After Lying About His Wealth on National TV, Michael Moore Admits He's A One Percenter
By Noel Sheppard | October 28, 2011 | 14:40
On Wednesday NewsBusters exposed Occupy Wall Street supporter Michael Moore for lying on national television about his wealth.
Clearly feeling the pressure to come clean, the schlockumentary filmmaker took to his blog Thursday to set the record straight - kind of:
Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to distribute my first movie, 'Roger & Me.' A reporter asked me, "How much did you sell it for?"
"Three million dollars!" I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan lottery.
Moore went on to explain what he did with his jackpot:
1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.
2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million -- and established a foundation to give it all away.
3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.
4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).
It really is something when a man lies to cover up his lies.
After all, in 2005, Peter Schweizer in his book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" included a copy of Moore's schedule D from one of his tax filings showing that the schlockumentarian at one point owned almost 2,000 shares of Boeing, nearly 1,000 shares of Sonoco, more than 4,000 shares of Best Foods, more than 3,000 shares of Eli Lilly, more than 8,000 shares of Bank One, and more than 2,000 shares of Halliburton.
As Schweizer told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on November 3, 2005:
PETER SCHWEIZER: Well, Michael Moore has said at least half-a-dozen times, I don`t own a single share of stock, because he considers investing in the stock market to be dirty money.
Well, I guess he is technically correct. He doesn`t own a single share of stock. He owns tens of thousands of shares of stock. And what is interesting is, is looking at the portfolio.
Michael Moore, yes, the same Michael Moore, owns shares in defense contractors like Boeing. He owns...
(CROSSTALK)
JOE SCARBOROUGH: No. Well, hold -- hold on. No way. You are telling me...
SCHWEIZER: Yes.
SCARBOROUGH: ... that Mr. "Fahrenheit 9/11" profits off of the war, because Boeing profits off the war, that he despises?
SCHWEIZER: Yes, that`s exactly right. He owns shares in Honeywell.
And, believe it or not, Joe -- it`s on the back cover of the book -- he, in recent years, has owned shares in Halliburton, the Darth Vader of corporate America.
SCARBOROUGH: OK. Hold on. I got to stop you, Peter...
(LAUGHTER)
SCARBOROUGH: ... because this guy said that he doesn`t invest on Wall Street. Are you telling me that he just is just lying to us?
SCHWEIZER: It`s a flat, bald-faced lie. When he says that he doesn`t own shares, I pulled IRS forms from a tax shelter of his. And he has hundreds of thousands of dollars on the stock market.
Right now, for example, he is preparing a film on pharmaceutical companies, attacking the health care industry. In recent years, he has owned shares in Tenet Healthcare, which runs HMOs, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. He is a complete hypocrite on this front.
SCARBOROUGH: And we have got to go to a break, and I want to talk to you on the other side.
But, just before we go to the break, are you telling me again that Michael Moore has owned stock in Halliburton?
SCHWEIZER: Yes. That`s what his IRS forms -- and he signed his own IRS forms.
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So Moore's own IRS forms show that one of his tax shelters owns thousands of shares of stock.
But that's not what he wrote Thursday: "I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with)."
As such, he's lying again.
Also of note, Moore discussed the $3 million he made from Roger and Me, but he didn't say a word about earnings from subsequent films.
As our friends at Celebrity Net Worth note:
Fahrenheit 911 raked in $230 million in theaters and another $3 million in DVD sales. After the theaters take their traditional 50% cut, that leaves roughly $130 million. Take away marketing, production and distribution expenses and Moore is conservatively left with $80 million. Moore was able to secure a deal from Miramax which guaranteed him 27% of his film’s net revenues, or roughly $21.6 million. Michael also was entitled to 50% of the profits of Sicko which are estimated to be $17 million.
Moore didn't discuss any of this in his piece Thursday, nor did he mention his current net worth is $50 million.
I guess he's not interested in telling the whole truth yet.
About the Author
Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Click here to follow Noel Sheppard on Twitter.
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