Confronting the question most commonly asked of the growing number of Americans who support replacing America's uniquely inefficient and immoral for-profit healthcare system with Medicare for All—"How do we pay for it?"—a new paper released Friday by researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) shows that financing a single-payer system would actually be quite simple, given that it would cost significantly less than the status quo.
"It's easy to pay for something that costs less," Robert Pollin, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and lead author of the new analysis, declared during a panel discussion at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlingon, Vermont, where Pollin unveiled the paper for the first time.

……….Islam came alive. It wasn’t a rigid, dogmatic system of rituals, dress codes and obligations, but a direct experience of Divine Compassion and Mercy. It wasn’t a religion of fear, but a tender, beautiful path toward Unconditional Love. Rather than a label or identity, it was a state of being in surrender to the natural flow of the Divine Reality, or Allah.....

Essentially the sufi way is about knowing myself and my wounds more deeply, something our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, counselled is essential on the path to truly knowing the Divine that is closer to us than our jugular veins. What I’ve discovered is that I’m someone, like anyone, who has idiosyncrasies and mental knots, obstacles and conditioned behaviors that I need to decode with care and compassion.

For nearly 30 years, the Rev. Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral was not only a religious landmark, but an architectural wonder and an embodiment of flush times in Southern California’s Orange County...…

Around the turn of the 21st century, Schuller’s large following of white evangelicals was aging, and the population of nonwhite residents in California was increasing. Membership and donations to Crystal Cathedral began to decline. The cathedral filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church started seeing an increase in Southern California.
In 1976, the Diocese of Orange consisted of about 300,000 Catholics. Today, the numbers are closer to 1.6 million, supporting 62 parishes, 41 schools, three hospitals and care centers and a number of agencies serving the poor, according to The Orange County Register.

AFTER THE massacre of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in late October, people flocked to social media and to the streets with messages of unity and collective opposition to the anti-Semitism behind the killing.
It didn’t take long, however, for the forces of racism and reaction to turn their outrage on the main people capable of mobilizing opposition to the rising tide of anti-Semitism: broadly speaking, the left and the social movements...….

Yet after last month’s shooting, much of the mainstream response was cut from the same cloth as Trump’s.....

It’s almost as if the voices of mainstream politics forgot exactly what happened at a Shabbat service — a bris, or baby naming, no less — just a few weeks ago. So let’s review what did happen:
A Nazi — an avowed white supremacist who critiqued Donald Trump for being too influenced by powerful Jews — entered a synagogue and murdered 11 Jews while yelling, “All Jews must die.”

With the stated mission of "revitalizing our democracy," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jane O'Meara Sanders are hosting a gathering of 250 progressive thinkers, politicians, and activists this weekend in Burlington, Vermont, where they'll discuss bold solutions to persistent inequality, the climate crisis, human rights violations, and other issues in the U.S. and around the world.
The inaugural Sanders Institute Gathering—which Common Dreams plans to cover over the three days—will include panel discussions and speeches including an opening keynote speech given by the senator on Thursday evening, as well as appearances by author Naomi Klein and Cornel West; politicians such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz; economists Stephanie Kelton and Jeffrey Sachs; former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis; U.S. labor leaders Roseann DeMoro and Peter Knowlton; organizers Bill McKibben and Nina Turner; and many others.