Michael Moore

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors (06-01-2009). By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know — who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made “Roger & Me,” I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.We are now in a different kind of war — a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn’t give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true — that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

   President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce — and most of those who have been laid off — employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades — and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories — that simply isn’t true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that’s a start. Please, please, please don’t save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don’t throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front — and the back — seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it’s over. It’s a new day and a new century. The President — and the UAW — must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore

MichaelMoore.com

FreeThinker founder Debbie Boen created this striking Obama signs for the Nov. 4 election.

As I was driving to the Icehouse café on Tuesday night, NPR (National Public Radio) said something about declaring Obama and I didn’t get what had happened.  I walked into the cafe and everyone was watching the big screen TV.  There was a screaming crowd on the TV set.  The scream of happiness from the TV crowd of thousands didn’t stop and seemed to shake the earth.  I swear I could feel the vibration of it come from the earth into my body.  Miranda Herrick ran up to me and said, “Did you hear what just happened?  Obama is declared a winner!  Why are we NOT screaming?  Why are we NOT screaming?”  and with that we both started screaming and again and again.

Hugs.  Screaming.  Jumping up and down.  Tears.  Stacy Smith Segovia took a picture of me being excited.  I realized that this was personal history:  me feeling truly excited.

Gikuyu and I talked.  I forgot how to feel exhilaration, I said.  It’s so unfamiliar.  Brandt Hardin sat down with tears in his eyes.  Each of them had a respect for me and the work I had been doing for several years.  Miranda had given me the place to hold the first meeting of the Freethinkers (for peace and civil liberties).  Gikuyu and Brandt put together the Tour of Wurdz and used it to give people their voices of dissent.  Brandt’s political art show Tuesday night at the Icehouse was made on the pages of the tiny Bill of Rights that I had given him.  (do go see it!)

Last night seemed like a first time I had dared to feel.  For the last four to six years my life has been riding on a horrible dread that I had to push down in order to function.  The happiness I felt had been forced.  I hadn’t been all the way HERE.  Finding humor had to be rediscovered.  Finding the good in things had become a destiny for personal health and for the health of the community.  Being a part of Clarksville Online had become a most valuable and commendable asset to our community in that line.

Maybe instead of getting all worked up, I should have chosen to be “dumb and happy,” as my father-in-law likes to say.  But when those planes flew into the towers my husband and I thought, “Oh no.  What is he (Bush) going to use this to do?”

When my daughter got married, I was happy for her but secretly hoping that she would not bring children into this future.  When we celebrated holidays, it was a forced happiness for me.  I can’t say everything was phony because some of my richest experiences were about the dissention we were able to cause and the celebrations we had despite oppression.  I’m going to say that the bad things this country has been doing is yet to be exposed.  The stuff we already know is nothing compared to what is hidden.  We were lucky to have had the torture and such exposed.  It always interests me how bad it had gotten and how many still did nothing and how many still supported it.  How low does it have to get to really shock some into action?

Candlelight Vigil at the Eternal Flame

Knowledge is power although we each had to struggle with our own feelings of dread related to it and how much action we could take in the face of that dread.  Most of us are bound to not go down being stupid.  The events the Freethinkers did run, vigils and protests, had a double purpose of dissension and also of moving our bodies.  Taking one step, one honk, one appearance to a function that puts motion into the body again.  Move.  Despite.  Opposition.  We made ourselves find a forced feeling of safety when we felt threatened to shut up.  It was too much like the Nazi’s and I think you know that.  Having our neighbors threaten us.  Having our neighbors dehumanize us for disagreeing.  Having no media.

Our country had taken a wrong path at the crossroads.  Like someone who chooses crime as a path, if you go down the wrong path too long it can become impossible to turn back.  You get caught, get thrown in jail.  Your bad record gets created and the hole gets deeper and harder to climb out of.  This wrong path could have been continued but instead we, as a country, chose to turn around and go back.  Go back to the crossroads and chose a different path.  A path of decency instead of war and bullying.  Maybe it was necessary to experience the wrong path for awhile.  How many thousands died because of it.  It was a scary wrong path.  Like the other wrong paths we try not to think about:  the genocides of Native Americans, of women during the witch trials, the Jews, the Crusades and so many more.

So thanks to America for not being happy in lower states of fear and bullyness.  You demand better.  Several of the folks who got the tally at different Clarksville voting precincts found that Obama lost to McCain by only a few votes.  I’m sure he did really well in Nashville.  That is success!

