Greg Palast's Blog, page 102

Palast in San Fran, Santa Rosa, Portaland, Seattle, Wash DC.

This weeks Billionaires & Ballot Bandits Tour stops.

Bring you copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits - or get it there and I'll sign 'em.

Please - bring your friends, spread the word and once you've read it - review it on Amazon, B&N and Goodreads.

Monday, September 24

BERKELEY

KPFA presents Greg Palast

7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)

St John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

————–

Tuesday, September 25

SANTA ROSA

Project Censored and KRCB present Greg Palast

7pm (doors open at 6.45pm)

Glaser Center

Unitarian Universalist Congregation

547 Mendocino Avenue

Santa Rosa, CA 95401

More info

—————

Wednesday, September 26

PORTLAND

KBOO presents Greg Palast

The Clinton Street Theater

7.30 pm

2522 Southeast Clinton Street

Portland, OR 97202

Phone: (503) 238-5588

More info

—————

Thursday, September 27

SEATTLE

Seattle Town Hall

7pm

1119 8th Avenue

Seattle, WA 98101

(206) 652-4255

More Info

—————

Sunday, September 30

Washington DC

Greenfestival
12:00 Noon
Main Stage
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC 20001
More info

New York... to be announced. 

* * * * * *

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Out this week! Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

ShareThis

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: 2012

by Greg Palast 

I can't believe that I had to write the sequel.

When I wrote The Best Democracy Money Can Buy after the 2000 swipe by Bush and his Ballot Bandits, I thought America would clean up its damn act and start counting ALL the votes. Boy, am I a schmuck.

Just when you thought it was safe to return to the polling booth - the Rovebots, the sharks and the vultures and the billionaire vote busters, ballot benders and defilers of democracy are back at it big time with 9 ways to steal your vote!

So here's the sequel to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, but funnier, more desperate, more informative, more important than the first time - and this time with a comic book inside.

Here it is,  Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

"Palast's funniest and Palast's best" says Pacifica Radio

"Palast's amazing, mind-blowing, literate and disturbingly funny account of what has happened to this country has left me dizzy. Meanwhile, thanks for f$%king up my life." - Jason Alexander aka George from Seinfeld. 

I want you to get this book right now because I can't stand the idea that you will walk to the polling booth innocent and unarmed, about to be swallowed.

By whom? By Themis and Datatrust, the Koch Brothers' and Karl Rove's computerized vote munching machines.

The book kicks off with Bobby Kennedy's j'accuse - The Hostile Takeover of Our Country. And in the middle there’s Ted Rall’s 48 page comic book. And then my investigations of soul crushing political terror that reviewers seem to find humorous, yet too informative for you to miss.

Look, I’m donating all my proceeds of this book because I want you to know that I'm writing this not to make a buck but to make a point: America and our kids' lives are on the line. If you think that's too dramatic just read the chapter, "Why Obama is likely to lose in 2012."

Get this right now because it includes the deadly important 9 ways they're going to steal the election as well as the antidote to this poison "7 Ways to beat…"

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, please order at least one copy from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indiebound.

Bobby, Ted and I will thank you especially if you can support our work with truly needed funds by donating for a book which I will sign. Tweet it, facebook it, post it on your sites, blow out your address books and harass your relatives - if you don’t carry the message, the SuperPAC’s will.

Media: If you have a program and you want me on contact us. If you have a website and want an excerpt contact us.

You can also get with the signed book - 2 posters of 7 ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits… because the vote you save may be your own.

And this time, let's make it the Best Democracy Money Can't Buy.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Out this week! Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

ShareThis

Romney's Breakfast of Billionaires

by Greg Palast - Dollars & Sense Magazine

On Friday, Governor Mitt Romney had breakfast with billionaires.

JOHN PAULSON, Paul Singer and Ken Langone have dropped more than a million dollars each into the Romney “Super-PAC” Restore Our Future. As Butch said to Sundance, “Who ARE these guys?”

Singer's known as "The Vulture" on Wall Street. Langone's database company came up with the list of innocent Black voters that Katherine Harris wiped off the voter rolls of Florida in 2000. But who is Paulson, a guy so dark and devious he doesn't even have a nick-name?

