Jesus W. Christ
Horatio Alger Must Die
excerpted from the book
Dude, where's my country?
by Michael Moore
Warner Books, 2003, hardcover
Jesus W. Christ
p129
George W. Bush comments"
"I could not be governor if I did
not believe in a divine plan that supercedes all human plans."
"I believe God wants me to be president."
"I feel the comfort and the power
of knowing that literally millions of Americans I'm never going
to meet . . . say my name to the Almighty every day and ask him
to help me . . . My friend, Jiang Zemin in China, has about a
billion and a half folks, and I don't think he can say that. And
my friend, Vladimir Putin, I like him, but he can't say that."
p134
... no more of this "God Bless America" crap. What makes
you think you get to be blessed and no one else does? I don't
play favorites. You don't hear anyone in Djibouti saying "God
Bless Djibouti." I have never heard anyone utter the words
"God Bless Botswana." They know better. Let's get this
straight- God don't bless America, God don't bless anyone, God
has got a tee time on the back nine and he doesn't have time to
be interrupted with this patriotic mumbo jumbo. Go bless yourselves
and quit using My name as a justification for feeling superior
to everyone else. You aren't. You are actually among the dumbest
people on the planet. Don't think so? Name the president of Mexico.
See? Ask anyone else in the world the name of the leader of the
country next to theirs and they can tell you who it is. God bless
America? More like God bleeps America.
Horatio Alger Must Die
p137
Perhaps the biggest success in the War on Terror has been its
ability to distract the nation from the Corporate War on Us. In
the two years since the attacks of 9/11, American businesses have
been on a punch-drunk rampage that has left millions of average
Americans with their savings gone, their pensions looted, their
hopes for a comfortable future for their families diminished or
extinguished. The business bandits (and their government accomplices)
who have wrecked our economy have tried to blame it on the terrorists,
they have tried to blame it on Clinton, and they have tried to
blame it on us.
But, in fact, the wholesale destruction
of our economic future is based solely on the greed of the corporate
mujahedeen. There is a master plan, my friends, each company has
one, and the sooner you can get over not wanting to believe it,
or worrying that to believe it puts you in the ranks of the nutters
who thrive on conspiracy theories, then the sooner we have a chance
of stopping them. Their singular goal is to take enough control
over our lives so that, in the end, we'll be pledging allegiance,
not to a flag or some airy notions of freedom and democracy, but
to the dictates of Citigroup, Exxon, Nike, GE, GM, P&G, and
Philip Morris. It is their executives who now call the shots,
and you can go vote and protest and cheat the IRS all you want
to get back at them, but face it: You are no longer in charge.
You know it and they know it, and all that remains is the day
when it will be codified onto a piece of paper, the Declaration
of the Corporate States of America.
p138
The fear drug works like this: You are repeatedly told that bad,
scary people are going to kill you, so place all your trust in
us, your corporate leaders, and we will protect you. But since
we know what's best, don't question us if we want you to foot
the bill for our tax cut, or if we decide to slash your health
benefits or jack up the cost of buying a home. And if you don't
shut up and toe the line and work your ass off, we will sack you-and
then just try to find a new job in this economy, punk!
p139
In the manufacturing sector, for example, British CEOs make twenty-four
times as much as their average workers-the widest gap in Europe.
German CEOs only make fifteen times more than their employees,
while Swedish CEOs get thirteen times as much. But here in the
U.S., the average CEO makes 411 times the salaries of their blue-collar
workers.
p140
... in 1980, only 20 percent of Americans owned a share of stock.
Wall Street was the rich man's game and it was off-limits to the
average Joe and Jane. And for good reason-the average person saw
it for what it was, a game of risk, and when you are trying to
save every dollar so you can send the kids to college, games of
chance are not where you place your hard-earned money.
Near the end of the eighties, though,
the rich were pretty much tapped out with their excess profits
and could not figure out how to a make the market keep growing.
I don't know if it was the brainstorm of one genius at a brokerage
firm or the smooth conspiracy of all the well heeled, but the
game became, "Hey, let's convince the middle class to give
us their money and we can get even richer!"
Suddenly, it seemed like everyone I knew
jumped on the stock market bandwagon, putting their money in mutual
funds or opening up 401(k)s. They let their unions invest all
their pension money in stocks. Story after story ran in the media
about how everyday, working people were going to be able to retire
as near-millionaires! It was like a fever that infected everyone.
No one wanted to be left behind. Workers immediately cashed their
paychecks and called their broker to buy more stocks. Their broker!
Ooh, it felt so good . . . after working your ass off all week
at some miserable, thankless job, you could still feel that you
were a step ahead, and a head above, because you had your own
personal broker! Just like the rich man!
Soon, you didn't even want to be paid
in cash. Pay me in stock! Put it in my 401(k)! Call my broker!
