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The Best Democracy Money Can Buy Paperback – February 25, 2003
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Award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast digs deep to unearth the ugly facts that few reporters working anywhere in the world today have the courage or ability to cover. From East Timor to Waco, he has exposed some of the most egregious cases of political corruption, corporate fraud, and financial manipulation in the US and abroad. His uncanny investigative skills as well as his no-holds-barred style have made him an anathema among magnates on four continents and a living legend among his colleagues and his devoted readership.
This exciting collection, now revised and updated, brings together some of Palast's most powerful writing of the past decade. Included here are his celebrated Washington Post exposé on Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris's stealing of the presidential election in Florida, and recent stories on George W. Bush's payoffs to corporate cronies, the payola behind Hillary Clinton, and the faux energy crisis. Also included in this volume are new and previously unpublished material, television transcripts, photographs, and letters.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPlume
- Publication dateFebruary 25, 2003
- Dimensions1 x 5.25 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100452283914
- ISBN-13978-0452283916
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- Publisher : Plume; Revised American edition (February 25, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0452283914
- ISBN-13 : 978-0452283916
- Item Weight : 11.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 1 x 5.25 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,543,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #102 in International Accounting (Books)
- #59,352 in Politics & Government (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors

Greg Palast is the author of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, Vultures' Picnic and the New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and the upcoming How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America's Vanished Voters (July 14).
Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast directed the U.S. government’s largest racketeering case in history–winning a $4.3 billion jury award. He also conducted the investigation of fraud charges in the Exxon Valdez grounding.
Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Palast set off on a five-continent undercover investigation of BP and the oil industry for British television’s top current affairs program, Dispatches
Palast turned his skills to journalism after two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast directed the U.S. government’s largest racketeering case in history–winning a $4.3 billion jury award. He also conducted the investigation of fraud charges in the Exxon Valdez grounding.
Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Palast set off on a five-continent undercover investigation of BP and the oil industry for British television’s top current affairs program, Dispatches.
Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who, for the Observer (UK), broke the story of how Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black Florida citizens from voter rolls before the 2000 election, thereby handing the White House to his brother George. His reports on the theft of the 2000 and 2004 US elections, the spike of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens before September 11, the secret State Department documents planning the seizure of Iraq's oil fields have won him a record six Project Censored awards for reporting the news American media doesn't want you to hear. "The top investigative journalist in the United States is persona non grata in his own country's media." [Asia Times.] He returned to America to report for Harper's Magazine.
Palast's Sam Spade style television and print exposés about financial vultures, election manipulations, War on Terror and globalization, are seen on BBC's Newsnight and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!
Palast, who has led investigations for governments on three continents, has an academic side: the author of Democracy and Regulation, a seminal treatise on energy corporations and government control was commissioned by the United Nations based on his lectures at Cambridge University and the University of São Paulo.
Beginning in the 1970s, having earned his degree in finance at the University of Chicago studying under Milton Friedman and free-trade luminaries, Palast went on to challenge their vision of a New Global Order, working for the United Steelworkers of America, the Enron workers' coalition in Latin America and consumer and environmental groups worldwide.
In 1998 Palast went undercover for Britain's Observer, worked his way inside the prime minister's inner circle and busted open Tony Blair's biggest scandal, "Lobbygate," chosen by Palast's press colleagues in the UK as "Story of the Year." As the Chicago Tribune said, Palast became a "fanatic about documents--especially those marked "secret and confidential" from the locked file cabinets of the FBI, the World Bank, the US State Department and other closed-door operations of government and industry--which regularly find their way into his hands. The inside information he obtained on Rev. Pat Robertson won him a nomination as Britain's top business journalist.
Palast is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. His writings have won him the Financial Times David Thomas Prize--and inspired the Eminem video, Mosh. "An American hero," said Martin Luther King III. In the BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, Palast exposed George Bush Jr.'s dodging the Vietnam War draft. Greg Palast, says Noam Chomsky, "Upsets all the right people."
