[Dateline: Chicago] “Why would somebody say a crazy statement like that?” Bernie had his arms spread like gull wings, fingers scribbling facts in the air.
“Why” was not really a question.
Watch this five-minute video of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rev. Jesse Jackson and their alliance to take on Kris Kobach, the Dr. Moriarty of vote suppression.
In Jesse Jackson’s private ministry office, the Reverend and I had just laid out President Trump’s claim that 3 million Americans were (Show me more...)
A national outcry followed last week’s request from Kris Kobach, Vice Chair of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, that state election officials provide him with a long list of personal information on every voter, including party affiliation, date of birth, last four digits of social security number, and more.
Many Republican states (red) indicated to CNN that they will “resist” Kris Kobach’s demand for full voter files—but have already given him those files. Four Democratic states (blue) have made the same inaccurate claim. North Carolina’s Democratic Governor last week ordered his Board of Elections not to hand over voter files to Kobach—but the Republican-controlled board had already turned over 6,745,639 voter files.
Election officials in forty-four states say they will refuse to comply with the June 28 written request from Kobach, whose advisory commission was created in May by Trump via executive order. Trump has made repeated and so-far unsubstantiated claims (Show me more...)
The Al Capone of vote rigging, Crosscheck creator Kris Kobach, in his capacity as Vice Chair of Trump's so-called Presidential Election "Integrity" Commission, has demanded the personal information, voting history, and party affiliation of every US voter.
Karen Handel took a break from beating up Democrat John Ossoff to attack a reporter: me. In the televised debate between the two candidates vying for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, Republican Handel claimed, “a reporter supposedly representing some very liberal Democratic organization almost literally (Show me more...)
I was in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District to investigate strange doings in the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel (who received an endorsement—and kiss on the lips—from President Trump).
The most expensive Congressional race in history will be decided June 20. While most polls show Democrat Jon Ossoff ahead of Republican Karen Handel, civil rights leaders fear that racial vote suppression tactics could steal this special election. Here's my report, broadcast today on Democracy Now!, from Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.
That enforcer made his announcement just hours after the euthanasia of Governor Brownback’s “Kansas Experiment” by the state legislature. Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, stepping over the corpse of Brownback’s political career, took to the stage and announced that he would be starting his campaign for Kansas’ highest office.
GOP Congressional candidate Karen Handel will do anything to duck questions about her role in purging Black and Asian voters in the Georgia run-off race against Jon Ossoff. Stay tuned for the full story of the Stealing of the Sixth CD — reports this week by Greg Palast for Thom Hartmann and Democracy Now!
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.
We estimate that before the last election, 1.1 million voters were removed from voter rolls in sates where Crosscheck was being used. Crosscheck is the flawed-by-design, racist vote purging system instigated by Trump’s Vote Suppressor in Chief, Kris Kobach, who this past week was appointed as the Vice Chair of the Presidential Commission for Election Integrity — see story.
Kris Kobach is the GOP mastermind behind a secretive system that purged 1.1 million Americans from the voter rolls.
Kris Kobach was spooning down vanilla ice cream when I showed him the thick pages of evidence documenting his detailed plan to rig the presidential election of 2016.
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...)
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.
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...)
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 Bandits
Now 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...)
Get the non-fake info with investigative reporter Greg Palast.
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...)
The film that told you Trump would steal it. And tells you who did it, and how. And what they’ll do next.
Greg Palast’s New Hit Movie The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits
A documentary unlike any other with appearances from Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, Willie Nelson, Ed Asner and Detective Duo Ice T & Richard Belzer.
