Greg Palast's Blog, page 99

The Anti-Clause: Reverend Billy's No-Click Christmas

By Greg Palast for Truthout.org

[New York, December 18, 2012] Even for New York, this was WEIRD. There were a half dozen Santa Clauses on Second Avenue getting a sermon from a Midwestern preacher who looks like a cross between televangelist Jerry Falwell and a white-haired Elvis.

The Santa Crew and their mini-skirted elves were on their way to get drunk (drunker?) with another thousand Santa impersonators at "SantaCon," an annual gathering of St. Nicks. But they were willing to let the Reverend Billy attempt to save their souls.

Reverend Billy did not object to their plans for lubrication, but to their original Sin: collaborating with the Devil's work known as "Christmas Shopping."

Was this some kind of joke? Yes, and a brilliant one.

Reverend Billy, pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, is the Stephen Colbert of American hyper-commercialism. For more than a decade, the Reverend has been bringing Americans the Good News that there is life after Wal-Mart.

"Repent and give up your iPod to the Lord! Steve Jobs is not the iSaviour!" The Santas, cracked up as, one by one, they got the joke.

Like Colbert, the Reverend is never seen out of costume nor out of character. In his reversed collar, bouffant hair-do, white pointy shoes and Elmer Gantry suit, he has, in fact, performed 200 for-real baptisms, as many marriages -- and been arrested 70 times.

In May of this year, while preaching at the opening of the David Koch Theater in New York, the Reverend was seized by four unknown assailants and hustled into a black, unmarked car. (He soon found out these were Koch's hired goons working with NYC police. So, It was back to jail until a judge with a sense of humor sentenced him to 20 minutes of preaching in front of the courthouse.)

Apparently, the Kochs did not repent.

Won't the economy collapse if we don't buy, buy, buy at Yuletide?

"This economy MUST collapse," he said. Commercialism "makes us stupid" – and worse. Sitting in the front booth at the window of my favorite diner, his sermon was drawing a little crowd.

"Advertisements are THREATS."

To explain, he noted that on the TV bolted on the wall above the cashier, a chat show host was talking about the gunman who killed 26 kids and teachers in Connecticut this past Friday. The killer was described as, "a loner, isolated."

And what is our society's proposed cure for painful isolation? The answer was in the news show's Christmas ads: Buy stuff. The advertisers were telling us how to express love and how to measure the success of our few years on earth. But more sinister than convincing us to buy disposable sweatshop junk, was the subliminal threat, terrorizing us for failing to imitate the grinning guy in the commercial -- odor-free, surrounded by loudly laughing models, fashionable according to a marketers' idea of fashion, and marked with Nike's swoosh logo.

[The Reverend doesn't wear a cross – "just another logo."]

"The ads are telling us that if we don't surround ourselves with their stuff, we are loners, we're oddities, freaks, unhappy, and, in fact, dangerous, to be avoided. Different, outside, not part of the party. This is violence masquerading as market democracy."

So what, then, do we do for the holidays if we don't follow the commands of the commercials?

"Commercials are signals from the wrong Christ. If you love someone, MAKE LOVE to them."

But how do you put a hard-on under a tree?

"OK. Take them for a hike on the Appalachian Trail! YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY TO GIVE!" The minister manqué raised his voice to the heavens -- and had to be shushed by shoppers in the next booth.

The Reverend had a long list of alternatives to One-Click Christmas. (This is the perfect place for a commercial break, and Rev. Billy obliged without asking: "You could donate to Greg Palast's Fund for a friend," he said, "so each week they'd get a gift of real news." Amen to that!! Click here: All donations tax-deductible.)

I took the Reverend's message to my twins. They wanted to give their mom an iPad. That is, they wanted to use my credit card to buy an iPad on-line and have it shipped to her.

I said, "I really think she'd prefer something from the heart."

This was met with retching sounds and disgusting suggestions involving buying beef hearts by the pound from the Halal butcher.

We settled on their taking Mom to a play she'll like (and they swear in advance to hate). And, after only a few threat-tinged hints, they wrote up their own note to her rather than go down to CVS to buy a greeting card with a statement of affection written by one of Hallmark's minimum-wage poets.

