Mike's Election Guide

by Michael Moore

  The new president needs to ban all ads other than the “Coming Attractions” in our nation’s cinemas. If you want to help him with a head start, let your local theater know that you did not come here to watch TV. And let the advertisers know, too. Go to www.captiveaudience.org to join the protest movement.

  After enacting this ban, the new president should ensure that no bag of popcorn costs more than three bucks, that people talking on cellphones and texting on BlackBerries will be waterboarded in the theater lobby, and that the kid popping the corn won’t be the one running the $100,000 projector.

  6.Defeat Al Qaeda and the Next Generation of America-Haters by Building Wells.

  Let’s begin by admitting there is no way to stop some crazy lunatics from blowing things up. They have always done that, and they always will do that. No amount of taking my shampoo from me at the airport X-ray machine is going to stop them.

  By the way, Homeland Security, if you happen to be reading this because the publisher slipped you an advance copy in return for some unmentionable “favor,” here’s a little tip: The next terrorist attack is not going to be on an airplane. These terrorists may be nuts, but they do not have Tourette’s. One thing I know about them, they’re really big into “Been There, Done That.” They don’t like to repeat themselves. Check out their pattern:

  KENYA AND TANZANIA: CAR BOMB.

  USS COLE: BOAT BOMB.

  9/11: AIRPLANES AS BOMBS.

  BALI: NIGHTCLUB BOMB.

  MADRID: TRAIN BOMB.

  LONDON: BUS AND SUBWAY BOMBS.

  Now that they’ve dispensed with all the major forms of transportation-as-weapons (assuming they have no Segway or wheelchair attacks planned), what’s next?

  Why wait to find out? Why not start by asking ourselves a question: “Why us?”

  Why are they targeting us? What did we do to them besides help prop up their Arab dictatorships with weapons sales and military bases on their soil? Hey, we need the oil! You can’t get all the neighborhood kids to the soccer game in a Chevette.

  Is it because, as George Bush says, they’re jealous of “our way of life”? Well, why don’t they go after Sweden or France? They have a way-better quality of life than we do.

  I guess it’s pointless trying to figure out why someone wants to kill you. What isn’t pointless is trying to prevent them from recruiting the next generation of America-haters. Here’s a plan for the next president to dry up the growing group of enlistees of third-world poor who seem eager to harm us.

  Dig wells.

  Tonight, there are over one billion people on this planet who do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. Two billion people do not have a sanitary sewer system of any kind where they live. One third of the planet! These two tragedies are the number one cause of illness, disease, and death for the people of the third world.

  And what is so terribly wrong about this is that we have the money and the know-how already in place to see that each and every one of them can have access to clean water and sanitation. This is not rocket science. This is not some plague for which we have no cure. It is simple, cheap, and doable. The ability to do it has been around for decades. Instead, we have let the poor of the earth suffer unnecessarily. Why? How do we answer for this?

  It has been very easy for the bin Ladens of this world to point the finger at us and say, “Look what they take from us—and look at how we get nothing in return!” America has only 5 percent of the world’s population and yet we grab and use 25 percent of its resources. Did we think no one would notice?

  To top it off, we cut deals with many of these countries’ leaders who are already oppressing their own people. And the oppressed in these countries know that.

  Enter George W. Bush and his oilmen/henchmen. Mix that in with everything else and it’s like we’ve handed those who would hurt us the best recruitment ad around.

  Our new president, whose family, in part, comes from the Third World, could turn this all around with one simple decree:

  “From this point forward, the United States of America is committed to being a good neighbor on this planet. We will prove that by starting with this pledge: We will guarantee that every citizen on earth has access to clean drinking water and sanitation by the year 2020. Your babies will no longer die of dysentery. Your elderly will get to live beyond their current life expectancy of 46. Your life will be better. And this will all come to you courtesy of your friends in the USA.”

  Not possible, you say? Too expensive? How much do you think it costs to dig a well in a Third World village? $10 per person. That’s right. Ten bucks. Folks, we can do this. As for the labor, it’s a much better use of our young people’s time than sending them to invade countries for things that don’t belong to us.

  And throughout the poorest parts of this planet, where hatred of America is growing, every one of these wells and sewer systems will have the following words inscribed on them:

  “Built for the people of this village as a gift from the people of the United States of America.”

  If we want, we can add an asterisk: “Please don’t hurt us anymore.”

  7.From Now On, When You Dial 4-1-1, You Will Be Talking to Someone Who Lives in Your Town.

  Hey, now that’s a novel idea.

  When I was a child, before there was 4-1-1, you just dialed “0” for the operator. A nice lady would answer and she would say, “Operator.” And then you could ask her anything, from “What time is it?” to “Get me the police, there’s an axe murderer in my bedroom!” She was always there for you. If you asked for Billy Tomaszeski’s number down the block, she would ask how Billy’s mother was doing. If you couldn’t remember which street the Woolworth’s was on, she’d know ’cause she just bought some stockings there this morning. If you asked for the number of a place on “Gratiot and Livernois,” she wouldn’t ask you to spell either of those streets because she lived there and knew exactly where it was.

