Greg Palast's Blog, page 86
February 13, 2016
Scalia’s Bad Habits: How the late Justice nixed nuns from the voting booth
His main legacy, knifing the Voting Rights Act and blessing the Jim Crow obstacle course created by bigoted, partisan voting officials. May he rest in peace. In the meantime, here’s a battlefield report about Justice Scalia from the voting rights war. Taken from the number one bestselling single issue adult comic book of all time, Steal Back Your Vote, by Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with cartoons by Ted Rall and this done below, by Lloyd Dangle.
By the way, you can download the entire comic book for free.
Click on the Image to read the whole story from the comic
An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Greg Palast
Stop me if you heard this one. See, these ten nuns walk into a polling station in Indiana and the guy in charge says, “Whoa, Sisters! What do think you’re doing?”
“Voting,” says Sister Mary.
“Well, not here, ladies; not without your ID!” He demanded their driver’s licenses, but the ten quite elderly Sisters of the Holy Cross, including a 98 year-old, had long ago given up cruising.
“Scram, Sis!” said the man, and kicked their habits right out of the polling station.
I may not have gotten the dialogue exactly right, but I got the gist of it and the facts: the ten nuns who’d been voting at that station for decades were booted out in 2008, just after the state of Indiana’s Republican legislature imposed new voter ID laws.
The reason for nixing the nuns? To stop voter identity theft. There wasn’t exactly a voter identity crime wave. In fact, despite no photo ID requirement, there wasn’t a single known case of false identity voting in the state in over one hundred years.
About four hundred thousand voters (9 percent of Indiana’s electorate) are African American. Nearly one in five (18.1 percent) lack the ID needed to vote, according to Matt Barreto of the University of Washington.
That’s twice the number of whites lacking ID. Therefore, as many as 72,000 black voters will get the boot when they show up to vote this November. Coincidentally, that’s three times Barack Obama’s victory margin in that state in 2008. Coincidentally.
And who are the white folk lacking ID? The elderly, like the sisters, and students like Angela Hiss and Allyson Miller, whose official state IDs don’t list their dorm room addresses and so can’t be used to vote.
Black folk, the elderly, students, poor whites blocked from registering and voting—a federal judge didn’t think it was all that coincidental. Justice Terence Evans could see a pattern: “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too- thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”
But Supreme Court Justice is blind. The Indiana law does provide a voter the chance to obtain an ID from government offices. The average voter’s distance to the office is seventeen miles. By definition, the folks that need the ID don’t drive. And the ninety-eight-year-old is pretty darn slow in her walker.
A lawyer for Indiana voters told me that the average bus trip back and forth, requiring two changes, takes an entire work day. They tested it. But Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that the law was fair and provided “equal protection” to all voters because “seventeen miles is seventeen miles for the rich and the poor.”
Our investigative team decided to check that assump- tion. Justice Scalia drives a black BMW. No kidding. What he meant to say is that whether a poor person or a rich person is driving a BMW, it takes the same time. And whether the BMW is black or white doesn’t matter either.
With Supreme Court blessings, voter ID laws are taking the nation by storm, or storm troops.
Apparently, the idea came to Karl Rove while buying his pampers. He told the Republican National Lawyers Association, “I go the grocery store and I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I have to show a little bit of ID. [So, why not when] it comes to the most sacred thing in our democracy?”
(Actually, Karl, you don’t have to show ID to swallow the Eucharist or matzo. But if by “most sacred thing” in our democracy you mean making donations to American Crossroads, you don’t need ID for that anymore either. If you mean voting is sacred, then it shouldn’t be dependent on taking a driving test, should it?
Anyway, I’d love to see Rove actually cashing a check at a grocery store, especially one written by the Ice Man. But I digress.)
Santiago Juarez sees some truth in Rove’s remarks. I met with Santiago in Espanola, New Mexico, where he was running a registration drive among low-riders, the young Mexican Americans who cruise the street in hopping, bopping, neon-lit Chevys. He says, “And who’s going to give these kids a credit card?” Of course, you can always get ID from a state office . . . if you already have ID.
