The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

by Greg Palast and Al Franken

Book Overview

"Palast is astonishing, he gets the real evidence no one else has the guts to dig up." Vincent Bugliosi, author of None Dare Call it Treason and Helter Skelter 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,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452285674
• ISBN13: 9780452285675
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

One of the Best Books Money Can Buy

"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is a must read for anyone-conservative or liberal-who wants to get a different perspective on what is happening in the world than the one that is consistently portrayed by the consolidated corporate media. While the controversial title of this book implies a liberal critique of Western values and institutions, it actually accomplishes something very different. Veteran investigative reporter, Greg Palast publishes some of the news stories that the consolidated corporate media refuses to report. While some may blanch at the targets of Palast's investigations, which include corrupt politicians, crooked companies, world finance organizations, and the consolidated corporate media, few can deny the accuracy and integrity of his reports. Palast is an independent reporter who originally specialized in racketeering investigations. His methods include scrupulously studying corporate documents, and examining the testimony of whistleblowers, many of whom approach him personally out of disgust toward their parent organizations. Palast does not work for a for-profit media company and is not beholden to corporate interests. This makes him one of the few honest voices in public life.Chief among Palast's exposés is the illegal manner in which Florida Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, and Governor Jeb Bush illegally denied tens of thousands of African American citizens their right to vote in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. Palast details the methods used by Bush and Harris to exclude eligible African American from voting such as manipulating database records to wrongfully categorize thousands of African Americans as felons, or wrongfully claiming that convicted felons who has completed their sentences in other states could not vote in Florida.Palast also exposes the presidential instructions from the Clinton and Bush (Jr.) administrations that forced dedicated FBI agents to ignore any leads to Saudi terrorists that implicated the Saudi royal family, or people from that region with influential ties to the U.S. government. When it came to investigating Saudi terrorist links, according to Palast, under Clinton investigators were ordered to turn a blind eye, while under bush they were ordered to shut both eyes. While both Clinton and Bush were concerned about alienating a key American ally in the Middle East, Palast demonstrates, that the latter took more excessive steps to suppress the investigation of Saudi terrorists, since many of them had tentative links to his own family business, including those who invested in his first oil company, Arbusto, and those-mainly members of the Bin Laden family-who sat with his father (the first President Bush) on the board of the Carlysle Group. Palast does not believe George W. Bush was complicit in the attacks of September 11th, but he argues that had Clinton and Bush Jr. not interfered in FBI anti-terrorist investigations, the attacks of September 11th might well have been preven

The Last Reporter

Greg Palast won't shut up. He won't shut up about how Jeb Bush and his lieutenant stole the election from Gore through a vicious manipulation of the voter rolls. He won't shut up about how cheaply Tony Blair's government can be bought. He won't shut up about how mainstream journalism is in thrall to the prevailing free market corporate ethos. He won't shut up about the Big Lie perpertreated by Milton Friedman and his gang that markets promote democracy, that markets are engines of viture. He shows with unshakable research that instead that instead of breeding virture and freedom, markets breed corruption, inequality, and through a politically moribund media, moral complacency.The opening chapter on the high-tech mechanism that the Bush camp in Florida put in place before the elections in 2000 to expunge African-Americans from voter rolls is worth the price of the book. Palast tells us how Jeb's gang reinstated Jim Crow laws in the New South by hiring a database firm with strong ties to the Texas Republican party to compare lists of voters with lists of felons and purge names from the rolls that "matched" in only the most tenous ways. Roughly 60,000 voters, most of them Black (because the prison archipelago in the United States imprisons mostly Blacks) were stripped of the fundamental right of voting. Why take blacks off the rolls? Because, as Palast notes, better than 9 in 10 Blacks vote for Democrats. He personalizes these facts in the person of a Black minister who had met and broken bread with Jeb Bush on numerous occasions. The minister showed up to vote at his local precinct where he had been voting for over 20 years and discovered that his name had vanished from rolls. Palast goes into stunning detail on how the scam was perpertrated and shows conclusively that the Bush camp stacked the deck well before the election. Further, he proves even under these circumstances that Gore actually won in Florida. Palast reported this high-tech lynching of Black voters rights in the Guardian (funded by public monies) before the actual election. No mainstream American media picked up on the story. When the Washington Post finally reported it, they did so months later under the cover of the Federal Election Commisions investigation into the manipulation of the election. Slate, to its credit, picked up on the story and helped with hard work of investigating the chicanery in Florida in the immediate aftermath of the elections, but as Palast notes, Slate is not the New York Times, or the Washington Post. He shows in lurid detail how the Republican power structure, including of course, the Supreme Court, swung into action under the guidance of James Baker and ended the counting on the basis of the flimsiest of legalistic doctrine. He depicts the almost comical ineptitude of a Democratic Party as it tries to take on the Repulicans. While the Democrats play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, the Republicans play to win. Anti-nausea medicine is strongly recomme

