Watching Michael Moore's every move (original) (raw)

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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Mikey The Union Buster, er, Champion

Michael Moore has been all over the Wisconsin union fight, giving a pointless speech a few days ago that basically repeated the ignorant interview I fisked below. And, last night on Maddow, he went completely non-linear after the Senate vote, calling it a war on the middle class. The latter is a truly a classic rant from Moore, a deranged factually-challenged diatribe ranging from the Air Traffic Controllers’ illegal strike to demands for students to strike in favor of Wisconsin. He repeats the false claim that there are trillions of unused dollars out there; he repeats various myths about wealth distribution; he incorrectly claims that the Wisconsin bill strips all unions of their rights. It ends with him holding up handcuffs and saying the people are coming for “you”, whoever “you” are.

(He also goes on about Michigan passing a bill to dissolve city governments. I’m not familiar with this bill and can’t find much on it beyond progressive websites. If the reports are accurate, I doubt it will pass constitutional muster as it does seem rather extreme.)

Moore thinks this is the beginning of a people’s revolution against the Man. Of course, he’s thought that—off and on—for the last twenty years. But if you watch the speech, it’s just standard socialist trope and “revolutionary” rhetoric. It might have been relevant 75 years ago, when unions were a large minority (as opposed to about 8% of non-government workers today). Today, it will play well with progressive crowds but the rest of the country will yawn and go back to work.

I would like to smack down a few of his lies, however.

Moore is claiming that the wealthiest 400 Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 50%. As is usual with Moore, he’s telling a half-truth. As Robert Frank points out, this has always been true for as long as we have statistics. And I would hazard that it was even more true in the so-called golden era when unions were strong (and, also, if your history comes from something thicker than a matchbook—when they were protectionist, racist and corrupt). Or maybe Mikey thinks we had a more equitable distribution of wealth when racial, sexual and ethnic discrimination were institutionalized in every level of government.

Ahem. Returning to my point—what’s really telling about the trendlines for wealth distribution is that the top 400 and the bottom 50% have both been doing well of late. The Forbes 400 have seen their wealth grown from about 500billiontojustunder500 billion to just under 500billiontojustunder1.5 trillion in the last twenty years. But the bottom 50% have seen their wealth rise as well, from about 800billiontojustover800 billion to just over 800billiontojustover1.5 trillion. In other words, the rising tide has lifted all boats.

The other problem with this line of hooey is that “the rich” are not some static group. The vast majority of the Forbes 400 today were not in the Forbes 400 even ten years ago. Despite Moore’s protestations that the American Dream is a lie, the overwhelming majority of the super-rich were not born that way.

You will rarely find a better illustration of Moore’s selective use of fact than that. He sites a statistic on wealth distribution with zero historical context because the historical context easily belies the socialist point he is trying to make. (You can see here for more debunking of the “dead middle class” statistics).

(Update One other point: the total wealth in the US is estimated to be some 50trillion.Thatmeansthetotalshareownedbytherichest400isabout350 trillion. That means the total share owned by the richest 400 is about 3% or so. That’s still a bit uncomfortable, even for me. But turn it around—the rest of us own 97% of the wealth in this country. The telling statistic is the low wealth of the bottom 50%. But this has actually risen over the last 40 years (from about 1% to about 3%) and is still about 50trillion.Thatmeansthetotalshareownedbytherichest400isabout310,000 per person. And, as I pointed out, people don’t stay in the bottom 50%.)

Moore also thinks we can close budget gaps by taxing the rich. This is incorrect. Tax rates would have to approach 90% before you’d get close to balancing the budget—and that’s assuming the rich did not respond by sheltering income or fleeing overseas. The bulk of tax revenue comes from the bulk of the taxpayers—the middle class. If you don’t want to cut spending, you have to raise taxes on everyone.

Moore also talks about a pilot making only $19,000 per year on a regional flight. I asked a pilot about this. That’s standard entry-level salary for small regional airlines. Once they get into larger routes (and union jobs), the salary goes up dramatically. Many jobs—doctors and lawyers, for example—have a similar salary path.

Finally, it behooves me to point out that when it comes to his own place of business, Moore’s pro-union record is, to say the least, dubious. That’s a long read, but worth it. Typical quote:

Michael Moore used some non-union crewmembers when union workers were available in the production of his latest film “Capitalism: A Love Story,” a documentary that argues the capitalist system allows for greedy corporations to exploit working-class people.

“For all of the different jobs on the movie that could have used union labor, he used union labor, except for one job, the stagehands, represented by IATSE,” said a labor source unauthorized to talk about Moore’s decision not to hire members of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

In a statement issued to ABCNews.com, Moore’s agent, Ari Emanuel, said the filmmaker wished the union included more documentary crew people—but he did not deny that IATSE members were snubbed in favor of non-union employees.

Much of the above is based on anonymous interviews and hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt. But it’s clear that Moore’s actions when it comes to unions is, at best, in conflict with his stated views.

For my part, I’m a little concerned about over-reach by Governor Walker. I was hoping a deal could be struck. Moore, of course, thinking that Wisconsin’s financial crisis is a fiction (it’s not), wanted the Democrats to hold out until the bitter end. Well, they’ve gotten their bitter end. I hope they enjoy it.

(PS - I will give Moore credit for one thing—the Favre line in his speech was good.)

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Thursday, March 03, 2011

Mooronomics

Posted by MikeS on 03/03/11 at 07:45 PM

Here is the latest emission from our favorite film-maker on how to fix the economy. I’ll transcribe:

To me, the solution is quite simple. First of all, we’re not broke. This country is not broke. The state of Wisconsin is not broke. There’s a ton of cash in this country, trillions of dollars of it.

Stop the tape. First off, Moore seems to be confusing the government being broke with the people and companies within the nation being broke. The assumption rolled into this is that all the money really belongs to government. Because if you don’t assume that, then government is broke. We are getting warnings about our debt. The interest payments alone are consuming a bigger and bigger chunk of the budget—taking money away from the liberal programs that Mikey and his compatriots love so much. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have over $100 trillion in unfunded liability and the latter began running into the red this year. And our national debt is projected to break 100% of our GDP within the decade.

If this is not broke, I’d hate to see what is.

Now granted—if you seized the money of all the big corporations, we wouldn’t be broke anymore. We also wouldn’t have jobs.

But I interrupted. Please continue to make a fool of yourself.

But it’s a finite amount. There is only so much cash.

Stop the tape. At any one moment, yes. But in the long run, wealth is not finite. As P.J. O’Rourke said: if you eat a few extra slices of pizza, that doesn’t mean I have to eat the box. Human wealth has grown massively over the last two centuries, mainly because of the explosion of human capital—the unleashed creativity of programmers, artists and even over-rated film-makers.

We’ve allowed the vast majority of that cash to be concentrated into the hands of a few people. And they’re not circulating that cash. If you don’t believe that, go try and get a loan right now.

Loans are tougher to get now. But that’s because the banks are—correctly—being smarter about lending. Maybe too smart, true. But that is preferable to the free-for-all that set up the recent crash.

They’re sitting on the money, they’re using it for their own—they’re putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with your life, with that money. We’ve allowed them to take that. That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours. We all have this—we all benefit from this or we all suffer as a result of not having it

A national resource? Other people’s money is a national resource? You will find few statement as socialistic as that one. To Moore, your money does not belong to you—it belongs to government (unless, of course, you’re trying to get a tax credit for film-makers).

Moore is also repeating the talking point that businesses are sitting on tons of cash, unwilling to hire people because of some nefarious plot. This is a myth. Corporations are maintaining liquid assets to hedge against further downturns and deal with existing debt. And their cash has only seemed to grow because their illiquid assets—real estate, especially—lost so much value. In the mean time, that cash is not “sitting there”. These guys aren’t making big piles of bills and rolling naked in it. It’s being invested—much of it in bonds to support our big-spending government. If you want more money available for loans, stop having the government borrow so much.

(Frankly, this point—which Moore made repeatedly during the last recession—has never made sense to me. Why would businesses sit on cash if they didn’t have to? Hiring people is how you make more money. Don’t businesses want more money? And the complaint that they’re spending it on themselves—isn’t spending supposed to stimulate the economy? Didn’t we just have a whole huge multi-hundred billion dollar spending bill that was supposed to do just that?)

In the end, businesses do not hire because they have cash. They hire because more income is anticipated. Moore knows this, or should. He doesn’t hire people when he’s not making a movie because he has money siting around; he hires people when he anticipates making another movie and making more money. But it’s hard for businesses to anticipate more income with growing regulation and the constant threat of ... well, what Moore says next:

I think we need to go back to taxing these people at the proper rates. They need to—we need to see these jobs as something we own, that we collectively own as Americans and you can’t just steal our jobs and take them someplace else

Michael Moore is self-employed. He owns his job. Most of us do not. I certainly don’t own my job. If I leave town or quit, I can’t take my job with me. If my employer goes belly up, I can whine all I want about “my” job—that won’t bring it back. Jobs are not property in any real sense. You can’t ship them and you can’t store them.

What we do own are our bodies, our labor, our skills, our intelligence and our work ethic. When opportunity exists—when the business environment is good—people will offer us jobs in exchange for those things. But we do not own those jobs any more than our employers own us. It’s a mutual and voluntary exchange.