Voting-rights lawyer John Boyd, who works for both parties, is alarmed by the “thousands and thousands” of poor people in each state that will lose their vote because of new ID laws.
“I don’t have any doubt this could decide the election,” he told me. “People don’t understand the enormity of this.”
People don’t. But Karl does.
And so does the Brennan Center. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School brings together America’s most prestigious scholars in the field of voting rights who are widely ignored because of their unquestioned expertise. The Brennan Center reports that the ID laws are racist, ageist, classist, and the stupidest way to stop “fraud.”
Here’s the Brennan Center breakdown of those without government photo ID:
6.0 million seniors
5.5 million African Americans
8.1 million Hispanics
4.5 million 18-24 year olds
15 percent voters with household income under $35,000 a year.
Now, don’t add them up because there’s a lot of double-counting here. “Poor,” “black,” and “young” go together like “stop” and “frisk.”
But let’s cut to the chase: the draconian ID law and other voting and registration restrictions passed in just the year before the 2012 election, according to the Brennan Center, are going to cause five million voters to lose their civil rights.
Overwhelmingly, the changes were made in twelve “battleground” states, with the most radical exclusion laws adopted in Florida and Wisconsin. The cheese-chewer state will require government-issued IDs to vote. But the IDs issued by the state itself to University of Wisconsin students won’t be accepted. That’s okay because, as a New Hampshire legislator, hoping to emulate Wisconsin, points out, “Kids, you know, just vote liberal.”
Using a formula provided by the Brennan Center, we can calculate that 97,850 student voters were barred, turned away, blocked, challenged, or given provisional ballots (left uncounted) on recall Election Day in June. No US paper listed Wisconsin as a “swing” state that month. Well, it swung.
Altogether, the 2012 changes in Wisconsin law were sufficient alone to account for the victory of Republican Governor Scott Walker in staving off that recall vote in June 2012. Walker did have the popular support of $31 million (versus $4 million raised by his Democratic opponent).
* * * * * * *
For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
Justice Scalia is Dead: Long Live The Voting Rights Act
Image from Steal Back Your Vote by Greg Palast
An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Greg Palast
Stop me if you heard this one. See, these ten nuns walk into a polling station in Indiana and the guy in charge says, “Whoa, Sisters! What do think you’re doing?”
“Voting,” says Sister Mary.
“Well, not here, ladies; not without your ID!” He demanded their driver’s licenses, but the ten quite elderly Sisters of the Holy Cross, including a 98 year-old, had long ago given up cruising.
“Scram, Sis!” said the man, and kicked their habits right out of the polling station.
I may not have gotten the dialogue exactly right, but I got the gist of it and the facts: the ten nuns who’d been voting at that station for decades were booted out in 2008, just after the state of Indiana’s Republican legislature imposed new voter ID laws.
The reason for nixing the nuns? To stop voter identity theft. There wasn’t exactly a voter identity crime wave. In fact, despite no photo ID requirement, there wasn’t a single known case of false identity voting in the state in over one hundred years.
About four hundred thousand voters (9 percent of Indiana’s electorate) are African American. Nearly one in five (18.1 percent) lack the ID needed to vote, according to Matt Barreto of the University of Washington.
That’s twice the number of whites lacking ID. Therefore, as many as 72,000 black voters will get the boot when they show up to vote this November. Coincidentally, that’s three times Barack Obama’s victory margin in that state in 2008. Coincidentally.
And who are the white folk lacking ID? The elderly, like the sisters, and students like Angela Hiss and Allyson Miller, whose official state IDs don’t list their dorm room addresses and so can’t be used to vote.
Black folk, the elderly, students, poor whites blocked from registering and voting—a federal judge didn’t think it was all that coincidental. Justice Terence Evans could see a pattern: “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too- thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”
But Supreme Court Justice is blind. The Indiana law does provide a voter the chance to obtain an ID from government offices. The average voter’s distance to the office is seventeen miles. By definition, the folks that need the ID don’t drive. And the ninety-eight-year-old is pretty darn slow in her walker.