* * *

If you want to catch the Anti-Claus in action, the Reverend and his 35-voice Church of Stop Shopping Choir will be in that great cathedral of logos, Times Square, this Friday, December 21, 7pm, near the statue of Rev. Duffy. Get there before the arrest -- or the Rapture (when your credit card limits are lifted up to heaven)--or, if you're a Mayan, before the end of the World-Going-Out-of-Business sale.

Catch videos of the Reverend's bits and busts at www.RevBilly.com.

And to all, a good night.

* * *

News Flash!  Just got word of the best Hanukkah gift ever: Correspondent Richard Engel and his crew were freed by Syrians who attacked Engel's captors.

- GP

* * * * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, just named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store and find great Holiday Gifts for your loved ones.

Or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

 

Photos by Zach D. Roberts.

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Before it's too late...Xmas/Xanuka Gifts from The Palast Fund for your Year-End (or world-end) Donation

By Greg Palast

The Mayans sure know how to take the fun out of Christmas.

The world ends on December 21... but that still gives you time, if you act NOW, to make your year-end tax-deductible donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

And we'll get a 'Thank You Gift' out to you (or anyone you designate) by priority mail within 48 hours of your donation.

That's way before the Big Choc-Mool pulls the plug.

Send us a much-needed year-end donation of $200, $20, $2000, $5. Whatever you can.

Or donate and get one of these items as thanks:

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

Donate $50 and get a signed copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the New York Times bestseller.

Why We Occupy

Donate $30 and get Why We Occupy - the DVD of Palast Live! from the Vultures' Picnic tour.

Double Trouble

Donate $75 and we'll make it TWO signed copies, personalized. (We'll send a note to get the names.)

Gift Packs

Donate for a gift pack of swag which I'll sign and get something for that uncle who still thinks that Reagan was an economic genius. Chose from 12 different gift packs, starting at $60.

Donate $2,000 and get a TRIP TO ALASKA - for a member of the Palast investigations team to get under the ice-cap for the real story on Arctic Drilling.

Donate $1,000and get a big bag of truth: we'll list you as co-producer of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: The Film, which is now just a few frames, and a few thousand bucks, short of completion.

Every dollar you donate will fund the post-apocalyptic follow-up investigations of mad frackers and other Mama Earth attackers, the Brothers Koch and their latest scheme (hint: much to do with the XL Pipeline), nuclear power nudnicks and international financial finaglers. And we're already sleuthing the Theft of 2014 - a year ahead of the vote rustlers.

And from the whole Palast investigations crew ... Happy Holidays (or) a Delightful Doomsday to you and yours.

- G

* * * * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, just named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store and find great Holiday Gifts for your loved ones.

Or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

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Don’t Touch that Snooze Button

by Greg Palast

Monday, December 10, 2012

By my initial calculation, 9.3 million Americans lost their vote on November 7 – purged from voter rolls, blocked at the polls, or had their “provisional” and absentee ballots thrown in the dumpster.

Let's get to the bottom of this: In the next 90 days, we need to name names, expose their games, and make sure things don't stay the same.

Just because Mr. Obama won re-election doesn't mean the vote-heist didn't happen. This is no joke: the evidence suggests the GOP actually lost the majority of Congressional races. But, through sick tricks in Arizona and three other states, snatched enough seats to hang our economy over a fiscal cliff.

Help me dig through the mud in those ballot boxes.

Make a year-end tax-deductible donation right NOW. In return, I'll send you the Holiday Stocking Gift-Pack of books, DVDs and political tarot cards, and I'll sign each, for a minimum donation of $125.

Or get a signed copy of any of my books or DVDs.

Order your Hanukkah and Christmas gifts right now and we'll get them out to you first class within 48 hours.

As Frank Sinatra said,…

…It was very good year. Our team's work was never more effective.

◆ Our BBC TV investigation of the top GOP donor, Paul “The Vulture” Singer, led to his type of financial flim-flam being banned throughout the British Commonwealth.


