Reviews

The following is my opinion. This is a good documentary. I recommend you see it before you vote. It shows how the Clintons have taken money and then given favor.

It has been like this for decades. However, the Clintons have brought it to a whole new level. One thing which has never been mentioned are those pardons. On January 20, 2001, during President Clinton's final hours in office, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, Carlos Vignali and 4 others you should look up.[1],[2] In 1983 billionaire Marc Rich was going to be indicted on tax evasion, wire fraud and racketeering so he fled to Switzerland. Marc Rich gave $550,000 to the Clintons and $1 Million to the Democratic Party. The prosecutor was Rudolph Giuliani, BTW.[3] Carlos Vignali was a convicted cocaine trafficker. He shipped hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Los Angeles to Minnesota.[4] Wealthy father Horacio Vignali gave many local Los Angeles politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hugh Rodham, brother of Hillary Clinton, received more than $204,000 dollars.[5] Hugh Rodham lobbied in the Clinton White House for a pardon for Vignali. Vignali was given a sentence commutation by President Clinton and Vignali walked out of a 15 year federal prison sentence. He had only served 6 years.

I highly recommend you read the above references. I will give them in the comments section of my Amazon review. I highly recommend you see this documentary. You do not need to pay for it. You can see it for free.[6] There is another documentary called Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. I do NOT recommend Hillary's America. It makes Hillary critics appear as though they are imbeciles.

See references to the above notes in the comments section of my Amazon review.

10 out of 10 stars.

On 2/24/2014, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced major budget cuts. The number of soldiers will be cut to 440,000, the lowest since before WW2. He stated, "This is a budget that recognizes the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges."

Because the USA has large deficits, it can no longer pay for an optimum-sized military. Secretary Hagel stated, "American dominance in the seas, in the skies and in space can no longer be taken for granted."

We're Not Broke covers how multi-national corporations have paid no US federal taxes, despite making billions in profits. With the exception of GE; CNBC, CNN, Fox News, & MSNBC have not reported this subject the way this documentary has. It is truly incredible how so little is known about this.

For 2010, ALL of these multi-national corporations paid NO federal taxes: GE, Bank of America, Exxon, Chevron, Citigroup, Honeywell. These corporations had a negative income tax rate: Verizon -5.9%, Yahoo! -9.6%, DuPont -11.5%, Boeing -0.1%, Ford -1.7%. FedEx's was 0.9%. WNB does not specify what Forest Laboratories', Wells Fargo's, Verizon's, Caterpillar's, Google's or Pfizer's tax rates were.

WNB reports these corporations use Transfer Pricing so they can pay lower tax rates in Bermuda, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Ireland. Also, 100s of USA corporations have a Cayman Islands PO Box so they can pay a 0% tax rate.

It costs a congressman millions, a senator $40 million and a president one billion to get elected. Most of the expense is for TV commercials. Corporations give them money and in return they vote for laws which enrich them further.

Elections must be free to end most of the IMHO corruption. The government owns the radio and TV airways. During elections, we can force the media conglomerates to give free air time for candidates. Unfortunately, the rich control everything so this will never happen. On 6/7/2013, President Obama was at a fund raiser in a private house in Santa Monica taking money from all his rich Hollywood friends, again. In his speech to his rich friends, President Obama stated, he was afraid his rich donors were suffering "donor fatigue."

On 1/21/2010, the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" ruling established corporations can give unlimited campaign contributions. Expect this IMHO corruption to get worse, not better. In his 2008 campaign, Obama promised he would "close the tax loopholes the lobbyists put in."

Because corporations have not paid their fair share, education, police, health care, infrastructure, parks, EPA sites, everything has been cut. For the military, the most alarming is the A-10 Warthog. The A-10 is the best ground attack aircraft ever built. During the Persian Gulf War, it was the A-10 the Iraqis feared most. The A-10 provides ground troop cover in Afghanistan today.

The Chinese, Japanese and British own most of our debt overseas. When they demand a 10% interest rate, we will be forced to face our huge deficits. Until then, nothing will change. Because CNBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are all subsidiaries of major corporate conglomerates, these subjects will never be reported in depth by them. Another documentary you should see is "Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream." It covers how the rich pay their representatives to write their laws so they can further enrich themselves on our backs, evermore.

In 2012, I did not even bother to register to vote. Cypherdude. 10/10 Stars.

There was a lot of media hype regarding this documentary. After viewing it, I was disappointed. I was expecting more. I already knew most of its content. There was only one item I did not know. It was the percentage of students in the past who went to trade schools vs. the ones who went to college. If you can't find anything else to do and have 2 spare hours, go ahead and rent this film. I don't recommend you buy it. You're not going to return to it again. Still, it's better than renting or, even worse, buying a movie about vampires having babies (???). At least here you'll spend your 2 hours learning something worthwhile.

My father was a teacher. He taught for over 50 years. He had a master's degree and numerous teaching-related credentials. He was a dedicated, hard-working educator. His final school, before retiring, was a Southern California city high school with a large Hispanic population some of which only spoke Spanish. Because he spoke fluent Spanish and had Spanish-related teaching credentials, he was better able to teach his students. However, he often had classroom discipline problems as is often the case with this age group. When he sent the misbehaving students to the principal's office, they often did nothing. Discipline is a big problem in USA's classrooms. Guggenheim conveniently never mentions this.

