California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

How to Throw Republicans for a Loop: Biden Should Propose Tax Breaks for the Middle Class and Tax Increases for the Rich

by John Lawrence, February 25, 2021

The proper use of taxation is to reduce income and wealth inequality. Instead Republicans use tax breaks to primarily benefit the rich. Democrats should modify this playbook. The increasing income and wealth inequality among American citizens cries out for redress. Robin Hood needs to come out and play. There's no law that says tax breaks have to go primarily to the wealthy or be based on some proportionate percentage over all incomes. Democrats should get into the tax break game too. We know that taxes aren't necessary to fund the government. Sure they're part of it, but the government can spend whatever Congress authorizes regardless of whether or not there is money from taxes to pay for it. The shortfall is made up with Treasury bonds most of which end up on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve just like the Fed used Quantitative Easing (QE), a fancy name that signified that the Fed issued trillions of dollars to bail out the Wall Street banks in 2008. In that case the Fed took MBSs (Mortgage Backed Securities), most of which were worthless onto its balance sheet as "collateral." The Fed can lend money to any entity it likes as long as it takes collateral onto its balance sheet. Much of this collateral is worthless such as defunct MBSs and even old bicycles!

In the article, "Modern Monetary Theory and the Changing Role of Tax in Society," by Andrew Baker and Richard Murphy, published online by Cambridge University Press we find the following:

"Tax is traditionally viewed as the main funding mechanism for government spending. Consequently, social policy is often seen as something determined and constrained by tax revenue. Modern Monetary Theory (‘MMT’) presents a reversal of the tax-spend cycle, by identifying a spend-tax cycle. Using the UK as an example, we highlight that one of MMT’s most important, but under-explored, contributions is its potential to re-frame the role of tax from both a macroeconomic and social policy perspective. We use insights on the money removal, or cancellation function of taxes, derived from MMT, to demonstrate how this also creates possibilities for using tax to achieve social objectives such as mitigating income and wealth inequality, increasing access to housing, or funding a Green New Deal. For social policy researchers the challenge arising is to use these insights to re-engineer tax systems and redesign social tax expenditures (STEs) for creative social policy purposes."

MMT is a game changer. Conventional thinking is that government can only spend money collected from taxes. But that is not how the system really works. As a sovereign currency, the Fed can just create US dollars with a few keystrokes on a computer. The budget deficit and national debt just become accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. We are not mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future. This is money that never needs to be paid back, that our children never need to pay back. China is not holding this debt over our heads; China could be paid back tomorrow if need be. The US government operates on a different set of principles than the US states, European countries in the Euro zone, and households. All these entities do need to pay back loans. The US government does not because it can just create or issue the money which is how the Fed operates on a daily basis. Even local banks create money when a loan is taken out without the need for deposits. They just have to have collateral - usually 10% of deposits - in their reserve account at the Fed. So money can just be created by the Federal Reserve, but, obviously, it does not do so willy nilly. Like alcohol, this facility must be used responsibly. So that is what the debate should be about, not the size of the deficit or the national debt.

The national debt was a problem when the US dollar was on a gold standard. The US promised to redeem dollars - paper currency - for gold up until 1971. Obviously, there was not enough gold if, all of a sudden, China, let's say, wanted to take all its US dollars and demand gold at $35 an ounce. But in 1971 President Nixon took the US off the gold standard. He said the US would forevermore not redeem US currency for gold. At that point the US dollar became a "fiat" currency. That means that a dollar was worth a dollar just because the US government said it was. The US dollar did not become immediately worthless. People continued to use it, and it continued to retain its value vis a vis other currencies. In fact it's the world's reserve currency as Nixon made a deal with the Saudis only to accept payment for oil in US dollars. That alone meant that the other countries of the world needed US dollars if for no other reason than to buy oil. As a matter of fact today most business dealings of foreign countries are settled in US dollars. So the US dollar has a bright future at least for now.

The conclusion is that US households, businesses, US states and European nations that use the Euro need to pay back loans when they borrow money. A nation with a sovereign currency such as the US, the UK, Japan, China and others creates its money when its central bank issues it by means of keystrokes. No one can demand repayment or exchange of dollars for gold or anything else. If China wants to be paid back for the Treasury bonds it holds, the money in its Treasuries (savings) account at the Fed will be debited and credited to its checking account at the Fed. It's as simple as that. That money can be exchanged for Chinese currency on the open market at the prevailing exchange rate. But probably the Chinese would want to keep much of their financial assets in dollars rather than renminbi since their currency is pegged to the dollar and many of their business dealings are settled in dollars.

Off the Top of My Head

Beyond Meat and Cow Farts

by John Lawrence, February 24, 2021

About 19% of the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted into the atmosphere each year comes from agriculture. There are roughly a billion cattle in the world raised for both meat and dairy. The 2 billion tons of GHGs they burp and fart account for 4 percent of global emissions each year. Also pig poop accounts for half of all poop related emissions with cows making up the other half. Industrial cow and pig farms create ponds full of poop which then sometimes break through to streams and rivers. In an article, "A million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms", we find the following:

"Fifty yards from Miller’s family graveyard is a massive open-air cesspool storing the pigs’ waste – a stagnant pool containing their feces, urine, blood and other bodily fluids – often referred to as a “lagoon”, one of about 3,300 lagoons across the state. When the cesspool reaches its capacity, its contents are liquefied and sprayed into a field across the street from Miller’s house via a large, sprinkler-like apparatus. The sprayer releases a mist of waste on to the field, which, according to court documents, is about 200ft from Miller’s home at its closest rotation."

In addition to the environmental, health and stench problems, pig shit lagoons are contributing major amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. “Air pollutants from the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation,” Wing and fellow UNC researcher Jill Johnston wrote in a 2014 study. They also found that the state’s industrial hog operations disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. That pattern, they concluded, “is generally recognized as environmental racism”.

The Guardian article continued: "North Carolina’s pork production industry has shifted dramatically since the mid-80s. Today’s industrial farms, often called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, raise pigs and other livestock in confinement until they are ready for slaughter. The hogs generally live in cramped quarters; Michelle B Nowlin, supervising attorney of Duke’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, estimates they typically get seven or eight square feet of space each." Chickens and cattle suffer the same fate of having to spend their meager existence in CAFOs.

As more people world wide become middle class, they want to eat more meat. This is not only a problem for the animals who suffer the most, but it is a problem for the GHGs that animal agriculture causes that contribute to global warming. But the nutritional aspects of eating animals are equally inefficient. A pig eats 3 times as many calories as we get when we eat it. Cows require six calories of feed for every calorie of beef that we eat. In China and other developing countries meat eating is becoming much more popular because of a growing and more affluent middle class.

There are several alternatives already on the market: plant based hamburgers called Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers. These burgers are a pretty good approximation of the real thing, but there are even more products being developed that don't only mimic the taste of meat. They actually are meat except they are created without having to pass calories through a cow and then slaughtering the cow. They use the same metabolic processes that a cow does to deposit meat on its bones. This meat though is created in a lab and is already on the market in Singapore according to The Guardian:

"Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

"The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.

"Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild."

If the world's consumption of meat can be converted to lab grown meat that looks, taste, and feels like the real thing, then we can eliminate the whole process of passing calories through a cow or pig or chicken first and still get the same end result. That alone will save about 10 billion tons of GHGs per year.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.

'Words Are Not Enough': Biden Pushed to Take Bold Climate Action as US Returns to Paris Agreement

Published on Friday, February 19, 2021

by Common Dreams

"The livelihoods and dignity of billions of people who didn't create the climate crisis require that the Biden administration takes immediate and far-reaching climate action driven by justice, equity, and science."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

29 Comments

Activists demanding climate and racial justice marched in New York City on September 20, 2020. (Photo: Steve Sanchez/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

While Democrats and scientists across the United States applauded the Biden administration for officially rejoining the Paris climate agreement on Friday and figures from around the world said "welcome back America," climate campaigners and experts emphasized that the nation now needs to take bold, immediate action.

As the advocacy group Public Citizen put it: "We have a tremendous amount of catching up to do."

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden delivered on his campaign promise to begin the process of returning to the deal—ditched by his predecessor the day after the November presidential election—which aims to limit global temperature rise this century to "well below" 2°C, and preferably 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.

"We can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change. This is a global, existential crisis, and we'll all suffer—we'll all suffer the consequences if we fail," Biden declared Friday, addressing the virtual Munich Security Conference. "We have to rapidly accelerate our commitments to aggressively curb our emissions and to hold one another accountable for meeting our goals and increasing our ambitions."

Similar messages came from key members of the Biden administration. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that "addressing the real threats from climate change and listening to our scientists is at the center of our domestic and foreign policy priorities. It is vital in our discussions of national security, migration, international health efforts, and in our economic diplomacy and trade talks."

Climate Envoy John Kerry—who, as the country's top diplomat during the Obama administration, played a key role of making the Paris agreement a reality—called climate change "among the most complex security issues we've ever faced." Pointing to the compounding crises in Texas this week, he added that "what these extreme weather events translate to on the ground should concern every single one of us."

Advocates of ambitious climate action welcomed the comments from the president and his allies, but they also made clear that "words are not enough."

"In a climate emergency, the only thing that will do is decisive action to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction that are #FossilFuels," tweeted Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. "Now is the time to really act."

While thanking Biden for keeping his promise, Andrea McGimsey, senior director for Environment America's Global Warming Solutions campaign, said Friday that "as pleased as we are with our return to the Paris agreement, it must only be a start."

"From getting more electric buses on the road to installing more charging stations in our national parks, so much can and must be done," she continued. "We'll also need to electrify our buildings and all of our appliances, and power them with clean renewable energy. And it's time to stop subsidizing fossil fuels with Americans' tax dollars."

"Extreme weather continues to hammer communities across the country," added McGimsey, as Texans endured power, food, and water problems due to a winter storm. "It's clear that to protect our families' health and well-being today—and to achieve a stable climate for our children and grandchildren—we need to lean in now to meet the commitments of the Paris agreement and go far further."

Leading up to Friday, tens of thousands of people and scores of advocacy organizations backed a demand that the Biden administration commit the United States to doing its "fair share" to combat the climate crisis—both in terms of reducing emissions at home and helping developing countries reach their goals.

That call and the U.S. return to the agreement follow a study released last week which warned that countries' Paris pledges to cut emissions—called nationally determined contributions (NDCs)—should increase by 80% to meet even the deal's dangerously inadequate 2°C target.

As Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote Thursday:

On April 22, Earth Day, President Biden will host a Leaders' Climate Summit, aiming to catalyze greater ambition ahead of COP26. The major emitters will be urged to raise their emissions reductions pledges for 2030 and add more detail on the domestic policies they will implement to achieve them. Developing countries—members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum—will also be there to remind the world of their dire plight and the moral imperative for richer countries to act quickly and boldly to help stave off existential threats to people and the planet.

The U.S. is expected to announce its updated NDC ahead of that summit. An ambitious U.S. NDC is the strongest signal the nation can send to show the global community that we are not just back in the Paris agreement, but in it to do our fair share. It is the single most important thing we can do to reestablish our credibility, foster trust, and catalyze greater action from other nations.

In an opinion piece for CNN on Friday, Alok Sharma, president of COP26—which was delayed until this November because of the coronavirus pandemic—celebrated the U.S. return to the Paris agreement and said, "I have been extremely encouraged by the conversations I have had with Kerry and White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy—both formidable allies in the fight against climate change."

Sharma also emphasized that at the summit in Scotland, world leaders must contend with the fact that "developing nations, particularly those most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, need financial support from developed countries to tackle its causes and effects—especially smaller island states like in the Pacific."

"Tackling climate change is a shared endeavor. And the clock is ticking ever closer to the point of no return," he wrote. "And so, I look forward to working as a matter of urgency with President Biden's administration and governments around the world, to deliver decisive climate action on the road to and at Glasgow. We owe that to current and future generations."

Organizers worldwide echoed that call for the Biden administration to approach the climate crisis on a global scale.

Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth Malaysia asserted that "the U.S. must not repeat its earlier bullying stance of blocking and undermining developing countries on issues such as equity between countries and the transfer of finance and technology, including for loss and damage."

"To be taken seriously, President Biden must go far beyond just rejoining the Paris agreement—he must listen and work cooperatively with developing countries in addressing the challenges they face in implementing more climate action in the face of the pandemic and growing indebtedness," said Raman. "The U.S. must be seen as a cooperative player, taking responsibility for its historical emissions and doing its fair share of action to phase out fossil fuels and increase its financial contributions."

Dipti Bhatnagar, international program coordinator for climate justice and energy with Friends of the Earth International, noted that "the United States' refusal to accept and address the high level of responsibility it bears for the climate crisis and encouragement of high-carbon lifestyles has resulted in untold suffering for women, men, and children throughout the developing world."

"Droughts are destroying crops, cyclones are leveling homes, and whole nations are literally disappearing," added Bhatnagar, who is from Mozambique. "The livelihoods and dignity of billions of people who didn't create the climate crisis require that the Biden administration takes immediate and far-reaching climate action driven by justice, equity, and science."

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The Borders of Our Perceptions

Dear friends,

When we reach the outer borders of our perceptions, we either leap into a new awareness or we spin around in the circle of repetitive experience. Eventually we will come to a stop when we must make a change. Things fall apart when they have outlived their usefulness.  In human life, that means when we are no longer learning and growing from them. Time for a leap. Not a leap of faith but a leap of consciousness. That might be the time for some “what if”” ideas.

