by Steven Whitney

From 2000 onward, intentional (and criminal) voter suppression has altered the political landscape on every level – local, state, and national. But from the 2000 Butterfly ballots in Florida that handed Bush the election, the Ohio locked-door counting of votes in 2004 that defeated Kerry, to the approximately 5.9 million votes lost (or stolen) in 2008, the problem has been more insidious and widespread than most of us realize. Most tragically, this happened in America – the country that invented modern democracy, but a nation in danger of becoming a plutocracy in which only money rules.

Just in time for our 2012 elections, award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast – arguably the foremost expert on voter suppression – has released a new book that offers prescriptive solutions to the gravest threat our democracy faces: the suppression and outright theft of votes across the United States.

As the title implies, Billionaires and Ballot Bandits exposes the billionaires (including the infamous Koch brothers) and bandit operatives (like Karl Rove) behind the various plots to reduce minority participation in all elections, from local dogcatcher races to national Presidential choices. These crooks are – as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in his brilliant introduction, A Hostile Takeover of Our Country – committing treasonous actions that are subverting both the intent and reality of our democracy. So in the book Palast tells you who does it, why they do it, where they do it, who they do it to, the 9 different ways they do it, why they get away with it, and, importantly, what you must do to make sure your vote counts to stop the wholesale theft of up to ten million votes in the coming election

As an added treat, Ted Rall, one of America’s top political cartoonists, has contributed a 48 page comic book insert – Tales From the Crypt of Democracy – that is hilarious, shocking, and right on target.

These scandalous shenanigans are much worse than Watergate – they are the worst political crimes of our era precisely because they aim to steal the most precious commodity Americans possess – their votes.

Read the interview, then get Palast’s ground-breaking expose on the real voter fraud taking place all across our country. You’ll not only be buying an important book, you’ll be making a vital investment in our democracy.

Steven Whitney: Let’s start with the most famous example in our history: Florida, 2000, Katherine Harris and the Butterfly Ballot. Everybody knows about that, but didn’t the Florida election officials do lot of other shady stuff even before the election?

Greg Palast: You hear about Butterfly Ballots because it’s rich, white folks in Palm Beach with their summer homes that lost their ballots to the butterflies. That’s unusual – they aren’t used to having their votes flushed down the toilet. They aren’t used to getting their chads hung. It’s usually the poorest, blackest folk in Florida. Before the 2000 election, before the butterflies, 94,000 mostly black folk – were targeted as felons, wiped off the voter rolls by a computer drone system. They were accused of being illegal voters. In fact, every one of them was guilty of Voting While Black. The number of actual illegal voters on the list of 94,000 turned out to be exactly zero. None. That’s what elected your President – a program of lynching by laptop, an electronic program against black voters.

Now, of course, things have changed since those dark days. They’ve gotten darker. This year, the felon purge is back, it’s black, it’s nasty. The Republicans have gone back in with the same game. How do they do it? For example, this time around, you’ll see in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits that a Robert Moore commits a crime. Common name, but sneaky Robert Moore changes his name to Bobbi. So Bobbi Moore, a registered voter in Florida, loses her vote. You’ll notice I said Robert Moore/Bobbi Moore loses her vote – so, obviously he had a sex change. Not only that, since he committed the crime in the future, according to the records, it’s a very sophisticated computer program, which seems to knock out black and blue-ish voters, you know, Democrats.

SW: Was it possible back then in 2000 that the Butterfly Ballot became a ruse to distract from all the other purging that Harris and Jeb Bush did?

GP: Not at all. No one gives a flying fuck about black people, especially in the white press. As far as they were concerned, the only thing that ever mattered in that whole race was the Butterfly Ballots…See trophy wives losing their votes is an issue. Black people in Gadsden County, who lost their votes through machine manipulation …Here are the numbers by the way: 178,000 votes were spoiled, that is cast and not counted in Florida. According to the Civil Rights Commission, if you were black, the chance your vote will be lost is 900% higher than if you’re white, and it ain’t just whistling dixie, that’s all over the United States. Officially we had 1.5 million votes cast and not counted in the last election, spoiled as they say. And overwhelmingly, it was a majority black, Latino and hugely, this is an interesting one, Native American. Overwhelmingly Democratic group, concentrated in swing states, there’s nothing new under the sun. America has progressed—our manifest destiny is to fuck the hell out of the Indians.

