Greg Palast's Blog, page 99
September 24, 2012
September 20, 2012
Palast in San Fran, Santa Rosa, Portland, Seattle, Wash DC
An Invitation from Greg Palast -
Starts Monday: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits Tour stops.
Bring your copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits - or get it there and I'll sign 'it.
Please - bring your friends, spread the word and once you've read the book - review it on Amazon, B&N and ŷ.
Monday, September 24
BERKELEY
KPFA presents Greg Palast
7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)
St John’s Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
—ĔĔĔ�
Tuesday, September 25
SANTA ROSA
Project Censored and KRCB present Greg Palast
7pm(doors open at 6.45pm)
Glaser Center
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
547 Mendocino Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
—ĔĔĔ�
Wednesday, September 26
PORTLAND
KBOO presents Greg Palast
The Clinton Street Theater
7.30 pm
2522 Southeast Clinton Street
Portland, OR 97202
Phone: (503) 238-5588
—ĔĔĔ�
Thursday, September 27
SEATTLE
Seattle Town Hall
7pm
1119 8th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 652-4255
—ĔĔĔ�
Sunday, September 30
WASHINGTON, DC
Greenfestival
12:00 Noon
Main Stage
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC 20001
—ĔĔĔ�
NEW YORK ... to be announced.
* * * * * *
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Out this week! Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast'sԻpodcasts.
Follow Palast onԻ.
Palast in San Fran, Santa Rosa, Portaland, Seattle, Wash DC.
Bring you copy of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits - or get it there and I'll sign 'em.
Please - bring your friends, spread the word and once you've read it - review it on Amazon, B&N and ŷ.
Monday, September 24
BERKELEY
KPFA presents Greg Palast
7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)
St John’s Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
—ĔĔĔ�
Tuesday, September 25
SANTA ROSA
Project Censored and KRCB present Greg Palast
7pm(doors open at 6.45pm)
Glaser Center
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
547 Mendocino Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
—ĔĔĔ�
Wednesday, September 26
PORTLAND
KBOO presents Greg Palast
The Clinton Street Theater
7.30 pm
2522 Southeast Clinton Street
Portland, OR 97202
Phone: (503) 238-5588
—ĔĔĔ�
Thursday, September 27
SEATTLE
Seattle Town Hall
7pm
1119 8th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 652-4255
—ĔĔĔ�
Sunday, September 30
Washington DC
Greenfestival
12:00 Noon
Main Stage
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC 20001
New York... to be announced.
* * * * * *
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Out this week! Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast'sԻpodcasts.
Follow Palast onԻ.
September 19, 2012
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: 2012
by Greg Palast
I can't believe that I had to write the sequel.
When I wrote The Best Democracy Money Can Buy after the 2000 swipe by Bush and his Ballot Bandits, I thought America would clean up its damn act and start counting ALL the votes. Boy, am I a schmuck.
Just when you thought it was safe to return to the polling booth - the Rovebots, the sharks and the vultures and the billionaire vote busters, ballot benders and defilers of democracy are back at it big time with 9 ways to steal your vote!
So here's the sequel to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, but funnier, more desperate, more informative, more important than the first time - and this time with a comic book inside.
Here it is, : How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
"Palast's funniest and Palast's best" says Pacifica Radio
"Palast's amazing, mind-blowing, literate and disturbingly funny account of what has happened to this country has left me dizzy. Meanwhile, thanks for f$%king up my life." - Jason Alexander aka George from Seinfeld.
I want you to right now because I can't stand the idea that you will walk to the polling booth innocent and unarmed, about to be swallowed.
By whom? By Themis and Datatrust, the Koch Brothers' and Karl Rove's computerized vote munching machines.
The book kicks off with Bobby Kennedy's j'accuse - The Hostile Takeover of Our Country. And in the middle there’s Ted Rall’s 48 page comic book. And then my investigations of soul crushing political terror that reviewers seem to find humorous, yet too informative for you to miss.
Look, I’m donating all my proceeds of this book because I want you to know that I'm writing this not to make a buck but to make a point: America and our kids' lives are on the line. If you think that's too dramatic just read the chapter, "Why Obama is likely to lose in 2012."
