Greg Palast's Blog, page 69
January 1, 2018
December 25, 2017
December 23, 2017
Palast Investigative Fund fellow Zach D. Roberts’ Charlottesville photo makes Time Mag’s Top 100 Photos of 2017 list
Chosen as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Photos of 2017: Our own Zach D. Roberts’ photo of the beating of a Black school teacher De'Andre Harris by neo-Nazis. In case the photo isn’t clear, the five men beating the teacher are the "good people" lauded by President Trump.
Photojournalist Zach D. Roberts is Associate Producer and stake-out videographer for Greg Palast’s film, “ The Best Democracy Money Can Buy .” We are now making the post-election update. You can add your name as a producer for a minimum tax deductible contribution of $1,000 ($500 for Co-Producer) or get a credit as a supporter for $100 minimum donation. And you’ll get a signed copy of your film on DVD. Or help us fund our continued investigation of 'their' vote-swiping schemes for any amount no matter how large or small.
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. His investigations have appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper's and New Statesman. 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 non-fiction movie.
Stay informed, download the new, #TrumpStoleIt, post-election edition of our hit film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, or get the signed DVD, 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. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Palast Investigative Fund fellow Zach D. Roberts’ Charlottesville photo makes Time Mag’s Top 100 Photos of 2017 list appeared first on Greg Palast.
December 15, 2017
Gov. McAuliffe, End New Jim Crow Voter Suppression Tactic
By Gary Flowers and Greg Palast for Richmond Free Press
Imagine a wonderful parting gift from Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Imagine if Gov. McAuliffe put an end to Virginia’s strange and inexplicable participation in a GOP voter suppression trick that reeks of Jim Crow.
Since 2013, this stealth voter purge program has cost tens of thousands of Virginians of color their right to vote. It’s called Interstate Crosscheck.
Interstate Crosscheck is the suspect computer program created by Kris Kobach, former Kansas secretary of state and a Trump administration appointee as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, also known as the Voter Fraud Commission.
President Trump, who is unfit to serve, alleged that millions of Americans were registered or “voting many, many times” in two or more states in the same election — a felony.
In June, Gov. McAuliffe laughed off these claims of mass voter fraud as nonsense and denounced the Election Integrity Commission as “a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.”
Furthermore, the governor flatly refused to hand over Virginia’s voter files to Mr. Kobach.
What Gov. McAuliffe did not say — and apparently did not know — is that Virginia already had turned over the files to Mr. Kobach months earlier.
In January, Virginia’s Elections Board sent Mr. Kobach the voting records of 5,629,081 Virginians, including their birth date and Social Security data.
Worse, last year, the state Department of Elections tagged 73,798 Virginians as “duplicate” voters based in part on Mr. Kobach’s suspect list.
Mr. Kobach, using his Crosscheck computer-matching program, has generated a list of an astonishing 3.1 million Americans that he has tagged as suspected “duplicate” voters or registrants.
What is not so laughable is that 28 states have removed hundreds of thousands of voters named on Mr. Kobach’s secret lists. Not surprisingly, almost all of the Crosscheck states are Republican controlled. A surprising exception: Virginia.
So who are these Virginians discovered by Mr. Kobach who dare to register to vote in two states at once?
Despite official resistance, a Rolling Stone magazine investigations team obtained Virginia’s Crosscheck list of the accused. For example, according Crosscheck, James Cross Barnes III of Arlington is “potentially” the same voter as James Elmer Barnes Jr. of Fayetteville, Ga. And James Anthony Barnes is supposed to be the same person as James Ratcliffe Barnes Jr.
Worse still, although Virginia handed over birth date and Social Security information to Mr. Kobach, his lists ignore this data when hunting “duplicate” voters.
So it’s no wonder that, in all, Mr. Kobach tagged an astonishing 354,452 Virginians as two-state registration suspects. Overwhelmingly, these voters happen to be of color and/or vote in heavily Democratic legislative districts.
The result? In 2013, Virginia removed 41,637 voters from the rolls based on Mr. Kobach’s listing.
Last year, the Virginia Department of Elections tagged 73,798 Virginians as potential “duplicate” voters based in part on Mr. Kobach’s list.
Here’s the real danger of Crosscheck: Database experts working with Rolling Stone and the national NAACP found the Crosscheck hit list is racially biased in the extreme. The lists are little more than compilations of common names.
* * * * *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 non-fiction movie.
