Greg Palast's Blog, page 79

Bring The Best Democracy Money Can Buy to a Cinema near you…

We're so proud that The Best Democracy Money Can Buy opened in theatres yesterday starting in New York at the Cinepolis Chelsea and hitting Los Angeles next Friday, September 30 at the Laemmle Noho 7 with more key cities to follow and is being distributed by Cinema Libre Studio. The film will also be released on DVD and On Demand on October 18.

To bring Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy to as many places as possible before the election, we need your help!

Together with Cinema Libre, we’ve partnered up with a Theatrical-On-Demand© program called GATHR to enable activists and organizations to set up one night screening events across the country at no cost to you! – Note: GATHR is USA only.

Go to HOST A SCREENING and get all the info you need.

Without your help this film could never have been made, now we need all hands on deck to get it out all across this country.To all those of you who have generously donated for a signed DVD a long, long time ago and waited patiently – The DVDs are coming hot off the press and will be sent your way next week.  (if you donated for the signed DVD ages ago and have moved home since let us know)What makes us most proud is that this film was funded 100% by you, our incredible donors!

Now let's go get and the word out and show this film all over the country and expose the Billionaires & the Ballot Bandits who don't want you to see this film.

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If you're in New York or Los Angeles go check out the film that packed the house on Opening Night!

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS

Friday, September 23 - September 29

NEW YORK

Cinépolis, Chelsea

260 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
GET TICKETS

12.05pm | 2.45pm | 5.10pm | 8.15pm

Q&A with special Guest Chris Hedges today at 8.15pm

Q&A with special Guest Abby Martin tomorrow - Sun, Sep 25 at 8.15pm

*   *   *   *   *   *

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS

Friday, September 23 - September 29

LOS ANGELES

Laemmle's Noho 7

5240 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601
GET TICKETS

12.05pm | 2.45pm | 5.10pm | 8.15pm

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COMING SCREENINGS

WASHINGTON, DC

PORTLAND, OR

SAN FRANCISCO

*****Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will open as a feature documentary movie in New York on September 23 & Los Angeles on September 30.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area  |  More cities coming soon

Want to bring the film to a cinema near you?

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

The post Bring The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
to a Cinema near you… appeared first on Greg Palast.

See the film Billionaires & Ballot Bandits Don’t Want You to see

Opens in New York

This Friday Sept 23 - 29

12.05pm | 2.45pm | 5.10pm | 8.15pm
Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening showtimes include

Greg Palast and Special Guests

Get your Tickets now  
Limited seating and no premium charge

Follow gonzo investigative reporter Greg Palast (BBC, Rolling Stone) as he busts the new Ku Klux Klan – the billionaire bandits that are behind a scheme to purge one million voters of color in November.

This real life detective story is told in a film noir style with cartoon animations, secret documents, hidden cameras, and a little help from Law & Order detectives Ice-T and Richard Belzer, plus Divergent spirit Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, Santa Claus (Ed Asner), and Willie Nelson as a stoner musician (can you imagine?).

Palast and his posse expose the darkest plans of the uber-rich to steal America’s democracy.  Donald Trump plays a billionaire on TV.  Palast jumps the real billionaire behind the "billionaire."

Audiences from California to Madison have laughed, cheered and given every performance a standing ovation. 

“…a wild and woolly ride, peppered with moments of wry sardonic humor that would make Dashiell Hammett smile. There’s so much more I’d love to tell you about what Palast dug up. But then I’d have to kill you. So you’ll just have to see “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” for yourself.”

– Paul Rosenberg – Salon | READ THE FULL REVIEW

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Palast “takes viewers on a two-hour journey in which he cleverly shows the pattern that has dominated American presidential elections since 2000…he connects dots to explain why this is happening, who is benefiting, how the dirty business is done, and who the likely villains in 2016 are.”

– Steven Rosenfeld – Alternet | READ THE FULL REVIEW

Get Tickets

*****Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will open as a feature documentary movie in New York on September 23 & Los Angeles on September 30.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area  |  More cities coming soon

Want to bring the film to a cinema near you?

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

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Don’t Want You to see appeared first on Greg Palast.

Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy Opens in Theaters Sept 23 NYC & Sept 30 LA

We are thrilled to announce that Cinema Libre will distribute our new film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, in the US and select foreign territories. The movie will open in New York and Los Angeles, on September 23 and 30 respectively, before being released as widely as possible before the November 8th election.

In addition to the traditional cinema release, groups, organizations and grassroots activists will be able to arrange theatrical-on-demand® screenings via Gathr. The film is set to roll out on DVD/SVOD on October 18, 2016.

READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE

This real life detective story is told in a film noir style with cartoon animations, secret documents, hidden cameras, and a little help from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit detectives, Ice-T and Richard Belzer, Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, Willie Nelson and Ed Asner, Palast and his associates expose the darkest plans of the uber-rich to steal America’s democracy.

