Greg Palast's Blog, page 63

Why we are suing Ohio and Kansas We CAN Reverse Purges

by Greg Palast for The Palast Investigative Fund

The Supreme Court decision blessing the purge of half a million voters in Ohio is NOT the last word.

On Monday, the renowned law firm of Mirer Mazzocchi Julien of New York will serve a a 90-day notice on Jon Husted, the Secretary of State of Ohio, of our intent to file suit in federal court unless we receive complete information on each of the hundreds of thousands of voters removed from the voter rolls.

[image error] Movie Still from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

We have already filed a demand for information on Kris Kobach, the éminence grise behind Ohio and other mass purges nationwide, to open his purge program files to us. We are joined in this demand by the ACLU of Kansas.

What we can do

As I explained in my prior report, the Supreme Court did not authorize Ohio to remove voters who skipped an election. Rather, failing to vote was merely one of Ohio's excuses to send a postcard to these voters. Not returning the postcard was taken, absurdly—insanely—as evidence the voter had moved away.

I discovered this nasty trick for Rolling Stone—a plain evil system I call Purge by Postcard.

The implications of the Supreme Court decision are unimaginably horrid, as at least two dozen states (not just Ohio) are using “evidence” that a voter has moved — “proven” by the failure to respond to a piece of junk mail.

The purge could be massive: A half-million in Ohio will undoubtedly lead to millions nationwide.

Normally, a Supreme Court verdict is the final word, the last rodeo.

But there is hope. Jeanne Mirer, our principal attorney, explained that the civil rights groups lost at the Supreme Court on a matter of law: In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Ohio may assume a lapsed voter has moved if they failed to return a postcard.

But what if the facts say otherwise?

Support our litigation, our Stop the Steal! 2018 Investigation & Action against Husted of Ohio and Kobach of Kansas for information to open their purge files. We really, truly need your help to build this massive action against Ohio and 25 other states using the same vote purging trick.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

It’s really simple to find out if failure to return a postcard is evidence you’ve moved: ask the voter. Call them up, knock on their door: Mr. Webster, have you moved to Virginia?

[image error] Greg Palast with Donald Webster, a voter targeted for purge

If Mr. Webster and others say, “No, here I am, I haven’t moved” … well, then, the Court’s factual assumption goes poof! Because the National Voter Registration Act says that removal methods must be “reasonable.”

So, the way to challenge the Court’s decision is to prove that purge-by-postcard is unreasonable, an absurd way to determine if someone has relocated.

(Note: Ohio not only sent the purging postcard to voters who missed elections, over 400,000 were sent to those identified by Kobach as having moved to another state – the infamous Interstate Crosscheck list.)

To get to these victim voters, we need their names. Kobach has so far stonewalled our polite requests for information to which we are entitled by law. So, our new demand comes with a 90-day notice of a lawsuit.

But, the doors to the truth are opening. Ohio’s Husted has now given us the name of every single voter purged in the last decade. But we need the details of who got postcards, who returned them, and why he sent these voters postcards in the first place. And we need copies of the junk mail that stole Ohio’s democracy.

I thank Mirer’s firm for taking on this enormous task because, in all, we are filing in 25 states where mass purges are conducted. (And she is not charging the Palast Investigative Fund one dime for her firm’s enormous and expensive effort.)

Our alliance with the ACLU of Kansas is especially vital as Kobach designed the Jim Crow postcards and created the list of 7.2 million voters he claims “moved” from their voting jurisdiction.

In Illinois, we are joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and in Georgia by Helen Butler of the Georgia Coalition of the Peoples Agenda where Hon. Stacy Abrams is running for Governor. Abrams is likely to face Brian Kemp who has purged Georgia voter rolls in a manner at least as spurious, vicious and racist as Ohio’s operation. We have just served papers on Mr. Kemp.

Through investigation, we have already obtained parts of these Ohio, Kansas and Georgia purge lists — including the one targeting Donald Alexander Webster Sr., a 70-year-old Black voter in Dayton. He is listed as allegedly moving from Ohio to Virginia because there’s a Virginia voter registered as Donald Eugene Webster Jr.