Stay informed, get the signed DVD, 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. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Gov. McAuliffe, End New Jim Crow
Voter Suppression Tactic appeared first on Greg Palast.
December 11, 2017
Legal victory stops steal in ‘Bama! Well, almost… Voting rights victory lasted just 9 hours: Republican judges overturn ruling to prevent ballot-box stuffing
By Greg Palast
I hope you savored the moment. Yesterday, Monday December 11, voting rights advocate John Brakey won a court order – in Montgomery, Alabama no less – requiring every county to keep copies of their ballots after the voting Tuesday.
Now, you may think that in a democracy, in the United States of America, in the 21st Century, you wouldn’t simply throw away ballots, announce a winner, and say, “trust us, we counted the ballots fairly.”
But this is not exactly America, nor the 21st Century. This is Alabama; Alabama after the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Then, by 6pm Alabama time, the voting rights victory dance came to an end. GOP state officials, in an "ex-parte" (i.e. private) meeting with an Alabama Supreme Court judge, obtained a "stay" of the ballot protection, effectively killing it. Alabama counties may now destroy ballot images, destroy any record of the true vote.
But they’ll tell you the winner: Likely Republican Judge Roy Moore, the former chief of the court that just blocked any possible challenge to a suspect election.
Even without Judge Moore’s cronies taking away this protection of voter ballots, the GOP had nine other methods already in motion to prevent a true and fair election. If the Democrat Doug Jones loses, it won’t be to Judge Moore; rather, it will be to Jim Crow and the ten little cheats perfected by the GOP.
[image error]Before you read on about vote theft way down south in Dixie, get the full vote-heist story, captured on film in Alabama. It’s in the post-election edition of the movie, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election.
No, it’s not the one on Amazon or iTunes. This is the NEW update--#TrumpStoleIt edition, which will go commercial next year.
But right now, you can ONLY get it by making a tax-deductible donation to the Palast Investigative Fund.
Donate $20 or more and get the download. Or donate $50 for a personalized, signed DVD as a heartfelt thank you from me. Or you can simply support our work for any amount no matter how large or small.
We didn’t get to Alabama by flapping our arms—we had to pay for tickets, cameras, lawyers, and feed our team of indefatigable detectives.
It is our habit, by instinct and long experience to get to the places where news will be made. Help us continue the hunt.
Now, read on…
Ballot-box stuffing
The TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) that Brakey won, then lost, would have stopped what I call the “Baldwin Ballot Bandit” trick or, as my co-author Bobby Kennedy calls it, “good old ballot box stuffing.”
Background: In 2002, Gov. Don Siegelman won a close re-election. But, after the Associated Press announced the result, rural Republican Baldwin County locked the courthouse doors. Beginning at midnight, GOP officials claimed to have counted thousands of ballots that they mysteriously “found”—enough to flip the election. No one was allowed to see those ballots—if they even existed.
This is what the Brakey TRO intended to stop.
[For the full story of the Baldwin County Ballot theft, see “Stuffed,” by Bobby Kennedy Jr.. It’s chapter 28 of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the 2016 edition of my bestseller. Donate $50 for the book and I’ll sign it to you with my thanks.]
So, how will they steal it? Let me count the ways (nine of them).
[Photo: Palast trying to get into an Alabama DMV in Lowndes County—73% black. Locked tight.]
The ID con. Within hours of the Supreme Court slicing up the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Alabama passed a law requiring all voters to have a photo ID from a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles). And the very next day, the state shut down almost every DMW in the ten Black-Belt counties.
“Caging.” It’s a felony crime, but that didn’t stop Judge Moore’s campaign chief, Brett Doster, from committing this vote theft crime for the George W. Bush campaign in 2004. I know, because I have Doster’s own confidential emails.
(How I got them – well, that’s another story. You’ll just have to read the book.) Here’s a bit of one of the emails. Bobby Kennedy Jr explains how this ‘caging’ trick steals votes (from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy):
[image error]
Crosscheck. In 2015 I got a call from Hank Sanders of Selma, Alabama. His name was missing from the voter rolls. That’s Senator Hank Sanders. Despite his post, he’d been removed mysteriously. I flew down and solved the mystery. The perp: Donald Trump’s operative, Kris Kobach of Kansas.
Kobach created a list of 239,801 Alabamians he tagged as “potential” duplicate voters. I got my hands on about a third of that list – how? don’t ask – and it’s overwhelmingly names of Black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters. Yet, Alabama has arrested not one double voter. It’s Jim Crow all over again.
