Capitalism: A Muddled Story
I watched Michael Moore's latest, "Capitalism: A Love Story," and found pretty much what I expected. My short review is that if Michael Moore could only take himself out of his own films, and maybe even stop directing them, they'd be pretty good.
I'll start with the positive: the cinema verite scenes of folks getting evicted from their homes, the detailed expose of big corporations clandestinely buying life insurance policies on their employees and bettting they will die, the compilation of data profiling the mountains of greed piled up in the last several decades by the top 1% of the population, the explanation of the favors extended to "liberal" pols like Chris Dodd by special interests are equally upsetting, gut-wrenching and infuriating. If this film had been a straight-on documentary about hyper-capitalism, it might have been a great movie.
Unfortunately, this basket of goodness is offset by about 300 pounds of crud. Twenty years after the innovative Roger & Me, Moore's schtick of showing up at this or that corporate headquarters with a bullhorn and a mike to make a "citiizen's arrest" has grown tiresome, to say the least. It's 100% predictable and his hamming it up results in nothing but...hamming it up. I would have preferred he just stuck to the story line and had canned the all-too-well-known set pieces.
But therein resides the bigger problem with Moore's latest. There is NO story line. Michael Moore is outraged, just plain outraged at the injustice around him. He even gets a few Catholic priests and a bishop on-camera to condemn the evil essence of capitalism. But he offers absolutely no credible narrative of how we got where we are and what we should do to get somewhere else -- though at the end of the film he warns, with a bit of self-martyrdom that he's not gonna keep doing us these favors of social protest unless we follow his lead (to what? and where?).
Indeed, there's a strange mix of naivete, conspiracy theory and just plain ignorance in his awkward attempt to explain the current financial crisis and gross institutional inequality in which we currently dwell. In the initial "set-up" portion of the film, it is strongly suggested that while capitalism had some flaws here and there, it was really the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that led to a "coup" by corporate America. Previous to that, it seems, Mike's Dad was a happy auto industry worker and that just about everybody in the system got by on one salary, had a nice home and a pension. That is, until, Reagan and his chief of staff Regan conspired to hand America over to the greed-heads.
This is, of course, a ridiculous fantasy and defies all history. A ten minute glance an Engels' writings about the condition of the English working class during the capitalist revolution of 150 years ago would pretty much dispel most of this cotton candy. No need, even to go back that far. Somewhere around 1929 would be an acceptable starting point.
Moore can't quite explain what's so different about the last 30 years as compared to the previous 300 other than a pretty funny sequence of Wall Streeters making asses of themselves trying to explain what the derivatives market means. A little more exposition about the effects of a globalized market for capital and labor, radical revision of tax policy and the demolition of social safety nets and a little less of Moore's faux astonishment as he interviews actor Wallace Shawn as an economics expert would have gone a long way to clarify things.
Most frustrating, is Moore's completely muddled politics. He's rather ruthlessly exposes some leading Democrats as complicit enablers of the Era of Greed but then presents the election of Obama as the People Taking Back America. Except, of course, that the evil Goldman Sachs, which is evil, also turns up with a weighty presence in the new administration. He trashes the Bush admin for handing out billions to Wall Street in the first of the bail-outs but offers no discernible opinion as to whether or not Obama was right in continuing the practice with his stimulus. Moore, in fact, is oddly quiet about the current status of the subject he claims to know best, General Motors. Was it or was it not saved by Obama's bail-out? Along with all those thousands of remaining auto jobs? Or should it have been allowed to sink along with the financial institutions Moore deems unworthy of government intervention?
I also found it rather disingenuous on his part to insert a segment suggesting there was some mounting wave of populist fight back by his blowing out of proportion a few small protests by well-meaning but tiny activist groups. Don't know if he's been reading the papers lately, but most of the street heat these days comes from a tea-baggin' right-wing ready to wage a fight to the death for their right to be screwed over by greedy medical insurance companies!