But Webster has not moved from Ohio. I can testify to that: I met with him in his Dayton home. And he swears he’s never been a “Eugene” nor a “Junior.”

Webster insists, “I vote every election and every primary, every one.”

“I remember the Civil Rights Act, I remember all of those things. Almost all gone,” Webster added, with a deep sadness in his voice, “Somebody dropped the ball. Maybe it was us, our age group, that we thought we didn’t have to fight anymore.”

Well, Mr. Webster, the fight is beginning. Again.

* * * *

I need you to join this fight. We desperately need your help right now, to roll back the effect of this Supreme Court decision. I am not a lawyer, but I am an expert investigator and statistical analyst – by work in a prior life – and I need a team to take on this work nationwide – to prove that the Purge-by-Postcard operation is wrong – and racist. For reasons explained in my prior report, voters of color, young voters, low-income voters are the ones far most likely to be purged.

And, most importantly, I need to film it and report it. Publicizing the unfairness and cruelty of this purge operation is crucial. Five states have already dumped Crosscheck under the glare of our exposés.

You’ve seen our reports on Democracy Now, Guardian Online, Rollling Stone… and cited in the New York Times and on the floor of Congress.

Our findings are made available to voting rights organizations without charge. (And we have impact: For example, Common Cause cited our investigative findings as key factual elements in their suit which ended the extension of Crosscheck in Iowa.)

I get great joy out of signing books and DVDs to those of you who generously keep the team alive and on the move across the nation. It is gratifying to know that there are so many of you who respect the dying art of old-fashioned investigative reporting. And for that, I thank you.

* * * * *Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, is now available on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. If you use Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund — and you get a tax-deduction! Click here for more info.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post Why we are suing Ohio and Kansas
We CAN Reverse Purges appeared first on Greg Palast.

What Can Be Done?

by Greg Palast for The Palast Investigative Fund

The implications of the Supreme Court decision are unimaginably horrid, as states come up with spurious “evidence” that a voter has moved — “proven” by a failure to respond to a piece of junk mail.

The purge could be massive: A half-million in Ohio will undoubtedly lead to millions nationwide.

Normally, a Supreme Court verdict is the final word, the last rodeo.

But there is hope. On Wednesday, I spoke by phone with renowned class-action attorney Jeanne Mirer of New York. She explained that the civil rights groups lost on a matter of law: States may assume a voter has moved residence if they don’t return a postcard.

But what if the facts say otherwise?

Just the Facts, Ma’am

It’s really simple to find out if failure to return a postcard is evidence you’ve moved: ask the voter. Call them up, knock on their door: Mr. Webster, have you moved to Virginia?

If Mr. Webster and others say, “No, here I am, I haven’t moved” … well, then, the Court’s factual assumption goes poof! Because the National Voter Registration Act says that removal methods must be “reasonable.”

So, the way to challenge the Court’s decision is to prove that purge-by-postcard is unreasonable and bogus.

To get to these purged voters, we need their names. Husted has just given us the complete list of the damned. But he’s stonewalling on the details, including who received and sent back the postcard.  He knows that exposing the full operation of his purge machinery will blow his case to smithereens.

So, this week, this reporter is filing a demand on Husted for details on each purged voter. And I thank Mirer’s firm for taking on this enormous task, because in all, we are filing in 25 states where mass purges are being conducted. (And her firm is working pro bono.)

We really, truly need your support to build this massive action against not just Ohio, but 25 other states using the same vote purging trick. Join our Stop the Steal! 2018 Investigation & Action.

Husted has so far stonewalled our polite requests for the information, but this new demand comes with a 90-day notice of a lawsuit.

And in Kansas, where these methods, postcards and Crosscheck lists were conceived, I am joined in my demand on Kris Kobach for his purge lists by the Kansas ACLU.

Strategically, we’re beginning by demanding that segment of the purge list that Kobach gave to Ohio and other states.