Get this right now because it includes the deadly important 9 ways they're going to steal the election as well as the antidote to this poison "7 Ways to beat�"
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, please order at least one copy from , or .
Bobby, Ted and I will thank you especially if you can support our work with truly needed funds by for a book which I will sign. Tweet it, facebook it, post it on your sites, blow out your address books and harass your relatives - if you don’t carry the message, the SuperPAC’s will.
Media: If you have a program and you want me oncontact us. If you have a website and want an excerpt contact us.
You can also get with the - 2 posters of 7 ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits� because the vote you save may be your own.
And this time, let's make it the Best Democracy Money Can't Buy.
* * * * * *
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Out this week! Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
You can order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast'sԻpodcasts.
Follow Palast onԻ.
September 18, 2012
Romney's Breakfast of Billionaires
by Greg Palast - Dollars & Sense Magazine
On Friday, Governor Mitt Romney had breakfast with billionaires.
JOHN PAULSON, Paul Singer and Ken Langone have dropped more than a million dollars each into the Romney “Super-PAC� Restore Our Future. As Butch said to Sundance, “Who ARE these guys?�
Singer's known as "The Vulture" on Wall Street. Langone's database company came up with the list of innocent Black voters that Katherine Harris wiped off the voter rolls of Florida in 2000. But who is Paulson, a guy so dark and devious he doesn't even have a nick-name?
I tried to join them ("Sorry, sir") just to ask why Romney was chowing down with the nation's most notorious billionaires and ballot bandits.
Here is just a bit about Breakfast Billionaire #3: John Paulson from my new book,: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps—An investigation of Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck-Buddies. There's a comic book inside by Ted Rall with an introduction by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Get it .
It was just released today and already hit NUMBER ONE NON-FICTION PAPERBACK in the USA. ()
In August 2007, billionaire John Paulson walked into Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, with a billion-dollar idea. Paulson’s brainstorm had all the elements that Goldman found enchanting: a bit of fraud, a bit of flimflam, and lots and lots of the ultimate drug: OPM—Other Peoples� Money.
Paulson’s scheme was simple. Paulson, a much followed hotshot hedge-fund manager, would announce that he was betting big on the recovery of the U.S. housing market. He was willing to personally insure that billions of dollars of shaky subprime mortgages, like the ones dumped on Detroit, would never go into default.
Now, all Goldman had to do was line up some suckers with more money than sense, some big European banks that handled public pension funds, and get them to put up several billion dollars to join with Paulson to insure these shaky mortgages. Paulson, to lure the “marks� into betting the billions, would pretend to put $200 million into the investment himself.
But, in fact, Paulson would be betting against those very mortgages. Paulson himself was the secret beneficiary of the “insurance� on the mortgages. When the housing market went bust, Paulson collected from the duped banks and they didn't even know it.
And Goldman would get a $15 million fee, or more, for lining up the sheep for the fleecing.
Goldman provided Paulson with a 29 year old kid, a French neophyte, to play the shill, making presentations to the European buyers with a fancy, 28-page “flip-book� about the wonderful, secure set of home mortgages the “clients� would be buying.
The young punk that Goldman put on the case texted a friend (in French � mais oui! —about the inscrutable �DzԲٰܴDzé�) while he was in the meeting right as Paulson was laying on the bullshit.
The carefully selected bag of sick mortgages was packaged up into bundles totaling several billion dollars. To paint this turd gold, Paulson and Goldman brought in the well-respected risk-management arm of ACA Capital. Paulson personally met with ACA and gave them jive that he himself was investing in the insurance (as opposed to investing against the insurance).
Secretly, Paulson personally designed the package of mortgages to load it up heavily with losers, concentrating on adjustable rate mortgages, given to those with low credit scores, while culling out high-quality loans given by West Coast banker Wells Fargo. ACA, thinking Paulson was helping them pick the good stuff, put their valuable seal of approval on the mortgage packages, though they were quite nervous about their “reputation.� (But that’s what happens when you go out with bad boys.)
The mortgages in each package were dripping dreck—but with the ACA/Goldman stamp, Moody’s and Standard & Poors gave the insurance policies a AAA rating.