A lawyer for Indiana voters told me that the average bus trip back and forth, requiring two changes, takes an entire work day. They tested it. But Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that the law was fair and provided “equal protection” to all voters because “seventeen miles is seventeen miles for the rich and the poor.”
Our investigative team decided to check that assump- tion. Justice Scalia drives a black BMW. No kidding. What he meant to say is that whether a poor person or a rich person is driving a BMW, it takes the same time. And whether the BMW is black or white doesn’t matter either.
With Supreme Court blessings, voter ID laws are taking the nation by storm, or storm troops.
Apparently, the idea came to Karl Rove while buying his pampers. He told the Republican National Lawyers Association, “I go the grocery store and I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I have to show a little bit of ID. [So, why not when] it comes to the most sacred thing in our democracy?”
(Actually, Karl, you don’t have to show ID to swallow the Eucharist or matzo. But if by “most sacred thing” in our democracy you mean making donations to American Crossroads, you don’t need ID for that anymore either. If you mean voting is sacred, then it shouldn’t be dependent on taking a driving test, should it?
Anyway, I’d love to see Rove actually cashing a check at a grocery store, especially one written by the Ice Man. But I digress.)
Santiago Juarez sees some truth in Rove’s remarks. I met with Santiago in Espanola, New Mexico, where he was running a registration drive among low-riders, the young Mexican Americans who cruise the street in hopping, bopping, neon-lit Chevys. He says, “And who’s going to give these kids a credit card?” Of course, you can always get ID from a state office . . . if you already have ID.
Voting-rights lawyer John Boyd, who works for both parties, is alarmed by the “thousands and thousands” of poor people in each state that will lose their vote because of new ID laws.
“I don’t have any doubt this could decide the election,” he told me. “People don’t understand the enormity of this.”
People don’t. But Karl does.
And so does the Brennan Center. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School brings together America’s most prestigious scholars in the field of voting rights who are widely ignored because of their unquestioned expertise. The Brennan Center reports that the ID laws are racist, ageist, classist, and the stupidest way to stop “fraud.”
Here’s the Brennan Center breakdown of those without government photo ID:
6.0 million seniors
5.5 million African Americans
8.1 million Hispanics
4.5 million 18-24 year olds
15 percent voters with household income under $35,000 a year.
Now, don’t add them up because there’s a lot of double-counting here. “Poor,” “black,” and “young” go together like “stop” and “frisk.”
But let’s cut to the chase: the draconian ID law and other voting and registration restrictions passed in just the year before the 2012 election, according to the Brennan Center, are going to cause five million voters to lose their civil rights.
Overwhelmingly, the changes were made in twelve “battleground” states, with the most radical exclusion laws adopted in Florida and Wisconsin. The cheese-chewer state will require government-issued IDs to vote. But the IDs issued by the state itself to University of Wisconsin students won’t be accepted. That’s okay because, as a New Hampshire legislator, hoping to emulate Wisconsin, points out, “Kids, you know, just vote liberal.”
Using a formula provided by the Brennan Center, we can calculate that 97,850 student voters were barred, turned away, blocked, challenged, or given provisional ballots (left uncounted) on recall Election Day in June. No US paper listed Wisconsin as a “swing” state that month. Well, it swung.
Altogether, the 2012 changes in Wisconsin law were sufficient alone to account for the victory of Republican Governor Scott Walker in staving off that recall vote in June 2012. Walker did have the popular support of $31 million (versus $4 million raised by his Democratic opponent).
* * * * * * *
For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
February 4, 2016
Who hatched Rubio?
The big boys are confident that Sen. Marco Rubio has locked up the Republican nomination. But who’s locked up Rubio?
I called my bookie in London. The betting professionals were not surprised at Marco Rubio’s big Iowa showing. The smart money has been on Rubio since October 31--despite the fact that Rubio was polling at just 9%.
Paul Krishnamurty, politics odds analyst at Betfair.com, told me that, among professional betters, over just two days, Rubio soared from zero to odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination.