Palast won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award for his BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes.
What they're saying ...
"Greg Palast is one of my heroes. The last investigative reporter in America. In Armed Madhouse he has the best inside story of the war inside the White House over the war in Iraq, the battle between the neo-cons and Big Oil." -Robert F Kennedy Jr. -Air America Radio
"Twisted and maniacal" -Katherine Harris
"We hate that sonuvabitch." -The White House
"Doggedly independent, undaunted by power. His stories bite, they're so relevant they threaten to alter history" -Chicago Tribune
In England, Tribune Magazine calls him, "The most important investigative reporter of our time."
"Greg Palast is investigative journalism at its best. No one has exposed more truth about the Bush Cartel and lived to tell the story." - Baltimore Chronicle
“Armed Madhouse is great fun. Palast, detective style, provides … pieces of the secret puzzle.” - The New Yorker
The Chicago Reader asks about Greg Palast, "Can one reporter change the entire political discourse of the nation?"
In Britain he's called, "The most important investigative reporter of our time." -Tribune
After exposing on BBC TV the contents of a stack of documents from inside The World Bank and the World Trade Organization, the WTO called his report, "Rubbish rubbish rubbish," and CNN reported, "The World Bank hates Greg Palast" for stories the Wall Street Journal's Jude Wanniski called, "Extraordinary reporting on the IMF," and Nobel Laureate Joesph Stiglitz called, "Excellent on the WTO."
"The information is a hand grenade." - John Pilger, New Statesman
"Up there with Woodward and Bernstein." -Manchester Guardian
"Just read Armed Madhouse - fantastic work." - Comedian Doug Stanhope
"What does a multi-award winning reporting investigator do when he has a huge story to break? If it's Greg Palast, one of America's foremost journalists, he goes to England! Greg Palast has repeatedly scooped the U.S. networks, and newspaper elites, reporting for London's Guardian newspaper, and BBC television's current affairs flagship program, Newsnight. He's reported on the truth behind George W. Bush's theft of the 2000 presidential election, the attempted theft of Venezuelan democracy, the World Bank's willful destruction of Argentina, Enron's looting of California, and the cozy relationship between the Bush and Bin Laden dynasties. The problem is: The men behind the curtain of America's media don't want you to know about these, or any of the other stories he has to tell. Undeterred by the sucking vacuum of America's mainstream media, Greg put together a few of his greatest journalistic hits in the book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: the Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters." Ironically, the stories the New York Times didn't find fit to print have become a New York Times best-seller. Now Greg Palast is releasing a DVD, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," and featuring some of his reports from Britain." - Chris Cook, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
"Armed Madhouse is a work of Genius" -Robert F Kennedy Jr. -Air America Radio
Awards
Patron of the Philosophical Society, Trinity College (an award previously given to Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift)
The Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression Award The American Civil Liberties Union
George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award: Freedom Cinema Fest at The Sundance Film Festival
The Financial Times David Thomas Prize
Nominated for Business Journalist of the Year 1998 (UK)
Politics Story of the Year on Salon.com 2001
Guerilla News Network's Reporter of the Year
The Peace and Justice Award -Office of the Americas
Path Breaking Investigative Journalism Award--Long Island Progressive Coalition
National Press Club's Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, Book Category, First Place.

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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.
He charges that more than 57,000 law-abiding citizens were improperly labeled as felons, and were kept from voting in Florida. These were almost all African-American who universally vote Democrat. There was an 80% criteria for finding a match of felon names. The company Choice Point started with a 90% match, but the state told them that was too high! They were told to make it an 80% match.
So, a felon named John Johnson Jr. would also keep a law-abiding citizen named Jack Johnson or John O. Johnson from voting too. When did the state of Florida inform these people that they were on a felons list and could not vote? They didn't, even though they were supposed to give ample notice to allow any mistake to be corrected.
