Michael Moore - “Capitalism: A Love Story” - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 09-08-2009, 01:31 AM

Michael Moore hates capitalism all the way to the bank
Sister Toldjah on September 7, 2009 at 7:31 pm

Reuters reports on Michael Moore’s new crockumentary and, as usual, it’s an anti-America fest:

Quote:

VENICE (Reuters) – Capitalism is e. That is the conclusion U.S. documentary maker Michael Moore comes to in his latest movie “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which premieres at the Venice film festival Sunday.

Blending his trademark humor with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, the 55-year-old launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty. “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” the two-hour movie concludes. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”

The bad guys in Moore’s mind are big banks and hedge funds which “gambled” investors’ money in complex derivatives that few, if any, really understood and which belonged in the casino.

Meanwhile, large companies have been prepared to lay off thousands of staff despite boasting record profits.

My question is: What will this idiot do with all the money he makes from this “documentary”?

If he takes one dime in profits then he’s a damn hypocrite.

To find out just how much Moore “hates” capitalism, read Jim Hoft’s post which describes the worth of Moore’s residence in Northern Michigan.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...m-is-evil.html

Just like the “greenies” like Al Gore and John Edwards, who demand of others a “green” lifestyle they themselves do not observe, just like the hypocrites in the Obama administration who demand purity from Republicans on the lobbyist issue but who don’t hold themselves to the same standard, Moore’s motto is “What’s good for me, is not necessarily good for thee.”

And the beat goes on.

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...y-to-the-bank/

gmyers · 09-08-2009, 02:12 AM

Yeah I bet he turns down all the money he makes. Yeah right. He's laughing all the way to the bank.

SHELBYDOG · 09-08-2009, 04:29 PM

Quote:

My question is: What will this idiot do with all the money he makes from this “documentary”?

If he takes one dime in profits then he’s a damn hypocrite.

LMFAO! In other words that would make him more of a republican more than anything ...

Jolie Rouge · 09-08-2009, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SHELBYDOG

Quote:

My question is: What will this idiot do with all the money he makes from this “documentary”?

If he takes one dime in profits then he’s a damn hypocrite.

LMFAO! In other words that would make him more of a republican more than anything ...

:

To'matoe ... Tom'atoo`
Po'Ta'toe ... Pa'ta'toe`
Republican ... Democrat

all the same ... anyway you slice 'em

I like the sound of

Quote:

...In other words that would make him more of a POLITICIAN more than anything else ....

THAT hits the nail on the head

:

watching Fred?

SHELBYDOG · 09-08-2009, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

To'matoe ... Tom'atoo`
Po'Ta'toe ... Pa'ta'toe`
Republican ... Democrat

all the same ... anyway you slice 'em

I like the sound of

THAT hits the nail on the head

:

watching Fred?

Just heard about Fred on your posts, loved the joke.
We went across to West Palm Beach to my GF for a cookout yesterday & got home around 11:30am today. Rubbing my head, drinking lots of fluids right now for my hot pipes, ate lunch, jumped in the pool to cool off, nothing is making me feel better & hearing about Fred is not helping. Everyone says if we can get to the end of Sept with no hurricane we're good to go....

Keeping my fingers crossed.

janelle · 09-09-2009, 03:08 AM

Of course, pure capitalism is evil just as evil as pure socialism. They both need a balance. You need a charitable society to offset those who make most of the money and in our society there are plenty of charities who help the poor. Socialism, the way Jesus practiced it, was also charitable since it didn't take from the rich and gave to the poor, the rich would not be coerced to give anything they did not want to give. Many communes lived the socialist way but only when they volunteered to live that way. No government should require people to share their wealth by taking it from them.

Moore never balances the arguments, the facts never get in his way.

Jolie Rouge · 09-30-2009, 01:00 AM

Politico reports that leftist documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has warned Blue Dog Democrats not to oppose President Obama’s health care plan. “To the Democrats in Congress who don’t quite get it: I want to offer a personal pledge. I – and a lot of other people – have every intention of removing you from Congress in the next election if you stand in the way of health care legislation that the people want,” Moore said.

“That is not a hollow or idle threat. We will come to your district and we will work against you, first in the primary and, if we have to, in the general election.”

He singled out Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and an opponent of the so-called public option:

Quote:

“You’ve made a serious mistake,” he warned Baucus.

Moore also called out Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who supports the public option, but whose role in financial regulation as chairman of the Senate banking committee comes in for criticism in “Capitalism.” Speaking to Public Citizen, Moore said, “we’re going to lose this seat unless we run another Democrat” and said he’d “already received a phone call from a well known Democrat to tell me to back off Sen. Dodd.”

It’s typical Moore, typical leftist, typical Democrat and, dare I say, typical Alinsky. Here’s rule number nine of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

Quote:

“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

It seems to me that there’s also a bit of rule eight in there (“work against you, first in the primary then in the general” - in other words, constantly and from all sides):

Quote:

“Keep the pressure on. Never let up.”

Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

And, of course, rule number one, the appearance of power:

Quote:

RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have,
but what the enemy thinks you have.”

Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

Michael Moore: Just another friend of Obama using Alinsky’s tactics against all those who dare disagree with the far-left’s radical agenda for America.

Also read this post. http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/28/m...ew-propaganda/

Money-quote:

Quote:

Geist and Hazlett forgot to mention that while Moore may blame “the rich” for all of society’s ills, he is actually a multi-millionaire himself. Yes, he dresses like a hobo, but Moore became extraordinarily rich by “picking the target [i.e. 'the rich,' conservatives, etc.], freezing it, personalizing it, and polarizing it” — precisely in the manner outlined by the famed radical “community organizer” Saul Alinsky.