“Spoiling.” The Alabama ballot has nothing on the ballot but the Senate race and, in some counties, a local referendum. But it also has a box for “party-line” votes. Vote for “Democratic Party” and also vote for the Democratic candidate, your vote can be tossed in the “spoilage” bin, not counted, because they can decide, arbitrarily, that you “over-voted” – voted twice. It’s a technical gotcha that is used selectively…i.e. against Black voters.
I saw the “over-vote” spoilage trick eliminate 700 Al Gore votes in Gadsden County, Florida in 2000. (That’s more than the 537 votes that supposedly elected George W. Bush.)
And I saw it again in November 2016 in Detroit, Michigan, where 70,355 ballots were not counted (in part, because of the same over-vote trick). Throwing out those Detroit ballots gave Donald Trump a supposed 10,700 margin to win Michigan.
OK, let’s review: There’s
1. Ballot stuffing
2. Crosschecking
3. Caging
4. Spoiling
5. Blocking (the ID con)...
...and five more tricks, including that old GOP standby, purging “ex-cons” not allowed to vote. Except I’ve yet to find an ex-con purge list that’s anything other than a con itself.
I simply can’t describe every trick in this small space. You’ll have to read the book or see the film.
There’s one certain way to stop these vote suppression games. One candidate, named Barack Obama, told our team: You can’t steal all the votes all the time. Turn out so massively, they just can’t steal it.
Martin Luther King Jr led 35,000 marchers over the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to the capital Montgomery. Along the way, four marchers were murdered by the Klan. But by time the marchers got to the capital, the Voting Rights Act was on its way into law.
A young Hank Sanders was there. Last year, making the film with him, the elder Senator Sanders demanded I walk over the Pettus bridge with him. “You have to walk over the bridge every chance you get—because the right to vote is always in jeopardy.”
We will see if enough Alabama citizens will cross that bridge tomorrow to overcome the trickery and flim-flam that Alabama calls an election.
* * * * *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 non-fiction movie.
Stay informed, get the signed DVD, 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. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Legal victory stops steal in ‘Bama!
Well, almost…
Voting rights victory lasted just 9 hours:
Republican judges overturn ruling
to prevent ballot-box stuffing appeared first on Greg Palast.
TRO Saves Alabama Senate Race Ballot Images — Well, ALMOST!!!A Republican, A Democrat, An Independent, And A Minister Walk Into An Alabama Court… And Successfully Sue To Preserve Digital Voting Records… UPDATE: Court Order Stayed In Ex-Parte Hearing
By Nicole Powers
Alabama Digital Ballot Image Preservation Preliminary Order
A group of Alabama voting rights activists have secured a temporary restraining order to stop digital election records being destroyed after Tuesday’s highly contentious Senate special election between Doug Jones (D) and Roy Moore (R). The preliminary injunction, issued by a Montgomery circuit court judge, orders all Alabama counties to save all digital copies of ballots that are created when vote counting machines scan paper ballots.
UPDATE 1: We just got a call from John Brakey and Chris Sautter from Alabama. The State Supreme Court, without a hearing, but on the pure "ex-parte" (i.e. private) complaint of the State, "stayed" — that is, OVERTURNED THIS MORNING’S RULING TO PRESERVE ALL BALLOTS!
The temporary restraining order, which can be viewed in full above, states:
All counties employing digital ballot scanners in the Dec. 12, 2017 election are hereby ORDERED to set their voting machines to save ALL PROCESSED IMAGES in order to preserve all digital ballot images. This order applies to those machines that have such a setting and does not apply to any machine that does not allow for processed images to be saved.
Prior to this court case, election officials in at least three of the state’s largest counties had planned to only preserve images in the case of write-in ballots, meaning that all other images would be lost once the vote counting machines, which scan the paper ballots, were switched off on Tuesday night. The defendants in the case are Republican Secretary of State John Merrill and Alabama's Administrator of Elections, Ed Packard. The complaint, filed on behalf of Pamela Miles of Madison County, Dan Dannemueller of Elmore County, Paul Hard of Montgomery County, and Victoria Tuggle of Cullman County, states:
1. Defendants John Merrill and Ed Packard are failing to carry out their duties to instruct county election officials to preserve all election materials as required by law. Specifically, Defendants, according to information provided by them, indicate they do not and will not instruct election officials in each of the Alabama counties to preserve digital ballot images created by digital voting machines used throughout the state even though they are instructing such county officials to preserve “write-in” digital ballots.