◆ Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps hit the Times bestseller list and helped focus national attention on the return of the new Jim Crow in vote theft.


◆ Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza, the Nation's biggest cover story, led to the exposure of the finance jackals who made billions off the auto bail-out then packed off 25,000 auto parts jobs to China. The UAW and People for the American Way are pursuing ethics charges – so that the ultra-rich can never again buy a candidate via a baloney “blind” trust.


◆ Vultures' Picnic was named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review for our investigation of banksters and BP.

Drenched

Hurricane Sandy flooded our New York office while I was out in Ohio investigating the suppression of the vote. Miraculously, 2,000 of you donated and literally pulled us from the swirling waters.

To our 2,000 Santas – thank you, thank you, thank you!

Your donations also paid for all the costs of our filming for Democracy Now! and for uncovering the information that was used by public interest lawyers to stop a gang vote rustlers.

Don't touch that snooze button!

Let's not hit the “snooze button” on vote suppression. The election-bending crime spree is far from over.The billionaires are buying the next batch of candidates for 2014.

That's not all. The Koch Brothers are ready to suck gold through the XL Pipeline, and the Arctic is being melted down for its oil.

Our next targets:

... The nuclear industry's radioactivity salesmen, the XL Pipeline pirates, the fracking fanatics, the vulture financiers and always, always, those who attack our right to vote. (Look out! The Supreme “Corp” is about to issue new rulings that will make Jefferson cry.)

For Hanukah, Christmas, or whatever lights your candle, please donate to keep our searchlight on at GregPalast.com.

Occupy your Christmas tree with the gift that takes a licking but keeps on kicking.

Donate, get a tax-deduction, a gift and a big box of “just the facts, ma'am.”

And have a happy, healthy holiday.

 

 

 

 

* * * * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, just named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store and find great Holiday Gifts for your loved ones.

Or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

www.GregPalast.com

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Sandy De-Filed Us! Please Donate to our Hurricane Fund

A personal note from Greg Palast

Damn that Sandy! She flooded our New York office.

I am asking those of you who can, to make a tax-deductible donation and download my New York Times bestselling book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal and Election in 9 Easy Steps or simply make a contribution here. Keep us afloat!.  Keep our investigative team above water.

My staff is currently operating on our dangerously exploding credit card balance. I’m not making this up, my friends. Please donate $200, $20, $2000, $5.  Whatever you can.

And if you want a signed (dry) book, go to our The Palast Investigative Fund site and make a tax-deductible donation there. You can get the printed edition or the Nook and Kindle version from your local book store, Amazon, IndieBound and Barnes & Noble.

From our wet, dark office, and on the road, we are producing stories for Nation, Democracy Now! and a hundred other outlets. We do old-fashioned non-partisan investigative reporting.

We will keep digging but are asking you to donate and help to pay for our shovels. TODAY, if you at all can.

And get the book. In print, for eReader or download it for a donation.

I thank you and my sleepless team thanks you.

This is Greg Palast reporting …until they pull the pencil from my cold, dead hand.

* * * * * * * *

Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

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Greg Palast at Los Angeles GreenFestival This Sunday

Greg Palast will be the featured speaker at this Sunday's GreenFestival in Los Angeles.

The presentation will be:

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

A post-Election Analysis

When and Where:

Sunday, November 18, 2012

 3 PM

Main Stage

Los Angeles Convention Center

SOUTH KENTIA HALL

1201 South Figueroa Street

Los Angeles, CA 90015

Click here for more info

 Best wishes and hope to see you there,

Greg

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Democracy Now: Ohio – Wrong Ballots for Black Voters Investigation Uncovers Thousands at Risk of Ballot Loss

A special report by Greg Palast for Democracy Now!

Watch the Report

[Dayton, Ohio. Tuesday November 6, 2012]

Several thousand African-American voters in Dayton, Ohio, may find their ballots left uncounted, and they, and America, won’t know it––even if the lost votes change the presidency.

First, you need to know, there are two elections for President in Ohio held on two days and in two colors.

