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Report: Just Ten Percent of Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Would Completely Pay For a Global “Green Transition”
Report: Just Ten Percent of Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Would Completely Pay For a Global “Green Transition”
Stephanie Kelton explaining what Ben Bernanke meant in 2009 when he said the Fed doesn’t “spend tax money” when it transfers money to banks, but simply changes numbers in a computer. “To lend to a bank, we simply use a computer to mark up the size of the account they have with the Fed.” Kelton: “It’s exactly like putting points on the screen at a baseball game,” and a scorekeeper can “never run out of points.”
I’m not a fan of the “how are you going to pay for it?” scam, since it’s obvious the government never pays for anything it really wants in the sense of raising new revenue. It just spends the money. For proof, just look at the Iraq War, or any recent war, or any Republican tax cut plan. (See the video above for a slightly longer explanation of why governments that control their own currency never have to tax to spend.)
The fact is, a government that issues its own currency and whose economy is not ravaged by inflation can always write checks to buy anything it wants — and the idea that it “pays for” what it wants by selling bonds is a fiction, since every bond sale is a trade of an asset for an asset, not a loan. The Treasury market also gives rich people something safe to invest in. Neither of these goals is related to financing government spending.
But for those who do fetishize “paying for it,” here’s one for the books.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Everyone in the U.S. Who Counts Wants Julian Assange Dead
Why Everyone in the U.S. Who Counts Wants Julian Assange Dead
Before and after images of the van that came to pick up the bodies of eleven men shot to death by circling American helicopters in Iraq in 2007. Both children in the van were wounded. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle,” said one of the pilots. “That’s right,” replies another. From the video Collateral Murder.
Below is a full video version of Collateral Murder, the 2007 war footage that was leaked in 2010 to Wikileaks by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning. This version was posted to the Wikileaks YouTube channel with subtitles. It will only take about 15 minutes of your life to view it.
It’s brutal to watch, but I challenge you to do it anyway. It shows not just murder, but a special kind of murder — murder from the safety of the air, murder by men with heavy machine guns slowly circling their targets in helicopters like hunters with shotguns who walk the edges of a trout pond, shooting at will, waiting, walking, then shooting again, till all the fish are dead.
The film also shows war crimes that implicate the entire structure of the U.S. military, as everyone involved was acting under orders, seeking permission to fire, waiting, then getting it before once more blasting away. The publication of this video, plus all the Wikileaks publications that followed, comprise the whole reason everyone in the U.S. who matters, everyone with power, wants Julian Assange dead.
They also want him hated. Generating that hate is the process we’re watching today.
“Everyone” in this case includes every major newspaper that published and received awards for publishing Wikileaks material; all major U.S. televised media outlets; and all “respectable” U.S. politicians — including, of course, Hillary Clinton, who was rumored (though unverifiably) to have said, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