Finally and most importantly, there are today many different distractions for the modern student. Today you have the Internet, gaming consoles such as XBox, DVD's, Blu-Ray, cable television, etc... All these things detract from the study time the student has. This is the true reason why students do not get good grades. If parents were to remove all these distractions, you would see grades skyrocket. Guggenheim conveniently never mentions this either. In fact, in one of the scenes you see a young student playing on a game console.

Most teachers do a competent job. People love to blame teachers because they are an easy target. You really don't need much to be a good student. You need a used textbook, a 25¢ 70 page spiral notebook, a pen, a $15 scientific calculator, a place to study free from distractions and someone to occasionally help you. That's it. Whenever people talk about the USA's educational problems, I often think about those poor southern black students in the early 20th century. Working in a small single dilapidated schoolhouse, they studied and were able to pass their classes. They didn't have calculators, let alone computers, they didn't have new textbooks, desks or chalkboards. What they had was the interest and the drive to do well.

The way to reform America's educational system is actually very simple: enforce discipline in the classroom, parent's must be involved and remove distractions, both parents and teachers must help the student generate interest in school. You don't need to make radical changes in the present system. You don't need to increase the school system's budget either.

7 out 10 stars

I have seen a LOT of movies, more than I'm going to admit here. There have been turkeys and there have been hits. However, I really must strain to remember a movie as bad as this one. Clichéd in multiple ways, boring, it was terrible. On rare occasions, in order to get through a movie, I set my DVD player to 1.2x speed which is what I did in Once Fallen. Once Fallen is one of worst movies I have ever seen. I can't believe Ed Harris would participate in this bomb.

Don't waste your time with Once Fallen. If you want to see a great prison film, the best I ever saw was The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Nothing comes close to it. Escape from Alcatraz (1979) starring Clint Eastwood is also good. If you want to see Ed Harris in a better film, ANYTHING else is better.

I just got through seeing Transformers 2 on DVD. It was not as good as the first one which was a decent film, not a great film. The one thing which stuck in my mind through the entire time was how it was directed towards teenagers. While I was seeing Transf2, I was trying to estimate the viewer age the filmmakers were directing their product at, not a good thing when you're supposed to be taking in the storyline. I settled on 14. Transf2 contradicts its own target audience because the main character is supposed to go to college, not Jr. High.

The dialog was childish, the behavior was childish, and I definitely felt I had rented the wrong film. Some of the script was especially ridiculous, particularly involving John Turturro while he was on the Pyramid. Transf2 had very little credibility.

There is a generally accepted premise in Hollywood that most moviegoers are teenagers. It's probably true. This is why many movies are directed towards teenagers. Transf2 is a product of this premise. I was expecting Transf2 to be at least as good as Transf1. I was disappointed and some parts were difficult to watch because they were so childish. You may read this and think, "What can I expect? After all, Transformers is derived from cartoons." They still could've written the script better and made it more sophisticated. Titanic was well written and in 1998 drew more than $1 BILLION worldwide in ticket sales! All I can say is, I am glad Transf2 only cost me $1.67 for renting it rather than $10.50 plus $7 for snacks.

They really need to inject some new blood into Hollywood. They keep hiring the same people! I see on IMDb there is going to be a Transf3 and yes, Michael Bay is going to direct it.....yet again. I may just skip seeing it.

3 OUT OF 10 STARS

I was expecting a lot better from the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Very boring prequel to the main series. After the first 30 minutes, I was waiting for it to end. The characters do a lot of talking about religion, computers, programming, retribution, etc... There are gangsters, mafia types, who carry out hits. However, Caprica doesn't have the action of the original series to offset the slower parts.

Let me give you some helpful advice when viewing movies: As a general rule, if there is a lot of excessive exploitive titillation, then you know the movie will be a dud. Caprica has lots of this. The director/writer usually attempts to compensate for his poor abilities by throwing in a few naked bodies. It never works and all it does is demean the (very) young actresses involved and I feel sorry for them. Directors/writers who do this should be banned from the business.

If you want to be bored for an hour and a half, by all means, rent Caprica. There's (free) porn on the 'Net if you really want to see naked bodies. Otherwise, move along, nothing to see here.

This is sort of a Harry Potter clone. It has flying witches, talking animals, everything including a "demon" which changes to and from a cat. The characters call them "demons" but they are really companion animal "spirits." The writers must've had a bad day. I can understand why people, especially children, didn't like it. It's difficult for clones to be successful.

I wasn't surprised when I looked up the Box Office numbers and saw it was more or less a flop. Hopefully foreign and DVD sales will help it break even. I was surprised that it cost $180M! Where did all the money go? Sometimes I think famous actors/actresses are paid WAY too much. Frankly, I think movies can be made just as well with lessor known actors for 1/10 the pay.

When I saw the ending, I knew there might not be a sequel. So my response was: "That's it?! Where's the rest?!" LOL That's unfortunate because the movie really isn't that bad. It tells a story which keeps you interested enough to see the ending. I looked up Nicole Kidman's and Dakota Blue Richards's filmographies and I see no projects to make a sequel so I guess that's the end of it.

I think the producers should have been less ambitious. They should have hired lesser known actors and kept the budget smaller. This way, it would have been easier to achieve a profit and therefore complete the ending.

Just my 2¢. 7 out of 10 stars.