ll“The answer is tough investigatioWords, UnLtd. October 2002

PALAST ON NETWORK PRIME TIME (Donahue, September 4. 2002) AT LAST:

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER?

by Marta Steele

 Just in case you were losing faith in the objectivity of the press, don’t despair.[1] Greg Palast has indeed reached network prime time with his breaking news report on the Florida database fiasco. What’s two years, after all? They had to allow a liberal commentator onto prime time network TV first. From Politically Incorrect (which was subsequently taken off the air) to … Donahue! It is to be hoped that sooner, not later, the full impact of his message reaches the public. My daughter just sent me the following missive regarding the status of our basic human rights:

 OVERVIEW OF CHANGES TO LEGAL RIGHTS BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal rights by the
Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror
attacks:

* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political
institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror
investigation.

* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public
immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people
without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public
records requests.

* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers
of any other records if they tell anyone that the government
subpoenaed information
related to a terror investigation.

* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison
jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny
lawyers to
Americans accused of crimes.

* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and
seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist
terror
investigation.

* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans
indefinitely without a trial.

* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or
being
able to confront witnesses against them.

      It is comforting that the mainstream press seems slowly to be realizing the rug the radical right is attempting to whisk out from under our incredulous lives. Where did I read that issues of discrimination comprise the least favorite subject of journalists? From my freelancing office overlooking the lazy Delaware, those words on an e-mail cannot alter the silence nor the ominous early-September blue skies; but they do portend that the next time I attend a protest rally (and I will not be scared away), I could be whisked off by the police and never heard from again.

     Palast is one of the few who are actively, vocally fighting the radical right. He is gifted enough to speak, not just write, and debate, not just make speeches, and, most of all, clear space on the Donahue show, amid politicians all speaking at once. He was, as a matter of fact, initially interviewed one-on-one by Phil before others were allowed their say. Unlike the event on Politically Incorrect, when for the entire segment at least five people were talking all at once, Greg managed to deliver his message to the largest-ever audience, uninterrupted for enough time for a several short paragraphs and sentences. All completely articulate as we progressives leaned on him and prayed: a minor miracle these days, for network tv, if you happen to be something other than radical right or Colin Powell.

     How many Donahue viewers were previously unaware of the database scam? Palast later told me that the Donahue engagement was not cleared until two hours before airtime, so that we didn’t even have time to publicize it. He had further dismaying, but hardly surprising [actual] news to add, which may be even more important, depending on how many Floridians were watching. His focus was the upcoming elections in Florida this November. “What’s happening is that the president of the United States is using the U.S. taxpayers as a piggy bank to basically purchase the governorship, the reelection, for his brother in Florida,” he told Donahue. For example, the purchasing back of oil-drilling leases on the Gulf of Mexico for $115 million of taxpayer money, which initially cost ExxonMobil (the second-largest donator to the Bush family’s various campaigns) $13 million. All that in line with Jeb’s pledge not to drill for oil off the Florida coast (certainly they will continue in California [where there is a Democratic governor, Gray Davis] and Alaska, though: hmmm). Just in time for the elections, the radical right shows a bit of environmental concern in Florida.

      That was the actually breaking news: “the oil companies holding the governorship of Florida hostage.” (“Why not just give each Floridian a free ticket to the Superbowl?” Palast asked.) The subject then turned to the Enron debacle as it permeated … not the long-suffering Californians, who dared vote against Bush in November 2000, but Florida, where pensioners lost $1/3 billion (three times more than any other state lost on “the Enron roulette wheel,” per Palast) the state had invested in Enron before the collapse. All was not lost, however; 45 days after the money disappeared “into a hole in Houston,” the former president of Enron donated $2 million to Jeb’s re-election campaign. That’s a .6 percent return, better than nothing, even though it was returned to a political candidate rather than the pensioners.

      True to the tradition of “correct” journalism, Donahue allowed the opposition its reaction to Palast’s reports. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, had this to say, in defense of so much: “…The reason that the mainstream press has paid absolutely no attention to that previous story is because there’s no there there. There’s no story.”

      Correct. For so long there has been [close to] no [news][2] story. She did not address any of Palast’s issues directly, but rather launched off into hot air and theoreticals, on his “Machiavellian, schizophrenic way of looking at government….”

      How to use your college education.

      You want specifics? The Congresswoman assured us that Democrats were sometimes included in media events covering Bush II’s frequent visits to Florida (10 times since his election, more than any other state, even Texas, per Donahue), where both U.S. Senators are Democrats. Not only that, but the allegations of the Democratic candidates for governor, that Florida receives such low federal allocations compared to other states, is simply untrue.

      Another favor Jeb is granting his constituency? Cleaning up the Everglades. In this process, reported Palast, the water systems in southern Florida will be privatized.  The freshwater in the Everglades will be sold to a company called Azurix, a fully owned subsidiary of Enron. Now that’s turning the other cheek, is it not? The reason all this money is needed to clean up the Everglades? Circular, per Mr. Palast. “Jeb Bush and George Bush won’t tell the Fanjul family [owners of the “big sugar plantation”] to stop dumping in the Everglades, which costs Florida $800 million annually to clean up.

       There followed a detailed presentation of the Florida database scam, with the added news that just last week “Katherine Harris confessed to the whole game. She had to sign off on an agreement with the NAACP.” That, after facing off with Palast in the July issue of Harper’s (accessible at the web page www.gregpalast.com) , where she also admitted the truth of his allegations that the Florida election was stolen when tens of thousands of black voters (a total of 91,000 minority citizens, according to the latest estimate) were denied the right to vote because of the illegal database produced by a Republican-biased corporation and paid for with $4 million of Florida taxpayers’ money.

      Aired then on primetime, ancient history to us progressives, is the BBC video clip of Palast being thrown out of the office of the superintendent of Florida’s department of elections, Clayton Roberts, for attempting to show him the fabricated database list and confronting him with the fact that 97% of the so-called felons on that list were innocent; the database company had been prevented from verifying the validity of the list by the people who hired them. If there was somewhere a felon named “George Jones,” then anyone named “George Jones” in Florida could be kept from voting – that sort of thing. Most of the people kept from voting were black and would have voted Democratic. Had these people voted, Gore would now be in the White House.

      This week, the distinguished governor and the former secretary of state, currently running for Congress in Florida, admitted the validity of Palast’s findings and said yes, these people would be allowed to vote; it seems, though, that the appropriate mechanisms will probably not be activated in time for the November elections (Palast: “It’s going to be very difficult to get those thousands of black people back on the voter rolls in time for Jeb’s election. I bet Jeb is crying about that, isn’t he?”). Maybe 2004?

      If Florida delivers its votes to the Democratic candidate in 2004, what will happen elsewhere? Gerrymandering? Dollars are ruling, not the will of the people. Stay tuned. Clinton, after all, visited California 66 times during his presidency, per a later guest on the program, Tony Blankley, editor of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times. And Florida has “the world’s best beaches,” after all…. “The economy relies on it.” The income from California beaches is at best 10 percent of that, he added. And nobody lives in Alaska [ergo, it’s o.k. to drill there. What a brilliant lesson in logical deduction].