I recently got the chance to chat with Michael Moore about the DVD release of Capitalism: A Love Story, as well as his thoughts on the latest political issues of the day. Here's the interview.
DA: Michael, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. First thing, your movie Capitalism just got released on DVD a week ago, on the 9th, and you mentioned in a diary the day that it was released that the extra features were activism tools. I was wondering what you meant by that.
MM: The extras on the DVD are various people who explain different things that we could do to structure things a bit differently in terms of how our economy is run. That’s probably a bit vague, but --
DA: Sure, that’s fine. So it’s basically having people telling other people what they can do to help kind of fight this process.
MM: How to develop your business as a worker-owned business. What a city like Flint or Detroit can do to create a urban environment that is not profit-oriented. Most of the DVD extras have that as the main theme. How should we do things, not with profit motive in mind, but what’s best for the people.
DA: I see, I see. This film really takes on a lot of the abuses of the financial sector and financial sector reform is one of the things that Democrats are going to have to consider as soon as health care reform is done. Did you see Senator Dodd’s proposal that he put out yesterday about his financial sector reform bill?
MM: Yes, I did.
DA: And what are your thoughts?
MM: Weak. Ineffective. More of the same. And the typical thing that Democrats often do is to create a gentler version of something that the Republicans would actually propose. So it was no surprise that with Shelby, the Republican from Alabama, said that he agreed with about 80 percent of it. I mean, that should be the first clue, if a Republican says they agree with 80 percent of your bill, then you probably got about 80 percent of it wrong.
DA: What is not in there that should be in there, in your view?
MM: Well, there’s no -- Paul Volcker -- the so-called Volcker Rule to prevent "too big to fail"? It’s in there. So that’s one of the primary qualities of the crash, and Dodd, yesterday, he’s sitting in front of the microphone and said this has never been what we have, too big to fail. Well, that’s not true. Unless you put actual specific limits and caps on how big they can get, you know, Dodd says it’s not going to happen again, because there will be provisions in there to supply more funds for something to prevent them to fail. In other words, just meaning more bailout money. We’ve done the worst thing possible as far as Wall Street. It’s okay, if you play fast and loose with our money, we’ll give you more money if you lose that money.
DA: Right. One of the things that isn’t in there that I know a lot of progressives have been clamoring for is some sort of reinstitution of Glass-Steagall. Is there any hope for anything like that, and is that something that you would agree with and support?
MM: Absolutely. In fact, that’s all Dodd’s bill should have said. Let’s go reinstitute Glass-Steagall. End of story. Because of Glass-Steagall, from World War II to the late ’80s, we did not have one single banking disaster. And then as Reagan started to take regulations away, first the Savings & Loan crisis, then Clinton takes more regulations away, then we had the hedge fund meltdown in the late ’90s. And then of course Bush came in and never met a regulation that he didn’t want to massacre. And we ended up with a complete crash in September of 08. So, you know, until we go back to having these tight regulations on the banks, and then the watchdog agency that Dodd has in his bill, it’s part of the Fed. Excuse me?
DA: Right. And that was going to be my next question, which is, you know, we technically already have regulators, except the regulators keep on ending up being captured by the institutions that they’re supposed to regulate. How do we avoid that problem?
MM: I don’t like thinking short term. I mean, the long-term answer is that we should not have an economic system that’s set up the way that it’s set up now because so much effort and money has to be spent on trying to keep the thieves at bay, and it’s the thieves who will always offer more money to those who are supposed to be watching them. Then how are we the people ever protected?
DA: Sure. Speaking of that, your film exposed some absolutely horrific practices. Things like airline pilots, major airline pilots, being on food stamps, and major corporations taking out dead peasants insurance on their low-level employees, and I was wondering if you’ve noticed any substantive action or substantive changes that have resulted from the sunlight that you’ve shone on these issues.
MM: Well, Chris Dodd, a few weeks after the film came out, announced that he wasn’t running for re-election. On the opening day of the film, when somebody asked me, "What would you like to see happen?", I said, "Well, one of the short term things I’d like to see happen is Chris Dodd not run for re-election." And I got calls from certain Democrats, asking me to quit saying that. So, you know, that happened. We now see Elizabeth Warren just about every other day, which is a good thing. She plays a critical role in the film. Then there’s all these little things. The FAA came out with their report about pilots, these regional pilots, for how they’re treated. In the long run, these are just band-aids. We need to be talking about the larger issue here.
DA: Sure. Speaking of what’s going on currently right now, health insurance reform is something you know a little bit about, given your previous filmography, and I was wondering about your take on the current situation. There’s a little bit of a divide where a lot of people are saying, "Just pass the damn bill right now." Other people still want to vote against it from the left. I was wondering what your take on this was.