SW: Well, I think they were born in Kenya, weren’t they?

GP: Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t mind a Muslim President from Africa because we’ve had these white Christian pricks for so long fucking it up, let’s give someone else a try.

SW: Didn’t John Kerry lose the election in 2004 because of an imminent terrorist attack on an Ohio courthouse?

GP: That was one of the games that was played. And, by the way, remember the kid who was zapped with the taser in Florida — you know, “Don’t tase me, bro!” He was holding up my book. He said, by the way, that he never let it hit the ground even though he was being tased — it was like the flag. And he was yelling at Kerry, “Why did you give up when this author, Greg Palast, said you won?” And by the way, Kerry said, “Yeah, I read the book, Palast is right.” No one got that answer. And, yes, one of the biggest ways that Kerry lost is a rotten piece of shit trick, in other words, something from Karl Rove, called caging. It’s one of the nine ways they steal votes that we have in the book.

Here’s the quick game on CAGING, and what happened to Kerry, and what happened again in Wisconsin with the Scott Walker recall, is that Karl Rove’s operation – and I’m not guessing here – sent out letters to soldiers, to students at black colleges in August, and to Jewish voters in Miami who are snowbirds and go north in August. The letters said on the outside “Do Not Forward.” So the letters came back, that is they’re caged, and then the Rovebots challenge the voters as voting from fraudulent addresses.

If you look in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, you will see these caging lists. One is nothing but soldiers from the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville. Now Mr. Rove, or “Turd Blossom” as George Bush called him, it was his nickname, Mr. Blossom, why wouldn’t a soldier be at their home base where they’re registered? Well, Afghanistan is one answer.

By the way, if you’re a soldier you’re allowed to vote from under your Humvee. But when those soldiers and those students and the elderly of Zion sent in their absentee ballots, they didn’t know that those ballots were under challenge and that they were thrown in the garbage. Go to Afghanistan, lose your vote, mission accomplished. You like that? That’s what the Rove Operation was doing. I’m not guessing because I have the actual caging lists…It’s not that Rove sends me his confidential evidence of felonious criminality, it’s that we had a friend of mine who owned a website – RepublicanNationalCommittee.org – and because they misaddressed the stuff, the stuff came right into him and he passed it to me. And as Bobby Kennedy, a Professor of Law who wrote the introduction and looked over the evidence, says, this is a “go to jail” crime. These people should be in prison.

SW: Why aren’t they?

GP: Because, it’s a lot easier to break into the vault when you’re the cops. For example, the guy that actually sent out the caging list is a creepy little shit named Tim Griffin who is Turd Blossom’s right claw. Griffin sent out the emails, which is a federal crime — several federal crimes as a matter of fact – and then when a US prosecutor began to grumble and complain, Rove had him fired and Griffin, the prime suspect, the guy who did it, he was named the new Federal Prosecutor. So you literally took the criminal and made him the lawman, gave him the badge. Fired the good guys. And, by the way, I got that information from a Republican Prosecutor, David Iglesias. The reason there’s a picture of Tom Cruise in the book is that in A Few Good Men the Tom Cruise character is based on David Iglesias. So they just got the wrong guy. They got a good man who wouldn’t go along with their racist scam.

SW: In Colorado, when Donetta Davidson removed almost 20% of the voters, how did she do it? And if we can’t put these people in jail, why can’t we make examples of them? Air an ad every day in Colorado informing people that Donetta stole their vote.

GP: [laughs] Why don’t the SuperPACs bust the Ballot Bandits? Because they are the Ballot Bandits. That’s why we called it Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. It didn’t say Billionaires versus Ballot Bandits, it’s Billionaires AND, or I should’ve really said Billionaires ARE Ballot Bandits. The guys who run the super duper PACs like Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brother’s SuperPAC, and American Crossroads, that’s Turd Blossom’s operation, the two organizations together have over half a billion dollars. No one can put in full-page ads every day except for them. They’re not going to bust themselves. They’re not going to say, here’s the crimes we’ve committed, we just thought that you should be an informed voter and know all about it.

