(c) by Mark Dempsey
Congress just approved a bigger military budget than the administration requested. Politico reports "Lawmakers approved the National Defense Authorization Act in a 316-113 [64% - 36%] vote with broad support from Democrats and Republicans as momentum builds on Capitol Hill to add upwards of $25 billion to Biden's defense proposal." [9/23/21]
Does the military have a climate impact? "the military remains the single largest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists." [Sep 13, 2019] "The U.S. Department of Defense has a larger annual carbon footprint than most countries on Earth, and it also is the single largest polluter on Earth. [Democracy Now Nov 9, 2021]So...why does congress keep supporting, even augmenting, the military's environmental insensitivity?
The first answer is the all-too-human pursuit of safety without any limit. People can never have enough safety, justice...and even vengeance (with 5% of the world's population, the US has 25% of its prisoners). People have been taught believe the military provides safety, and incarceration "protects" the public. This is roughly like believing beating children is the only effective way to raise them--misguided, at best, counterproductive at worst.
Economics provides the other answer: When lobbied by the Indivisible organization to reduce military spending, a Senator told constituents that his state (Maine) had 7,000 military-related jobs at a single ironworks there. He couldn't throw those people out of work. It would be politically impossible!
And those iron workers are just the tip of the carbon pollution iceberg. If our government seriously addressed the climate catastrophe barreling down the tracks toward us it would throw all the coal miners and oilfield workers out of work. Any policy that would effectively reduce carbon emissions would paint a target on the politicians who support it.
Speaking of jobs: "A study by the Political Economy Research Center at the University of Massachusetts found that military spending creates fewer jobs than almost any other form of government spending. It found that $1 billion invested in the military yields an average of 11,200 jobs, while the same amount invested in other areas yields: 26,700 jobs when invested in education; 17,200 in healthcare; 16,800 in the green economy; or 15,100 jobs in cash stimulus or welfare payments.
It is tragic that the only form of Keynesian stimulus that is uncontested in Washington is the least productive for Americans, as well as the most destructive for the other countries where the weapons are used. These irrational priorities seem to make no political sense for Democratic Members of Congress, whose grassroots voters would cut military spending by an average of $100 billion per year based on [a] Maryland poll." [From here]
So...all the progress toward a carbon tax or international agreements (G20 and COP26) to reduce carbon, or even moves to reduce the estimated trillions ($6 trillion in 2021, says the IMF) in petroleum subsidies will confront these facts of life. Any proposed change would cost lots of workers their jobs, and cost the companies who own the factories, drilling and minerals their investment--if that shift away from petroleum and coal is successful, never mind the losses suffered by the military-industrial complex if congress reduced their funding.
The Solution
The solution to these problems is actually simple. The governments who create their own money need to compensate the equipment owners, and fund a job guarantee for those displaced. They don't even need to raise taxes. Government already buys surplus soybeans and cheese. Why not buy surplus labor and recycle drilling/mining equipment? Is that such a stretch?
No higher taxes are necessary, either. If taxes provision federal programs, then where do taxpayers get those dollars they use to pay the taxes if government doesn't spend them first? It's not "tax & spend," it must be "spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes." Taxes create the demand for dollars; they don't fund government programs for currency creators.
"Where will all that money come from?" The same place it all comes from: sovereign, fiat money issuers create the money, virtually without cost, and their power to tax makes it valuable. Monetary sovereigns are fiscally unconstrained.
And if you don't believe me, take a look at the Fed's actions in the wake of Lehman's bankruptcy in 2007-8. The Fed's own audit declares that it extended $16 - $29 trillion in credit to the same financial sector whose frauds crashed the economy. No taxes rose. No inflation occurred. Our central bank just extended the credit to save the banking system. Is it so hard to believe we could use a similar remedy for the climate catastrophe?
And what do we call the money spent, but not retrieved in taxes? Answer #1: the dollar financial assets of the population (their savings). Answer #2: National 'debt.' This is analogous to our bank accounts which are our assets, but to the bank, they are a liability (a debt).