MM: Well, it’s complicated because at this point, were Obama to lose the vote on this, he would be pretty paralyzed, at least for this session of Congress, getting anything done. So the reasons to vote for it are that, the fact that the health insurance companies hate the bill -- that's a good reason to vote for it -- and it has some provisions in it that are really quite good. Allowing young people to stay on their current health insurance until they’re 26 years old.
DA: Right.
MM: But it is not health care reform in any sense of the word. It’s like health care caulk. Health care fixer-upper.
DA: Right.
MM: You know, plugging some holes and doing a couple little good things, that’s not universal health care. And that’s what we elected Barack Obama and the Congress to do. To get us, you know, universal health care. So that’s what they wanted. The majority said they wanted that. So that’s pretty much how I feel about it. I think that -- I don’t like the bill. I think the more we settle, and the lower and lower we settle, the farther away we get from where we need to be. I’m not a politician. I’m not elected to public office. And people like me need to be stating exactly what we do need. We need a single-payer system that removes profit motive from health care. Pure and simple. And if we had strong leadership who could explain that to the American public, I know the people would go for it. But it’s never been explained to them. No one really understands it. If you show people evidence they’ll have more money in their bank account next year, with a single-payer system, than with this so-called health care reform, they would go for it.
DA: Right. Switching back to the financial sector and the activism, in your own words, what are the top things, just a couple of the top things, that people can do right now, the actionable steps they could even take tomorrow, to help in their own personal lives and maybe, as a collective action, something systemically, to correct this type of imbalance that we have right now. What would you encourage people to do right now?
MM: Well, first of all, I think everyone should commit to taking five minutes out of every day and doing something for their country. People ask me, "Are you a filmmaker, or are you an activist?" And I say, well, "activist" is a redundant term because if I’m a citizen in a democracy, it automatically implies I’m an activist. Because if everyone is inactive, then it’s not a democracy. So every day, people need to think about -- what do I -- what congressman do I need to call? Who do I need to send a letter to? What letter to the editor do I need to write? Maybe I need to go on this blog and respond. Maybe I need to a tweet out to all my friends about this, that or whatever. I think that people out there should be thinking about running for office themselves. Why are we leaving it up to the wrong people all the time? People need to give serious consideration to "Yes, I could do this job. And I’m going to devote myself and my life to it." So, those are two things that come to mind that I think people can easily do. Where did all the activism go that got Barack Obama elected?
DA: Interesting question. I don’t know the answer to that myself. Something that Daily Kos readers are always interested in: when did you first find out about Daily Kos and what prompted you to start posting here?
MM: Oh wow. That’s a very good question. You want me to think back to my very first --
DA: If you can. If you can remember what that was about and how you found out and what prompted that, if you can remember.
MM: Let’s get back to that. I will remember. I remember my first diary. Was it a blog, or a post?
DA: A common problem.
MM: So let me, let’s get back to that one. Is that okay?
DA: Yeah, sure, absolutely. Yeah. Whatever you remember as being your first post or whatever it was about. I don’t have it up in front of me. I was wondering if you remembered what that was about or how long ago it was, or how you first found out about Daily Kos.
MM: Ah, jeez. You made me change my channel here in my head. Let me just rack my brain. Move on to another question here and I’ll come back to it.
DA: Okay, sure. I did want to put you a bit on the spot a little bit and ask you on the health care thing: If you were the current congressman from Flint, Michigan, would you vote for the bill on health care?
MM: No.
DA: No, you would not?
MM: I would not. Well, if I were to vote for it, in order to -- if I were on Air Force one, instead of Congressman Kucinich [Monday], to President Obama, this is what I would have said to him: I vote for this bill if you will stand beside me when we explain and admit that it’s not health care reform, it’s not universal health care, and that you’re committed to that, you’re committed to universal health care with a public option, and as soon as we pass it, we’re going to get to work on that. We get everybody covered in this country. We’re not going to leave 17 million people out. And we’re going to remove profit motives from our health care system. You commit to that, and that we’re going to work on that on the morning after this bill passes, then I’ll vote for it.
DA: I see, I see. Any insights into what your next project might be? I know that a lot of people, when your movies come up, they always wonder what the next thing is, what the next issue you’re going to tackle? I was wondering if you had any insights into that.
MM: Uh, no. I don’t have any, and I am thinking about a lot of things right now. But right now, my focus is on just trying to be a good citizen here and participate in the fight to get real health care reform passed, put regulations back on the banks on Wall Street, and do what I can to convince the Democrats to change their tactics and strategy so that they don’t get an ass-whipping in November.
DA: Michael, thank you so much for taking the time.