Now, Donetta Davidson, I call her the Purge’n General. Yeah, she got rid of 20% of the voters of Colorado, which just made Katherine Harris green with envy. Well, she was already kind of greenish, but green with envy instead of rot. And, Donetta Davidson, instead of being read her rights and marched off to the federal penitentiary for this crime, Bush appointed her as Chairwoman of the US Elections Assistance Commission. They made her basically the Purge’n General in charge of elections nationwide. So that was the example, you steal enough and you get the reward. It’s a sick, sick system.

SW: What happened with the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin this summer?

GP: I was just up in Baraboo, Wisconsin this week, and in Baraboo Obama won by 28%. That’s a crush, right? And yet, in the recall vote, Scott Walker won it big time. Now, come on, how does that happen? Well, let me let you in on a little secret. The secret is called Themis. Themis is the Koch Brother’s magical vote munching machine. It’s a data mining operation. It does two things. It’s capable first of something that’s creepy but legal. They fill out ballots for their own voters, mail them and tell them to sign it. It’s all perfect so they’re beyond challenge. So their voters are all taken care of basically, they’ve already been voted for if they sign.

Then, the Themis machine is capable of doing all the caging, all the challenging, the purging, and the blocking at the polls to keep away the voters. For example, if I went by the Brennan Center numbers, and these are experts and therefore no one listens to them, but if you do listen to the screaming, screeching, buried experts, 97,000 Wisconsinites, almost all of them students, were barred from voting because they lacked state ID. Even though they had state student ID, that’s not state ID.

But that wasn’t enough for the Themis machine. The Koch Operation, Americans for Prosperity, had its Chief set up a front called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. United Sportsmen of Wisconsin, which appeared and then instantly vanished after the recall vote, using the Themis machine, were able to identify likely Democratic absentee voters in key recall areas. Because there were also votes, by the way, on legislatures. The Themis machine was able to get the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin to identify Democratic voters, send them letters saying here’s where you mail in your ballot, and here’s the deadline. The address was a phony, it was their own, and the date was after the legal date for submitting an absentee ballot. So, either way, you were fucked like a duck. The Sportsmen basically were hunting Democrats. That’s how it worked. And again, as Bobby Kennedy says – he’s Dean of Law School at Pace University – this is a crime. And it’s a double crime when you add in the fact that most of this is racially targeted.

SW: How many people do you think are going to lose their right to vote this November nationwide?

GP: I can give you the exact number for 2008 which was 5,901,814 — in fact, if you look in the book you can get the real serious point-by-point break down.

SW: Yeah, I’ve got the same numbers for 2008 and 2010.

GP: Here’s the deal, for 2012 we’re looking at double to triple the loss. And it will be highly targeted. We’re going to go from 488,000 absentee ballots, which were cast and not counted in 2008, to having 2 million absentee votes thrown in the garbage…and it will occur, of course, in very targeted areas. The magnitude of the steal in America is very large because we have an electoral system and of course, don’t’ forget, we have something called the United States Senate. Heaven help us. And not my numbers, but the University of Minnesota says that seven Republicans are sitting in the Senate not because they were elected, but because they didn’t count all the votes. So I see that magnified. I can see a complete shoplifting of the US Senate. So how many more than 6 million votes lost this time? I can only guess. My numbers are more conservative than the experts at the Brennan Center, so I’d say 10 million. They would have the number much, much higher.

SW: Will most of those be in the swing states?

GP: Most of those will be in the swing states, but the key thing is that most of those will be in the non-billionaire community. [It’ll be in areas where] the 47% of the lazy ass, dependent skivers that are sucking off the government’s tit – Democrats – live. Remember vote theft is class war by other means. I mean, there’s this whole ugly Ku Klux Klan counting system we have, but it’s really about class.

In fact, my studies were showing that the worst vote theft in some states is actually of the poor white voter. And while it will be in swing states substantially, it’s also because that’s where the congressional and senate races are hot. Like Missouri, like Ohio, that’s where you’re going to see it. Not even so much to swing the presidential election but to swing those congressional and senate seats.

SW: Could you explain what overvotes and undervotes are?

GP: That’s a fancy ass term for getting jacked on your ballot. For example, an overvote is where you vote twice, by accident supposedly, or often by deceptive ballot design, or someone has a reason to cut out your vote. I give an example, a true example, in which I saw ballots when I went down to Florida where in the Black community of Gadsden the ballot said: “write in candidates name.” So people wrote: “Al Gore.” But they also voted for Al Gore by punching the ballot.