2. As a result of Defendants’ failure to comply with Alabama’s public records law, digital ballot images used for tabulating votes and possible post-election adjudication will be destroyed following the December 12, 2017 special election for United States Senate in Alabama. The issue continues to be ripe through all elections scheduled in 2018.
3. Plaintiffs believe the failure of defendants to require that all election materials including digital ballot images violates Alabama’s public records law and infringes upon their right to a fair and accurate election.
As noted in the complaint, “Digital scanners count the digital images of the ballots rather than the paper ballots themselves while optical scanners count the paper ballots. Ballot images are therefore in the chain of custody and constitute public records.”
"People think that when they mark the ballots and they go into the machine that that's what counted,” said Priscilla Duncan, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, to local news outlet AL.com. "But it's not, the paper ballot is not what's counted. That ballot is scanned and they destroy [the ballots] after the election ... If there's ever an election challenge you need to have what was actually counted.”
John Roberts Brakey, a noted Arzona-based voting rights advocate, is an integral part of the team responsible for bringing the case. After news broke that the group's bid had been successful and that a TRO had been issued, we reached out to him for comment. He tells us: “The Court’s decision today is a clarion call to election officials in Alabama and across the country that transparency is essential to healthy democratic elections in our constitutional government. I believe this is the first of many successful challenges that will make our elections transparent, trackable, and publicly verified.”
A full hearing is set for December 21, when Brakey hopes the court will make the temporary restraining order permanent.
UPDATE 2: Following news that a stay has been issued, essentially overturning the TRO to preserve digital copies of paper ballots in the Alabama Senate Race — which makes a recount impossible — we reached out to voting rights advocate John Roberts Brakey for comment:
“By this desperate action filed late today one can see that they clearly don’t want elections that are transparent, trackable and publicly verified,” says Brakey. “History teaches us that elections without public accountability are nothing more than vote-counting in the dark, controlled by a government, in the act of choosing itself and its cronies, while picking our pockets.”
The full motion to stay, filed by Republican Secretary of State John Merrill, can be found here. Merrill's corrected petition for emergency writ of mandamus with exhibits can be found here.
The post TRO Saves Alabama Senate Race Ballot Images — Well, ALMOST!!!
A Republican, A Democrat, An Independent, And A Minister Walk Into An Alabama Court… And Successfully Sue To Preserve Digital Voting Records… UPDATE: Court Order Stayed In Ex-Parte Hearing appeared first on Greg Palast.
December 6, 2017
Poor People’s Non-Profit Bank Sues Trump Over Illegal Seizure Of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By Greg Palast
Medal of Honor for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union — the poor people’s non-profit bank that's suing Donald Trump over the illegal seizure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (see story). This is the same little bank that took on Goldman Sachs (see my Democracy Now! report above) and kicked ass.
Willie Sutton robbed banks — Trump is worse — he’s letting the banks rob their customers. The CFPB is trying to corral the pay-day check cashing predators. Trump wants to continue the shake-down and give the jackals a tax break. By suing Trump, New York’s Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union is making itself a target of the entire Trump regime and its rightwing Brownshirts.
Our response, don't just stand by the credit union, become a member. Pull your cash away from the banker snakes that bite you and deposit your funds in a non-profit credit union that protects you. If you’re in New York, open an account at the People’s Federal Credit Union — open to all small businesses and most residents of the city. Even better, GET A LOAN from People’s — banker for Occupy Wall Street — so you don’t get ripped off — and your funds go to the resistance.
[Disclosure: The CEO of the Peoples bank is my dearly beloved ex. But that's another story.]
*****
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. His investigations have appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper's and New Statesman. 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 non-fiction movie.
Stay informed, get the signed DVD, 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. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Palast Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter. Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Poor People’s Non-Profit Bank Sues Trump Over Illegal Seizure Of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared first on Greg Palast.
Lower East Side People vs Trump: NY Credit Union Sues To Save Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By Nicole Powers
The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union has filed a lawsuit to block Donald Trump from installing Mick Mulvaney as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 by New York law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP on behalf of the not-for-profit credit union, which is owned by its 8,500 members and serves predominantly low-income New York residents under a unique federal charter.
The complaint states that:
1. The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City is regulated by the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). President Trump has attempted an illegal hostile takeover of the CFPB, throwing the Credit Union and other credit unions and banks into a state of regulatory chaos. Even worse, defendant Trump has purported to appoint an Acting Director whose mission is to destroy a Bureau that protects thousands of the Credit Union’s members.