Last night I was very happy to be with others who saw Michael Moore in Nashville just before the election of 2004.  We’ve all had this core feeling of dissent since that event.  The Michael Moore fireball really woke me up to what action is possible.  After the election of 2004 several of us put together the Clarksville Freethinkers for Peace and Civil Liberties.  I gave workshops on understanding apathy and moving through the emotions up to positive anger.  I bought mini Bill of Rights books to hand out.  Mary Alice and I started a newsletter.  We held meetings at the library.  Held weekly vigils in public square about the war for a year.  Joined in MoveOn efforts.  Several people wrote letters to the editor of the Leaf (Chronicle).  Joined Gathering to Save our Democracy in their attempts to get verifiable elections in Tenn.  Went to Democrat meetings.  Went to war protests in Nashville. Went to civil rights meetings.  Made signs.  Made art.  Sat at the parks with statistics of the war signs.  Turned our backs on the Bush motorcade when it passed through Kentucky.  Did this when the Democrat Party and most of the country acted frozen.

Some of the many others who inspired me were:

• My grandfather and the one time I heard him tell a friend how Hitler destroyed his opposition.  Grandpa loved this country more than anyone I know and he showed me that I still had the power and necessity to do something now, before it’s too late.
  

  Boen lights a candle at the Eternal Flame

• Bernie Ellis and Gathering to Save our Democracy for speaking the truth and doing something about election fraud.  By the next major election, Tennessee will have verifiable voting machines.
• Cindy Sheehan, a warrior just like us, who was determined to bring Bush down and did it when she broke through the main stream media wall.
• Chris Lugo who put together and reported on peaceful dissention to the war.
• Christine Pieysk who turned a breeze into a flurry of powerful action and words.
• Bill Larson who created ClarksvilleOnLine; what a gift to our city and to our voices!
• Civil Liberty leaders Terry and Wanda McMoore.
• Turner McCullough.  David Shelton.  Blayne Clement and Kim.  Tom Payne.  Beth and Faith Robinson.  Jill Eichhorn.
• Sarah of Boulder.  David Boen.  Randall Boen.  Alma Sanford.  Miyo and Jordi Kachi.  Nancy and Daren.  Gerry Gilman (go, go, go!).  Deborah Bowles.  Kitty.  Beverly.  Barry, Ted and Hannah Kitterman.  Tracy Diven.  Leslie Pierce. Gregg Schlanger (creator of the Eternal Flame monument, “Pillar of Clouds, Pillar of Fire”).
• MoveOn.org who united this country.
• The web which did the real reporting. So many others!

Others who inspired life:  Annette Cunningham, UU Clarksville, APSU, ARTZ and Gabriele and Bob Wardeiner, Tom Thayer and John McDonald of the Roxy Regional Theatre, Downtown Artist’s Co-op, NYC, Silke’s, The Looking Glass, Tandoor, Suva and Jack Bastin.

I feel like I have awoke from a nightmare.  Am I all the way awake yet?  Will I remember just how bad it got?  Will I learn?

Before the next step I feel the need to really, really celebrate.

This is not an ending but a (difficult) climbing out of the hole and creating a new beginning.  Time to put on a different pair of shoes.

Again I thank Clarksville Online for being 3 steps ahead in that game.

Thanks to you for being on (this mailing list).  In connection there is definite power.

Choices like do you get the prescriptions you need to have a decent quality of life, or do you eat? Do you get regular medical checkups, or do you because you can’t afford the price of a doctor’s visit skip them until a health condition forces you to the doctor, often after it’s too late to treat the condition? Do you look after your dental health, or do you have to let your teeth basically rot in your mouth?

I have personally been forced to make some of these choices, and I have friends and relatives who have been forced to as well. Choices no American should ever have to face.

Lets be realistic. The problem with health care in America is the private for-profit companies currently running it. In order to fix our broken system, we must take the profit motive out of it.

Private companies are required by law to return the largest possible profits to the shareholders of the company. There is no requirement that a company look after the public good, or to act in a moral manner. In order to get positive recommendations from financial analysts, they must increase the profits dramatically from previous years, every year.

We see a quick example of this with petroleum companies, as year after year they post increasingly large record profits — every dime of which was taken from our already strained pocketbooks.