And if Michael Moore wants people to stop “taking jobs someplace else”, maybe he should stop advocating that we “tax these people at the proper rates” (his only suggestion) and other such nonsense. High business and personal taxes tend to drive businesses away, not bring them in (many businesses file taxes as individuals). The Sarbanes-Oxley law has crippled IPOs and start-ups. American businesses are facing large hiring costs thanks to the insurance mandate.

We need to do the opposite of what Moore is suggesting. But then again, that’s usually the case.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

MooreandMe

Posted by MikeS on 12/21/10 at 06:59 PM

To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of the #MooreandMe business. Here’s a rundown:

If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, it’s probably been hard to miss the Twitter protest against Michael Moore for dismissing and mischaracterizing the rape accusations against Julian Assange—first in a post announcing he was posting bail for Assange and then on Keith Olbermann’s show.

Launched by Sady Doyle and Jaclyn Friedman last Wednesday and waged under the hashtag #mooreandme, the campaign has called for Moore (and Olbermann) to correct the misinformation they spread, offer an apology for minimizing rape allegations and smearing the accusers, and preferably donate $20,000 to an anti-sexual assault organization.

Almost a week later, there’s still no response from Moore (although he has written a letter to the entire government of Sweden) but the protest is still going strong, has attracted the inevitable anti-feminist trolls, and even caused Keith Olbermann to quit Twitter for 3 days “until this frenzy is stopped.”

Here is Doyle’s latest post, which is long and heart-rending. She’s been getting death threats and rape threats for what seems a fairly reasonable demand—that Olbermann and Moore apologize for revealing the name of Assange’s accuser and characterizing her as a potential CIA agent based on the unsubstantiated rantings of one of Assange’s aggregators, a known Holocaust denier.

There are three tangled issues going on here. First, is the unsubstantiated accusation from within Assange’s organization that this woman is a CIA plant. I’m not sure why Moore is at the center of this. It seems to me that Olbermann was at the center of this and Moore just repeated it. Moore’s two blog posts on the subject have not repeated the claim. As much as it pains me to say this, I think the mooreandme campaign, while having the right intentions, is focused on the wrong person.

However, having retweeted the name of the accuser and the unsubstantiated “blame the victim” accusations, I think an apology is the least Michael Moore can do. No? That would make the controversy go away awfully fast. (Moore’s second post—a letter to the Swedish government—sideswipes an apology but doesn’t get there).

Second, is the accusation, which Moore continues to repeat, that Sweden has made this case a priority to get Assange (or something). That’s not unique to Moore, either, nor did it originate with him. Many Wikileaks supporters are saying this, most notably Naomi Klein (once described by Lee, quite accurately, as a third-rate intellect). Their basis of this is Naomi Wolf’s misleading analysis of Swedish rape statistics.

** Sweden has the HIGHEST per capita number of reported rapes in Europe.

** This number of rapes has quadrupled in the last 20 years.

** The conviction rates? They have steadily DECREASED.

The Amnesty International report specifically says that Sweden’s rates are difficult to compare to other countries because they charge for each incident (most countries charge once per victim) and Sweden has a much more expansive definition of rape than other countries. So this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Of course, as we’ve shown many times, Michael Moore is no stranger when it comes to comparing apples to oranges and thinking he’s found lemonade.

Maybe there’s something here, but accusing the Swedish government of concocting these charges implicitly accuses the alleged victim as well. Instead of being a tool of the CIA, she’s a tool of the Swedish government. I really can’t let him off the hook for this, although, again, it seems like focusing on Moore specifically, is a bit misguided.

The third issue is the nasty, brutal and personal attacks that Doyle has endured. We’ve seen this kind of behavior from Moore fans before, but I think this is more an issue of Julian Assange’s deranged fans than Michael Moore’s. Still ... would it hurt Moore to ask people to knock it off? Would it hurt him to say something along the lines of, “I think this #mooreandme stuff is crap, but lay off Doyle. It’s a free country.”?

In the end, my feeling about the rape charges against Assange is to let them play out in the courts. What matter is if they are true or not. I really don’t give a shit why these charges are being brought, but they do not seem trivial. I don’t begrudge Moore posting bail money for him (although I’m curious as to why he needs it). But it is detestable to make unsubstantiated accusations against a potential rape victim because you happen to like what her rapist does for a living. What Moore and his fellow travelers continue to do is no different from people who “blame the victim” whenever their favorite sports star is accused of rape, assault or domestic violence. I don’t think they would put up with it if Lakers’ fans had accused Kobe Bryant’s victim of being a Celtics fan. But their feminism and support for victims goes out the window when it’s their hero in the crosshairs.

Whatever their intentions, this came across as “blaming the victim” to a substantial number of people. Whatever their intentions, they repeated unsubstantiated allegations against the alleged victims and revealed their names. Moore is not the source of this, but he actively participated in the smear, passing it on to over 700,000 twitter viewers. He may not deserve to be at the center of the storm. But an apology seems the least he can do.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

I Am SO Popular in Cuba

Posted by MikeS on 12/18/10 at 11:12 PM

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with the Wikileaks scandal, but there is one little aspect that came to light recently. A diplomatic cable claimed that Michael Moore’s Sicko was banned in Cuba. According to the cable, Cuban doctors were concerned—stop me if this sounds familiar—that the idyllic healthcare system portrayed in the film was at variance with reality (something we have demonstrated over and over again right here at Moorewatch).

Well, you just knew Mickey wouldn’t let that go unanswered:

It is a stunning look at the Orwellian nature of how bureaucrats for the State spin their lies and try to recreate reality (I assume to placate their bosses and tell them what they want to hear)

Of course, if you follow Michael’s bullshit, you would know that he thinks the Wikileaks revelations are 100% accurate when they embarrass the United States. But have someone gainsay his movie, and that’s pure fiction.

There’s only one problem—‘Sicko’ had just been playing in Cuban theaters. Then the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of ‘Sicko’ were set up in towns all across the country.

I want you to step back a moment and think about this. Michael Moore is boasting that his film was beloved by one of the most oppressive regimes in the Western hemisphere. He is boasting that his film was used as propaganda by that regime to fool their own people into believing their broken useless (but free!) healthcare system was so much better than the dynamic, innovative (if flawed) system employed by their nemesis. He even quotes from one of the approved Cuban news agencies.

We’ve occasionally joked around here at Moorewatch by calling Mike some variation of Mikey Riefenstahl. It’s very rare that he himself tries to own up to that moniker.

But the bigger issue here is how our government seemed to be colluding with the health insurance industry to destroy a film that might have a hand in bringing about what the Cubans already have in their poverty-ridden third world country: free, universal health care. And because they have it and we don’t, Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than we do, their life expectancy is just 7 months shorter than ours, and, according to the WHO, they rank just two places behind the richest country on earth in terms of the quality of their health care.

First of all, if the government were colluding with the insurance industry, they would have been broadcasting Castro’s love of Mike’s films. Their popularity with the Cuban government would do more to discredit them than anything we could type here on Moorewatch. Only when you’ve drunk as deeply from the totalitarian well as Mike has, does Castro’s endorsement seem like a good thing.

Second, he never learns, does he? We’ve talked about how the numbers coming out of Cuba are bullshit. I’ve personally deconstructed the infamous WHO report. And yet he’s still flogging these long-debunked numbers.

Well, that’s propaganda for you. They don’t change their opinions to fit the facts. They change the fact to suit their opinions.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Look at Bloggy Goodness

Posted by MikeS on 09/28/10 at 09:05 PM

Well, it’s been a few weeks since Mikey started up his “Mike and Friends” blog. And I must confess myself ... bemused. Moore actually doesn’t do too much blogging himself. The blog is basically a dumping ground for every far far Left whiner, ingrate, ignoramus and conspiracy theorist who can put a title after their name. It’s a really depressing read as every single post, it seems, is about how much America sucks.

Here, for example, is Donna Smith, complaining about a fire fighter who can’t get a $22,000 test to see if his son has a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy. I feel for him. But if we had the socialized healthcare system she prefers, that test would probably not exist. Smith manages to top herself by disparaging a man whose wife has cancer but believes he can handle it by himself. Courage under adversity is seen as stupidity.

Here is Joan Wile, screaming about taxes:

Bucking the Tea Party and Right Winger presidential wannabes Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and other advocates for the super rich at the expense of all the rest of us, the [Gray Panthers] have issued a proclamation outlining their proposals regarding tax cuts. Among their many resolutions is one demanding that the progressive taxation system practiced in many other developed democratic countries be adopted here.

We have such a system. Tax rates vary from 10% for lower income to 35% for the upper incomes and many deductions are capped. Moreover, we have a second tax system --- the Alternative Minimum Tax—designed to screw “the rich” even further. According to the government’s own figures, the top 1% earn 19% of the income but pay 37% the tax. The bottom half earn 13% of the income and pay 3% of the tax. Libs will usually respond by talking about payroll taxes. But since those taxes go to pay for your own retirement—and the benefits for the rich are capped—that doesn’t really wash.