Music by Mario Grigorov, additional music by Graham Nash.

*****

 

COMING TO THEATERS

NEW YORK — SEPTEMBER 23 - 29 2016

@ Cinepolis Chelsea, 260 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011

(Daily showtimes and tickets to be listed soon!)

LOS ANGELES — SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 6 2016

@ Laemmle’s Noho 7, 5240 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601

(Daily showtimes and tickets to be listed soon!)

SELECT SCREENINGS IN BOTH NY AND LA WILL FEATURE

A Q&A WITH GREG PALAST & FRIENDS.

*****Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will open as a feature documentary movie in New York on September 23 & Los Angeles on September 30.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area  |  More cities coming soon

Want to bring the film to a cinema near you?

Contact zach [at] gregpalast [dot]com

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

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The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Opens in Theaters Sept 23 NYC & Sept 30 LA appeared first on Greg Palast.

Help us Stop Lynching by Laptop Sign the Petition

Greg Palast explains how it's done

A petition demanding the release of the names of voters

on the Interstate Crosscheck purge list.

Sign the Petition
Signed, 
Hon. Alcee Hastings, US Congressman

 

* * * * * *

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will be released as a feature documentary movie this fall.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area.

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

The post Help us Stop Lynching by Laptop
Sign the Petition appeared first on Greg Palast.

Greg Palast on MSNBC with Joy Reid GOP Effort to purge millions from voter rolls

Rolling Stone reports on a Republican-orchestrated effort to compile lists of voters who they allege are registered to vote in multiple states. Reporter Greg Palast and Dale Ho of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project join to discuss. Read the full article at Rolling Stone.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will be released as a feature documentary movie this fall.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area.

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund  store  or simply make a tax-deductible  contribution  to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

The post Greg Palast on MSNBC with Joy Reid GOP Effort to purge millions from voter rolls appeared first on Greg Palast.

Palast On MSNBC with Joy Reid Sunday 10:30am est

I'll be on MSNBC's AM Joy discussing my year long investigation into the GOP's new plan to steal your vote for Rolling Stone Magazine. “The GOP’s Secret War on Voters,” exposes a scheme by 29 Republican state voting officials to remove voters, a program directed by ultra-right Trump operative Kris Kobach Secretary of State of Kansas.

Read the entire investigation before the show - right now on RollingStone.com

The post Palast On MSNBC with Joy Reid Sunday 10:30am est appeared first on Greg Palast.

The Election Crime Wave Involving 7 Million Americans & The GOP Scam Behind The Hype

by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein

Image: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits Comic - Out soon

If you believe the Republican hysteria machine, there’s an unprecedented election crime wave sweeping America involving a staggering 7.2 million suspected double voters. Thousands of these supposed criminals — who, if found guilty, have committed a felony punishable by 5-years in the slammer — have already lost their right to vote, with 41,000 people in Virginia alone being struck off voter roles. Statistical analysis of the evidence uncovered by investigative reporter Greg Palast shows that one million Americans may lose their vote by November. It also shows that a high proportion of these black, white, and brown voters have one thing in common: they tend to vote blue. In this week’s Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Election Crimes Bulletin, Palast gives Flashpoints’ Dennis J. Bernstein the skinny on this election crime wave, which in reality is little more than a GOP-generated racist sham designed to filter the blue out of the votes at the polls.

TRANSCRIPT (Originally broadcast on Aug 25, 2016)

Dennis J. Bernstein: Greg Palast has got an article that just went up on Rolling Stone. Will an anti-voter fraud program designed by one of Trump’s advisors deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November? 

Greg Palast: This week Rolling Stone has a tremendous investigative report, “The GOP’s Secret War Against Voters.” I know about it because I wrote it. This is an investigation I’ve now been on — I say one year in the article, but it’s really been two and a half years — uncovering a system by which the GOP has already removed tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of voters from the voter rolls — and it’s probably going to hit a million by November.

DB: The 21st century version of Jim Crow, the electronic Jim Crow. Talk a little bit about it…

Palast: Here’s the deal: 29 Republican Secretaries of State have given their voter rolls over to the Republican Secretary of State for Kansas, Kris Kobach. He’s a right-winger who was just slapped down by the Supreme Court for his racially biased voting tricks. And now he has every Republican state’s voter rolls, including the swing states of Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona.

What is he doing with these? He is cross-checking the list. What does that mean? He has a system called Crosscheck, where he’s looking for people who are voting in two states at once. For example — and this is a real example — Maria Christina Hernandez he says has voted in Virginia and she’s also voted in Georgia. I want to warn Maria Hernandez, that’s a go-to-jail, five-year felony to vote twice. Except in Georgia she’s voting as Maria Isabel Hernandez, so Maria Christina Hernandez is supposed to be the same voter as Maria Isabel Hernandez.

