Daily Archives: May 29, 2014


You’re invited: Elizabeth Warren and Thomas Piketty interview

flyer for Warren/Piketty Conversation

Below is an email that Moveon.org generated for me to announce the above event that I will be watching on Monday night

Hi,

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Professor Thomas Piketty, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, are two of the leading voices on economic inequality–and they’re teaming up for a one-of-a-kind conversation that we’re invited to!

This Monday, June 2, at 8:30 p.m. ET (7:30 CT/6:30 MT/5:30 PT), MoveOn is teaming up with Sen. Warren and Prof. Piketty to broadcast their dialogue for the first time. And when they talk, they’ll be answering questions submitted by MoveOn members. Right after the screening, Sen. Warren will join a special call with participants.

I’m going to watch the conversation with Sen. Warren and Prof. Piketty on Monday night–will you join me? Click here to RSVP and submit your questions.

Thanks!


Here are the questions I wrote in my response to the invitation.

Modern Monetary Theory explains that the government’s collection of taxes doesn’t have to have anything to do with funding the government’s expenditures. Expenditures could be financed by the creation of our sovereign currency by keystrokes by the Fed if it weren’t for certain procedural impediments placed on the Treasury by Congress.

Can you please address the policy objectives of taxing the rich without making the mistake that it is necessary to do so to fund government expenditures? Can you also explain that it would be better to prevent the rich from taking so much in the first place by reregulating certain of their practices and jailing the ones that violate the law than it would be to tax them after they have already taken so much?


Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition

Brave New Films has the article Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition.

I hope you’re ready for a wild ride. Billionaires David and Charles Koch have been handed the ability to buy our democracy in the form of giant checks to the House, Senate, and soon, possibly even the Presidency. The last time we exposed the Koch Brothers’ dealings to the world we here at Brave New Films wound up in their crosshairs. They produced online ad campaigns attacking us, but, it takes more than a banner ad to slow us down.

We’ve reissued Koch Brothers Exposed in an updated version, Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, to shine a light on them. We’ve delved even deeper into where their money is going, who their money is hurting, and how much they are making during this whole process leading up to the 2014 Elections.

For my fellow MIT graduates who were willing to accept the new David Koch research center at MIT, I ask you to watch the entire film. I hope you will have a change of heart.

Here is a trailer for the film.


You can watch the film for free as I did, but after seeing it, I decided to contribute some actual money.


MMT on a Postcard

Naked Capitalism has the article MMT on a Postcard by Lambert Strether.

I’ll show the postcard below, but that is only a brief summary of MMT. The article that I linked to above gives an excellent, concise explanation of what is on the postcard, and a lot more.

MMT on a Postcard

There may be no better brief introduction to MMT than this article.