Another example of when the public sector issued money to deal with a problem: World War II. No one said "Sure, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but we're low on cash, so we won't respond." The government took over 50% of the economy then.
To implement the Green New Deal, government would only have to take 5% of the economy. All we need to do is acknowledge that climate is as big an existential threat as war.
So...simple, right?
What do you want to bet people will be skeptical about this? That's why Marshall McCluhan says "Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity." We're attached to the answers we've been told, even if they're obviously misguided.
There have been a few links on this site this week about ivermectin. Including a very well done discussion of the most important extant trials.
I would like to add a few things from my own experience about this drug. And where we are right now. In my area, we are again having what appears to be the early stages of yet another surge of COVID. This time, it is clearly involving many fully vaccinated and even boostered patients. And they are very ill. This is not a joke. In these patients, the vaccines have clearly failed in their mission. Seeing the tide coming in, even Dr. Fauci had to admit as such this week.
We supposedly have the new Pfizer drug (more on that in a second) and we now have the monoclonal antibody therapy. Unfortunately, the supply of the Pfizer drug is non-existent. And we have very limited supplies of the antibody drug. That drug is reserved for only patients that are high-risk and already very ill. Just so you can understand the magnitude of this issue – 68% of the patients who received the antibodies this week in my area were fully vaccinated, many boostered (I do not have that exact %). The other 32% were the unvaccinated. Again – the vaccinated patients are now getting sick enough to be in the “high-risk” group to get antibodies.
I do not believe anyone anticipated we would be in this situation with a fairly significant majority of the population vaccinated – but here we are. And now because of the severe staffing shortages and other issues, it is very important to do all we can to keep people out of the hospital safely.
As I have stated repeatedly, my experience in previous surges with this infection have demonstrated to my own eyes that Ivermectin is very capable of doing this. That is pretty much the only area in which I use it – patients who are positive whether ill or not get started on it immediately in addition to all of their primary contacts. Despite the months of propaganda from MSNBC and the CDC ( don’t take the horse dewormer y’all) , I have yet to have a single person have one issue with this medication. The same cannot be said for the vaccines. However, as is the case in every single viral infection in human medicine, once people are sick enough to be in the hospital, almost nothing works well. One of the agents we have been using, remdesevir, seems to do absolutely nothing beneficial that I can tell and often damages the patients. To be brief at that point of hospital admission – it is 100% support. It is critical to deal with patients early and strong in their illness.
I will say again – I was a very young doctor in the AIDS crisis working in an inner city hospital surrounded by dying AIDS patients at every turn. A very similar story was playing out at the time – and I guess WISDOM is the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past and never let them fool you again.
Pneumocystis carinii – the scourge of AIDS before we had effective anti-virals is the agent that killed the vast majority of my patients back then. Often abbreviated PCP. It causes a severe pneumonia. This bug is most definitely NOT a bacteria. In the 1980s it was thought to be a protozoa like ameba – however now we consider it more like a fungus ( I am not going into that here – suffice it to say it is NOT a bacteria). Interestingly, there were all kinds of agents in the 80s and early 90s for this agent that were actually doing far more damage than good to people – IV and inhaled pentamidine is the most common. And this drug was making mountains of cash for Big Pharma. From the front lines, various docs across the country started using a very old patent-expired ANTI-BACTERIAL called BACTRIM. 2 cents a pill. This had been used for decades at the time mainly in the treatment of urine infections. And docs all over America noticed how well it was working for PCP. All anecdotal – but vigorously shared. We had all had one too many cardiac arrests with the pentamidine. Some papers here and there appeared. All minimal studies because that is all you could really do as a lone wolf at the time. But overwhelming efficacy and minimal safety issues were noted. And then Dr. Fauci sent out the wolves. He and others were very busy promoting vaccine research, and antivirals that were very toxic, and keeping the pentamidine money train going. I sat through one conference after another deriding the use of BACTRIM as a pee pill by NIH experts sent to quell the rebellion. “How dare you use a bacterial agent against this protozoan fungus – the drug is not even in the right class”. The ridicule coming from these people at times was overwhelming. All kinds of papers and statistical manipulation was belched forth to try to subvert the evildoers. But the drug actually worked. And the doctors using it noted it. And persisted. And over the next few years, despite the NIH, Bactrim became the drug of choice for PCP – and still is to this day. I have not written a prescription for pentamidine in decades. Not even sure they still make it.