Now, according to Katherine Harris, that someone voted twice. The old rule was that the voter’s intent counted. So like, excuse me, can you figure out the voter’s intent if they punch Al Gore and write Al Gore? Is that difficult to figure out their intent? But no, it was thrown out saying they can’t figure out the intent, overvote, it’s out.

Undervote works the other way. You didn’t vote enough. For example, and literally, two old people I know, two elderly people, my parents, okay — they wrote in a candidate’s name, a Democrat, Donna Frye, the surfer chick of San Diego.

SW: I remember her.

GP: And Frye won by a couple thousand votes for Mayor of San Diego in a write-in campaign. But then, after the fact, they disqualified 4,000 ballots, including my parents’, because while they wrote in Donna Frye, they didn’t blacken the bubble next to her name that said that they were writing in her name. Now, one way to figure out whether they wrote in her name was that they wrote in her name, but again, the new trickery that’s being done, now computer aided, they called that an undervote and it was thrown out. This was the problem. So Jesus Christ, don’t fucking go postal on me. Do not mail in your ballot. Shove it down their throats. Walk in with your ballot, even if you have an absentee ballot, take it to your Board of Elections and make sure there’s no problem.

SW: How do these officials get away with it? As I recall, the Voting Act of 1965 is all about the intent of the voter?

GP: Yes.

SW: How do they get around that when the intent is so clear?

GP: How do these guys get away with it? One, they fire the cops and they give themselves the badges, as we saw with creeps like Rove’s right hand man, Tim Griffin.

SW: Right.

GP: Two, one thing about stealing an election is that you basically steal a police department. You’re the cops. There’s no enforcement because you steal the badges. You’re now the Justice Department okay? There’s a couple of other elements too. The Democrats have their hands dirty in this shit too. They’re not nearly as good, but they’re dirty enough, that they’ve got shit stains in their party underwear.

SW: Especially in New Mexico, right?

GP: Especially creepy things like in New Mexico, where you have this massive wipeout of the poor Hispanic voter. A wipeout. Purges, blocking, registrations thrown out, Native American registrations dumped in the garbage, provisional and absentee ballots thrown out. An entire precinct of Native American and Hispanic soldiers, where they claim that there was not a single vote for President of the United States. All these games, pulled off, all that vote blocking done against Hispanic Democrats, by Hispanic Democrats, by the elite. Again, this is a class war issue. People like Bill Richardson — do you know a lot of William Richardson’s who are Hispanic? So you figure that one out. And the Secretary of State, who I’m glad to say is on trial and hopefully on her way to prison for these games, that’s rare, but she couldn’t just steal the vote, she had to steal the money from the voting machine companies as well.

The thing is, the Democrats have their hands dirty, but the victims are always the same. You’ll notice that the Democrats go after Democrats and the Republicans go after Democrats, so it’s always poor defenseless voters who get it in the rectum.

SW: In the book, you detail the nine ways that are most commonly used to purge votes. We talked about caging, you defined that. Didn’t caging begin as a direct mail tool?

GP: What’s interesting is Rove & Company is a direct mail operation, which is why they used the term caging, because that’s used in direct mail. Usually, when people send back checks in the mail the letters usually have to be opened inside a metal cage, literally. That was one of the hints to me that Rove was in the middle of this.

SW: Rove made his fortune in direct mailing.

GP: Yes, and not only that, but the guy who sent the emails, believe it or not, the little criminal Tim Griffin – who by the way is not in jail, he’s in the U.S. Congress right now – I’m the only guy who actually believed [Griffin] when he said he didn’t know what he was sending out. Because Rove doesn’t have his own computer — Rove is a whiz kid with computers. He was the first guy to use computers in elections, which he did for Richard Nixon. While the rest of us were protesting the war, he was wearing a clip-on tie, a white shirt, and with his small, soft hands had all these computer tapes rolling to figure out who to electronically zap.

SW: He was mining databases back then?

GP: Yeah, the first guy to do it…and then working as a protégé to Richard Viguerie, a right-wing freak show [and the pioneer of political direct mailing]. Rove hasn’t denied it and Rove reads all my stuff carefully. I know because the Justice Department got his files and made them public. I said clearly Griffin has said that he didn’t know what caging is and his boss [Rove] doesn’t have a computer, so who sent out those caging lists? Well, golly gee, you figure it out. Now, it could’ve been Griffin’s assistant, a guy named Matt Rhodes. He’s not in jail either, he’s now the Campaign Chairman for Willard Mitt Romney.