There are several ways for a company to do this: they can improve delivery of services they offer, they can find cheaper suppliers, or they can raise the rates charged for their services. Since raising the rates they charge is the simplest way to accomplish their goal, this is what most commonly happens, and prices increase every year.

Let’s not even get into the complex issues of overly generous executive compensation, huge bonuses, and murder by spreadsheet (denying legitimate medical care to the insured).

So it’s easy to see why I have a major issue when I see candidates such as Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton advocating forcing people to buy health insurance from private insurers.

Here’s one example from the Associated Press via Yahoo.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”

Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms. With her proposals for subsidies, she said, “it will be affordable for everyone.”

In the 1990s Hillary Clinton while pushing her national health plan stated, that her plan would cost the “average family of four” who makes $ 24,000 a year ONLY $4,000. Of course this would cost much more today.

So lets take a look at the the budget for someone getting paid weekly, and making a total of $24,000 a year, and with no state income tax.

$24,000 divided by 52 weeks comes out to $461.53 a week. Using a tax calculator and 3 exemptions we come up with the following amounts for withholdings.

$10.58 federal income tax
$28.61 FICA
$6.69 Medicare
————————-
$45.88 Total

That leaves $415.65 a week after taxes, or $1662.60 per month.

In our city three bedroom homes go for between $550 and $1,100 a month. Lets take $600 as an average rent. That leaves $1062.60.

In this day and age we must have electricity; $100 a month by time heating, cooling, and laundry and heating the water for baths is reasonable. We are down to $962.60.

Lets figure $50 for our gas and water bill, $912.60.

Telephone service will likely run us $30. This bring us to a total of $882.60.

Now we have to feed our family and ourselves, so lets low ball that at $350 a month. We now have $532.60.

Gotta get to work, take the kids to school, band practice, football practice and such so we need a car. $200 a month for a car payment is reasonable. We are now down to $332.60.

Car Insurance $70 (mandatory insurance for everyone really lowered the cost of that, didn’t it). We are now down to $262.60.

Gotta fuel the beast, and with gas prices constantly going up, we will likely spend at least $35 per week or $140 per month. Ouch! Only $122.60 left.

Gotta have some kind of entertainment, news source, and educational resource for the kids, so we should figure on TV service and Internet access. Most people currently get it from their cable company. Lets say $70 for expanded basic and broadband Internet service. This leaves us with $52.60.

Last but not least, if you are living this close to paycheck to paycheck, you can bet that you have a credit card for emergency use only. Lets say it has a $25 minimum payment so we end up with $27.60.

I didn’t figure on clothing, school supplies, medical and dental care, insurance copays, going out to eat or a movie now and then. Basically the stuff that makes life worth living.

Now lets take a look at 1990’s Hillary’s $4,000 a year for health insurance. That works out to $307.69 a month. I am forced to ask, where exactly is it supposed to come from!

Hillary has never in her life had to worry about an amount so small and so she doesn’t really understand the magnitude that taking three hundred additional dollars a month out of already strained budgets really is to low income people. So of course she wants to make it mandatory!

Let me make this clear, I personally WILL NOT vote for any candidate Republican or Democrat who intends to force people to pay a for-profit private insurance company for their insurance coverage. We have seen how well that has worked in Tennessee with car insurance.

Mandatory insurance, either health or auto, lets the insurance companies gouge everyone. They know that with mandatory insurance that you realistically have no place to go. Yes, they might lose your business to another company, but they will likely gain just as many back with the dissatisfied people coming to them from other companies.

If you really want to know how screwed up America’s for-profit health insurance system is; go rent a copy of Michael Moore’s Sicko from your local video store: you will be shocked!

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is only one real solution for fixing our health care system and that is national single payer health care.

And to date the public has responded to our collective action.  We opened in over 400 theaters last week and had a great turnout.  More impressive, over the last five days the momentum has continued to grow – while others have gone down in the box office – we have actually gone up – which is virtually unheard of.

However, the most compelling evidence that we are making a difference is found in the response of the health care industry itself.  For the first few weeks after the movie premiered in Cannes, the industry did their best to ignore the film – no doubt at the behest of their lobbyists, the industry’s political muscle – who were likely counseling them not to engage.  Well, over the last three weeks, the industry appears to have changed its strategy as it has become clear that SiCKO poses a real threat.

First, we had front groups and conservative think tanks – both of whom appear to get their funding and support from the health care industry – sponsoring events and trying to influence the press.