European banks that hold government pension investments snapped up the AAA-rated junk.
In August 2008, over one million foreclosures resulted in the Goldman mortgage securities losing 99% of their value. The Royal Bank of Scotland, left holding the bag, wrote a check to Goldman Sachs for just short of one billion ($840,909,090). Goldman did the honorable thing . . . and turned over the money to Paulson (after taking their slice).
Don’t worry about the Royal Bank of Scotland. The British taxpayers and Bank of England covered its loss, taking over the bleeding bank.
And here’s the brilliance of it: when it came out that Goldman and other mortgage backed securities were simply hot steaming piles of manure, their value plummeted further and the mortgage market, already wounded, now collapsed—and mortgage defaults accelerated nationwide. The result was that as the market plummeted, Paulson’s profits skyrocketed: his hedge fund pulled in $3.5 billion and Paulson put over a billion of it in his own pocket.
With Paulson skinning some of Europe’s leading banks for billions, there was a bit of a diplomatic and legal dustup. The SEC investigated, confirmed in detail Paulson’s scam and sued the kid at Goldman who acted as Paulson’s assistant,the one who couldn’t even follow the complex deal. Goldman paid a fine, but never admitted any wrongdoing.
And Paulson received . . . a tax break.
Robert Pratt, a UAW member I met in Detroit, and several million others, lost their homes, including a Saudi prince who, in the recession, had to sell his Vail, Colorado, home ... to Paulson for just $45 million.
But now the bandit billionaire had a bit of problem. With $3.5 billion of ill-gotten lucre in his pocket, he needed something else in his pocket:politicians who would protect the tax dodge and keep the SEC enforcement dogs on a tight leash. Paulson wasn’t alone in profiteering from the savaging of the mortgage market. There was his billionaire buddy Paul Singer, known on Wall Street as “The Vulture.� Together they launched the super-PAC Restore Our Future with a check for one million each. They asked Bill Koch to throw in some change. Koch did: $2 million.
To restore the billionaires' future, the super-PAC's first order of business was to ally with Karl Rove. "Turdblossom," as George Bush called his mastermind Rove, had created a massive database on Americans, “DataTrust,� which works with a second massive database, “Themis,� funded by two other Koch Brothers, Charles and David.
But that’s another story, in another chapter. Read it in .
Go to to get the book.
***
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.
You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast'sԻpodcasts.
Follow Palast onԻ.
September 16, 2012
This is it, folks...
A personal request from Greg Palast
Saturday, September 16, 2012
Today, our foundation releases my investigation/comic book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.
I am asking you to order it today, right now, on or ǰ ǰ, bless your heart, from your local bookstore. You get it Tuesday when it also hits the shelves.
We need to put this book up on #1 on and and the Times list as we did with The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.If we slam the the NY Times Bestseller list again, they'll have to talk about it; the peacock, the eyeball and at the fox will have to take notice.
Let’s make sure the media can’t ignore our book.
When they see a hit, that allows me and Ted Rall (who wrote the killer comic book inside) and Bobby Kennedy (who wrote the intro and key chapter), to get on the air to blow the whistle.
The book, say 50 reviewers, is funny. But vote theft is no joke, and as Kennedy says, "IT'S A CRIME."
Stealing elections is an ugly business--and for the Kochs, the Ice Man, the Vulture, the Snake and the other billionaires, vote theft is a profit center.
So when I say, This is it!" I mean it. This is OUR moment. If you've ever donated to the Palast Investigative Fund, shared my work on , a link - yelled at your friends about voter caging, oil spills, vultures - then you're part of my team - and I thank you.
People are already calling Billionaires & Ballot Bandits the sequel to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy ("Palast's best"- Pacifica) - but I don't want to make it a trilogy.
Let's put the vote-rustling trickster out of business right now. We helped put the voter ID horror show, illegal "felon" and "alien" purges and the whole issue of ballot banditry into the mainstream media conversation. Now, let's get the rest of the story out there of the other 6 ways they steal the vote (purging, prestidigitizing, blocking, caging...well, read it yourself.)
is an experiment - I receive no money from it - all my proceeds go to the a 501c3 not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.