2. The Credit Union does not know who is validly in charge of the CFPB, who is authorized to make the rules, or whose rules to follow. The Court must resolve this regulatory chaos. It must determine who is in charge of the Bureau. To the Credit Union, it is plain that Leandra English is the only lawful Acting Director in charge of the CFPB.
The vacancy at the helm of the CFPB arose when Richard Cordray, who was confirmed as the agency’s first Director in 2013, unexpectedly resigned his position on November 24, 2017. Before leaving his post, he appointed Chief of Staff, Leandra English, as the CFPB’s Deputy Director, thus ensuring she would become Acting Director when he stepped down. Later that same day, however, Trump announced his own conflicting choice for Acting Director, Mulvaney, in violation of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Mulvaney currently serves Trump as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He is an outspoken critic of the CFPB — calling it a “sad, sick joke” — who has no prior experience in the fields of consumer protection enforcement or banking regulation.
We reached out to the CEO of The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, Linda Levy, to find out more about the lawsuit. [Disclosure: She also happens to be the beloved ex-wife of a certain Fedora-sporting investigative reporter.]
Nicole Powers: Why did your credit union decide to take this action?
Linda Levy: Our Credit Union has always supported the work of the CFPB, because we recognize the need for protection from financial predators, given that our members are common targets for these predators. We are concerned that this action by Trump to circumvent the statute of the CFPB rules for succession will lead to dissolution of the agency.
NP: What’s wrong with Mick Mulvaney?
LL: While Mulvaney is not a person I would support for Director of the CFPB (he has made it clear he does not believe in the work of the Bureau), it is not Mulvaney we are objecting to per se, but the fact that Trump has appointed someone who is an “at will” employee of the White House to run an agency that is meant to be independent of political influence.
NP: How does your credit union have standing to file this lawsuit?
LL: We are a financial institution, and as such, we are regulated by the CFPB. If there is uncertainty regarding the leadership of the agency, we can be harmed because we don’t know which regulations are in effect, or may not be in effect in the near future. Compliance is costly, both in dollars and staff time.
NP: What happens next?
LL: We are still waiting for the court to assign a judge, and then there are a few different courses of action we could take. We are waiting for our attorneys to advise.
NP: Your credit union has a long history of supporting those who resist inequality. I know you helped Occupy Wall Street set up their first bank account. What other actions have you taken to support the 99%.
LL: Given that all of our members are in the 99%, everything we do is in their support. Our credit union is actually over 90% low income.
NP: How can we (the public) help support this case and fight inequality in general?
LL: Join a credit union is obviously my first suggestion! The only way we can make a difference is if people cut their ties to the large banks. As long as your money is being controlled by profit-making institutions that care only about earning the highest possible income, nothing will change.
Read the full complaint here:
Credit Union v. Trump. Filed Complaint, dkt 1, 12-5-17 (00312338x9CCC2)
The post Lower East Side People vs Trump:
NY Credit Union Sues To Save
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared first on Greg Palast.
Lower East Side People vs Trump: NY Credit Union Fights To Save Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By Nicole Powers
The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union has filed a lawsuit to block Donald Trump from installing Mick Mulvaney as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 by New York law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP on behalf of the not-for-profit credit union, which is owned by its 8,500 members and serves predominantly low-income New York residents under a unique federal charter.
The complaint states that:
1. The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City is regulated by the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). President Trump has attempted an illegal hostile takeover of the CFPB, throwing the Credit Union and other credit unions and banks into a state of regulatory chaos. Even worse, defendant Trump has purported to appoint an Acting Director whose mission is to destroy a Bureau that protects thousands of the Credit Union’s members.
2. The Credit Union does not know who is validly in charge of the CFPB, who is authorized to make the rules, or whose rules to follow. The Court must resolve this regulatory chaos. It must determine who is in charge of the Bureau. To the Credit Union, it is plain that Leandra English is the only lawful Acting Director in charge of the CFPB.
The vacancy at the helm of the CFPB arose when Richard Cordray, who was confirmed as the agency’s first Director in 2013, unexpectedly resigned his position on November 24, 2017. Before leaving his post, he appointed Chief of Staff, Leandra English, as the CFPB’s Deputy Director, thus ensuring she would become Acting Director when he stepped down. Later that same day, however, Trump announced his own conflicting choice for Acting Director, Mulvaney, in violation of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Mulvaney currently serves Trump as Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He is an outspoken critic of the CFPB — calling it a “sad, sick joke” — who has no prior experience in the fields of consumer protection enforcement or banking regulation.