Wile doesn’t even get that far, basically lamenting the Bush tax cuts going to the rich. But that’s garbage too, since the tax cuts essentially removed millions of the poor from the tax rolls. While the tax cuts for “the rich” would reduced federal revenues by 700billionoverthenextdecade,thetaxcutsfortherestofthenationwouldreducerevenueby700 billion over the next decade, the tax cuts for the rest of the nation would reduce revenue by 700billionoverthenextdecade,thetaxcutsfortherestofthenationwouldreducerevenueby3 trillion. How is that regressive? Wile then goes on about rising income disparity, which is largely a myth created by people who don’t understand statistics (or actually, who probably do). Then there’s this:

The Gray Panthers are tired of such statements as that of, for example, Newt Gingrich, “I think to raise taxes on people who create jobs in the middle of a 9.5 percent unemployment rate is, frankly, crazy.” Inasmuch as more and more corporations are transplanting jobs to low-wage workers in other countries, that comment seems a bit disingenuous. Our history has shown more than once that expanded wealth at the top does not trickle down into the pockets of the less fortunate.

First of all, corporations and small businesses that pay taxes as individuals are not the same thing. Second, one reason jobs get moved overseas is because of our massive tax and regulator structure, which costs our economy $1.75 trillion a year, according to the WSJ. Third, try to familiarize yourself with the explosion in class mobility that occurred in the wake of the Reagan tax cuts.

By comparison, Michael Moore’s calling out of liberals for going along with the evil Republicans’ diabolical plans to start a war they knew was bad for the country (or something) or his (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theories about Detroit sports are small potatoes.

We’ll keep a watch out for you, though, to see if anything really stupid turns up (it’s only a matter of time). That’s what we do here—it says so right in the URL.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Return of Moorewatch

Posted by MikeS on 09/15/10 at 04:44 PM

Oh, goody. Michael Moore, only about ten years behind the times, is launching a blog. Of his very own! Well, sort of his own. It will include inane rants by his friends, including this delightfully incoherent rant from Alan Grayson:

When Kennedy said these words, the unemployment rate in America was 3.7%. Today, it is almost three times as high. Too many of our working brothers and sisters are out of work, thanks to more than a decade of economic mismanagement. 10% of us are unemployed, and the other 90% work like dogs to try to avoid joining them. Which is just what the bosses want.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I look forward to a Labor Day where every worker has a job, every worker has a pension, every worker has paid vacations, and every worker has the health care to enjoy life.

Yes, every worker should have a pension like those that are bankrupting our states and the federal government. And every worker should have a paid vacation. And making it more expensive to hire people will certainly not increase unemployment. (The Euro-zone’s unemployment during boom times is about to equal to what ours is now).

My opponents call that France. I call it America, an America that is Number One.

I’m not adding the emphasis, by the way. It’s in the original.

This is going to be a lot of fun. While I’m waiting for a coherent post to show up (warning: this may take some time), you can enjoy Mike trying to defuse the stupid Cordoba House controversy by suggesting the mosque be built at Ground Zero.

“And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you,” he added.

Stay tuned for Michael demanding that a church be built at the site of the next abortion clinic bombing.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Help me help 23.6 million people

Posted by JimK on 05/14/10 at 01:03 PM

I really should have posted this sooner, but school kicked my butt this semester, and this week I have been on crutches & crying thanks to a perfect storm of gout-inducing circumstances. OWW. So I actually sort of forgot about getting the word out...and that makes me a terrible human being to be sure, but…

...I’m here now, blegging for your assistance. On June 13th I’m riding the Tour de Cure, a charity bike ride to raise funds for the American Diabetes Association. I know, these charities have huge overhead, but diabetes doesn’t have a lot of directly-donatable charities, and more people are getting this - especially children. Did you know they no longer call Type 2 “adult-onset diabetes?” Because the largest growing segment that gets it? Kids. Kids are getting a disease that used to afflict mainly the elderly, then fat middle-aged people, and now, thanks to a combination of flat-out evil behavior from food companies and utter laziness coupled with a lack of effort on the parts of parents everywhere...kids are getting “adult onset” diabetes as early as 8 or 9 years old. Just imagine what that means, what you have to feed a child in order to create a disease state that shouldn’t happen to them for another 40 years.

Part of the effort to combat this trend is education (both parents and children), and that costs money, and that is where the American Diabetes Association can be useful. SO...go here: http://main.diabetes.org/goto/stark23x. Donate. Sponsor my (still fat but shrinking every day) ass to chug along the roads of North Haven, CT in support of helping not the fat middle-aged dude who eats nothing but King-Size Reese’s and KFC twice a day and can’t figure out why he’s 350 lbs. and his blood sugar is all over the road, but for the child of that parent who doesn’t know that what the kid is being given to eat is going to put them in the ground at an early age.

http://main.diabetes.org/goto/stark23x. Right now my class’s team is signed up for the 25K. I should tell you now, that is NOT a challenge for me. However, if I raise 250,Iwillrideittwice,evenifnooneelsefrommyteamjoinsme.50Kisabitofachallenge,buthere’sthekicker.250, I will ride it twice, even if no one else from my team joins me. 50K is a bit of a challenge, but here’s the kicker. 250,Iwillrideittwice,evenifnooneelsefrommyteamjoinsme.50Kisabitofachallenge,buthere’sthekicker.500 and I’ll ride it three times. 75K will literally chap my ass, and I do mean literally. So if you despise me, here’s your chance to make me suffer. The more you give, the more pain I will be in on June 13th. :)

http://main.diabetes.org/goto/stark23x.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Mikey Goes Off the Deep End

Posted by MikeS on 03/17/10 at 06:33 PM

Michael Moore has come out with another of his letters that is so incoherent, so all over the map and so self-contradicting that fisking it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Dead fish. In a tiny barrel. With a bazooka,

Still, that’s what we do here at Moorewatch.

Every story on the front page of Monday’s New York Times told the story of the Age of Greed during which a system known as capitalism is slowly, but surely, killing us:

Michael doesn’t link to any of these stories for fear that his shallow readers might learn something. So we’ll just take a look at the stories he’s complaining about. As you’ll see, Mike didn’t actually read them. He just glanced at the headlines and drew his own conclusions (gee, we haven’t seen that before in his movies (search for Tobin)).

Insurance company greed: “Millions Spent to Sway Democrats on Health Care”

Here is the story. It’s actually not about insurance companies but about a group if interests, headed by the Chamber of Commerce, who are trying to persuade key Democrats to vote against the legislation. it also goes into something Mike would rather you not know about—the enormous amount of money organized labor and pharmaceutical companies—yes, Evil Big Pharma—are putting into supporting the legislation. I don’t know what people like Moore expect when the government tries to transform one sixth of the economy. Or what they expect to continue to happen as the sector become more and more controlled by politics.

It once again illustrates a pattern from Moore: special interest groups Mike agrees with are principled; ones he disagrees with are evil.

War profiteers: “Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants”

Here is the story and it is actually alarming. But, of course, this is happening under a Democratic President overseen by a Democratic Congress. So much for change.

There’s no profit in repairing our infrastructure: “Repair Costs Daunting as Water Lines Crumble”

Here is the story. The problem is that it has nothing to do with capitalistic greed and everything do with incompetent city governments that have been run for decades by Democrats. While they’ve found plenty of money to build stadium for sports teams (or to fund social programs), they can’t seem to find the money to keep up their infrastructure. And efforts to raise water rates have been met with fierce opposition, particularly from the Left. This isn’t capitalism gone wrong. This is bad governing.

Ironically, there are good reasons to believe that the problem here is that water is a public monopoly with no privatization. This makes simply maintaining the system heavily political and expensive. I’m not completely sold on the idea of water privatization. I fear it will end up as the politicized statist mess that California’s energy “privatization” effort did. But can it be worse than the mess we have now?

China, the bank: “China Uses Rules on Global Trade to Its Advantage”

Here is the story. I disagree with their conclusion, which is about China manipulating currency and trade rules to their advantage. But the irony here is so thick you could slice it. China is exactly the all-controlling, all-powerful government that Michael favors. And, moreover, China’s leverage on these issues would be far smaller if it weren’t for the massive debts we are accumulating, especially under the current President and in liberal Democrat-controlled states like California.

You mean NAFTA didn’t improve life in Mexico: “Two Drug Slayings in Mexico Rock US Consulate”

Now we’re just getting stupid. This story has nothing to do with NAFTA. Nothing whatsoever. The article doesn’t mention NAFTA once. Mexico’s massive wave of drug violence is the result of an ill-advised ramp up in the War on Drugs, not NAFTA.

What happens when Big Food profits from hurting kids: “Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has New Boss”

Michael clearly didn’t read this story at all. It’s about schools hiring recess coaches to get kids playing again, rather than just lazing around. It has NOTHING, nothing to do with Big Food. Mike pulls the connection completety and totally out of his ass. (A good take on this story can be found at Lenore Skenazy’s outstanding Free Range Kids blog. Skenazy, unlike Moore, actually bothers to read stories before she comments on them.)

There’s now a daily parade of news like this—well, not really “news,” more like the media division of large corporations shoving your face into the dirt that is your life. You already know the schools are a disaster and the war is a boon for the Halliburtons and a bust for you. You don’t need a newspaper to tell you the roads and electrical lines and the local sewage plant is in miserable disrepair.

