The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

by Palast, Greg

• ISBN13: 9780452283916
• ISBN10: 0452283914
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-25
• Publisher: Plume

Summary

Investigative journalist Greg Palast has uncovered scandal, fraud, corruption, and lies in the highest seats of power-from the White House to corporate America. His provocative exposes-as well as groundbreaking reports on the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, Wal-Mart and more-are included in this collection of Palast's most incendiary stories. Written in a no-holds-barred, in-your-face style, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a must-read for anyone who believes that the First Amendment is important enough to use and that democracy cannot be bought.

Author Biography

Greg Palast's undercover reports and his "Inside Corporate America" column in the Observer have won him Britain's top prizes for investigative and business journalism as well as the Financial Times David Thomas Prize. Salon.com chose his scandal-busting report on the presidential race in Florida "Political Story of the Year" and his writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Harper's and The Nation. Greg Palast divides his time between New York and London.

Table of Contents

Who Gives a Shit? An Introduction to the New American Edition	1	(10)
Jim Crow in Cyberspace: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida	11	(72)
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them	83	(34)
California Reamin': Deregulation and the Power Pirates	117	(26)
Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree: Globalization and Its Discontents	143	(64)
Inside Corporate America	207	(30)
Pat Robertson, General Pinochet, Pepsi-Cola and the Anti-Christ: Special Investigative Reports	237	(60)
Small Towns, Small Minds	297	(14)
Kissing the Whip: Reflections of an American in Exile	311	(32)
Appendix: Your Turn-Resources for Action	343	(6)
Acknowledgments	349	(4)
Index	353	(16)
About the Author	369

Excerpts

Who Gives a Shit? An Introduction to the New American EditionYou read the papers and you watch television, so you know the kind of spider-brained, commercially poisoned piece-of-crap reporting you get in America. You could call this book What You Didn't Read in the New York Times and What You Can't See on CBS. For example: Five months before the November 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida moved to purge 57,700 people from the voter rolls, supposedly criminals not allowed to vote. Most were innocent of crimes, but the majority were guilty of being Black. I wrote that expose for page one of the nation's top newspaper. But it was the wrong nation: Britain. It ran in the Guardian of London and its Sunday sister paper, the Observer. You could see it on television too-in Europe, on BBC TV's Newsnight, which airs my investigate reports. (If you want to know what was in that diseased sausage called a presidential election, read Chapter 1, "Jim Crow in Cyberspace.") Something else you didn't read: After the American electorate booted the senior Bush from the White House, he landed softly on the board of a gold-mining company originally funded by the Saudi Arabian Adnan Khashoggi, arms dealer to the Axis of Evil. The former president's gold-digger friends made a billion off changes in rules courtesy of the outgoing Bush administration. From there, the story gets more brutal and much bloodier (see Chapter 2, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," new to this American edition). Then there's the story of Monsanto's genetically modified milk-making hormone. The stuff caused company test cows to drip pus into milk buckets. Yummy. Monsanto fixed that problem the easy way-by burying test data. U.S. officials helped out, slipping the company confidential regulatory documents. American journals couldn't cover that. They were too busy licking the loafers of Monsanto's Robert Shapiro, GE's Jack Welch and Enron's Ken Lay to write something not cribbed off a company press release (see Chapter 5, "Inside Corporate America"). And you didn't read how the "Reverend" Dr. Pat Robertson secretly, illicitly used his Christian Crusade jihad assets to boost his berserker get-rich-quick business schemes (see Chapter 6, "Pat Robertson"). Nor did you get the news about Anibal Veron. In August 2000, Veron, a bus driver who hadn't received his pay for nine months, protested and was shot dead. Argentines believe the World Bank had a secret plan to force the nation to cut wages. Antiglobalization conspiracy fantasy? I'll show you the document. Instead, American-style journalism gives you proglobalization gurus like Thomas Friedman. It tells you the new international financial order is all about the communications revolution and cell phones that will call your broker and do your laundry at the same time. Golly. And if you're against globalization, you're against the future. The kids protesting in the streets are just a bunch of unsophisticated jack-offs. And in the United States especially, there's no dissent from this slaphappy view. I'm not going to argue with Friedman and guys in favor of The Future. What I will do is take you through Country Assistance Strategies, Article 133 diplomatic letters and GATS committee memos. Most are marked "confidential" and "not for public disclosure"-having walked out of filing cabinets inside the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization. And there's nothing in there about cell phones for Incas. If you read the original hardcover edition of this book, you'll see here a substantially different text. An awful lot has happened since we last met between these covers, and new material arrives daily. There were letters like this: "You are a freak liberal asshole! [signed] A Reasonable American." That is not news. However, there was an extraordinary note from Florida. Katherine Harris, secretary of state, wrote that my reporting was "twisted." Agai