Democracy Now has the video Ilhan Omar Speaks Out Against U.S. Sanctions & Bipartisan Support for Regime Change in Venezuela.

Now we have two women in Congress who have shown the courage to speak out against our crimes against Venezuela. When are we going to find some male Congress members with some courage?

Democracy Now has the episode As Venezuela Coup Attempt Fails to Overthrow Maduro, Guaidó Calls for More Street Protests.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is claiming to have defeated a coup attempt launched by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. On Tuesday morning, Guaidó appeared in an online video standing among heavily armed soldiers, calling for the military to back what he called the “final phase” of an effort to topple Maduro’s government. Guiadó appeared alongside Leopoldo López, a longtime opposition leader, who was reportedly released from house arrest by renegade officers. Guaidó has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since January, when he declared himself to be Venezuela’s interim president. The Trump administration, as well as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and others, openly supported the coup attempt. Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox Business that military action in Venezuela is possible, “if that’s what is required.” We speak to Miguel Tinker Salas, Venezuelan historian and professor at Pomona College.

There are some important details here that you will never know about if you only listen to the USA oligarchs’ news media, and our own politicians. So far Tilsi Gabbard and Ilhan Omar are the only ones with the courage to speak out.

Democracy Now has the interview Economist Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. Sanctions Have Devastated Venezuela & Killed Over 40,000 Since 2017. To say nothing of the impact of our economic war over the last 20 years against Venezuela.

More than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result of U.S. sanctions, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research co-authored by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot. The report examines how U.S. sanctions have reduced the availability of food and medicine in Venezuela and increased disease and mortality. We speak with Jeffrey Sachs in our New York studio. In the report, he writes, “American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change. It’s a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people.”

What people in the USA never consider is that if the USA is going to use the dollar as an economic weapon, then the world is going to try to free itself from the dollar as the world reserve currency. When they finally succeed, and the more we push, the more the world will push back. We will lose a lot of economic policy freedom when the world stops accepting the USA dollar as a means of payment.

I agree with the Modern Money Theorists when they say inflation in the USA is unlikely in any near term scenario, except they don’t talk about what will happen if we drive the dollar out as the world reserve currency. That is only one of two ways that I see that could drive inflation in the USA under the current circumstances.

Niko House has the video Only ONE Presidential Candidate Has Called For Peace In Venezuela.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Let Niko House explain it. We should demand that every Presidential candidate speak out against our actions in Venezuela. Let’s isolate Joe Biden the way he needs to be isolated.

If we don’t react, the politicians will think they get a free pass to cheer on yet another regime change war. There needs to be a political price for supporting regime change war.

RT has the episode From copycats to innovators to ultimatums (E1377).

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the 5G war raging between the US and China’s Huawei, which is reportedly 12-18 months ahead of its Western competitors in its technology roll out… and at half the price. As China moves from low cost manufacturer and tech copycat to innovator in high tech and beyond, are trade wars about to get more fierce? In the second half, Max interviews Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen’s energy program about the US pulling all waivers for Iranian sanctions. What impact will this have on global markets?

Between the laughable and the frightening, this is quite a ride. Max Kaiser is no physicist.

When we have drug safety laws that end up killing people there must be something unconstitutional about that. In particular, I am thinking about the laws that prevent re-importation of drugs from countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This is brought to mind by the article Concerned About Getting Rx Drugs from Canada? Here’s What to Know.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently sent a warning letter to a Canadian company selling prescription drugs online to Americans.

The agency has pointed out that where you buy medications outside of the United States can make the difference between taking a pill that improves your health and getting one that doesn’t help. It may even harm you.

I think about the recent steep rises in drug prices like insulin that has people dying from trying to ration how much insulin they use because of the limits on what they can afford. Whatever safety problems arise from shipping drugs to Canada and then re-importing them to the USA can’t possibly be as bad as not being able to get the drug at all. If this isn’t denying people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I’d like to see how the Supreme Court can explain this if the case comes before them. If the Supreme Court can think that corporations are people, surely they can see that people are people.

The Real News Network has published partner provided content Economic Update: Capitalism vs. Socialism.

This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff does something a little different. He dives deep into the 200+ year old debate and struggle between capitalism and socialism and looks into how it has become both confused and confusing. The different definitions of these systems make honest, balanced discussions and evaluations of them increasingly more difficult. Now that socialism is rising yet again to challenge capitalism, the debate demands a closer examination of the terms and their numerous, new and different meanings.

Richard Wolff is ready to go on to a different debate than we have engaged in about state capitalism versus private capitalism. Some people may not be ready to move on yet. I am not sure if I am, but I will entertain the thought.

As a “what worksist”, if somebody can explain to me how it would actually work practically to make society better and how we could make the transition, then it would be something we should try. I think there is a lot in the existing debate that could lead to better results while we also debate Professor Wolff’s ideas.

The Deductible has the article Rep Jayapal and Sen Sanders Have Introduced Medicare For All Bills: One Is a Lot Better Than the Other.

The cost-containment section in Representative Jayapal’s bill will cut health care costs substantially without slashing the incomes of doctors and hospitals. Senator Sanders’ bill cannot do that.

Now that you know the punchline, read the article for the explanation.

New Economic Perspectives has posted the article How Far Can We Push This Thing? Some Optimistic Reflections on the Potential For Economic Experimentation.

I argue that, based on a new framework I’ve developed for measuring the likelihood of sustained, runaway inflation that I call the Worker Bargaining Index (WBI), it is highly unlikely that a sustained inflation will result.

I believe that Modern Money Theory is the correct explanation of how money works, but I am sometimes skeptical about the lack of deeper thinking on some important issues. This article is the type of thing that worries me.

Does the new calculation take into account that we don’t have inflation from the trillions of dollars injected by the Fed because the people who got the money were not consumers? They had nothing productive worth investing in, so they bought Treasury bonds, inflated the stock market, and promoted corporate stock buybacks.

Does this new calculation contemplate what would have happened, and might happen in the future when the trillions of dollars flows into the economy because it looks like the economy is starting to grow?

It is not enough to say that the $29Trillion of liquidity injected by the Fed has not created inflation. You have to look deeply into why it didn’t cause inflation. When you can answer the why question, you might get a clue as to what might unleash that inflation.

A Worker Bargaining Index is one measure of what typically causes inflation, but it doesn’t seem to be worrying about the trillions of dollars sloshing around in the hands of the oligarchs who have kept it out of the productive part of the private sector because there is nothing worth investing there until we start getting some real economic growth.