Filmmaker Michael Moore lambasts capitalism at Pittsburgh film premiere

Filmmaker Michael Moore denounced greed in the U.S. economy and health care system before the American premiere of his latest movie last night.

Moore held the first U.S. showing of the film called “Capitalism: A Love Story” at the Byham Theater Downtown as part of a convention sponsored by AFL-CIO, a federation of national and international labor unions.

Before the premiere, Moore spoke briefly at the David Lawrence Convention Center.

The film casts a negative light on corporate finance in the United States and the recent near-collapse of the financial system, Moore said.

“It’s about the decimation we’ve seen since Ronald Reagan took office. The richest 1 percent has more money than the bottom 95 percent,” he said, adding, “We have legalized greed.”

He said Wall Street got away with one of the “greatest heists in history.” The greed and irresponsibility of the current financial system caused our economic crisis.

“It’s all free trade and free enterprise until they need help. Then, they turn into the biggest socialists around,” he said.

Corporations have a legal responsibility to their stockholders to make the maximum profit possible, he said. Corporations that don’t do so risk being investigated by the Securities Exchange Commission.

He said health insurance has been treated as a commodity in the United States for too long.

“Now, say you’re a health insurance company. How do you make a profit? You drop people off your rolls when they get sick,” he said. “You don’t let people on the rolls when they’ve got pre-existing conditions. You work the system to make a profit.”

The film contains new footage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was recorded before his death but never shown to the public.

Moore said it gave Roosevelt’s thoughts on the future of the United States and where Roosevelt planned to take the country after World War II.

“Capitalism: A Love Story” was previously screened in Venice and Toronto. It will appear in American theaters Oct. 2.

Commenting on the current health care debate, Moore said he hoped President Barack Obama would come around and support the single-payer system, in which all medical fees are paid from a government or government-related source.

Obama is slated to speak today at the second day of the convention, for which the AFL-CIO will hold events throughout the week.

“The president is a good basketball player, and I hope that he’s feinting right to go left. Universal health insurance isn’t universal health care. Today, we’re marching in support of single-payer health care,” Moore said.

After Moore’s speech, people in the ballroom emptied out onto Penn Avenue and marched to the theater.

The march took over Penn Avenue, slowing traffic to a one-lane crawl for about 10 minutes. Some marchers carried signs that read, “H.R. 676,” which is the United States National Health Insurance Act, a proposed health care reform bill different from the one currently being debated.

One man was dressed in a suit with a green monster head, the symbol of a local Pittsburgh band, Gramsci Melodic, and held a sign that had an “X” over corporate greed.

Tracy Kurowski, 38, a labor liaison for the Quad City Federation of Labor, marched in the throngs of activists in support of the unions and the single-payer health care movement.

She said Moore’s speech was “phenomenal.”

Kurowski said she hoped the movie and convention would help the labor movement regain some of the steam it had lost in recent years.

“I joined in my 20s, and it was very exciting to get into it then. I hope that now we can bounce back,” Kurowski said.

Kurowski is in Pittsburgh for the AFL-CIO convention.

Ron Codario, a 28-year-old member of the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Single-Payer Health Care, was at the event to support the drive for universal health care.

“It’s a moral imperative that everyone gets universal health care, not just insurance,” he said. “The patient wins because they’re getting essentially free health care, and the economy wins because not all of [people’s] money is wasted on health insurance.”