What if I were living exactly the way I would choose? What would that be? What if I were perfectly healthy? How would that change things?  What if I never worried about money? What would I be doing? Those are personal questions that could get us started on a possible leap into more conscious living. I believe that humanity is right there on the edge as well.  We cannot continue the way we have been up until now.  What if the human race leaped out of our fear of difference?

What if we were living with one another in peace and harmony? What thoughts about people would we be having?  What decisions would we make regarding the distribution of wealth, of goods and services?  What if war were obsolete, completely out of the realm of possibility? What would our young men and women be doing instead?  What if we knew that God was in us, not outside of us?  How would we access that power? 

“What if” questions are a good way to challenge our current beliefs and to get us thinking from the potential we all possess.  The human race has only just begun, really. We haven’t been around very long in universal terms. Can we make some leaps from survival to thrival?  I think we can. What if we believed that?

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.

Transforming to an Ecological Civilization: The Alternative Is Unthinkable

Published on Friday, February 19, 2021

by YES! Magazine

A society based on natural ecology might seem like a far-off utopia—yet communities everywhere are already creating it. We need to forge a new era for humanity—one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior.

by

Jeremy Lent

 

22 Comments

When we consider the immensity of the transformation needed, the odds of achieving an ecological civilization might seem daunting—but it’s far from impossible. (Photo by Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images)

As a new, saner administration sets up shop in Washington, D.C., there are plenty of policy initiatives this country desperately needs. Beyond a national plan for the COVID-19 pandemic, progressives will strive to focus the administration’s attention on challenges like fixing the broken health care system, grappling with systemic racial inequities, and a just transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

These are all critically important issues. But here’s the rub: Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice.

Take a moment to peer beyond the day-to-day crises capturing our attention, and you quickly realize that the magnitude of the looming catastrophe makes our current political struggles, by comparison, look like arguing how to stack deck chairs on the Titanic.

The climate emergency we’re facing is far worse than most people realize. While it was clearly an essential step for the United States to rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the collective pledges on greenhouse gas emissions from that agreement are woefully insufficient. They would lead to a dangerous temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius this century—and many nations are failing to make even these targets. We are rapidly approaching—if we haven’t already passed—climate tipping points with reinforcing feedback loops that would lead to an unrecognizable and terrifying world.

Even if the climate crisis were somehow brought under control, our current growth-oriented economic juggernaut will bring us face-to-face with a slew of further existential threats in future decades. As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe.

We’re rapidly decimating the Earth’s forests, animals, insects, fish, fresh water—even the topsoil we need to grow our crops. We’ve already transgressed four of the nine planetary boundaries that define humanity’s safe operating space, and yet global GDP is expected to triple by 2060, with potentially calamitous consequences. In 2017, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issued an ominous warning to humanity that time is running out: “Soon it will be too late,” they wrote, “to shift course away from our failing trajectory.”

We need to forge a new era for humanity—one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization.

A Life-Affirming Civilization

Without human disruption, ecosystems can thrive in rich abundance for millions of years, remaining resilient in the face of adversity. Clearly, there is much to learn from nature’s wisdom about how to organize ourselves. Can we do so before it’s too late?

Changing our civilization’s operating system to one that naturally leads to life-affirming policies and practices rather than rampant extraction and devastation.

 

This is the fundamental idea underlying an ecological civilization: using nature’s own design principles to reimagine the basis of our civilization. Changing our civilization’s operating system to one that naturally leads to life-affirming policies and practices rather than rampant extraction and devastation.

An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. While the notion of structuring human society on an ecological basis might seem radical, Indigenous peoples around the world have organized themselves from time immemorial on life-affirming principles. When Lakota communities, on the land that is now the U.S., invoke Mitakuye Oyasin (“We are all related”) in ceremony, they are referring not just to themselves but to all sentient beings. Buddhist, Taoist, and other philosophical and religious traditions have based much of their spiritual wisdom on the recognition of the deep interconnectedness of all things. And in modern times, a common thread linking progressive movements around the world is the commitment to a society that works for the flourishing of life, rather than against it.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Pay for a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence

In 1940 British economist J. M. Keynes’s book, How to Pay for the War: A Radical Plan for the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave the economic guidance for financing the Second World War. Following Keynes, massive financial resources were devoted to the war resulting in full employment without inflation. There is a model here that can be used for the Green New Deal (GND) which is the Moral Equivalent Of War (MEOW). Bill Gates and J.D. Alt have put an upper bound of $5 trillion a year, but closer and more exacting estimates have put it at $1 trillion a year for 10 years. Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray write: "Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and underutilized resources, as well as shifting resources from current destructive and inefficient uses to GND projects. We argue that financial affordability cannot be an issue for the sovereign US government. Rather, the problem will be inflation if sufficient resources cannot be diverted to the GND. And if inflation is likely, we need to put in place anti-inflationary measures, such as well-targeted taxes, wage and price controls, rationing, and voluntary saving. Following Keynes, we recommend deferred consumption as our first choice should inflation pressures arise. We conclude that it is likely that the GND can be phased in without inflation, but if price pressures  do appear, deferring a small amount of consumption will be sufficient to attenuate them."

Their analysis is the most astute to date. We know that the money is available because the Federal Reserve can create it with a few keystrokes on a computer. This has been demonstrated time and time again from the bank bailouts of the Great Recession to the COVID relief bills. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has provided the theoretical framework that explains how the Fed creates money and the fact that the US can never run out of money. The US government which has a sovereign currency does not have to pay back loans whereas a private household or even a US state does have to pay back loans or else suffer the consequences. The only potential consequence when the Fed creates money for public purposes is inflation which can be controlled by a variety of measures. In How to Pay for the Green New Deal, the authors write: "Viewed from the MMT perspective, the government uses the monetary system to mobilize real resources and to move some of them to pursuit of the public purpose. Affordability is never an important question for a sovereign government—the relevant question concerns resource availability and suitability. There is thus a natural alliance between MMT and the GND. If we can identify technologically feasible projects that would achieve the GND’s goals, and if we can identify the resources to devote to these projects, then we can arrange for the financing of the programs." Bill Gates has identified a number of promising new technologies that he has invested in to address the GND issue.

As Keynes pointed out, it's a question of available resources to tackle any public problem. If the resources are available, the money is no problem although resources may need to be switched from the private to the public sector. Republicans who favor that all economic activity be confined to the private sector may have a problem with this. Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened during the Second World War. Resources, both human and material, were activated within the public sector to fight the war while at the same time were withdrawn from the private sector. Consumption was held to a minimum and deferred till the war's end. Then private resources, both human, financial and material, were unleashed so that the post war era was one of the most prosperous that the world has ever seen. The deflation brought about by wage and price controls and rationing during the war offset the inflation caused by the public money that was spent financing the war. The same tactic is necessary for a Green New Deal.

Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray write: "The approach is simple but also profound: total the resources available to prosecute the war while meeting the consumption needs of the population. If the available resources fall short of what is needed, the solution cannot be found in the finances. Government can always spend more to shift resources to the war effort; if consumption spending is not reduced, the result is inflation that generates a combination of “voluntary” saving and excess profits as real consumption falls. To prevent this undesirable outcome, government must reduce consumption demand by some combination of voluntary saving, taxes, deferred compensation, rationing, and wage and price controls. To be clear, the purpose of these actions is not to provide government with the financial means to “pay for” the war effort but rather to relieve pressure on scarce resources."

There will be much opposition from the America First crowd which is really a euphemism for Me First. The people who put their own freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want will probably not take too kindly to making any sacrifices so that future generations will have a habitable planet to live on. There will be demagogues ala Trump who will appeal to their baser instincts of solipsistic selfishness. They will be all about their First Amendment freedoms to resist any effort that is for the public good especially if it involves doing anything of a salutary nature for people in other parts of the world. I can visualize bars and restaurants complaining that they can't get enough hired help because everyone is employed by the Green New Deal. Let's hope that the better angels of mankind will prevail.

Off the Top of My Head

Despite All the Talk, Practically Nothing Has Been Done About Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Every year 51 billion tons of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) go into the atmosphere. There has been no decrease in that number despite the Paris Accords, despite more hybrid cars, despite the build up of solar and wind renewables. 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015, over 5 years ago and yet there has been no improvement in the number of tons of GHGs dumped into the atmosphere per year. Well, a couple of tons less this year due to the pandemic. In general it is slightly increasing according to Bill Gates in his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." At the rate we are going, there is no way that the earth can escape the dire consequences of global warming. Should we just give up and enjoy the few remaining years of a habitable earth? I don't think so. What will it take to forestall catastrophe? Basically, it will take a Green New Deal or should we call it the Green Equivalent of World War II?

During World War II there was a huge amount of government deficit spending. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that this is no problem because a government such as the US which issues its own sovereign currency can never run out of money whether or not there are tax receipts to cover the spending. The problem is inflation which occurred in WW I despite more modest outlays. In the WW II years there were wage and price controls which effectively controlled inflation. There was also rationing. These measures made sure that all resources both human and material were devoted to the war effort. Everyone was on the same page. Is that possible for a Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW) today? Would people be willing to give up anything so that resources could be devoted to a MEOW as far as Global Warming is concerned? Many Americans are not even willing to wear a mask during a pandemic, and many also believe that global warming is a hoax. Would they sacrifice for a MEOW?

Bill Gates has invested his money in a variety of start-ups which have some promise of addressing the global warming issue. One of them is Direct Air Capture (DAC) in which carbon dioxide is removed directly out of the air. This is a feasible alternative which is already in use on a small scale. The problem is that it's the most expensive alternative out there. A combination of other methods to ameliorate GHGs in the atmosphere would not only be more feasible but cheaper. He estimates that removing 51 billion tons of GHGs per year would cost $5.1 trillion per year. This would be an upper bound on the cost of getting to zero GHG emissions. Actually this does not seem too unreasonable given the fact that between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet, its total assets, ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion. That means that the Fed "printed" $3.4 trillion with its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. The Fed has "printed" $3.5 trillion just in the year 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic to keep the economy from falling apart. This is the amount of money authorized by Congress in several spending bills. Add to that Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and you get a total of $5.4 trillion. And yet there has been no inflation.

So there is a little hocus pocus going on in the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury. The Fed by law is not allowed to buy US debt directly from the Treasury department. How it works is Congress authorizes a spending bill. The Treasury issues a Treasury bond if there aren't enough taxes to cover it. That bond is sold to the "primary dealers" which are mainly big Wall Street banks, and then the Fed buys the bond on the "open market" which means it buys them from the primary dealers. So by a roundabout method, the Fed buys up US debt by means of "printing" money although it's actually by means of a few keystrokes on a computer crediting the Treasury's account at the Fed and the Fed takes the bonds onto its balance sheet from which theoretically it could sell them some day. One little distinction: this is not QE. QE was a term coined when the Fed "printed" money to bail out the big banks aka providing liquidity. The Fed took all the toxic junk of mortgage backed securities and other assets onto its balance sheet and gave the banks all the money they needed to cover bets on credit default obligations and interest rate swaps and other casino garbage. So while it amounts to the same thing - the Fed "printing" money and adding it into the economy - the money injected now is going into the real economy whereas the QE went into the Wall Street economy.

But I digress. So Bill Gates says it would require at most $5.1 trillion to get our GHGs down to zero on an annual basis. In other words keep the goddam fossil fuels, cow farts and Keystone pipeline and just get those DAC machines humming. Seems reasonable to me. The Fed can just print up that $5.1 trillion and we're home clear. J.D. Alt estimates that solving the global warming crisis will cost $60 trillion over 10 years which is about the same amount per year that Bill Gates estimates although supposedly we will reach some point at which renewables and other technologies will result in zero emissions so we will not have to go on spending that amount in perpetuity. So why don't we just go ahead and do it? The Fed could just print the money. No inflation is in sight. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that any country with a sovereign currency (such as the US dollar) can never run out of money and as long as the resources are available (both human and material) the financial resources will always be available. The only problem is the stupidity of most of the US Congress (mainly Republicans) whose only response to any Democratic initiative is just to Just Say No as well as their economic ignorance. So it is of paramount importance that next year after the pandemic is over and before Republicans take over (hope not) one of the branches of Congress in 2022, that Congress passes a $5 trillion per year Green New Deal or a $50 trillion GND spread over 10 years.

No Compromising with the GOP Cult

by Robert Reich

 

Monday, February 15, 2021

I keep hearing that Joe Biden has to govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he has razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican Party has moved to the right.

Rubbish. First, there is no “center” between the reality-based world and the conspiracy-fueled, hate-filled world of today’s Republican Party. Second, the problems the country is facing cannot be solved with milquetoast, centrist solutions – they demand immediate, bold action.

I’ve been in or around politics for 50 years. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with.

Today’s Republican Party is a cult.

93 percent of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting an insurrection, and Senate Republicans refuse to convict him. This is after Trump’s insurrection threatened even their own lives.

The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are facing backlash from their colleagues, with some even calling to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position. 

But hardly any have condemned the vile conspiracy theories spouted by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has claimed that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were “false flags” and that the deadly California wildfires were sparked by a Jewish space laser, among other wild lies.

All of this marks the culmination of the GOP’s growing lunacy over the last four years. With Trump at its head, the Republican Party has embraced blatant white supremacy, and now inhabits a counterfactual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.

Even by mid-January, polls show three out of four Republicans don’t think Biden won legitimately. 45 percent support the storming of the Capitol; 57 percent say Trump should be the Republican candidate in 2024.

And a growing fringe – including some Republicans in Congress – openly talk of redressing grievances through violence.

With this Republican Party, Biden cannot be a “centrist.” 

Instead, he must deliver bold change for the American people, refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism. Barring Trump from ever holding public office again. Expelling Trump’s co-conspirators from Congress. 

