’s not just the Sioux who are fighting this pipeline. White landowners have gone to court and mounted protests as well. Conveniently and not surprisingly, laws of eminent domain may apply, forcing landowners to accept the pipeline’s passage whether they want it or not. As explained by attorneys, “existing South Dakota law allows for pipelines holding themselves out as ‘common carriers’ engaged in the sale of commodities, like crude oil, to utilize public condemnation when necessary.”[6]

At least when George Coleman set about raping Northeast Oklahoma, the residents got a nice vaudeville theater out of the deal. There is nothing anyone in the Dakotas or anywhere else in this pipeline’s route will gain other than a one-time payment for the easement rights. Somewhere down the line, the oil will out.

Want to help? Visit the resistance website for more information. http://sacredstonecamp.org/