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Michael Moore, Healthcare and Captialism

Last February I wrote a post titled Capitalisms Death. Looking back and rereading it now nothing has really changed. In fact, things have gotten more extreme and more obvious as the presidency of Barack Obama unfolds. In some ways it seems like he is really trying to make some basic changes in the way things work, but is simply unable to overcome the Washington machine. Other times, it seems like he is just like all the other politicos and it is just going to be business as usual.

The only good thing about the way things are now is that all the cards are on the table and the masks are coming off.

Just watch the health care debate, with all its twisting and posturing on the part of the elected. Even though the majority of citizens wants universal health care with a public option it is simply never going to happen. The wheels have been greased and the guys with the oil cans are right out in the open. A million and a half bucks a day going for lobbying! That is major clout. The only surprising thing to me about this is who's kicking in the money. If the $280 million spent on lobbying is broken down by industry the actual insurers only account for 17%, rounding the millions off. Almost half is being kicked in by manufacturers of drugs and health products. Here's how it breaks down:

And here is an overview of how the money is being spent.

(These two illustrations scraped from CNN.)

One question that isn't being pursued is: which politicians are being paid off? As far as I know, the only media network pursuing this question is CNN. Rick Sanchez is proving to be fairly relentless in his pursuit of this question. He is also bringing light to the subject by comparing what the politicians received with their voting records. Good job Rick!

What will it take to actually change things? There's certainly no doubt that the linkage between Washington and Wall Street breeds corruption and that things with the financial sector are right out of control. Maybe part of the problem is that the snippets of damning information come out one by one, so that people just don't get a real overview.

Perhaps Michael Moore's new movie on capitalism will provide that overview. He certainly did a good job of priming the pump for the health care debate with his previous film Sicko. I'm only afraid that he's preaching to the choir. Viewers of his movies may have their mind changed about the issues, but if they don't occupy a seat in Washington it doesn't seem to make much real difference.

Incidentally, I watched Mr Moore in several TV appearances for the release of Capitalism a Love Story, and I was very impressed by his demeanor. He's very thoughtful and forceful in his assertions, but he isn't a rabble-rouser by any stretch of the imagination and he defends himself well from most attacks. Wolf Blitzer was trying to get him to admit he was a socialist, since the opposite of capitalism is socialism, and his answer was masterful: Capitalism is a sixteenth century system. Socialism is a nineteenth century system. This is the twenty-first century and we should have our own system. This really opens things up by destroying the false dichotomy between socialism and capitalism. Why not develop a new system that is neither socialist nor capitalist? DOH!

According to Matt Taibbi, who writes for Rolling Stone. the economy is only going to get worse if something radical isn't done. Capitalism is a system devised to steal wealth from everyone else and deposit it in the pockets of a few. I called this suck up economics in my previous post to contrast it with Reagan's supposed trickle-down economy. Mr Taibbi says we are having such an interesting time now because the fatties have stolen everything from us and have turned on each other. (In his movie Michael Moore states that the top 1% of society now has more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. I've seen this figure cited elsewhere as well.) He also says that Goldman Sachs has engineered every boom and bust since the great depression. They win under all circumstances regardless of who loses. He penned one of the great lines in journalistic history by saying that Goldman Sachs was a vampire squid wrapped around the head of humanity. His article in Rolling Stone can be found here. And here is a video of Matt Taibbi discussing his story.Matt Taibi explains the vampire squid.

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