by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for EcoWatch
from the foreword to Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

American democracy is under assault.

In one super-PAC alone, Karl Rove and the Enron grifter Ed Gillespie, have assembled $200 million from big polluters and Wall Street moguls to buy the 2012 election.

Two of the Koch Brothers, Charles and David, pledged $130 million to elect candidates who favor unrestrained corporate profiteering.

The senators and congressmen they fund and elect are not representing the United States—they are representing Koch and its oil industry cronies, Big Pharma, and the Wall Street banksters currently mounting a hostile takeover of our government.

I have no problem characterizing these corporate-centric super-PACs as treasonous.  We are now in a free fall toward old-fashioned oligarchy; noxious, thieving and tyrannical.

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Greg Palast on Current TV - The Young Turks

Cenk Uygur breaks down the numbers from investigative journalist Greg Palast’s report detailing how Ann Romney’s blind trust profited from the government bailing out General Motors. Exactly how much money did the Romneys make? Between $15 million and $115 million. “What happened, Romney? I thought you were against bailouts,” Cenk says. “Apparently you’re not as against it when it goes into your pocket.”

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by Greg Palast | Truthout

He's kidding, right? Did I just hear Mitt Romney say, "I would do nothing to hurt the US auto industry"

Really? REALLY?

Here's the facts, ma'am:

As I reported in this week's Nation magazine cover story "Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza", the Romneys are in a special partnership with the vulture fund that bought Delphi, the former GM auto parts division.

[Watch our Democracy Now! report on the Romney group's auto plant closures.]

The Romney vulture fund investment syndicate shipped every single UAW production job – EVERY job – to China.

Just after Nation broke the story, Washington newsletter The Hill received the Romneys admission of profiteering:

"Romney's campaign did not deny that he profited from the auto bailout in an email to The Hill, but it said the the report showed the Detroit intervention was 'misguided.'"

The truth? On June 1, 2009, the Obama Administration announced (Show me more...)

Watch Greg Palast talk about his new Nation magazine article Romney's Bailout Bonanza.

Elements of this story appear in Palast’s brand new New York Times Bestseller:
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps.

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How Mitt and Ann made millions–and Mitt's hedge fund donors made billions–from the auto-industry rescue that he condemned.

By Greg Palast

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed,“Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Elements of this article appear in Palast’s brand new NYT bestseller:
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps

Watch Palast talk about this exposé on Democracy Now!

But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for FireDogLake

Here’s an easy way to spoil a vote: digitize it . . . then lose the digits.

Prestidigitation is the French-derived term for conjury, legerdemain, sleight-of-hand, presto-change-o hand-jive, disappearing trickery . . . or, in the language of Karl Rove, “Helping America Vote.”

Following what the media called the “Florida debacle,” the winners of the debacle agreed to “reform” the voting system. So the Bush administration proposed and Congress passed the Help America Vote Act.

The best way to prevent voting reform is to pass a voting reform bill—especially if it’s written by the folks that helped themselves to your vote in the first place.

The Help America Vote Act is not the most Orwellian named, satanic law ever passed by Congress, but it tries. To avoid ballots with hanging chads, the law simply does away with ballots, providing about $4 billion in subsidies for Direct Recording Equipment (DREs), (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for Utne Reader

It’s lookin’ bad for the old white guys. Eleven million Hispanic citizens remain unregistered, Americans all, and 15 million kids between the ages of 18 and 24 who can’t be pried away from Facebook long enough to register—at least so the tally of vote registries say.

Now, add to that 16 million ex-cons who can vote but think they can’t. (It’s only in three states in Old Dixie where those who’ve served felony sentences are barred from voting.)

All these un-voters, if they suddenly registered, could rock the planet.

You think the Old World Order hasn’t thought of that?

So, then, how do they stop Americans from taking over America? Easy: first, make registering voters a crime.

In a swing state like Florida with its huge new Hispanic population (no, not Cubans, Puerto Ricans), you make it illegal to register citizens at welfare offices, churches, or voter-registration drive meetings. (Suggestion: sneak voter registration forms into handgun barrels. Guns are allowed at all these locations.)

Second, make registering voters as risky as a derivative from JPMorgan. In Florida (I love using Florida for vote suppression examples, don’t you?), Governor Jeb Bush made it a crime, with vicious fines, to turn in voter forms more than forty-eight hours after they were gathered, or with itty- bitty errors in them. He successfully put the League of Women Voters out of the registration business (Show me more...)

An excerpt from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Greg Palast for ColdType

“There is a massive effort underway to register illegal aliens in this country!”

– Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce

The Arizona Republican hunt for "aliens" from Uranus to the Rio Grande has led to the removal of over 200,000 citizens, overwhelmingly Latino, from the state's voter rolls. There's more than an even chance that vote "suppression" - the polite word for racist, José Crow racial tactics - will result in the Democrats losing an open seat in the U.S. Senate where Democratic Hispanic Richard Carmona is pulling ahead of Republican Jeff Flake.

But I don't think Carmona wants to win with illegal alien votes. After all, an alien voting has committed a crime- yet no one was arrested. Why? I flew out to Phoenix to investigate–and ended up in jail. That is, I visited the infamous tent prison of Sheriff Joe Arpaio who has led the alien hunt in his state.

But before I broke into Arpaio's prison, I called his political ally, Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, who sponsored one of the nation’s nastiest ID laws, Prop 200. It requires all new voting registrants to prove they are US citizens.

“How many illegal aliens have actually been registered?” I asked.

Pearce’s PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats too. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for The Mudflats.net

What the hell happened?  Did Barack have a fight with Michelle?  Was it nicotine withdrawal?  Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President:  As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side.  And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War.  The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped.  Lost.

Well, here’s three, Mr. President:

1. Issue Social Security checks. Checks for cash money.  Not some bullshit voucher.
2. Save General Motors and Motor City.
3. Kill Osama.

Maybe you should have written those on your palm.

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

Really, Mr. President, REALLY? (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast from Billionaires & Ballot Bandits:
How to Steal and Election in 9 Easy Steps

Your Ballot Condom for safe Voting

Right now, the Koch Gang and the Rove-bots have 9 sick, illegal ways to steal this election:  More than 5.9 million votes are at risk.  It could be yours.

Click on the Poster/flyer to download it, then send it around, email it, Facebook it, sky-write it – or click on the color poster and print it out.   Stick it up at your Zumba class, your Tea Party sleeper cell tree-house, and your church.

[You can also make a small donation to get these hot-looking 11"x17" posters in packs of 10.  We'll use the funds to ... print more posters for our voter protection partner groups!]

Here's your ballot condom for safe voting ...

7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits
by Greg Palast

1.  DON'T GO POSTAL!

For those of you who mailed in your ballot, please tell me, what happened to it? You don’t know, do you? I can tell you that in the last election, half a million absentee ballots were never counted, on the flimsiest of technical excuses. (Show me more...)