Are Black people too lazy to vote? No. No one understands rhetoric. Behind Black vote drop: Jim Crow in Cyberspace.

Reports claim black voter turnout fell for first time in 20 years. But it’s not that black voters are too lazy to come out to vote, it’s that they’re trying to vote and their names have disappeared from voter rolls.

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Join us for the launch of The Voting Rights Project on Saturday May 27, 2017 from noon until 3 pm. The event will feature a screening of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a panel discussion on "Georgia Voter Suppression Counter-Strategy and Tactics" and a press conference to demand voting rights reform.

Time: Sat, May 27, 2017 — Noon until 3 pmPlace: Eagles Nest Church, 50 Mansell Court, Roswell, Georgia 30076Tickets: FREERegister: StopCrosscheck.org

Sponsored By: The Civil Rights Center & The Palast Investigative FundCo-Sponsors: Eagle Nest Church, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, Common Cause Georgia, The Cobb County NAACP, and WRFG Radio

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By Greg Palast for Alternet

Kris Kobach is the GOP mastermind behind a secretive system that purged 1.1 million Americans from the voter rolls.

The Secretary of State of Kansas, sucking up carbs at a Republican Party Fundraiser recognized the documents – and yelled at me, "YOU'RE A LIAR!" then ran for it while still trying to wolf down the last spoonful.

But documents don't lie.

That was 2015 (yes, the ballot heist started way back). Today this same man on the run, Kris Kobach, is now Donald Trump’s choice to (Show me more...)

"It is difficult to get the issue of voter suppression on television at the moment, I think for a couple of reasons. Number one: Donald Trump — he sort of blocks out the sun. He’s taken up so much of the airtime on any given day that the media just feels that it can’t not talk about him. Between the insane things that (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast for Truthout

A napkin can be a dangerous thing in the hands of fools. Especially when the D students sit in the Oval Office.

President Donald Trump's mind-blowing $2 trillion tax cut, according to his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, "Will pay for itself with growth."

The storied economist John Maynard Keynes once said, "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

The scribbler, in this case, is my old professor and mentor, Art Laffer. Famously, he did his scribblings on napkins, a corollary of his addiction to greasy cheeseburgers.

In 1974, over burgers at the University of Chicago student grill, he scribbled a curve on a napkin, illustrating a curiosity: the higher the tax rate, the lower the total tax collection. Or, turned around: a cut in taxes can pay for itself.

But, alas, Art told me, this economic magic trick only works (Show me more...)

President Trump aims to roll back the Obama administration’s attempts to ban oil drilling off the southeastern Atlantic and Alaskan coasts.

I was in the Arctic where Trump wants to drill baby drill. Drilling means the ethnic cleansing of the Inuit speakers who still live there. Whales won't swim in hydrocarbon. I noticed Trump did not OK drilling off Mar-a-Lago.

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by Greg Palast – for Channel 4, UK

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

5 years ago, we located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases:  the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for OpedNews

Koch Brothers celebrate their victory (from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy)
When RyanCare-TrumpCare finally ended up face-down in the swimming pool, triumphalist Democrats whooped and partied and congratulated themselves on defeating the Trump-Ryan monstrosity.

But deep in their counting house, counting their gold, three brothers cackled with private jubilation.

David and Charles Koch knew the day was theirs.

Joining them in the celebration was Brother Billy, William Koch, who will share in their $21 billion windfall that the President arranged for them only hours before TrumpCare crashed—when Trump announced his State Department had formally approved the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Let's start with that $21 billion.

The XL Keystone Pipeline would take the world's heaviest, filthiest crude from Canada's tar sands, and snake with it all the way down to Texas.

From Greg Palast’s film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot BanditsNow here's a question I never hear from our sleep-walking media: Exactly why are we sending oil all the way across the United States to Texas. I mean, doesn't Texas already have a little oil?

In fact, Texas is drowning in oil, choking in it. But the Kochs' Texas refinery can't use much local crude. The Koch Industries Flint Hills refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast was designed specifically to crack only the world's "heaviest" (i.e. filthiest) crude.