SW: What a coincidence. Okay, tell me what TOSSING is.

GP: That’s tossing of absentee ballots. We mentioned that. If you mail in your ballot like my parents did, they throw it out because they didn’t like the size of your ballot, your postage is due, or you didn’t lick it correctly – I kid you not – you wrote the different name on the outside of the envelope than you did when you signed it on the inside, suspect signature. Now who’s suspect in America? And who suspects us? This is the game that’s played. Like I said, officially 488,000 absentee ballots were tossed out on the most cockamamie reasons and 2 million are going that way this November.

SW: Okay. How about computer hacking?

GP: What I call PRESTIDIGITIZING, because while hacking is an issue, I’m not an expert at that. I wanted people to focus on the other problems of computer voting, which is if you want to steal a vote by computer, the easiest thing to do is unplug it…And a favorite in places like Florida is to not give black poll workers the passwords to open the machines. So votes lost in computers, that’s a lot easier than when they play the game of supposedly switching your vote, which is complex and difficult. What’s real easy is for the machine just to go bluey and not record.18,000 votes went bluey in Democratic precincts in a congressional race in which a Republican won by only 500 votes. Katherine Harris’ old Sarasota District. All those votes just disappeared. “Gee, there was a glitch, what can we tell you? They just didn’t show up.” And, go ahead, try to find the fingerprints on that fucker.

SW: Is Diebold still in the middle of this or are there other manufacturers of electronic voting machines that are in on it?

GP: There’s plenty of operators in on the game. Like I say, they were bribing Secretaries of State like the Becky Vigil-Giron of New Mexico. The bribery is rampant and the games are rampant, but like I said, the big thing is the machines not working. Hugo Chavez’ buddies bought one voting company hoping to correct our elections, figuring [Chavez] had a better chance if Americans actually had their votes counted. But again, once they get the machines, they go zap. All they have to do is screw them up so that the votes do not appear. That’s the biggest thing. Precinct after precinct where you see zero votes on hot key offices. Zero votes. And, they go well, “What can we say?” There is simply no way to trace it back.

SW: What about SPOILING?

GP: In Gadsden, Florida, for example, where I saw these wonderful optical reading machines, that’s the best thing you could have, paper ballots that are optically read. In white rich areas, every precinct had its own little reader. If you make a mistake, and you accidentally add an extra mark or forget to vote for an office, you will get a message and you get to revote, correct your ballot, whatever. But in poor black areas, Hispanic areas, Native American areas, where they put in optically read balloting, these areas don’t have the money, just like they don’t have money for good schools, they don’t have money for good hospitals, they don’t have money for good voting systems, and everyone knows it. The ballots go to a central reader and if there’s an error, the ballot simply gets tossed out.

Now spoiling is no joke, we have nearly a million and a half votes spoiled every presidential election. A million and a half, and the chance of your ballot spoiling is 900% higher if you’re black than if you’re white. 500% higher if you’re Hispanic than if you’re white. And it’s statistically insane for Native Americans, how high the spoilage rate is. I have a chapter called “Indians Spoiled Rotten” because their ballots spoil all over the place. Again, because of the crap machines that they’re given, not because they don’t know how to vote.

SW: How about REJECTING?

GP: Oh excuse me, I’m sorry, I reversed these. Rejecting is disallowing absentee ballots. Tossing is throwing out provisional ballots. So just to get the terminology right here. Now what is a provisional ballot? As Lee Camp said in his SuicideGirls rant based on the book, when your name is purged or some bullshit, or you don’t have the right ID, they’ll say, “Oh, take this provisional ballot and we’ll count it later.” No they won’t. Lee said, filling out a provisional ballot is like voting on a fart, okay. It’s gone. Because whatever knocked you out in the first place stays knocked out. If they say you’re a felon, you have a felony record. And in Colorado, they removed all these people with felony records, despite the fact that in most states, including Colorado, you can vote with a felony record. But, forget all that, if they have it dead wrong and they give you a provisional ballot, they’re not going to count that vote, they’ll just say that they can re-register you next time. It’s a placebo ballot. They throw them out. I think it’s going to be big this time because when people go in with the wrong ID they’re going to be handed these provisional ballots so they don’t bitch. So, 767,023 provisional ballots were knocked out last time. Three quarters of a million — watch that double.

