The "Muckracker" Speaks

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Called "the greatest investigative reporter of our time" Greg Palast has single-handedly exposed some of the juiciest recent public scandals: Bush undercutting the FBI's investigation of Saudi Arabia's financing of terrorist organizations; the Republicans stealing the election in Florida; Enron swindling its way into an energy monopoly.

Palast took up journalism because, as he says, "no one in the [American] media could get the story right." The American, now living in London, reports for the BBC and the Guardian. Earlier this week Penguin released the Expanded Election Edition of Palast's New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy as he kicks off an eight-city tour to promote the book. [Click here to read the excerpt "Oil Slick Jim," about the other side of James Baker, from Palast's new book.]

Palast gave Utne magazine the following exclusive written interview. In it he predicts what we Americans have to fear next from our shadowy government, hypes the role of online media, and warns about New York City's cabs.

Utne magazine: Has the 2004 presidential election already been decided? In the new chapter, you refer to the potential problems with online voting, and how it could swing the election results in Bush's favor.

Greg Palast: Hey, you may have already voted -- they just haven't told you for whom yet. Here's an ugly fact so astonishing, so outrageous, I was a bit afraid to print it: in the 2000 election, one million black people cast ballots that no one counted. One million. No fooling, no BS. And this is not something Greg Palast discovered; it came from the official sources: the US Civil Rights Commission and the Harvard Law School Civil Rights project. The ugly reality of our apartheid electoral system is hidden in Appendix 14 of the Commission report.

How does it happen? The votes are "spoiled" -- voided for this technical reason or that. And the great spoiler in 2000 was Kathryn Harris. The state of Florida simply did not count 180,000 ballots in the Bush/Gore race. And according to the official report, half were cast by black voters. On net, Gore lost about 70,000 votes in the state that way.

And in 2004, it will be worse, they've made sure of it. The racist skew in voting machines (busted machines in black counties, state-of-the-art in white counties) was getting fixed ... so the Bushites had to bust the system again, this time by ordering in touch-screen voting. And in 2002, Jeb [Bush, President Bush's brother] did a practice run: in Broward County, there was a computer-vote meltdown in black precincts ... in other words, the system worked as they wanted it to.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print