Don’t listen to people claiming this would be a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda. There is no healing without accountability. If we let those who incited this insurrection off the hook, we’re inviting it to happen again. And next time they might succeed.

It should all be part of Biden’s agenda. Biden must fight for democracy and against authoritarianism – including strengthening voting rights, getting big money out of politics, and taking on the Republican Party’s anti-democratic agenda of gerrymandering and voter suppression. 

There is no longer a “center” in American politics. No middle ground between lies and facts. No halfway point between civil discourse and violence. No midrange between democracy and fascism.

We either have a future based on lies, violence, and authoritarianism – or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility, and democracy. Biden and the Democrats must fight for the latter. And we must make them.

Love is an Energy That Restores Wholeness

Dear friends,

What could love do for you today?  Perhaps a release of old pain and resentments? Could it restore your faith inhumanity?  How about self respect and a change of habits?  If you desperately want to stop abusive drinking or smoking, would love be a factor in your decision to seek help?  What kind of love are we  speaking about here?  Love in its true power is not about romance; that is the least of it.  It is an energy that restores wholeness where there appears to be brokenness.

Love seems to cause us pain when it is withdrawn by another. Yet it remains within us, available to us whether we are alone or in a relationship.  Love is not something that is given to us. It is generated from within our very own soul.  Self Love is the starting point, the first use of Love.  From there it extends out into the world attracting and affecting a response.   When we see it as the most powerful energy in the universe, we might have more respect for what we can generate.

Ernest Holmes called love a “cohesive energy” that “brings things together what belongs together” and “maintains it in harmony” (as long as Love is active and present.)  We all know what happens to friendship, romance, business, anything really, when Love is withdrawn. Those things tend to unravel and fall apart. Love must be present to maintain harmony in every situation.  On this Valentine’s Day the question remains: What could I do with Love today?

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Where Will the Republican Party Go From Here?

by John Lawrence

The Republican party is having an identity crisis. Will it be dedicated to the adulation of Donald Trump or will it be based on conservative principles? What are conservative principles? Is the US a Republic or a Democracy or an Autocracy? This whole situation comes about because of the shifting demographics of the US. Historically, the US has been based on rule by white European Americans who have been able to keep minorities including chiefly African Americans in check by various means including slavery, Jim Crow laws, domestic terrorism, red lining, exclusion from education opportunities, even unemployment which has been used by the Federal Reserve to control inflation. That is changing because now there are more educated minorities including immigrants from all over the world gaining positions of political and economic power. 216 companies on the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children.

Is it any wonder then that poor and middle class whites want to tamp down immigration and keep black people in their place which they have always successfully been able to do until now. A lot of Trump supporters are effectively saying to hell with democracy if it means a multicultural society in which we have to tolerate multiple religions and multiple ethnicities and multiple shades of skin so it's not a question for them of having a democracy or a republic or any kind of society based on some version of popular rule. They want white European American rule like they've always had. There is also the added impetus that most of the once good paying manufacturing jobs have gone elsewhere which leads to even more insularity. So Trump supporters are the real conservatives in the respect that they want to conserve a way of life in which white people and European Americans have all the advantages. They abhor a democracy in which their lifestyle, their religion and their prerogatives are not paramount.

The Mitch McConnell conservatives overlap with the Trump conservatives, but the former stand for the privileges not of the white majority necessarily but of the white elite, of the white wealthy. They are even liberal enough to let wealthy people of different colors into their club while assuring less fortunate Americans that they too, if they work hard enough, may one day gain privileged positions of power and wealth. Basically, they represent rich people and abhor the white rabble. The problem is that this branch of the Republican party is increasingly irrelevant to the problems that America and the world faces. They stand for a strong defense which has morphed into endless wars which have gone nowhere and have only made matters worse in areas of the world in which the US has inserted itself. They stand for a bloated military-industrial-intelligence complex which has proven its incompetence in that it wasn't even able to predict an insurrection at the US Capitol, much less even defend against it once the attack was underway. They have proven to be focused on the wrong problems despite having been lavished with trillion dollar budgets.

What else do "principled" conservatives stand for? Low taxes but modern economic theory has proven that government spending need not be predicated on or limited by tax receipts. They stand for maximizing the private sector and minimizing the public sector at a time when dealing with climate change and even traditional infrastructure rebuilding demands the opposite. They stand for aiding and abetting the rich which has driven economic inequality to new heights. So what would be the role of a revamped and principled Republican party? Probably just to be a Democratic party lite or a party that criticizes Democratic programs. But that wouldn't assuage the interests of most power hungry politicians nor would it excite many members of their base who demand an entertaining leader who is focused by means of dog whistle diplomacy on white power.

The Trump party is similar to the Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party (at that time meaning descendants of colonists or settlers, rather than Indigenous Americans) before 1855 and the American Party after 1855. It was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s, originally starting as a secret society. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement. So naturally they would resent an Irish Catholic President even though now there have been two of them. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name. Qanon anyone? Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. Sure enough sounds like the Trump base to me.

The question is will the US become a full fledged democracy and live up to its vaunted principles finally even though it traditionally never has or will it revert to some version of white European American rule by electing another entertaining autocrat. That may not be Trump who has been deplatformed from Twitter, his chief propaganda tool, and faces mounting legal challenges, but there are others waiting in the wings who will offer bells and whistles instead of sound programs that really benefit the American people as a whole. But do Americans want government based on democratic principles or neverending campaign rallies with flags, banners and chants? As my Dad used to say, we shall see what we shall see.

Off the Top of My Head

A Job Guarantee Would Win Over Trump Voters and Also Address Black Lives Matter

by John Lawrence, February 14, 2021

Joe Biden can win over disgruntled Trump voters with a job guarantee. There has been a lot of research indicating that, if government were the Employer of Last Resort (ELR) at say a wage of $15.00 an hour, this would save money on unemployment as well as setting a minimum wage. It's also the minimum wage called for in Biden's COVID relief bill. Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary says:

"[G]ive Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

"White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

"A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his last letter requesting support for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”:

“It was obdurate government callousness to misery that first stoked the flames of rage and frustration. With unemployment a scourge in Negro ghettoes, the government still tinkers with half-hearted measures, refuses still to become employer of last resort. It asks the business community to solve the problems as though its past failures qualified it for success.”

It's clear that an ELT program would solve many problems not the least of which is wooing Trump voters to the Democratic party. Trump's appeal to them was partly that they had been left behind because jobs had been moved to China and Mexico and he was going to bring good paying manufacturing jobs back to America, something he never did or had a clue how to do. The ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer adding jobs during a recession and eliminating them during an expansion when jobs will shift back to the private sector. All private employers would have to do is pay a wage slightly higher than the program wage of the ELR program which would effectively set the minimum wage. It has been thought that a certain level of unemployment was necessary to fight inflation, but that's not necessarily the case as jobs in the ELR program would not compete with jobs in the private sector. The program wage would be a floor below which wages could not drop.

The so-called "Phillips Curve" maintained that there was a trade-off between employment and inflation, that to achieve lower inflation you had to increase unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines full employment as an economy in which the unemployment rate equals the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), no cyclical unemployment exists, and GDP is at its [full] potential. The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. So government economists have been willing to trade off the misery of approximately 16 million unemployed people in order to achieve stable money. Those 16 million are mainly composed of African Americans. However, Modern Monetary Theory claims that this is not necessary. There are other policy tools to fight inflation. Taxes, for example, mainly targeted on the rich. Other countries such as Argentine and India have implemented ELR programs. The money spent would eliminate the need for food stamps, unemployment insurance and other government programs necessary to deal with poverty and homelessness. Anyone wanting a job could have one, and these jobs would be in areas like child and elder care where there is a need for additional workers.

'Subpoena Kevin McCarthy If You Have To': Democrats Urged to Bring Witnesses After Bombshell Report on Trump Call

Published on Saturday, February 13, 2021

by Common Dreams

"As evidence of Trump's behind-the-scenes sociopathy mounts, it becomes clearer that Dems must call witnesses."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

53 Comments

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) walks back to his office from the Senate floor on U.S. Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 4, 2021. (Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Update:

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the lead House impeachment manager, said Saturday morning that his team will seek to subpoena Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) to testify before the Senate about her knowledge of a phone conversation between Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that took place during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol," Herrera Beutler said in a statement late Friday. "McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That's when, according to McCarthy, the president said, 'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.'"

The Senate voted by a margin of 55-45 Saturday morning to open the door to calling witnesses. Senators will soon vote on calling specific witnesses, including Herrera Beutler; Trump's defense team has threatened to call "lots" of witnesses, but their requests must be approved by the Senate.

"The significance of this development in the impeachment trial can't be overstated. We are now going to have witnesses. Each witness can lead to other witnesses and new information. This can also prompt others with new evidence to come forward voluntarily," tweeted Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). "The focus for now is on Trump's conversation with Kevin McCarthy. That conversation goes to the critical issue of Trump's actions and state of mind after the rioters breached the Capitol."

Earlier:

Democratic House impeachment managers are facing growing public pressure to call witnesses to testify at Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial in the wake of bombshell reporting on the former president's conversation with Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a right-wing mob.

Progressive watchdog groups, as Common Dreams reported earlier this week, have been urging Democrats to call witnesses since before the start of the trial, but CNN's late Friday story on Trump's conversation with McCarthy added fuel to those demands.

During the phone call, according to CNN, Trump told the California Republican, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," a comment that reportedly prompted a shouting match between the two GOP leaders as McCarthy pleaded with the then-president to speak out against the attack. Hours after the assault began, Trump finally released a video urging the insurrectionists to go home while praising them as "special."

"Trump's call with McCarthy is another powerful piece of evidence that Trump was on the side of the rioters attacking the Capitol," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted late Friday. "He utterly failed his oath to protect and defend our nation. This should seal the conviction with every senator."

While the Democratic leadership is hoping for a speedy end to the trial in order to move forward with confirmation of President Joe Biden's nominees and legislative business—including coronavirus relief—critics argued Friday night that failure to call witnesses following news of Trump's remarks to McCarthy would be a dereliction of duty.

"Democrats should call Kevin McCarthy as a witness and have him testify under oath about this call," tweeted Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter. "I know they want to wrap this up but it won't take long. The American people deserve the truth."

After House impeachment managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), delivered their striking case in support of convicting the former president for inciting a deadly insurrection against the U.S. government, several members of the Senate Democratic caucus said Thursday that witnesses would not be necessary.

"I feel like we've heard from enough witnesses," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), referring to interviews played during House Democrats' presentation. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, "I think the case has been made. I don't know what witnesses would add."

But observers argued that the new details of Trump's phone conversation with McCarthy indicate that compelling the House Republican leader and others to testify under oath could yield important new information. Calling witnesses would require a simple-majority vote in the Senate.

"As evidence of Trump's behind-the-scenes sociopathy mounts, it becomes clearer that Dems must call witnesses," said the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.

 

Others echoed that sentiment, pointing also to new reporting confirming that Trump was aware that former Vice President Mike Pence was in danger when he tweeted an attack on Pence during the mob assault.

In an appearance on MSNBC late Friday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) argued the new reporting "undermines the entire defense that the president's lawyers have put on" and said he would be open to calling witnesses to testify at the trial.

"I think [House impeachment managers] have established a slam-dunk case that the president incited violence for the purpose of overturning the election," said Van Hollen. "If they make a decision to call witnesses... obviously we would welcome that."

Watch:

Joining the growing chorus, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) tweeted Saturday morning that "the House Managers should ask for witnesses to be called, including anyone who communicated with Donald Trump or [has] direct knowledge of his actions and state of mind while he was in the White House after the Capitol was breached and while the attempted coup was ongoing."

Democrats are expected to decide on whether to call witnesses at some point Saturday morning. As Politico reported, "If Democrats and Trump's team opt against calling witnesses on Saturday, the trial will move immediately to closing arguments, expected to last no more than four hours. That would set up a vote on the charge against Trump in the early afternoon."

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Cancel Perks for the Worst President in History

Monday, February 8, 2021

How should the nation respond to an ex-president who has incited an insurrection, brought our democracy to the brink of destruction, and left so much pain and suffering in his wake?

In addition to being convicted in the Senate, which could bar him from running for office again, he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the cushy benefits former presidents receive.

These benefits were created under the Former Presidents’ Act of 1958, which was drawn up after Harry Truman told the House Majority Leader that he was going broke. 

The benefits in the Former President’s Act now include a yearly pension of over $200,000, an annual $1 million travel budget, an annual $500,000 travel budget for spouses, an office “appropriately furnished and equipped,” and staff to operate that office – for the rest of the former president’s life.

But what about a twice-impeached former president who did everything he could to attack Black and brown communities, and ended his presidency by inciting an insurrection against the United States government? 

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think someone with that record should receive millions in taxpayer-funded benefits at all, let alone every single year for the rest of his life. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to happen: A simple majority in Congress can pass a law barring this ex-president from the normal perks afforded to former presidents. For the sake of the country, Congress must do so. 

He should also be barred from receiving national security briefings now that he’s left office. There is no reason that someone this dangerous should be privy to the highest levels of intelligence as a private citizen – especially given his looming legal and financial entanglements with foreign entities. He was already a national security risk in office; as a private citizen, there’s no telling what he would do with classified information. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t take an act of Congress to cut off access to briefings: It’s up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone. He has the power to prevent his predecessor from receiving any and all national security briefings. For the sake of America and the world, he must do so.

Regardless of how the impeachment trial in the Senate ends, one thing is clear: Someone who has disgraced the office of the president so maliciously should not reap its amenities for the rest of his life.