SW: Okay. How about ERRORS? Now, you talk about government clerks making mistakes. Is some of this intentional and some of it just human error?

GP: The answer is yes. It’s what I call vulture opportunism. I think 1 in 12 names are input wrong. You know, you fill out those forms and some knucklehead has to read it, you have sloppy ass handwriting, so they get your name wrong when they input it. And, it turns out that it’s especially unusual names like Mohammad or, in California, a lot of Filipino names and hyphenated names and Hispanic names with the funny accents on them and stuff. So they get it wrong. But they know who’s getting fucked on these errors and they don’t notify anyone. You don’t know until you show up that you lost your vote or that your ID doesn’t match the name they inputted. I mean, in Arizona we had Juarez spelled with a ‘W’ so people lost their votes because you know, their ID didn’t say Juarez with a ‘W’…I mean Paul Maez, his name was knocked off and he’s the Elections Supervisor in Santa Miguel County, which is a very poor Hispanic area. I asked why that happened and he said, “The answers on the down low.” That’s all he would say.

SW: What is EJECTING?

GP: We have a chapter called “Nuns on the Run” where I go through the case of the 10 nuns who didn’t have their driver’s licenses in Indiana, which has the worst ID law. It’s a good thing they didn’t because one of them was 98 years old. They’d been voting in the same place for decades. I understand this ID law is to prevent voter fraud, however, there has not been a single case, not one, of a nun or anyone else voting fraudulently, stealing someone else’s ID. See, the whole point of ID is to say, “I’m the person whose name is listed there.” No one does that crime because you absolutely get caught, you absolutely go to jail. You’re insane to do that to vote for a school bond or even to vote for Hillary Clinton or Ron Paul. No one does it. That’s why we don’t have those cases.

SW: On August 12th, the Carnegie and Knight Foundation report was released. After examining thousands of documents from 2000 to 2010, and looking at 600 million votes, they found only 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud. Those were just alleged and no there were no convictions. So, these two very bi-partisan foundations together said that voter fraud is virtually non-existent.

GP: As I point out in Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, Tova Wang, who’s from the Century Foundation, was asked by the Elections Assistance Commission to analyze voter fraud and she found only 6 cases a year. 6 million voters are knocked out a year to stop 6 cases of voter fraud a year! So she says you’re more likely to get hit by lightning. I actually calculated that you’re 60 times more likely to get hit by lightning then commit voter fraud.

SW: Okay, how about STUFFING?

GP: I left stuffing to Bobby Kennedy. That chapter is written by the Professor. He goes through the good old-fashioned stuff of cranking in the votes after the election is over to change the outcome. He just took a simple case, Don Siegelman of Alabama. By the way, most times it’s paper but sometimes, like in this case, it’s by computer. That’s very helpful because then there’s no trail. Don Siegelman was reelected Governor of Alabama by several thousand votes. Then, in a Republican area, the courthouse was sealed. They said a mistake was made, they had a recount of votes and they got something like 8,000 votes that they suddenly found overnight that had switched and Siegelman lost. There was no record of how this happened. No one was allowed to observe this so-called computer recount, or question why it took all night. Just a bunch of Republican officials locked in a room. And when Siegelman bitched, which you’re not supposed to do… Siegelman decided to scream bloody murder, and so he was arrested and today he’s in a federal penitentiary. Because they always have files on these guys. Everyone has a file, and they pulled it out on him. He still refuses to concede. He says, “I’m Governor. I was elected. I’m not giving up.” ….So what happened is, they kept him out of office by good old-fashioned stuffing.

SW: Okay, now. Where does lying come in? I’m talking about trying to convince ex-cons that they aren’t allowed to vote when in fact they are.

GP: The ex-con con is what I call BLOCKING. It’s part of the stopping of registration of legal voters. You know, one way is to make it illegal by simply arresting members of the League of Women Voters for having clipboards in public or something, which, basically, Florida tried to do. It was very effective. Black and Hispanic registration has dropped in America by 2 million since the last election. 2 million fewer black and Hispanic voters. Because we know fewer Hispanics have come in to the country and fewer are becoming citizens, is that right? No.

