I’ve written several articles skewering HBO for producing political projects destined to air immediately prior to the 2012 election, where the vast majority of the cast and crew are passionate Barack Obama supporters, and where the content is aimed at the Democrat’s two favorite Republican villains: Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. So, when I sat down to watch HBO’s Too Big to Fail, I prepared myself for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the big surprise awaiting me.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail. (more…)

While we at Big Journalism spend most of our energy correcting bias and falsehoods originating from the left, every now and then we must take a moment to gently correct things that go off track with our friends on the right. This is one such case.

Jim Geraghty started a brouhaha yesterday by criticizing how the makers of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” received $1.2 million in tax credits by filming in the state — and that Palin signed the 2008 law which made it possible. Because she’s now apparently omnipotent, able to see into the future and plan for it by signing into law a complex program with numerous in-house checks and balances. Geraghty questioned Palin’s conservative credentials.

… but it looks problematic for a crusader for small government to end up collecting a seven-figure paycheck from an endeavor that received a seven-figure subsidy, all set up by a program she signed into law.

What’s problematic is to define the tax credit in this issue as a “subsidy.”

Tax credits are offered as an incentive to do business in a particular area, city, or state as a way to attract business and commerce into said area. These tax credits are usually offered as a percentage of total money spent and the credits can be sold at a discount to businesses looking to alleviate their tax load. The exchange creates a cashflow that helps offset the costs of doing that particular business in that area; in this case filming in Alaska is very expensive. A net gain of dollars flows into those local communities and the credits establish a way for a particular locality to compete with other cities or states for business; over the long term it can they help establish a broader tax base by increasing the number of professionals drawn to the area.

The optimal situation is to have a tax code is low enough where regulations aren’t so restrictive so as to warrant the need for tax credits. That is the real debate. However, it is within every state and city’s right to make themselves more competitive by offering tax incentives to attract business and create a business community. Aren’t we, as conservatives, supporters of the 10th Amendment? You pay for things by increasing your tax base, not by increasing regulations or taxes.

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The current economic crisis is not a failure of capitalism, but a failure of culture. Citizens United Productions’ film Generation Zero explores the cultural roots of the global financial meltdown – beginning with the narcissism of the 1960s which spread like a virus through the self-indulgent ’90s and exploded across the world in the present economic cataclysm.

Brought to you by award-winning writer and director Stephen Bannon, Generation Zero is the first film in the “Tea Party Trilogy,” which also includes Fire from the Heartland and Battle for America.  Featuring financial and cultural experts, authors, and pundits, including Lou Dobbs, Lawrence Kudlow, Tobin Smith, Victor Davis Hanson, Shelby Steele, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Morris, and Newt Gingrich, Generation Zero exposes the untold story of how the mindset of the Baby Boomers sowed the seeds of economic disaster that will be reaped by coming generations. Sean Hannity did an exclusive one hour special on Generation Zero, and the documentary has received extensive media acclaim. (more…)

Is there a cosmic rule that says to make film and entertainment that is interesting and well received you have to be a liberal? It seems that way sometimes, but it doesn’t need to be the case. 

I think everyone is pretty aware of the overwhelming liberal bias of Hollywood in general but it’s bigger than that, most creative people, period, tend to be heavily on the left. Why is that, and what can be done to get the true message of conservatism into films and entertainment? 

The American Dream Trailer from American Dream on Vimeo.

Let’s first take a look at what makes good media. Regardless of the format, whether narrative or documentary, the first and foremost thing people want is a good story. Telling a good story and crafting interesting characters is a talent. Film-making is not something that everyone is going to be able to do well. I say this not to discourage anyone but more to identify what the real issue is. The biggest strength of the liberal voice is that they use the elements of story-telling far better. They know that stories of struggle and triumph are far more engaging than messages of statistics and fear. I am convinced a lot of liberals would like the story of free markets and small government a lot better if we did a better job telling it. 

Think about the following: Is the problem that we need more people on the right making films, or is it that we need more good filmmakers thinking right? 

I would propose it is the latter. 

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Why is Hollywood moving away from the star-driven vehicle, and more towards the gimmicks of 3-D, IMAX, and animation?  The answer is, of course, economic. 

Since Star Wars appeared in 1977, Hollywood has been primarily driven by two factors: the blockbuster film and the star-driven vehicle.   The studio’s portfolio theory economic model requires the blockbuster.  It is these massive revenue generators that push a studio into profitability, to counteract the revenue drag created by other films, which lose money.  

The star-driven film has been around since Hollywood’s golden age.  There is an implicit assumption that audiences will go to a movie with their favorite star.  The reason things got out of whack was because, in the 1990’s, agencies wisely began pushing the asking price of their clients up – way up.  Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Carrey, Cruise – they all became $20 million men.  This was a brilliant strategic maneuver.  Knowing that the industry was driven by fear, the agents knew that the first time a studio caved to an outrageous salary demand, all the other studios would do the same.  No studio wanted to be left out in the cold without a star to drive its latest blockbuster.   So they caved.