The company that got the job of putting the fix in, Choice Point was awarded a multi-million dollar contract over other companies that would have done the same job better for literally pennnies per voter. Florida decided to pay much more per voter with Choice Point.
Now here's the lie. Choice Point said that they did not use race as a criterion, but it was used as a matching criterion. Presto! Even with the disproportionate number of Blacks in the prison population, Palasts states that the number kept from voting was statistically way out of proportion to the number of felons.
Just to ensure the outcome, the voting machines in Black neighborhoods were fewer and older than the ones in White neighborhoods. In some cases 18% of the Black vote was thrown out for one reason or another while in White neighborhoods were 1 to 2% was the norm. This was the perfect scam since anyone knows that Blacks would overwhelmingly vote for Gore, and the Whites would have had a large voting block for Bush.
Florida's official reason was that the law prohibited felons from voting. They didn't want any felons to try to vote. (?)Palast asks, what felon wants to vote so badly that he would risk going back to jail for it? Good point! Not one person in Florida was arrested for voting twice.
Then, there were the roving republican goon squads who went to wherever the recount was attempted to intimidate the recount process.
Palast accuses the press of doing nothing or investigating nothing about a national election that was obviously rigged. When he offered the story to CBS, a network that has long since cowed to conservative screams of bias, they refused. Why? The CBS executive called the state of Florida to verify the story. They, the state, assured them there was nothing to it? Isn't that like asking the fox if he can be trusted to protect the henhouse? Palast gained a large audience in Europe bringing this story to light. It received almost no attention here, and when it did, it was way after the election.
This was the most important part of the book for me. While I enjoyed his commentary on Wackenhut and other exposes, this one was the most riveting. It scares me. This isn't supposed to happen in the US. That is why I recommend this book and especially his newer one, "Armed Madhouse."
Palast proves by showing leaked documents, pictures and statistic improbability that this and the 2004 election were stolen by electronic ballot stuffing. I thought this was only supposed to happen in a third world nation.
Shouldn't someone go to jail for this? Shouldn't we be able to count on it?
Top reviews from other countries
Although I am always sceptical about the motives of politicians I still found this book a real eye opener and was unprepared for the extent of corruption in the highest places. For instance, Maggie's sell off of the country's silver (the public utilities) was actually due to following the teachings of a maverick professor in a Boston (USA) university. I never realised that the IMF and the World Bank were anything but benign institutions. However, the loans by these institutions come with strings attached. Countries are compelled to sell off their state owned utilities and largely USA-owned buyers snap them up at a bargain price and then increase the costs enormously which subsequently results in profits going out of the country and therefore reducing the country's ability to pay back the loan. A vicicous circle is thus created that keeps the country in debt.
There are many other revelations in this book but don't want to spoil it too much for readers so I'll leave it at that. The only negative I can find is that I think it is a little self-indulgent and the style is a little Americanised for British taste but that doesn't detract from the content. I shouldn't hold the latter against him as Greg is an American although he has spent much of his working life in UK.
This book contains an awful lot of information about an awful lot of subjects and shows that we live in a "democracy" bought with money and where only money and the interest of the powerful of the world count, nothing else! Greg Palast gives you information about the weird Bush re-election (funny how Al Gore never really fought back but then, would the world have been in a better shape with him? I doubt it!), Lobbygate and all the dirt that went with it and still goes, the truth about the value of immigration, especially illegal immigration (although he thinks that immigration can be a great thing, an opinion I don't share), the struggle of the Bolivians (who at least fought for their rights, something we don't really do anymore in the Western world), the privatized prison system in the US which is now coming to Europe as well and much more! All in all a book worth reading, wherever you live!
Democracy is the best system of governance.......
Corporations are successful due to all their collective hard work and customer focus.....
Western governments are not corrupt.........
Big Media always tells us the unedited truth......
Standing for ones right against authority is bad.........
I think the world need more Palasts to help us deal with our learned helplessness.






