"Of course labor leaders are sensitive to the working class. That's how they avoid belonging to it." 

- Garry Trudeau 

That being said, unions and government and large corporations all ruthlessly adhere to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: 

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Born and raised. I like to think of myself as the living embodiment of NAFTA: A Canadian who lives in the US and speaks fluent Spanish. :)

"Buckaroo, the President's on Line One, he wants to know if everything's ok or should we go ahead and destroy Russia." 
"Tell him 'Yes' on one and 'No' on two." 
"Wait, which was 'Yes'? Destroy Russia or the second one?"

Local Hero. Just wonderful in it's simple storytelling and beautiful characters. 

(And I see that's already been mentioned twice, so....)

Rashomon. Raises more questions about our morality and ability to tell the truth than any film before or since. 

Wings Of Desire / Far Away, So Close. Spiritual without being preachy, tender without being melodramatic, it celebrates the divine and the mortal with equal vigor. 

Ice-T is also the lead singer of Body Count, and his song"Cop Killer" was excoriated by all sides for what seemed to be a call to wage war against law enforcement. 

But. 

Since then, we've learned that life in South Central L.A. at that time  was life under tyranny. We've had law enforcement commit cold-blooded murder in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We've had innocent people subjected to no-knock raids with alarming frequency. We've had drones and surveillance cameras pop up seemingly everywhere. 

But are we really safer? 

I'm not knocking policemen with this post. I shoot on the range with cops all the time, and they're good people. Ice-T was wrong to write a song about killing cops.

And we were wrong for thinking that militarizing our police force and taking liberties with our civil liberties were never going to affect anyone beside criminals. 

There's "Meh, it could be worse"  and "I'm excited to vote for Romney/Huckabee!" 

Very true. I can chose with whom to do business (or not). I can't chose to pay taxes or not. 

Or, can I? 

One of the interesting things that's happening because of global connectivity is who quickly personal wealth, not just business capital, can move around the world. The recent move of Facebook's co-founder to Singapore and Bono's move out of Ireland has shown us, to borrow from an old saying from the Internet's earlier years, that money treats excessive taxation as damage and routes around it. 

Lawrence of Arabia. Because David Lean, Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Shariff. 

Kelly's Heroes. A war movie AND a heist movie. It's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of cinema. 

This is the spot until recently "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" would usually go, but I've been re-assessing "The Godfather" as of late, and it's just too good to pass by.