I tried to join them ("Sorry, sir") just to ask why Romney was chowing down with the nation's most notorious billionaires and ballot bandits.

Here is just a bit about Breakfast Billionaire #3: John Paulson from my new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps—An investigation of Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck-Buddies. There's a comic book inside by Ted Rall with an introduction by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Get it here now.

It was just released today and already hit NUMBER ONE NON-FICTION PAPERBACK in the USA. (Barnes & Noble)

In August 2007, billionaire John Paulson walked into Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, with a billion-dollar idea. Paulson’s brainstorm had all the elements that Goldman found enchanting: a bit of fraud, a bit of flimflam, and lots and lots of the ultimate drug: OPM—Other Peoples’ Money.

Paulson’s scheme was simple. Paulson, a much followed hotshot hedge-fund manager, would announce that he was betting big on the recovery of the U.S. housing market. He was willing to personally insure that billions of dollars of shaky subprime mortgages, like the ones dumped on Detroit, would never go into default.

Now, all Goldman had to do was line up some suckers with more money than sense, some big European banks that handled public pension funds, and get them to put up several billion dollars to join with Paulson to insure these shaky mortgages. Paulson, to lure the “marks” into betting the billions, would pretend to put $200 million into the investment himself.

But, in fact, Paulson would be betting against those very mortgages. Paulson himself was the secret beneficiary of the “insurance” on the mortgages. When the housing market went bust, Paulson collected from the duped banks and they didn't even know it. 

And Goldman would get a $15 million fee, or more, for lining up the sheep for the fleecing.

Goldman provided Paulson with a 29 year old kid, a French neophyte, to play the shill, making presentations to the European buyers with a fancy, 28-page “flip-book” about the wonderful, secure set of home mortgages the “clients” would be buying.

The young punk that Goldman put on the case texted a friend (in French — mais oui! —about the inscrutable “monstruosités”) while he was in the meeting right as Paulson was laying on the bullshit.

The carefully selected bag of sick mortgages was packaged up into bundles totaling several billion dollars. To paint this turd gold, Paulson and Goldman brought in the well-respected risk-management arm of ACA Capital. Paulson personally met with ACA and gave them jive that he himself was investing in the insurance (as opposed to investing against the insurance).

Secretly, Paulson personally designed the package of mortgages to load it up heavily with losers, concentrating on adjustable rate mortgages, given to those with low credit scores, while culling out high-quality loans given by West Coast banker Wells Fargo. ACA, thinking Paulson was helping them pick the good stuff, put their valuable seal of approval on the mortgage packages, though they were quite nervous about their “reputation.” (But that’s what happens when you go out with bad boys.)

The mortgages in each package were dripping dreck—but with the ACA/Goldman stamp, Moody’s and Standard & Poors gave the insurance policies a AAA rating.

European banks that hold government pension investments snapped up the AAA-rated junk.

In August 2008, over one million foreclosures resulted in the Goldman mortgage securities losing 99% of their value. The Royal Bank of Scotland, left holding the bag, wrote a check to Goldman Sachs for just short of one billion ($840,909,090). Goldman did the honorable thing . . . and turned over the money to Paulson (after taking their slice).

Don’t worry about the Royal Bank of Scotland. The British taxpayers and Bank of England covered its loss, taking over the bleeding bank.

And here’s the brilliance of it: when it came out that Goldman and other mortgage backed securities were simply hot steaming piles of manure, their value plummeted further and the mortgage market, already wounded, now collapsed—and mortgage defaults accelerated nationwide. The result was that as the market plummeted, Paulson’s profits skyrocketed: his hedge fund pulled in $3.5 billion and Paulson put over a billion of it in his own pocket.

With Paulson skinning some of Europe’s leading banks for billions, there was a bit of a diplomatic and legal dustup. The SEC investigated, confirmed in detail Paulson’s scam and sued the kid at Goldman who acted as Paulson’s assistant, the one who couldn’t even follow the complex deal. Goldman paid a fine, but never admitted any wrongdoing.

And Paulson received . . . a tax break.

Robert Pratt, a UAW member I met in Detroit, and several million others, lost their homes, including a Saudi prince who, in the recession, had to sell his Vail, Colorado, home ... to Paulson for just $45 million.

