I saw the new Michael Moore movie, Capitalism; A Love Story the day after it opened, and wrote a blogpost about the experience. I had a few reservations, one of which was that Moore was big on condemning Capitalism as a system but was not offering anything substantive to take its place. He stirred the emotional pot and hinted at revolution and left it at that.Today I have to eat a little crow because Michael Moore has posted on his website a very comprehensive list of specific things we Americans can and should do. His cry is not "man the ramparts", but use the phone and media to make your citizen's voices heard. Tell Congress and our President what we want and make them listen. He has a plan after all and it's not bad. I'm gonna participate. How about you?
Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite and the link. Have a look and do what you can.
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is H.R. 3200 (but only with Rep. Anthony Weiner's amendment). You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!...check out the rest by clicking on the link belos.
...Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now
I take it all back Micheal. This list rocks and you are OK by me.
photo from filmofilia.com
2 comments:
Crow can be quite tasty when served up with the side dishes of common sense MM outlines.
Medicare For Everybody would've prevented *all* evictions and bankruptcies for medical bills. But since we don't have it (yet!), a ban on all current proceedings is definitely needed.
Medicare For Everybody also would've prevented tens of thousands of jobs being sent overseas to countries where employers don't have to include health insurance as a "benefit" in overhead costs. (One guess who our present system *really* benefits - not you and me.)
And...any industry operating purely for profit *should* be regulated to the max, as most were pre-Reagan.
Odd that our country was *the* model of capitalism before that actor-turned-prez threw regulation out the window, claiming it "hampered" capitalism. The only thing it hampered was Corporate America's ability to steal without consequence.
Amen, Jama-- amen
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