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Hypocritical Union Protest Planned In Michigan

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The poster child for all that’s wrong with liberalism who became obese by biting the capitalist hand that paid for his too many Big Macs, Michael Moore, is now setting his ego…errr…his sites on the state of Michigan.  In an open letter to labor unions on his website he calls for union members to fake calling in sick to work and students to cut class:

Please show up at noon on Wednesday for our first mega-rally against this insanity. Hundreds of groups are already organizing car pools and buses. You can right now just declare yourself an organizer and get your friends and neighbors committed to being in Lansing. If ever there were a day to call in sick, Wednesday is it (because this IS sick). Students, if ever there were a day to cut class and become a participant in your democracy, Wednesday is it. This event needs to be HUGE — and I believe it will be if you will simply be there and take a stand.

Much attention has been paid to Wisconsin in recent weeks. Well, they got nothing on what’s going on here in Michigan. Rick Snyder is Scott Walker on steroids. There’s never been what even the AARP calls “an all-out attack” like this on us. Trust me, you will rue the day you sat home and did nothing while thieves posing as politicians stole your Great Lakes State from you.

All because Governor Rick Snyder wants to balance Michigan’s budget by taxing monies not previously taxed and putting Michigan in a welcoming position for business (and therefore jobs) by lowering the state business tax.  Yeah, ok, that Emergency City Management idea needs more work and it isn’t fun to realize that you are going to become like almost everyone else in the country by paying taxes on your pension (Michigan is one of only 4 states that doesn’t tax pensions) but let me assure you that once he won the primary, Governor Snyder had the support of Michigan Tea Party members who know full well drastic measures must be taken to balance the budget.  And success doesn’t come by losing money in the form of film credits that do nothing more than bring more La-La Land entitlement types to rub shoulders with the mafia-run labor unions.

Besides, if the AARP doesn’t like it and it is giving unions heartburn, it must be good.

Michigan Taxpayers Subsidize Michael Moore’s Anti-Capitalism

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As a poster child for Democratic compassion, the state of Michigan, long known as the home of the auto industry, continues to show little signs of recovery.  Despite massive infusions of taxpayer money (that will never be paid back) and business plans created by those “best and brightest” affirmatively-graduated Ivy Leaguers, the only American auto company that is turning a profit is the only one who didn’t knuckle under the government’s spell in the first place.  Ford.

Michigan’s unemployment rate was the highest in the country at 14.6% as reported for December 2009, with the metropolitan Detroit area at 15.4% in November.  Of course, the underemployed and those who’ve simply given up looking for work mean the real numbers are much higher.

So what does a true-blue state do when faced with such dire straights?  They follow the lead of other lame-brain losers like California.  In this case, by courting the film industry.  So what, you say?  Sure, jobs are jobs and everyone needs the escape provided by a movie every now and then.  But unfortunately, the only escape with this feel-good endeavor is its disconnect from reality.

The Michigan Film Incentive is a state economic development program whereby state government offers large tax credits and outright cash subsidies to filmmakers who make some portion of their films here. The program rebates up to 42 percent of a filmmaker’s Michigan expenses. The amount that exceeds the filmmaker’s state business tax liability is reimbursed by a check from the Treasury and signed by John Q. Taxpayer.

Now guess who has directly profited from this?  You guessed it, Michael Moore.  That raving anti-capitalist who went rabid against big business in his last film apparently has no problem sticking his hands into the pockets of the taxpayers on Main Street to pad his personal coffers.  Just like those big, evil firms on Wall Street.

He is a current member of the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council, a state organ created to advise the Michigan Film Office, which is responsible for approving applications for Michigan’s film incentive program.

There’s a whole lot of other “perceptions of impropriety”, aka old boys’ network and cronyism at work here as well, which in the end makes it little more than yet another Democratic grab at the wallets of the very people they claim they are trying to help while the only ones making any real money are they and their buddies.

Recently, Michigan Film Office Director Janet Lockwood was given a role in a movie — “Wild Michigan” — that had been approved by her office for subsidies.  Lockwood blithely dismissed conflict of interest questions from my colleague, Kathy Hoekstra*, by arguing that the she had not been paid.  But as an actress she was in fact paid; paid with the opportunity to appear on the Silver Screen – an honor for which many actors would themselves pay.

Former state Rep. Bill Huizenga (now a congressional candidate) helped shepherd the Michigan film incentive program to passage in the Legislature.  He did so while sitting on the Board of Compass Film Academy, a Grand Rapids-based film school.  Lockwood called Huizenga — who was apparently given the moniker “Hollywood Huizenga” for helping muscle the film incentive through the Legislature — “our hero.”

But, but, but it can’t be all bad because regular people in Michigan worked on these films, right?  Sure.  Yet what they received in pay was merely another insidious transfer of wealth:

Michigan hiked taxes $1.4 billion just months before creating the film program to redistribute a portion of it to lucky filmmakers.  At best, this creates a jobs wash, not new economic growth.

We’ve said before that Michael Moore is an insufferable hypocrite who should be shipped off to someplace like Venezuela.  But the truth is that he and his kind continue to be enabled by the compassionate Democrats running the state of Michigan.

 

 

 

* no relation to Michigan State representative Pete.

People Unclear On The Concept

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Grab the salt shaker, melt the butter, and start popping the corn.  And don’t forget to supersize those sodas, folks!  Michael Moore is about to release another film.  And in that stereotypical, oxymoronic way of progressives (heavy emphasis on the “moron”) he has titled it,  “Capitalism: A Love Story”.

Though we acknowledge the near-impossibility of such a thing, it would have been more correct to title it, “Capitalism: A Hate Story”.  For you see, this beneficiary of the all the goodness available in a free market economy – as evidenced by the supersize of his bank account, his … ummmm … overly-generous girth, and his newfound fashionista-wannabe style – has aimed his poison pen at a storyboard that explains just how and why capitalism is a Very Bad Thing.

For some.

Because in the left-most wing of the progressive, liberal asylums, the speaker is always exempt from their version of how things must be.  In this case, “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil.  You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”  Which means:  now that I’ve milked free market capitalism to the extent of my incompetance, I can work to eliminate any future competition by leveling the playing field.  For everyone else.

So he ties together banks, politicians and U.S. Treasury officials to make a case that capitalism is why Wall Street gets help instead of Main Street, and he includes footage of the illegal activities of those (a la ACORN) who break into foreclosed and sold homes to “repossess” them on behalf of those stupid enough to take out a mortgage they were unable to repay.

He made this statement at a news conference: “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event.  If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.”

Guess what, Michael?  The United States isn’t a democracy.  It is a republic.  And we don’t intend on participating in your hypocritical cinematic swill.