Texas crude ain't heavy enough, ain't dirty enough, for the Kochs' Gulf Coast operation, originally designed for imports for the world's major source of heavy crude: Venezuela. The price the Kochs paid for Venezuela's oil was set by its President Hugo Chavez, and now, by Chavez' chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro.

Chavez and Maduro both told me they'd squeeze the Kochs by their tankers. They have.

Enter the Mounties: Canadians sell their super-heavy crude at a $12 to $30 a barrel discount to the Venezuelan price. If the XL Pipeline is complete, the Kochs can suck down Canada's cheap cruddy crude for a minimum savings of $1.27 billion in a single year.

The Kochs pocket billions while we fry: burning the Canadian tar sands reserve will, all by itself, raise the temperature of the entire planet by 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Over the life of the XL Keystone Pipeline, the various Koch operations will put at minimum (Show me more...)

Right now, this minute, you can watch The Best Democracy Money Can Buy on Amazon from $2.99, or if you prefer get a lifetime stream from Vimeo.

Or better yet, get a signed copy for a tax-deductible donation.

See the Film that Jesse Jackson is bringing to 200 churches before election day.

Follow me as I bust the New Klux Klan – the billionaire bandits that are behind a scheme to purge one million voters of color on election day.

The Hysteria Factory is in full effect. Trump says a million "aliens" are swimming the Rio Grande to (Show me more...)

Palast says,
"It’s no joke—and it’s far more sinister than a mere "lie."

"The US press has done a good job exposing President Trump’s looney-toons claim that millions of votes were cast against him.

"But what’s missing is what’s behind Trump’s claim — and it’s not just his cranky, whining ego looking to erase the embarrassment of losing the popular vote.

"We are witnessing the crafting of a systematic plan to steal the 2018 midterm election."

And that’s not all:

Did anyone notice that in the middle of Trump’s psycho-drama of a press conference, he said, "…I want to thank Paul Singer for being here and coming up to the Oval Office."

Those are the most dangerous words Trump has uttered since (Show me more...)

A note to all who’ve made a donation to
our Investigative Fund

You are not only keeping us alive financially, but emotionally.

Eventually, our stories make national news, but, in those months while the mainstream resists, your encouragement really means a lot.

People ask me how I keep my sense of humor when I see all these horrors, from lost votes to lost lives. The truth is, I get the blues too.

Support, good wishes, and remembering the tough world I came from are what gets me back on track.

And here’s something they can’t steal from us:  a Happy New Year, from my family to yours.

Thank you,
Greg Palast, reporting

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Last week, I flew to Detroit with my team at the request of a major west coast publication. When I landed, they got cold feet; assignment cancelled. Without funding to continue, I should have (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast for Truthout

Photo of Michigan ballot with bubble. (Image courtesy of Palast Investigative Fund, 2016)

Before the Electoral College votes, they should know this.

Michigan officials declared in late November that Trump won the state's count by 10,704 votes. But hold on – a record 75,355 ballots were not counted.

The uncounted ballots came mostly from Detroit and Flint, majority-Black cities that vote Democratic.

According to the machines that read their ballots, these voters waited in line, sometimes for hours, yet did not (Show me more...)

Officially, Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. But a record 75,335 votes were never counted. Most of these votes that went missing were in Detroit and Flint.

How do you disappear 75,335 votes? I flew to Michigan to investigate.

 

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Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation
After investigating the REAL story of the recount, we stopped by the Department of Justice yesterday and handed them our Crosscheck petition, signed by 50,000 people. We have a lot more work to do and thankfully, our efforts are starting to get notice. We're not done...

Join us bySupporting the Stolen Election Investigation

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Thousands of bubbles filled in next to the candidate's name couldn’t be read by the optical scanning machines in Michigan and Wisconsin but a much better machine, the (Show me more...)

After reading my report on the Kobach/Koch/Trump operation, which has removed tens of thousands of minority voters from the rolls in the swing states that surprisingly shifted to Trump, former federal judge (and now Congressman) Alcee Hastings told me Crosscheck is a criminal violation of federal law. Hastings has called for criminal indictments and written an official Congressional member letter to ask for investigation.

hastings-crosscheck-letter-to-ag-lynch

Hastings’ demand for justice is backed by a petition to expose and end Crosscheck’s racist attacks on voting rights. So far it's been signed by 50,000 people, including 29,507 members of 18 Million Rising, the Asian-American rights group. The group is joined by co-signers Rep. Keith Ellison, Bill Gallegos of Climate Justice, Martin Luther King III and others.