But now the bandit billionaire had a bit of problem. With $3.5 billion of ill-gotten lucre in his pocket, he needed something else in his pocket: politicians who would protect the tax dodge and keep the SEC enforcement dogs on a tight leash. Paulson wasn’t alone in profiteering from the savaging of the mortgage market. There was his billionaire buddy Paul Singer, known on Wall Street as “The Vulture.” Together they launched the super-PAC Restore Our Future with a check for one million each. They asked Bill Koch to throw in some change. Koch did: $2 million.

To restore the billionaires' future, the super-PAC's first order of business was to ally with Karl Rove. "Turdblossom," as George Bush called his mastermind Rove, had created a massive database on Americans, “DataTrust,” which works with a second massive database, “Themis,” funded by two other Koch Brothers, Charles and David.

But that’s another story, in another chapter. Read it in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

Go to www.BallotBandits.org to get the book.

***********************

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.

You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

ShareThis

This is it, folks...

A personal request from Greg Palast

Saturday, September 16, 2012

Today, our foundation releases my investigation/comic book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

I am asking you to order it today, right now, on Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble or Indiebound.org or, bless your heart, from your local bookstore. You get it Tuesday when it also hits the shelves.

We need to put this book up on #1 on Amazon and B&N and the Times list as we did with The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. If we slam the the NY Times Bestseller list again, they'll have to talk about it; the peacock, the eyeball and at the fox will have to take notice.

Let’s make sure the media can’t ignore our book.

When they see a hit, that allows me and Ted Rall (who wrote the killer comic book inside) and Bobby Kennedy (who wrote the intro and key chapter), to get on the air to blow the whistle.

The book, say 50 reviewers, is funny. But vote theft is no joke, and as Kennedy says, "IT'S A CRIME."

Stealing elections is an ugly business--and for the Kochs, the Ice Man, the Vulture, the Snake and the other billionaires, vote theft is a profit center.

So when I say, This is it!" I mean it. This is OUR moment. If you've ever donated to the Palast Investigative Fund, shared my work on Facebook, tweeted a link - yelled at your friends about voter caging, oil spills, vultures - then you're part of my team - and I thank you.

People are already calling Billionaires & Ballot Bandits the sequel to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy ("Palast's best"- Pacifica) - but I don't want to make it a trilogy.

Let's put the vote-rustling trickster out of business right now. We helped put the voter ID horror show, illegal "felon" and "alien" purges and the whole issue of ballot banditry into the mainstream media conversation. Now, let's get the rest of the story out there of the other 6 ways they steal the vote (purging, prestidigitizing, blocking, caging...well, read it yourself.)

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits is an experiment - I receive no money from it - all my proceeds go to the a 501c3 not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

If you already bought it THANK YOU. Really, we can't thank you enough.

But we're going to ask one more thing, spread the word. Get your printer warmed up and print out this leaflet it's from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and it's your front line defense document. Make 20 copies and hand it out at your college, your nursing home or wherever people congregate these days in real life.

If you read my columns, watch my BBC or Democracy Now! reports, you’re just getting the news appetizers. The whole enchilada, the whole book, is tastier than you can imagine.

Go to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble right now and write a review - then get it out to your mailing lists, your yoga studio, your sleeper cells and on your facebook page.

We don’t have the budget to advertise like the 1% do.

But we have YOU - we the army of un-billionaires - to go to Facebook, Twitter, google+, whatever to spread the word about Billionaires & Ballot Bandits - send your friends the excerpts here, here and here .

Thanks for everything - and remember you're the reason why we can do what we do - you're our Peoples' Mic - now move your fingers and spread the word.

Karl Rove, the Kochs and their buck-buddies have a plan to swipe 5.9 million votes. Now you know it, now you need it. Today makes the difference, so please order.

And note: Whether you get the book on line, from a bookstore or from BallotBandits.org, the proceeds support our not-for-profit fund for investigating the billionaires and the ballot bandits that are threatening our democracy.

See you in our funny papers,

Greg Palast

 

*************************************

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Palast has investigated US election irregularities since 2000 where he first uncovered Katherine Harris' purge of thousands of innocent black Floridian voters from the voter rolls, thus handing the White House to George W. Bush.