Now, believe it or not, the people in Kansas and this Kris Kobach — who by the way is the guy who devised the plan for Donald Trump to force Mexico to pay for his wall. According to Kobach, Maria Hernandez is not a common name, at least not common for Republicans. He can’t imagine why those are two different people, Maria Christina Hernandez and Maria Isabel Hernandez. That’s not an odd example.

DB: Other than they have different names.  

Palast: They have different names, right? …And both Maria Christina Hernandez and Maria Isabel Hernandez stand to lose their votes.

DB:  Both?

Palast: Both… Why hasn’t this story been all over the press before? …The reason it hasn’t been public is because no one has gotten the list. In fact, as far as I know, I’m the only journalist who asked for the list. And they told me flat out, you can’t get them. Because, think about it… If you vote twice, that’s committing a felony crime. So these are lists of the criminal suspects, which of course are police confidential.

The thing is, you know how many people are on the suspect list? 7.2 million people. Now, I wasn’t supposed to get the list, but, if you know me, I do investigative reporting. That means “no” is not an answer we appreciate. No is where we begin. When they said it was confidential, we worked until we got the first list, which was out of Virginia, which immediately sent us a letter saying, “We sent you this list by mistake…”

DB:  Who is on these lists? How did they come about? Who controls them? 

Palast: Kobach takes the list of 29 states’ voter lists, compares the names, and when he finds two names that are the same, those people are put on the Crosscheck list sent back to their state. They then are reviewed to have their vote taken away… Now, not everyone on the list will have their vote taken away. They make it a little complex process, frankly, to hide their steps.

Here’s how it works. For example, obviously, there’s a lot of people called Maria Hernandez in this country, and a lot of people called David Lee and David Kim, who are almost all Asian-American, and a lot of people named Mohammed Mohammed — the most common name on the planet. They are claiming publicly that they checked the first name, middle name, last name, junior, senior, address history, social security number, date of birth — they’ve got to get the right guys. But, in fact, when we got the instructions, it said, if the social security numbers don’t match don’t worry about it. And, by the way, out of 7 million, roughly none of them do.

DB:  Roughly none?

Palast: Roughly none… So, yes, they have the information, but they ignore it. The middle name mismatches, out of 7 million names they’ve collected, 2 million of the voters are mismatched by middle name. We have several hundred thousand which are mismatched by a suffix such as junior, senior, or III. In other words, they have listed fathers and sons as the same person, the same voter illegally voting twice or registering twice. Both lose their vote.

Now, what is so dangerous about this? And why would Republicans be doing this? Do the Republicans have something against people with common names? Here’s the trick… This is where I got into my own background in statistics and brought in a whole team of experts who do the database management for eBay and for American Express, etc. They were horrified. They said this is just a list of first and last name matches. It’s childish. It’s dangerous. Then they did a statistical run and said it’s racially biased. Massively racially biased. Because 85 out of the 100 most common names in America are overweighed with minorities: Black-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans — who, by the way, vote nearly as Democratic as Black-Americans. People don’t realize that… It’s looking like over 80% of Asian-Americans are going to vote Democratic this year...

Yes, there are a few white names, like John Smith. But even the names like Smith — like the African-American actor Will Smith — I mean, it’s a very common name. So even the white-sounding names are substantially black, but the black and Hispanic names… like Garcia, for example, is 94% Hispanic.

DB:  There are five Dennis Bernsteins. At least three of them are writers. Actually one of them is down there with you in LA. He writes on hockey.  

Palast: There’s another ethnic group, by the way, the Jewish population. You have a lot of Levys. And you have a lot of ethnic groups that are not in the top 100. For example, a lot of Nepali-Tibetans have the last name Sherpa, a lot of Indians are named Singh. You have these commonalities in ethnic names, which are Democrats, which you don’t have in [Republicans]. For example, Kris Kobach, there’s one. Charles Koch, there’s two. I looked it up. David Koch, there’s three.

DB:  There you go. 

Palast: And, believe me, they’re not on these lists. So what’s happening is you end up with basically a hit list of ethnics. They’ve got a list of 7 million, they’re not removing all 7 million. There’s two ways that they bias the program. It’s already racially poisonous, the list. On top of this, they send out postcards to people that look like junk mail.

The junk mail experts we spoke to said this postcard is meant not to be returned. It’s inscrutable small print, doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t even say you’re accused of voting twice. It just says, please confirm your voting address. Now, most people say, well it’s confirmed, you just mailed this to me, schmuck. So people throw it away. But, which people throw it away?

According to the experts, the chance of someone under 25 (in other words, likely to vote Democratic) throwing away their card is 900% higher than someone over 65. White people respond to threatening government notices at twice the rate of African-Americans and Hispanics. So you have an ethnic difference, you have an age difference — all, again, prejudicing towards the Republican voter. So, if a few Republicans get caught, they’re probably elderly, white suburbanites who will return their card and save their vote.

