Michael Moore Tells Wisconsin Teachers “America Isn’t Broke”

Jon Stew­art put it nice­ly. Now film­mak­er Michael Moore takes the gloves off. Vis­it­ing Madi­son, Wis­con­sin this Sat­ur­day, he told the crowd “Amer­i­ca isn’t broke.” Rather, the mon­ey that used to run the coun­try sim­ply got siphoned out of the sys­tem and put into unpro­duc­tive Wall Street accounts. Strong words, but if you con­sid­er that most US cor­po­ra­tions pay no US tax­es, that bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­agers pay far low­er tax­es than the rest of you, that we’re pre­serv­ing the unsus­tain­able Bush tax breaks that over­whelm­ing­ly ben­e­fit the extreme­ly wealthy, then you start to think about our nation­al deficits and Wis­con­sin’s bat­tles with teach­ers in a dif­fer­ent light.

Make no mis­take about it. The deficits are a real prob­lem. And any tru­ly exces­sive perks for pub­lic work­ers should be cut. But the mid­dle class should­n’t bear the sole brunt of the nation­al sac­ri­fice. And, so far, that’s all we see. Main Street took the hit in 2008 while Wall Street walked. And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing again…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jon Stew­art: The Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)