Today, White Ohio will vote: Evangelicals, rurals, small businessmen, big and bigger businessmen, the whole Rotary Club.

Black Ohio already voted. More African-Americans vote early than on the official Election Day.

Alert:  Today and tomorrow: FREE download of Greg Palast’s New York Times bestselling book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

Really, truly free. The honesty of the vote today is more important than sales –– though we ask those who can, to make a tax-deductible donation to our not-for-profit non-partisan foundation so we may complete this investigation in Ohio. With appreciation – Greg Palast.

The big day for African-Americans––and for Barack Obama’s hopes for reelection––was on Sunday, “Souls to the Polls” day, when church buses filled with the ladies of the choir and their men vote as a group.

This Sunday, I joined the Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church group, with cameraman Daniel Russel, following a feast of sweet potatoes, banana pudding and gospel and headed to the one and only Sunday polling station in all of Dayton and Montgomery County … as they stood in a line with nearly one thousand voters.

The line, about 80% African-American, snaked through the state building then out, through and around the building’s parking complex.

After the hours of waiting, the patient citizens got their ballots—or thought they did. They didn’t get ballots. They got this: “APPLICATION FOR ABSENT VOTER’S BALLOT.”

WHAT???????

In prior elections, and in some other counties in this current polling, early voters got ballot ballots, not absentee ballots.

I immediately got voting rights attorney Robert Fitrakis, on the phone. I told Fitrakis, also a professor at Columbus State College, about handing voters absentee ballots instead of regular, vote-now ballots.

“That’s insane!” he said, “Completely wrong.” And stone cold dangerous to the vote count.

It’s simple: Not all absentee ballots get counted. Indeed, as I pointed out in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the US government data indicates that 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected after they were cast in 2008. The New York Times puts it at two or three million cast and not counted. Not incidentally, the US Civil Rights Commission found that African Americans are 900% more likely to cast “spoiled” votes (those cast and not counted) than a white voter.

Fitrakis had a hard time believing Republican officials would pull a stunt this raw. So, I shot off from Dayton to Columbus to show the professor my smoking gun.

Sure enough: an absentee ballot application. The voters filled it out, stuck it in an envelope, sealed it, handed it to a clerk who ripped it open and gave them an absentee ballot to mark and seal––and leave to be counted on Election Night. Maybe. Maybe counted.

This is not the same as the ballot ballot given to voters on Election Day, i.e. the white voters.

“An Absentee ballot is not an early ballot.” On a real ballot, when you cast a vote, the law requires it be counted. Not so for absentee ballots. There are a gazillion ways for officials to discard your absentee ballot. Unlike with the normal Ohio voting machines, if you put an “X” or check the box next to your candidate’s name, your ballot goes in the dumpster. (The bubble next to the candidate’s name must be blackened in––enough but not too much.)

In Ohio, there are extra tricks to trash your absentee ballot. “See this form? See all these blank spaces?” Fitrakis explained that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, requires absentee voters to fill out these long “applications,” the ones handed out in Dayton to early voters. Failure to include even picayune information on the application or its envelope, or use a “suspicious” signature (whatever that is), and your ballot goes bye-bye.

How many? Enough ballots were rejected and voters purged in Ohio in 2004 to re-elect George Bush as President.

I asked Fitrakis if many of these voters would lose their vote. “Absolutely,” he replied. “Jon Husted is the most partisan Secretary of State in America.”

I asked the elections manager at early voting why early voters were given absentee ballots, not allowed to use voting machines, as in prior elections.

“In case there is a need to re-count votes.” Huh? Then why not have white-day voters also use these not-quite-ballots?

What’s this all about? After all, these “absent” voters on Sunday weren’t absent at all. One thousand were lined up right outside his office.

This absentee ballot game was only the latest attack on the right of citizens of color to vote. He noted that Ohio had purged a million and a quarter voters from the voter rolls in the past two years. Which voters? In some rural white counties, not one name was purged. But in Cleveland, Ohio, some Black precincts suffered the removal of more than half the voters’ names from the rolls.