Tune out here if you are sensitive to explicit language because I am about to get granular in my syntax.
In the movie business there's a common phrase, one I even heard in several pitch meetings during my very brief venture into Hollywood in the mid 1980's. "You're jacking me off but you didn't make me come," they say.
In this case, if you are going to go to the trouble of making a movie, however clumsily denouncing capitalism per se, it seems to me that you have a responsibility to say what you would like to see in its place. The 800 lb gorilla sitting in every movie theater, naturally, even if unsaid, is the specter of socialism or communism which are assumed by most to be the antithesis of capitalism. Few Americans know the difference between one or another let alone any degrees of shading within the categories. But it's fair to say that both notion --rightly and wrongly-- have a pretty negative connotation amongst most Americans and Moore does himself no good by not addressing that issue head on (I say that as a socialist by the way).
So after getting us all stroked and stoked, what's Moore's payoff? How does he answer his own self-posed question as to what capitalism should be replaced by?
"Democracy" is his answer.
Huh?
It sort of begs the question on behalf of any thinking person if Moore is using that word as a euphemism for some sort of socialism or is he just plain copping out? Hell if I know!
I know that Moore is not a Stalinist-Communist and does not think American capitalism should be replaced by a North Korean model. I doubt if he's really even some sort of socialist. There's a 99% chance that he is what most learned folks refer to as a social democrat, which seems perfectly reasonable to me and which embodies more or less --policy wise-- much of what Moore would prescribe to fix America (You know, European-style capitalism). So why not come out and say it? The closest he comes is to propose FDR's second bill of rights which was never enacted. But that's all pretty gooey to an audience mostly born long after Roosevelt passed on; and as laudable as FDR's proposal might have been at the time, it does nothing to grapple with a much more complex modern global economy 60 years later.
OK, enough nit-picking. I give the film a three out of five, just in terms of passing an idle two hours. It's an OK 10$ ride for those who are already on board. But it will leave those genuinely hungry for enlightenment or those with germinating doubts about the sanity of our system mostly unmoved and untouched. The enormously wide-ranging subject of capitalism is just too big a subject for the more modest range of political talents possessed by Michael Moore.
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October 12th, 2009 at 5:56 am
On an island where to acquire cement, blocks or steel is comparable to getting a bit of lunar dust, destroying in order to build has become common practice. There are specialists in extracting clay bricks intact after eighty years of being embedded in a wall, experts in peeling off the glazed tiles from a demolished mansion, and adroit “deconstructors” who extract the metal girders from the collapsed heaps. They use the reclaimed materials to build their own habitable spaces in a country where no one can buy, legally, a house.
http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=1046
October 12th, 2009 at 7:40 am
“Era of Greed”
What’s that? People working to get what they want?
If so, letting others take what you earned must be the “Era of Stupidity.”