Second, we have had the industry itself begin trying to issue their own video press releases and industry fog machine.  But no matter how hard they spin, the American people understand something is wrong when we pay more for health care and get far less back. We don’t live as long AND our children aren’t born as healthy as other developed countries.

And, now, we have an internal, confidential memo from an executive at Capital Blue Cross – a major Pennsylvania health care insurance company with over a billion dollars in revenue. The memo discusses the impact and threat of SiCKO and what needs to be done to combat the movie.  Ironically, one of their strategies is to try to distinguish themselves from strict for profit insurance companies – never mind the $795 million the company has ‘on reserve.’  They also seem to believe that we – the American people – deserve the blame for our quality of health care, pointing to our diet and exercise regimes.  I suggest that they go to France where people eat cheese by the wheel, drink wine by the bottle, smoke like chimneys and are still healthier than we are.  It is not our diet.  It is not our exercise.  It is our health care system.  The memo is ironic for three reasons:  first, it would seem to confirm the notion that for profit health care and quality health care are incompatible. Second, so-called non-profits like Blue Cross are non-profit in name only – their CEO makes over $800,000 a year. If that is non-profit, I am sure a lot of people would be interested in working for that kind of pay. Where is all that money coming from? Third, when the companies start pointing fingers at each other, you know they are on the run – like rats fighting to stay afloat.

Now that we have them on the run, it is critical that we don’t let them hide.  Today, in light of the Blue Cross memo, I call on the Capitol Blue Cross CEO to meet me at a debate sponsored by the U.S. Steelworkers – who are headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.  You can run – but you can’t hide.

After a few words from the Steelworkers and the Nurses, I’d like to open the forum up to fellow Kossacks. Let’s go!

The United Steelworkers of America

The United Steelworkers union historically has done the heavy lifting in America.  We helped build this country – and we continue to do so.

The Steelworkers union also historically has led the fight for social justice for working people and the middle class in this country – from fair wages to safe working conditions to strong pensions.

Today, it is the Steelworkers union out there hammering away for quality, affordable health care for all, after watching one employer after another raise the premiums that workers must pay so high that coverage no longer is affordable to the middle class in this country.

The USW and Michael Moore challenge Blue Cross executives to swap their pinstripes and Bruno Malis for coveralls and steel toes and spend a day in a USW steel or paper mill, a tire plant or copper mine and then blame the American people for our health care system.  While they are at it, they can trade salaries too.

We are proud to host the hard hats vs the pinstripes debate featuring on one side, Michael Moore and USW International President Leo Gerard, a native of Canada, land of National Health Care, and on the other side, Capital Blue Cross CEO and whoever he might choose as a tag team partner.

We will do the event in Pittsburgh. If the CEO doesn’t have the guts to show, we’ll put up an empty chair. It will be a well-padded wingback, in keeping with what they are no doubt used to, and we will hold an old fashioned screening and town hall instead. – Leo W. Gerard, USW President

California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

From Day One, the registered nurses of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee have been proud to have worked with Michael on this fight.

We hosted the first premiere screening in the US.  We sent a Nurse honor guard to the other premieres.  We marched with Michael and the stars of the movie in Sacramento and DC.  We appeared on Wall Street and called for socially responsible divestment from the health care companies.  And last week we organized events with Nurses in 46 markets all across the country to coincide with the opening.  To us, this is a movement for fundamental reform plain and simple with guaranteed healthcare for all – that ends the disgrace of insurance company denial of care.

No one knows the true state of America’s health care system better than the Nurses.  ”SiCKO” brings to life the experience American’s RNs live every day. Our patients and our communities need real, systemic reform, not incremental change, not tinkering.  The foundation is flawed – and we need to fix it at the most basic level.

When Michael shared with us the Capitol Blue Cross internal memo – we recognized the momentum “SiCKO” has helped ignite and the growing power of our movement. The insurance industry is afraid. The game is up for them.

It is time for all of us to write our own memo to these insurance companies – and the memo should have two words: YOU’RE FIRED.

We look forward to this debate – and we hope that Blue Cross will stand up to this challenge. They have a lot of explaining to do about their policies and practices that have inflicted so much pain and suffering on so many people. The American people deserve better, and soon we will have it. – Deborah Burger RN, President, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

This was originally posted by Michael Moore at Dailykos and republished with their permission.