No cushy benefits. No national security briefings. No perks for the worst president in history.

Tackling the Infrastructure and Unemployment Crises: The “American System” Solution

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Ellen Brown

A self-funding national infrastructure bank modeled on the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt would help solve not one but two of the country’s biggest problems.

Millions of Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, and government relief checks and savings are running out; meanwhile, the country still needs trillions of dollars in infrastructure. Putting the unemployed to work on those infrastructure projects seems an obvious solution, especially given that the $600 or $700 stimulus checks Congress is planning on issuing will do little to address the growing crisis. Various plans for solving the infrastructure crisis involving public-private partnerships have been proposed, but they’ll invariably result in private investors reaping the profits while the public bears the costs and liabilities. We have relied for too long on private, often global, capital, while the Chinese run circles around us building infrastructure with credit simply created on the books of their government-owned banks.

Earlier publicly-owned U.S. national banks and U.S. Treasuries pulled off similar feats, using what Sen. Henry Clay, U.S. statesman from 1806 to 1852, named the “American System” – funding national production simply with “sovereign” money and credit. They included the First (1791-1811) and Second (1816-1836) Banks of the United States, President Lincoln’s federal treasury and banking system, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932-1957). Chester Morrill, former Secretary of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, wrote of the RFC:

[I]t became apparent almost immediately, to many Congressmen and Senators, that here was a device which would enable them to provide for activities that they favored for which government funds would be required, but without any apparent increase in appropriations. . . . [T]here need be no more appropriations and its activities could be enlarged indefinitely, as they were, almost to fantastic proportions. [emphasis added] 

Even the Federal Reserve with its “quantitative easing” cannot fund infrastructure without driving up federal expenditures or debt, at least without changes to the Federal Reserve Act. The Fed is not allowed to spend money directly into the economy or to lend directly to Congress. It must go through the private banking system and its “primary dealers.” The Fed can create and pay only with “reserves” credited to the reserve accounts of banks. These reserves are a completely separate system from the deposits circulating in the real producer/consumer economy; and those deposits are chiefly created by banks when they make loans. (See the Bank of England’s 2014 quarterly report here.) New liquidity gets into the real economy when banks make loans to local businesses and individuals; and in risky environments like that today, banks are not lending adequately even with massive reserves on their books. 

A publicly-owned national infrastructure bank, on the other hand, would be mandated to lend into the real economy; and if the loans were of the “self funding” sort characterizing most infrastructure projects (generating fees to pay off the loans), they would be repaid, canceling out the debt by which the money was created. That is how China built 12,000 miles of high-speed rail in a decade: credit created on the books of government-owned banks was advanced to pay for workers and materials, and the loans were repaid with profits from passenger fees. 

Unlike the QE pumped into financial markets, which creates asset bubbles in stocks and housing, this sort of public credit mechanism is not inflationary. Credit money advanced for productive purposes balances the circulating money supply with new goods and services in the real economy. Supply and demand rise together, keeping prices stable. China increased its money supply by nearly 1800% over 24 years (from 1996 to 2020) without driving up price inflation, by increasing GDP in step with the money supply.   

HR 6422, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2020

A promising new bill for a national infrastructure bank modeled on the RFC and the American System, H.R. 6422, was filed by Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., in March. The National Infrastructure Bank of 2020 (NIB) is projected to create $4 trillion or more in bank credit money to rebuild the nation’s rusting bridges, roads, and power grid; relieve traffic congestion; and provide clean air and water, new schools, high-speed rail and affordable housing. It will do this while generating up to 25 million jobs paying union-level wages. The bill would provide flexible, lowest-cost financing to state and local governments and projects a net profit to the federal government of $80 billion per year. The bill also provides for substantial investment in “disadvantaged communities,” those defined by persistent poverty. 

The NIB is designed to be a true depository bank, giving it the perks of those institutions for leverage and liquidity, including the ability to borrow at the Fed’s discount window without penalty at 0.25% interest (almost interest-free). According to Alphecca Muttardy, a former macroeconomist for the International Monetary Fund and chief economist on the 2020 NIB team, the NIB will create the $4 trillion it lends simply as deposits on its books, as the Bank of England attests all depository banks do. For liquidity to cover withdrawals, the NIB can either borrow from the Fed at 0.25% or issue and sell bonds. 

Modeled on its American System predecessors, the NIB will be capitalized with existing federal government debt. According to the summary on the NIB Coalition website:

The NIB would be capitalized by purchasing up to $500 billion in existing Treasury bonds held by the private sector (e.g., in pension and other savings funds), in exchange for an equivalent in shares of preferred [non-voting] stock in the NIB. The exchange would take place via a sales contract with the NIB/Federal Government that guarantees a preferred stock dividend of 2% more than private-holders currently earn on their Treasuries. The contract would form a binding obligation to provide the incremental 2%, or about $10 billion per year, from the Budget. While temporarily appearing as mandatory spending under the Budget, the $10 billion per year would ultimately be returned as a dividend paid to government from the NIB’s earnings stream. 

Since the federal government will be paying the interest on the bonds, the NIB needs to come up with only the 2% dividend to entice investors. The proposal is to make infrastructure loans at a very modest 2%, substantially lower than the rates now available to the state and local governments that create most of the nation’s infrastructure. At a 10% capital requirement, the bonds can capitalize ten times their value in loans. The return will thus be 20% on a 2% dividend outlay from the NIB, for a net return on investment of 18% less operating costs. The U.S. Treasury will also be asked to deposit Treasury bonds with the bank as an “on-call” subscriber. 

The American System: Sovereign Money and Credit

U.S. precedents for funding internal improvements with “sovereign credit” – credit issued by the national government rather than borrowed from the private banking system – go back to the American colonists’ paper scrip, colonial Pennsylvania’s “land bank”, and the First U.S. Bank of Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary. Hamilton proposed to achieve the constitutional ideal of “promoting the general welfare” by nurturing the country’s fledgling industries with federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other internal improvements; protective measures such as tariffs; and easy credit provided through a national bank. Production and the money to finance it would all be kept “in house,” without incurring debt to foreign financiers. The national bank would promote a single currency, making trade easier, and would issue loans in the form of “sovereign credit.” ’

Senator Henry Clay called this model the “American System” to distinguish it from the “British System” that left the market to the “invisible hand” of “free trade,” allowing big monopolies to gobble up small entrepreneurs, and foreign bankers and industrialists to exploit the country’s labor and materials. After the charter for the First US Bank expired in 1811, Congress created the Second Bank of the United States in 1816 on the American System model. 

In 1836, Pres. Andrew Jackson shut down the Second U.S. Bank due to perceived corruption, leaving the country with no national currency and precipitating a recession. “Wildcat” banks issued their own banknotes – promissory notes allegedly backed by gold. But the banks often lacked the gold necessary to redeem the notes, and the era was beset with bank runs and banking crises.

Abraham Lincoln’s economic advisor was Henry Carey, the son of Matthew Carey, a well-known printer and publisher who had been tutored by Benjamin Franklin and had tutored Henry Clay. Henry Carey proposed creating an independent national currency that was non-exportable, one that would remain at home to do the country’s own work. He advocated a currency founded on “national credit,” something he defined as “a national system based entirely on the credit of the government with the people, not liable to interference from abroad.” It would simply be a paper unit of account that tallied work performed and goods delivered. 

On that model, in 1862 Abraham Lincoln issued U.S. Notes or Greenbacks directly from the U.S. Treasury, allowing Lincoln’s government not only to avoid an exorbitant debt to British bankers and win the Civil War, but to fund major economic development, including tying the country together with the transcontinental railroad – an investment that actually turned a profit for the government.

After Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the Greenback program was discontinued; but Lincoln’s government also passed the National Bank Act of 1863, supplemented by the National Bank Act of 1864. Originally known as the National Currency Act, its stated purpose was to stabilize the banking system by eradicating the problem of notes issued by multiple banks circulating at the same time. A single banker-issued national currency was created through chartered national banks, which could issue notes backed by the U.S. Treasury in a quantity proportional to the bank’s level of capital (cash and federal bonds) deposited with the Comptroller of the Currency.

Off the Top of My Head

The Two Strands of Modern Economic Theory

by John Lawrence, February 12, 2021

Ellen Brown with her book Web of Debt pointed out that public banks could save states and municipalities millions in interest compared to Wall Street banks. She also pointed out that money is created by banks when they make loans with fractional reserve banking. They just create the money with keystrokes; it doesn't come out of deposits. Ergo, all money comes from debt, but that's only half the story. The other strand explains how the Federal Reserve just creates money by keystrokes. In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton explains how countries with sovereign currencies can create money that really is not debt, despite the fact that conventional thinking says it is. When households or states or countries in the Euro zone take on debt, they do have to pay it back. When countries with sovereign currencies create money, they don't have to pay it back. It's as simple as that.

When European countries gave up their sovereign currencies and adopted the Euro, they gave up the right to create the money they needed to pay bills so they need to borrow on capital markets which can charge them whatever interest they want. This is how Greece and Italy and other European countries got into problems. On the other hand the U.K. which never gave up its sovereign currency can just create the money it needs without going to the debt markets. In the same way Orange County and other US municipalities got into trouble with spiraling debt which had to be paid back. This can get out of hand because the more indebted a debtor gets, the higher interest rate they get charged so that in the worst case they are just borrowing money to pay interest. The US can never get in this debt trap because it never has to borrow money on the open market and the Fed can set interest rates however it wants. Once authorized by Congress and required by law Treasury bonds are issued and can always be paid because the Fed can just create the money to pay them.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has established that deficit spending, whether that comes from tax breaks or government programs or currently for coronavirus relief, is just an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. The national debt never needs to be paid off. Also any country that owns Treasuries - for instance, China - could have them paid off tomorrow if they chose to cash them all in by the Fed just debiting money from the savings account of the People's Bank of China at the Fed and crediting their cash account also at the Fed. Countries with sovereign currencies, ^i.e. the US dollar, the British pound, the Japanese yen etc, can all create money in this way by having their central banks do it with keystrokes on a computer. Greece, Italy, California and New York can't do this because they don't have sovereign currencies.

So there is a difference between debt acquired by households, firms and countries which don't issue their own sovereign currency and countries which have central banks that do. The US Federal Reserve can buy up Treasury bonds as necessary to provide as much money as is authorized by Congress to the US Treasury. By law they can't buy them directly from the Treasury but must buy them on the open market. However, US primary dealers - mainly Wall Street banks - are required to buy them and the Fed can buy them from the primary dealers by providing "liquidity" - dollars which the Fed creates with keystrokes - to the Wall Street banks. The Fed also controls interest rates which at this time are 0.25% or almost zero. So the $1.9 trillion relief package proposed by Biden is no problem either for the US Treasury or the Fed. That money could just end up on the Fed's balance sheet the way the trillions of dollars it created to bail out the Big Banks in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 did. The fact is that, when the US government deficit spends, that adds money to the private economy, and right now the private economy is hurting because so many are out of work and not able to pay rent or mortgages or car payments. Money added to the economy by deficit spending (deficit being really a misnomer) can be readily absorbed by unemployed workers to pay their bills. The point is that taxes are not necessary for government spending.

So Web of Debt applies to the private economy and The Deficit Myth applies to the national economy. The first book advocates public banking which can save states and municipalities money on interest because they do have to pay their debts. The second book describes how governments with sovereign currencies can just create money which need never be paid off. However, this money creation facility should, like alcohol, be used responsibly; otherwise, inflation can occur. But when huge numbers of people are unemployed and states are having a hard time paying their bills, it is incumbent on the central government to help them. The same applies to European countries in the Euro zone. US lawmakers need to get up to date on how the real economy actually works. In truth Republicans have lost all legitimacy when it comes to their harping on deficit spending.

Off the Top of My Head

China Has Been Taking Over the World ... Peacefully

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2021

As Trump was retreating from multilateralism with his America First approach, China was winning friends and influencing people by building infrastruture in countries around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This model put excess Chinese labor to work pulling their families out of poverty and set up the groundwork for increased trade and friendly relations with with other countries. Latest example: Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has not even been able to build infrastructure in its own country. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. In 2017, the U.S. infrastructure earned a D+ average. Stay tuned for a new report later this year. Infrastructure looms large because now it must be built out as green infrastructure replacing fossil fuel infrastructure.

In Latin America, America's so-called back yard, 19 countries have signed up for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The value of trade between China and Brazil, Latin America's largest country is $100 billion. China is South America's largest trading partner. Only Paraguay is not on board because they're the only South American country that recognizes Taiwan and not Beijing as the legitimate Chinese government. In 2019 Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America concentrating on regional infrastructure such as ports, roads, dams and railways. Meanwhile, America was focused on its entertainment and consumerist economy, now partially defunct due to COVID. Chinese purchases of minerals and agricultural commodities helped South America get through the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. While the US had an orgy of financial speculation that created the 2008 financial crisis, China was powering on keeping its shoulder to the wheel, ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone building infrastructure and providing full employment for the Chinese people. As the US was relying on its military power to maintain its influence in the world, China was employing peaceful means to expand its influence. In 2020 the US spent $738 billion on defense, an additional $35 billion on nuclear weapons and and additional $80 billion on intelligence programs, none of which by the way provided intelligence on the assault on the Capitol although it had been discussed widely and openly on the web in prior weeks. Meanwhile, China's 2020 defense budget was $178 billion.