We reached out to the CEO of The Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, Linda Levy, to find out more about the lawsuit. [Disclosure: She also happens to be the beloved ex-wife of a certain Fedora-sporting investigative reporter.]
Nicole Powers: Why did your credit union decide to take this action?
Linda Levy: Our Credit Union has always supported the work of the CFPB, because we recognize the need for protection from financial predators, given that our members are common targets for these predators. We are concerned that this action by Trump to circumvent the statute of the CFPB rules for succession will lead to dissolution of the agency.
NP: What’s wrong with Mick Mulvaney?
LL: While Mulvaney is not a person I would support for Director of the CFPB (he has made it clear he does not believe in the work of the Bureau), it is not Mulvaney we are objecting to per se, but the fact that Trump has appointed someone who is an “at will” employee of the White House to run an agency that is meant to be independent of political influence.
NP: How does your credit union have standing to file this lawsuit?
LL: We are a financial institution, and as such, we are regulated by the CFPB. If there is uncertainty regarding the leadership of the agency, we can be harmed because we don’t know which regulations are in effect, or may not be in effect in the near future. Compliance is costly, both in dollars and staff time.
NP: What happens next?
LL: We are still waiting for the court to assign a judge, and then there are a few different courses of action we could take. We are waiting for our attorneys to advise.
NP: Your credit union has a long history of supporting those who resist inequality. I know you helped Occupy Wall Street set up their first bank account. What other actions have you taken to support the 99%.
LL: Given that all of our members are in the 99%, everything we do is in their support. Our credit union is actually over 90% low income.
NP: How can we (the public) help support this case and fight inequality in general?
LL: Join a credit union is obviously my first suggestion! The only way we can make a difference is if people cut their ties to the large banks. As long as your money is being controlled by profit-making institutions that care only about earning the highest possible income, nothing will change.
Read the full complaint here:
Credit Union v. Trump. Filed Complaint, dkt 1, 12-5-17 (00312338x9CCC2)
The post Lower East Side People vs Trump: NY Credit Union Fights To Save Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared first on Greg Palast.
December 5, 2017
Flashpoints: The Pigs In The Pipeline — And In The White House
by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein
Last month the Keystone pipeline cracked in South Dakota and dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of the dirtiest tar sands oil onto a previously pristine prairie. In this episode of Flashpoints we discuss how this burst came about when there were supposed to be foolproof high tech safety measures in place. This episode is particularly relevant to Flashpoint's local Northern California audience, since before the Keystone pipeline burst, another pipeline in San Bruno exploded for very similar reasons. The 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline blast, which sent plumes of fire into the air, wasn't just an environmental disaster, it was deadly; the explosion destroyed 38 homes and killed eight people. In this edition of Flashpoints, we not only discuss intentionally compromised Pipeline Inspection Gauges (aka PIGs) at the heart of both these tragedies, we also discuss the Tax Bill and an intentionally compromised president, who seems to have conveniently forgotten to include one of his major campaign promises — one he stole from Bernie — to close the Billionaire speculators' "carried interest" loophole.
TRANSCRIPT (First broadcast on November 28, 2017)
Dennis J. Bernstein: Today on Flashpoints the Keystone pipeline and the safety PIG that was muzzled so it couldn’t squeal. We’ll be joined by Greg Palast and the PIG… No, we won’t have the PIG, but we’ll have Greg… Greg has been on a special investigation to do with the Keystone pipeline explosion. Greg, we’re going to play a piece that you did, but let’s talk a little bit about this PIG here. What the hell is going on with the PIG? Do they use PIGS to check the safety of pipelines?
Greg Palast: Yeah, they do. In fact the PR man for the Keystone pipeline, a guy named Mark Cooper, to everyone’s astonishment, he’s say’s the blowout at the pipeline shouldn’t have happened because “we sent actual pigs through out pipeline.” Well, you’re thinking of like these big porkers or maybe oil company executives. But actually a PIG is a pipeline inspection gauge — P.I.G. These are robots that go through the pipeline with the oil.
