My film Fat Head will air again on TV in New Zealand on December 30th. Set your DVRs and get gobsmacked all over again.
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4 Responses to “Fat Head On Kiwi TV”
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I have just watched your doco “Fat Head” here in NZ. I thoroughly enjoyed it and what a relief it is to see a common sense version of the fat issues that hasn’t been funded by one side of the argument. Keep up the good work and I hope that you get the rewards that you deserve for putting the effort into this.
I appreciate that. I’m still waiting for it to pay off, but we’ve got a long way to go.
I too am a Kiwi who has just watched your “doco”.
Stunning stuff, very funny and nicely crafted.
Yet another illustration of how the lobby industry in the USA can be so successful promoting the wrong things. And the willingness of other countries (like ours) to follow the mantras they develop.
The real problem is that you have power structures in your country that are totally warped in favour of vested interests. They ensure you eat what they want you to eat and then charge you gazillions in insurance premiums to fix the damage their products cause.
All the while, Wall St fat cats stroke their bellies and purr.
Very odd country.
I’m afraid you’re correct. If our government’s power were limited as intended by our constitution, the lobbyists would have no one to bribe. The irony is that the same people who favor big government in America are also those who complain most loudly about special interests. As I’ve tried to explaining to some of them, if you give 535 people the power to spend trillions of dollars and regulate everything in sight, it shouldn’t shock you when other people are willing to pony up a few million to steer the process in their favor.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with you, Tom.
Your political system by its nature allows vested interests, the media, and ideologists to distort your politics. Bribery as part of your election processes and unremtting bribery by industry lobbyists between elections ensures that government in your country is run, and has for decades been run by people who have not been elected and has allowed them to fiddle the system to their advantage.
Here, we elect a government on their stated policies. We allow no room for the machinations of vested interests outside that process. And we take a dim view of of any interest that overtly tries to manipulate election processes. The last of these that tried it (the Exclusive Brethren) turned a likely election victory for one party into a disastrous defeat, simply because we do not tolerate that kind of interference in determining the will of our people.
The bottom line is that your political system is a shambles.
Sorry to have to say that.
I agree it’s a shambles. But I still believe if our government were limited to the very few powers enumerated in the constitution, there’d be little corruption because there would be so little influence to sell. We went downhill when federal courts started pretending the constitution granted powers it clearly didn’t.
If we continue going in the government-runs-everything direction we’re headed in now and my daughters are facing 60% tax rates for their entire working lives, I’ll be seriously thinking about emigrating. I would hate to give up my lifelong identity as an American, but if America isn’t America anymore, it won’t matter.
Then you might like it here.
We were rated in 2009 by Transparency International as the least corrupt country on the planet. Our top tax rate is 39.7% (including a premium for a “free” universal accident insurance scheme), and we have been rated as one of the most business-friendly countries around.
Unfortunately, we are what you guys inexorably call a “socialised” state. Government “interference” in places that would aghast Americans. Our health system, for example.
But, hey, that’s what we think “government” is for.
Despite that, we think of ourselves as “free”, “independent” and “individualistic” in the things that matter in our daily lives. And, in fact, we very much are.
Americans like to say they are too.
But, these days, “freedom” in America is a charade. Freedom is a commodity that has out-lived its use-by date. The corporates that expensively promote (and win) agendas that work against the American “people” ensure at every turn that Americans are deprived of liberties.
Becoming even more capitalistic than you are now would only aggravate that.
Big government is not your problem. Ineffective government is.