Through investigation, we have already obtained parts of these purge lists — including the one targeting Donald Alexander Webster Sr., a 70-year-old Black voter in Dayton, Ohio. He is listed as allegedly moving from Ohio to Virginia because there’s a Virginia voter registered as Donald Eugene Webster Jr.

Webster has not moved from Ohio. I met with him in his Dayton home. And he swears he’s never been a “Eugene” or a “Junior.” He insists, “I vote every election and every primary, every one.”

Channeling Justice Sotomayor, he told me, “I remember the Civil Rights Act, I remember all of those things. Almost all gone.” He added, with a deep sadness in his voice, “Somebody dropped the ball. Maybe it was us, our age group, that we thought we didn’t have to fight anymore.”

Well, Mr. Webster, the fight is beginning. Again.

* * * * *Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, has just been released on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. If you use Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund — and you get a tax-deduction! Click here for more info.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post What Can Be Done? appeared first on Greg Palast.

Ohio’s Junk Mail Trick Led The Supreme Court To Approve Jim Crow Vote Purge

By Greg Palast for Truthout

Monday’s Supreme Court decision blessing Ohio’s removal of half a million voters was ultimately decided on the issue of a postcard.

Now that little postcard threatens the voting rights of millions — but it can be reversed.

The instant-news media, working from press releases, not the Supreme Court’s decision itself, said that Husted, Ohio Secretary of State v. A. Philip Randolph Institute was about whether Ohio has the right to remove voters who failed to cast ballots in two federal election cycles.

Nope.

Even the Court’s right-wing majority concedes that federal law strictly forbids removing voters because they skipped some elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 states that a voter purge program “shall not result in the removal of the name of any person … by reason of the person’s failure to vote.”

But here’s the trick: In 2002, the George W. Bush administration ginned up the Help America Vote Act. When a Bush tells you he’s going to “help” you vote, look out. Yet, naïve Democrats passed the act into law. The Help America Vote Act is filled with buried land mines that are still exploding.

Monday’s decision is one of those land mines. The Help America Vote Act, the Court concluded, blew open a giant loophole in the National Voter Registration Act’s protections. The trick is that Ohio does not remove voters simply because they missed a few elections. According to the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito:

Ohio uses a registrant’s failure to vote [only] to identify that registrant as a person whose address has likely changed.

The Court takes note that Ohio claims it had evidence that, in 2012, a whopping 1.5 million voters — an astronomical 20 percent of its total voter base — had moved their residence out of Ohio or moved from their county voting area. The 1.5 million voters were sent postcards asking them to confirm their mailing address.

It was a voter’s failure to return the postcard that cost them their right to vote. The Court majority said that the Help America Vote Act trumps the National Voter Registration Act, arguing that the act passed under George W. Bush “specifies that ‘nothing in [the National Voter Registration Act prohibition] may be construed to prohibit a State from using the procedures’ — [such as] sending a return card.”

The Justices ruled that a voter’s failure to return a postcard (which asks the voter to confirm their address) constitutes solid proof that the voter had left Ohio or moved to another voting district.

The plaintiffs, a coalition of voting rights groups, were gob-smacked. Plaintiffs argued that there are many reasons folks did not return the postcard, most likely that they threw it away as junk mail or never received it in the first place. But the Court majority found that, without specific evidence, the plaintiffs’ claim that voters just threw away the cards was speculative and “dubious.”

Jim Crow Is In The Cards

Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the effect of the Court’s decision was to disproportionately wipe out the rights of “minority, low-income, disabled, homeless, and veteran voters.” Sotomayor went on to cite an investigation revealing that Ohio’s purge operation had knocked out the registrations of 10 percent of African American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati compared to only 4 percent of voters in a nearby suburban, majority-white neighborhood.

But that’s the point, Madame Justice.

But how? The Jim Crow result is in the cards.

I first discovered “purge-by-postcard” in 2014 while investigating mass attacks on voter rolls by GOP officials in a dozen states for Al Jazeera. I turned to direct mail experts, including Michael Wychocki, a Chicago-based adviser on mailing for Amazon and other companies that live or die by mail.