No, Mike. This is reporting on incompetent and ineffective government. And this is you shoving dirt in people’s face, taking a positive story about recess and turning into a whine about Big Food; taking a story about the War on Drugs and turning into an indictment of NAFTA. This is you taking the front page of the New York Times and trying to shoehorn every headline into your ignorant, far Left, eternally whining point of view.

Mike then finally gets to his point—I think—which is bashing the Democrats’ health care bill. On this, we agree:

Within days, the House of Representatives will vote to pass the Senate health care “reform” bill. This bill is a joke. It has NOTHING to do with “health care reform.” It has EVERYTHING to do with lining the pockets of the health insurance industry. It forces, by law, every American who isn’t old or destitute to buy health insurance if their boss doesn’t provide it. What company wouldn’t love the government forcing the public to buy that company’s product?! Imagine a bill that ordered every citizen to buy the extended warranty on all their appliances? Imagine a law that made it illegal not to own an iPhone? Or how ‘bout I get a law passed that makes it compulsory for every American to go see my next movie? Woo-hoo! Who wouldn’t love a sweet set-up like this windfall?

Exactly. It’s a good thing we’re united in our ... oh.

Please, Democrats—just say that—then pass this poor excuse of a bill. Pass it because, if President Obama takes a fall on this one, I don’t know if he’ll be able to get back up. And then NOTHING will get done. We can’t have that.

Yes let’s pass this turd of a bill to support a presidency that is cow-towing to every special interest out there. OK.

(Mike goes on a long rant, which I’ve left out, about how insurance companies want to kill children by denying them care. Completely ignored in his rant is the existence of S-CHIP, a program created by the evil Republican Congress that now guarantees coverage for the children of people making up to 400% of the poverty level. For a family of four, that’s $88,000 per year.)

But then it gets really fun:

On the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, the dateline was, sadly, once again, “Flint, Michigan.” The story was about how doctors are no longer accepting Medicaid patients. Which means tens of thousands of poor can no longer go to the doctor. Last year, the State of Michigan also prohibited doctors from accepting Medicaid patients who had anything wrong with their vision, their hearing, their feet or their teeth. In a 16-county area northwest of Flint, there will soon be not one single hospital that will allow you to give birth there if you’re on Medicaid. The official unemployment rate in Flint is 27% (unofficially, closer to 40%).

This is an American tragedy. And, as I’ve warned you for years, this tsunami is heading your way—if it’s not there already.

Jumping Jesus Christ. Medicaid is a government program. And like all government healthcare programs, it’s keeping costs down by denying care and underpaying doctors. Medicare also has problems with doctors refusing to take it. And with $60 trillion in unfunded liability, it’s only a matter of time before it begins denying care.

Moreover, Mike is an advocate of “Medicare for all” which really means “Medicaid for all”. He’s (apparently) taken a good look at the bankrupt system that is denying care, driving doctors out and said, “That’s what America needs”. I guess it’s OK for him, since he’ll have enough money to get real care. But the intellectual dishonesty is jaw-dropping, Mike advocates for a system, then blames the massive failure of that system on some nebulous entity called “capitalism”.

Whatever it takes.

But friends, it gets even better. After showing he can’t read a web page and openly advocating for a government healthcare system he admits is a disaster, he just starts rambling.

I’ve just turned on my new iPhone and it informs me that it has “apps” it would like to suggest I buy. One is called “Scanner.” It will allow me to listen in on police scanners anywhere across the country. I buy the app. I see that the Flint police scanner is part of this. I turn it on out of curiosity. And this is what I hear, at one in the morning: A woman is being beaten by her husband… A home invasion is taking place ("16-year-old black male, wearing a white skull cap")… A child has been missing since noon today… Another woman is being beaten by her boyfriend… A diabetic, obese man is having trouble breathing and needs to be rushed to the hospital (there will be three more of these obese diabetics in the hours to come; the entire town is ill)… One more woman calling, screaming for help, “officers urged to use caution...”

...And on and on and on. This is what I have listened to before going to bed. I am filled with despair and helplessness as I hear my former neighbors crying out for help. I hate it. I have to turn it off. I start to cry. Thank you, iPhone. Thank you, Democrats. I’ll sleep better knowing that you’re looking out for all of us.

What. The. Hell. An incident of criminality, health problems of the obese (their obesity, of course, being the fault of Republicans), a beating. What the hell is the point here? Are Democrats supposed to prevent this? Is Barack Obama supposed to magically leap between an abusive husband and his wife?

I think his point is that Flint (which, I should remind you, is about 200 miles from where Mike actually lives) is in a bad state. And that misery is a creation of vile capitalism. But do the liberal Democrats who have long controlled Michigan and driven it to financial ruin bear no responsibility for what’s going on? What about their willingness to cut essential services, like police and hospitals, rather than tamper with unionized payrolls, benefits and pensions? Flint didn’t just happen by accident. It was made. And the men who made are not evil capitalists, but liberal politicians who have no idea of how the world works.

(By coincidence, Reason.com is running a wonderful series of videos this week on how to save Cleveland, a city that has suffered a similar fate to Flint. It is absolutely worth your time. You will learn far more about big city failures than you will from Mike’s last movie. And, unlike Mike, they don’t just whine and cover their eyes and hope for a merciful Democratic Messiah to do something, please. They actually propose solutions to Cleveland’s woes. Real solutions that empower the citizens of Cleveland, not the unions and their Democratic puppets.)

Guys, I’m scratching my head here. How does something like this get written? Michael usually is at least _semi_-coherent. This reads more like something one of his fans wrote on Democratic Underground. While high.

In other Mike News, he was on Olbermann, saying that the healthcare bill that he wants passed is “death sentence” to tens of thousands of people. Never mind that the evidence that lack of insurance kills is ambiguous at worst and massively exaggerated at best. Here is Mike’s take on it.

“Their only crime – for dying – their only crime that they would have committed was they were a citizen in the United States of America,” Moore said of the uninsured. “If they were a few hundred miles north of us here, they wouldn’t die. Pure and simple, that’s the only difference – they hold an American passport instead of a Canadian passport.”

Yeah. In Canada, they would never be denied care because clinics are running out of money. They would never be unable to get the most advance procedures because the socialized system won’t pay for it. They would never have to go onto a waiting list for care.

Tell me, Mike. Are millions of Americans moving to Canada to enjoy their free healthcare? Or are Canadians coming here to get care they are denied by their wonderful socialist system. Don’t think too hard.

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Tax Incentives For Me, But Not For Thee

Posted by MikeS on 02/11/10 at 12:00 AM

The Mackinac Center smokes out Michael Moore for taking a tax break he’s railed against.

I’m with Moore, actually, on the idea that industries should not get special tax cuts. And I do understand that, with millions of dollars at stake, the temptation is awfully hard to resist. But it takes a rare degree of hypocrisy to denounce people who are doing exactly what you are doing; to think that because you’re a liberal film-maker, your us of tax incentives should be immune from opprobrium.

This again highlights the problem of his Capitalism analysis. The industries that take money from government are part of the problem. But they’re doing what anyone would do in their situation. The problem is the political system that constantly doles out rewards to interests, that sees fit to micromanage the economy. The path we are on is not leading to less of that.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Sanjay Gupta, Superstar

Posted by MikeS on 01/18/10 at 11:37 AM

You remember Sanjay Gupta? He was CNN’s medical correspondent for a long time. When he had the temerity to disagree with Michael Moore, he was pilloried by the Moore-ons and Moore apologists like PZ Myers. They could not believe that a member of the MSM would dispute the vileness of America’s healthcare system. We blogged on the Moore-Gupta dust-up here, here, here and here. For disputing Moore, Gupta was called a tool of the system. This quote, from revere, is typical:

Gupta was badly roughed up and had he any testicles prior to the interview would have found them gone after it. Given his track record, he actually had nothing to lose. I’m not a violent or blood thirsty kind of person, but even I have to admit it can be entertaining to watch someone beat up in public.

One can disagree with Gupta, although the links above document, very throughly, that Gupta was right and Moore was wrong. But the personal attacks and slagging of Gupta was typical of the Cult of Personality that has built up around our favorite documentary film-maker. And no doubt they played some role in his decision to withdraw his name as a nominee for Surgeon General (to be fair, many liberals loudly supported his nomination).

Ignored in the fracas and character assassination was that Gupta is a skilled neurosurgeon who has saved and improved lives. While covering the Iraq War, he rolled up his sleeves and operated on both military and civilian casualties.

He’s done it again:

After doctors and nurses from a Belgian medical team left a field hospital Friday night because of security concerns, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, was the only doctor to help 25 earthquake victims, CNN said Saturday.

The network said Belgian Chief Coordinator Geert Gijs, a doctor who was at the hospital with 60 Belgian medical personnel, told CNN that he decided to pull the team out for the night.

Gupta stayed all night at the hospital with other CNN staffers, security personnel and at least one Haitian nurse who had refused to leave, CNN said.
“I’ve never been in a situation like this. This is quite ridiculous,” Gupta said. He monitored patients’ vital signs, gave them pain-killers, continued intravenous drips and stabilized three new patients in critical condition, CNN reported.