So, what’s happened? One way to block voters is to convince them, and even some minor officials, that they can’t vote when they can. The biggest unrepresented vote in America is not the youth vote, it’s not the Hispanic vote, it is the ex-felon vote. If you served your time in the United States of America, except for six old Jim Crow states, in 44 states, if you served your sentence, you can vote. You don’t become a non-citizen. You have to basically be in jail or under probation to have your vote removed in most states, and in most states even not on probation. You have 16 million ex-cons in the United States for committing crimes like doing a little blow and being poor. Obama did a little blow but he wasn’t poor. Or having a little J but not inhaling. That’s Clinton because he was at Oxford, so he’s got the Oxford elite exemption. So, remember, we’re not talking about people who have committed crimes, we’re talking about people who’ve been caught comitting in crimes in America, and those are two different categories – 46% are black and a lot are Hispanic, and that’s knocking out 16 million voters.

Here’s the interesting thing. Something the Democratic Party never mentions, and they should, which is that 88% of voters who go to prison come out Democrats. 88% come out Democrats. It’s16 million voters, you do the math. If the Democrats would stand up for these voters, they could never lose an election, but they won’t. In fact, it’s the opposite. They will take anyone that looks like a felon, in other words, black, BLA as they say on the Florida Voter Forms, and the Democrats let them be labeled felons and whistle at their shoes. It’s sick….And Obama, by the way, has nothing to say about that.

SW: We covered the nine ways they suppress the vote, could you go through for me the seven prescriptive solutions that voters can do?

GP: Yeah. One is don’t go postal. I just told you, they throw the crap in the garbage. I mean, you think these guys even want your vote, a bunch of partisan sharks and you’re going to mail it to them? Come on, get real. Second, vote early because when they fuck you around and say that Steven is a criminal, you can go back and say, well I served my time so I can still vote. Three is register and re-register. I know you think you’re registered. You voted last time, what’s the problem? The answer is, don’t be a schmuck. They’ve knocked out 22 million people in the last 2 years. Let me repeat that: 22 million people purged. That means you better get online and check if you are still registered. County Clerk or a Secretary of State’s office, get your name and get your address and make sure that your name is not spelled with an ‘F’. Okay.

SW: Right.

GP: Number four, vote unconditionally, not provisionally. Don’t take one of these placebo ballots. Don’t vote on a fart. Five, occupy Ohio, invade Nevada. What I mean by that is, get your ass in gear, okay? Show your shit, do your thing. Martin Luther King took a bullet for the vote. You can take a bus. You can do something valuable. The revolution will not be digitized. Go to where the votes count. If you’re in a non-swing state, though look at those congressional districts, it’s not just about the presidency. And I don’t care whether you’re for Obammy or Mitt Romney, this is not a partisan issue, this is about protecting ourselves from the Ballot Bandits. Number six is date a voter. As I say, voting, love and bowling should never be done alone. There’s all kinds of reasons for that including when they jack you around that you have people with you. It’s always easier to stand up when you’ve got people watching your back. Because sometimes people complain and they get busted. And also convince your friends, your frienemies, whatever, to show up and vote.

I don’t want to hear any crap about it doesn’t matter, they’re going to steal my vote. Fuck you, okay? I’d take your name off my list, don’t read my books, you’re not getting a ride in my car – I’m not going to let you date my ex-wife. I don’t want to hear from you with that crap. It’s not about the candidates. It’s about this thing that we have fought forever for. As Jesse Jackson said, “Marched too long, worked too hard, died too young.” If you haven’t put those three things on the line, then you definitely don’t have no right to talk about whether we should vote or not.

Seven, make the democracy demand no vote left behind. The election is November 6th. I want to see your ass at BallotBandits.org on November 7th, because we’re going to review whose vote was stolen where. Even if they reelect Obama, that’s not the issue, you need to know which votes were stolen and believe me, how many congressional and senate seats were swiped, whether or Obama wins or not.

When Obama won in 2008, it doesn’t matter when 6 million votes are stolen. That’s sick business, and it’s got to stop, and we have to demand that the votes be counted. If Don Seigelmen is ready to go to jail because he said the votes should be counted, shit let’s do it. We saw this in Serbia, we saw this in Peru, we’ve seen people in the Ukraine, people stand up and say, you can’t steal the fucking election, not from me. That’s it. So, we have to stay with it. That’s the Seven Demands, that we don’t shrug our shoulders and do an Al Gore.