China's Cosco Shipping is building a new $3 billion port in Peru, and there are plans for a transcontinental railroad linking South America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Diplomatic opportunities for China have also been opened up due to COVID since China produces most of the world's PPE. The US was caught flat footed because it had to go hat in hand to China for PPE not much of which is manufactured domestically. Mask diplomacy has caused Washington to worry that China is gaining influence during the pandemic as China has provided PPE to 150 countries and 7 international organizations around the globe. While the US struggles to get vaccine into the arms of Americans, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine free of charge. Time magazine reported:

"Yet China has won influence not by wielding sticks but by deftly distributing carrots. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bilateral trade with China rose from $2 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. Today, Brazil sends 30% of all exports to China, including 80% of its soybean crop and 60% of its iron ore. These entanglements are typically tightest with nations with goods to sell; China has supplied over $17 billion in financing to Argentina since 2007, according to Inter-American Dialogue, and is the world’s top importer of Argentine soybeans and beef.

"China is also now a preferred lender across the region. It hosts two international development banks–the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai–that are both expanding their remit across the region. “Infrastructure development has shrunk the distance between Asia and Latin America,” AIIB president Jin Liqun tells TIME in his Beijing headquarters."

While China was deftly distributing carrots, the US was wielding sticks with Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo bullying the rest of the world to get them to fall in line behind the US. The US needs to cooperate with China to stave off the next big crisis - global warming - not start a new Cold War in an effort to overtake or compete with China. For the most part China has already won any competition to speak of by gaining cooperation and friendship with the rest of the world and achieving the world's largest economy while the US still struggles with COVID, its economy in shambles. "No country has put itself in a better position to become the world's renewable energy superpower than China,"says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. In Brazil China's State Grid Corp. is the largest power generation and distribution company, while China's Three Gorges, the world's largest hydropower provider, controls 17 out of 48 hydro plants and 11 wind farms.

Joe Biden is doing his best to backtrack from Trump's disastrous America First policy, but American foreign policy is still on the track that it views China as a competitor rather than a nation that should be cooperated with in order to meet the challenge of global warming. Rather than gearing up for a military confrontation or quibbling and squabbling over human rights, the US must adopt a less belligerent foreign policy and learn to get along with the other nations of the world even those who have not been historic allies. The US should cut back on its bloated military and military-complex spending and devote the savings to virus research and green infrastructure implementation at home and around the world in cooperation with China and other nations.

Off the Top of My Head

When Will the Pandemic Be Over? Maybe Never

by John Lawrence, February 10, 2021

We may just have to live with it, the same way we live with most other viruses. To eradicate COVID-19, it would have to be eliminated everywhere in the world. Not likely. To add insult to injury, COVID-19 is mutating - everywhere in the world and not only in humans. These viruses are also present in animals and are mutating there as well. What this means is that all the billions spent on vaccines so far may not have resulted in vaccines effective against the mutants. So billions more need to be spent for new vaccines that might not be effective against even newer mutants. It's a race against time, and humans may need to be vaccinated multiple times each one not effective against the newest mutant.

So we may have to learn to live with COVID. After all we have learned to live with a number of other viruses including flu, which also keeps mutating, HIV, poliomyelitis, yaws, dracunculiasis, malaria, measles, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis and cysticercosis. In some cases symptoms are treatable in an individual even though the virus may still be present as is the case with HIV. The only viruses that has been eradicated from the planet are smallpox and rinderpest. The fact that humans are the only reservoir for smallpox infection and that carriers did not exist, played a significant role in the eradication of smallpox. Most viruses are present in animals as well as humans and can harbor there for years before breaking out again in humans.

The modus operandi for a virus is that the more transmissable ones win out over the less transmissable ones. So the longer the virus exists in the population, the more the virus mutates and the more transmissable the virus gets. It does not necessarily get more deadly because if it killed its host right away, it wouldn't have as much time to infect others. So an ideal virus is one that hangs around in its host for a long length of time and then kills it. Being asymptomatic but transmissable for a long length of time also contributes to the success of the virus at least from the virus' viewpoint. Time magazine reports:

"That underscores wealthy countries’ responsibility to help developing nations get access to vaccines, Mazet says–for the benefit of the people who live there, of course, but also for the rest of the world. Even if one country achieves herd immunity, that status could be threatened by new viral mutations emerging from areas without broad vaccine coverage.

"The good news is we already know how to live with viruses, like seasonal influenza and the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. These diseases aren’t harmless–the flu infects millions of people in the U.S. each year and kills tens of thousands–but we have learned to minimize their damage."

So it becomes apparent that, if we don't help poorer countries, our own lives will never be out of danger. This is true for pandemics but it is also true in many other respects which should be perfectly obvious. Global poverty contributes to global disease. Going it alone or America First or ignoring the plight of our neighbors puts our own lives in peril. This is especially true for global warming. It is also true for the refugee crisis, childhood poverty all around the world and many other things. Climate refugees are already being created thanks to the effects of global warming. All these problems can only be addressed if not solved by global cooperation. In order to do this we must overlook things about other countries that we quibble with especially on the order of human rights. From their perspective we are human rights violators. What is important is not to bully or sanction other countries but to get along with them. Diplomacy and cooperation should be the order of the day. We must deemphasize military threats and solutions to world problems, defund the military and fund programs designed to counteract the real threats to ourselves and others.

Time put it this way:

"A better solution, many experts believe, is investing in the public-health infrastructure that went neglected before the COVID-19 pandemic, thus improving our ability to contain, respond to and monitor coronaviruses and other pathogens. “We need to invest in creating a healthier country [and world!], so when there is another virus, we will not be as unprepared as we were for this one,” Galea says.

...

"Recovering from the pandemic must also involve better science communication, to improve understanding of what must be done to curtail disease spread–and to persuade Americans to actually do it.

"Part of coexisting with COVID-19 may mean recognizing the need for cooperation [emphasis mine], whether it’s getting vaccinated to contribute to herd immunity; wearing a mask to prevent spreading the virus; consenting to regular testing or contact tracing to help with monitoring; or adhering to the guidelines set out by local health authorities if an outbreak emerges. Steven Taylor, author of The Psychology of Pandemics, says it’s possible for humans to adjust to such a scenario. Wearing masks felt bizarre to many in the Western world less than a year ago; now it’s second nature for most. “The virus will adapt to its host,” he says, “and we will adapt to the virus.”"

Yes, cooperation to provide herd immunity, to provide a herd response to global warming which also affects the whole herd and elimination of war and military responses to every nonexistent but imagined threat. We are all interconnected so that the more we cooperate, the more likely it will be that we will solve these global problems. If we don't the human race could be wiped out by ongoing pandemics, global warming and warfare. Let's spend our money on the real threats to mankind and not on a bloated military-industrial complex which is proving on a daily basis that it is ineffective in confronting the real problems of mankind.

'Invisible killer': Fossil Fuels Caused 8.7m Deaths Globally in 2018, Research Finds

by Oliver Milman, Tue 9 Feb 2021 03.00 ES

from the Guardian

Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Two men walk along Rajpath amid smoggy conditions in New Delhi last month. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

The enormous death toll is higher than previous estimates and surprised even the study’s researchers. “We were initially very hesitant when we obtained the results because they are astounding, but we are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution,” said Eloise Marais, a geographer at University College London and a study co-author. “It’s pervasive. The more we look for impacts, the more we find.”

The 8.7m deaths in 2018 represent a “key contributor to the global burden of mortality and disease”, states the study, which is the result of collaboration between scientists at Harvard University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London. The death toll exceeds the combined total of people who die globally each year from smoking tobacco plus those who die of malaria.

Scientists have established links between pervasive air pollution from burning fossil fuels and cases of heart disease, respiratory ailments and even the loss of eyesight. Without fossil fuel emissions, the average life expectancy of the world’s population would increase by more than a year, while global economic and health costs would fall by about $2.9tn.

The new estimate of deaths, published in the journal Environmental Research, is higher than other previous attempts to quantify the mortal cost of fossil fuels. A major report by the Lancet in 2019, for example, found 4.2m annual deaths from air pollution coming from dust and wildfire smoke, as well as fossil fuel combustion.

This new research deploys a more detailed analysis of the impact of sooty airborne particles thrown out by power plants, cars, trucks and other sources. This particulate matter is known as PM2.5 as the particles are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter – or about 30 times smaller than the diameter of the average human hair. These tiny specks of pollution, once inhaled, lodge in the lungs and can cause a variety of health problems.

“We don’t appreciate that air pollution is an invisible killer,” said Neelu Tummala, an ear, nose and throat physician at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “The air we breathe impacts everyone’s health but particularly children, older individuals, those on low incomes and people of color. Usually people in urban areas have the worst impacts.”

Instead of solely relying upon averaged estimates from satellite and surface observations that account for PM2.5 from a range of sources, the researchers used a global 3D model of atmospheric chemistry overseen by Nasa that has a more detailed resolution and can distinguish between pollution sources. “Rather than rely on averages spread across large regions, we wanted to map where the pollution is and where people live, so we could know more exactly what people are breathing,” said Karn Vohra, a graduate student at University of Birmingham and study co-author.

The researchers then developed a new risk assessment based on a tranche of new research that has found a much higher mortality rate from fossil fuel emissions than previously thought, even in relatively low concentrations. Data was taken from 2012 and then also 2018 to account for rapid improvements in air quality in China. Deaths were counted for people aged 15 and older.

The results show a varied global picture. “China’s air quality is improving but its fine particle concentrations are still staggeringly high, the US is improving, although there are hotspots in the north-east, Europe is a mixed bag and India is definitely a hotspot,” said Marais.

A coal power plant in Niederaussem, western Germany. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images

The death toll outlined in the study may even be an underestimate of the true picture, according to George Thurston, an expert in air pollution and health at the NYU school of medicine who was not involved in the research. “Overall, however, this new work makes clearer than ever that, when we talk about the human cost of air pollution or climate change, the major causes are one and the same – fossil fuel combustion,” he said.

Philip J Landrigan, director of the program for global public health and the common good, said: “Recent research has been exploring the use of newer exposure-response functions, and several recent papers that use these newer functions have produced higher estimates of pollution-related mortality than the Global Burden of Disease analyses.” He added: “I consider it important that different risk assessment models are now being developed, because their development will force re-examination of the assumptions that underlie current models and will improve them.”

Ed Avol, chief of the environmental health division at the University of Southern California (USC), said: “The authors have applied improved methodologies to better quantify exposures and better document health outcomes in order to reach the unsettling (but not surprising) conclusion that fossil-fuels-combustion-related air pollution is more damaging to global human health than previously estimated. The remote satellite imagery exposure specialists and health epidemiologists on the research team are highly competent investigators and among the most talented scholars in this dynamic field.”

“Fossil fuels have a really large impact upon health, the climate and the environment and we need a more immediate response,” said Marais. “Some governments have carbon-neutral goals but maybe we need to move them forward given the huge damage to public health. We need much more urgency.”

 

Off the Top of My Head

Even With Unlimited Spending Some Problems Can't Be Solved

by John Lawrence

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that unlimited Federal spending is no problem. The money is there, but it's a question if the productive capacity is there. For instance, since most products are manufactured in China, unlimited spending on products needed to counter the pandemic might only produce inflation. That's a problem of letting crucial industries be relocated to a foreign country and not manufactured here. If you can't ramp up production in a meaningful time frame, even though the finance is not a problem, the ability to produce needed products may be. In this situation MMT predicts inflation. Existing facilities to produce vaccines can only produce so many vials.You could go to 24 hour a day production, but beyond that you would have to build more factories and that takes time. Would the money spent to build more factories be well spent if the production facilities came online only after the crisis was over? No. MMT stands for spending money wisely to solve social problems like the pandemic and global warming, but the time frame within which the problems need to be solved is important. There's no sense in spending money to ramp up production if that production only is available after the problem has already been solved.

Yeva Nersisyan and L Randall Wray write:

"But what happens when ventilators and masks are not available for sale even as companies are operating 24/7? More money may not solve the problem, but the government still has a role to play. During the second world war, the US quickly became “the arsenal of democracy” by repurposing its productive capacity to meet the needs of the war. Through diligent planning “[l]ipstick cases became bomb cases, beer cans went to hand grenades, adding machines to automatic pistols, and vacuum cleaners to gas mask parts”. We were able to cut “production time for Liberty Ships down from 365 days to 92, 62, and, finally, to one day”. We can mobilize our resources once again to build temporary hospitals, and to ensure a sufficient supply of medical equipment and whatever else is necessary to overcome the crisis."

So it may be necessary to shift production from pre-COVID endeavors to provide the necessary human and material resources to deal with the problem. For instance, the restaurant industry which filled the gap from lack of time for home preparation of meals due to both spouses working has suffered the most during the pandemic because more people have the time for meal preparation at home. Those workers are now available for deployment in other more crucial industries such as the renewable energy industry. Other hospitality and entertainment sector workers can also be shifted to more crucial endeavors just as they were during World War II. The economy as it existed pre-COVID was composed mainly of profitable private sector activities, many of which were not designed to deal with the most crucial social problems.

The solution of the pandemic at least in the US has an expected solution within the next year. Global warming has a somewhat longer time frame, but requires much more money to be spent because, from a finance point of view, it's a much larger problem. Changing the infrastructure of the whole world will require much more money but over a longer time span. The time span for solving global warming is approximately 10 years so we have ten times as long to solve global warming as we do to solve the pandemic. The pandemic may never be completely resolved because wiping out the virus everywhere in the world completely may not be possible just as it has not been possible to wipe out a number of other viruses. Over time, however, the problem can become treatable and manageable. The same can be said of the global warming problem. It may be impossible to eliminate every source of greenhouse gas emission in 10 years, but if most of them are eliminated, the remaining problems may be manageable in the sense that the earth may ultimately be salvageable.

