Take Your Bank Before I Pay You Out

There's this filmmaker named Michael Moore. He's famous for making bold documentaries challenging government actions and other controversial topics like terrorism (Fahrenheit 9/11), gun violence (Bowling for Columbine), and health care (Sicko). But his main focus is on economics - namely, the downfall of the American economy.

Today, I watched his most recent documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. It followed Moore as he examined the effects of a money-driven society on people's lives - specifically, what happens when you can't pay back bank loans. Answer: they take your house. Or whatever it is you have left. But the real kicker came in after we watch a family clean out their house and take their things to the local dump (the bank could have the house stripped for them, but they offered the family $1,000 to do it themselves). After they had burned the last few wooden armoires, the son remarked that at least he still has his hobby - flying. He aspires to be a pilot - something I've always viewed as an honorable profession. However, almost as a cruel stroke of irony, Moore's documentary goes on to confess that pilots are some of the lowest paid workers in the US. Which is absolutely ridiculous, considering the about of pressure placed on their profession. But they're seriously only paid a starting salary of around $20,000 a year; it's common for rookie pilots to live on food stamps for a while. It takes years to reach the high 20ks.

I always thank pilots at the end of a flight just because it's polite. I'm going to start shaking their hands.

Anyway. That was just a side fact, no one's clearly to blame. But a couple of other things addressed in the documentary caught my attention. Like, there was a woman who decorated cakes at Wal-Mart - she suddenly died of a severe asthma attack. Her family, of course, was left with hospital bills and funeral expenses - and was infuriated to find out that Wal-Mart had taken out a life insurance policy on her, but named themselves as the beneficiaries. Wal-Mart got $81,000. The family got more bills. This same situation happened to a family in Houston - the husband worked for Amegy Bank and was diagnosed with cancer. Amegy got over $1.5 million when he died. And it's perfectly legal. Something called "Dead Peasants" policies that corporations take out on their employees - some even estimate what percentage of their workers will die every year and factor it into the annual budget.

And then there's the thing with the government. On September 18, 2008, there was this huge financial crisis. Before then, everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. But all of a sudden, that Thursday morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave Congress a five-page document demanding a $700 billion bail-out plan, or all hell would break loose. The White House was quick to encourage Congress to sign the plan immediately - which conveniently included a clause saying it was not to be reviewed against any legal measures to save time. Eventually, a deal was cut.

A few things are wrong with what happened that day. First, I don't know about you, but I had no idea that happened. As far as I was concerned, 9/18/08 was Bailey's 17th birthday. It was a Thursday. I must have even watched the news that evening at dinner like I do every other night. But I definitely didn't hear about this. Actually, here are the headlines that ran that day on a democratic news site. I've only been able to find a couple of very carefully worded headlines on very specific sites. You'd think that news of a national crisis would have made it to the general public. However, the government keeping information from the public, I can understand - they're in a position of power. But the government keeping information from themselves? I mean, Congress was straight blindsighted by that bailout plan.

This probably isn't the way things are supposed to work in the US. So here's what I think: obviously, we're supposed to have a democracy - meaning the people have power. And the government knows this, as well as the big-shot corporations. And so they'll do anything to keep the public from being educated on behind-the-curtain actions - if we don't know there's anything wrong, we won't try to change anything. But not everyone here is bad - some of the people involved in these actions are as in the dark as we are. Moore interviewed someone in the government banking industry who said that there's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in place. They don't ask the government what they're going to do with the money, and so the government doesn't tell them.

When Franklin Roosevelt was in office, he proposed a "Second Bill of Rights" in a State of the Union address. It has also been called an Economic Bill of Rights. It outlines basic "rights" - I put that in quotations because, while they're such basic things, there are people who unjustly live without them. Things like a job, health care, adequate income, and education. FDR died a year or so later, and no action was ever taken on his proposition.