The asking prices continued to escalate, with some stars getting a piece of gross revenue.  (more…)

Here’s the diagnosis regarding Hollywood’s present malady:

1) Movies operate in a statistical environment of extreme uncertainty


2) Uncertainty creates fear


3) Fear creates a desire to control


4) Desire to control has resulted in a multi-layered, needlessly expensive studio bureaucracy, resulting in sub optimal risk management.


5) The goal of each individual level of the bureaucracy is to insulate itself from criticism from the layer above it.


6) This results in the hiring of the most expensive, but not necessarily most talented or suitable, creative team
to manufacture product that audiences are losing interest in and are not designed to achieve maximum ROI.  (more…)

The whole “Robin Hood theory” argument has been used by radical leftists (most commonly referred to as “college professors”) for decades across our great country. “Steal from the rich and give to the poor” is the rhetoric they’ll always undoubtedly regurgitate. There’s only one problem… It’s wrong. Dead wrong.
Every time I hear some dumb college know-it-all or stupid self-righteous celebrity use the story of Robin Hood as an argument for socialism, I want to punch them right in their perfectly zoom-whitened teeth. The truth, is that Robin Hood was the quintessential ANTI-Government revolutionary. He’d have more in common with our Founding Fathers or Ronald Reagan than the likes of Stalin, Marx, or Sean Penn.

See the one point that liberals miss when they read the story of Robin Hood was that the man never stole from “the rich.” Leftists like to vilify the wealthy, but the tale of Robin Hood vilifies a corrupt government. Robin Hood was stealing from an oppressive monarchy/administration and giving the wealth back to its rightful owners. He was essentially re-distributing wealth by removing it from the initial re-distributors. Confused? Let’s break down the story of Robin Hood for a second: (more…)

“Objectivity is impossible,” self-styled “peoples’ historian” Howard Zinn once remarked, “and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.”

History serving “a social aim,” rather than chronicling the past in a detached manner, is what readers get in A People’s History of the United States. With any luck, “The People Speak,” the History Channel documentary based on the book that premieres this Sunday, will be, like so many Hollywood productions, unfaithful to the original. Given A People’s History of the United States’ infidelity to facts, this might be the only chance viewers have of seeing anything resembling an accurate retelling of history.

Through Zinn’s looking-glass, Maoist China, site of history’s bloodiest state-sponsored killings, transforms into “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control.” The authoritarian Nicaraguan Sandinistas were “welcomed” by their own people, while the opposition Contras, who backed the candidate that triumphed when free elections were finally held, were a “terrorist group” that “seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua.” Admitting some human rights abuses, Zinn writes that Castro’s Cuba “had no bloody record of suppression.”

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There is no doubt the State of Ohio, like many others, is in a financial mess. If you looked at the history of our economy you would notice that there have always been ups and downs. Individuals seem to understand this and plan for times of lean and times of plenty. Governments and our elected officials seem to have missed that day in Economics 101. Governments always seem to be shocked when the economy goes south for a while.

Our Governor Tom Strickland has a plan to balance the Ohio budget. Here it is in a nutshell: “Let’s gamble our way to prosperity!” As a comic my natural instinct is to ridicule this idea and to highlight the fact the Governor is ignoring that four times in the last twenty years the voters, by a wide margin, have refused casino gambling. (more…)

The Democrats, after getting their butts kicked all through July, are trying to change the momentum by raising the bloody flag of class warfare. Last Friday the House of Representatives voted 237-185 along party lines to enable financial regulators to limit Wall Street pay and bonus packages they deem inappropriate. The new regulation would affect firms worth over $1 billion, whether or not they got government bailout funds. The Washington Post and AP both asserted the House was responding to looming “populist anger,” although polls suggest recent public concern has been over spending and health care. 

Class warfare rests on the assumption, usually well disguised and used very selectively, that capitalist profits are a rip-off, a heist, “unearned.” In his recent health-care pitch, President Obama declared insurance companies are “making record profits,” a questionable claim but presumably identifying both the evil enemy and the room for government to save money, if you buy that the government can deliver something as good for the same cost.   (more…)

When preaching to the choir, one directs one’s lessons to those who already agree.  Conversely, those who otherwise might listen and gain something useful get nothing.  More on that as this inter-connected series of observations comes to an end.

American Icon: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”

Vast, determined, highly successful forces and superior technologies dominated the theaters of WWII prior to America’s entry into the conflict after Pearl Harbor in 1941.  The Manhattan Project began in August of 1942, a couple of months before General George Patton invaded North Africa.  Character, strategy, and tactics played as large a role in dealing with Panzer and Tiger tanks as did Patton’s Shermans, of course, because firepower alone was insufficient in itself.  But the defeat of one totalitarian threat by 1945 was not apt to make much difference in taking down another in a place where school children were being trained to fight to the death for the Empire— with sharpened sticks.  The Manhattan Project, through funding, research, experimentation, design, development and production, met the challenge and made the difference. (more…)

Your correspondent, as absorbed by the Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA.

A dance craze— like “freaking”— it is not, but rather, a point of view.