This, my friends, is making a difference.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Cold Water on the Cuban Myth

Posted by MikeS on 01/16/10 at 12:49 PM

It’s a rare month that doesn’t go by without yet another demonstration of why Michael Moore was so totally wrong on Cuba’s healthcare system. Here‘s the latest:

Twenty-six patients at Cuba’s largest hospital for the mentally ill died this week during a cold snap, the government said Friday.
Human rights leaders cited negligence and a lack of resources as factors in the deaths, and the Health Ministry launched an investigation that it said could lead to criminal proceedings.

A Health Ministry communique read on state television blamed “prolonged low temperatures that fell to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) in Boyeros,” the neighborhood where Havana’s Psychiatric Hospital is located.

It said most of the deaths were from natural causes such as old age, respiratory infections and complications from chronic diseases including cancer and cardiovascular problems.

The statement came in response to reports from the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights that at least 24 mental patients died of hypothermia this week, and that the hospital did not do enough to protect them from the cold because of problems such as faulty windows.

Commission head Elizardo Sanchez said that so many patients dying of hypothermia was “absurd in a tropical country” and claimed the deaths could have been prevented if the government had granted long-standing requests from international aid groups to tour Cuba’s medical facilities, including the capital’s 2,500-bed mental hospital.

But it’s universal healthcare! And it’s free!

When P.J. O’Rourke visited East Germany, he marveled that communism could make a poor country out of Germans. I have to stand back in awe of a system that has people freeze to death in Cuba of all places. The Cubans are, as usual, blaming the US-led embargo. But you don’t need fancy imports and trade to keep people warm at night. Is the embargo so onerous that their wonderful healthcare system can not procure a few blankets or seal a few windows? How does this happen?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Declining Influence of Moore

Posted by MikeS on 01/12/10 at 10:14 AM

The Telegraph is putting together a rundown of the 100 most influential liberals and conservatives in the US. And who is that at #91?

A reviewer of Moore’s 2007 movie Sicko, about the American health system, summed up his career as being “a multimedia attempt to undo Reagan’s great achievement: persuading blue-collar factory workers and other members of the working class to embrace his heady brew of jingoism, anticommunism, contempt for government and admiration for the virtues of unfettered capitalism”.

By that standard, the university dropout from Flint, Michigan has failed miserably. But his Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) on the war on terror (the highest-grossing documentary of all time) and Bowling for Columbine (2002) about the gun lobby became the far Left’s contribution to key debates. But with liberalism now mainstream and in the White House (where Moore is unlikely to be a guest) the filmmaker’s influence seems to be on the wane.

They ranked him #7 two years ago. I have to agree with them that his influence is declining. Capitalism did not produce nearly the buzz and hysteria that his past movies did. And, with a box-office take just above $14 million, it was his least successful film in the last decade.

So does that mean the end of Moorewatch? Not when he still has so many followers. And not when his twitter feed contains such pearls of wisdom as this:

Thank God the first troops in the surge to Afghanistan got there in time to stop a Nigerian man on a flight to Detroit.

Apparently, the idea of layered defense doesn’t make much sense to Mikey.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Boycott The Voters

Posted by MikeS on 12/16/09 at 07:57 PM

As you may have heard, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman has proven to be a big obstacle to the current attempts at healthcare “reform”. So ... yes, you in the back with the baseball cap and mediocre movies?

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore on Thursday called for a boycott of the state of Connecticut in reaction to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) opposition to key provisions of healthcare reform legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently removed the public option and Medicare-buy in proposal, which the centrist Lieberman opposes, from the bill in order to attract centrist votes. Reid needs 60 votes in order to break a Republican filibuster of the bill.

Moore focused his anger on the Connecticut voters who reelected Lieberman in favor of liberal candidate Ned Lamont (D-Conn.) in the 2006 elections. He tweeted:

“People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we’ll boycott your state.”

Considering the Moore wants single payer anyway, I’m not sure why he’s upset that Pelosicare is going down in flames. Surely that clears the path to Bankrupt Medicare for all, no?

How do you boycott a state, anyway, in our inter-connected economy? Does this mean he won’t be doing speaking engagements at Yale?

PS - Mike’s twitter feed is MMFlint, which is funny since he lives nowhere near Flint.

Monday, November 30, 2009

The Surrender Letter

Posted by MikeS on 11/30/09 at 07:53 PM

I sometimes miss Mike when he’s so quiet. Taking on his stupid is just so much fun. But apart from a little love for Kanye, he’s been quiet since his unintentionally hilarious movie came out.

What’s that? Another open letter? One about the war? Squeee!!!

Before we get started, I’ll state my position: I’m of two minds on the Afghan War. On the one hand, I don’t want to abandon the Aghan people and potentially recreate a safe haven for Al-Quaeda. On the other hand, I’m not sure throwing more troops at the problem is going to help. I’m also aware that we are—once again—doing the rest of the world’s work for them. Nations that won’t lift a finger to help us will condemn us if Afghanistan falls into chaos. I’m not sure there is a good option but I’m cautiously optimistic that an Iraq-esque surge—not just more troops but a change in strategy—could stabilize the situation enough for us to leave. I’m also realistic enough to accept that making a deal with the less-repugnant factions of the Taliban may be necessary.

Moore’s position is more stark: he wants out, plain and simple. While it provides him with a certain clarity, it also causes him to steamroll over inconvenient realities while huffing deep from a 55-gallon sized bag of stupid.

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple.

True enough. That’s why it’s taken a long time to decide this. By the end of his first year, Obama will own the wars, the economy, Gitmo, everything. The “blame Bush” days will be—well, not over, since they’ll never be over—but lack an audience. Obama knows the public will hold him responsible for what happens, which means he has to weigh his options, not instantly comply with liberal demands.

And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do—destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true—that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

First of all, there are far “worse possible things” that Obama could do. Running up massive debts comes to mind. Smacking young idealists with the harsh reality how politics actually _works_—with compromise and debate—would not even make my list of the top 100 worst things Obama could do. I’d actually placed it on a list of good things, slightly behind “64. Try not to bow to foreign royalty.”

Second, what was your first hint that Obama was just another politician, Michael? When Obama rigged the auto bailout, the stimulus and healthcare to favor your special interests, those were matters of principle. But the second he does something you don’t like, suddenly he’s “another politician”. What special interests would he be catering to in continuing the war? The “industrial military complex” that opposed him in 2008? The Republicans who regard him as slightly to the left of Lenin? Rush Limbaugh?

Third, did you fucking pay attention during the election? Obama ran on this policy. He promised to put more troops into Afghanistan. This is not breaking a campaign promise—it’s fulfilling one.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that.

We are a civilian-run government. But it’s the job of the generals to figure out how to carry out the mission. I don’t like McChrystal taking the squabble public, but his job is to tell Obama what is needed to do the mission. It is Obama’s job to decide whether to accept or ignore that advice.

Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

Yes, we hate those damned generals. We hated George Washington, U.S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower so much that we elected them President. We hated Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall and Norman Schwarzkopf so much they were revered around the nation. And Colin Powell remains one of the most respected men in America who supported Obama in the election (that being the “seeking redemption” Mike references).

As an aside, any reading of the history of the Iraq War—I just read the outstanding _The Dark Side_—will tell you that Powell was fed bad information by the Bush Administration and his State Department thought we were going into Iraq woefully underprepared. Of all the possible nefarious figures in the Iraq War, Powell would place very low—and well below the “no blood for oil” shriekers like Moore who derailed the pre-war conversation with conspiracy theories about why we were going.

But I digress.

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea—“Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

What a minute. Is Mike suddenly saying the Reagan was right to support the Mujahideen? Is he acknowledging the aggression of the Evil Empire? Am I dreaming? If so, why am I dreaming about fisking Michael Moore instead of my dreaming about naked ... uh ... art?

Mike goes into a long ramble about the history of Aghan invasions that demonstrates, clearly and definitively, that he knows how to work Wikipedia. While these comparison are important, they are all example of nations attempting to conquer Afghanistan and turn it into part of their Empire. What we are doing is a little different. It’s hard to call it Empire expansion when our intention is to set up a permanent independent government and then get the hell out.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.”

Wait. Isn’t the economic crisis solved?

Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line—and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Patently ridiculous and ignorant. I doubt that the Native Americans would think they tore us to shreds. Nor would the vast swathes of people conquered by the British Empire, the French Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire ...

I have long thought that the most apt historical comparison to our own civilization is the Roman Empire (if nothing else, to steal a line from Eddie Izzard, I’m looking forward to the orgies and vomitariums). Any reading of Gibbon will reveal that expanding their Empire was never their problem. Failing to defend it was. Allowing the barbarians to storm the gates was. Draw your own conclusions.

You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

Really? They don’t want us there? It’s hard to tell. The opinion of the Aghan people is notoriously difficult to gauge. As recently as February, they wanted us there. The turning tide of opinion is not over whether Americans should be there, but whether we can accomplish the mission or not.

Maybe we can’t finish off the Taliban and create a stable government. But the debate is a lot more subtle and complex than “they don’t want us there”. And Obama has a whole State Department designed to figure this out so that he doesn’t have to “feel it in his bones”. He can make judgements based on fact.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Well, we aren’t fighting AQ anymore, Mike. We’re fighting the Taliban. Try to keep up.

