Tag: Michael Moore

The Resistance: Michael Moore’s 5 Steps To Take This Week

Tuesday on his facebook page, documentary film maker and activist, Michael Moore outlined five things that we can do this week to combat the coming Trump administration. 5 Things You Can Do Right Now About Donald J. Trump It’s been seven weeks since Hillary beat Trump by nearly 3 million votes but lost the presidency …

Continue reading

Overtime with Bill Mayer, Michael Moore and Jeremy Scahill

After the regular segment of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Bill Maher and his guests – Michael Moore, Jeremy Scahill, Katty Kay, Jack Hunter, and former Sen. Bob Graham – answer viewer questions after the show.

Michael Moore: Flint Was A Hate Crime And Taking Down Trump

During a ten minute interview with Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time,” activist and Academy award winning documentary producer Michael Moore discussed his new film “Where to Invade Next;” how the poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan was a race hate; rips President Barack Obama for drinking the water; and plans with Bill …

Continue reading

Americans Are Living In The Wrong Country

Activist and Academy Award winning documentarian, Michael Moore has a new documentary called “Where to Invade Next” Moore sets up his film by daydreaming about a summons from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Instead of using Marines, use me,” he pleads. As we watch a collage of America at its worst – bank scandals, stock …

Continue reading

The Health Care We Deserve

In a NYT‘s op-ed in New Year’s Day, Michael Moore called the ACA awful

I believe Obamacare’s rocky start – clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could – is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.

What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it.

Emergency Room visits have increased for those with insurance rather than decrease. This is probably due to the problem of finding a physician who will accept the patient’s insurance plan. What was needed was a mandate that physicians and hospitals accept all insurance plans.

Access to Health Care May Increase ER Visits, Study Suggests

   Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits as people sought care from primary care doctors. But a rigorous new study conducted in Oregon has flipped that assumption on its head, finding that the newly insured actually went to the emergency room more often.

   The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts. The pattern was so strong that it held true across most demographic groups, times of day, and types of visits, including for conditions that were treatable in primary care settings.

   The finding casts doubt on the hope that expanded insurance coverage will help rein in rising emergency room costs just as more than two million people are gaining coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

   Instead, the study suggests that the surge in the numbers of insured people may put even greater pressure on emergency rooms and increase costs. Nearly 30 million uninsured Americans could gain coverage under the law, about half of them through Medicaid. The first policies took effect on Wednesday.

This will only push up the costs of health care and increase the costs for consumers and tax payers.

This video explains in less than 8 minutes why healthcare in this country is so expensive and still sucks.

Published on Aug 20, 2013

In which John discusses the complicated reasons why the United States spends so much more on health care than any other country in the world, and along the way reveals some surprising information, including that Americans spend more of their tax dollars on public health care than people in Canada, the UK, or Australia. Who’s at fault? Insurance companies? Drug companies? Malpractice lawyers? Hospitals? Or is it more complicated than a simple blame game? (Hint: It’s that one.)

For a much more thorough examination of health care expenses in America, I recommend this series at The Incidental Economist: http://theincidentaleconomist….

The Commonwealth Fund’s Study of Health Care Prices in the US: http://www.commonwealthfund.or…

Some of the stats in this video also come from this New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06…

This is the first part in what will be a periodic series on health care costs and reforms leading up to the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in 2014.

NDAA: Killing the Democratic State

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Truthdig columnist, Chis Hedges, along with six other journalists and activists filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration  over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) alleging that it violated free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment and due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Last Wednesday they were back in Federal Court in Manhattan for a hearing before three judges:

Attorney Bruce Afran, addressing press and gathered activists in an icy downtown Manhattan plaza Wednesday, said the three-judge panel today challenged the government to prove that the NDAA provision is nothing more than an “affirmation” of the laws regarding indefinite detention already established by Authorization for Use of Military Force. According to the DoJ, the NDAA provision is nothing new, but simply a codification of AUMF. The plaintiffs and their supporters vehemently disagree, as did Judge Forrest last year. Afran stressed again Sunday that 1021(b)(2) “broadens the power of the military” when it comes to the capture and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and as such “breaches the constitutional barrier between civilians and the military” and constitutes a significant extension of the military state beyond the powers given by AUMF.

Mr. Hedges explains the consequences for the nation and the democratic state should they lose this case:

If we lose in Hedges v. Obama – and it seems certain that no matter the outcome of the appeal this case will reach the Supreme Court – electoral politics and our rights as citizens will be as empty as those of Nero’s Rome. If we lose, the power of the military to detain citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military prisons will become a terrifying reality. Democrat or Republican. Occupy activist or libertarian. Socialist or tea party stalwart. It does not matter. This is not a partisan fight. Once the state seizes this unchecked power, it will inevitably create a secret, lawless world of indiscriminate violence, terror and gulags. I lived under several military dictatorships during the two decades I was a foreign correspondent. I know the beast. [..]

Five thousand years of human civilization has left behind innumerable ruins to remind us that the grand structures and complex societies we build, and foolishly venerate as immortal, crumble into dust. It is the descent that matters now. If the corporate state is handed the tools, as under Section 1021(b)(2) of the NDAA, to use deadly force and military power to criminalize dissent, then our decline will be one of repression, blood and suffering. No one, not least our corporate overlords, believes that our material conditions will improve with the impending collapse of globalization, the steady deterioration of the global economy, the decline of natural resources and the looming catastrophes of climate change.