Palast has since reported extensively on election issues for BBC Newsnight, the UK Guardian papers, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, Democracy Now! and Rolling Stone.

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter | Podcasts

ShareThis

“Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012”

Greg Palast, The Nation of Change

An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps

“Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012” is the title of a column Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal in June 2011.

It’s not Rove’s prediction: this is his plan to make sure Obama will lose. That’s fine with me—if Rove prefers vanilla to chocolate, hey, it’s a free country. But how Rove plans to take Obama down is contained in the subhead, and it gives me the chills:

“even a small drop in the share of black voters would wipe out [Obama’s] winning margin in North Carolina.”

Here, Rove is not talking about winning by convincing black voters to vote Republican. The key to victory is preventing the black vote. Period. Rove suggests, with a wink and nudge, the Game Plan:

“If their [black voters’] share of the turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr. Obama’s 2008 winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over.”

The smell of freshly laundered white sheets, brown shirts, and sulfur is unmistakable: The key to Republican victory, in the Carolinas and nationwide, then, is making sure black people don’t turn out. Or, if they do, that they’re turned away. Or, if they can’t be turned away, that their votes are not counted.

If Rove can stand in the polling station doorway and block three million voters from entering and bulldoze another three million ballots into a landfill he can make the Ice Man’s dreams come true.

I can report that Rove is well on his way to success, and he’s only just begun.

How Rove and his compadres set out to do that—eliminate six million votes and voters—and how he and his partners have done it in the past to black voters, Hispanic voters, students, Jews, and any kind of Blue-ish voter— that’s the story you’ll get here. And not just Rove’s sleight of hand, but deliberate ballot-burgling done by others in the GOP and—cover the children’s ears!—Democrats too.

When voting-rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined our investigations team in 2008, he examined the latest documents we’d squirreled out of Republican Party head- quarters’ files. And then he said, speaking of Karl Rove and his associate Tim Griffin, “What they did was absolutely illegal—and they knew it and they did it anyway. Griffin should be in jail.”

But Griffin’s not in jail, he’s in Congress. Rove is not in prison, either. According to IRS records, he’s director of a nonprofit “social welfare” organization. American Crossroads GPS, tax-exempt under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, aims to improve society’s welfare by dragging Democrats out of their seats in Congress and removing The Black One from the White House.

Let me be clear: whether Obama is reelected, that’s none of my business. As a journalist, I stay clear of cuddling up to candidates of either party. Who gets elected, well, that’s your problem, gringo.

I’m a reporter, and it’s not my job to preserve Democrats. But preserving democracy, with that fragile little d, that means something to me.

****************

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.

You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

ShareThis

The Worst Teacher in Chicago

by Greg Palast | For the Occupied Chicago Tribune

This is a true story.

CHICAGO.  In a poorer city school, one English teacher–I won't use her name–who'd been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn't do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year.  Under Chicago's new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.

In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire.  No teachers' union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field - for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.

You've guessed by now:  It's the same teacher.

It's Back to School Time!  Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party and Barack Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.

And in Arne's old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.

Let's stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure:  slash teachers salaries, bust their unions.

Greg Palast is the author of the new Book Billionalres and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.  For two decades, Palast was an investigator for Chicago-area unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union.

They've almost stopped pretending, too.  Both the Right Wing-nuts and the Obama Administration laud the "progress" of New Orleans' schools–a deeply sick joke.  The poorest students, that struggle most with standardized tests, were drowned or washed away.

Don't confuse low scores with low potential or low ability.  That's one of the evils of standardized testing (See No Child's Behind Left.)

You want to know what's wrong with our schools?  Benno Schmidt, CEO of the big Edison Schools teach-for-profit business told me, that before Hurricane Katrina, his company would never go into New Orleans because Louisiana spends peanuts per child on education.  You get what you pay for.  Not what you test for.

So the charter carpetbaggers slither in, cherry-pick the easy students, declare success. The tough cases and special ed kids are left in the public system so they can claim the public system fails.

Here's what the teacher who was terrible at $70,000 but brilliant at $41,000 told me:

"They're not doing this in white neighborhoods.  And they want to get rid of the older, experienced teachers with seniority who cost more.  Get rid of the teachers and, ultimately get rid of the kids.  And the charter school gets to pick the kids who get in."