  Many of you have never lived under an information system such as this. The greedy phone companies merged, broke-up, then merged again into something I have no idea what or where it is, who runs it, who works there, or if they are even still on this planet. The idea that there is anyone in your town who works for the phone company is laughable.

  Replaced by robots, computers, and way-too-happy workers in Calcutta, the 4-1-1 information system is where the real joke is. By the time you’ve spelled and re-spelled the name for them, by the time you’ve explained that you’re in Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine, and after getting a “supervisor” on the line who finally finds the number for you, you could have driven over to the guy’s house you were calling and gotten the number from him in person.

  Just like with anything labeled “customer service” these days, the whole point of this exercise of calling a number for help—only to get NO HELP and have your brain turn into a rototiller of rage—is to wear you down to the point that you will toss the broken electronic device you are calling about into the trash and go out and buy another one. If they were actually there to help you, then your device might get fixed and you’d be all content and happy and they wouldn’t make any money.

  And that, sir, is not the point of Capitalism. Capitalism is designed to have you in a constant state of unhappiness, fear, and anxiety—and living life in a brain-dead stupor. How else can you be convinced to buy! buy! buy!? And after what you’ve bought doesn’t bring you happiness, how dare you call customer service and expect us to make you happy! Get back to work, peasant! Work means freedom! To shop! God forbid you should ever lose your job. No money = certain death. And death is really unhappy.

  Our new president needs to issue this decree: “From this day forward, when you dial 4-1-1, you will be talking to someone who lives within 20 miles of where you live. They will help you. They know how to spell Pascagoula.”

  (As for improving customer service at Best Buy, I’m sorry, eliminating capitalism is not one of these ten decrees.)

  8.Make Soc
ial Security Solvent Until the 22nd Century by Having the Rich Pay Their Fair Share.

  For many years now, the Republican elite has been on a singular mission. That mission has been to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The thinking is that by eliminating government programs that help the poor or disadvantaged, they, the rich, will pay less taxes.

  That made sense to a majority of Americans, and so we have had a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. Why would so many Americans approve of this strategy of being so cruel to their fellow, less-fortunate citizens? It’s a unique thing about us—we really, REALLY hate the riffraff, the destitute, the losers. They’re like lepers to us. We don’t want them around us, certainly not in our neighborhoods where they will bring down our property values. We don’t want to have to look at them on the street corner. We don’t want their kids going to school with our little precious ones.

  But mostly we turn away because, in them, we see the possibility of our future. We know that deep down, there but for the grace of God, that could be us. We know how cruel our system of capitalism is, winners and losers—more losers than winners—and we know that we somehow lucked out and got to scrape by on the nicer side of town.

  Once the idea of taking away from the poor caught on—so much so that the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton joined in on the dismantling—the Republicans tried, bit by bit, to close down the federal government. They convinced Congress and the president to privatize everything, from taking the census to running the mess hall on an army base.

  And the cutbacks resulted in a huge tax savings for the rich—$410 billion since 2001. But by privatizing services—handing these jobs over to companies who had a fiduciary responsibility to make a bigger and bigger profit each and every year—it has ended up costing more money, and in many cases, not getting the job done half as well. When you hand an ice truck over to someone who doesn’t know where New Orleans is, and the ice truck is found still driving around Maine two weeks later, somebody is paying for this bill. That would be you.

  And when they start a war in order to grab some oil, and that war ends up costing $2 billion a week for five-plus long years, well, the boys at the country club ain’t gonna be paying for that, either. Instead, the government just borrows the money from the rich man and then expects YOU to pay interest to him for the next 20 years.

  Yet so much of the middle class wants to keep voting for Republicans because they promise to keep the poor in check—when all the time the ones getting the real body check are the middle class. The poor—don’t worry about them. They’ll survive, they always have. And sooner or later, as history shows, they’ll get fed up and come looking for us.

  A nice gate around the neighborhood, anyone?

  So here we are with the biggest spending administration in the history of America. They have run up a record debt, and by the time you read this it may be in Chinese ’cause that’s who owns our ass now. The Commies won! Long live Chairman Mao! The same people who told us to hate the Commies are the ones who went into business with them to screw us. What dopes we are. Embarrassing.

  But enough good citizens have caught on. The Republican party—a true axis of evil that figured out 30 years ago the way to rule America was to bring together the religious right with Wall Street—has now realized that their days are numbered. So in desperation, the Republicans and John McCain are once again pushing the lie that the other party is the “tax and spend” party. And they are back to proposing—ever so gingerly—that we must move toward privatizing Social Security. They reach into their bag of fear tricks and pull out chestnuts like this:

  “Social Security will be broke by 2017! Government has failed you! Let us invest it in the stock market!”

  Well, they’re right. Social Security will be busted sooner or later. BUT NOT BECAUSE THE MONEY ISN’T AVAILABLE.

  It will be broke because the rich and the near-rich DO NOT PAY ONE DIME OF SOCIAL SECURITY TAX ON ANY INCOME OVER $102,000!