October 12th, 2009 at 8:15 am
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I think Moore’s muddle points to something that I believe is important in these discussions. First of all, Goldman Sachs isn’t evil. It’s following its own logic within a capitalist structure that allows them to do certain things. If a small group of people can make money accruing wealth doing completely absurd things – like securitizing bundles of bad mortgages and selling them off to investors – they will do it. If out-and-out Ponzi schemes were legal under our current system, people would be making money off of them. It’s not about “evil” – it’s about human nature. Where Moore is both nonsensical and pointing in the right direction is with the “democracy” thing. The solution – in the foreseeable future – isn’t conjuring up a total alternative to capitalism. It’s using democracy – i.e. the political system – to create a playing field for capitalistic ventures and enterprises that is reasonably level, that protects the public reasonably well against bullshit such as we’ve seen (which does have links to the Reagan ascendancy) which can jeopardize the entire system and to create tax structures and social insurance systems that don’t allow for the kind of class warfare we see with this 1% aggressively enforcing their ability to up their take beyond any concievable rational notion of productivity or “earning it.” So democracy CAN BE a “solution”, but it’s not an economic alternative so much as a path to regulate an effective production system so that its inherent flaws don’t destroy us and, eventually, “it.” The northern Europeans have done a pretty good job with “social” democracy, but haven’t come up with a different system of production. Just tamed the capitalist beast so that “evil” can’t run rampant. The “evil” is just some combination of what we call human nature, of a crackpot ideology around “free markets” as inevitably rational and a social good, and the malign influence on our democracy of this accrued economic power. There’s no easy “solution”, but IMHO the place to look for an “alternative” is in recapturing our political system, examining the agendas of countries that aren’t as clearly out of wack as we are on the economic front (Canada, for instance, had regulations in place that forestalled the banking crisis that we experienced) and work for reforms that move us in that direction. If I’m going to look for “evil” that matters, I’ll look at the corruption of our politics and its failures, rather than assume that guys out trying to make a buck are anything other than what they are and need to have some responsibility and rules enforced on their “game.” There are capitalists who have a broader, more responsible vision and God bless them, but the financial sector has taken over the big picture and they are for all intents and purposes nothing but sharks and should be treated as such. Not evil but totally amoral and incapable of acting in ways that are responsible to anything other than animal instincts and their own hunger. And in the Reagan era their machinations were annointed as some combination of “magic” and “good.” Totally nuts, but that was the script the old coot was reading from. So in response to that nonsense, “evil” and “crackpot” are appropriate. But it’s not really the issue that’s worth discussing. I’m fine with harnessing the desire to get rich if it’s connected to creation of some productive enterprise. The problem with ascribing morality to an economic system, of course, begins with morons who believe that capitalism is inherently “good” or somehow fully consistent with Judeo-Christian values, with individual liberty, with freedom, with democracy or some other such nonsense. Capitalism has no “values.” That said, the question of balancing capitalism, democracy and shared ethical assertions is a purely pragmatic one, and we are very far from coming up with a satisfactory answer.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:16 am
[...] appear to have even pondered what it could be. That’s what journalist Marc Cooper finds clumsy and muddled about the movie. If you are going to go to the trouble of making a movie, however clumsily [...]
October 12th, 2009 at 9:20 am
This is right on, but why pick on Moore? Most of the rest of the democratic left is exactly the same in offering no poistive alternative, just protest against whatever the ephemeral outrage of the week is. At least Moore talks about the lives of human beings, not baby seals.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Hey Bob – keep swinging away at Fidel when the question of capitalism run amok is raised. Becuz the political “left” in the US really want to turn our country into Cuba. (Or perhaps you have us confused with the “left” ideological counterparts of “free market” dogmatists who are, in truth, just practicing a perverse religion.) That’s why whenever Woody accuses me of loving Stalin he’s proving his intellectual acuity and relevance to reasoned discourse. Almost as cutting as the issue of “who’s gay”, which consumes the discourse of 10-year old boys.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Mr. X, I can concur. For all of his weaknesses a political theorist a) he’s been right more than he’s been wrong and b) he offers more a populist voice than the typical agitprop cranks who pollute the Pacifica airwaves (Marc’s old stomping grounds) and the blogosphere.
Moore even points out that he’s not an intellectual, he’s just trying to get people to think. Where are the great minds of the left? Hawking more books and writing nasty little blog entries about how Barak Obama is Clinton in Blackface.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I posted a week or so ago an idiot alert about Bill Maher who jaw droppingly said to Moore ‘Isnt the opposite of Capitalism Communism?
Moore shot him down.
So here is a smug talking head (Maher) who thinks he’s the progressive bees knees hot shit who is as dumb as a tea bagger.
I also posted in the other thread the MM email letter that raises the issue of critics talking about him rather than the issues raised in the film– such as airline pilots flying for bubkas including that guy who saved everyone’s ass and was dragged around the media circuit– who in fact–according to MM– had been trying to bring awareness to the dire circumstances of the guys you trust to fly you around.
