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.

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.

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.

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 $700 billion over the next decade, the tax cuts for the rest of the nation would reduce revenue by $3 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.

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.

...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, 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. $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. 

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 $21 million on “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a film trashing George Bush? Any way you look at it, that’s a hefty return on a $6 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 $5,000 for shooting 60 percent of Moore’s breakthrough debut, “Roger and Me,” which sold to Warner Brothers for $3 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?

Where does Mikey think the people who see his movies and line his pockets get their money from?  Where does he think the funding for his film comes from?  The difficult in getting movies made and books published is not unique to Moore.  Everyone in Hollywood is struggling to get something made.  Some of the most brilliant books and majestic movies we know spent years, sometimes decades, without garnering interest or funding.

As for the $50 million figure, CNS has more on Moore’s money:

According to Fortune Magazine, Moore’s films have grossed over $300 million worldwide. His highest grossing film was “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which critiques the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and earned over $200 million worldwide.

Moore reportedly was paid $21 million by Disney for producing, directing and creating the film.

Moore also earned 50 percent of the profits of his 2007 film “Sicko,” totaling $25 million plus DVD sales, according to Vanity Fair.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Moore would receive all of the profits made from DVD sales of “Sicko,” sales of which have been estimated at over $17 million.

It is evil capitalists, not noble socialists, who are falling over themselves to fund his movies.  He’s not getting money from the government or some hippy collective.  He’s getting money from Walt Fucking Disney—that’s as capitalist as it gets.

And more power to him.  I don’t begrudge Moore a single penny of the money he makes.  It’s a free country and he’s not holding a gun to the heads of the dupes who fill the theaters seats.  All we do is dispute the facts, the honesty and the logic of what he says.