And those crazy long lines? We would have hoped this Block-the-Black vote game had ended after the notorious 2004 election when another Ohio Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, finagled the allocation of voting machines to keep Black voters in line an average of 4.5 hours, while white voters waited 15 minutes. (Experts measured it.)

In 2008, a Democrat held the Secretary of State’s office, and there were no lines. Ohio held a month of early voting, including a full month of Sundays.

This time, GOP vote chief Husted tried to end early voting completely. When a federal court stopped that scheme, he simply cut the days and hours––only one Sunday, and then for only four hours for Souls to the Polls.

Where cities usually had several early polling stations, Husted allowed only one per county, including just one for 1.5 million Cleveland residents. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was there with the hungry voters near midnight, waiting since before the polls closed at 5pm.

“It’s the New Jim Crow,” Fitrakis said.

Back at the early voting station in Dayton, I asked the Freedom Faith group in the church van how they were doing. They were in a terrific mood, happy they got to cast ballots, some for the first time.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that those votes may never be counted.

* * * * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller  Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, , including a comic book by Ted Rall and chapters by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A FREE Download of the book is available for the next 24 hours.

Donate and can get a signed copy of the book or make a contribution of any amount to support our work.

You can also order the book at Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound and on the NOOK and Kindle.

Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews, review copies and excerpts contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

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7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits Lee Camp's Videos

Lee Camp's riffs on Greg Palast's bestelling book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.

Get a copy here.

 

1. Don't go Postal

2. Vote Unconditionally - NOT Provisionally

3. Register, Register - Then Register again

4. Make the Democracy Demand - No Vote Left Behind

5. Vote Early - Before the Ballot Bandits Wake up

6. Date a Voter

7. Occupy Ohio - Invade Nevada

 

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *     *    *

Lee Camp is the brilliant comic, creator of Lee Camp's Moments of Clarity.

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Starting Today: No Charge for my Bestselling Book. No Joke.

Palast Fund to give away FREE copies of Bestseller

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:

How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps

A personal note from Greg Palast

Call me crazy.  The Palast Investigative Fund is dead broke and our office in New York is under water.  No kidding.

But America is drowning and I can’t stand by and watch.

So I’ve made a decision:  For the last few days leading up to the election, you can download a complete copy of my New York Times bestselling book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:  How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

Stone cold free.

No tricks.  I am asking those of you who can, to make a tax-deductible donation when you download the book or simply make a contribution here. Totally voluntary.  That’s the only way we can keep our investigative team alive and make sure we can report on the wholesale shoplifting of the ballot I am witnessing here in Ohio.

My staff is currently operating on our dangerously exploding credit card balance. But America is in the balance and they haven’t cancelled our card yet.

I’m not making this up, my friends. Please donate $200, $20, $2000, $5.  Whatever you can.  And if you want a signed (dry) book or film, go to our “store” and make a tax-deductible donation there.

Or give zero.I just want you and your friends to read this book. If you do want the printed edition or the NOOK and Kindle version, you can get those from your bookstore,Amazon, IndieBound or Barnes & Noble.

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits has been on the New York Times bestseller list for the five weeks since its release – at the cover price of $15.  Now, YOU can get it for FREE. (I will cover the publisher’s loss.  Somehow.)

It contains details, which we revealed in the The Nation cover story “Mitt Romney’s Bail-out Bonanza,” of how Mitt Romney profited directly at the taxpayers expense. The book also tells you the full sickly funny but horrific tale of Romney’s secret business partner and top donor Paul Singer a.k.a. The Vulture, and dishes the dirt on his other sugar daddies, the Ice Man, the Snake, and the three Koch brothers.

From our wet, dark office, and on the road, we are producing stories for Nation,Democracy Now! and a hundred other outlets. Hell or high water we will expose the 9 ways these ballot bandits are stealing the vote in Ohio, Colorado, and Florida.

We do old fashioned non-partisan investigative reporting.

We will keep digging but are asking you to donate and help to pay for our shovels. TODAY, if you at all can.

And get the book. In print, for eReader or download it free.

I thank you and my sleepless team thanks you.