That situation alone is worth a whole say…FRONTLINE or 60 Minutes.
It was bad enough when they started shorting passengers fresh air to save on fuel. Many crew getting sick. I found myself always getting a respiratory infection after a long haul flight where before that didn’t happen.
I think its crap criticism to attack Moore’s populist methods rather than focus on the hair raising issues he illuminates.
And from what I have now seen of Marcie Kaptur on other venues and learning that Moore gives her a pulpit– I would discuss this more than accusing him of muddy or naive politics.
She was on Bill Moyers and drew blood– not Moyer’s to her adversaries.
Marcy Kaptur and that airline pilot. Already two spokespeople for gut wrenching issues that he gave a pulpit to.
What has any other left wing bobble babble mouth done to bring those issues alive in a visceral way?
I haven’t seen the film yet but have read all the same criticism– plus those that see past the fat to the meat.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:40 am
“Unfortunately, this basket of goodness is offset by about 300 pounds of crud. ”
Marc, that kind of remark is offensive. You worry about swearing but not about laying out a cheap shot insulting someone’s looks.
And if Moore did nothing else but Roger and Me…he would stand head and shoulders above a lot of other so called activists.
That film should be shown NOW. AGAIN. It was PRESCIENT. And one of the most damning documents of how a population can be degraded by an economic paradigm.
During the run up to election when there were reports on regions that had been wholly white reactionary working class turning to Obama there was footage of these same wasted, cigaretter smoked out ravaged looking people who had worked all their lives for one corporate manufacturer that had sort of owned the town.
Horrifying. It wasn’t that theses people had been unemployed most of their lives but that their values, sensibility, clearly ideas about health, food etc were so destructive.
One imagined none of them ever allowing a green vegetable to touch their lips and surviving on cigarettes, coke, canned food and TV dinners.
They were like something from the Island of Dr Moreau.
Ditto for those profiled in Roger and Me. A whole subculture of no culture.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Was capitalism working splendidly in 1967 ? If not, how were you able to buy a new GTO at age 16 ? Did I miss some fantastic era of muscle cars for all ? Was this pre-Reagan workers paradise you say Moore invokes actually for real ?
October 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics
Commentary: Michael Moore, Timothy Geithner also passed over
(But, a couple of U.S. professors did, and you know what they’re like.)
October 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
reg, you seem infatuated with me. Seems gay to me. And, you’re a commie. And, “other things.”
- – -
Here’s an example of the economic model that Obama follows.
Chávez Loyalists Push to Close Golf Courses
That was from the New York Times, but The Onion couldn’t have done better.
How can Marc Cooper go fishing for fun when poor people need those fish to eat?
- – -
Another model that liberals endorse:
Britain continues its descent into a socialist hell
- – -
Another country’s leadership that seems to be doing better with capitalism than Obama’s U.S. is communist China. There are no controls on them except what our government can offer, but Obama is dead set to give China a monopoly on the world rather than offer any competiton and maintain fiscal responsiblity.
- – -
BTW, for someone who has a problem with capitalism, is Michael Moore going to reject the film’s profits?
October 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Moore lost me when he included the scene of children in Iraq running around with balloons and sliding down slides in Farenheit 911, if I recall the scene accurately.
It’s not that children didn’t have balloons and slides–that’s probably accurate as far as it goes–it’s that it was meant to be a visual stand-in for the argument that all was well in Iraq in before the US invasion. It was a grotesque argument advanced in a perfidious way. I’ve never been able to take him serioiusly since then.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Oh, yeah. Happy Columbus Day!
October 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
>reg, you seem infatuated with me…
Go around calling yourself “Woody” and what do you expect, Reverend?
October 12th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I posted a week or so ago an idiot alert about Bill Maher who jaw droppingly said to Moore ‘Isnt the opposite of Capitalism Communism?