But the global corporatists-who have created a new species of totalitarianism-demand, during our decay, total power to extract the last vestiges of profit from a degraded ecosystem and disempowered citizenry. The looming dystopia is visible in the skies of blighted postindustrial cities such as Flint, Mich., where drones circle like mechanical vultures. And in an era where the executive branch can draw up secret kill lists that include U.S. citizens, it would be naive to believe these domestic drones will remain unarmed. [..]

After the hearing, Mr Hedges, along with three of his co-plaintiffs, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg; Revolution Truth Executive Director Tangerine Bolen; journalist and U.S Day of Rage founder Alexa O’Brien; and Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal, and their attorneys, Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran, sat down to discuss the state of the lawsuit. The discussion was moderated by Natasha Lennard of Salon and Matt Sledge of The Huffington Post.

In a second panel to “discuss the broader context of the case,” Mr. Hedges, Mr. Ellsberg and Ms. Bolen were joined by film maker and activist Michael Moore, NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for CIA whistle-blower John Kiriakou and a director of the Government Accountability Project.

If This Were The Tea Party

The silence of the traditional media on the Wall St. protest that has been going on for a week is deafening. As Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore point out of this were the Tea Party, it would be all over TV and the papers. Last, Mr. Moore expresses his outrage of over the murder of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia and his support of the Innocence Project and Get Out the Vote in Georgia.

Photobucket


Click on image to enlarge

Wisconsin: Taking Back America

Michael Moore appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show commenting on the aftermath of the stealth, and quite possibly illegal, vote by the Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate to remove the right of collective bargaining from state workers. He was so furious that his voice actually broke with the emotion of the moment. Every working person in this country needs to walk out on Friday at 2 PM in your respective time zones and join the people of Wisconsin to take back our country for the people.

Supporting Wisconsin: Michael Moore Marches with Workers

This is not just about the rights of workers to bargain but it is a class war that, as Michael Moore says, was started 30 years ago by Ronald Reagan. It is civil and human rights issue as well.

‘America Is NOT Broke’: Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI — March 5, 2011

Tens of Thousands Cheer Michael Moore in Madison: “You Have Aroused a Sleeping Giant, Known as the Working People”

by John Nichols

Filmmaker Michael Moore marched with members of Madison Firefighters Local 311 to the Wisconsin Capitol Saturday and delivered a old-school progressive populist address is which he told a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands that: “Wisconsin is not broke. America is not broke.”

“The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just not in your hands,” he told the Wisconsinites who rallied to challenge the claim that the state needs to strip public employees and their teachers of collective bargaining rights in order to balance budgets.

Moore ripped apart Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s claim, made repeatedly in recent weeks, that the state is broke.

“Never forget the three biggest lies of the past ten years,” Moore said. “Number one: America is broke. Number two: there are weapons of mass destruction. Number three: The Packers can’t win the Super Bowl Without Brett Farve.”

Laura Flanders of GRITtv interviewed Mr. Moore this past week.

People Still Have The Power

Today’s Heroes: The Wisconsin 14
by Richard Trumka

For anyone who still thinks the inspiring actions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are just about public employees in those states, here’s a moving dose of reality.

People in every walk of life and every part of the country — even other countries — are expressing heartfelt gratitude to the 14 Democratic state senators who left Wisconsin Feb. 17 rather than allow Gov. Scott Walker to pass a sham budget bill taking from state and local workers the right to bargain for good middle-class jobs.

Gov. Walker and state Republicans may be sending them $100-a-day fines and arrest warrants, but take a look at some Facebook and phone messages real people are sending the brave Wisconsin 14

From Egypt to Wisconsin with Love

Michael Moore has asked that we spread this message from the trade unions and workers in Egypt to the unions and workers in Wisconsin. Also, wear something RED today in support of the Wisconsin state workers.

‘We Stand With You as You Stood With Us’

The poster in the background shows photographs of some of the recent young victims of the Mubarak government. The writing says they are among the martyrs of the 25 January Revolution.

KAMAL ABBAS: I am speaking to you from a place very close to Tahrir Square in Cairo, “Liberation Square”, which was the heart of the Revolution in Egypt. This is the place were many of our youth paid with their lives and blood in the struggle for our just rights.

From this place, I want you to know that we stand with you as you stood with us.

I want you to know that no power can challenge the will of the people when they believe in their rights. When they raise their voices loud and clear and struggle against exploitation.

No one believed that our revolution could succeed against the strongest dictatorship in the region. But in 18 days the revolution achieved the victory of the people. When the working class of Egypt joined the revolution on 9 and 10 February, the dictatorship was doomed and the victory of the people became inevitable.

We want you to know that we stand on your side. Stand firm and don’t waiver. Don’t give up on your rights. Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their just rights.

We and all the people of the world stand on your side and give you our full support.

As our just struggle for freedom, democracy and justice succeeded, your struggle will succeed. Victory belongs to you when you stand firm and remain steadfast in demanding your just rights.

We support you. we support the struggle of the peoples of Libya, Bahrain and Algeria, who are fighting for their just rights and falling martyrs in the face of the autocratic regimes. The peoples are determined to succeed no matter the sacrifices and they will be victorious.

Today is the day of the American workers. We salute you American workers! You will be victorious. Victory belongs to all the people of the world, who are fighting against exploitation, and for their just rights.

Load more