It's simple.  When you look at the drop-out rates in New York (41%) , Chicago (44%), and the solution offered is to pay teachers less, and punish those who dare to work in poor schools where kids struggle, you can bet that "washing away" half the kids in our schools is, in fact, exactly what they've planned.

It's notable that, when he lived in Chicago, Barack Obama played basketball with city school chief Arne Duncan, but Obama sure as hell didn't send his kids to Arne's crap charter schools. Those are for po' folk.

His kids went to the tony "Lab" School in Hyde Park.  Obama knows what Duncan knows and what Romney knows:  there's no money and no need for universal education.  Yes, they like to say that "children are our future."  But they mean the children of China are our future, the Chinese kids who will make the stuff we want and the children of India who will program it all for us.

After all, how much education does some obese kid from Texas need to stack boxes from China in a Wal-Mart warehouse?

Education is no longer about information and learning skills.  It's now about "triage."  A few selected by standardized tests or privileged birth will be anointed and permitted into better and "gifted" schools.

The chosen elite are still very much needed:  to invest in India and Vietnam, to design new derivatives to circumvent the laughable new banking laws, and to maintain order among the restless hundred-million drop-outs squeezed out of the colon of our educational system.

Democrats' Bantustans, Republicans' Value-less Vouchers.

The Obama/Duncan/Emanuel plan is to create Bantustans of un-chartered, cheaply-run dumpster schools within a government system.  But Romney and the GOP would give every child a "choice" even outside government schools with "vouchers."

Of course, the "vouchers" don't vouch for much.  Romney's old alma mater, Cranbrook Academy, runs at $34,025 a year, not counting the polo sticks and horse.  The most generous voucher program is Washington DC's, beloved of the GOP, which pays about $7,500, or if the student's "choice" is Cranbrook, about 2 months of school.  Hyde Park Day School Chicago is $35,900.  To give each kid a real choice, not just a coupon, means a massive increase in spending per pupil.  I didn't see that in the Republican platform, did you?

The experienced teacher in Chicago who took the pay cut was offered one consolation.  She was told she could make up some of the pay loss by quitting the union and saving on union dues.

So that's the program.  An educational Katrina: squeeze the teachers until they strike, demolish their unions, drown the students.

Class dismissed.

* * * * * * *

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.

You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

ShareThis

Cartoon Car-JackerGives $1 Million to Romney PAC

by Greg Palast for Truthout

An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps. Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck Buddies. Includes a comic book by Ted Rall and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Charles Manson can’t vote, but Manson Inc., al-Qaeda LLC, and Putin & Co. can run negative campaign ads on the Fox network.

And maybe they have.

In ancient times, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, the maximum amount you could give a candidate for president, legally, was two thousand dollars. And, until 2010, to legally donate to a candidate, you had to 1) have a first and last name, 2) be a citizen of the United States, and 3) breathe oxygen.

Then, in 2010, the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision (followed by a lower-court decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC) blew the doors off the limit on secret political campaign contributions. “Unnatural” persons—headless, heartless creatures called corporations—could now spend in election campaigns. And, unlike us mere mortals, these corporate creatures are not limited to two thousand dollars.

As soon as Citizens came down, billionaires pulled out their debit cards and went on a shopping spree.

In 2012, Paul “The Vulture” Singer, a billionaire, gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the super-PAC behind Mitt Romney. So did The Vulture’s buddies John Paulson (also a billionaire), Julian Robertson (billionaire), Bill Koch (billionaire). Half a dozen other rich guys also ponied up millions to Restore Our Future—including, of course, The Ice Man.

And a million bucks came into Restore Our Future from something called “F8 LLC.” Records indicate that F8 has estimated annual revenue of only $87,000 a year. So that $1 million donation must have been a real sacrifice. The “principal” of F8 is listed as Mr. Diego Villasenor. No photo, so I looked up the F8 man in Google image search and found this:

You may recognize Mr. Villasenor, a well-known assassin. But luckily, as a cartoon, he only kills other cartoons. However, he does have a million in real cash money to blow on making Governor Romney our president.