Anna, when one conducts an interview, one will often ask questions to elicit a specific response. Just for the record, that was a question. If Maher had said “The opposite of capitalism is communism” you would have a point. In this case, however, it was not a declaration: it was a question.
October 12th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
No national healthcare, no way.
October 12th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Actually, Randy, that is exactly what Maher said and he went on to qualify his “belief” in capitalism and the market. I forget the exact exchange but he became shirty and clearly was not just playing devil’s advocate.
I have seen other evidence of his screwy, contradictory “beliefs’ come out.
I am 62, Randy, not 6. I am able to discern the mechanisms used in this type of format to draw people out.
Maher is an asshole. Can I be more clear?
October 12th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Dan O: compared to what its like in Iraq since the invasion…I’d say the comparison makes its point.
kids being bombed to bits, loosing limbs, no medical facilities to speak of, blistering heat, neighborhoods in rubble, no infrastructure, everyone shooting and bombing everyone else.
A Saddam dictatorship coupled with sanctions imposed by the US that malnourished children would seem like a paradise.
I think a little imagination about what it would be like to be in that hell hole now is needed. I recall a report that showed a frazzled, frail man wondering along a hot, desolate dusty road stripped of his home, family…house bombed, family dead. He is wailing: what will I do? Where will I go? It was one of the most awful existential moments I have ever witnessed or contemplated.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Anna,
I saw the interview and really didn’t get that impression.
Maher is an asshole
I’m sure you know the old saying about opinions.
I am 62, Randy, not 6. I am able to discern the mechanisms used in this type of format to draw people out.
The quality of your discourse often makes you seem like the latter.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Yeah, Anna, I’m sure this distinction will be lost on you, but the conditions after the invasion have zero to do with the dishonesty with which Moore portrayed life in Iraq before the invasion.
Whatever you think about the invasion should be separated from Moore’s sleazy little tactic. It amounts to a virtual apology for dictatorship. It’s a kind of reverse FUD.
There are no easy answers on this topic, but pretending life was idyllic under ‘ol Saddam doesn’t cut much ice. You can trot out your list of conditions post-invasion, and I certainly can not and do not want to deny most of them. We should tell the truth about all of this.
But don’t forget the place was a fetid mausoleum before the invasion, with Saddam responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Don’t forget that he used starvation as a weapon just like Stalin, if somewhat less effectively.
I have no real opinion on what you think about the war and it’s aftermath. Being 100% percent opposed to and sickened by the whole thing is a perfectly rational response.
But it is not OK, in the course of your outrage, or Moore’s for that matter, to pretend that we stomped on a sweet fairy land of gum drops and chocolate rivers. That is disgusting dishonesty.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Dan O, I sincerely doubt that Moore’s intent was as you make it out to be.
Its an illogical assumption.
We don’t have to waste time confirming we each feel nothing less than complete revulsion over Saddam’s rule or the US’s.
This is not a contest of whose rule was/is least or most horrible. Its not Derek and Clive arguing over ‘oo ‘as the biggest cansuh’
I am suggesting your interpretation of Moore’s use of that imagery might be tainted by some personal prejudices.
I repeat: given Moore’s point of view it would be insane for you to assume that he was making the statement that life under Saddam was a picnic.
A little common sense can go a long way.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Obama cares. Sure he does, huh?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091013/wl_nm/us_honduras_rights
October 12th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
As I recall, the “idyllic” portrayal consisted of about 30 seconds of people indulging in simple, human daily life. If having to look people in the eye first, if only for a few seconds before dropping bombs on them causes such an uncomfortable emotional response, then maybe it’s not that great of an idea to take action that kills tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians after all. Rationalize away.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Randy,
Maher exhibits a contradictory zealotry. His hook is his supposedly critical take on US policy and politics. But at times he sounds as rabid as any right wing, zenophobic wing nut when he repeatedly says “those people” referring to Muslims, Islam– really crossed the line and was inflammatory. He goes off on terrorists in the same hysterical way those he purports to criticize do.