Then, each night, you'd pore over the
stock charts in the newspaper as one of the all-finance-news-all-the-time
cable channels blared in the background. You bought computer programs
to map out your strategy. There were ups and downs but mostly
ups, lots of ups, and you could hear yourself saying, "My
stock's up 120 percent! My worth has tripled!" You eased
the pain of daily living imagining the retirement villa you would
buy some day or the sports car you could buy tomorrow if you wanted
to cash out now. No, don't cash out! It's only going to go higher!
Stay in for the long haul! Easy Street, here I come!
But it was a sham. It was all a ruse concocted
by the corporate powers-that-be who never had any intention of
letting you into their club. They just needed your money to take
them to that next level, the one that insulates them from ever
having to actually work for a living. They knew the Big Boom of
the 1990s couldn't last, so they needed your money to artificially
inflate the value of their companies so their stocks would reach
such a phantasmal price that, when it was time to cash out, they
would be set for life, no matter how bad the economy got.
And that's what happened. While the average
sucker was listening to all the blowhards on CNBC tell him that
he should buy even more stock, the ultrarich were quietly getting
out of the market, selling off the stocks of their own company
first. At the same time they were telling the public-and their
own loyal employees-that they should invest even more in the company
because forecasters were predicting even more growth, the executives
were dumping their own stocks as fast as they could.
In September 2002, Fortune magazine released
a staggering list of these corporate crooks who made off like
bandits while their company's stock prices had dropped 75 percent
or more between 1999 and 2002.
p143
[Between 1999 - 2002] over four trillion dollars was lost in the
stock market. Another trillion dollars in pension funds and university
endowments is now no longer there.
p144
After fleecing the American public and destroying the American
dream for most working people, how is it that, instead of being
drawn and quartered and hung at dawn at the city gates, the rich
got a big wet kiss from Congress in the form of a record tax break,
and no one says a word?
p144
Whatever benefits you may have now are going to get whittled down
to nothing. Forget about a pension, forget about Social Security,
forget about your kids taking care of you when you get old because
they are barely going to have the money to take care of themselves.
And don't even think about taking a vacation, because odds are
your job won't be there when you get back. You are expendable,
you have no rights, and, by the way, "what's a union?"
145
The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not
among them, not now and not ever. It's rigged so well that it
dupes many otherwise decent, sensible, hard-working people into
believing that it works for them, too. It holds the carrot so
close to their faces that they can smell it. And by promising
that one day they will be able to eat the carrot, the system drafts
an army of consumers and taxpayers who gladly, passionately, fight
for the rights of the rich, whether it means giving them billions
in tax breaks while they send their own children into dilapidated
schools, or whether it means sending those children off to die
in wars to protect the rich man's oil. Yes, that's right: The
workers/consumers will even sacrifice the lives of their own flesh
and blood if it means keeping the rich fat and happy because the
rich have promised them that some day they can join them at the
table!
p145
During the past twenty years, companies including Disney, Nestle,
Procter & Gamble, Dow Chemical, JP Morgan Chase, and WalMart
have been secretly taking out life insurance policies on their
low- and mid-level employees and then naming themselves-the Corporation-as
the beneficiary! That's right: When you die, the company-not your
survivors-gets to cash in. If you die on the job, all the better,
as most life insurance policies are geared to pay out more when
someone dies young. And if you live to a ripe old age, even long
after you've left the company, the company still gets to collect
on your death. The money does not go to help your grieving relatives
through hard times or to pay for the funeral and burial; it goes
to the corporate executives. And regardless of when you croak,
the company is able to borrow against the policy and deduct the
interest from its corporate taxes.
Many of these companies have set up a
system for the money to go to pay for executive bonuses, cars,
homes, trips to the Caribbean. Your death goes to helping make
your boss a very happy man sitting in his Jacuzzi on St. Barts.
And what does Corporate America privately
call this special form of life insurance?
Dead Peasants Insurance.
p148
Look, I don't know how to put it any gentler than to say that
these bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving,
smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced
with a whole new system that we control.
p149
... the two bosom buddies, George W. Bush (CEO of America), and
Kenneth Lay (Chairman of Enron, the seventh largest company in
the U.S.). Before its collapse, Houston-based Enron was raking
in a monstrous $100 billion a year, mostly by trading contracts
for commodities including oil, gas and electricity around the
world. The increasingly deregulated energy market was a gold mine
for the company, which was known for aggressive deal-making.
Lay, affectionately nicknamed "Kenny
Boy" by Bush, was never shy about public displays of friendship.
Enron donated $736,800 to Bush from 1993 on. Between 1999 and
2001, CEO Lay raised $100,000 for his pal, and personally contributed
$283,000 to the Republican National Committee. Lay also graciously
gave candidate Bush use of the Enron corporate jet during the
presidential campaign so he could fly his family around the country
and talk about his plan to "restore dignity to the White
House."
This friendship was truly a two-way street.
Bush interrupted an important campaign trip in April 2000 to fly
back to Houston to watch Lay throw out the first pitch at the
Astros opening day game at the new Enron Field. Who said men aren't
sentimental?