He directed me to the US Census Bureau’s massive study of mail return rates. Dig this:

•​ While 90 percent of those 65 years of age and older return the Census form, only 55.4 percent of those 18 to 24 reply.

• Homeowners are 32 percent more likely than renters to return forms.

• Only 65 percent of Latino voters mailed back an initial Census form, as did 70 percent of Black voters—versus over 80 percent of “non-Hispanic whites.”

And crucially, according to the Census study, 12 percent of mailings simply go astray—especially, says Wychocki, in poor, urban communities, where the tenants hop between apartments in the same neighborhood. And let’s not even discuss students and the homeless.

 

[Above: An example of the postcard that was the center of the Supreme Court Ohio ruling. If you don’t return it, you lose your vote. The card was designed by Kris Kobach of Kansas — each GOP state using it can create a variant. This one, used in Georgia, is used by Secretary of State Brian Kemp to purge voters. Kemp is running against Democrat Stacey Abrams for Governor.]

Designed To Be Thrown Away?

And that’s the Census Bureau, which designs mailings to get the highest response possible. Not so for the purge-by-postcard programs used by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.

I showed Ohio voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis a postcard on which one’s voting rights hang, and he gave, word for word, the same response I got from another direct mail expert, Mark Swedlund (whose clientele include eBay and AT&T): “Looks like junk mail, you’d throw it in the garbage.”

Indeed, Wychocki inspected the cards, which are filled with blocks of small print with no images. He explained that the design violates every cardinal rule of direct mail solicitation. While Wychocki would not speculate on the designer’s motives, he said it looked as if the postcard was by someone who did not want the voter to respond.

And one such someone is Kris Kobach. According to documents obtained by the ACLU, Kobach provided Husted (and other GOP voting officials) a sample postcard to send to voters targeted for purge.

Why? There are two groups of voters in the 500,000 that Ohio purged based on “evidence” the voter has moved. Hundreds of thousands were purged who landed on the suspect list because they missed elections. Second, there were those who supposedly have registered in another state. Names of those identified as moving to another state were taken from the infamous Interstate Crosscheck list given Husted by Kobach, according to documents from Kobach’s office.

For example, in 2015, leading up to the presidential election, Kobach, secretary of state in Kansas, gave Husted the Crosscheck list of 423,484 names of Ohio citizens who supposedly had registered in another state, according to Kansas records obtained by an investigative team I was working with at Rolling Stone magazine. Kobach and Husted had originally sold the Crosscheck program to the public as a method of finding criminal “double voters” – those actually voting in two states.

But Kobach himself told me in 2016—when I confronted him at a GOP fundraiser in Wichita while working for Rolling Stone—that the primary use of his Crosscheck lists is to identify voters who have moved and registered in another state. Kobach’s office directs the national program to remove voters who fail to respond to a postcard, taking advantage of the nifty Help America Vote Act-shaped hole in the National Voter Registration Act.

That Kris Kobach led the way with the purge-by-postcard scheme is not surprising, given his long history of scams to disenfranchise voters of color, closely reported on by me for Truthout.

History Of Vote Suppression

Which brings us to Sotomayor’s outrage that the majority “entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the [National Voter Registration Act] was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”

We don’t need to look at all of US history. Husted’s own long record of purging, blocking and not counting voters of color is a history lesson in disenfranchisement all by itself.

In 2012 and 2016, I filmed the single early voting station in Dayton, Ohio, where Black voters lined up for five hours to vote. I also filmed the lines in a white Toledo suburb. Well, actually, there were no lines: white voters had a gigantic field of machines to choose from—plus cookies and coffee served.

The long lines for Black voters resulted from Husted’s order closing all but one single early voting station in each county. That meant one polling station for the 13,000 residents and cows in Vinton County and one polling station for 1.3 million residents of Franklin County (Columbus).