Why would the guys who bet the rent money place it all on Rubio—and what suddenly changed on October 31?
Because, despite the fact that 9 of 10 Republicans rejected him, on Halloween, Rubio won the only vote that counts: The Vulture’s.
It was page one news in the New York Times: Paul Singer, Influential Billionaire, Throws Support to Marco Rubio for President.
I’ve been hunting Singer, AKA The Vulture, for nine years across four continents. And now the carrion-chewing billionaire has decided who will be your next President.
The Vulture, not the Kochs, has become the Number One funder of the Republican Party. The Vulture’s blessing signals to the other billionaires where to place their bets.
Singer doesn’t “donate” to candidates. He invests in them. And he expects a big, dripping return on his money.
But why Rubio? Because Singer’s little hatchling is doing The Vulture’s bidding already. Singer has launched a murderous financial “vulture” attack on Argentina. Singer is shaking down the gaucho nation for $3 billion.
Here’s the story. Decades ago, Argentina’s military dictatorship issued bonds that sucked the nation dry. When democracy returned, 97% of the banks that had funded the dictatorship agreed to take a low payment for these bonds.
Then down swooped The Vulture. Singer and his partners bought up the “hold-out” 3% for $50 million – and now Singer demands that Argentina pay him $3 billion, a 6,000% return on his “investment”—or he’ll bring Argentina to its knees.
That’s why he’s called The Vulture – because Singer has used this same junk-bond ransom trick to swipe aid funds meant for cholera clinics in the Congo. (When I uncovered that scheme for BBC Television, Britain’s Parliament banned Singer’s vulture fund from British courts. His operations are outlawed throughout most of the civilized world.)
But The Vulture has a problem: Hillary Clinton. As Secretary of State, Clinton went to court on Argentina’s side and body-blocked every ugly attempt by The Vulture to savage Argentina.
Singer is screeching. A President Hillary would cost Singer billions. (As would a President Sanders, a stalwart foe of vulture financiers.) To counter Hillary, The Vulture hatched a Senator: one Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio has made several ethically dubious attempts to bully the Treasury and State Departments on Singer’s behalf.
That failed, so Singer has decided to put the anti-gay martinet Rubio into the White House. (Singer’s son is married to a man—but hey, to Singer, a feast of billions means more to him than family.)
Yet Singer knows you can’t put a Rubio in the Oval Office by winning the most votes. No way. Changing demographics doom almost any GOP candidacy.
The only way to take the White House is to block the vote of millions of voters of color.
And that’s why Singer has become donor Numero Uno to Karl Rove’s operation Crossroads.
I’ve been on the trail of racist vote suppression tactics since 2000 when Katherine Harris was Purge’n General. And behind so many of the moves to disenfranchise voters, all too successful, is the Rove operation.
Now I’m on the hunt again. I’m in the middle of ripping the lid off the biggest, most secretive vote suppression operation since Jim Crow was law.
I’m in the thick of making the movie, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, about the coming attempt to swipe the 2016 election through ugly—but unbelievably sophisticated—vote suppression trickery.
For BBC Television, The Guardian and Rolling Stone, I’ve been on the beat of ballot bandits – and the billionaires behind them for 16 years. This film – and a related series of articles, web videos, and a book – which we must release in Spring 2016 – has one aim: to save The House I Live In, the America of Martin Luther King and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This is not about whether Rubio or Clinton or Sanders or any other candidate should win. This is about making sure that the ballots, not the billionaires, determine the election.
I’m asking you to help me complete this documentary.
And we’ll be covering The Vulture and his hatchling.
Singer’s knuckle-draggers muscled me out of his Rubio fundraiser last month—when my disguise fell off. No kidding. So I have to try again.
While The Best Democracy Money Can Buy movie will have heavyweight, real, undercover, no-BS investigative reporting, it will present the eye-popping truth in an eye-popping manner, with all the humor and heart you expect from a Palast team film.
Watch this sneak peek.