Now, here’s the other trick, as our experts told us: The post office doesn’t like to tell you this but they don’t deliver all the mail in low income areas. You just don’t get it. Or, if it’s in a building with a bunch of boxes, they don’t care which box they put it in. People who have low incomes, the unemployed, and young people like students move around. They may be legal voters, but they’re not at their mailing address when these cards come in. Like students, who are legally registered, get these cards in the summer and they’ve lost their chance to vote.

And you don’t know you’ve lost your chance to vote until you show up and find out. They don’t even tell you that you’re listed as a double voter. They say you’re inactive, whatever that means. Sorry, you can’t vote.

Like I say, they were hiding the names from us. I got 2 million out of the 7 million names anyway. They will not tell us the names of the people they’ve actually finally removed, though Virginia told us they eliminated 41,000 people already.

DB:  41,000!?! 

Palast: And listen to this! Kris Kobach, who came up with this system, when I said, “Look at your list that you sent to Virginia, these aren’t matches, they’re different people, different middle names.” First he said, “Those names weren’t on the list.” I said, “Sorry, but we got this list from your computer, try again.”

The other day, when I told him Rolling Stone was rolling with this, he called me up actually and said, “Yeah, that’s our list.” And he said, “But people don’t have to use the list.” I said, “Virginia used your list. 41,000 names were removed.” He said, “They can’t have removed them, that’s a violation of federal law.” He said that!!! He’s a law professor, right? Because he told them they had to go through a procedure, and they said, ah, skip it, just write the names off.

DB: Really?

Palast: That’s what most states are doing. They’re not going through some fancy procedure, they’re just writing the names off. Even if they go through a fancy procedure, these are not double voters. This is just a racist call.

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Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will be released as a feature documentary movie this fall.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area.

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.

The post The Election Crime Wave Involving 7 Million Americans & The GOP Scam Behind The Hype appeared first on Greg Palast.

Rolling Stone exposé: The GOP’s secret scheme begins purge of a million minority voters from voter rolls

Donald Trump is right—the election IS rigged. And it’s his buddies who are rigging it. Rolling Stone has unearthed a confidential list of MILLIONS of voters who are marked to be purged, up to a million at risk by November. Who? Mostly, voters of color, i.e. Democrats.

On Friday, Rolling Stone will release on newsstands, “The GOP’s Secret War on Voters,” a year’s-long investigation by Greg Palast and a team of experts exposing a scheme by 29 Republican state voting officials to remove voters, a program directed by ultra-right Trump operative Kris Kobach Secretary of State of Kansas.

Taking off from Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that "people are voting many, many times," GOP officials are targeting voters who are allegedly voting or registered in two states and can therefore vote a second time in November. While voting twice is a felony crime, and less than 6 voters have been convicted of this crime, the GOP purge operation is removing tens of thousands of innocent voters as you read this.

Palast obtained the lists—kept "confidential" by states on grounds these millions are criminal suspects. According to database experts who have statistically analyzed the lists, the program is "dangerous" and "seriously biased against minorities." Already, the swings states with tight Senate races, Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona are quietly removing voters through this racially poisonous purge operation.

Contact us to schedule an interview with the author, Greg Palast.

Note: Palast filmed his investigation in real time—and both video and still images are available.

Palast is famed for exposing on BBC TV, in The Guardian and in Rolling Stone how Katherine Harris removed thousands of Black men from the voter rolls of Florida in 2000, falsely tagging them "felons."

His investigations for Rolling Stone and the British news outlets have been turned into a feature length documentary, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: a Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, to be released next month.

The post Rolling Stone exposé:
The GOP’s secret scheme begins purge
of a million minority voters from voter rolls appeared first on Greg Palast.

Trump and the 13 Losers behind him

by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein for Nation of Change

Donald Trump announced the formation of his Economic Advisory Council. Aside from a token academic that he’d never actually bothered to meet prior to the announcement, the all-male panel read like a rogues list ripped straight from the pages of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by investigative reporter Greg Palast. Trump’s inner circle, which after an outcry over the glaring sex bias was supplemented by eight women, features some of the worst offenders when it comes to political powerbrokering for personal gain. But that’s just pay-to-play politics, and is therefore not so surprising. What did raise some eyebrows was Trump’s decision to embrace a group of guys he’d previously lambasted for “getting away with murder” due to their super-sized tax breaks: hedge fund managers, whom he’d also said half the time had “luck more than talent.” But The Donald can no longer afford to be picky, since the billionaire on “reality” TV only needs some actual real cash to fund his floundering campaign. In this week’s Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Election Crimes Bulletin, Flashpoints’ Dennis J. Bernstein gets the lowdown from Palast on Trump’s new hedge fund BFFs and the hidden payoff that’s facilitating their cosy relationship.

TRANSCRIPT (Originally broadcast on Aug 10, 2016)

Dennis J. Bernstein: Welcome back to the Elections Crimes Bulletin with bestselling author and noted BBC investigative reporter, Greg Palast, now reporting for Rolling Stone on these crazy elections as we try and figure out if your vote will count, or if it doesn’t really matter because the NRA might put a bullet behind Hillary’s ear — as per Donald Trump’s strong, strong suggestion. Greg, welcome!