Ohio attorney Robert Fitrakis says, bluntly, that Husted is purging voters of color to “make Ohio winnable [for Republicans] in the only way he knows how — by stealing American citizens’ votes. And he’s counting on bigotry to get away with it.”

Sunday, Part 2: The Supreme Court decision is NOT the final word. Millions of voters’ registrations are threatened, but I have joined with a team of attorneys, and we have come up with a way to stop the steal, stop the massive purge.

And we really, truly need your support to build this massive action against not just Ohio, but 25 other states using the same vote purging trick.

* * * * *Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, has just been released on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. If you use Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund — and you get a tax-deduction! Click here for more info.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post Ohio’s Junk Mail Trick Led The Supreme Court To Approve Jim Crow Vote Purge appeared first on Greg Palast.

Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging?Palast on The Thom Hartmann Show

The Supreme Court's blessing of Ohio's move to remove a half million voters from the rolls because they missed two elections should scare you. But dig this: At least 100,000 of those voters, mostly in Democratic areas, actually only missed one election. Being on the Crosscheck list and not returning a postcard was counted by GOP Secretary of State rules as a "missed" election.

For more on voter caging and how not responding to a junk mail post-card could result in you losing your vote watch

The post Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging?Palast on The Thom Hartmann Show appeared first on Greg Palast.

Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging?The Thom Hartmann Show

The Supreme Court's blessing of Ohio's move to remove a half million voters from the rolls because they missed two elections should scare you. But dig this: At least 100,000 of those voters, mostly in Democratic areas, actually only missed one election. Being on the Crosscheck list and not returning a postcard was counted by GOP Secretary of State rules as a "missed" election.

For more on voter caging and how not responding to a junk mail post-card could result in you losing your vote watch

The post Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging?The Thom Hartmann Show appeared first on Greg Palast.

Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging?

[Above: Thom Hartmann and Greg Palast discuss the recent Supreme Court decision which validates Ohio's massive purge-by-postcard.]

The Supreme Court's blessing of Ohio's move to remove a half million voters from the rolls because they missed two elections should scare you. But dig this: At least 100,000 of those voters, mostly in Democratic areas, actually only missed one election. Being on the Crosscheck list and not returning a postcard was counted by GOP Secretary of State rules as a "missed" election.

For more on voter caging and how not responding to a junk mail post-card could result in you losing your vote watch the update of our move, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy — now available on Amazon Prime. And look out for a major report coming soon on Truthout.

* * * * *

Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, has just been released on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. If you use Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund — and you get a tax-deduction! Click here for more info.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post Did The Supreme Court Just Legalize Caging? appeared first on Greg Palast.

Women For Kansas Present: The Best Democracy Money Can BuyPalast To Announce Lawsuit Against Kobach At “Showing Our Strength” Convention In Wichita, Kansas On August 31.

Greg Palast was the first to expose Kris Kobach’s vote-stealing trickery in the pages of Rolling Stone. The investigative reporter will answer your questions in person after a special screening on Friday, August 31 in Wichita, Kansas of the post-election update of his hit film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case Of The Stolen Election. The Q&A and screening are the culminating event of the Women for Kansas’ “Showing Our Strength” Convention. The event is open to all.

The post Women For Kansas Present: The Best Democracy Money Can BuyPalast To Announce Lawsuit Against Kobach At “Showing Our Strength” Convention In Wichita, Kansas On August 31. appeared first on Greg Palast.

Oil-Can Eddie: The Man Who Made Me an Investigator and Made Me a ManEddie Sadlowski (1938-2018)

Eddie Sadlowski was a machine oiler at U.S. Steel Southworks. In 1976, he led a workers’ rebellion to take control of the million-person United Steelworkers of America. (Back then, workers were united and America made steel.) Oil-can Eddie was America’s working-class hero, back then, when America was working. He’d been profiled on 60 Minutes. The University of Chicago Business School thought it cute to

The post Oil-Can Eddie: The Man Who Made Me an Investigator and Made Me a ManEddie Sadlowski (1938-2018) appeared first on Greg Palast.