I am asking you, to add your name as a Producer or co-Producer of this film (for a tax-deductible donation of $1,000 or $500 respectively) and you will receive a movie producer credit and an invite to join me at our opening in Hollywood. (You can, of course, choose to remain anonymous.)
For a $100 donation, you’ll be listed in the film credits as a supporter – and receive the signed DVD of the film.
Or support the film for any amount you can, no matter how small or large.
Please make this donation to our foundation right now.
I can’t thank you enough for your support—not just financial, but your vote of confidence in me and my team’s work over the years.
It’s what keeps us going.
* Paul "The Vulture" Singer by Rob Bischoff from the film, 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' ©Palast Investigative Fund
* * * * *
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
February 1, 2016
Rubio's Billionaire VulturePaul Singer, the GOP's Baddie Sugar Daddie
The untold story of the sources of the loot controlled by Paul "The Vulture" Singer and why he needs to buy the White House
by Greg Palast
Greg Palast has been investigating Singer and other finance vultures for BBC Television's Newsnight.
It's out of the closet –– or, more accurately, out of the coven. The list of the billionaires who have given at least $2.5 million to Conservative Solutions, the pro-Rubio Super PAC, is headed by Paul Singer. Singer and his hedge fund crew at Elliott Associates, with their donations to the Republican National Committee and other "independent" groups like "Solutions", makes it likely that Singer is now the top funder for the GOP.
For BBC-TV, I've been tracking Singer for nine years. And this is the key fact you need to know about the man whose cash would pick our President: Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed carcasses.
The carrion king is known as Singer The Vulture. I didn't give him the moniker. The name Vulture was tagged on him and his speculator colleagues by the Prime Minister of Britain and the World Bank. Recently, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Winston Tubman suggested I ask Singer or his business associates, "Do you know you're causing babies to die?"
What does this guy do—put poison in kiddies' milk? Worse: he takes away the milk.
Before I get to the story of his attack on African kids, let me tell you how Singer made his first billion, his first killing (and I don't mean that metaphorically): via an attack on victims of asbestos poisoning.
Background: The executives of a few asbestos companies, WR Grace, USG and Owens-Corning, knew that their asbestos factories were killing their workers. When caught and sued, the companies filed for bankruptcy, agreeing to pay almost all their earnings to those dying and injured by their asbestos.
But Singer had a better idea. These companies, as you can imagine, were worth next to nothing; and Singer bought Owens-Corning for a song.
If he could cut the amount paid to the victims, Singer could boost Corning's value big time. So, a PR campaign was begun attacking the dying workers, saying they were all faking it.
One attacker was a guy named George W. Bush.
In January 2005, President Dubya held a televised meeting to promote an "expert" who pronounced that over half a million workers suing Singer's industry were liars. If workers couldn't breathe, he said to the grinning President, it wasn't the fault of asbestos.
The "expert" was not a doctor, but notably, his "research" was partly funded by ...Paul Singer. And so was Bush. Since the death of Enron's Ken Lay, Singer and his vulture flock at Elliott International had become the top contributors to the Republican National Committee. It's hard to measure his largesse exactly because some of that help comes in through the side door. For example, Singer put money behind the "Swift Boat" smear on Bush's opponent, John Kerry.
The legal, political and PR attacks on the dying workers chiseled away the compensation expected to be paid by the asbestos companies, boosting their net worth. Singer then flipped Corning, selling it for a neat billion-dollar profit.
It's legal, it's brilliant, it's sick, it's Singer.
Asbestos workers have lawyers and the law, weak as it may be, so Singer only made a billion. Singer hit on a way of squeezing billions from those even more vulnerable.
Singer's new modus operandi is to find some forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation (Peru and Congo were on his menu). He waits for the US and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nations' debts; then waits at bit longer for offers of food aid, medicine and investment loans. Then Singer pounces: legally grabbing at every resource and all the money going to the desperate country. Trade stops, funds freeze and an entire economy is effectively held hostage.