He has “issues”.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
BillAnthony Says:
October 12th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
As I recall, the “idyllic” portrayal consisted of about 30 seconds of people indulging in simple, human daily life.
Bill, I am not sure if you are backing up my argument around the purpose of the use of that imagery or not…It sounds like you are.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
I liked it. Not a perfect film by any stretch but he was willing to make a strong anti-capitalist argument in a film that is being shown to mass audiences. Sorry but nobody else could get that done.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Whatever guys. That scene was a dishonest and malicious little bit of propaganda. A very serious distortion of the truth.
Little revelation for what it’s worth. I was an enormous Michael Moore fan at one point. Saw his movies the instant they came out–even saw him live at an early screening of one of them, and thought he was very funny.
But that bit of turgid garbage was revolting. It’s ruined his credibility for me. If he can play that fast and loose with the truth there, then where else is his playing for effect?
Clearly I’m not going to convince Bill or Anna that I’m right about this, so all I can say is it was an obvious piece of propaganda, designed to make the US look like a bunch of murderous thugs bombing the hell out of paradise. It’s a lie by omission at the very least. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Oh well, carry on. As we now know, all was well in Iraq, health care in Cuba is freaking awesome, Canadians never lock their doors, and other verities from our great documentarian…
October 12th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Not a big Chavez fan, but it seems he and I do have similar attitudes about golf courses.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Maher plays well for laughs, but no one should ever take him seriously, despite every appearance that he takes himself very seriously.
His analysis of the Palestine-Israel conflict is that the Palestinians have lost the war and should therefore accept their fate and stop trying to win. Israel has taken their land “fair and square” in his absurd view.
He also claims the U.S. was right to invade Vietnam.
He appears to be highly unprincipled, even though he is obviously a very quick thinker and somewhat knowledgeable on world affairs.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Sorry, Dan O, but Moore made no attempt to portray Iraq as a paradise.
You’re slander is of exactly the same variety that got us into that war.
There is simply no connection between observing the fact that Iraqi children were safer under Saddam, or that the U.S. invasion was the product of greed, lies, hubris and gross miscalculations, and approving of Saddam’s regime.
I’m sure if you look, you can find Moore amply condemning Saddam, if that would make it better for you…
October 13th, 2009 at 7:16 am
hey bunker…come back when you understand how propaganda works. It might make it better for you…
October 13th, 2009 at 7:51 am
[...] appear to have even pondered what it could be. That’s what journalist Marc Cooper finds clumsy and muddled about the movie. If you are going to go to the trouble of making a movie, however clumsily [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Moore always overreaches – his Cuba segment in Sicko was ridiculous (most notably when he used the $250 cost comparison as having any relevance.) Undermined what was an otherwise excellent case for changing the health insurance system. I go to Michael Moore movies expecting to see some stuff that’s very good and some stuff that I consider crazy or at least over-the-top. There’s an interesting clip of Moore talking extensively with Sean Hannity on the web right now and Hannity doesn’t bully Moore the way he does most people – he’s remarkably respectful toward him. I think its because he knows he’s met his match in Moore – the “anti-Alan Colmes.” Moore doesn’t give a shit and will drive his MAC truck right back at you, unlike so many liberals whose main concern is sounding reasonable and marshaling evidence even in the face of total disingenuity . Moore strikes me as a total jerk, but a useful jerk as long as there are Sean Hannitys around on the right. He’s also mastered pop culture in a way that few overt liberals have been able to do. Whatever else one thinks of Michael Moore, he’s cracked at least part of the code for left-liberals to get their messages out there. I don’t like the guy particularly and I am offended by some of his cheap tricks, but we’re better off for his efforts and example. I’d rather have him more or less on my side than, say, Christopher Hitchens (whose latest broadside is against Jon Stewart of all people – which I’m sure is driven by the knowledge that Stewart’s critiques of society and politics actually matter and his increasingly do not.)
