Von: Ing. Oliver Drobnik
Gesendet: Freitag, 12. März 2004 06:55
An: ‘mike@michaelmoore.com’
Betreff: Some Ideas
Dear Mr. Moore,
After „Stupid White Amer … um. sorry Men“, „Dude“ is the second book I am devouring by you and I’d like to express my gratitude to you for not only telling us naive Europeans how it really works in the new world, but also actually trying to change something about it.
All appreciation aside I think you should not attempt to unseat W. by financially supporting alternative candidates. That would be trying to buy the next president just as the big parties will do. As such this is a futile attempt because the rich will always have more leverage with this than you do. You are trying to play the 1%-league and that’s NOT your strength. Your strength is probably mobilizing people. Also your www.spendmikestaxcut.com strategy sounds like someone winning the lottery and spending it all. You might be able to create a little straw fire, but I guarantee that there will be no lasting effect once the money is gone.
- Strength is in numbers. For the rich it is financial numbers, for the poor it is body count.
Your strategy should be tailored to mobilize as many voters as possible to vote against W. The fewer voters the better for the rich! Percentagewise there are traditionally more rich people voting than poor people. Change that! Thus they make up a larger percentage and more likely get their will in the final outcome. - You should try and find a legal loophole to send every family a $100 bill who can honestly tell you that they are going to vote against W. Or give away something people want in return for the favor. Hell, the rich are doing it the other way around successfully and since you are not affiliated with a party, but affiliated AGAINST one, it must be legal for you to give presents to people you like (for voting right). If there’s money in it then the poor people will go vote and not stay home in frustration and swear at the television set when they see that W has won.
- In the longer run you should consider creating a foundation. Put a sizable sum into it and make the foundation’s mission to actively research “solutions to un-american behavior” and educate people. The sour apple might be that you would have to invest the foundation’s money in paper assets so that the interest earned can fuel the foundation’s cause. But this way you will have a greater effect than a website, some books and movies can have in the long run. Also I think this gets you another huge tax writeoff. (Why else would Bill Gates have founded his foundation?)
- The foundation might for example teach free “true patriotism classes” to a new “coalition of the willing”. Knowledge multiplied by number of people will equal your success. The foundation might be sort of a club for the people spit out of corporate America. Unlike a labor union which always has vested interest in being nice to politicians in power, this would ever increase the number of people who you can give a tool for change. You need to make clear to everyone that it is better to organize and act than to watch TV and sulk.
- Talk to the best tax attorney you can find. I believe you will find that foundations have become very attractive because it is the vessel the ultra-rich use to shelter their money (see Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Use these built-in advantages to the better of the poor!
- The foundation might even consider handing out micro-loans as seed money to encourage unemployed people to become small-business owners themselves. This creates jobs. And thankful SMEs and employees then will be thankful and help with the cause as well.
- Right now all your success centers on YOU. But at the same time this is your curse! Because you don’t plan to run for President all this attention and love will only benefit your books and movies. You know the saying “monkey see, monkey do”? People will never do what you tell them, but only what they see you do. So it is not enough to tell them to now vote for W. you need to actively show them ways to be patriotic.
- If you are sincere in your mission to restore a balanced democracy then you HAVE to make it independent from your own person. Only then you can scale the tool indefinitely. Yes, you might be staying leader. You might even be the CEO of the Mike Moore Patriotism Foundation and travel the world giving talks and selling books. But you could have additional people who have the same mission organize under one umbrella. People like to be part of something and have a symbol for it: like an “I am a Patriot” Button to show your affiliation with the foundation.
- And where is the Mike Moore Patriotism Reality Soap?! Your show “The Awful Truth” has cult status and I have watched a few episodes I downloaded off a P2P network. You have to give people what they want, and right now they want “real life”. I have two suggestions for interesting shows:
a) A Show about you that depicts your most patriotic daily events, like going into an American steak house instead of McDonalds…. (you’ll loose more weight because you save carbs)
b) A Show that borrows the idea from “The Apprentice”, but instead you cast 20 unemployed people and show how they pull themselves out of their own misery. Every week somebody gets voted out based on who does the best to start supporting themselves, who is the most American while not following the rich American’s script. The winner gets a suitable and desirable price.
I am interested in your feedback on these ideas.
Yours sincerely
Oliver Drobnik
Austria, Europe