Also, part of the reason there are so few fighters is because of our invasion. When this started, there were thousands. Most of them are dead or captured and the rest are in Pakistan. Our concern now is preventing the Taliban from retaking the country, imposing radical Islam and allowing Al-Queda a safe haven in which to rebuild. Now maybe that’s not doable. But this has become a far more complex situation than “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

Corporate backers? I thought Obama was elected by a groundswell from “the peepul”. I do share Moore’s fear of what might happen if someone else gets into power. Why they might even engage in a $6.5 trillion boondoggle involving huge bribes to drug companies, doctors and insurance companies.

We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

Caving in? On what? Michael defines any difference between his wishes and Obama’s decisions as “caving in”. This happens because Moore thinks his own opinions are Absolute Truth and any deviation from them is due to selfishness, cowardice or evil. It never occurs to him that Obama might have an opinion of his own or that governing a fairly conservative country involves some compromise. If Obama were truly going to “cave in” to the “haters”, he would have just accepted McChrystal’s recommendations months ago.

You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

I’m guessing the “one thing” is his skin color.

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Has there been an actual explosion of homelessness and bread lines? Are there zillions of invisible Hoovervilles all over the nation? If so, then the situation has only gotten worse in the last ten months. Who bears the blame for that, Michael? The “haters”, the “crazies”, the “idiots”? Or maybe the fools in charge? At least a little bit?

Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has. Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

If he does, Michael, will you be willing to take credit for any chaos that follows? Or will you own up if the Taliban returns to power? If terror attacks start being launched from a failed state, will you accept this as the price of withdrawal?

There are always tradeoffs. You want to make this simple—that all we have to do is “stop the killing” and everything will be butterflies and rainbows as it was in your hilariously rosy vision of pre-war Iraq. But it’s not like that. We don’t have any good options. Even if we admit it was a mistake to invade Afghanistan—and I don’t—that decision can not be undone. Leaving now is not the same as un-invading the country. We have to deal with the situation we have now, not the one we had in 2001 and certainly not the one that exists only in your imagination.

Are you willing to accept the price—short- and long-term—of bringing they boys home? Are you willing to oppose efforts to intervene in other horror spots like Darfur? I’m something an isolationist myself but I accept that this means looking away from suffering that we could prevent. Do you?

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Saturday, November 07, 2009

A Call To Action

Posted by MikeS on 11/07/09 at 09:07 AM

I was out of the country when Michael posted his most recent ignorant screed, an action plan of 15 items for his minions to follow. Should I fisk this list? Yes, I think I should.

First, he goes through five things we should demand the President and Congress do immediately:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people’s homes are now truly worth—and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

Hillary Clinton did, in fact, propose something like this. Now let’s ignore that this would destroy the idea of the rule of law—our Constitutional right of contract would be permanently shredded, giving the Feds the unlimited power to rewrite contracts as they see fit. Michael has never cared for the constitution or the law anyway. No, let’s remember that no one would ever seriously propose this because of the devastating effect it would have on the country.

Eviction is one of the few tools in the bank’s arsenal—one they hate to use because they lose tens of thousands of dollars every time they enact a foreclosure. Without that tool, there is less incentive for people to make their mortgage payments, especially when money is tight. If Mikey wants to trigger another bank bailout, that’s a perfect way to do it.

But it gets worse. To compensate for their inability to foreclose, banks will demand more money up front and higher interest rates for any new borrowers. Fewer people will be able to buy homes. People who prudently saved their money during the housing bubble will be screwed. The result will be a collapse of the real estate market and real estate prices. Demand for new houses—and those yummy constructions jobs associated with them—will vanish.

So apart from its ability to simultaneously crash the real estate market, the banking system and the economy, this is a fine idea.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery

And replace it with a different sort of misery. 60 minutes just ran a story about how easy it is to defraud the Medicare system. The reason for this is that Medicare’s administration is criminally small, focused on just doling out money without review so that they appear “efficient”. The program has swelled and continues to swell beyond anyone’s expectation, despite shifting much of its costs to the private sector. Simply dumping everyone into this system without any cost controls is a recipe for fiscal catastrophe (and will necessitate massive tax hikes). And cost controls—assuming you can get any past AARP—mean rationing, mean an end of innovation, mean a political scrabble for the government pile of money, means government money going to quackery like Therapeutic Touch.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists.

This is forcing people to pay for the promulgation of views with which they disagree. Suppose, for example, I favor drug legalization. Now I’m having to fork over my tax money so that both parties can run on the War on Drugs.

And what happens to third parties under this system, Michael? Do you really think our two parties are going to let guys like your buddy Ralph Nader have serious campaigns? That’s a recipe for political stagnation as, historically, ideas for change have come from outside parties that can focus on ideas rather than elections.

As for the ban on politicians becoming lobbyists, I don’t have much of a problem apart from my general disposition toward freedom. I would much rather cut the influence of special interests by cutting government so that it is no longer worth their time to lobby government. But what does Mikey think of Obama granting all these waivers so that lobbyists can work in his Administration? Does he really want to ban Bill Clinton from lobbying on behalf of certain interests? Or prevent politicians from helping out Big Labor? Always remember that, to Mike, “special interests” excludes any interests he likes.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies—and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies—you name it. If a company’s primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by—and the first rule is “Do no harm.” The second rule: The question must always be asked—“Is this for the common good?”

This would be the state-run banks like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who are still losing money and getting bailed out by the taxpapers? And I’m sure it would be great for the county to return to the Carter-era economy. There’s really no question among economists that airline and telecom deregulation have been good things, producing cheap flights to Flint and cheaper cellphones. Focus especially on the later. The development of modern telecommunications, something deregulation was a critical part of, has proven to be one of the great forces for freedom—as being demonstrated even now in Iran.

Thinking all our problems will be solved by more regulation is to indulge in magical thinking. Sacrificing more money and power to Washington in the hopes that it will heal what ails us is no more rational than sacrificing virgins to the Sun God.

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin’s socialist Alaska.

The stupidity of this statement is too much even for Mikey. He want to model our energy policy on the graft and corruption of Alaska?! He has a point—the US is one of the few countries that has not nationalized its energy industry. As a result, our energy industry—as bad as it is—is not the cesspool of corruption, inefficiency and pollution that it is in many countries—countries like the communist paradise being run by Mikey’s buddy Hugo Chavez.

Now he has five ways to “make Congress and the President listen to us”. Not much to argue with here:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121)

Actually, letters tend to be more effective, especially if they’re not boilerplate. I have never failed to received a response—usually a very polite and intelligent one—when I’ve written a physical letter to a Member of Congress.

2. Take over your local Democratic Party.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year—or, better yet, consider running for office yourself!

I’m all in favor of this. Nothing will vault the GOP back into power faster than have the Moore-ons take over the Democratic Party.

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there’s more of us than there are of them!).

Wouldn’t want to be like those raucous tea-partiers now. I would point out that there are not more of “us” than there are of “them”. Poll after poll shows that there are far more conservatives in this country than liberals, almost 2-to-1 in the nation as a whole. At the lowest ebb, conservatives are just below independents (who tend to lean right). I know that it doesn’t seem like that. But that’s because conservatives are more likely to have jobs and, until recently, less likely to be marching in the streets.

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth—so you have to do it! Start a blog!

Unless it’s a conservative blog, of course. And be prepared—if you blog, people will challenge your preconceptions. You will learn that things are a lot more complicated than they are in Mike’s movies. You will learn that the other side is not unadulterated evil—they have reasons for what they believe.

Joking aside, I don’t disagree much with the middle five of Mike’s suggestions. People should be more involved in their government. At the very least, it would be good for the Moore-ons to learn first-hand that all governing is done by compromise and tradeoffs. Someone making movies or sitting in a college dorm room can spin little fantasies about single payer healthcare systems. But once those grandiose plans make contact with reality, you discover it’s not so easy. Opponents have legitimate arguments against it; unintended consequences are rife; and small steps become much more doable than massive changes. Exposure to reality is always a good thing. Get cracking, Moore-ons!

Mike then has some personal advice. Once again, there are some pears of wisdom buried in a big pile of manure.

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

I don’t disagree with this at all. Small banks were far more prudent over the last decade. Be aware, however, that you will lose the advantages of a national bank, such as pervasive ATMs.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one—the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

In principle, I don’t disagree with this. However, there are time when credit cards can be a lifesaver. Earlier this year, my family had more mortgages than jobs and had to live off our credit cards for a while. We paid them off once we sold our old home. Soon, we will have to have our roof replaced. Delaying it until we’ve saved up enough will just cause more expensive damage to the house.

Better advice would be to only run up long-term credit card debts when absolutely necessary. Always remember that, when you have credit card debt, the interest makes every purchase cost twice the ticket price. There is no such thing as a sale when you’re in hock to the credit card companies.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

Flowers? I thought we weren’t supposed to be using credit cards? And why would you want to pay off your mortgage when you can’t be evicted and Mikey’s mortgage freeze is going to destroy the value of your home anyway?

I will agree that playing the stock market is a fool’s game. But over the long haul, through boom and bust, a broad dollar-cost-averaged stock market portfolio—e. g., a typical 401k or IRA—would have returned 5-7% interest over any decades-long period in the market’s history. This is better than 0% currently being returned by bonds (which are not that safe when government is trillions in debt). The key to saving money is _diversity_—stocks, bonds, savings accounts, etc.

