Michael Moore, that obsequious liberal synchophant. has long railed against capitalism and the corporations that enable it.
From GM to GE, from Michigan to Memphis, Moore continues to decry the amounts of government support, subsidy, and business provided to these "giant consumers of the people's wealth".
In the past, he's expressed specific disdain and repulsion for the various governmental subsidies passed on to the big studios from state governments trying to lure film productions to their state.
In a July, 2008 speech in Traverse City, Michigan, the bloated blowhard said:
“These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios... why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we’re already broke here?
I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they’re making billions already in profits. What’s the benefit of that?”
As a result of his outrage against the big corporations, Moore was named to the Michigan’s Film Office Advisory Council, the group that oversees how state film development money is distributed.
Moore specifically railed against the program, which provides filmmakers with refundable tax credits worth as much as 42 percent of expenditures for movies made in the state, claiming that they were merely one more form of corporate welfare awarded by the Republicans to their fat cat friends.
Of course, at the time, Michigan was run by liberal Democrats.
Not Republicans.
But now, apparently, Mr. Moore has had a significant change of heart.
And rather than apologizing to those "fat cats" he so readily defamed, he's taken a typically liberal way out.
In 2009, Moore completed an independent "documentary entitled "Capitalism: A Love Story".
That film finds Moore vehemently criticizing the government bailout of privately held businesses.
Early on, Moore admits that he, too, fell in love with post-war capitalism as a child, and that the system used to work pretty well for the average middle-class American.
The problem, he says, is that there is no middle class anymore –– there is only “the people who got nothing and the people who have it all”.
This Moore blames first on Ronald Reagan, who he slams as an actor-turned-pitchman-turned “spokesmodel as president,” then on the subsequent Republican administrations who encouraged the intermingling of big business and government sectors.
This Moore blames first on Ronald Reagan, who he slams as an actor-turned-pitchman-turned “spokesmodel as president,” then on the subsequent Republican administrations who encouraged the intermingling of big business and government sectors.
The film is still full of patented Michael Moore venom — the star/director has a bullhorn in one hand, and the other is permanently poised over the bad stock footage button.
And while he begins the picture with the borrowed B-movie warning that what we’re about to see is “truly one of the most unusual movies ever made,” in fact it's typical Michael Moore hype, mis-statements, and factual errors, covered by bad footage poorly edited.
Moore's stated bitch in the film is that the government should not use taxpayer dollars to support private industry and companies.
That was a year ago.
That was a year ago.
Cut to today.
It was announced last week that:
"The 2009 documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story,” produced by Michigan filmmaker Michael Moore, has been approved for a subsidy from the Michigan Film Office, according to a video released today by Kathy Hoekstra, communications specialist for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Moore is a member of the Film Office Advisory Council, which advises the state-run Michigan Film Office."
Janet Lockwood, director of the Michigan Film Office, would not disclose how much the payment might be for “Capitalism: A Love Story” but it is believed to be in the mid six figures.
“Given the state’s precarious fiscal status, should struggling families and businesses continue subsidizing filmmakers?” asked LaFaive. “How can a state with the nation’s worst unemployment rate justify special tax favors to millionaire filmmakers? We already know the incentive fails as an economic development tool.”
“It’s striking that a movie focused on the inequities of granting taxpayer dollars to private enterprise would apply for and receive taxpayer-funded incentives,” said Michael LaFaive, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center.
“Government should not be bailing out or subsidizing Wall Street banks or main street filmmakers.
As Moore knows, this marriage between government and business — in the name of creating and saving jobs — can facilitate every sort of mischief.”
It now seems that Moore, who has become a master of asassinating capitalist icons like GM, Viacom, GE, and the like, may now have suffered a self-inflicted wound of deflation.
Would that the shot had hit him in the ego.
"Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential." ---- William Thomas
“It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt” ---- Thomas Paine