  Yes, you read that line right. I’ll wait a moment while you read it again.

  Social Security will be broke because the rich and the near-rich DO NOT PAY ONE DIME OF SOCIAL SECURITY TAX ON ANY INCOME OVER $102,000!

  Got it? Anyone who makes more than $102,000 a year pays NO SOCIAL SECURITY TAX on anything they make above that. Zip. Zero. Nada.

  But that’s not the deal you get. YOU pay Social Security tax on 100 percent of your income! It is entirely taxed at the full 6.2 percent for Social Security.

  But the upper middle class and the rich are NOT taxed at 100 percent of their income. That flat tax they love to wax on about? That’s for YOU, not them. And if you’re making $40,000 a year, and you have to give up 6.2 percent of your income to Social Security—no deductions or excuses allowed—that is a big bite of your income.

  But if a person who makes a million dollars a year doesn’t have to pay the 6.2 percent tax on 90 PERCENT of his income, well, the pain he feels is no worse than a mosquito bite.

  And here’s the rub—and the Big Lie of Omission—that they don’t want you to ever hear:

  If all Americans—including the rich—had to pay the same 6.2 percent on all their income into Social Security, THERE WOULD BE ENOUGH MONEY IN SOCIAL SECURITY UNTIL ALMOST THE BEGINNING OF THE 22ND CENTURY!

  Instead of ever telling you this, they have filled you with fear that your Social Security will not be there when you retire. They have you convinced that when you are old you are going to be shit-outta-luck. They want you scared now, while you are young, so you will work your nose to the grindstone, work two jobs if necessary, and behave yourself so you don’t lose that job. And don’t ever forget about all those Democrats who are going to spend all your money!

  Well, there is a quick and simple fix to make sure the elderly and retired don’t suffer—and that’s by making every American pay that 6.2 percent tax. No exclusions.

  And when that happens all Americans can rest assured that there will be funds for them in their old age.

  An act of Congress and a stroke of the pen can make Social Security solvent today—and for the rest of the century.

  9.Update the Pledge of Allegiance.

  As a child in Catholic school, each day began with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. I understood why we were praying. There were tests to take and good grades to get, and a prayer to the Old Man might cause Him to look upon me with a smidgen of mercy.

  But when it came to the Pledge of Allegiance, I was confused. Why was I pledging my loyalty to a flag? I knew that the flag was supposed to be a symbol, but a symbol of what? Freedom, democracy, good roads? Ok, I was for that. A nation founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves where women couldn’t vote for the first 140 years? Hmmm. I wasn’t so sure about that. Also, wasn’t idolizing a flag in direct contradiction to the commandments of the Guy we were just praying to (something like, “Thou Shalt Not Honor Any Idols, Symbols or Golden Calves Other Than Me”)?

  Then one day in school, while pondering the relic bones of the patron saint of floor enamel, I came up with a solution to this conundrum. But first, a little history.

  Far from it being some sort of loyalty oath invented by witch hunters looking to round up the rebellious heathens, the Pledge of Allegiance was in fact written by an American socialist, Francis Bellamy, in 1892. Bellamy was also a Baptist minister. He preached radical sermons like “Jesus, the Socialist.” He was a deep believer and supporter of his cousin, Edward Bellamy, who wrote Looking Backward, a socialist utopian novel describing the 21st century as a workers’ paradise in which people earn equal pay, work reduced hours, and retire early with benefits. It was one of the most popular American novels of its time, selling more than a million copies.

  Francis Bellamy believed that good citizenship in a true democracy was the best way to emulate what Jesus preached. Bellamy had the Pledge published in The Youth’s Companion, a popular children’s magazine at the time. He asked President Benjamin Harriso
n to issue a proclamation in favor of the Pledge, and on Columbus Day, 1892, 12 million school children across America recited the Pledge in school.

  This was the original wording of the Pledge:

  “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

  Not bad, simple, to the point. But like all good ideas, some people just can’t leave well enough alone. In 1924, “my flag” was replaced with “the flag of the United States of America.” Then schools began requiring all students to recite the Pledge every day—and those who didn’t were often punished (the perfect way to encourage love of one’s country).

  But in 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that forcing everyone to recite the Pledge was unconstitutional and that students could opt out of saying it.

  In 1954, though, at the height of the Commie scare, the Knights of Columbus and other religious groups got Congress to add the words “under God” so as to distinguish America from all those godless communist countries. The new improved Pledge, which remains to this day, thus went: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

  It is now more than 50 years later, with a lot of who we are and what we’ve done that’s flowed under the bridge. Over 80 percent of our nation now thinks the country is “on the wrong track.” More than half of the world’s citizens do not hold us in high esteem. Something needs to change.

  Let’s start with a new Pledge of Allegiance for the 21st century. It would go like this:

  “I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH WE STAND, ONE NATION, PART OF ONE WORLD, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.”

  Not bad, eh? Kinder, gentler, and in recognition that we are in the same boat with everyone else on this planet.

  And let’s leave it up to God if He wants to bless us. It really is His call—one I’m sure He’ll make based on our behavior—isn’t it?