(If I remember correctly, it was 4.3 million.)
This is an extraordinary book. There are eight chapters and it reads like a house on fire. Incindiary.
The first chapter deals with the fraudulent election in Florida in 2000, that led to the investiture (by the Supreme Court) of George W. Bush as president. I don't know about you, but I remember that when I first heard about it that I dimly recalled and then investigated something out of the past; the theft of a presidential election a couple of generations before, engineered out of Florida and squeezed through the courts, and saw that the Bush election heist was engineered almost the same way in every detail. Or so it seemed at the time. Then I thought, Hell, the Bushes did it the old-fashioned American way; they just bought it. You know, the gentlemanly thing; you bribe, you cheat, you steal, but you get others to do the dirty work for you, and out of sight. You stay on camera wearing a bright smile an' wearing a sharp tux. It's what you do when you've got that kind of money and those kinds of connections. But now thanks to Palast I've been given the ability to see deep into the mechanism of the fraud, and I am amazed by the complexity of the scheme. A filthy business, it must have taken a great deal of planning to work out the details; my guess is that 'W' set the plot in motion only seconds after he decided to run.
Palast shows us how in the months before the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, working in cordination with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local election supervisors to purge nearly 60,000 voters from State registers. They were deleted because they were designated as felons on a special CD-ROM database created for Florida's Republican Administration and administrators, and they were both Democrats and Black. But were they felons? No. The outfit that created the election software scrub list, was a private company called DBT Online, which becmae ChoicePoint, of Atlanta, and they were paid four million dollars for it, and for their services in working it. By whom? Guess.
One chapter: This entire business takes up about 81 pages of dense but thrilling reading. The story doesn't simply lie there on the table: Pinned down for examination it thrashes and writhes, snarling and lashing out, fighting to excape. One can say that Katherine Harris fought tooth and nail to avoid indictment and trial, and her final identification as a liar under oath, and a criminal before the State of Florida, and the nation. Jeb Bush was never brought to trial. Neither was he impeached while in office. Actually, his family's pressure on the media was so intense that the entirety of the story was never aired on any of the Television Channels, nor printed in the United States, in any paper. Instead, the details of the crimes Jeb Bush perpretated to get his brother into the office despite a significant lack of popular votes, had to be printed abroad in two English newspapers, the GUARDIAN and the OBSERVER, in a series of stories and articles by Greg Palast. The lashing tail of this story vanishes out of the door as Palast informs us that this corrupt electronic service, ChoicePoint of Atlanta, has morphed and spread and become a kind of authority in the new field of electronic voting, and hopes that its new programmable voting console (that cannot be counted or tallied outside of ChoicePoint's laboratories) will soon become ubiquitous throughout the United States of America, replacing the live poling place authorities we have been accustomed to for so long. (First the 2000 election, and then the 2004 election.)
The Second Chapter has to do with the fortunes of the Bush family, generally; particularly the free-flowig sources of wealth associated with President George Herbert Walker Bush, and to a lesser degree, the remarkable financial manipulations of President George Walker Bush. (We get to see how Sr. got Jr. out of the military and into the Texas Air Guard, and how much it cost him.) Much of Bush Sr's money appears to have derived out of the Enron scandals of a few years ago; the theft of retirement funds, etc. It appears to be reasonable considering the close relationship between Bush Sr. and Ken Lay, CEO of that tricky, swindling conglomerate.
Palast outlines for us Enron's method of globalizing its control of Utilities, and shows us that internationally, this means water as well as gas and oil and electricity. In poor South and Central American countries when the cost of water goes up 2, 3, 4 hundred percent, people suffer. The contrast between Poppy Bush's activities as ex-President and, say Jimmy Carter's is phenomenal. Whereas Carter helps the poor and encourages peace and the growth of economic development, Bush lobbies world leaders and politicians for his friends, the lobbyists of American Corporate power, and gains for himself significant percentages of the costs of the transactions -- like the sale (privatization) of utilities. We're talking millions.
This is a very complex and intriguing chapter, and has much to do with the Saudis in all their numbers, from arms dealers to gold and oil speculators, and involves the very curious way the Bushes managed to smuggle members of the Bin Laden family out of the country and away from the FBI immediately after the second and final Twin Towers attack, 09/11.
Chapter 3 has mostly to do with the way Texas Utliities firms like Enron, managed by getting Washington to pass deregulating legislation, in order to be able to legally swindle California (and other parts of the country -- as well as other parts of the world) out of billions of dollars in sky-high electricity bills.
Chapter 4 had mostly to do with spontaneous and not-so-spontaneous reactions to Globalization get-togethers throughout the world. Much of the writing has to do with The World Bank and how it functions with the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank, to strip debtor nations of not only their wealth, but their sustenance. The crippling of Argentina as it is told here is an engrossing story.
Chapter 5 has to do with class action suits moving through the country's legal guts, and how the money for legal work is being handled; well? Or ill?
Chapter 6 focuses largely on General Pinochet of Chile, and Pat Robertson. (Strange bedfellows) The smell is incredible. By the way, did you know that Pat Robertson's father was a Senator and close personal friend and mentor of Senator Prescott Bush, George Sr's father? Anyway, watch Ol' greasy-faced Pat, that grifter, handle money! Is he slick! Are you old enough to remember his bid for the Presidency? His speeches? Remember his sincere declaration that he was not and had never been a Television Evangelist?
Chapter 7 is Palast's turn on the American Small Town thing. You know, Grover's Corners, the Red, the White and the Blue and small town values. Or, home-grown integrity vs. WAL-MART.
Chapter 8 is called KISSING THE WHIP, and has to do mostly, with English Journalism's way of self-censoring itself. Because England has no Freedom of the Press doctrine, as we do, and consequently no protection for journalists and particularly investigative ones, their behavior in virtually all situations, is robustly devious, and has to be. Very interesting. Here Palast shows his versatility by writing like an English journalist himself. What an unusual slang. Very interesting indeed.
I can't say I enjoyed reading DEMOCRACY, as much as it thrilled or shocked me in new and different ways. The book doesn't read like anything else; I don't read a lot of Journalism and that's what Palast writes. But mostly the reason I don't read American journalism much anymore is because it has become so weak and flabby over the past twenty years, it doesn't know what it is or wants to be. So much in American newspapers and on Television is mushy, epicene jibberish I hate to waste my time. I feel insulted. Not to worry here. This man is not diffident. He knows what he's doing, and nobody's got him cowed.
I've subscribed to his columns in THE OBSERVER now, and expect to get them on my computer. I'll buy his other book in a week or two. As long as I'm alive I intend to stay awake. You? For one thing, I wonder if that skinny little guy with the big ears, Obama, will be able to dig us out of this? The suspense, man! Or will the Oligarchy wreck the economy utterly and gnaw his bones? And ours? Look out over the legislature: It's like THE REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, waiting.
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