Oil-Can Eddie: The Man Who Made Me An Investigator – And Made Me A Man Eddie Sadlowski (1938-2018)

By Greg Palast

[Above: Edward Eugene “Oil-can” Sadlowski,

September 10, 1938 - June 10, 2018.]

Eddie Sadlowski was a machine oiler at U.S. Steel Southworks. In 1976, he led a workers’ rebellion to take control of the million-person United Steelworkers of America. (Back then, workers were united and America made steel.) Oil-can Eddie was America’s working-class hero, back then, when America was working. He’d been profiled on 60 Minutes. The University of Chicago Business School thought it cute to bring him to the ivy-decorated campus to lecture, with his rough hands and Local 1110 windbreaker, so the yuppies-in-training could make fun of the workers’ monkey trying to speak English.

Sadlowski stunned them, his brain racing beyond them. But it was their decade, with Reagan rising, and they would close Southworks, then bury both Eddie and his union. I didn’t know that then and I’m glad I didn’t.

Sadlowski ended his performance by looking out over the packed auditorium, saying, “Is Greg Palast here?”

Heads turned. Mine, too. Huh?


“Yeah, you. You Greg Palast? Meet me downstairs.”


OK. In the basement coffee shop, I got us two Styrofoam cups and lots of sugar, and without even a hello, Sadlowski said, “Rosen told me where I could find you. Teddy Smolarek says you’re a genius.”

He said it like, “You’re the guy who has the tire size I’m looking for.”

Sadlowski told me that this big-shot politician, a Boss Daley Machine hack on the South Side, was running against a decent lady who cared about steelworkers. The union needed info on the Machine’s candidate.

Sadlowski said, “He’s a crook.”

I asked how he knew the guy was a crook.




The entire 240 pounds of Polish steelworker leaned in to me. “You’re the genius. You tell me!”

* * *

Two weeks later, through some BS story I used about a research paper, I got my hands on the bids for county emergency roadwork. There it was: the Machine’s boy was the costliest bidder for the job. He still got the contract. Excited with the stone-cold evidence of corruption, I gave the story to CBS. Which buried the story—and the corrupt politico got elected to Congress — a lesson in American “news” that I’d get again and again and again for the next 40 years.

Whatever, that was my first real investigation. I didn’t know it, but this side of beef of a mechanic was handing me my life across a plastic folding table.

* * *

“There’s a man by my side walkin’.

There’s a voice within me talkin’.

There’s a word that needs a sayin’:

Carry it on.

Carry it on.”

I will, Eddie.

Story of Oil-Can Eddie from Vulture’s Picnic by Greg Palast (2011). “Carry It On” by Eddie’s friend, Pete Seeger.

* * * * *

Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, has just been released on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile. If you use Smile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund — and you get a tax-deduction! Click here for more info.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

The post Oil-Can Eddie: The Man Who Made Me An Investigator – And Made Me A Man
Eddie Sadlowski (1938-2018) appeared first on Greg Palast.

Court Checks Crosscheck In Indiana

By Greg Palast

A federal judge has enjoined Indiana from purging voters just because they are on Kris Kobach’s Crosscheck list. The winning suit was brought by Common Cause. Their complaint extensively cited the work of the Palast Investigations Fund.

[Above: Excerpt from the preliminary injunction which bars Indiana from removing voters from the rolls based on Crosscheck alone. View full order here.]

This means Crosscheck is wounded, but the beast can still kill. Kill democracy. But we are proud to have provided the hard investigative facts that saved tens of thousands of voters of color in Indiana. Just 25 states to go… and we’re going after all of them, one at a time. And you can help us, by supporting our "Stop The Steal" action by making a tax-deductible donation here!

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Before turning to journalism as an investigative reporter for The Guardian and BBC Television, Greg Palast was an investigator of fraud and racketeering for governments and labor unions worldwide. Known as the reporter who exposed how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black voters from Florida rolls to steal the 2000 election for George Bush, Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie. The post-election update of the movie, subtitled The Case of the Stole Election, has just been released on Amazon — and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

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