What we have learned from the pandemic is that much more money needs to be spent on research and development in virology so that we are better prepared to deal with pandemics and epidemics. Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest. The rest still exist somewhere in the world. There are also four ongoing programs, targeting poliomyelitis, yaws, dracunculiasis, and malaria. Five more infectious diseases have been identified as of April 2008 as potentially eradicable with current technology by the Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication—measles, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis and cysticercosis. What we have also learned is that there is more of a threat to Americans and human beings in general from viruses than there is from foreign nations, both state actors and terrorists. Therefore, the money spent on the defense department should be drastically reduced while the money spent on human health should be vastly increased. Let's deal with the real threats not the imagined ones.

Coronavirus Has Destroyed the Myth of the Deficit

by Yeva Nersisyan and L Randall Wray

from the Guardian, April 17, 2020

No, federal government spending doesn’t have to be ‘paid for’. The crisis shows providing for our society is not a financial issue

‘Buying into the deficit myth, for generations we have been living below our means – paralyzed by the belief that finance is the constraint.’ Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Only a month ago, a stimulus bill of $2tn would have been unthinkable. Indignant deficit scolds would have asked how one planned to pay for it, and complained about burdening our grandchildren with debt and bankrupting our country. Bernie Sanders bent over backwards to explain how he was going to pay for a Green New Deal or Medicare for All. These programs don’t seem as expensive any more. Suddenly the government is planning “helicopter drops” of cash. Larry Kudlow, who relentlessly attacked the Obama stimulus during the global financial crisis, is touting the current stimulus as “the single largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States”.

Nobody is seriously asking how we are going to pay for this stimulus – and they shouldn’t. It took a global pandemic to explode the myth that federal government spending has to be “paid for”. The Covid-19 crisis has clearly demonstrated what should have been obvious already: provisioning society – whether with food, disinfecting wipes, toilet paper or medical supplies – is not a financial issue. If we can’t produce enough masks, ventilators or food, finance will not help. Society’s capacity to produce real output is what limits its ability to provision itself. And this is precisely what the virus threatens, as workers stay home, supply chains break down and businesses shut their doors.

On the financial side, a sovereign government can always afford to buy what is for sale in its currency, as Modern Money Theorists have long explained. It cannot run out of money because it simply credits bank accounts when it spends. This is not a prescription, but merely a description of what actually happens. In the United States, Congress passes the budget, while the Treasury, in cooperation with its fiscal agent, the Federal Reserve, makes the necessary payments. This happens through the thick and thin of the business cycle, crisis or not. If the US government wants to buy more ventilators or masks, finance cannot be an impediment.

But what happens when ventilators and masks are not available for sale even as companies are operating 24/7? More money may not solve the problem, but the government still has a role to play. During the second world war, the US quickly became “the arsenal of democracy” by repurposing its productive capacity to meet the needs of the war. Through diligent planning “[l]ipstick cases became bomb cases, beer cans went to hand grenades, adding machines to automatic pistols, and vacuum cleaners to gas mask parts”. We were able to cut “production time for Liberty Ships down from 365 days to 92, 62, and, finally, to one day”. We can mobilize our resources once again to build temporary hospitals, and to ensure a sufficient supply of medical equipment and whatever else is necessary to overcome the crisis.

Buying into the deficit myth, for generations we have been living below our means – paralyzed by the belief that finance is the constraint. Prolonged periods of slack and jobless recoveries have disincentivized investment and hurt our productive capacity and labor productivity. Even in good times our economy leaves millions unemployed or underemployed and a significant amount of our capacity idle (before the epidemic, our factories were only operating at three-quarters of capacity). We have underinvested in public healthcare, education and infrastructure and imposed extreme limitations on social assistance programs. As of this writing, the administration still plans to go through with its plan to kick 700,000 Americans off the food stamps program to save a measly $4.2bn over five years. We have been living in “poverty in the midst of plenty”, as John Maynard Keynes aptly noted in the Great Depression.

Once this crisis passes, the deficit scolds will be back at it again, trying to put roadblocks in front of progressive policies. We will be told we can’t afford Medicare for All, Jobs for All, College for All or halting climate change. The centrists will try to get us back to “normal” – ie an economy that leaves so many behind.

It is imperative that we resist. What progressives need to push for is creating a different kind of economy through a Green New Deal. To do so, we need to distinguish between the myths and real constraints, understanding “that what is technically feasible is financially possible” for a sovereign government. Affording the Green New Deal is about real resources and technology, not about finance.

The original New Deal was also dogged by concerns about excessive government spending. The second world war eliminated that obstacle, unleashing extraordinary economic mobilization and decades of prosperity. Hopefully the coronavirus crisis will not be as destructive as the Great Depression, but if there is one thing it should destroy, it’s the myth of the deficit.

• Yeva Nersisyan is associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College

• L Randall Wray, author of Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems; Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist; and Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability, is senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and professor of economics at Bard College

 

Off the Top of My Head

Contrary to Larry Summers Biden's Relief Bill Will Not Cause Increased Inflation

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2021

Joe Biden's almost $2 trillion pandemic relief deal will not be inflationary despite Larry Summers' opinion. Inflation occurs when there is too much money sloshing around in the economy chasing too few goods, services and human resources. That is not the case here. First of all it will reemploy the unemployed. This is a presently unused resource. Secondly, it will suck up unused or unsold goods and services funding things that are currently unfunded like child care, and thirdly, it will serve to pay off debt and replenish savings. Any money going into savings or paying off debt is not inflationary. It's deflationary in the sense that the banks will lose money due to interest they won't collect if loans are paid off. The middle class that did have savings or credit in many cases has had to use those to survive the pandemic. That's why giving money to higher earning, but not wealthy, families is a good thing. To hear some people talk only money should be given to those who are desperate and living from paycheck to paycheck. Yes, those are the families most in need who should be given money first, but higher earning families who have depleted their savings or gone into debt need to be resuscitated also.

So here is what Larry Summers says about inflation:

"First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply."

Summers fails to take into account the deflationary effects of the relief bill. Money going to states and municipalities will actually be deflationary because much of it will be used to pay down debts and loans. Many state budgets are in horrible shape and employees such as police, librarians and firemen have been laid off. People paying back rents and mortgages will have a deflationary effect on the economy. People on the lower end of the economic spectrum who are living paycheck to paycheck will be able to get a little ahead and also save. This will not add a lot to inflation. Also money can always be withdrawn from the economy by taxing the rich, those who actually added to their wealth and income during the pandemic. This is the only reason that taxes might need to be raised because the US government has the ability to spend without raising taxes. The only reason to tax would be to fight inflation and those taxes can be targeted towards wealthier families and individuals. The Federal Reserve has not been able to achieve its target rate of 2% inflation recently despite maintaining almost zero percent interest rates. It wants more money sloshing around in the economy.

There are other ways to suck money out of the economy to offset inflation. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) recommends Medicare for All which would result in much less money spent on health care while providing better health outcomes. This would be deflationary which would counteract any inflationary propensities of government deficit spending. Conventional economic thinking is that there is a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. The more people unemployed there are, the more inflation is diminished. Therefore, full employment as defined by economists is not really employment where everyone is employed. It is that level of unemployment which just keeps inflation in check. However, according to "The Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment in an MMT World: An Open Economy Perspective" by Emilio Carnevali and Matteo Deleidi, MMT it is contended that inflation "occurs when the system reaches the point of full utilization of its productive capacity, both in terms of capital utilization and in terms of availability of workers. At this point, the government should curb inflation forces cooling down the effective demand. This is another fundamental task of taxes." As long as there is unused capacity in human or production terms, increased employment will not be inflationary. So Larry summers need not worry that putting all those unemployed people back to work will lead to inflation.

Biden's putting a $15.00 an hour minimum wage in the relief bill is also what MMT advocates in relation to a Federal job guarantee. Real full employment at a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour does not need to be inflationary especially if it is in areas that don't compete with already employed workers. Biden's relief bill will have the effect of putting almost everyone to work with at least an hourly pay of $15.00 an hour. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and employed at $15.00 an hour are not going to contribute to inflation since their demands on the economy are those that can be easily accommodated by existing production and easily increased production. Deficit spending is not a problem. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said, "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default." So the real limit on government spending is inflation which can be controlled by taxes on those sectors of the economy which are not easily upscaled to provide more supply.

There is much unused capacity in the current US economy both in human and material or physical terms. People should be put back to work with a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. A follow-on bill that would address infrastructure rebuilding and a Green New Deal also needs to be done. Resources may have to be managed by government to control inflation, but the important thing is that work needs to be done in these areas and people need to be put back to work. Inflation can also be offset by the deflationary effect of withdrawing funds form a bloated defense sector.

Off the Top of My Head

What If: Trump Had Asked Supporters to Bring Guns to Rally January 6?

by John Lawrence

Trump was a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Did we just dodge a bullet so to speak when he didn't encourage his followers to open carry at his January 6 rally? Most, if not all, Trump supporters are gun advocates. Things might have turned out very differently if they had had their guns with them when they invaded the Capitol. Thank God that for whatever reason most of the insurrectionists didn't have their guns with them although even without guns that many people bent on mayhem could have done a lot more damage, especially to human lives, than they actually did. As it ended, American democracy was still intact unlike the situation in Myanmar where they really know how to put on a coup. But let January 6 be a wake up call for Americans that want to preserve our time honored system and the rule of law.

Fast Company reported:

"Days before the chaos, according to The Washington Post, it became clear from discussions on far-right internet forums that mobs would transport guns with them to Washington D.C., which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. That was correct: during and after the mayhem, arrests were made for weapons possession, and authorities recovered at least five handguns and long guns from the scene. ...

"Gun laws are relatively tight in the nation’s capital. Open carry is forbidden; concealed carry is only allowed with a permit from D.C., and not from any other state. Guns must be registered, and there’s an assault weapons ban in place. The Capitol itself is a gun-free zone. (Which is why, earlier this week, D.C.’s chief of police said he planned to inform Lauren Boebert, an incoming Colorado congresswoman who claimed she would be bringing her Glock to work, that she would face penalties if she did so.)

"Of course, the far-right mobs ignored those laws, and the Capitol’s metal detectors, by smashing the windows and climbing through. But, gun laws still matter, Brady says, certain that the damage would have been a lot worse had laws been looser. In May, disrupters in Michigan, an open-carry state, marched into the State Capitol to protest pandemic lockdowns, armed with semi-automatic rifles, which are typically rigged to fire rapidly. “If we had had that scene yesterday,” she says, “it would have been absolutely lethal.”'

So do we have to thank the fact that Washington DC has strict gun laws and open carry is forbidden, presumably even at Trump's rally, that America is still a democracy? Let that sink in. If American democracy is to fail, which it came so close to doing on January 6, it will probably be because of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution and how it's been interpreted by the courts.

So the 2nd Amendment in and of itself could be the downfall of American democracy if we get another Trump like actual gun nut elected as President. Trump himself was only a gun nut in rhetoric only. I doubt if he ever killed a deer or a possum or a rabbit being a city kid from New York City. But some of these more rural southern politicians are not gun nuts in name only. They are the type who invaded the Michigan Capitol carrying firearms. If that was the rehearsal for the insurrection in DC, it was a rehearsal that didn't materialize in a better performance thanks to Washington's strict gun laws. Let that be a lesson to all of us.

Switzerland has a stunningly high rate of gun ownership. yet it has very few mass shootings or gun violence. Why? The Swiss have strict rules for who can get a gun, and take firearm training very seriously. Most Swiss men are required to learn how to use a gun. So it isn't like the US where any bird brained or mentally deranged wahoo can exercise his privilege to own a gun. The Swiss require gun owners to be trained and licensed just like we require drivers of automobiles to be in the US. Maybe we should take a page out of their book.

'Jim Crow Relic': Progressives Ramp Up Efforts to Finally Get Rid of Filibuster

Published on Sunday, January 24, 2021

by Common Dreams

 On the Filibuster: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "A Cherished Tool of Segregationists"; former President Barack Obama: "Jim Crow Relic"; and ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "Outlived Its Usefulness."

by Common Dreams staff

 

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Democratic Congresswoman from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks as now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer listens during a press conference in the Corona neighborhood of Queens on April 14, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Johannes Eisele / AFP via Getty Images)

A coalition of more than 40 progressive groups—Just Democracy—is ramping up the pressure on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer by running a digital billboard in New York's Times Square—the heart of Schumer's district—urging him to end the Senate filibuster. The filibuster rule requires most legislation to reach 60 votes to pass in the Senate.

The coalition—made up of over 40 grassroots civil rights and social justice groups from around the country—created and paid for the week-long billboard starting Monday.

Just Democracy tweeted Sunday that the billboard was previewed on NBC's "Meet the Press" earlier in the day:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the majority whip, said on "Meet the Press" that "the American people want us to take action, action on this pandemic, action on this economy and on a host of other issues, and if this filibuster has become so common in the Senate that we can't act, that we just sit there helpless, shame on us. Of course we should consider a change in the rule under those circumstances."

The Just Democracy ad quotes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "A Cherished Tool of Segragationists"; former President Barack Obama: "Jim Crow Relic"; and ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "Outlived Its Usefulness." Ocasio-Cortez is reportedly considering a challenge to Schumer for his Senate seat in 2022.

“Democrats gained control of the Senate because of Black and Brown organizers and voters," Stasha Rhodes, campaign director for 51 for 51 and a member of the Just Democracy coalition, said in a statement. "Now they have a chance to remove the biggest impediment to the legislation those voters care about most — voting rights, healthcare, a serious COVID rescue package and more."