You may recognize Mr. Villasenor, a well-known assassin. But luckily, as a cartoon, he only kills other cartoons. However, he does have a million in real cash money to blow on making Governor Romney our president.

Whether this is the real Mr. Villasenor, or if there is a real Don Diego, or if he’s a Quechua Indian in Peru who believes photos will steal his soul, or if he has a soul at all, well, that just doesn’t matter. What matters is the “LLC,” which stands for Limited Liability Corporation. And under Citizens, the letters LLC mean F8 LLC can donate unlimited millions for political advertisements—and F8’s owner’s name, whether it really is Diego, his nationality, or even if he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, is none of your damn business.

And what is Restore Our Future? Well, it is a kind of campaign Death Star that can and does emit crushing blasts of money to mutilate and destroy candidates who would oppose the electoral will of Paul “Vulture” Singer, F8, Bill Koch ($2 million donation), and the other billionaires.

In just the first couple months of 2012, Restore Our Future ran about $56 million through its cash colon to crap all over the opponents of Romney’s presidential bid. (Official records showed 87.4 percent of the super- PAC’s spending went into hate messages, i.e., negative ads and telephone calls.)

But why play? What do they want? And as Butch said to Sundance, “Who are these guys?”

Well, despite the name “Citizens United,” not all those united are citizens. Less noted in the hubbub about corporate personhood was that the Citizens and SpeechNow decisions OK’d political spending by foreigners. Look forward to candidates funded by Zeta Gang Inc PAC. And while Charles Manson has lost his citizenship and right to vote, Citizens has restored his right to form Manson & Company Super-PAC.

The Chinese military is already positioned to support its Manchurian candidates. In fact, the Peoples Liberation Army is already incorporated in the US via its clothing line sold at WalMart called, “New Order.” I kid you not.

And maybe they have. Senator John McCain has disappeared from TV screens since letting the cat out of the bag that the largest contribution to “Restore,” the Romney super-PAC, likely came from China via the Sands Casino Corporation. It’s been a long time since Sinatra played the Sands in Vegas. Today, its entire income comes from casino operations in Macau, China, an operation created in partnership with Communist Party apparatchiks.

But there’s no sense asking about it. Mr. Villasenor isn’t taking questions.

----------------------------------

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.

Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter | Podcasts

ShareThis

FireDogLake Book Salon: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps book chat at FireDogLake has finished but check out what was said at here.

Read the first chapter before you chat 'Colonels in Mirrored Sunglasses'

Host Watertiger (Dependable Renegade)

Because Americans aren’t anxious enough, forced to digest anemic monthly jobs numbers, an economy teetering on the precipice, the steady stream of illegal home foreclosures, a Democratic President poised to shiv Social Security and Medicare, and the country’s insidious metamorphosis into a security state, they also have to worry about something so basic as the right to vote. That’s because über-bully Karl Rove, not content to have put the Dauphin of Dumbfuckistan in the White House, decided that controlling the Executive Branch wasn’t enough. Like his Machievellian comrade and patron, Charles Koch, he “want[ed] his fair share–and that’s all of it.” Hey, if that means depriving American citizens of their civil rights, well, so be it. There are always going to be winners and losers, amirite? Whaddya gonna do about it?

Enter Greg Palast. Let me rephrase: ENTER Greg Palast. Many of you may already be familiar with Palast’s investigative reports on everything from our decaying democracy to the looting of African economies that have appeared in The Guardian, the BBC, Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The Nation, among others. The author of New York Times bestsellers, he’s a muckraker of the best sort, nonpartisan and intrepid, digging for information while our lazy, turgid American media gets its information from PR flaks and cocktail weenie gossip.

Palast recognizes that the greatest threat to the survival of the American Experiment is the silencing of our collective voice. So he set out to follow the money behind the Koch-and-Rove Show’s organized effort to “shut it down”–if I may paraphrase Todd Akin [R-Ignorant Dipshit]. The result? Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps. With comics by the irrepressible Ted Rall, Palast’s lastest outlines precisely how these sociopaths (I know, I use that word a lot, but hey, shoes that fit…) have begun to dismantle the voting process and what we, the people, can do to repair the damage and take back our country from these arrogant plutocrats. And yes, it’s up to us, because we can’t rely on the bought-and-paid-for government to do it for us.

