Charged with dumping
three million gallons of murderously toxic oil residue into rivers in six
states, the Kochs were served with a ninety-seven-count criminal indictment.
Their friend Newt Gingrich managed to legalize this in Congress (see clause 7
of the "Contract with America"), thus exonerating them.
Palast has kept an
enormous scrapbook on these monsters since 1996 at least (even as they all keep
files on him) . The list of their stunning achievements goes on and on, bleeding
back into the rest of the voting story by way of . . . "Congressman" Tim
Griffin, a Rove point-man (yes, here's Rove, as if he weren't present in spirit
as the chamber of horrors continue to work their black magic). Griffin, is hugely
supportive of the XL pipeline and thus beloved by the Kochs, who pumped enough
money into his campaign to put him into Congress after his ignominious past,
aided by his "gofer" who was subsequently appointed to head Romney's reelection
campaign. Griffin had been fired as federal prosecuting attorney in Arkansas in
the blink of an eye. He was the mastermind of the original caging lists, born in 2004, a Rove invention to eliminate
voters from registration rolls through sending mail marked "do not forward" to
vulnerable citizens who might not be home because they were in Iraq, foreclosed
on, otherwise homeless, in prison . . . the list goes on. Palast got his hands
on these by way of a fake website georgewbush.org that intercepted some of
them.
And so back from the
cause to the effects on us voters, viz., taken efficiently, chapter by
subsequent chapter (and an orchestra might punctuate each component with grim
percussion:
Purging: removing names from registration lists as illegal aliens,
disenfranchised felons (but legally disenfranchised in only six states),
nonentities, corpses, etc.;
Caging: sending deliberate letters to those away from home for
various tragic reasons, marked "do not forward" (to homeless shelters, military
outposts, foreclosure victims, Native Americans without numbered addresses,
etc.)
Spoiled Votes: where voter intent is not officially clear through ballot
defacement accidentally on purpose;
Prestidigitizing:
Tossing Provisional Ballots : demanded
when voters' names are effaced from lists or they are purposefully directed to
wrong precincts;
Rejecting Absentee or Mail-in Ballots :
a sinister abuse of the USPS--disposed of in large sacks into dumpsters all of
which Bev Harris and her colleagues can't dive into despite their efforts;
Outlawing Registration of Minorities :
charging huge fines if forms are not handed in within 48 hours of being filled
out; dumping any that lack any information at all--including check-marked hollow
boxes; or the wrong info--viz., ID'ing yourself as a Democrat;
Rejecting Registration Forms: a legal prerogative awarded to
secretaries of state since 2006;
Ditto if the spelling of a
voter's names does not match across every database ever amassed in the country,
even Social Security, which most of us signed up for as kids; then consider all
those of us gifted with exotic surnames--all those inevitable typos;
Press Negligence: the fourth branch of our government is far more interested in the Olympics and the Kardashians than voter ID issues, though lately even Fox is admitting that something is amiss and covering it to the worst of their negligible and biased abilities;
Ballot-Box Stuffing: tried and true, though small potatoes compared
to the digital counterpart (see "DREs," above);
The list
goes on and constantly expends. The latest issue is the requirement of voter I.D., admitted by a honcho Republican as a
great way to strike us from the rolls, since poor folks of every color are most
likely not to have them or to be able to obtain them. Another of their
superstars proclaimed the bottom line of all their efforts back in the
eighties: the fewer the voters who turn up at the polls, the more likely the
GOP is to triumph.
There are fabulous
anecdotes and statistics--Palast's hammer--that I don't have room for (read the
book!), as usual, viz,:
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