I have better advice—ignore the stock market. Put part of every paycheck in a broad array of investments and don’t worry about the bumps and dips of the markets.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run.

These would be the union-run business that are going bankrupt. And the unions that have become badly corrupt.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she’s right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month.

Actually, I don’t have a problem with this. It’s difficult to find time for this in a bad economy. But no one ever lay on their death bed wishing they’d watched more TV. When I had two mortgages, I cancelled cable to save money. I don’t miss it (except during football season) and don’t plan to turn it back on anytime soon. Our new home also has a great veggie garden and an 80% reduction in our commute time. I can’t express how much better this had made our lives. So—on this one idea—Moore and I are in compete ag- ... we are in complete agre-… Come on. I can do this. We are in complete agreement.

(Note to self: take shower now).

This seems to be a running theme on Moorewatch these days. Mike is turning up the occasional truffle as he roots around in the dirt. It almost breaks your heart to think of what he could do if he weren’t so beholden to ignorant liberal ideology.

Less...

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Moore manages to confound one reporter

Posted by DonnaK on 10/25/09 at 07:07 PM

I just got this article in my mail and I thought it was so entirely brilliant that I feel the need to republish it in its entirety. It’s from a site named The Shotgun and it counts twelve ways Moore managed to make inane remarks in a two and a half minute interview clip. Watch the clip while you read the post - it’s a really great deconstruction of Moore’s words.

This clip lasted 2 minutes and 36 seconds. In that time I counted 12 ways that Michael Moore is an idiot.

Stupid things Michael Moore said:

1. Capitalism is a legal system
If you are going to make a movie about something shouldn’t you know what the word means? Just as a beginning point at least. A quick Wikipedia search of the word tells you that it is an “economic and social system,” not a legal system. To be sure there is a legal structure that is needed to make capitalism work properly, but that doesn’t make capitalism a legal system itself.

2. Regulation and rules that use to keep them in check are no longer keeping them in check
There are no more regulations? That’s news to me. I think it would also be news to the thousands of small and large companies that have to suffer increased costs due to mind numbingly dumb regulations.

3. Rich having more is anti-democracy
What is anti-democratic about someone having more stuff than me? Or even having a lot more stuff than me? I guess it is only democracy if we all have the same amount of stuff...oh wait isn’t that called something else?

4. Not only against democracy but against his personal values
This I admit is a bit of a cheap shot, but did you notice how he made a distinction between his values and democratic values?

5. Against the values of people
Yes because lord knows that capitalism goes against the very fiber of America society. The free exchange of goods and services is universally condemned by every right thinking American. The USA hates freedom and capitalism that’s for sure. That’s why they were so friendly with the Soviet Union.

6. Jesus wouldn’t approve of a hedge fund
How the hell does he know what Jesus would think? Capitalism wasn’t even an abstract concept when Jesus was alive, so how can we possible discern his opinion on that never mind his opinion on hedge funds. You know what, 2 can play at this game. Jesus hates tax collectors therefore Jesus likes capitalism.

7. Replace capitalism with democracy
What the hell? Democracy is a political system. It isn’t even a legal system. So how can he even conceptualize replacing capitalism with democracy? What do we do? Vote on what job someone will get, how much they get paid, how much his groceries will cost, and so on?

8. How can we call it a democracy just because we vote
Because that’s what democracy means? Sure there has to be a couple more requirements to fully qualify as a democracy in most people’s minds; such as competitive elections and the rule of law. But voting is the fundamental core of every democratic system.

9. Don’t want to lose his democratic rights when he goes to work in the morning or go to the bank
At this point it is pretty clear he doesn’t know what the word democratic means. Even the Greeks wouldn’t stretch it to include commercial activity. He is just using it as a buzz word to avoid using the word socialism. This kind of demonstrates just how stupid #5 is.

10. Stop the debate between capitalism and socialism
Umm...okay? One system is based on voluntary individualism and the other is based on coercive collectivism. There may be a wide spectrum between two extremes but how exactly do you propose breaking this paradigm? Wouldn’t involving democratic voting in commercial activity just lead to the coercive model? Or did you think people wouldn’t notice?

11. We are smart enough to come up with a new system that is fair to all people
Demonstrably untrue; people have been trying to do this for thousands of years. Why do you think just because it is a new century we are suddenly smarter? I’ve seen no indication of this increased intelligence.

12. It’s time to start sticking up for the little guy in this country
This isn’t so much stupid in itself but stupid in the context of the rest of the clip. Socialism does not benefit the little guy. And let’s be real here, it is socialism and not some sort of commercial democracy that Michael Moore is advocating. Every socialist system has shown that it ultimately benefits a select group of elites. You want to protect the little guy’s interests? Protect capitalism.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The World Is Ending

Posted by MikeS on 10/15/09 at 04:52 AM

Michael Moore and I agree, sort of. In response to a question from a libertarian student, he admits that corporatism is the problem, not capitalism.

Of course, his sensibility doesn’t last long. He quickly calls for pay restrictions and “democracy” in the workplace and can’t quite wrap his mind around the idea that big government is the problem. And, as usual, he looks at the past through rose-tinted glasses. He also doesn’t understand the concept of opportunity cost: the reason Europeans don’t mind big government is because they see the visible benefits of it—“free” healthcare and college—and miss the invisible costs—the full employment and booming economies they would otherwise have. What they riot over are the effects of big government. And when government is so big, riots and political protest are the only way to change things.

Still. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Documentary Oscar Goes to Obama; Mikey Applauds

Posted by MikeS on 10/11/09 at 06:37 PM

Mike’s been putting a lot of letters up on his site and, being on vacation, I’ve been slow to respond. I’m tinkering with an omnibus post addressing the worst points he’s been making, but he had a double post on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize that contained some classic classic Mike.

First, this, his initial reaction. At first, it seems like something I wouldn’t have a problem with. He points out that the Afghan War is quickly becoming Obama’s War and thinks that we should have gotten bin Laden without a war (how you do this without taking down the government sheltering him is left unexplored). Whatever you may think of those views, they’re legitimate. But he just can’t write a simple open letter without driving headfirst into a septic tank.

The Taliban is another matter. That is a problem for the people of Afghanistan to resolve—just as we did in 1776, the French did in 1789, the Cubans did in 1959, the Nicaraguans did in 1979 and the people of East Berlin did in 1989. One thing is certain through all revolutions by people who wish to be free—they ultimately have to bring about that freedom themselves. Others can be supportive, but freedom can not be delivered from the front seat of someone else’s Humvee.

Our independence came after a very long and bloody war and with a big assist from the French. The French Revolution went ten years, was a bloody disaster and ended, not in Democracy but in Napoleon’s tyranny and even more wars of aggression. You can say that we have to leave Afghanistan to let the Afghans sort out their future—but you have to acknowledge that this will mean years, possibly decades of bloodshed and may end in something just as oppressive as the Tallban. Iran had a revolution too, you know. And right now, they’re raping people in prison to stay in power.

For an example of revolutions gone wrong, you need look no further than the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions that Mike bizarrely juxtaposes with the American and French. It’s that connection that moves this letter from “normal Michael Moore background stupidity” to “post worthy”.

Neither of those revolutions was based on ideas of enlightenment, freedom or democracy. Both installed horrendous tyrants who imprisoned dissenters, oppressed minorities and use violence and murder to stay in power.

Both also reduced their populations to abject poverty. Cuba went from the richest nation in the Caribbean to a nation so poor that teenage girls prostitute themselves to foreign visitors so their families can eat. Yes, the US has a stupid embargo in place. But Cuba got billions in aide from the Soviets and has open relations with many other countries. Our Iranian embargo is more oppressive but you don’t see Persian girls working the streets to avoid starvation. Cuba is such a badly run country that their famous cigars are almost unsmokeable now. How do you screw up cigars? By being a God-damned communist, that’s how.

As for Nicaragua, they have foolishly re-elected the Sandanistas, fooled by the veneer painted on their dissent-crushing, freedom-gobbling, Indian-murdering thug of a leader, Danny Ortega. Apparently, they failed to learn the last time when the Sandanistas looted the country on the way out of power. They will learn again, sooner or later.

There’s also Mikey’s jab at Nobel critics—“Why do they hate America so much?”. I’d attack this but I’ll be generous and assume he’s being sarcastic. It is worth noting that the DNC said this in all seriousness. When Michael is less stupid that the DNC, we’re in trouble.

He’s followed up his letter with an even dumber one today. Here’s my absolute favorite Michael Moore quote ever:

I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack’s big day. Did I—and others on the left—do the same?

The question, I think --- it’s sometimes hard to slice Michael’s prose into coherent ‘thoughts”—is whether the Left always dumped on everything Bush did and what little he accomplished. Um, Mike? You made a whole damned movie in that vein. You might remember it? You do remember when the evil capitalist system kept bring dumptrucks full of money up to your poor starving artist’s mansion as you bravely put out your underground film? No? OK.

Then after his call to action—and the pre-requisite lumping of the Religious Right, libertarians, flat taxers, social security privatizers and Bush into one big glump called “stuff Michael Hates”—there’s this gem.

So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating—that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.

As opposed to Bush, who wanted his daughters to live in a barren nuke-ravaged hellscape. Everyone wants peace, Mike. It’s what we’re willing to endure for it that distinguishes us.