By the way, they say there’s thousands of jobs on the Keystone pipeline; the current Keystone pipeline, which covers most of America, is run by only 50 people and a bunch of PIGs, these robots…You have a whole team, 24/7 watching these robots go through the pipe. They have little feelers, they can feel any bit of corrosion, any raw weld, any problem whatsoever. The PIG is monitoring every inch of that pipe so, he’s right, there shouldn’t be a crack, like the burst we just had.
There should not be bursts in any pipeline that now use what they call smart PIGs. This is very important, if you’re in the San Bruno area, and you know someone who was victimized by that gas explosion, listen up to this story. So why did the PIGs not warn of this impending burst? …Bursts don’t just suddenly happen.
Bernstein: How bad was the burst?
Palast: At least a quarter million gallons of oil burst out of the Keystone pipeline.
Bernstein: Big burst.
Palast: This was the pipeline they said don’t worry about… Well now there’s another burst, a quarter million gallons — the biggest yet. They’re right, it shouldn’t [burst]. The PIGs, if they find any little problem which will lead to such a burst, you see red on the computer screens. It’s supposed to be idiot proof. So why didn’t the PIGs squeal when it went through the pipeline? The answer is that the PIG, it’s a robot, and it was technologically muzzled. How do they do that? The PIGs are benign, they’re just sending out waves of billions of data points. You need sophisticated software to read it, interpret it, and say, oops there’s a problem near the North Dakota border right there with corrosion that could burst, there’s a change in pressure, whatever it is, it should have [flagged] it, and they’re correct.
What we’ve found out, and this is ugly, and this is frightening, and this is terrible, Dennis, three whistleblowers confirmed to me that as an industry practice in particular companies that provide this software that they deliberately turn down the PIGs’ squeal. That is, electronically they make the PIGs appear to be less sensitive than they should be. The sensitivity of these robots for warning is set by law, by regulation. You can’t just fake it. There are regulations as to when that PIG squeals, and they’ve been turned down. That’s why we’re having these so-called inexplicable explosions, and the most obvious one that was affected here [in California] was in San Bruno.
Bernstein: Well, let me guess Greg, that shall we say PIGing out… has something to do with saving money?
Palast: Oh, yes. Follow the money, Dennis. I knew you’d get there. Yeah, you can’t bribe a PIG, but you can certainly threaten workers who don’t go along. Why would they want to turn down their robots so that they don’t squeal? Why wouldn’t they want the warning? The answer is money, money. Every time that PIG squeals and the screen goes red, you’ve got to dig up the pipe. You’ve got to stop the flow of oil or natural gas. You’ve got to stop that flow, you’ve got to reroute the pipe, you've got to replace the pipe. It’s frankly, cheaper and easier to simply replace a pipe which has already burst. Because if every time the PIG found a problem, and you started replacing pipes around the US, that would cost the pipeline industry billions — and that’s with a B — billions of dollars more per year.
So it’s better to take the chance that they’ll fail. It’s an ugly truth, and I got to tell you Dennis, I first did an investigation of pipeline explosions before I was a journalist. I ran two pipeline explosion investigations for the Attorney General of Illinois. Eighteen people in Chicago were blown up and I saw that the company knew exactly where their pipes could possibly blow. They could pinpoint them. You could almost buy the coffins in advance. It was ugly. But they paid off the victim’s families like three, four million dollars each. There were 18 people killed, and it’s cheaper than replacing miles of pipe, especially in urban areas like Chicago or San Bruno. This is a deadly problem, so when these guys, like the Koch Brothers and others, tell you that the Keystone pipeline, or any pipeline, is safe because they’ve got these robots, so they can’t miss, they’re lying because they know that they're muzzled.
Bernstein: Now that you’ve really laid it out nicely, let’s listen to the piece. You prepared a piece for Tom Hartman, is it okay if we give a listen to that? It really sort of lays it out so that people understand what we’re talking about.
Bernstein: The story is troubling because this is just one explosion, one part of the pipeline. But if this is policy, we can expect a bunch more explosions. And all this crap about the special care they’re taking now, and monitoring, and there’s never a leak, and all this stuff is just set aside by the corporate bottom line. If it costs too much, we’d rather pay after the fact than before.
Palast: Yeah, there’s no question and Keystone’s already lying… Because they already said there was only two hundred thousand gallons of oil — but that’s what’s coming up to the surface, the break was below. And, you have to understand, this is industry endemic. I know that this software, for example, is being used on the Alaska pipeline. This software which is wrong, which is dangerous.
