I will post late tomorrow evening -- we need a little break and will attend a parade on Sunday which should be a lot of fun.
Michael Moore gave a speech in Madison today entitled "America is not broke." His view is that money is in the hands of the wrong people ie the "bankers and the super-rich."
Here are some great photos from Michael Moore's speech today in Madison...
...and the video of his complete, very powerful speech, in which he pulls no punches:
Excerpts from Michael Moore's speech:
America is not broke.
Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.
I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.
The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It's part of the Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.
Bill O'Reilly believes that Michael Moore is a crazy socialist who is dumb because he is suing the Weinsteins because an independent auditor found that they had re-routed millions of dollars belonging to Moore. I'd love to know what O'Reilly would do if he were to find out that he had been cheated out of millions of dollars.
Treat this as an open post.
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UPDATE:
HonestyinGov took the following photos in Sacramento last Saturday at a demonstration in support of the protesters in Wisconsin. He has kindly given us permission to post them here at Politicalgates. Thanks a lot, Honestyingov!
These photos remind us that citizens all over the USA are taking to the streets to protect the collective bargaining rights of themselves and others.
Special thanks also to GinaM for helping make the photos available.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