Singer then demands aid-giving nations pay monstrous ransoms to let trade resume. At BBC TV's Newsnight, we learned that Singer demanded $400 million dollars from the Congo for a debt he picked up for less than $10 million. If he doesn't get his 4,000% profit, he can effectively starve the nation. I don't mean that figuratively—I mean starve as in no food. In Congo-Brazzaville last year, one-fourth of all deaths of children under five were caused by malnutrition.
For BBC, I tried to ask Vulture Singer the diplomat's question about the baby killing, but I couldn't get past George Gershwin. (In the New York office tower housing the billionaires' roost, a George Gershwin look-alike in top hat and tails plays show tunes on a grand piano for Singer's grand entrance.)
One of my favorite Singer scores was his successful scheme to legally loot the Treasury of Peru. The nation's US lawyer told me, aghast, how Singer let Peru's rogue President, Alberto Fujimori, flee his nation to avoid murder charges. Singer had seized Fujimori's get-away plane. The Vulture named his price: One of Fujimori's last acts as president before he fled was to order his dirt-poor nation to pay Singer $58 million.
Why the Billionaires Need to Buy the White House
Paul Singer had placed a big bet on the asbestos industry; then, set out to fix the casino, helping install Bush in the White House. That is, he had a President willing to beat up on asbestos workers and push for so-called "tort reform" that undermined these victims' claims. What the victims lost, Singer gained.
But there's trouble on the horizon for Singer. In 2007, Britain outlawed Singer and all other Vulture speculators in Third World debt from collecting their pound of flesh in the United Kingdom. Other European nations are following suit.
Several US Congressmen are pushing a UK-style prohibition on Singer's activities. (Even Chevron Corporation is complaining about the Vulture attacks. When Chevron calls bankers unscrupulous, they've got to be really unscrupulous.) Without a veto pen over Congress, Singer stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
Singer plays defense, but is best at offense: To collect on some of his claims against Argentina, his lobbyists have pushed a bill in Congress to put an economic choke-hold on trade with the South American nation. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blocked this crazy attack on our ally. As a result, Singer is not a happy gaucho. There will be blood. Obama will have to pay.
What every billionaire wants
There's one thing that every billionaire wants: another billion. And that's threatened by Obama's plan to tax the "carried interest" tax deferment.
Guys like Singer don't pay taxes like you and I do. While we pay taxes on income, the profits from vulture speculation and arbitrage are often recorded as "carried interest," effectively not taxed for years, then when collected, only at a low rate. It's a billion-dollar benefit for the billionaires, and every Republican candidate has sworn to keep this loophole open and make sure you and I pay Singers' taxes for him.
* * * * *
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature length documentary The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes Paul The Vulture Singer.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our work.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
January 19, 2016
Palast on Abby Martin's 'The Empire Files: The Tyranny of Big Oil'
Abby Martin has taken her groundbreaking work to TelesurEnglish, now called The Empire Files. In this episode titled 'The Tyrany of Big Oil,' Abby talks with Greg Palast and Antonia Juhasz. Greg and Antonia delve into Big Oil's grip on Washington DC and how far they will go to make a buck - leaving a wrath of destruction as they do.
Palast begins about 17 minutes into this episode discussing the story behind his investigation into why New Orleans drowned. To see more on this story, watch his film Big Easy to Big Empty and of course read Vultures' Picnic.
Please subscribe to our Youtube channel for exclusive excerpts from Greg's upcoming film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
January 18, 2016
Remembering MLK Jr. with Steady Loving Confrontation
Meet Lynda Blackmon Lowery.
Late last year we talked with Mrs. Lowery for our new film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy about her first time meeting Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and what his words meant to her.
Her mother died when she was only 7 years old, from that point forward she became committed to making sure that not another child would lose her mother because the color of her skin. So when she heard Dr. King speak the words of "Steady loving confrontation" she became committed to the Civil Rights movement. At 14 years old she marched with King across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965.
Support this film with a tax-deductible Donation
For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
January 17, 2016
Get the Bernie bio today — not because...