October 13th, 2009 at 8:30 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091013/pl_afp/usafghanistanmilitarytroops
Nobel”peace” president Obama sends more soldiers to kill.
The troop increase approved by Obama means that there are more US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan than during the peak of the surge in Iraq in late 2007 and early 2008.
enjoy your national health care, suckers.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I’ll take Grayson’s style of Mack truck over Moore any day. He manages to marshall evidence and facts and yet still manages to land powerful right crosses. We need more Grayson and less clown.
I don’t think I realized how much Moore had fallen in my esteem until I started writing about this, but I totally reject the dichotomy between pussified reasonablness as demonstrated by Pelosi or even Edwards, and the cartoonish and bufoonish BS of Moore. Grayson proves you can be both biting and hard, while also being reasonable and fact filled.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Matt Taibbi has an interesting piece on Grayson – apparently Grayson is a bit of a wild man himself. (And that’s coming from Matt Taibbi, who also has been known to throw a few bombs.)
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/09/25/have-the-federal-reserve-or-prime-brokers-ever-tried-to-manipulate-the-stock-market/
October 13th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Sergio, don’t upset the liberals by telling them that
LBJObama is escalating the war inNorth Viet NamAfghanistan.October 13th, 2009 at 10:28 am
LYT: <i.Not a big Chavez fan, but it seems he and I do have similar attitudes about golf courses.
I’m upset, too, when people ruin perfectly good greens like this. Symbol carved into green at Lakeville golf course</b.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
BB, you just confirmed my worst suspicions about Maher. I have only seen him a few times and only recently.
Ptui.
Reg:
Marcy Kaptur, Marcy Kaptur!
Matt Taibbi seems to be a terrific muckraker–have been catching his stuff. He stalked Thomas Friedman who is apparently a real jerk.
And MK in lock step with Taibbi but she is an elected official and all. Why wasn’t she up for any major cabinet posts or even VP?
Did you see her on Moyers last week? She takes no prisoners, is concise, articulate and determined.
Position on The 2008 Economic Crisis Bailout
Marcy Kaptur has expressed her strong opposition to the multibillion dollar bailout plan brought before Congress. In her speech[8] she criticized Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson’s Plan for
1. Forcing congress to rush the decision.
2. Disarming the public through fear. Controlling the media enough to ensure that the public will not notice that this bailout will indebt them for generations taking from them trillions of dollars they earned and deserved to keep.
3. Controlling the playing field (hiding info from the public, holding private hearings, and private teleconferencing calls).
4. Diverting attention and keeping people confused.
5. Having the goal to privatize gains and socialize losses.
She also blamed Wall Street executives for their greed and held them responsible for the crisis and said
You have perpetrated the greatest financial crimes ever on this American Republic. You think you can get by with it because you are extraordinarily wealthy, and the largest contributors to both presidential and congressional campaigns in both major parties.
She pleaded a “Wall Street Reckoning” and an alternate plan whereby “America doesn’t need to bail you out. It needs to secure real assets and property. Federal regional reserve banks should have a new job to help renegotiate mortgages. American people should get equity in any companies. Major job creation to rebuild our infrastructure. Regulate, we need a modern Glass-Steagall act. Refinancing must return a major share of profits to a new social security and medicare lock box.”
Marcy Kaptur backed the The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the U.S. House after she was able to insert an amendment that would authorize the Secretary of Energy to create power marketing authorities in regions where none currently exist. One such area would be the Great Lakes region. Kaptur said the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation could serve as the vehicle for administering up to $3.5 billion in borrowing authority to stimulate economic development through creation of green energy such as solar power and wind power. Kaptur said the $3.5 billion in borrowing authority would promote “regional equity” and serve as a powerful engine for job creation in a region that has suffered from high energy costs, especially expensive electricity.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Her riff on health care rip off bills sings.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Hmmm…. So Moore seems to hold Obama up to a different
standard than other Dems and humanity in general, there’s a
lot of THAT going around(this blog). Or as it has always been with
Cooper on Moore, the tubby calling the rotund fat.