Back in January of this year, Andrew Breitbart announced “Big Hollywood’s modest objective: to change the entertainment industry”.  The announcement is as important as it is radical, assessing the power of Pop Culture in shaping global attitudes and standing athwart contemporary assaults on Western values, yelling, as did William Buckley in 1955, Stop.

Ask yourself: Is a vision of the world that is contrary in almost every way to the prevailing cultural paradigms a difficult “sell”?  Given this is always so, how is such a challenge overcome? (more…)

LOS ANGELES – Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state’s remains to its final resting place in a Winchell’s Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed ‘King of Pop Culture’ died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation. The death sent shock waves across the world and sparked an outpouring of grief by rabid fans.

“I don’t care what the tabloids and the Wall Street Journal say,” said a weeping Illinois. “I still love you, Cali!”

The 640-mile long funeral parade route was lined with flowers, candles, teddy bears, and IOUs from millions of mourners and debtors who made the somber journey to watch the passing of the state that had once ruled the box office and industrial charts. Among them were current chart-toppers who cited California as a key influence.

“If it wasn’t for California, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Arizona of Westside 3, the popular Sunbelt trio who recently benefited from the late state’s generous gift of fleeing taxpayers and businesses. As a tribute to their mentor, Arizona vowed the group would start spending money “like crack-addled hip hop stars.” (more…)

USA’s new series “Royal Pains” is about Dr. Hank Lawson (Mark Feuerstein), who serves as a “concierge doctor” to the rich and semi-famous residents of the Hamptons.  In the course of the show, there are some unfortunate public policy claims made. In the second episode, entitled “There will be food,” Dr. Hank is trying to provide health care to a not particularly well-to-do fisherman. Hank gives a short lecture on price gouging and hospitals “screwing” people. A heavily discussed theme in this episode involves the need for a free clinic for the regular people who make the Hamptons run and the selfishness of the person who would have been the biggest donor to the clinic who is instead spent his money on a retirement party for a ballerina. In any case, the dialogue for this segment that I would like to focus on is as follows: (more…)

When you spend a few trillion bucks you don’t have, at some point you need to come up with a plan to pay that money back. If you don’t, you look bad and no messianic cult figure ever wants to look like he doesn’t know what’s up. If you are a working stiff you have two ways to get money to pay off your debts, earn more or spend less. If you own the printing press like the Federal Government you have another option, create inflation. For example, if you printed enough money to cause inflation to rise by a factor of ten you could pay back a trillion dollars of debt with money that is in reality only worth 100 billion. The down side of that is that milk ends up costing thirty-three dollars a gallon.

Another thing a government can do to raise revenue to pay off their debt is expand the economy. That one is tough when you have just bought GM, AIG and are getting ready to nationalize health care. Corporate types aren’t too keen to expand their businesses when Uncle Sam is looking to control them.

A third option is to raise taxes. When President Obama was still candidate Obama he promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. At least I think that’s what he said, or did he say income taxes? Then too, there was a little vacillation on what was meant by middle class. Was it earners over $250,000 or $150,000? (more…)

I would like to introduce my cousin Michael Rulle. My mother and his father were brother and sister,  and his father, Uncle Mike, shaped a lot of our political ideas, though we thought he may have been the anti-christ, as he was a conservative and we were Kennedy democrats for a bit.

William F. Buckley was Uncle Mike’s favorite and we frequently were subjected to long dissertations.

Thank God for Uncle Mike.

When we were younger my cousin Michael and I would put on political skits. This was in the 60s and I must say we were ahead of our time.  I like to think that we’re still ahead on some things — most recently when the economic crisis first started my cousin provided insights that only now some are talking about. He was WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE, which is why I want to share his voice with you.

His latest piece, “The Horror……the Horror” is a good starting point. Then I suggest you go back to his blog “The Law of the Bad Premise” and share his stuff with your friends. (more…)

As all the politicians, left and right, run around feigning indignation at the bonuses paid to a few AIG executives I am reminded of the scene in the movie “Casablanca” when Captain Renault closes down Rick’s Café American. As his deputies empty the casino in the back room he exclaims with stunned surprise, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” He says this just as one of Sam’s employees brings him his winnings.

I am not sure what makes me angrier, that absolutely bogus attitude or their overwhelming incompetence, but that’s not what I want to write about today. I’m not going to write about a lot of stuff here. I am not going to write about fact that Chris Dodd wrote the rule that allowed these bonuses and then in perfect Clintonese quasi denied it when he said, “I can’t point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in. I can tell you this much, when my language left the Senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did.” Then when confronted with his lie, he owned up to it. I won’t spend time on the fact he took a ton of campaign dough from AIG, headquartered in his state. (more…)

Just in case you’ve never read my bio, I am a stand-up comedian and have been slinging jokes for over thirty years. I have had my ups and downs, worked the road for years, gigged in dumps and Vegas palaces, done TV and had a few shots at the big time. I have hurt my career by my personal behavior and I blame no one but myself for that.

I reinvented myself as a performer almost as many time as Dylan and I’m still standing. To quote my good friend, radio host Marc Germain, “I’m better than most and not as good as some.” (more…)