Academy Award winning director Alex Gibney — who is in town and will be attending the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight as a guest of the Washington Post — is in release mode for his next big documentary achievement, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, that doesn’t just focus on the shenanigans of Jack Abramoff but puts a glaring spotlight on the Congressional and political enablers — on both sides of the aisle — of financial sector corruption.
The film opens in theaters on May 7th.
Gibney is a truth-teller, and his films cut through the obfuscation that Washington tries to cloak around most important policy issues.
The video piece above has some compelling clips from the film showing compelling commentary from director Alex Gibney as well as Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule and Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Until I saw Gibney’s clip, I had no idea that hedge fund managers only pay a 15% tax on their income — because the income they make is considered “capital gains” — even though it is NOT THEIR MONEY they are investing.
The so called “hedge fund” loophole costs the government $6.3 billion a year — which the film notes equals “the cost of providing health care to 3 million children.”
Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side is one of the most important films ever in documenting for American history — forever — the horrible impunity that America unleashed in secret prisons, indefinite detentions, extraordinary rendition and the like under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief architect of kafkaesque national security policy, David Addington.
I will be attending the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight as well, as a guest of Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo, where I have just been brought on as editor-at-large.
— Steve Clemons
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