About Michael Moore

Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning film director, producer and author. His outspoken left-wing views on such issues as globalization, large corporations, gun violence, the Iraq War, George W. Bush and health care have led to him being known as a political activist, although he rejects the label. His newest movie Sicko is currently playing in theatres

When asked about SiCKO, Michael Moore responds , “Sicko is a comedy about 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.” I personally disagree with Michael Moore on that one point, this is not a funny subject.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A reviewer on the Internet Movie Database web site had this to say:

A man without health insurance (companies simply refuse people), whose middle- and ring finger are cut off, had to choose between paying 60.000 dollars for having his middle finger restored and 12.000 dollars for having his ring finger fixed. Being the “romantic” that he is, he chose his ring finger. A woman, formerly with a good job, bankrupted by her medical bills and forced to live in the study of her daughter, has to pay 240 dollars a month for her cancer medication but gets the same pills on Cuba for… 10 cents. 45 Million uninsured Americans live in fear that they might, some day, need medical care. The rest of the world doesn’t know these fears, because for them, medical help is free: paid for by tax money. The United States have become ruthless to it’s own people. It contradicts the image Americans have of themselves and their country, but it’s the awful truth. – Ivo Martijn

Americans have the most expensive health care in the world. We have one of the highest infant mortality rates, and we have the second lowest life expectancy for any nation which isn’t in the third world.

It’s also no wonder that we have a outsourcing crisis, in America the business bears the entire cost of their employee’s health care. So a corporation benefits when they use workers in another country, one with a single-payer health care system. In American health care is anything but cheap.

We are not even getting the best possible care for the huge amounts of money we spend. Corporations providing for-profit health care do not reap huge profits from providing the best health, they are successful only when they provide the least.

Lets take a look at the World Health organization’s ranking of the worlds national health systems. Don’t look for the USA in the first 3 rows. America is at #37. Dominica and Costa Rica have better health systems. Yes this really is best health care that capitalism can provide. Our health care system ranks just above Slovenia, Cuba, and Brunei.

Top 10: France, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Malta, Singapore, Spain, Oman, Austria, Japan

11-20: Norway, Portugal, Monaco, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland

21-30: Belgium, Colombia, Sweden, Cyprus, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Morocco, Canada, Finland

31-40: Australia, Chile, Denmark, Dominica, Costa Rica, United States of America, Slovenia, Cuba, and Brunei.

While you might say it could be worse, I would promptly respond that our health care system couldn’t be a worse joke.

It does not matter if you like Michael Moore or not, we should all be grateful that he had the courage to document the problems with America’s health care system. Because understanding that there is a serious problem, we are one step closer towards fixing it.

Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media.

Among the cast of characters in Orwell rolls in his grave are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Orwell rolls in his grave provides a vital forum for ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. From Globalvision’s Danny Schecter: “We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a mediacracy – where a media that is supposed to check political abuse is part of the political abuse.” New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller says, “These commercial entities now vie with the government for control over our lives. They are not a healthy counterweight to government. Goebbels said that what you want in a media system – he meant the Nazi media system – is to present the ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.”

From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t, Orwell rolls in his grave moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media. Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where in an era of more news sources the majority of the population has actually become less informed?

Orwell rolls in his grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.

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According to Kathleen Parker (August 14), having a blog and expressing a strong political opinion is akin to “Stalinist tactics”. Such words would not apply to any right winger editorialist like herself of course, but only to those such as the “operative” Michael Moore.

Parker describes a recent blog by Moore as a “manifesto…straight out of Stalin’s playbook”. The blog merely states his strong opinion that the next democrat presidential candidate be anti-war.

Ms. Parker’s editorial states her opinion that leftists want an anti-war president. Is she also plagiarizing from the same “Stalin Playbook”? Of course not, so why say it of Moore?

I suppose the difference is that Parker’s rant is as an ‘editor’, Moore’s same rant is as a ‘blogger’. Or, maybe the difference is one is an democrat and the other a republican. I think most people that follow politics understand the underlying results of Lieberman’s loss. Why both sides have to use it to degrade?  It reeks of egotism and diverts discussion away from the subject to the writer, from the opinion to the opinionated.

This non-debate will never be productive and will never facilitate any resolution of the issues that confront our country, including the war. Lyndon Johnson’s favorite bible verse was said to be Isaiah 1:18– “Come let us reason together”. Reason is the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence. We would be wise to heed that verse. We should openly invite others to discuss issues and ideas, with reason not rhetoric, not name calling and spin, but with rational thought and intelligence.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/08/joe_liebermans_war_of_independ.html

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php