I’m really glad I’m speaking to a Northern California audience, because I do know that in the case of San Bruno… and again I’ve done these investigations for government. I was looking at the San Bruno case, the federal government believed that maybe they just didn’t set the PIGs sensitivity to make it sensitive [enough], that the regulations were not strong enough, and that’s why San Bruno exploded. Because a PIG had just gone through a couple weeks before. It shouldn’t have happened if the PIG was squealing as it should. But what the feds do not understand is the problem is not in their regulations, the problem is in the millions of lines of software code. They have to accept these companies’ honesty. [But there were] millions of lines of software code which, in fact, didn’t adhere to the legal standards. And, by the way, this whistleblower came to me right after the San Bruno explosion. He did not want to be on camera, even in shadow. It’s very dangerous to deal with this industry as a whistleblower, you get ruined. But after he saw the deaths in San Bruno, he said to him this went from a technical dispute with a client to something that kills people and he had to come forward. So it was [because of] San Bruno, the deaths there, he said he had to speak out.
Bernstein: We’re going to watch the story very closely… Greg, I want to talk to you [about] this so-called tax reform bill. General thoughts?
Palast: Well, I want to talk to you about another pig who didn’t squeal. Donald Trump had said that, when he was running for President, big headlines in The New York Times, that he was adopting Bernie Sanders’ position that they should close the biggest loophole for Wall Street speculators. It’s called carried interest, and for the ten-month budget period it’s going to cost the US Treasury $170 billion that will go to a few speculators.
The number-one user of this tax loophole in America, who personally gained at least a billion dollars in his pocket from it, is Robert Mercer — the number-one donor to Donald Trump. The head of his advisory committee, and Steve Mnuchin’s partner, John Paulson, aka JP “The Foreclosure King,” personally saved over a billion dollars using this carried interest loophole. Paul “The Vulture” Singer, we’ve talked about him before, he’s another guy who has his snout in the carried interest trough.
Trump made a big, big deal, he is going to end this Wall Street loophole. There no economic value to it to the country, and he said, and I quote: “It’s so unfair, it’s so unfair." And yet, in this tax bill, “so unfair” — it’s still there. And no one has called him out on it. Unfortunately, you say, well what about the Democrats? That’s $170 billion that could save, for example, the California local tax deduction. So why don’t the Democrats bring it up? Well, once again, because they’ve got their Wall Street speculator’s, Mercer’s partner Jim Simons is the other big user of this tax loophole, and he’s one of Hillary’s top donors. So, we’ve got the problem that there’s two parties who have their pigs in the carried interest loophole trough — $170 billion — and no one’s done anything. I noticed that the financial press, everyone is pretty much silent. Like, what happened to this promise of Donald Trump’s? We bring it up in our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I knew this was going to happen, because Trump made this big statement, and right after he made it suddenly these billionaires are backing him. I said well why are billionaires backing him if he’s going to slap a $170 billion tax on them? The answer is, if they can get him off it and redirect him. And they did.
Bernstein: So this is in the bill now…?
Palast: Well, what it is, is what it isn’t. In other words, it’s not in the bill. After this big, big deal, it’s the number one tax savings he could make. $170 billion. And yet, you have a House proposal that would raise taxes on teachers — you’re not allowed to take off crayons that you buy for your kindergarten classes anymore. Crazy stuff like that. All for the purpose of paying off these loopholes for billionaires. And yet, here’s this giant loophole that Donald Trump made a big deal about. He’s, in a dozen speeches, complaining about this tax loophole for Wall Street. And, I would note, it’s one of the only loopholes for rich guys he doesn’t use. It’s purely for the Wall Street speculators.
There’s no value in it. It doesn’t encourage investment. It encourages the worst speculation. His biggest donors are the biggest abusers, and he won’t touch it. So what I wanted to do — and I’m glad you gave me the platform — is to point out, everyone’s talking about what the tax bill does and I think it’s very important to discuss what the tax bill doesn’t do. Because if you’re going to reform the tax law, you start with a billionaire's loophole: $170 billion for carried interest.
This is how Romney was able to protect most of his money from being taxed. And, by the way, Obama promised in that election in ’12 that he was going to close that loophole. He got in and never proposed closing the loophole once he got in.
Bernstein: But Penny Pritzker became Secretary of Commerce.
Palast: Yeah. So it’s like a two party party.
*****
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. His investigations have appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper's and New Statesman. 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 non-fiction movie.
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The post Flashpoints: The Pigs In The Pipeline — And In The White House appeared first on Greg Palast.
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