If you already bought it THANK YOU. Really, we can't thank you enough.
But we're going to ask one more thing, spread the word. Get your printer warmed up and print out this it's from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and it's your front line defense document. Make 20 copies and hand it out at your college, your nursing home or wherever people congregate these days in real life.
If you read my columns, watch my BBC or Democracy Now! reports, you’re just getting the news appetizers. The whole enchilada, the whole book, is tastier than you can imagine.
Go to and right now and write a review - then get it out to your mailing lists, your yoga studio, your sleeper cells and on your page.
We don’t have the budget to advertise like the 1% do.
But we have YOU - we the army of un-billionaires - to go to , , google+, whatever to spread the word about - send your friends the excerpts , and .
Thanks for everything - and remember you're the reason why we can do what we do - you're our Peoples' Mic - now move your fingers and spread the word.
Karl Rove, the Kochs and their buck-buddies have a plan to swipe 5.9 million votes. Now you know it, now you need it. Today makes the difference, so please order.
And note: Whether you get the book on line, from a bookstore or from , the proceeds support our not-for-profit fund for investigating the billionaires and the ballot bandits that are threatening our democracy.
See you in our funny papers,
Greg Palast
**
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Palast has investigated US election irregularities since 2000 where he first uncovered Katherine Harris' purge of thousands of innocent black Floridian voters from the voter rolls, thus handing the White House to George W. Bush.
Palast has since reported extensively on election issues forBBC Newsnight, the UKGuardianpapers, Harper's Magazine,The Nation, Democracy Now!ԻRolling Stone.
Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
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September 13, 2012
“Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012�
Greg Palast, The Nation of Change
An excerpt from : How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps
“Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012� is the title of a column Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal in June 2011.
It’s not Rove’s prediction: this is his plan to make sure Obama will lose. That’s fine with me—if Rove prefers vanilla to chocolate, hey, it’s a free country. But how Rove plans to take Obama down is contained in the subhead, and it gives me the chills:
“even a small drop in the share of black voters would wipe out [Obama’s] winning margin in North Carolina.�
Here, Rove is not talking about winning by convincing black voters to vote Republican. The key to victory is preventing the black vote. Period. Rove suggests, with a wink and nudge, the Game Plan:
“If their [black voters’] share of the turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr. Obama’s 2008 winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over.�
The smell of freshly laundered white sheets, brown shirts, and sulfur is unmistakable: The key to Republican victory, in the Carolinas and nationwide, then, is making sure black people don’t turn out. Or, if they do, that they’re turned away. Or, if they can’t be turned away, that their votes are not counted.
If Rove can stand in the polling station doorway and block three million voters from entering and bulldoze another three million ballots into a landfill he can make the Ice Man’s dreams come true.
I can report that Rove is well on his way to success, and he’s only just begun.
How Rove and his compadres set out to do that—eliminate six million votes and voters—and how he and his partners have done it in the past to black voters, Hispanic voters, students, Jews, and any kind of Blue-ish voter� that’s the story you’ll get here. And not just Rove’s sleight of hand, but deliberate ballot-burgling done by others in the GOP and—cover the children’s ears!—Democrats too.
When voting-rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined our investigations team in 2008, he examined the latest documents we’d squirreled out of Republican Party head- quarters� files. And then he said, speaking of Karl Rove and his associate Tim Griffin, “What they did was absolutely illegal—and they knew it and they did it anyway. Griffin should be in jail.�
But Griffin’s not in jail, he’s in Congress. Rove is not in prison, either. According to IRS records, he’s director of a nonprofit “social welfare� organization. American Crossroads GPS, tax-exempt under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, aims to improve society’s welfare by dragging Democrats out of their seats in Congress and removing The Black One from the White House.
Let me be clear: whether Obama is reelected, that’s none of my business. As a journalist, I stay clear of cuddling up to candidates of either party. Who gets elected, well, that’s your problem, gringo.
I’m a reporter, and it’s not my job to preserve Democrats. But preserving democracy, with that fragile little d, that means something to me.
*
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.