…not because you’re for or against Bernie Sanders the candidate, but because you are against the trivial idiocy of boob-tube media that won’t give you real information about the candidates who would rule our nation.
As a journalist, I don’t support candidates — but I do support the journalism of Ted Rall, a fellow of the Palast Investigative Fund, whose reports in graphic form are entertaining antidotes to news as chit-chat.
I need you to get the book now! Your brain will feel better for it.
Read my review.
Ted Rall’s 200-page “comic book” is reporting at its best — fascinating, factual, no bias, no BS. (And, no sin, it’s fun.)
Most important, your tax-deductible donation for the signed Bernie book will support our investigation of the latest in vote theft shenanigans.
Today’s New York Times’ story on Sanders? A profile of the staffer who plays pretend-Hillary in preparing Sen. Sanders for the debates. How cute. How trivial. And that’s the ‘Paper of Record,’ Lord help us.
But if you want those rare things called INFORMATION, INSIGHT, HARD-CORE HISTORY AND FULL-FRONTAL FACTS, you’ll have to turn to the journalist with a 50-caliber pen: Ted Rall and his Bernie.
Tell you what: make a tax-deductible donation of $150 to our investigations fund and I'll send you the Palast & Rall Book Trio, signed copies of Bernie, Snowden and my own collaboration with Ted Rall, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the smash bestseller.
So why am I, a journalist, asking, pleading, begging and demanding you donate to the Palast Investigative Fund today? Would I sound too crazy if I told you that America’s democracy is on the line? 'Tis.
This is no joke. I have just returned from deep investigation of some of the cruelest, most racist—but horribly effective—means of purging voters of color from the voter rolls in the two key swing states, Ohio and North Carolina.
With the Supreme Court’s gunning down the Voting Rights Act, right-wing Secretaries of States are hunting down minority voters.
Jim Crow has returned. But instead of white sheets, he’s using spreadsheets.
You know that my reports have to sneak in to America through the back door: through BBC TV, through Democracy Now, through Rolling Stone and the ‘net. Help me break the truth embargo.
I need to complete the series of TV news reports and print reports that will bust open the vote-theft story in the USA.
The capstone of our investigation is a film that is finally getting buzz within US media. We need to finish the filming, editing — and non-stop investigating— that our project, and our nation’s democracy. requires.
Frankly, WHETHER BERNIE OR HILLARY OR HARRY POTTER ARE NOMINATED DON’T MEAN A DAMN THING if the ballots are burglarized.
Will you help me expose the latest in ballot banditry?
If you’re REALLY ready to stand with me, please PRODUCE THIS FILM.
- Donate $100 (tax-deductible) and get your name in the film credits plus the signed DVD once the film wraps or $50 for the signed DVD only.
- Or donate $1,000 (tax deductible) and we will proudly list you in the movie credits among our Producers or Co-Producer ($500), the souls that support our crucial work.
- Support our work for any amount no matter how large or small.
- Greg Palast
* * * * * * *
For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
January 12, 2016
Bernie – The new Comic Book Bio It can cure Stupid
A personal note from Greg Palast
Love Bernie. Hate Bernie. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I’m violently non-partisan by profession and nature. But, I demand you read Ted Rall’s comic book biography of Bernie Sanders.
It’s not some propaganda crap-ola to promote Sanders’ Presidential campaign. You don’t get a lot of stuff that makes you feel warm and fuzzy about the candidate. Rather, what you get is, “The Making of a Guy Pissed-off with the Way the System is Stacked Against the Average Joe.”
Rall’s Sanders was not the intellectual child of Karl Marx. Rather, he was the child of Eli Sanders, a low-ticket salesman whose commissions barely covered the rent on a one-bedroom flat in Brooklyn – except when they didn’t cover it and Sanders’ parents would fight.
* * * *
Get a signed copy of Ted Rall’s Bernie, the brilliant 200 page full-color comic-book biography by making a tax-deductible donation of at least $100 to the Palast Investigative Fund.
Or order Bernie on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Indiebound.