Greg Palast: You don’t have much of a sense of humor, Dennis. Don’t you ever tell assassination jokes?

DB: Am I not subtle enough?

Palast: Well, you know, I figured that was a loaded question — bang!

DB: So Trump manages to keep the headlines, but maybe that’s better for him because if people really start delving behind the scenes, look into who supports him, what he’s been up to, this is where his real trouble is. 

Palast: I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that instead of parsing his seventh grade sense of humor that we would be looking at the billionaires behind him. It’s fascinating because it was Donald Trump who told us, when billionaires like me write checks, we expect something back from the politicians, and a lot more than we put in. Now that he’s been exposed as not a billionaire — he just plays one on TV — he’s gone to the very guys that he’s attacked.



When I say the very guys he’s attacked, I don’t mean just other billionaires, he’s now created a counsel of 13 economic advisors. I love the way our lamestream press has said these are wonderful guys — really? Almost all of them are hedge fund managers, that is speculators. These are the very guys that Donald Trump said are lazy, are just gamblers, that they get tax breaks for gambling. Sometimes they’re lucky, sometimes they’re just losers, they don’t create a single job, and then we give them tax breaks for taking our money. He’s blasted these guys all over the place as basically scum. He made Bernie Sanders sound like Adam Smith when he went after these guys. And he says, I’m going to take away their biggest tax break.

Bernie Sanders said the billionaires’ tax break for hedge fund speculators — known as ‘carried interest’ — in a Sanders presidency, they’d go. So Hillary Clinton had to go along and she said, okay, whatever Bernie says, me too — for now. She’s going to get rid of carried interest and Donald Trump said he would get rid of carried interest —because it’s one of the few tax breaks that he as a real estate billionaire has no access to. He doesn’t get any of that. It’s not his tax break, it’s for these hedge fund speculator scum that he doesn’t like.

Now he’s appointed the hedge fund speculator scum to be his economic advisors, including, at the very top of the list, John Paulson, JP.  That’s the guy we’ve actually had two podcasts on. He’s so dark and dangerous, and I’m going to use the word ‘evil’ — I don’t usually make statements like this but I kind of have to. He’s a major target in my investigation in my upcoming film, Best Democracy Money Can Buy. JP is the guy that pushed the mortgage market over the cliff and made $5 billion in a single year, more money than any human since the pharaoh, by destroying the US housing markets and pushing foreclosure. And he then made another billion bankrupting the Royal Bank of Scotland. He sold them bad mortgage securities, knew that they were bad, knew they would go bankrupt, so then he bet the company he knew he was going to bankrupt, he bet that they would go bankrupt. He bet against mortgages that he knew were bad so he made sure they went bad. The Security Exchange Commission busted his assistant and charged his company that he worked with, Goldman Sachs… Charged them $500M, which is couch coins for these guys.

He made $5 billion in a year from that, then he took down the General Motors auto parts division, Delphi. Took it over… every single union job was eliminated — every one! 35,000 workers, all their jobs were sent to China. All of them. Not one union job remained. So he bankrupts and destroys the auto parts division at General Motors, makes billions off crashing the mortgage market, makes another billion crashing the biggest bank in England, which had to be bailed out by their tax payers. This is Trump’s advisor, whom he personally attacked before. But, dig this, JP, the foreclosure king, held a big fundraiser for him at Cipriotti, which is actually inside the New York Stock Exchange. It’s in the bowels of the Stock Exchange and it has these chandeliers that cost more than all your ancestors made in nine generations, Dennis.

So he held a fundraiser. If you wanted to be a host, like JP, you paid a minimum of $350,000 if you wanted to break bread with the Donald and JP. Who was the other guy that set this up? Steven Mnuchin. Now, I want to spell his name because I want you to know, for those of you who are Second Amendment aficionados. MNUCHIN. By the way, that’s a joke.

Steven Mnuchin, he is the head of the fundraising enterprise for Donald Trump, who said he didn’t need any money and would self-fund his own campaign. Now he’s getting money from Mnuchin, who was a marauder from guess where? Goldman Sachs. No points for guessing that one. Another Goldman Sachs cat who then went out and started his own creepy illegal foreclosure operation, where he’s having robo-signings of mortgage foreclosure notices and all that.

The Feds came down on this guy, but he still has billions in his pocket. He’s the guy that produces the X-Men films. He’s put together this whole panel for Trump. He’s given a half million dollars to Trump — that’s the legal limit. Another half million dollar donor is Harold Hamm, who is from Continental Energy, he’s the fracking king. That’s not a surprise because Trump has said we should just drill everywhere, including in your grandma’s grave. That’s not a surprise, what is a surprise are all these hedge fund guys.

DB: For how long did we hear that this man was self-financing his campaign? How many times?