The Best Pure Reporter on the Planet

What can I say? Along with Alexander Cockburn, Robert Fisk,John Pilger, Alain Nairn, Amy Goodman, Russ Mokhiber, Greg Palasat is on the Planet Earth pure hard news reporting all star team. His reporting on Team Bush's theft of the American presidency was as ground breaking as it was censored in America.His analysis of how the U.S. mainstream media works evokes Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent. Palast tells the facts and names the names in the tradition of George Seldes and I.F. Stone. ...If you want to know just how intellectually bankrupt the conservative philosophy is read this book. If you still think that capitalism is the best economic policy, read this book.I can tell you one thing about Greg Palast: he will not get his own show on CBS or NBC or ABC or CNN or FOX telling the facts and naming the names. But not because he's not accurate; not because he's boring; not because he wouldn't get ratings. It's because Palast tells citizens the truth that corporations and their political allies do not want us to think about or even know.

The Truth Hurts

Greg Palast is not your typical journalist. He doesn't varnish the truth based upon ideology, political leaning or who's paying his salary. His background as an investigator shines through in his writing. Unlike a vast majority of so-called investigative reporters, Greg does his homework by scouring sources and providing evidence, not by rewording what's already been dictated to the media. Greg reveals what really happened in Florida. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris fixed the election. Plain and simple. The proof is in the book....This book doesn't spare the Clintons or Gore. If you've wondered why the Democrats didn't jump on the Palast bandwagon during the election fiasco and publicize the voter purge of primarily black Democratic voters, Greg's got the answers. You may not like them.The chapters on the WTO and IMF may bring tears to your eyes when you stop and think about what they've done in the name of progress. The wholesale destruction of economies and people seems to be the new definition of progress, with the US leading the pack. Ever really wonder why America is so despised? Here's one answer.Media myths are destroyed in this book. Read about Walmart, Tony Blair, Pat Robertson, the Exxon/Valdez coverup, Volvo, etc. This is the most explosive and accurate portrayal of our new globalized society that you can find in America. No fluff, only substance. If you care about civilization, read the book.

How Florida Profiled Blacks and Stole the 2000 Election

In a time when fiduciary responsibilities and concern for stockholders have reduced most American newsrooms to ghost towns populated only by cut and paste journalists, Greg Palast, an American working for the Observer in London, still does what reporters used to do. He digs through the evidence, particularly the emails, the government records and the financial reports to get the hard evidence. His evidence on the 2000 Florida Presidential election voting process is both astonishing and terribly troubling.Palast also offers clear documentary evidence that Blacks were racially profiled to be eliminated from voter rolls by Florida's voter/felon purge. Essentially, at the behest of Katherine Harris, under Jeb Bush's close watch, Florida systematically and intentionally denied voting rights to approximately 90,000 voters whose right to vote in Florida was legally unquestionable--and over 54% of them were Black. Since Florida Blacks voted 93% for Al Gore, Palast's remarkably detailed book makes it perfectly evident that illegally purged Black votes prevented Florida from voting overwhelmingly for Al Gore and giving Gore the presidency.Palast also demonstrates that the issue is not one of Black incompetence. Voting machines were set to accept double voted, and therefore uncountable, ballots in Black districts, while they were set to reject double voted ballots in White districts, so Whites could recast their ballots. In other counties with heavily Black populations, the automatic protection systems which reject double voted ballots were simply turned off to "reduce costs." So while Bush "won" the presidency on a 5-4 Supreme Court vote which said, essentially, that Americans don't have the Constitutional right to vote for the President, something far more sacred was lost in the Florida voting process--the right of every eligible, adult American to have his or her vote counted and to have that vote determine who will lead our country.