Rall, a Journalism Fellow of The Palast Investigative Fund, is also the penman-author of Snowden, and, with Greg Palast, the New York Times bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.
For a tax-deductible donation of $200 you can get the signed Palast & Rall Book Trio.
Bernie is also a quick primer on “Pot-hole Socialism." For example, as Mayor of Burlington, Sanders brought a minor league ball team to town, built affordable housing, balanced the budget and took care of business. Bernie was a government executive even Paul Ryan could love (if Ryan weren’t a sick, duplicitous shill for billionaires.)
Ted Rall is an ornery cuss, so he has lots of gripes about some of Sen. Sanders’ votes and views – and the book is the better for it.
The book’s opening is a particularly enjoyable I-didn’t-know-that history of the Democratic Party’s "moonwalk," sliding right while pretending to defend progressive views. It’s the betrayal that created Bernie’s movement, not just his political moment.
With Bernie, Rall does the job that used to belong to news reporters – illuminate the soul of a candidate. And, most importantly, he puts Progressivism back into the story of American history.
Given that our media covers little more than pollster yammering and Trump’s hairdo versus Hillary’s, Rall’s book comes as a welcome cure for stupid.
I am turning The Best Democracy Money Can Buy into a feature length film about the billionaires and ballot bandits and their plans to steal the 2016 election. Watch the Trailer.
Be our mogul angel. Donate at least $1,000 to the Palast Investigative Fund and you’ll get a Producer credit and tickets to our Hollywood opening.
Or donate $500 for a Co-Producer credit. You can save America while getting a tax deduction.
Or support our work by making a tax-deductible No Gift donation.
No matter how small or ginormous, it's all immensely appreciated!
The filming is nearly complete – but editing the good stuff from the secret camera hidden in my hat (no kidding)—and adding the way-cool graphics to illuminate those confidential documents that you’re not supposed to see—that takes some cash. So I’m asking you for your direct support so we can get this exposé on the air in 2016—and bust the vote thieves before they commit the crime.
* * * * * * *
For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
January 6, 2016
Behind North Korea's Nukes: GW Bush's "Khan Job"
How did North Korea get The Bomb in the first place? As I disclosed on BBC Television Newsnight, the ugly answer is that George W. Bush turned a blind eye to Pakistan's secret sale of the technology to the North Korean regime.
Read the original story from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:
On November 7, 2001, BBC Television's Newsnight reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q. Khan, known as the "father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb. This week, Khan confessed to selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.
The Bush Administration has expressed shock at disclosures that Pakistan, our ally in the war on terror, has been running a nuclear secrets bazaar. In fact, according to the British news teams' sources within US intelligence agencies, shortly after President Bush's inauguration, his National Security Agency (NSA) effectively stymied the probe of Khan Research Laboratories, the Pakistani agency in charge of the bomb project. CIA and other agents told BBC they could not investigate the spread of 'Islamic Bombs' through Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia.
Read the rest here.
Donate for the book that this story originally appears - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Support our film in progress and become a producer - here.
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Greg Palast in San Diego January 10 & 11, 2016
Greg Palast will be speaking at 2 events in San Diego on January 10th & 11th.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Fundraiser for KNSJ Community Radio San Diego
Where:
8412 Sugarman Dr,
San Diego, CA 92037
What Time:
6pm - 8.30pm
Please RSVP for this event with a note to: info@KNSJ.org
Monday, January 11, 2016
Greg Palast discusses Clean Elections
Where:
First Unitarian Universalist Church
Bard Hall
4190 Front St
San Diego, CA 92103
What Time:
6pm - 10pm
There is no admission fee for this event - suggested donations only
Sponsored by Neighborhoods for Clean Elections
* * * * * * *For 15 years, Greg Palast has been uncovering voter suppression tactics in investigative reports for BBC Television, The Guardian, Harper’s and Rolling Stone.
In 2016 Greg Palast will be releasing his new feature film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy—A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, which includes his award-winning investigation Jim Crow Returns.
Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic.
Make a tax-deductible donation and support our ongoing investigation into voter suppression.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
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