I wanted to note that these two pertinent stories hit the wires on Friday:

GOP efforts to purge the voter rolls in Florida and Colorado have so far come up with almost no noncitzens, NPR reports. The two states fought to gain access to an immigration database compiled by the Department of Homeland Security to compare against their voter rolls. Armed with this federal database, Florida claims the purge has identified “several” noncitizens out of 2,600 names, while Colorado admits they have “no confirmed noncitizens.”

And this:

After previously trying to restrict early voting, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) today reversed course on his decision to block county boards of elections from setting their own early voting hours in the days leading up to the November election.

It’s something, but we need more. Much, much more. And with that, I want to welcome Greg Palast and Ted Rall to Firedoglake’s Book Salon!

ShareThis

Colonels in Mirrored Sunglasses

An excerpt from Greg Palast's Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps with comics by Ted Rall and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Here are the facts, ma'am:

In the 2008 election, no less than:

767,023 provisional ballots were cast and not counted;

1,451,116 ballots were "spoiled," not counted;

488,136 absentee ballots were mailed in, but not counted.

Add it up: in the last presidential election, no less than 2,706,275 ballots were cast—and never counted. I have not included a quarter million (251,936) provisional ballots counted only in part (that is, for some offices).

That's the official number I've calculated from the records of the US Election Assistance Commission.1 Approximately three million votes flushed away are ugly enough. But it gets worse.

In addition to the roughly three million ballots cast and not counted, no less than:

2,383,587 would-be voters had their registrations rejected;
491,952 voters already registered were wrongly purged from the rolls; and
320,000 properly registered voters were simply turned away from the polls when they tried to vote, mostly for not having IDs acceptable to a poll worker.

Add it up again and total grows to no less than 5,901,814 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count. Let’s call it the Missing Six Million.

Karl Rove, when he was senior advisor to President George W. Bush, summed it up perfectly:

“We are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.”

Rove's not complaining, he's boasting about his own accomplishments.

But for strategist Rove, six million isn’t enough. Through several front organizations and affiliates, Rove and his comrades have launched a campaign making brilliant use of the tactics originating from the Red Scare and the War on Terror. Now, instead of the communist lurking under your bed or the al-Qaeda sleeper cell next door, they’ve created a new monster to fear, to hunt, and to destroy: the Fraudulent Voter.

There aren’t any, of course. Or, to be accurate, so few you can literally count them on your fingers—about six in any year—not six million, half a dozen jerks convicted of voting illegally. In the whole country. But in Rove’s echo chamber of fear, in the Voter-Fraud Hysteria Factory, these six become so threatening and dangerous that they will be used to take away the vote from six million.

Tracking ballot-bending tricksters, figuring out how they game US elections and snatch the choice away from the electorate, that’s my job, my beat for more than a decade, for the Guardian newspaper and BBC television, and in 2008, for Rolling Stone.

I started covering the election games in November 2000 when I got my hands on two computer disks from the office of Secretary of State Katherine Harris of Florida. My team cracked the computer

codes and found the names of ninety-one thousand criminals—felons—Harris listed to purge from voter rolls.

We went through Harris’s list name by name. We didn't find felons. But most were guilty of VWB: Voting While Black.

Chapter Two: "Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012"

“Purging” is one way to get rid of legal voters. There are eight more tricks, and I’ll take you through each in turn. It was bad in 2000. It was worse in 2004 and 2008. But in 2012, it will be muchworse. And in 2016, worse than in 2012."Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012" is the title of a column Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal in June 2011.

It’s not Rove’s prediction: this is his plan to make sure Obama will lose. That's fine with me—if Rove prefers vanilla to chocolate, hey, it's a free country. But how Rove plans to take Obama down is contained in the subhead, and it gives me the chills...

... Read the rest in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

*****

Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed book Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times Bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Palast has investigated US election irregularities since 2000 where he first uncovered Katherine Harris' purge of thousands of innocent black Floridian voters from the voter rolls, thus handing the White House to George W. Bush.

Palast has since reported extensively on election issues for BBC Newsnight, the UK Guardian papers, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, Democracy Now! and Rolling Stone.