Beyond that, this is a pretty good review, and I like
Michael Moore quite a bit; AND agree with Anna’s respect
for “Roger and Me”, “Sicko” too for that matter.
Bill Maher was right on the mark. Even a historical
and economic lay person like me knows all the stuff
Moore LOVES about America are also part of capitalism
(the rise of the middle class in the Michigan of his
youth, even the workers who own their own
company) and the great radical reforms of the FDR
era were born out of the horrific depression years.
A repeat of which, it is argued, were avoided by the
bailouts.
Moore’s routines are undeniably losing there
edge through repetition, and how many in today’s
audience will grasp the significance of Carter’s
“Malaise” speech out of context? It isn’t mentioned
that we started the century with an essentially
balanced budget, and in spite of what Moore and
Cooper will tell you, the rape of our economy
was essentially all right wing based and steeped
in the Military Industrial Complex they never
get around to mentioning. I guess they don’t
want any heat from Christopher Hitchens.
Yet Moore’s broad strokes paint a pretty
true portrait. I have a friend who’s trying to
slink by on a pay check from Barnes and Noble.
These corporate bookstores ( use Amazon,
let them die) treat their workers with supreme
contempt, and on top of that Capital One has
garnished her wages. With a court order!
She makes about a hundred and fifty dollars
a week, but it was the same deal as the housing
loans. She put the money to have her teeth
fixed on her card and they kept raising the
monthly. She tried to negotiate with them and
was shown the door.
Anyway, Moore should trust his audience,
I thought he was going in that direction with
“Sicko.”
October 13th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I can’t help but worry about these right-wing nuts who associatie with Marc Cooper and attack Obama: Whiner-in-Chief
October 14th, 2009 at 10:10 am
[...] RG mail Capitalism: A Muddled Story [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
# Woody Says:
October 13th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I can’t help but worry about these right-wing nuts who associatie with Marc Cooper and attack Obama: Whiner-in-Chief
Weenie-in Chief:
Being a cracker you oughta know there are more ways than one to skin a…..cracker:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27568.html
October 14th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Not really following this thread, but this article from Ron Rosenbaum made me think of Marccooper.com. He takes aim at the framing revolution and specifically “the public option.” Enjoy:
And this http://www.slate.com/id/2231919
October 14th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
http://www.alternet.org/media/143255/obama_vs._rupert_murdoch%3A_fox_news%27_blatant_transition_into_gop_tv
another perspective on Fox becoming a wholly partisan media outlet.
This view is the one that gets to the point. IMO.
Stick it, Weenie-in Chief.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I saw the movie – it’s a mess, full of good stuff and absurd overreach, but I’m glad he made it. He’s using the Catholic Church to evade a more complex discourse, but who gives a fuck. And Marc’s absolutely right on that his posing capitalism vs. democracy is incoherent – but it points in the right direction, although Moore veer off into jousting with “Evil.” Contra Moore, a smart, humane regulatory environment could tame capitalism for the foreseeable future (actually does in some countries that don’t “matter” as much as the humongous USofA slice of the economic pie.) But our ability to do that in the polluted environment of US politics is still in question – although I’d argue we’re making some positive strides. Nihilism, pessimism and apocalyptic notions about “Evil”, whether based in Tehran or Wall Street, aren’t much help.
And Marcy Kaptur was awesome. If a lady in a fuddy pink suit coming out of Ohio can pull her shit off, the “Kaleeforniya” coastal sophisticates should stand for a moment in awe AND take hope that “Middle America” isn’t beyond redemption and an awakening (although last time I checked, WE might be.)