Palast: And what’s amazing, here’s the guy who actually, in a way, busted the system. He said, when billionaires give you their money, they expect a lot back — in multiples. Now, here he is, literally on his hands and knees before Steven Mnuchin, before Harold Hamm, before JP, the foreclosure king, he’s literally on his hands and knees begging. And Steve Feinberg, who is the head of something called Cerberus Capital. For those of you who have a more classical education, Cerberus is the three-headed dog from hell. Now, a guy who calls his company after the three-headed dog from hell, you’ve got a bit of an idea of the business practices that he adheres to, right? Then you’ve got Stephen Moore, the guy who started Club for Growth, which is  somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.

There’s only one single economist, the right winger, Peter Navarro. Everyone else is in hedge funds, the guys he said were scum. The other thing that’s interesting is that, except for Navarro — the single professor — every single one of these other guys are his top donors. It’s like he literally took his top 12 donors and made them his economic advisors. It was that simple. He took his donor list, the top 12 donors, boom, you’re on. No kidding!

What I like about it in a way is it’s wrong… Now Hillary and Obama, they take care of their people. Penny Pritzker — who should be breaking rocks on a chain gang, but she’s a billionaire, so she’s exempt — she is our Secretary of Treasury. She is the person who raised three quarters of a billion dollars for Barack Obama in 2008. And what does she get? She gets a cabinet post.

Now, Trump is already talking about filling cabinet posts with his people, but he doesn’t even cover it up. He doesn’t make them take five or six of his big donors and pad the committee with a bunch of other mere millionaires who don’t give him money. His 12 top donors are his 12 chief advisors. Why didn’t he just have a Dutch auction? My professor, George Stigler, University of Chicago, who got the Nobel Prize in Economics actually suggested that, that we just have a bidding war for president and for political offices and the public gets the money. We be better off than having scoundrels.

DB: It’s funny, because our friend from Illinois is back in the news… the Governor…

Palast: Oh, Rod Blagojevich.

DB: He was just openly saying, I’m going to sell you this, this is going to cost you $100K, that office is $250K.

Palast: You know what his problem was, he thought small. He was actually trying to sell a US Senate seat for a couple hundred thousand dollars. What a fool! No wonder they busted him. They were probably laughing listening in. I mean, how much do you think Hillary Clinton’s seat went for? We know what Obama charged to put Penny Pritzker into the Department of Commerce and it was not a hundred grand, it was in the hundreds of millions. He was a working class guy, so he thought in very small numbers. I think that they busted him because he was bringing down the market price of a senator.

DB: [laughs]

Palast: But I mentioned that Trump, Sanders, and Clinton all came out against this carried interest billionaires’ loophole. Now we know that Hillary is never going to go through with it. Obama said he’d close that loophole, never even proposed closing the loophole. Never even proposed it. Just used it in the campaign. Sanders obviously would’ve done it, but I understand he’s not going to be president now. But, Trump, you could say maybe he’ll really do it. He’ll get rid of the billionaires’ loophole because it’s not his billionaires’ loophole. But, as it turns out… I won’t go into all the crazy details, but carried interest reduces the capital gains on what these hedge funds rip out of the economy’s heart, what they bleed out of the economy. Instead of paying 40%, they only have to pay 24% tax. But what Trump has said is, I’m going to eliminate that… instead, you’ll pay 15% tax. That little footnote, I didn’t hear from him in a speech, it came out sideways in a little paper. So he’s saying, I’m going to tell these billionaires they can’t get their tax break anymore that caps their tax at 24%, I’m going to cap it at 15%. No wonder they all jumped on his committee and gave him a half million dollars, because that little asterisk literally saved these guys billions.

DB: Amazing!

Palast: Of course they’re going to pony up a half million dollars. Basically each of these guys put up one-third to half a million dollars each to be an advisor to Donald Trump.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will be released as a feature documentary movie this fall. Get your name in the movie credits!

Check for Movie Screenings in your area.

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund  store  or simply make a tax-deductible  contribution  to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.

Nation of Change is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Nation of Change.

The post Trump and the 13 Losers behind him appeared first on Greg Palast.

Why Trump’s New Hedge Fund BFFs Are Hedging Their Bets

by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein

With Trump being an unpredictable wild card in this year’s election race, his cabal of new billionaire hedge fund buddies are hedging their bets by buying Congress and the Senate, so no matter which blonde gets into office, they can be sure that their interests are taken care of. To do this, in some key swing states, they’re spending millions betting against a Trump White House. In this week’s Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Election Crimes Bulletin, Flashpoints’ Dennis J. Bernstein and investigative reporter Greg Palast discuss the special needs of these mega-rich vote-manipulating vultures and the specifics of what they hope to get in return for their election-rigging investments.

