Senator Bernie Sanders has the article Flashback: Republicans Block VA Benefits on his web site.

Republicans in February blocked important legislation from Sen. Bernie Sanders to improve veterans’ access to health care among other things. Only two Republicans, Sens. Dean Heller and Jerry Moran, voted for the veterans benefits bill, which was endorsed by every major veterans organization.

A country like ours that can make its own currency at the drop of a few computer key strokes always has enough money to pay for whatever it wants. It may not have the actual resources, but it has the money. In our case, with high unemployment, unused factory capacity, and excess natural resources, there is absolutely no reason to not fund the VA bill.

Money this country owes in terms of its own currency that it creates, will never be a burden for future generations to pay off unless we keep strangling this country with phony economics that strangles the productive capacity of the nation.

Every felon probably knows the phrase, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” For our country, we need to remember, “If you can’t afford the war, don’t start one.” It doesn’t rhyme, but it is just as applicable.

We all knew that George W. Bush and the Republicans would do this to our veterans when they started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is just one of the reasons we should have been adamantly opposed to both wars, and especially to the one in Iraq. If we cannot afford to support our troops, we should stop meddling in world affairs.

The Washington Post has the story Sen. Sanders to propose bills addressing VA issues.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced Friday that he will introduce a bill to hold top officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs accountable for performance problems and re-introduce comprehensive VA legislation that failed in February.

If we have to elect Bernie Sanders as President in 2016 to get fair treatment of our veterans, then let’s do it.

Truth Out has the article Behind the Koch Brothers: New Book Spills the Secrets of Nation’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty on the Democracy Now interview below.

Charles and David Koch have funneled millions of dollars to conservative candidates and causes over the last four decades while working tirelessly to open the floodgates for money in politics. The Koch brothers’ net worth tops $100 billion, currently tying for fourth on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Their rise to becoming two of the nation’s most powerful political figures is explored in the new book, Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty. The story is based on hundreds of interviews with Koch family and friends, as well as thousands of pages of legal documents. We are joined by the book’s author, Daniel Schulman, a senior editor at Mother Jones magazine.

I get the sense that the author and the book are more nuanced than the interviewers let on. However, I think the Koch brothers are still worth fearing.

Talking Points Memo has the story Scaring The Crap Out of People Oddly Not Winning Fans.

Open Carry Texas and a group of other aggressive gun rights groups have issued a joint statement telling their members, Dudes, let’s stop taking our guns to restaurants. It’s freaking people out and making them hate us.

I suspected that not all gun enthusiasts were batshit crazy. It’s nice to find out that what I suspected is actually true.

Naked Capitalism has the post Financial Times Finds “Many” Errors in Piketty Analysis, Argues They Undermine His Thesis by Yves Smith.

The Financial Times story had more of a “gotcha” tone that one expects to see in the mainstream media, and compared the mistakes to the famous spreadsheet errors in Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s work on debt to GDP ratios. But at least so far, there is a key difference: only one other study had found results similar to the those claimed by Reinhart and Rogoff. By contrast, Piketty is far from alone in finding rising concentrations of wealth at the very top; Demos points out that a new study published by Garbriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez paints a post-war picture similar to Piketty’s. Thus the FT’s assertion that their corrections of Piketty’s data show no increase in wealth concentration is an awfully bold claim, and will likely be scrutinized as much as the errors and possible methodological shortcomings that Giles found.
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With Piketty’s book having gotten so much attention over the last few weeks, it’s a given that there will be a lot of eyes on the Giles findings and considerable debate over how much of an impact they have on Piketty’s conclusions. So hold tight and see how this shakes out.

While Naked Capitalism has its own reasons for disagreeing with some of Piketty’s conclusions, they at least have the humility to admit that the final answer is not in yet.  As I was reading about the claims made by The Financial Times story, I was wondering how The Financial Times could conclude that there was no evidence of increasing concentrations of wealth at the top 1%.  I was happy to see that Yves Smith made note of this hard to believe conclusion.

The Washington Post has the story Iran hangs key figure in banking scandal.

Iran’s state media is reporting that a key player in the country’s biggest-ever banking scandal was executed here on Saturday.
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But fighting financial corruption, which was rampant during Ahmadinejad’s two terms, was a promise made by Hassan Rouhani when he assumed office last August.

Now that’s what I call keeping a campaign promise.

Some economists believe that we could fix the income inequality in this country by taxing the rich more.  I bet a few hangings would convince many of the rich to stop accumulating wealth by nefarious means in the first place.

Let it be noted that I am not in favor of capital punishment.  It is just too tempting to use.