You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast'sԻpodcasts.
Follow Palast onԻ.
September 11, 2012
The Worst Teacher in Chicago
by Greg Palast | For the Occupied Chicago Tribune
This is a true story.
CHICAGO. In a poorer city school, one English teacher–I won't use her name–who'd been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn't do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago's new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.
In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers' union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field - for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.
You've guessed by now: It's the same teacher.
It's Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party and Barack Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.
And in Arne's old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.
Let's stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers salaries, bust their unions.
Greg Palast is the author of the new Book : How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps. For two decades, Palast was an investigator for Chicago-area unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union.
They've almost stopped pretending, too. Both the Right Wing-nuts and the Obama Administration laud the "progress" of New Orleans' schools–a deeply sick joke. The poorest students, that struggle most with standardized tests, were drowned or washed away.
Don't confuse low scores with low potential or low ability. That's one of the evils of standardized testing (.)
You want to know what's wrong with our schools? Benno Schmidt, CEO of the big Edison Schools teach-for-profit business told me, thatbefore Hurricane Katrina, his company would never go into New Orleans because Louisiana spends peanuts per child on education. You get what you pay for. Not what you test for.
So the charter carpetbaggers slither in, cherry-pick the easy students, declare success. The tough cases and special ed kids are left in the public system so they can claim the public system fails.
Here's what the teacher who was terrible at $70,000 but brilliant at $41,000 told me:
"They're not doing this in white neighborhoods. And they want to get rid of the older, experienced teachers with seniority who cost more. Get rid of the teachers and, ultimately get rid of the kids. And the charter school gets to pick the kids who get in."
It's simple. When you look at the drop-out rates in New York (41%) , Chicago (44%), and the solution offered is to pay teachers less, and punish those who dare to work in poor schools where kids struggle, you can bet that "washing away" half the kids in our schools is, in fact, exactly what they've planned.
It's notable that, when he lived in Chicago, Barack Obama played basketball with city school chief Arne Duncan, but Obama sure as hell didn't send his kids to Arne's crap charter schools.Those are for po' folk.
His kids went to the tony "Lab" School in Hyde Park. Obama knows what Duncan knows and what Romney knows: there's no money and no need for universal education. Yes, they like to say that "children are our future." But they mean the children of China are our future, the Chinese kids who will make the stuff we want and the children of India who will program it all for us.
After all, how much education does some obese kid from Texas need to stack boxes from China in a Wal-Mart warehouse?
Education is no longer about information and learning skills. It's now about "triage." A few selected by standardized tests or privileged birth will be anointed and permitted into better and "gifted" schools.
The chosen elite are still very much needed: to invest in India and Vietnam, to design new derivatives to circumvent the laughable new banking laws, and to maintain order among the restless hundred-million drop-outs squeezed out of the colon of our educational system.
Democrats' Bantustans, Republicans' Value-less Vouchers.
The Obama/Duncan/Emanuel plan is to create Bantustans of un-chartered, cheaply-run dumpster schools within a government system. But Romney and the GOP would give every child a "choice" even outside government schools with "vouchers."
Of course, the "vouchers" don't vouch for much. Romney's old alma mater, Cranbrook Academy, runs at $34,025 a year, not counting the polo sticks and horse. The most generous voucher program is Washington DC's, beloved of the GOP, which pays about $7,500, or if the student's "choice" is Cranbrook, about 2 months of school. Hyde Park Day School Chicago is $35,900. To give each kid a real choice, not just a coupon, means a massive increase in spending per pupil. I didn't see that in the Republican platform, did you?
The experienced teacher in Chicago who took the pay cut was offered one consolation. She was told she could make up some of the pay loss by quitting the union and saving on union dues.
So that's the program. An educational Katrina: squeeze the teachers until they strike, demolish their unions, drown the students.
Class dismissed.
* * * * * * *
Greg Palast is the Author of the recently published, acclaimed bookand the New York Times BestsellersArmed MadhouseԻThe Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18.
You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
and can get a signed copy of the book.
MEDIA requests (Interviews, Review Copies, excerpts etc.)contact us.
Subscribe to Palast's and podcasts.