Therefore, was born an innate skepticism of Big Pharma and indeed of Dr. Fauci, in an entire generation of young doctors in this country.
One huge difference back then is we did not have the odious presence of the pathological liar Rachel Maddow and the morons at the NYT to poison the medical discourse. We did not have Big Pharma owning our entire media landscape with their ad dollars ( that did not start until the mid 1990s hat tip to the assholes Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton). We did not have facebook and twitter and youtube to censor anything that was said about bactrim or pentamidine. We had ourselves, our colleagues, our wits, and our experience and our intellect. It was a much better world.
Unlike so many on both sides of the ivermectin issue which appear to be religious zealots, I came by my usage of this drug by doing a deep dive into the actual science. I was initially quite skeptical. But reading the basic science and some of these clinical trials made me feel very comfortable in trying it. The safety profile is so good that using it in this kind of crisis would be unethical. I am not alone in that assumption. Despite what the talking heads say on TV, every medical ethics conference I have been to about this topic, EVERY SINGLE ONE, to this day continue to state it is UNETHICAL not to use it.
Earlier this year, I attended a few conferences where the pharmacodynamics were discussed and the clinical trials discussed. It was there I learned from a PharmD that I know and trust that Big Pharma was starting their anti viral trials for COVID. And the candidates he had seen HAD EXACTLY THE SAME COURSE OF EFFECT ON COVID AS THE BASIC MEDICINE TRIALS WERE TELLING US ABOUT IVERMECTIN. Let me say that again – at least some of the Big Pharma agents being evaluated had the exact same effect on COVID as Ivermectin. I could not believe that at the time. Because this research is proprietary, it was unavailable to be looked at. But I did share this with the COVID brain trust back then. But here we are – on the verge of having this released – and indeed – THE PFIZER DRUG INHIBITS EXACTLY THE SAME PROTEASE INHIBITOR AS IVERMECTIN. The only difference is that ivermectin seems to be active against multiple other parts of COVID that this new Pfizer drug does not touch.
And where do the American people get to learn this? From Rachel Maddow? Sean Hannity? Chris Cuomo? The Paper of Record the NYT? The New Yorker? – Our elected officials? NO TO ALL – We get to learn this from a retired nurse in Great Britain and a comedian in his garage studio – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xROICA8Hr7I
Please note – the discussion that the nurse gives is the Cliffs note version of what I have been hearing for months. He makes it very easy to understand.
We are a corrupt and unserious nation. That includes my profession. They have managed to propagandize this issue for long enough now that the very word ivermectin is now radioactive. And just in time for the new 800 dollar a course Pfizer drug to hit the market – and there are others from other companies right behind them. Pigs feeding at the trough.
Where are the promised trials? I have been waiting all year. As a non-zealot, I would love to know one way or the other what the efficacy of ivermectin is……Will likely never know at this point. The cash register is just 2 steps away.
If you are high risk, get vaccinated. If you feel you are sick with COVID or are newly positive – get in touch with your doc. At my practice, we are now hitting it with all we have. I now have many patients demanding this approach. The Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers screeds from the MSM have done nothing but profoundly increase this desire. Antibodies if available. Ivermectin and fluvoxamine. And all the usual OTC. If you are vaccinated, do not assume there is a halo of protection – there most certainly is not. Continue to be diligent. Lose weight, sleep well, do all you can to decrease your stress level. Protect your vulnerable.