The documentary filmmaker may publicly advocate abolishing the capitalist system and replacing it with “democracy,” as Hazlett says, but without capitalism he would have been a nobody living in a tent, rather than an immensely wealthy individual residing in a big, comfortable house.

Jolie Rouge · 10-02-2009, 02:28 PM

Michael Moore: Champion of the working man…except when hiring his own film crew.

Hire as he says, not as he hires.

Quote:

Union teaches Michael Moore a lesson
October 2, 2009

Michael Moore, champion of the working class, used non-union stagehands to film "Capitalism: A Love Story." The porcine provocateur is promoting his anti-Wall Street jeremiad by giving free tickets to unions, but the American Federation of Teachers has turned them down because Moore didn't hire any members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. "Michael Moore and one of our sister unions, IATSE, are in discussions about concerns the union has," the AFT told ABC News. "The AFT has decided against accepting tickets until those issues are resolved." Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, seems to blame the IATSE for treating documentarians as "second-class filmmakers." "This is a Writers Guild, Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild film, as all Michael's films are," Emanuel said. "He is a proud, dues-paying member of all three of these unions."

Jolie Rouge · 11-04-2009, 01:20 AM

Michael Moore ignores capitalism's blessings
By Gregory Ferenstein
Tue Nov 3, 4:00 am ET

Irvine, Calif. – Though Michael Moore seems to have missed it, in the past 10 years corporations have made enormous strides in promoting workplace democracy, patent-free innovation, and the financial independence of women in developing nations.

Mr. Moore's new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," profiles hardworking Middle American families financially ruined by the brutal tactics of the auto, insurance, and financial industries and sets out to prove his extreme claim that "capitalism is evil."

He's wrong.

While capitalism certainly has its faults, the fact that many big corporations went bankrupt shows that the free market did not reward unscrupulous practices. There is, in fact, a large slice of the economy thriving in the recession, and these firms are based on democracy and generosity.

Worker empowerment is profitable

During the past 20 years, team-based work environments have dethroned the Industrial Age hierarchy as the management structure of choice. One example of the change: Harvard Business Review contributor Ricardo Semler saved his manufacturing plant from bankruptcy by replacing middle management with autonomous, employee-run teams.

Teams at his plant, Semco, set their own salaries, schedule their own hours, and are offered finance classes so they can understand Semco's transparent record books. Mr. Semler found that devolving power to employees made them happier – and happier workers were more productive.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to this new worker-empowered management style led Fortune magazine to publish an annual list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For."

The Container Store earned a top spot on the list when reports rolled in of employees saying things such as, "[i]t's rare to find a company with the same values, philosophy, and foundation principles. Going to work is like going to a family reunion every day." Research shows that this enthusiasm is a cash cow: Members of the 100 Best routinely outperform their autocratic counterparts. Indeed, American automakers' refusal to adopt team-oriented practices is often cited as the reason they could not outsell their foreign competitors.

Given that American automakers needed a bailout, Moore's movie seems more like a documentary of capitalism's authoritarian losers, rather than its democratic winners.

Self-interest is not always selfish

Business is booming for companies like Tom's Shoes, which donates a pair of shoes to needy children for each pair purchased. Psychological studies reveal a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and charity: Donations to charity increase when matched with the purchase of "luxury" products.

For instance, consumers are more willing to splurge on a $5 cup of Fair-Trade Starbucks coffee, since they can rationalize the cost as a contribution to some third-world coffee bean grower.

Contrary to Moore's view of the free market, recent research confirms that consumers are willing to buy higher-priced organic, environmentally friendly, and socially conscious products. Wanting to feel good about one's own charitableness is certainly self-interested, but is not always selfish.

Additionally, Moore laments that society has yet to learn from the antipatent altruism of Jonas Salk, who donated the intellectual property of his polio vaccine to the public domain. However, research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Eric von Hippel shows that individuals are increasingly sharing their innovations, especially within the medical industry.

So widespread is this movement, that my own father, a small-town Midwestern eye doctor, gives a free annual lecture advising developing nations on a cheap alternative to cataract machines he discovered. Because of the Internet, everyone from medical professionals to gadget enthusiasts have a convenient way to share their passions.

Open source is government-free and self-sustaining

In fact, many public-domain innovations have developed into their own financially sustainable system. Much of the Internet is run by patent-free "open source" software. Open source permits anyone to modify a program, as long as their modifications are made publicly available.

As some open-source projects reach millions of individual contributors, financial assistance is needed to pay for websites and data storage. Technology megacorporations, such as Cisco, happily sponsor open-source software; it not only gives them great publicity, but ensures access to software they find more efficient than commercial products.

As a result of free software, developing nations can afford to purchase more computers, adding to the ever growing user-base of open-source software. A thriving industry of open-source tech support and hardware accessories has developed in response to increasing demand.

Finally, though Moore advocates federal assurances of individual financial security, government assistance can hurt more than it helps.

A chorus of economists have claimed that billions in federal aid to Africa have done little more than enrich corrupt politicians and entrench villages into unsustainable dependence on foreign governments. This is precisely why the 2006 Nobel Prize went to research on a capitalist solution: microloans, low-interest payments to tiny textile and agricultural entrepreneurs.

Kiva, a Clinton Global Initiative microloan organization, has put thousands of communities on their first path to self-sustaining prosperity. Often, Kiva's beneficiaries are women who become financially independent of abusive family relationships.

While capitalism is not perfect, African female entrepreneurs, employees at The Container Store, computer owners in developing nations, and the children wearing Tom's shoes would probably argue that the free market is far from evil.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091103...m/yferenstein/