For an excellent discussion of why the Democrats should forget about the South and instead concentrate on the Mountain West and shoring up support in traditionally blue states, see Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, Thomas F. Schaller (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006; with a new Afterword in 2008).
The Union of Concerned Scientists “World Wide Nuclear Arsenals” fact sheet, July 2007, reports that the United States has 10,000 nuclear warheads and Russia has 15,000. Together, these two countries have more than 96 percent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal.The information can be accessed online at www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/worldwide-nuclear-arsenals.html.
Little League Baseball changed its rules for pitches in all divisions beginning with the 2007 season. The pitch limit varies by age, and the more pitches a player throws the longer he must rest before pitching again. For complete rules see “Little League Implements New Rule to Protect Pitchers’ Arms,” published on August 25, 2006, and posted on the site www.littleleague.org/media/pitch_count_08–25–06.asp.
2. HOW TO ELECT JOHN MCCAIN
A full transcript of Barack Obama’s June 4, 2008, speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is available from National Public Radio, “Transcript: Obama’s Speech at AIPAC,” June 4, 2008; www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432.
For a full transcript of John Kerry’s denial of having seen Fahrenheit 9/11, go to http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/08/lkl.00.html. The interview aired on CNN’s Larry King Live on July 8, 2004.
3. TEN PRESIDENTIAL DECREES FOR HIS FIRST TEN DAYS
Don’t believe me that government-run healthcare systems cost less and provide better care than our screwed up market-based system? Then maybe you will believe the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Its OECD Health Data 2007, published in July 2007 (http://miranda.sourceoecd.org/vl=2536797/cl=15/nw=1/rpsv/figures_2007/en/page2.htm), reported on the health spending and resources for all member countries, including Canada, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.S. spends 15.3 percent of its GDP on health care, as opposed to Canada (9.8%), France (11.1%), Sweden (9.1%), and the United Kingdom (8.3%). No OECD member country spends a larger percentage of their GDP on healthcare than the United States.
The World Health Organization, “World Health Statistics 2008—Mortality and Burden of Disease,” tracks the life expectancy at birth for countries around the world. The life expectancy for someone living in the United States is 78, compared to 79 in the United Kingdom, and 81 in Canada, France, and Sweden. See pp. 36–44 of www.who.int/whosis/whostat/2008/en/index.html.
The Library of Congress reports that HR 676 has 90 co-sponsors: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110: h.r.00676. For more information on John Conyer’s HR 676, United States National Health Insurance Act, go to www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php, a site run by Physicians for a National Health Program.
For information on who pays for drug research, see the following sources: The Truth About Drug Companies, Marcia Angell, Random House: New York, 2004; New York Times, “Drug Companies Profit From Research Supported by Taxpayers,” Jeff Gerth and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Apri1 23, 2000; www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/042300hth-drugs2.html; Frontline: The Other Drug War, Interview with Marcia Angell, PBS.com: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/other/interviews/angell.html. Marcia Angell is quoted on Frontline as saying:
The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is their incredible PR and their nerve.
In fact, if you look at where the original research comes from on which new drugs are based, it tends to be from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], from the academic medical centers, and from foreign academic medical centers. Studies of this, looking at the seminal research on which drug patents are based, have found that about 15 percent of the basic research papers, reporting the basic research, came from industry. That’s just 15 percent.
The other 85 percent came from NIH-supported work carried out in American academic medical centers. In one study, 30 percent came from foreign academic medical centers. So what we know about the numbers indicates that the foreign academic medical centers are responsible for more new drug discoveries than the industry itself.
All tax data for comparing French and American taxes is from “OECD Taxing Wages Statistics 2007.” The figures cited are for a two-earner married couple, one at 100 percent of average earnings and the other at 67 percent of average earnings, with two children. The figures are based on total tax payments less cash transfers, which the OECD defines as “employees’ social security contributions and personal income tax less transfer payments as a percentage of gross wage earnings.” Without taking cash transfers into account, the tax rate is higher for French families with children, but because the government transfers money back to the families, subtracting the amount of the cash transfer from the total tax bill is a more accurate reflection of actual costs.