Follow Palast on and .
September 10, 2012
Cartoon Car-JackerGives $1 Million to Romney PAC
by Greg Palast for
An excerpt from : How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps. Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck Buddies. Includes a comic book by Ted Rall and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Charles Manson can’t vote, but Manson Inc., al-Qaeda LLC, and Putin & Co. can run negative campaign ads on the Fox network.
And maybe they have.
In ancient times, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, the maximum amount you could give a candidate for president, legally, was two thousand dollars. And, until 2010, to legally donate to a candidate, you had to 1) have a first and last name, 2) be a citizen of the United States, and 3) breathe oxygen.
Then, in 2010, the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision (followed by a lower-court decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC) blew the doors off the limit on secret political campaign contributions. “Unnatural� persons—headless, heartless creatures called corporations—could now spend in election campaigns. And, unlike us mere mortals, these corporate creatures are not limited to two thousand dollars.
As soon as Citizens came down, billionaires pulled out their debit cards and went on a shopping spree.
In 2012, Paul “The Vulture� Singer, a billionaire, gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the super-PAC behind Mitt Romney. So did The Vulture’s buddies John Paulson (also a billionaire), Julian Robertson (billionaire), Bill Koch (billionaire). Half a dozen other rich guys also ponied up millions to Restore Our Future—including, of course, The Ice Man.
And a million bucks came into Restore Our Future from something called “F8 LLC.� Records indicate that F8 has estimated annual revenue of only $87,000 a year. So that $1 million donation must have been a real sacrifice. The “principal� of F8 is listed as Mr. Diego Villasenor. No photo, so I looked up the F8 man in Google image search and found this:
You may recognize Mr. Villasenor, a well-known assassin. But luckily, as a cartoon, he only kills other cartoons. However, he does have a million in real cash money to blow on making Governor Romney our president.
�
You may recognize Mr. Villasenor, a well-known assassin. But luckily, as a cartoon, he only kills other cartoons. However, he does have a million in real cash money to blow on making Governor Romney our president.
Whether this is the real Mr. Villasenor, or if there is a real Don Diego, or if he’s a Quechua Indian in Peru who believes photos will steal his soul, or if he has a soul at all, well, that just doesn’t matter. What matters is the “LLC,� which stands for Limited Liability Corporation. And under Citizens, the letters LLC mean F8 LLC can donate unlimited millions for political advertisements—and F8’s owner’s name, whether it really is Diego, his nationality, or even if he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, is none of your damn business.
And what is Restore Our Future? Well, it is a kind of campaign Death Star that can and does emit crushing blasts of money to mutilate and destroy candidates who would oppose the electoral will of Paul “Vulture� Singer, F8, Bill Koch ($2 million donation), and the other billionaires.
In just the first couple months of 2012, Restore Our Future ran about $56 million through its cash colon to crap all over the opponents of Romney’s presidential bid. (Official records showed 87.4 percent of the super- PAC’s spending went into hate messages, i.e., negative ads and telephone calls.)
But why play? What do they want? And as Butch said to Sundance, “Who are these guys?�
Well, despite the name “Citizens United,� not all those united are citizens. Less noted in the hubbub about corporate personhood was that the Citizens and SpeechNow decisions OK’d political spending by foreigners. Look forward to candidates funded by Zeta Gang Inc PAC. And while Charles Manson has lost his citizenship and right to vote, Citizens has restored his right to form Manson & Company Super-PAC.
The Chinese military is already positioned to support its Manchurian candidates. In fact, the Peoples Liberation Army is already incorporated in the US via its clothing line sold at WalMart called, “New Order.� I kid you not.
And maybe they have. Senator John McCain has disappeared from TV screens since letting the cat out of the bag that the largest contribution to “Restore,� the Romney super-PAC, likely came from China via the Sands Casino Corporation. It’s been a long time since Sinatra played the Sands in Vegas. Today, its entire income comes from casino operations in Macau, China, an operation created in partnership with Communist Party apparatchiks.
But there’s no sense asking about it. Mr. Villasenor isn’t taking questions.
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Palast's brand new book: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from,ǰ. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.
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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic.
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