Supreme Court - corporations can now buy candidates

JB811 wrote:

If someone is going to vote they should research candidates before making a decision, regardless of party.

JB811 wrote:

As much as some of you hate to admit it this is a First Amendment victory, just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean it is wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: OK, let’s talk about—well, Capitalism: A Love Story just came out. And we’re looking now, today, when we look at the economy, when we look at the state of our union, Ben Bernanke, the question of whether he should be confirmed, reconfirmed, Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. And we’re looking at a Supreme Court decision, unprecedented, overruling years of precedent of corporate money just—if it hasn’t already, the floodgates opened on them—flooding politics in this country. Put that all together.


MICHAEL MOORE: Man, that’s so depressing. It’s like the way you—I mean, you just—this last week has been a rough week for democracy. I mean, I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t in a total state of despair at this moment. And I’m not usually one that goes there. I mean, I’m usually like, “Let’s go!” I have—that Supreme Court ruling—and the disgusting part of it is how I got dragged into it, that there’s the whole argument before the Supreme Court and the justices and the attorneys for the other side discussing Fahrenheit 9/11. I don’t know if you followed this.


AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain the whole thing.


MICHAEL MOORE: Well, the Supreme Court case that was decided was based on the fact that the Federal Elections Commission declared this anti-Hillary ad an ad. And the other side was—they were calling it a documentary.


UNIDENTIFIED: She’s deceitful. She’ll make up any story, lie about anything, as long as it serves her purpose of the moment. Ruthless, vindictive.


ANN COULTER: Venal, sneaky.


UNIDENTIFIED: Ideological, intolerant.


ANN COULTER: Liar is a good one.


MARK LEVIN: Scares the hell out of me.



MICHAEL MOORE: And the FEC said, no, this is an ad, and you have to follow the election laws. In terms of where the money comes from, you have to report this. They said, no, it’s just like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. That was produced and distributed by a corporation, the Weinstein Company, etc., etc. And so the justices—they all had this discussion about how—why did Michael Moore get to distribute his film and not have to deal with the FEC, and they did? And that was the case that was decided. The justices decided, yeah, that’s not right. And so, we’re just going to let—now open up the floodgates and let all this money pour in. So I—


AMY GOODMAN: So you’re the cause of this?


MICHAEL MOORE: Well, I’ve got to tell you, my own Catholic guilt and my own—I have thought about this for the last few days. Not that I’m the cause of it, but, you know—see, the thing is, and this is where—this is how they got away with it, is basically, you really never want the government, any arm of the government, whether it’s the FEC or the Supreme Court, deciding who can say what, period.


You know, I think what I do is a form of journalism. You know, it’s essentially a filmed version of the op-ed page, my op-ed page, and it’s full of lots of facts and information, and it also is full of my opinion. And, you know, the right would say, “No, that’s not true. You were just out there trying to get Bush out of the White House and get Kerry elected with Fahrenheit 9/11.” And I could say and prove, of course, that I started working on that film long before there was a John Kerry for president. And I never spoke to anybody in the Kerry campaign, and I’m sure they didn’t want to speak to me. So, that had nothing to do with that, whereas the Hillary thing was specifically set up to be out there during the campaign in ’08 to stop Hillary Clinton. But you can see how it could get confusing and how they can create the ball of confusion in all of this.


And, of course, where did my money come from? Well, my money came from a Hollywood studio. Hollywood studio is a corporation, not only just a corporation, but in this case, Fahrenheit 9/11 was made by Miramax, which is part of the Walt Disney Company. So you can see where they go with this.


And I think that I just—it just—I hate it when the other side, they’re so—I mean, I hate it because I also, in some weird way, also admire them. They’re so good at what they do, the evil that they perpetrate, their ability to rally people, and of course the amount of funding that they receive. Just to make this clear, the Walt Disney Company, once they saw Fahrenheit 9/11, Mr. Michael Eisner said, “We no way are ever releasing this movie.” And as everyone knows the story, you know, we made this public, and he had to admit that they were trying to censor the film, and then I was able to get the film out because of a public outcry about it. So, we will never have the resources.


I just got a phone call from a freshman congressman in Michigan, a good guy, who beat the incumbent Republican in ’08, asking me for a donation for his reelection this year. And I just felt like, why? Because I have—whatever amount of money I could give you, or everybody else in here or people we know could give you, will never ever match what corporate America has. If that’s really the new—if that’s the new rule now, then we’ve already lost. We’ve already lost.


So how do we fight this now? Because their propaganda machine that’s funded now with—will have billions of dollars behind this to manipulate an uneducated American public—when I say “uneducated,” I’m talking about an American public, as you know, where we rank in the world, in math and science and literacy, all these things—we’re so far behind so many other countries. We have 40 million functional illiterates in this country, 40 million adults who can’t read and write above a fourth grade level. If you create a country where the education system sucks so bad, where you make it your lowest priority, and then you want to create some propaganda to easily lead them down the path you want to lead them down, it’s a cakewalk at that point, when you have this enforced ignorance, the illiteracy that’s encouraged, the C-minus president who was so proud of himself and encouraging others that that was cool, it was cool to be dumb. And that’s what we’ve just lived through, through this first decade of this century. And now they’re going to have billions of dollars to manipulate our fellow Americans? What are we going to do, Amy? Seriously. I mean, as I sit here, I don’t have the answer. But, you know, we have your show. What else do we have?


AMY GOODMAN: You talk about us and them, us and them. Timothy Geithner, do you think he should be Treasury Secretary?


MICHAEL MOORE: Absolutely not. He never should have been. I said that at the beginning. And it was—you know, I joked, I think, about it with you like a year ago. I said maybe he’s just bringing him in to clean up the mess he created, you know, something like a parent would do. You know, “OK, you broke this. Get in here and clean it up.” Clearly, that’s not what his purpose was for this year. His purpose was there to protect Goldman Sachs, to protect the banks and Wall Street. And he’s done a fine job of doing that, in making sure that, again, they are back to record profits, record bonuses, all of this stuff.


AMY GOODMAN: How does this play in Michigan? That’s where you live now. And you live in Flint, one of the most depressed areas in the country.


MICHAEL MOORE: People are so angry. And I think, of course, this is what—partly what happened in Massachusetts. And it’s partly why Obama got elected, because people were so angry at what happened to their lives, to the economy, to our reputation as Americans, that a country that is essentially—still has a huge problem with race, a certain number of Americans were able to put their feelings about race aside, because they were so angry at what was going on. That was interesting and somewhat impressive.


I think that anger and the anger in Michigan, we’re going to end up with a Republican governor this November. I can—I already see it. I can already feel it happening, I think, because people are so upset. I mean, you’ve got an official unemployment rate of over 15 percent. Unofficially—I mean, the county I live in is over 20 percent officially, so you know it’s really over 30 percent, at least. People are very, very upset and can now be easily manipulated now, as people who are hurting have been, I mean, historically.


I mean, we don’t have to—we know the examples. We’re sitting here—you know, what happens when those in power, those who support corporate interests, who support right-wing ideology—they used to call it “fascism”—they’re the pros at manipulating the public when the public is hurting. And so, expect to see that. And that’s what I expect to see. And, of course, I’m not just going to sit back and let it happen, and I know people watching this, listening to this, feel same way. But we’re going to have to—we’re going to have to get it together, and get it together pretty damn quick, because they’re already ten miles down the road in front of us.