According to the French Embassy in Washington, DC, the French social security code puts no limitation on the number of allowable paid sick days per year, except in the case of long-term illness, which is generally considered to be between 1 and 2 months. In that case, the employer does have the right to begin taking steps to lay a person off. At that point the social security system picks up the bill and supports the ill person.
My primary source for material on the history of high fructose corn syrup is Greg Critzer’s Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2003), which should be required reading in all high schools. Additional sources on HFCS include www.grist.org, “ADM, high-fructose corn syrup, and ethanol,” Tom Philpott, May 10, 2006, http://gristmill .grist.org/story/2006/5/10/135951/485; New York Times, “Seeing Sugar’s Future in Fuel,” Clifford Kraus, October 18, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/business/18sugar.html?pagewanted=1&—r=1; New York Times Magazine, “The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity,” Michael Pollan, October 12, 2003, http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=52; and www.cato.org, “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare, James Bovard, September 26, 1995, www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html. For additional information on the number of people without clean drinking water or basic sewer systems, see WHO, “Drinking Water, Sanitation, Health and Disease,” www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/mdg1/en/index.html. Although it is certainly the case that the cost of digging a well in a third world country varies greatly depending on the type of well and numerous other factors, according to sources at Africare and the Millennium Water Alliance, $10 per person is a conservative estimate.
Information on the Social Security tax ceiling and keeping the trust funds solvent by eliminating the ceiling was obtained from the Congressional Research Service report by Debra Whitman titled “Social Security: Raising or Eliminating the Taxable Earnings Base,” Congressional Research Service-CRS Report for Congress, January 26, 2006; http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL32896_20060126.pdf. It states, “If all earnings were subject to the payroll tax but the base was retained for benefit calculations, the Social Security Trust Funds would remain solvent for the next 75 years . . .”
In 1982 the percent of covered earnings that were taxed for Social Security was 90 percent; in 2004 that number was down to 85 percent. That percentage is projected to fall to 83 percent for 2014 and later.
According to the 2006 Congressional Report on Congress, “if the base was completely eliminated for both employers and employees so that all earnings were taxed, but those earnings did not count toward benefits, solvency would be restored to Social Security. The increased revenue would eliminate 116% of the projected shortfall and the program would have surplus of 0.32% of wages. Under this scenario, the payroll tax rate could be immediately lowered by 2.6% of taxable payroll (from 12.4% to 9.8%), and the system
would remain solvent for the next 75 years. However, the traditional link between the level of wages that are taxed and the level of wages that count toward benefits would be broken.”
Source material for the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and Francis Bellamy is from “What’s Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?” by Gene Healy, www.cato.org, November 4, 2003; “The History of the Pledge of Allegiance,” Associated Press, June 14, 2004; and Washington Post, “The Pledge of Allegiance; The Big Story—An Occasional Look at What Everyone Is Talking About,” May 23, 2004.
4. SIX MODEST PROPOSALS TO FIX OUR BROKEN ELECTIONS
The New York Times Magazine reported on the estimated failure rate of electronic voting machines in “Can You Count on Voting Machines?” by Clive Thompson, January 6, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html.
The source for information on voter turnout is International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, “Voter Turnout Rates from a Comparative Perspective,” Rafael López Pintor, Maria Gratschew and Kate Sullivan, www.idea.int/publications/vt/upload/Voter%20turnout.pdf (see page 80 for U.S. in comparison to Western Europe and North America).
Voting machine failure rates are from the Los Angeles Times, “Tallying the Woes of Electronic Balloting,” Chris Gaither, September 24, 2004, and accessed online at www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=2907.
Obama’s fundraising information is from the Campaign Finance Institute, “Newly Released 2007 Reports Give Clues to Candidates’ Financial Strengths and Vulnerabilities Going into Super Tuesday,” February 1, 2008; www.cfinst.org/pr/prRelease.aspx?ReleaseID=177.
For information on why we vote on Tuesdays, seeS. 2638: Weekend Voting Act, GovTrack.US; www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110–2638.
For info on Canada’s “National Register of Electors” and how they used to have a U.S.-like inefficient voter registration process, visit the official Canadian Election website: www.elections.ca.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my publisher, Grand Central Publishing, for the unconditional support and commitment to get this book in the hands of as many voters as possible. Grand Central used to be called Warner Books and was part of the TimeWarner empire. Then the French bought Warner Books, so I guess you could say I now work for the French. One more talking point for O’Reilly.