After Bush became president, he invited
Lay to come to Washington to personally conduct the interviews
of people who would serve in the Bush administration, primarily
for high-level positions in the Energy Department-the very regulatory
agency overseeing Enron.
Harvey Pitt-the chairman of the Securities
and Exchange Commission at the time-was a former lawyer for Enron's
accountant, Arthur Andersen. Lay and the Andersen team also worked
to make sure that accounting firms would be exempt from numerous
regulations and would not be held liable for any "funny bookkeeping"-arrangements
that would come in handy later.
The rest of Lay's time in Washington was
spent next door with his old buddy, Vice President Dick Cheney.
The two formed an "energy task force" responsible for
drafting the country's new "energy policy," a policy
that could affect virtually all of Enron's business dealings.
Cheney and/or his aides met with Enron executives at least six
times during this period, but no one knows the full extent of
the meetings because Cheney has refused to make public the records
of those meetings. Meanwhile, Enron's wheeler-dealers were cooking
up schemes to manipulate an energy crisis in California that would
end up adding millions to their own pockets.
Does any of this ring a bell? You may
have forgotten, with all the military distractions that have taken
the focus off of Enron, that this was one of the greatest corporate
scandals in the history of the United States. And it was committed
by one of the "president's" closest friends. I'm sure
Bush thanks God every night, for the War on Terror!, 9/11, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and the Axis of Evil all but assured that Enron would disappear
from the news and from the minds of the voting public. This scandal
should have resulted in Bush's early impeachment and removal from
our White House, but fate often has a way of working in Bush's
favor and letting him escape the consequences of his actions.
p151
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Enron gave nearly
$6 million to the Republican and Democratic parties since 1989,
with 74 percent going to the Republicans. This meant that when
Congress began investigating Enron at the beginning of 2002, 212
of the 248 members of the House and Senate on the investigating
committees had taken campaign contributions l from Enron or its
crooked accountant, Arthur Andersen.
p151
By the fall of 2001, the pyramid scheme that was Enron imploded.
And while the rest of the country was in a state of shock over
9/11, Enron executives were busy bailing out, selling stocks,
and shredding documents.
And a national crisis didn't stop them
from reaching out to their buddies in the Bush administration.
Calls were placed by Enron executives to Commerce Secretary Don
Evans and then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, seeking help as
the company was on the brink of collapse.
Evans and O'Neill said they did nothing
when Enron told them of the company's shell game and impending
failure, and the administration proudly used that as evidence
that no special favors were granted to one of the president's
biggest supporters.
That's right-they were proud of doing
nothing while millions of Americans were swindled. And the fleecing
was made possible to a large degree by the Bush administration's
willingness to let Enron run amok.
p153
When Enron officially went bankrupt in December 2001, Wall Street
pundits and investors throughout the country were stunned.
But "bankrupt" has a different
meaning for Enron's top executives than it does for the rest of
us. The company's bankruptcy filing in 2001 shows 144 top executives
received a total of $310 million in compensation and another $435
million in stock. That's an average of over $2 million each in
compensation and another $3 million in stock.
And while the big guns counted their millions,
thousands of Enron workers lost their jobs and much of their savings.
Enron had established three savings plans for its employees and
at the time of the bankruptcy, 20,000 of them were members of
these plans. Sixty percent of the plans were made up of Enron
stock. When the stock evaporated to pennies from an August 2000
high of $90, these employees were left with next to nothing. Losses
in 401(k) plans totaled more than $1 billion. J
p154
The only true value your life has to the wealthy is that they
need your vote every election day in order to get the politicians
they've funded into office. They can't do that by themselves.
This damnable system of ours that allows for the country to be
run by the will of the people is a rotten deal for them as they
represent only 1 percent of "the people." You can't
get tax cuts for the rich passed when the rich don't have enough
votes to pull it off. This is why they truly hate democracy: because
it puts them at the distinct disadvantage of being in the smallest
of the smallest minorities. So they need to somehow dupe or buy
off 50 percent of the people to get the majority they need to
run the show. That is no simple task. The easy part is buying
the politicians, first with campaign donations, then with special
favors and perks once in office, and then with a goodpaying consulting
job once out of office. And the best way to ensure that your politician
always wins is to give money to both sides, which is what nearly
every corporate PAC does.
Fooling the majority of the voters into
voting for the rich man's candidate (or candidates) is much harder,
but they've proven it can be done. Getting the media to repeat
your words as if they were truth, with hardly a question being
asked, is one method. As we've seen, scaring people works well,
too. As does religion. The rich have thus had a hardcore army
of conservatives, right-wingers, and Christian Coalition-types
to act as their foot soldiers. It's an odd marriage of sorts because
the rich, by and large, are neither conservative nor liberal,
neither right nor left, nor are they devout Christians or Jews.
Their real political party is called Greed,
and their religion is Capitalism. But they are more than happy
to see millions of poor whites ) and even millions more middle-class
people cheerfully pulling the lever in the voting booth for the
candidates who will only screw I these poor-white and middle-class
people once they're in office.
Dude,
where's my country?
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