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA REQUESTS (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter | Podcasts

ShareThis

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

by Greg Palast

If you're not sick and outraged and ready to vomit, then don't talk to me.

When I see a cruel bucket of garbage and winky-winky racism and bullshit and venom like Paul Ryan talk to America like he's some kind of Boy Scout, I want a gun, or a TV network where I can tell the truth or a giant washing machine to dunk America and rinse off the crud of lies and pure manipulative evil that they're feeding us.

But I don't like guns, I don't have a TV network, I just have this:  A book.

It’s called Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:  How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

An investigation of Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their billionaire Buck-Buddies. The guys who bought Ryan.

It's the most important bullet I've ever fired.

I watch these smug jerks at the Republican Convention and I'm ill ... because I know something they won't tell you on CNN or CBS, let alone Fox.  And here’s the facts, ma'am:

In 2008, no fewer than 2,706,275 ballots were cast—and never counted.

It didn't make a difference then, but it will make a difference now.

And, in 2008, no fewer than 3,195,539 legal voters were denied the right to vote.   Told to get the hell out of the polling station.

Add it up.  That's at least 5,901,814 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count.

So God Bless America. By the way, these numbers are from the raw data supplied to me by the US Elections Assistance Commission.

It's official. It's in your face.  It's sick.  It's unreported.

I cry.  I scream.  I retch.  Then I make jokes — but I give you the inside info on the Koch Brothers ("Target 67C" as federal prosecutors called Charles Koch) that will make your eyes pop.

Fact: The 2012 election's been stolen.  Already.  Stolen by billionaires who've created data bases called "Themis" (the Kochs own that) and "DataTrust" (Karl Rove's satanic machine).

The election has not been stolen from Barack Obama — it's been stolen from you.  From We the People who march to the polls believing America is still a democracy, the land of the Brave, home of The Free, and that our votes count.

The Rove-bots and the monsters behind the data bases have figured out how to fiddle, finagle and ultimately throw your vote in the garbage.

America is on the line.  ON THE LINE.  I have two kids and God forbid I stand here silent with my hands in my pockets whistling at my shoes.

How did a sick little monster like Paul Ryan end up on the Republican ticket?  Follow the money.  The big sugar daddy behind Ryan, his donor Numero Uno, is Paul "The Vulture" Singer.  Singer's the guy who started the Romney super-PAC "Restore Our Future" and he's funded Ryan up the Wazoo.

Why?  Because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton told a federal court that Singer The Vulture is a "threat to the entire financial system" of the planet.  And now Singer wants their blood—and your dead carcass.

Frankly, I don't care, as Shakespeare said, if Obama’s campaign "farts or flies."  I do care if a billionaire can steal the votes of Black soldiers just so he can make another billion.

So I want, I demand, I insist, that you order a copy of the exposé on The Vulture and Romney's billionaires (and Obama's, too):  Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:  How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

With a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "The Hostile Takeover of America". RFK is as outraged as I am but a lot calmer.

And inside it, there's a 48-page comic book by Ted Rall because every cartoon is worth a thousand bullets.

Don't be fooled again. This election is about a bunch of madly dangerous financiers — "The Vulture," the "Ice Man," and guys so evil they don't even have nicknames -- who can't tolerate the idea that Americans have a right to choose our leaders, our destinies.

You want to know who owns your ballot?  Then get the book right now by ordering it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Indiebound.  Or go and pound the counter at your local bookstore and tell them that instead of another Yoga Diet Cookbook you want a HAND GRENADE MADE OUT OF TRUTH:  Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

Alternatively, make a donation and get a signed copy.

[Whichever way you choose to get it, your dollar goes to support the Palast Investigative Fund. I am donating all my proceeds to the fund.]

Can a book make a difference?  Can't say. But I know this:  Ballot Bandits are cowards, are cockroaches.  When we turn on the lights, they run run run away.

Do this now.  Get the info ammo and pass it on to your friends and mailing lists.

And for my terrible language, I apologize.

Yours,

Greg Palast

*****

Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Or donate and can get a signed copy of the book.

MEDIA REQUESTS (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.) contact us.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.

Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter | Podcasts

ShareThis