And there’s this, which is currently second on my list of favorite Mike quotations:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Norman Borlaug planted crops while wars were going on and saved a billion lives. F. W. de Klerk defied his own nation to end apartheid. Nelson Mandela and Andrei Sakharov endured years of oppression for their ideals. Lech Walesa fought communism for decades. MLK used non-violence to liberate millions. Sadat and Begin made peace between Israel and Egypt. For all their flaws, the UN Peace Keepers put their lives on the line to try to stop conflict. Hell, even Jimmy Carter helped make the Egyptian Peace and has worked to make the world more peaceful.

And Barack Obama ... successfully ran a campaign to become the most powerful man on Earth. I realize that, to his critics, anyone who is not George W. Bush was going to be worthy of some award. But you might want to check out the Constitutional limits on presidential terms, Mike. Someone was going to replace George Bush. Would you think it appropriate if John McCain got a Nobel Prize for winning the election? Don’t think too hard.

I too was distressed by a lot of what Bush did. But John McCain would have broken from a lot of his policies as well. And—and I’m sorry to keep pushing this—What. Has. Obama. Actually. Done? Is Gitmo closed? Are the wars ended? Is the recession over? You don’t give people awards because they might do something—you give them because they have done something. Barack Obama was awarded for things he said against the Bush Presidency (he was nominated by February), not things he did. Would Mike be fine—as one wag quipped—if Obama were given this year’s Best Documentary Oscar because he “might” make a great movie one day?

Actually, I think I’ve pinpointed why Mike is so enthusiastic about this. An award given by intellectual elites to undeserving recipients for political purposes? Oh, my God. Mike thinks Obama just won the Palme d’Or!

And, as always, Michael Moore can’t get through a letter without the usual bashing.

I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio) ... After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans—and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate—we had all seen enough. It was time for change.

Change passed you by decades ago, Mikey.

Less...

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Foreclosures And Rape

Posted by MikeS on 10/08/09 at 06:14 PM

I’ll give Mikey credit for going on Hannity, where he was sure to get a hostile reception. But then again, hostile environments tend to bring out the stupid:

While I share his sympathy for people who get foreclosed on (and appreciate Hannity’s point about people who play by the rules and pay their bills), let’s some get perspective here. The foreclosure process takes many months, especially in the environment we have now. Many loans that are currently in default are not being foreclosed on and will not be foreclosed on in the immediate future as the banks struggle to avoid crashing the system. I have a relative who went into default because clients weren’t paying him. Once he got paid, he made good on all his missing mortgage payments. A lot of banks are forestalling foreclosure in the hope that the economy will right itself and many of the people currently in default can start climbing out of it.

But moreover, a foreclosure does not consign someone to unending poverty. It moves someone into the rental market and destroys their credit rating. That sucks. But it’s not the end of the world. Earlier this year, I realized that I was probably six months away from a potential default. I got through it by reminding myself that I would still have my job, my health and my family. Not having my own home or the ability to buy one would be crushing, but not fatal. And in seven years, it would be forgotten. Foreclosure is not in the same ballpark as being violently and intimately assaulted. It’s not even the same solar system.

We’ve got to get this through our heads: recessions hurt. And the people they hurt the most are those at the bottom of the economic ladder. There’s simply no way to evade that beyond going back to a hunter-gatherer existence. The best we can do, apart from helping those in genuine need during a time of crisis, is to make recessions as few and far between as possible. And the best way to do that is through capitalism. But Mike would apparently prefer the continuous and unending recession that is socialism.

How can Moore preach about what he doesn’t practice? An idea….

Posted by DonnaK on 10/08/09 at 02:05 PM

I just came across a fascinating article in the Miami Herald written by one of Moore’s biographers, Roger Rapoport. In it, he asks many of the same questions we’ve been posing here on this site - how can Moore preach about the evils of capitalism when he himself has profitted so very much from it? Here’s a sample:

Released on the 60th anniversary weekend of the Chinese Revolution, Michael Moore’s new shockumentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” proves once again how hard it is to be rich in America. Last year, when his net worth finally exceeded that of his old nemesis General Motors, Moore was forced to sit down and have a serious talk with himself. How do you preach about the evils of capitalism when you make roughly 21millionon“Fahrenheit9/11,”afilmtrashingGeorgeBush?Anywayyoulookatit,that’saheftyreturnona21 million on “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a film trashing George Bush? Any way you look at it, that’s a hefty return on a 21millionon“Fahrenheit9/11,”afilmtrashingGeorgeBush?Anywayyoulookatit,that’saheftyreturnona6 million investment.

In 2008, serious fans at his film festival in Traverse City, Mich., whined publicly that they couldn’t afford to buy tickets for a Madonna documentary about Malawi children orphaned because of AIDS. And I was disappointed to find that neighbors in my high-unemployment western Michigan hometown of Muskegon needed to drive three hours to Moore’s closest free “Capitalism” screening for the jobless. You just can’t beat the oil companies.

Another potential source of embarrassment comes from people who helped the filmmaker become rich and famous. Take old buddies like Bruce Schermer, the cinematographer who received a whopping 5,000forshooting60percentofMoore’sbreakthroughdebut,“RogerandMe,”whichsoldtoWarnerBrothersfor5,000 for shooting 60 percent of Moore’s breakthrough debut, “Roger and Me,” which sold to Warner Brothers for 5,000forshooting60percentofMoore’sbreakthroughdebut,“RogerandMe,”whichsoldtoWarnerBrothersfor3 million.

This point - the hypocrisy of Moore decreeing that the capitalist system is inherently evil and must be destroyed while he continue to this very day to profit from it - has been bothering me more and more. The dichotomy of his stance really came to a head when I read this excerpt from one of Moore’s last letters to his fans, in which he implores his flock to go and spend their hard-earned money on his film opening weekend:

For those of you waiting till next week to see it, I can’t say this strongly enough: Do not put off going to see “Capitalism: A Love Story.” It is not just a movie. It is a referendum that is being closely watched by the CEOs of America. Let me tell you bluntly, the suits on Wall Street are closely watching to see how this movie does this weekend. So, too, are the members of Congress. If “Capitalism” has a huge opening, it will send shivers down their corporate spines, telling them loud and clear that the American people are mad as hell and are not into taking it any more. It will put all the bosses on notice that the vast Obama-voting majority has awoken from its silence and are out in full force.

But if the attendance is just “ok” or “so-so,” then they will be relieved knowing that there is not a popular groundswell of opposition out there—and then they can go about their business as usual. I’d like to send them a different message.

Treat tonight and tomorrow as if it were election day. Blow their minds on Monday morning when they show up at their executive suites, switch on CNBC or Fox Business News, and learn that America turned out in droves to participate in a raucous denunciation of Wall Street and everything it stands for. I often hear people ask, “What can I do to make my voice heard?” Your answer is at the nearest theater showing this movie. Trust me, packing these movie houses tonight and tomorrow will eff them up in an overwhelming and profound way.

I truly cannot understand how Moore can write a letter asking his fan base to essentially give their money to him through a capitalist system while at the same time decrying said system as an “evil” that must be “destroyed”. How can those two opposing positions both be justified? In short, they can’t. It’s simple hypocrisy to at once decry the very existence of capitalism whilst at the same time begging for people to use said system to earn you more money.

If Moore had really wanted to drive home the point that capitalism is wrong and that a “democratic” economic system is the way to go, he could have chosen to do so when he opened this movie. Moore could have done something that musicians have been doing now for years on the Internet - a pay-what-you-think-its-worth program. In this system, when you download a song or album from a musician, you donate only as much at you feel the product is worth. A penny, a quarter, a dollar - any donation will get you the music, but you only pay what you feel it’s worth. That premise - allowing the consumers to decide how much your product is worth, is far more “democratic” than allowing a record label to set prices that fans must pay in order to hear their favorite band’s music. There is a proven track record of reasonable success with this method and with such major names as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead having used this system, it’s not an unknown practice.

So, dig if you will this picture… “Capitalism” opens on a modest 500 screens across the country… for free. Moore and his production company pay the theater’s rental fees and the general public does not have to pay to watch “Capitalism”. Moore mans each theater with one or two employees or volunteers that, after the end of the movie, stand near the exits and ask movie-goers to pay what they feel the movie was worth. Sure, many wouldn’t pay a dime, but most would donate something, and certainly quite a few of Moore’s wealthier fans would be willing to pay large sums to support the film. Moore might not make as much money as he might through a capitalist system, but it would be a solid demonstration of democracy in action. As an added bonus, I bet the attendance would have been through the roof. After all, everyone would turn up to see a free movie, right?

If Moore had done this or something similar, he would have proved several points. One - an economic system based on the principles of democracy is at least in theory possible. Two - the turnout for his movie could potentially have been astronomical, thus both proving his points and really making sure his message got out there to the public, even those who can’t pay for movie tickets. Three - he isn’t afraid to practice what he preaches. Four - it would have taken the ammunition away from critics like Rapoport and us who can’t help but see that Moore is acting the complete hypocrite with his behavior. And yet… Moore did none of this. He just conducted business as usual without practicing anything he is preaching. So why should any of us be listening to Moore’s message when he clearly isn’t listening himself?

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