TRANSCRIPT (Originally broadcast on Aug 17, 2016)

Dennis J. Bernstein: It looks like Big Don is in trouble, but now the billionaires are turning their attention to Congress. They’re going to need to buy Congress and the Senate for a number of reasons. And that's what we're going to talk about today… Let’s start with carried interest. What's that?

Greg Palast: Carried interest. Where do you carry your interest?

DB: I don't have any.

Palast: What are you interested in? Carried interest is simply known as the billionaires’ hedge fund loophole. It's really complex, but it has to do with the rate at which hedge fund guys pay taxes — or don't pay taxes. If you and I go to work and get some pay, we pay according to a schedule on the tax code. If you go to work as a hedge fund speculator and you make money, like billions, then you don't pay by the normal schedule. You pay at a reduced schedule, almost cut in half. That is how Romney ended up only paying 14% tax because he uses this loophole called carried interest.

Now, interestingly, there's two guys who really agreed that this is an egregious, horrible, ridiculous loophole. One was named Bernie Sanders — remember him? He's quickly becoming a trivia question. He said if I'm president, we're going to close this loophole. Now, understand why that makes billionaires unhappy. Hedge fund managers now save about $17 billion a year, so it's about $170 billion over ten years — that’s a fifth of a trillion for those of you who made it through No Child Behind Left education. They don't want to lose that fifth of a trillion. It's your money, I know it should go to the government treasury, but hey…

Bernie wanted to slice it out. The other guy that wanted to slice it out, oddly, is a guy named Donald — The Donald. Mr. Trump wanted to close the carried interest loophole. Why? Because he's cranky. He's one of the few supposed billionaires  — he says he's a billionaire — one of the few billionaires on the planet who doesn't use the carried interest loophole. It's reserved for Wall Street speculators and he builds casinos… He doesn't speculate. He has said these guys are nothing but gamblers, they don't create a single job, they make billions of dollars if they're lucky, and then we give them a tax break for being lucky on their gambling. So he says he wanted to close the loophole.

Then something very interesting happened. One of the richest speculators on Wall Street, who we talked about before, named John Paulson, the foreclosure king — all his money is from gambling, if not fixing the casino known as Wall Street — he has become the number one top donor for The Donald. Now why would a guy who would get clonged by closing this loophole support The Donald? Let me tell you. Paulson, on just one single hit that he made on the mortgage market, saved $1.2 billion. In other words, $1.2 billion which we the people didn't get because he used this special tax loophole on a single deal. He had another deal where he and another big Republican donor, Paul “The Vulture” Singer, made a $1 billion savings on this loophole. So why would Paulson support Trump? Trump just repeated in his Economic Club speech that he was going to close this loophole. Why aren't the billionaires screaming? Why is Paulson still backing Trump?

The answer is, yes, he's closing the carried interest loophole, but he's opening up another bigger loophole. Understand, Paulson, he made $5 billion in a year and instead of paying 40% Federal Tax on it, which is his bracket, he paid only 23%. But that loophole is closing if we have a President Trump. Instead he's going to let Paulson use a different loophole in which he would only be taxed 15%. So, in other words, Paulson's taxes are going to go down even further under Trump. And the way Trump wants to rewrite the loophole, Trump himself would now get a piece of the action. He don't like being left out, so it's a new loophole.

Hillary Clinton, by the way, has said that if she becomes president she’ll close carried interest. She was debating Senator Sanders and whatever he would say when she was losing, she would say the magic words "Me too, me too! If I'm president, me too! I'll close carried interest.” …Obama said he was going to close that loophole, and he never even proposed it. Because, again, he gets money from these same hedge fund managers. In fact, Hillary Clinton is getting more money from hedge fund managers than Donald Trump. I'm not saying that she won't live up to her promises that she made during the Primary with Senator Sanders. I don't want anyone to accuse me of saying that she was just making an empty campaign promise.

DB: But Trump is in trouble… Are the billionaires taking steps to go around Trump in case they don't get their man?

Palast: Well, the second biggest gainer from the carried interest loophole, a guy who’s got at least $1 billion chopped off his taxes with the carried interest loophole, he ain't messing around throwing his money on Trump, because he doesn't speculate. Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the number one donor to the Republican party — not the Kochs, Paul Singer. He won't give a dime to Trump. He thinks that's a loser. He is instead putting all his money into those swing Senate races, into the Kirk race in Illinois, he's backing Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Portman in Ohio. These are the races he's going after. He wants to make sure that the Republican Senate stays the Republican Senate. Then it doesn't matter what the President proposes or which blonde gets elected, as long as the Senate is there that tax loophole will not be closed.

And, by the way, let me mention the Kochs. They don't give their money directly to the Republican Party just for that reason. They don't want Trump to get his short fingers on that money. They have actually already arranged for $160 million in television and radio broadcasts for the last month, for the October lead up to the election. $160 million that they have reserved and they paid for. Their whole intent — every penny that they're putting in — is to keep a Republican Congress.