On Tuesday, December 13 I will join the leaders of 18 Million rising in Washington, D.C. to present the petition to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Stopping Crosscheck is the Standing Rock of racist vote suppression.  If we don’t open the investigations now, by January 21, Kris Kobach will be Homeland Security chief and Jeff Sessions Attorney General.

Demand an investigation into Crosscheck, sign our petition — and then share it! (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for Truthout

There's been so much complete nonsense since I first broke the news that the Green Party would file for a recount of the presidential vote, I am compelled to write a short guide to flush out the BS and get to just the facts, ma'am.

 

Nope, they’re not hunting for Russian hackers

To begin with, the main work of the recount hasn't a damn thing to do with finding out if the software programs for the voting machines have been hacked, whether by Putin’s agents or some guy in a cave flipping your vote from Hillary to The Donald.

The Green team does not yet even have the right to get into the codes. But that's just not the core of the work.

The ballots in the electoral “dumpster”

The nasty little secret of US elections, is that we don't count all the votes.

In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—and all over America—there were a massive number of votes that were simply (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast

UPDATE: In Michigan and North Carolina the wipe-out of Black, Hispanic and young voters was massive - especially under Crosscheck. Watch my latest segment on MSNBC's AM Joy, this Saturday morning on how the election was rigged - long before the vote even happened.

Jill Stein just called to say that I am the first one to be informed that the Green Party is formally petitioning for a recount in 3 states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump’s margin is less than 11,600 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin and 68,000 in Pennsylvania.

Support the 2016 Stolen Election Investigation

If just a few thousand votes are found in Wisconsin and Michigan, (Show me more...)

Being right never felt so horrid.

“This is the story of the theft of the 2016 election.
It’s a crime still in progress.”

So opens my film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me.

Instead, the returns made the fool a President.

And so, my vacation’s cancelled. My life’s cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy.

What’s at stake?
No way around it, this is one frightening moment.

Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction.  Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed—and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and a howling anti-Semite as White House Senior Counselor.

But the horror we face is countered by this one hard and hopeful fact:  (Show me more...)

By Ben Gelblum | The London Economic

Throughout the US election campaign one of The Donald’s main refrains was “this election is rigged.”

Turns out this particular Trump election rallying cry wasn’t a lie… Well, not entirely.

Veteran election investigator Greg Palast has uncovered the sickening truth. I spoke to Palast about evidence of widespread systemic election rigging, robbing black, hispanic and asian American voters of their right to vote in crucial states. – Enough votes to swing the election away from the Hillary Clinton victory predicted in polls – explaining suspicious exit polls inconsistencies – and towards a shock result for Trump and Republican victory in the Senate.

“Before a single vote was even cast, the election was already fixed by Trump operatives,” explains Palast.

“This country is violently divided. There simply aren’t enough white guys to elect Trump nor a Republican Senate. The only way they could win was to (Show me more...)

Before a single vote was cast, the election was fixed by GOP and Trump operatives.

Starting in 2013 – just as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act – a coterie of Trump operatives, under the direction of Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, created a system to purge 1.1 million Americans of color from the voter rolls of GOP–controlled states.

The system, called Crosscheck, is detailed in my Rolling Stone report,
“The GOP’s Stealth War on Voters,” 8/24/2016.

Crosscheck in action:  
Trump victory margin in Michigan:                    13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list:                       449,922

Trump victory margin in Arizona:                       85,257
Arizona Crosscheck purge list:                           270,824

Trump victory margin in North Carolina:        177,008
North Carolina Crosscheck purge list:              589,393

On Tuesday, we saw Crosscheck elect a Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump.  The electoral putsch was aided by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters, methods detailed in my book and film, including “Caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.

Trump signaled the use of “Crosscheck” when he claimed the election is “rigged” because “people are voting many, many times.”  His operative Kobach, who also advised Trump on building a wall on the southern border, devised (Show me more...)