Meanwhile, another progressive/labor coalition—Fix Our Senate—ran a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times that also pushed Schumer to end the filibuster. “There is absolutely no reason to give Sen. McConnell months and months to prove what we absolutely know — that he is going to continue his gridlock and dysfunction from the minority,” said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Fix Our Senate. The group has launched a six-figure ad campaign and plans to deploy field staff in states where Democratic senators have expressed reluctance to ditch the rule.

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The Energy of Joy

Dear friends,

There are many ways to speak about God.  Joy is one of them.  Joy is such a little word, yet it has tremendous energy if unleashed as our experience.  We seldom let it out, perhaps feeling it is inappropriate when there is such suffering in the world.  Some people think joy is not even real, that it is some temporary up leveling of happy.  But no, joy is a natural state that makes grass grow, birds to fly, babies to squeal, all of us to whistle while we work, dance and sing.  In humans, Joy is the energy of aliveness and the awareness of what a miracle it is to be in a body, able to experience our own Being in form. It is God knowing itself as us.

We are meant to carry that energy throughout our life, all the way into transition.  “Well,” we are told, that is just silly.  It is an unsophisticated way to think. It is childish and will only cause pain.” What?!! Joy causes pain? I suppose if we think we have to chase it or that it does not actually exist, they might have a point.  The truth is that Joy is essential.  It has to be present for us to grow, physically and intellectually.  It is enthusiasm, curiosity, the willingness to learn something difficult. Joy drives our life.  When we deny it, we fail to thrive.

Joy might best be defined as Spiritual Life Force.  We all have it, but it can be somewhat suppressed by fear, hate, anger, chronic disappointment, limiting ideas; really the business of living in this dimension can shut down the flow of that powerful energy.  Our well-being is linked to the awareness that the Life Force is forever available and always accessible.  We do not have to be happy to know Joy.  Joy is quietly present, even when we are sad. People say “Oh yes, I knew that Joy before I learned of all the terrible things in the world.” Exactly.  That is the point. All the terrible things in the world have no power to lessen our very Being. They dissolve in the presence of Spiritual Life Force, coming through us, refining our thoughts, raising our sights, making us available to the Power that makes all things new. We make the world a better place when Joy is alive in us, when we let it have its way with us.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Left Wing Media Has Made a Celebrity Out of Marjorie Taylor Greene

by John Lawrence

CNN can't resist the additional eyeballs glued to the tube. They've made Marjorie Taylor Greene a household word ... er uh 3 words. She herself wonders how they can be so dumb. She's already made millions off her celebrity. I'm waiting with baited breath for the book deal, perhaps even a movie ... endorsements? Yes, she is a beautiful woman. That gets her more attention than some of her cohorts. So why has her controversial counterpart, Ilhan Omar, not gotten the same level of publicity. Simple. She's not as beautiful and charismatic. One might even say that Greene is taking over the spotlight that Trump recently vacated. People can't get enough of her outrageous statements.

This is exactly why cults of personality form. Because they are entertaining. Greene has taken a page out of the Trump playbook. She's intelligent enough to realize the entertainment value of lies and conspiracy theories. She will probably become a major figure in the Republican party if she's not already. The Republican party is split between what we might call the Liz Cheney wing and now what we must call the Marjorie Taylor Greene wing. Let's call her MTG just as on the other side of the aisle we have AOC. AOC is more or less on a par with MTG because she is just as beautiful and even more articulate. While MJT stands for Trumpism which is little more than a cult of personality, AOC stands for some really great ideas and policy initiatives. Because she represents these ideas so well, she has drawn the ire and attention of Republicans who feel threatened by her. Let the demonizing begin! AOC has gained the respect of Republicans, and you know that because they've gone to great lengths to demonize her the way they demonized Hillary. They love to demonize Democratic women, especially strong Democratic women.

The old guard of the Republican party represented by Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney wants the party to have principled conservative beliefs and positions on the issues. The Trump, MTG wing says to hell with that. They represent the will of the (white) people. We are true blue (white) Americans. USA. (white) USA. We want a hero (or a heroine) for our leader, not some mealy mouth, super competent Democrat. Nor do they want the competence of a Liz Cheney or a Mitt Romney. They like tax breaks, but now they're waking up to the fact that they mostly benefited the rich - not them - thanks to this being pointed out by Democrats. So why not elect a MTG and have her promote tax breaks for the middle class and not the rich. Respectable Republicans would be aghast at that prospect! That's the danger of cultivating a populist base.

So while millions of Americans are dealing with hunger, Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman, is demanding and getting organic food while in jail as ordered by a judge. How ironic is that! While millions of Americans are relying on food stamps and dependent on food banks, someone who invaded the Capitol in an insurrection is getting organic food! How dumb can this judge be? I suppose that next the jailed Proud Boys will be demanding get out of jail free passes so they can visit their girlfriends on the weekend. Will we have MJT and Shaman Chansley on the next Republican ticket? This is truly Looney Tunes. A bedeep a badeep a badeep. That's all folks!

Off the Top of My Head

The Left/Right Political Spectrum Is Irrelevant at This Point

by John Lawrence

The Extreme Right position on the pandemic is just to let it rip. This would mean ongoing disaster for the whole world into the indefinite future. The Extreme Left would advocate government spending as much money as necessary to defeat the pandemic and get the economy back to normal. The middle of the road would advocate doing half as much as necessary to sort of but not really get the pandemic under control. Result: the coronavirus would be mutating and popping back up for years just as SARS COVID-9 is a mutation of the original SARS virus and is related to the MERS virus. Whether the mutations occur in animals or in humans, it doesn't matter. Viruses mutate and doing a half ass job in getting rid of this pandemic which is the political "middle" insures that there will be more pandemics in the future. Not allocating increased funding for the study and research of viruses insures that there will be more threats to human lives and economies.

The Extreme Right position on global warming is to do nothing about it. That includes encouraging consumption of fossil fuels and not caring how many greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. This virtually guarantees that the earth will become uninhabitable in 50 years or less. The Extreme Left position would be to do as much government spending as necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in about 10 years. This would prevent global temperatures from rising more than the amount that would destroy the habitability of the earth. The middle position would be to spend a piddling amount to combat global warming. The result would be that the earth would become uninhabitable in a slightly longer time frame.

Republicans want to limit Federal government expenditures to solve problems while maximizing the private sector in the economy. Problem is that dealing with the pandemic and climate change are problems private enterprise is not capable of solving or even leading the way. Is there a role for private enterprise? Certainly, but government must play the leading role or these major problems as well as a number of others will not be solved. Private enterprise won't engage in any activity for which there are no profits to be made. Some problems like the pandemic and global warming are not likely to yield much in the way of profits. Ergo, private enterprise will not be interested in dealing with them.

The COVID relief package that Biden has put forward is totally dependent on Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. That in turn was totally dependent on the Georgia runoff elections for two Senators which produced two Democrats. Otherwise, there would be no COVID relief package or follow on projects to deal with global warming because not enough Republicans will be voting for any of Biden's projected spending to solve these problems. So the Extreme Left position of these issues which are totally necessary if they are to be dealt with successfully would not have been possible. Even successfully dealing with these two existential problems was hanging by a thread because the election of two Democratic Senators from the state of Georgia was heretofore unheard of. But now there is a chance.

What really needs to happen with regard to government spending is that the public, and that includes Senators and Representatives, need to be educated on how the economy really works. Deficit spending is not really a problem. Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans rely on the ignorance of the public while suggesting that adequately dealing with global warming or the pandemic will raise their taxes. It does not have to increase taxes which is the conventional understanding about it. The Federal government does not need to pay back Federal deficits because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just "print" the money - although it doesn't actually print it - it creates it by a few keystrokes on a computer. A household or private firm must pay back its loans. Even US states must pay back loans usually by raising taxes. Th Federal government does not have to raise taxes nor does it have to pay back loans. Treasury bonds can just end up on the Fed's balance sheet where in fact most of them do end up. So a government, any government, which has a sovereign currency can create as much money as necessary to solve any problem. The only caveat is that money creation under certain conditions can induce inflation.

Too much money sloshing around in any sector can produce inflation in that sector. What the US economy has created recently is asset inflation but not inflation in the real economy. Tax breaks for the rich has resulted in the bidding up of assets. Take the stock market, for example. Major corporations have used their tax breaks not to build production facilities but to buy back their own stock. This raises the stock price: ergo, asset inflation. The same holds for the real estate market. People, with more money than they are willing to put to productive use, use it to bid up the value of real estate. Ergo, inflation. This makes housing less affordable. The real economy has under utilized capacity in terms of all the unemployed and underemployed labor. Government spending which soaks up this capacity and puts it to productive use in converting to a reusable energy economy and upgrading to green infrastructure should not produce inflation. Neither will more government money spent on research on viruses produce inflation. What else produces asset inflation is money spent on the military-industrial complex. Think $600 toilet seats.

The US public needs to be enlightened on how the economy really works at the macro level. That being understood would take all the wind out of the sails of Republican objections to government spending. It does not have to raise your taxes because the US government can never run out of money. An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory leads to that understanding.

It’s a New Day in the Climate Battle, Now We Must Act With Agency

Published on Thursday, February 04, 2021

by The Hill

We must push forward aggressively now that the wind is finally at our backs, to rescue our planet while there is still time.

by Michael Mann

 

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A poster is held aloft during a demonstration of the Fridays for Future movement calling for urgent action for climate protection, on January 24, 2020 in Berlin. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP) (Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images)

Last week, President Biden signed a flurry of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis. The new rules place climate at the center of our foreign policy and national security considerations, building upon the recently re-entered Paris Climate Accord, and establishing the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and the National Climate Task Force as part of a broad, intergovernmental approach to climate action. Taken together, they constitute the boldest climate plan ever enacted in the U.S. government.

We are so close now we can taste it. We’re finally seeing the policy movement that is and will be necessary if we are to avert catastrophic climate change.

And not a moment too soon. Unprecedented wildfires, heat waves, floods and superstorms amplified and exacerbated by climate change collectively cost us a whopping $100 billion dollars in 2020. If you are Puerto Rico, or North Carolina, or Texas or California, or Louisiana, or Iowa, or … just about anywhere on our planet, dangerous climate change impacts have arrived. As my friend, the youth climate advocate Greta Thunberg has put it so poignantly, “Our house is on fire.” There simply couldn’t be greater urgency.

Hopelessness is perhaps the surest path to disengagement there is.

 

But there is agency, too. There is still time to take the actions necessary to avert a catastrophic 3F planetary warming. We have now witnessed a favorable shift in the political winds in the U.S. with a new president, in Biden, who campaigned on climate action, has a mandate on climate action, and is taking bold climate action. There is now Democratic control of Congress, if by only the slimmest of margins. And while a 50/50 Senate may not pass an expansive Green New Deal, there is an opportunity for bipartisan compromise on climate legislation that will complement the executive actions under way. With the U.S. once again reasserting leadership on this issue, chances are excellent that other nations, too, will be more mobilized to act.

The climate denialism once advanced by the fossil fuel industry and its advocates has grown impotent—it simply isn’t credible any more to deny the impacts of climate change when we are experiencing them in real time. But that doesn’t mean these forces of inaction (the “inactivists”) have given up or stopped throwing out roadblocks to slow the transition from fossil fuels toward clean energy.

They are instead now fighting what I call the “New Climate War” in my new book of that title—engaging in an array of tactics that seeks to delay, deflect and divide, intent on leading us down the same path of inaction as outright denial. 

The most insidious of the tactics, however, involves another “D” word—doom. Or, to be more precise, doom-mongering. Petrostate actors such as Russia have used troll and bot armies to promote fractious melees on social media that sow conflict and discord, getting climate advocates to fight with each other. It’s a divide-and-conquer tactic to make sure that climate advocates fail to present a united front demanding policy action. 

They also have manipulated social media environments to promote doom and despair, the idea that it is too late to actually do anything about the problem. After all, if there’s nothing we can do at this point, why bother? Inactivists, after all, don’t care about the path you take, just the destination. And hopelessness is perhaps the surest path to disengagement there is. It’s an especially nefarious gambit that seeks to take the very people who might be most motivated to demand action—environmental progressives—and weaponize them to advance the agenda of the fossil fuel industry.

Almost as if to try to prove the point, just last week Indiana’s former Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, a noted critic of climate action, insisted in a Washington Post op-ed that “If the climate change computer models prove accurate, it is already too late to prevent the world’s thermometer from rising to levels deemed unacceptable.” That, of course, is entirely wrong. The latest science demonstrates that the surface of the planet stops warming up as soon as we stop burning carbon. Our efforts today have a direct and immediate impact. And the only real obstacles, at this point, are political ones.

What is so pernicious about this sort of rhetoric is that it seeks to rob us of the very sense of agency that is so critical to our meeting the challenge ahead. And even those with the best of intentions and our most respected media outlets — including the New York Times quite recently, in fact—fall victim to this framing at times, playing into, if unintentionally, the narrative that “it’s too late to act, so why bother.”

It’s a new day in the climate battle, and I’ve never been more hopeful—for the first time in a while, there is a clear path forward on climate. But we need to educate ourselves about the obstacles in our way and, in particular, the tactics that ever-more-crafty adversaries are using, such as doomism, to suppress enthusiasm for change. We must push forward aggressively now that the wind is finally at our backs, to rescue our planet while there is still time.

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University. He was recognized with other Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change authors for their contribution to the IPCC's 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Follow him @MichaelEMann

© 2020 The Hill

Finding your Roots

Dear friends,

One of my favorite television programs is “Finding your Roots.” Assisted by the host, guests trace their ancestry centuries into the past. They are always surprised, and often shocked, at what they discover.  It made me wonder how great it would be if we could see our descendants in future centuries.  Wouldn’t you like to know what impact your life made on those yet to be born?  What if one or more of them were researching their ancestors and found you?  What would be impressive to them?