For example, Trump has gotten so unpopular in Illinois that Singer is paying for Senator Kirk, who is the Republican Senator for Illinois, to run anti-Trump ads so he can appear to be the Democrat, he can appear to be Hillary Clinton's running mate. This is an old Chicago trick, you appear to be a party that you aren't. I'm not making this up. He's trying to run as a kind of Democrat for re-election. Kelly Ayotte has said that she will vote for Trump but not endorse him, whatever that means.

DB: There are other reasons why these guys want to buy Congress… Argentina and Puerto Rico. Where does that come in and why does that have all the billionaires throwing their money at Congress?

Palast: Well, as I said, Paul “The Vulture” Singer is the vulture, but there are many vulture financiers, as they are called. That's a term given to them in the finance industry, including John Paulson, the Trump backer. While they don't agree on Trump, they do agree on the Senate. And one of their other big issues is their right to conduct vulture attacks on nations and banks.

They take nations that are dying, literally, like the Congo, like Argentina when Argentina was in trouble, and now Puerto Rico. Paulson is now one of the big holders of Puerto Rico's old bonds. What they're doing is they're squeezing the hell out of these nations … For bond purposes, Puerto Rico’s not America. When an American state or an American city runs into financial trouble, it has the right to go to Bankruptcy Court. Puerto Rico specifically is excluded from that American state and city right… And these are Americans remember.

Puerto is dying, it’s bleeding to death because its population is leaving. As the treasury shrinks and the population shrinks, they're laying off school teachers, people aren't getting paid. Paulson sees this as an opportunity. Vultures feast when things die, and Puerto Rico is dying. So Paulson wants to make sure that Congress does not allow Puerto Rico to straighten out its debts in Bankruptcy Court. That’s one of his biggest issues. He got Marco Rubio on his side — that's another tight Senate race so he and Singer are backing Rubio in that really tight Florida race. Paulson and The Vulture are, again, backing these Republican candidates in tight Senate races.

By the way, Rubio, when he was trying to get votes from Puerto Ricans who had moved to Florida, had called for giving Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection. It was bipartisan. Then Singer came in with his cash, Paulson came in with his cash, and suddenly Rubio has literally flipped around to get their cash. Their cash is more important than the people's votes. You see it right there immediately. It couldn't be more stark…

DB: We see Venezuela being junked, if you will. I guess the vultures are watching that in the context of U.S. policy. Should we be looking at that?

Palast: Absolutely. I’ve covered Venezuela a lot. I was close to Hugo Chavez, I know the current president. There’s no way that the Chavista Party is going to survive another election. Things have gone bad as the price of oil has gone down. One of the great things that Hugo Chavez did was to spread the oil wealth to the public, which had never happened before… He spread it around but unfortunately, with oil prices absolutely crushed, the oil companies go to Venezuela last, they're always last on the list. With Venezuela crushed, there's no money to maintain the social programs that Hugo Chavez had started, so people are upset.

Remember, a lot of young people are now voters and they don't remember the old days before the Chavistas took over. They don't remember when Venezuela was basically an oil colony. So the vultures will be happy when Venezuela dies, that's when vultures feast. But they're going to need the backing of the United States government, and the Democrats are saying that they're going to put the vultures out of business. Whether we believe them, I don't know. But certainly the vultures are scared enough of the American Eagle suddenly coming after them that they need to buy the U.S. Congress.

DB: And Dodd-Frank, while some people think it wasn't nearly strong enough, to them it's the enemy. Much more than Obamacare, Dodd-Frank is the thing that gets on everybody's nerves. Do you want to talk about how much money you think they're going to spend to kill that?

Palast: The vultures are involved in that too. Understand, when banks die, just like nations or people, vultures feast. Now Dodd-Frank is weak, it didn't put back Glass-Steagall or end the turning of Wall Street into a casino, but it now says if banks blow all your money in one of their Vegas operations, they have to have what's called a "living will.” Basically they can't die, they would be merged into other banks, or saved before you have to bail them out. That absolutely enrages the vultures. They need the banks to die so that they can grab their assets and then demand a big piece of bailout pie. That's how Singer made money in the auto bailout, and in the bank bailout as well.

If there's a crisis, they want banks to die. They don't want the banking system saved. They want to wait, they want to force Americans to pay bailout loot. You'd think that's crazy, who would vote for that? Well, the guys that take their money is the answer. The Senators who take their money will vote to allow the vultures to eat the corpse of the banks when we stuff them with dollars.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will be released as a feature documentary movie this fall.

Check for Movie Screenings in your area.

Subscribe to Palast's mailing list and Podcast to receive regular updates on this issue.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund  store  or simply make a tax-deductible  contribution  to keep our work alive!

Or support the The Palast Investigative Fund (a project of The Sustainable Markets Foundation) by shopping with Amazon Smile.

GregPalast.com

Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.

The post Why Trump’s New Hedge Fund BFFs
Are Hedging Their Bets appeared first on Greg Palast.