My special thanks to my personal publisher and editor there, Jamie Raab, who is a dream come true—every writer should be so lucky. Thanks also to the great staff at Grand Central: managing editor Bob Castillo, Anne Twomey, Anna Maria Piluso, Toni Marotta, Jimmy Franco, Martha Otis, Chris Barba, Bruce Paonessa, and the rest of the Hachette Book Group sales force—merci beaucoup! They all let me write right up until the presses ran so that this guide could be as current as possible. Special thanks to the chair of Hachette USA, David Young.
Thanks to my agent and the Deep Throat of my world, Mort Janklow. He knows where the bodies are buried. And to the wonderful Anne Sibbald at Janklow, Nesbit. Someday I hope to meet Nesbit.
Thanks to Basel Hamdan, Cory Fisher, Eric Weinrib, and Jennifer Moore for all their help in researching and working on this book. Thanks to Christine Fall, Curt Webb, and John Raths for photographing the people on the street. Thanks to Jenn Craven for assisting me during this process.
The cover of this book was designed by Tom Kluepful at Doyle Partners.
Thanks to Al Hirvela for suggesting the idea for Chapter Two and to Rod Birleson for numerous discussions about everything else. Thanks also to them and Joanne Doroshow, Ann Cohen, Jeff Gibbs, Fred and Jackie Trimble, Shirley Williams, and Deborah Lake for reading the draft and for their helpful comments. Their unhelpful ones were useful, too.
Special thanks to my sisters Anne and Veronica for their feedback and encouragement. Thanks also to my bros-in-law John and Rocky for reading the final draft and for their support.
This book was written in downtown Traverse City, Michigan. Come visit the historic State Theatre art house if you’re ever in the area. It shows only the best movies, the picture and sound are perfect, and the pop and popcorn can be had for $2. We put on a film festival here every end of July in the hopes of saving it and supporting the art of cinema. Thanks to all the people here who have made this a nice place to think and create.
And thanks to all of you who continue to read my books and go to my movies. Though I sadly don’t have the time to answer most of my mail, I do read it and am eternally grateful for your kind words and your own commitment to making a better world. Don’t give up, we’re all in this together.
Finally, thanks to Kathleen and Natalie. And Lily, northern Michigan’s Dog of the Year. She got over her disappointment in Hillary’s narrow loss and is now working hard for Obama.
About the Author
Michael Moore’s books include Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country? His films include Sicko, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine, The Big One, Canadian Bacon, and Roger & Me. His TV series include TV Nation and The Awful Truth. He’s won an Oscar, an Emmy, and hopes to win a Grammy with the audio recording of this book. Broadway, you’re next! He became the first American to win the British Book of the Year award and is revered throughout Slovenia for reasons that are still unclear to him. His blood pressure is a steady 120 over 60 and his cholesterol count is 152. He resides in northern Michigan.
PHOTO CREDITS
(page 34) women kissing: Jacques Zorgman/Getty Images; (page 35) men kissing: AP Photo/CP, Paul Chiasson; (page 166) Jeanne Shaheen: Meryl Levin photo; (page 168) Al Franken: Bill Weaver photo; (page 174) Ronnie Musgrove: Associated Press; (page 186) Ethan Berkowitz: Clark James Mishler photo; (page 187) Ann Kirkpatrick: Jocelyn Augustino photo; (page 191) Betsy Markey: William Moree photo; (page 195) Suzanne Kosmas: William Moree photo; (page 197) Debbi Halvorson: Jocelyn Augustino photo; (page 198) Paul Carmouche: Daymon Gardner photo; (page 203) Ashwin Madia: Tim Davis photo; (page 204) Kay Barnes: Jocelyn Augustino photo; (page 209) Linda Stender: William Moree; (page 217) Eric Massa: Personius-Warne Studio; (page 220) Larry Kissell: Brian Strickland photo; (page 221) Steve Driehaus: Nanette Bedway photo; (page 226) Bob Roggio: Shea Roggio photo.
Mike's Election Guide Page 15