In New Thought spirituality, we believe that consciousness produces outer events.  We work in that realm of mind, affirming that peace and plenty prevail on earth. We are aware that we may not live long enough to see the results, but we do it anyway, knowing it is our legacy.  Did Abraham Lincoln affirm freedom for all with the Emancipation Proclamation?  The results of that are still forming and shaping our current reality.  Black Lives Matter is a descendant of his affirmation, and of the enslaved themselves.

Emerson was an abolitionist. He was vocal about his views, writing that no man is a gentleman if he supports slavery. His writings have greatly affected my own life. His legacy is an active gift to all who study his words.  Ernest Holmes was deeply influenced by Emerson, helping to shape the basic tenets of The Science of Mind that Holmes first put down in writing in 1926.  And so it goes. Those who have come before us have left treasures for us to discover and use. Can we imagine, today, what our legacy will be? Give it some thought. It might be useful in reordering our priorities.

Stay tuned  in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Fareed Zakaria: The Pandemic Will Not End Unless Every Country Gets the Vaccine

by John Lawrence, February 4, 2021

Does this finally mean that we have to cooperate with all other countries in the world whether we like it or not or face the dire consequence that the pandemic will never end? War no more? Or will we so much not want to give up war, Hot or Cold, that we are willing to continue competitive rivalries with other nations? Will we have to settle or at least live with our differences in order for most of us to survive? Must petty grievances and bullying sanctions end? The US spends a trillion dollars a year on its war machine, while the real enemies are global warming, domestic terrorists and viruses. Will human beings ever learn or do we love competition and fighting so much that we will not cooperate on any terms and for any reason.

The longer the pandemic goes on anywhere in the world, the more time the virus has to mutate to deadlier and more transmissible forms. Yet some people even refuse to wear a mask. It seems that freedom is not having to do anything I don't want to do even if it protects others - especially if it protects others.Freedom is all about me - my rights, my prerogatives. Freedom is not what Kris Kristofferson thought: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose". No freedom means that I don't have to love my neighbor as myself as the Bible says. Freedom means that I can do what I damn well please despite the consequences to anyone else.

Fareed Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post:

"Despite the amazing progress we’ve made with vaccines, the truth is that our current trajectory virtually guarantees that we will never really defeat the coronavirus. It will stay alive and keep mutating and surging across the globe. Years from now, countries could be facing new outbreaks that will force hard choices between new lockdowns or new waves of disease and death.

"The basic problem is in how the vaccine is being distributed around the world — not based on where there is the most need, but the most money. The richest countries have paid for hundreds of millions of doses, often far in excess of what they need. Canada, for example, has preordered enough to cover its 38 million residents five times over.

"Meanwhile, Nigeria’s 200 million people have not received a single dose of the vaccine. Rich countries make up 16 percent of the world’s population, yet they have locked up 60 percent of the world’s vaccine supply. In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Thomas Bollyky and Chad Bown pointed out that Australia, Canada and Japan account for less than 1 percent of the world’s coronavirus cases but have secured more doses than all of Latin America and the Caribbean, which account for more than 17 percent of cases."

Both the pandemic and global warming put the human race in an interesting dilemma. We must help each other if any of us are to survive, and we must sacrifice if future generations are to survive. People that are all about "me" are in actuality a threat to lasting human civilization on planet earth, probably on any other planet as well. Yet as is well known many, if not all, humans elevate selfishness above communal values. Their enjoyment of what life has to offer in the present is more important than someone else's survival in the future. This isn't true of most mothers though who want their children to survive even if they have to die. So maybe men are the problem here. They value the present and their "toys" much more than they do the future. They want what they want and they want it now.

Billie holiday wrote the song, "God Bless the Child Who's Got His Own." "Rich relations give crusts of bread and such. You can help yourself but don't take too much." Billie Holiday died in a hospital with 74 cents in her bank account and $750 strapped to her leg. You might think that the fact that she died without a will would not have mattered yet her estate was valued at $14 million in 2014 and revenues from her reissued records are bringing in more money on an annual basis. By a quirk of fate most of that money, and the continuing revenue from royalties, is going to people she never even knew in life. Is people getting their just desserts really the issue here? Maybe perhaps other people getting just a little dessert is what's important.

The Sedition That Nobody’s Talking About

by Robert Reich

Friday, January 29, 2021

The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – CEOs and their army of lobbyists.

CEOs are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. That’s after saying they will no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors, on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud. 

Give me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans, and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.

Their assault hasn’t been as violent as the pro-Trump mob who stormed the Capitol. And it’s entirely legal. But it’s arguably more damaging over the long term.

A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

So now, in the wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe CEOs care about democracy?

As Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, put it, “No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition.”

Yet Dimon has been a leader of a more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.

For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”

But where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s bigotry and lies for over four years?

After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”

Spare me. Dorsey has fought all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation.” He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.

Look, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to regulate social media content.

But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re answerable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in. 

If they were truly committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their PACs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.

And they would throw their weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.

Don’t hold your breath.

The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest to stop Joe Biden and the Democrats from  raising corporate taxes, increasing the minimum wage, breaking up big tech and strengthening labor unions.

Make no mistake: These CEOs and their corporations don’t actually care about protecting democracy. They care only about protecting their bottom line.

Warren Blasts 'Unconscionable' $740 Billion Pentagon Budget While Millions Suffer From Poverty, Joblessness, and Covid-19

Published on Tuesday, February 02, 2021

by Common Dreams

"A budget is about priorities," said the Democratic senator.

by Kenny Stancil, staff writer

 

34 Comments

"Spending $740 billion dollars a year on this one piece of the federal budget is unconscionable," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said to Kathleen Hicks, one of President Joe Biden's Pentagon appointees, on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. (Photo: Screengrab from PBS NewsHour)

"We continue to overinvest in defense while underinvesting in public health and so much more."

"We can spend less on the military and obtain not only the same amount of security, but more."
—Stephen Wertheim, Historian

That's what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Kathleen Hicks, President Joe Biden's nominee for deputy defense secretary.

"The size of the defense budget... has long been a concern of mine," said Warren, "but after the past year, watching more than 400,000 fellow Americans die, tens of millions unemployed due to Covid-19, millions more who are lined up at food banks, and even millions more who are on the threshold of losing their homes and being put out on the street, spending $740 billion dollars a year on this one piece of the federal budget is unconscionable."

"A budget is about priorities," said Warren. When the senator asked if the U.S. can reduce defense spending "without sacrificing our security," Hicks said no.

Even though "I certainly understand" how the coronavirus crisis "calls into question what the priorities are across our government," said Hicks, "I also... believe that we are a nation that can afford the defense that it needs to have."

"The focus on the top-line number can really obscure a more important conversation around what is it we want our military... to do," Hicks said, sidestepping Warren's point, which was that the national budget should reflect the issues that people in the U.S. want their representatives to focus on, like implementing policies to mitigate compounding public health, economic, and environmental emergencies.

 

"We can spend less on the military and obtain not only the same amount of security, but more," asserted Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and research scholar at Columbia University.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, pointed out that Warren was the only lawmaker at the hearing to juxtapose the nation's bloated military budget with the surge in unmet social needs.

As Common Dreams reported Monday, all 10 senators behind the GOP's $618 billion coronavirus relief counterproposal voted in favor of spending $740 billion on endless wars in fiscal year 2021.

Those members of Congress were joined in supporting the National Defense Authorization Act by the majority of their fellow Republicans as well as the bulk of Democrats in the House and Senate, providing additional evidence of the extent to which most American lawmakers' priorities aren't aligned with those of the public.

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Off the Top of My Head

Mitch McConnell: "Loony Lies and Conspiracy Theories are Cancer for Republican Party"

by John Lawrence, February 3, 2021

Now even the leader of the Senate Republicans is admitting the Republican party is a joke. They've got nothing besides idol worship and rabbit holes. What do they stand for? White supremacy, bellicose machoism, xenophobia and solipsism masquerading as the American Dream. They stand for nothing except greasing their own palms and staying in power. McConnell at least and a few other principled Republicans like Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and John Kasich actually are trying to reconstruct the Republican party based on conservative principles. Their problem is that their base is a bunch of wahoos that can't get enough of being entertained by Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Fantasy trumps reality for them.

The point is that in realistic terms the Republican party has nothing to offer. In a world that cries out for cooperation among great powers, they stand for bellicose machoism and bullying. In world where private enterprise is incapable of solving major outstanding problems like climate change and the pandemic, their emphasis on small government falls flat. In a world where it is becoming clear that taxes alone are not necessary for government spending, their pejorative negative hurled at Democrats - "tax and spend" - is meaningless. Their attempts at pulling the wool over Americans' eyes are becoming dispelled. Their fiscal policies have only served to increase economic inequality - to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. So what have they got? A base composed of looney tunes and no nothings and a head composed of the rich and powerful. It doesn't compute.

Republicans want to hearken back to a nostalgic past where black lives didn't matter, white people occupied all positions of prominence, Native Americans were extras in western movies and the concept of global warming had not even been formulated and was not on anybody's radar. They want things like they used to be. Well a lot has changed since then, whatever your definition of "then" is.  Forever wars are draining government finances that could be used in more productive ways. Global warming needs a MEOW solution - the Moral Equivalent of War. This calls for a large amount of government spending. It is becoming more evident, thanks to the exposition of Modern Monetary Theory, that the US government can never run out of money because the US dollar is a sovereign currency which can be created by a few keystrokes at the Fed. Even regular banks create money when they loan money for mortgages, auto loans etc. They don't need to have deposits before they make loans. It's called fractional reserve banking, and it's backed up by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, which clears checks and is the loaner of last resort.

Government spending should not, however, represent fiscal profligacy or imprudence. The government should spend money responsibly which it has not been doing with spending on forever wars and tax breaks for the rich. IMHO Republican supported government spending has not been responsible spending. Fiscal conservatism should mean that money should solve actual problems and make the lives of most Americans better. So if Republicans want to be the party of fiscal conservatism in the future, they should be concerned that deficit spending does not lead to inflation or deflation, rather than just minimizing government spending other than on defense and tax breaks. Let's see if Republicans want to reformulate themselves on responsible terms or do they just want to continue to be the party of the rich.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans' New Definition of Socialism: Any Government Program That Would Help Black People

by John Lawrence, February 2, 2021

Republicans are worried that the US will become a socialist country. The public sector will come to dominate the private sector. Well, the private sector has been helpless at solving the big outstanding problems: global warming and the pandemic. If the private sector could solve these problems, well, that would be great, but they're not capable of doing it. Therefore, government is left by default to deal with global warming and the pandemic as well as a host of other systemic problems like health care, poverty, economic inequality and racism. So what does capitalism stand for at this point: fossil fuel dependency and business as usual which means more and more income and wealth inequality. With capitalism there is no "we" there, only an accumulation of "I"s.

What Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown is that the Republican accusation of Democrats - "tax and spend" - is a discredited misnomer because US government spending does not depend on taxation. In fact a Green New Deal and Medicare for All could all be accomplished without increasing taxes on anyone. That's because the US central bank aka the Federal Reserve can just create money with a few keystrokes on a computer the way it did to save the banking industry during the Great Recession when it gave the Big Banks several trillion dollars without any consequences whatsoever for deficit spending or increased taxes to pay for it. This facility should be used responsibly, however, just like the use of alcohol. Used irresponsibly this money creation facility could increase inflation.

So what is the responsible use of government spending? Obviously, during a pandemic and incipient global warming, it would be responsible for the government to spend money to solve these huge worldwide problems which not only affect the US, but affect the whole world. One of the lessons of this situation is that, if we want to contribute to the solution of global warming, we must become friends with the world's biggest GHG emitter which is China. China and the US are the world's first and second largest GHG emitters and the first and second largest economies. We can't afford not to be partners in the solution of this problem. China and US continued rivalry even amounting to a Cold War will guarantee that the earth is destroyed as a habitable living place for humans. So we have no other choice. Either we can continue our petty squabbles with China or we can cooperate with them to solve problems. We are truly all in this together. Either we hang together or we hang as nations separately.

The second lesson of MMT is that Medicare for All (M4A) could be part of the solution for global warming. If M4A were to be implemented, the US could have a much better health care system with better outcomes health wise at a far cheaper price. This has been shown in study after study. What's more M4A would be deflationary in financial terms. Deflation as well as inflation is bad for the economy. The fight against global warming would be inflationary because of the huge expenditures that must be made so it could offset the deflation caused by M4A. In fact we find in How to Pay for the Green New Deal, working paper 931 by Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray:

"To be clear, we do recognize that implementation of the GND will shift spending from the private sector to the government sector. However, unless there is an a priori reason to believe this would—by itself—be inflationary, we take the position that in the general case it makes no difference in terms of inflation whether the dollar spent to hire resources comes from the government or from the private sector, which is also the method used by Keynes. As Stephanie Kelton says, cash registers do not discriminate. Indeed, as we report below, there is strong evidence that at least in the healthcare sector a dollar of government spending buys more care than a dollar of private spending—so shifting toward government as the single payer would produce disinflationary pressure."

So while the US government can create as much money as it needs for a GND by means of the Federal Reserve's money creation powers without increasing taxes, the need to forestall inflation could be offset by M4A which would in addition provide a health care system with better outcomes for Americans at a lower price. The only reason then to raise taxes would be to diminish economic inequality which could be ameliorated by only taxing the rich.