Sedona News – The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to present the Northern Arizona premiere of “Finding the Money” showing May 25-30 at the Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatre.
There’s another side to the national debt.
An intrepid group of economists is on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt — and the nature of money — upside down.
“Finding the Money” follows American economist Stephanie Kelton on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT”. Kelton provocatively asserts the National Debt Clock that ticks ominously upwards in New York City is not actually a debt for us taxpayers at all, nor a burden for our grandchildren to pay back. Instead, Kelton describes the national debt as simply a historical record of the number of dollars created by the US federal government currently being held in pockets, as assets, by the rest of us.
MMT bursts into the mainstream media, with journalists asking, “Have we been thinking about how the government spends money, all wrong?”
But top economists and politicians from across the political spectrum condemn the theory as “voodoo economics”, “crazy” and “a crackpot theory”.
“Finding the Money” traces the conflict all the way back to the story we tell about money, injecting new hope and empowering countries around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.
“Finding the Money” will be shown at the Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatre May 25-30. Showtimes will be Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 25, 28 and 29 at 3:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Monday and Thursday, May 26, 27 and 30 at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are $12, or $9 for Film Festival members. For tickets and more information, please call 928-282-1177. Both the theatre and film festival office are located at 2030 W. Hwy. 89A, in West Sedona. For more information, visit: www.SedonaFilmFestival.org.
3 Comments
Not very difficult to find the money- politicians have control of it and politicians misappropriate, misspend and are bought with it.
They sit in “classified” economy briefings and hearings and then get to play the stocks with the info garnered in those meetings.
They can have entire industries shut down or saved from shutdown with government spending as was done with banks and automobile manufacturers in 2008.
They pick and choose who the government invests in for military weapons, vehicles, aircraft, drones, food and equipment while the taxpayer pays three times more for civilian products and personnel than the military did when Halliburton, LogCap, Brown and Root (all founded and owned for years by DICK Cheney), Lockheed, Raytheon and BlackWater were even conceived of and they do so to line their own greedy pockets.
They make back door deals with foreign governments and businesses and rarely if ever declare themselves as foreign agents, claim income or pay taxes on very large sums of undeclared income and extravagant gifts like new high end sports cars, precious metals, high end alcohol and tobacco products.
They make dirty off record deals with M’ericas traditional enemies like Rusher, N Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Chiiiyynaaa to provide them with M’erican weapons, aircraft, armored vehicles, military training and more in order to have a Hotel or Factory built on the lands of our enemies.
They have affiliations with and have made deals with the likes of Manuel Noriega, Duterte, the Bin Laden’s, Saddam, Un, Putin, Xi, Orban and many many other DICKtaters in exchange for money, unbalanced regional power and war, access to oil, precious metals and minerals.
The average M’erican has little to no first hand knowledge of what our politicians are truly up too on a daily basis due to firewalls they use to insulate themselves from being investigated like “classified information”, “congressional secrecy rules” and “individual immunity”. All bullshit excuses to say the very least especially since or system of justice is supposed to be fair, equal and just for all but is far far from it. Especially when you have an Orange Moron making a mockery of it on a daily basis but somehow avoids what any average M’erican would definitely face – physical arrest, complete booking process to include cavity search and then time in a group cell sleeping on the cold floor without any padding whatsoever and the AC cranked to the maximum to prevent inmates from fighting. Just try making a crack in court like he does and see if the Judge doesn’t tell you to A) Shut up or get locked up or B) permanently removed from your own hearing where you will then be found guilty without having any opportunity to speak on your own behalf. In order to escape justice he has thrown friends, family, staff, clients and more under the bus and then slanders them until his cult agrees with him and they plot to use violence against them on his behalf.
Then there’s crooked Menendez who is such a crooked crook he’s going to throw his own wife under the bus for his criminality in order to attempt to escape justice for a second time!
And let’s not forget Schizophrenic Georgi Santos who’s still out scamming innocent victims out of their money so he can pretend to be important. He claims to have dirt on all of his fellow Maggots so wonder what crimes we’re unaware of?
Take money out of politics and then let’s see who takes the job!
And hold publicly televised Congressional briefings on Military Spending and Contracts so the taxpayer can see how that funding is being used as a form of oversight from a committee that is not an internal biased source like the oversight committees we currently have.
Yep JB, to many laws passed to let this continue on. Citizens United just took a bad situation and made it worse. Also take note, one side wants changes to Citizens United and one does not.
The wealth that comes out of K Street is disgusting!
And the military should have a balance sheet for everything. They just get to run wild and spend our tax money!
Then we give billions of subsides to trillion dollar corporations, and huge tax breaks to the richest people, so it can so call trickle down!
I have dozens of fixes for all the waste, just imagine if my voice got to loud and people paid attention to it?
You said it! I had a buddy that was a Depot level armorer: meaning he could work on any weapon system from an Army Pentathlete’s .22 cal target pistol up to Bradley’s, Abram’s to electrostatically fired Vulcan’s. When we came home from the Gulf in late 91 all of our deployed weapons, vehicles, guns and equipment deployed back with us to Europe where it was maintenanced by civilian Lockheed/Boeing. My friend who was an E-5 at the time continued his routine work and got to observe the civilians “fix” things like broken radio knobs with not new knobs but entirely new damned radios! They did the same with expensive thermal and night vision optics and it all got charged to Joe Sucker Tax Payer! And that was all under W Senior and his thieving pal DICK Cheney who made billions if not trillions a year for decades ripping of taxpayers with his Army of way overpaid Halliburton/LogCap/Brown and Root workers did the job GI’s have always traditionally done like setting up base camps, cooking, laundry, trucking supplies etc. but did so at 3-6 times what GI’s got paid to do the same damned things!
I was in an Airborne line unit and we never had anyone do any of that for us. First time I saw it my jaw fell off my face with disbelief!
I ran into a former Chemical Weapons NCO who left the Army an E6 Staff Sergeant making $28K per annum to drive Log Cap trucks for $180K per annum.
I know many a veteran who left Active Duty to get the “big money” they unrealistically offered to them with the skill and ease of a Recruiter suckering a lower income kid into signing a contract to things the kid doesn’t completely understand. And yeah they made some bucks fora year or two but then we’re either laid off for 4-5 years at a time or had quit early on after seeing the big picture that didn’t include them.
When I served the Army had no money for training, leadership advancement schools, training ammo etc. I can’t imagine the grift that has occurred since 9-11 when the government gave the military everything they every wanted, wished for, needed and did not need.
I worked SWAT out of a base that housed Border Patrol, ATF, DEA, DoD SWAT/SRT’s and I saw the initial monies rolling in fast just after 9-11. My Chief called me while I was running a live fire range to get a list of everything our team wanted or needed and my assistant and I compiled a detailed list of everything after meeting with the entire team for input. We didn’t ask for a single item we absolutely did not need to do our missions and we got every single thing on the list! It was crazy but not as crazy as the Base Commander of that base requesting half a dozed extravagant two story guard towers to be positioned on the shore of a waterway that buffered part of the base. The towers each had power, lighting, heat/ac, half bath and kitchenette with microwaves, coffee makers and mini fridges.
The towers were never manned once during Afghanistan/Iraq and cost some $380,000 each!