This is Greg Palast, in Toledo, Ohio, reporting …until they pull the pencil from my cold, dead hand.

* * * * * * * *

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

Palast's brand new NYT bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, is available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound and on the NOOK and Kindle.

Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Donate and can get a signed copy of the book or make a contribution of any amount to support our work.

MEDIA REQUESTS: For interviews, review copies and excerpts contact us.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.

Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

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Did The Romneys’ Auto Bailout Bonanza Violate Federal Ethics Law?

By Greg Palast for The National Memo

At the same time, taxpayer-subsidized Delphi expanded its workforce in China to 25,000. Today, Delphi supplies GM and Chrysler parts from Mexico and China.

This week, Republican vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan arrived in Ohio to accuse the Obama administration of cutting the pensions of the Delphi non-union pensioners. In fact, says the UAW’s King, it was the Singer-Romney group that simply refused to pay any pensions whatsoever to union and non-union workers alike. The company’s $6.2 billion pension obligation, says King, “was dumped on the US government Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) which is limited by law — not by President Obama — in the sums it can pay retirees.”

None of this surprises observers of Paul Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, which partnered with Ann Romney. Elliott is notorious for what the finance industry calls “vulture” attacks, in which speculators seize old debts of bankrupt corporations — and even nations —  then demand payments of ten or a hundred times their investment, while making threats of economic ruin.

These vulture tactics are at the core of charges in the ethics complaint, which cites not just Elliott’s seizure of Delphi but the hedge fund’s infamous attacks on the treasuries of the Congo and Peru, which have caused an international diplomatic uproar.

Last April, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the extraordinary step of filing an action in a US federal court to stop the Singer fund’s vulture attacks on Argentina. The government argued that the actions of Singer (and thus also his partners, the Romneys) have a “significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations.”

The Singer group responded to the U.S. State Department legal action by seizing the Argentine Navy’s training ship, Libertad, which is a square-rigged sailing frigate.  Which seems to suggest that the Romneys now own a piece of a real-life pirate ship.

Public Citizen’s ethics expert, Dr. Craig Holman, notes that as president, Romney would have to choose between U.S. allies and his business partners. He is barred by law from using a “blind trust” to conceal such conflicts of interest.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:  How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, which along with his Nation magazine article on the bailout helped to trigger the public interest complaint against Mitt Romney to the Office of Government Ethics.

 

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UAW Files Charges Against Romney on his Auto Bail-out Profiteering

Broke ethics law hiding millions, say good government groups

by Greg Palast

Toledo, Ohio

For Mitt Romney, it's one scary Halloween.  The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon he will charged with violating the federal Ethics in Government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bail-out.

At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)  have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called "blind" trust.

The union chief says, "The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue,” “It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.”

“While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added.

The Romneys' gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a Limited Partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it.

The Romneys' windfall was originally exposed in Nation Magazine, Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza after a worldwide investigation by our crew at The Guardian, the Nation Institute and the Palast Investigative Fund.   [Ed. - The full story of Romney and his "vulture fund" partners is in Palast's New York Times bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.]

According to ethics law expert Dan Curry who drafted the ethics complaint, Ann Romney does not have a federally-approved blind trust.  An approved "blind" trust may not be used to hide a major investment which could be affected by Romney if he were to be elected President.  Other groups joining the UAW and CREW include Public Citizen, the Service Employees International Union, Public Campaign, People for the American Way and The Social Equity Group.

President Obama's approved trust, for example, contains only highly-diversified mutual funds on which Presidential action can have little effect.  By contrast, the auto bail-out provided a windfall of over 4,000% on one single Romney investment.

In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband's key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division.  Singer's hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM's supply of steering columns unless GM and the government's TARP auto bail-out fund provided Delphi with huge payments.  While the US treasury complained this was "extortion," the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain.  Singer's hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney's tens of millions.

The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi -- and continues to make.  The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job --25,000-- and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers.

Forensic Economist Greg Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television.  His latest bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps contains a comic book by Ted Rall and chapters by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  www.BallotBandits.org 

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