Visit BallotBandits.org to buy the Billionaires & Ballots Bandits book and/or download the 7 Ways to Beat the Ballot Bandits poster for free.

by Greg Palast

What the hell happened? Did Barack have a fight with Michelle? Was it nicotine withdrawal? Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President: As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side. And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War. The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped. Lost…

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

Really, Mr. President, REALLY?

Romney says that if you’re 38 or 54, it doesn’t matter that you’ve paid into Medicare and Social Security all your life, you don’t get the insurance you paid for. You get some stinking voucher, some coupon that says, “Here’s a hundred bucks kid, go buy a gold watch.”

Who exactly is going to take a voucher to provide health insurance to a 72-year-old with asthma, in a walker and prostate problems?

Governor Romney said, with that smirky, smarmy grin, “I’d assume I’d rather have a private [health] plan.” Gee, Mr. Romney, could you give me the number of your insurance company and tell them to take my “voucher”?

Mr. President, you gabbled on about the Cleveland Medical Clinic and its “best practices.” Who the hell cares, Mr. President? There are people bleeding out here, LITERALLY BLEEDING, who now can get health coverage because of ObamaCare. For all its failings, it saves lives, saves homes from foreclosure caused by insane medical bills – only recently, the number one cause of foreclosures in America.

Can’t you even defend the one thing that’s worth a damn and has your name on it?

Romney’s wife has MS. That’s sad. But what’s tragic is that there are millions in America with MS who couldn’t get insurance because they have this prior condition—and are not married to an investment banker demi-billionaire.

I don’t care that you couldn’t seem to defend yourself tonight, Mr. President. That’s a Democratic Party headache. What I resent, what gets me furious and angry, is that you didn’t defend ME. Me and my family.

When Romney says he defends small business, let me tell you, I have a small business. I don’t need a tax break – hell, like most small businesses, we don’t make money. We need health insurance. We need government loans.

When Romney says government never does anything cheaper than the private sector, Mr. President, don’t you know that it was government mortgage agencies that funded America’s middle class homeownership? That’s what government did – and licked Hitler to boot.

When mortgages were privatized, we were thrown at the mercy of the Banksters.

(And why the hell did you, Mr. Obama, bring up that right-wing canard that banks just gave out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them – blaming sub-prime predatory mortgage crimes on the victims. Sounds like you agree that 47% of Americans are leeches.)

Maybe it’s true that you, Mr. President, are actually just a hollow man, a creation of PR consultants and rich donors, a Ken-doll of repeating lines about “Hope,” “change” and “this country thrives when the middle class thrives.”

The truth is, you were ready to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut back-room deals with drug companies. Maybe in the end, progressive policies are just a marketing niche you’ve found to cover aimless ambition and a yearning to compromise.

If someone drilled a hole in you, could we blow in and play you like a flute? Or is there some substance, some hard core of principal that couldn’t break out tonight because it was imprisoned by advisors who told you to play it safe, play it in a coma?

Mr. President, if you can’t explain why you are the Commander-in-Chief in this class war against the billionaire bandits attempting to seize our government, then get off the horse and let someone in the saddle who can ride.

A version of this story originally appeared on the The Mudflats.

Greg Palast is the author of the recently published New York Times Top 10 Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, which is available via Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

[..]

by Nicole Powers

The weekend leading up to Occupy LA‘s October 1st anniversary featured a packed schedule of activities, which included panel discussions, educational events, and a Really, Really Free Market. In anticipation of the big day, several protesters reoccupied City Hall on the Sunday night, erecting tents on the sidewalk surrounding the now restored South Lawn. Though the LAPD harassed campers under the premise of minor infractions, occupiers ensured they stayed within the bounds of local bylaws and codes, and were allowed to stay in their temporary encampment overnight. Despite the fact that two arrests were made – after those suspected of “crimes” such as first degree jaywalking and possession of a bike with no light were found to have outstanding warrants – the symbolic victory set a distinctly upbeat tone for Occupy LA’s first birthday celebrations, which featured a rally at Pershing Square at noon (where OLA kicked off exactly one year ago), an afternoon of marches and direct actions, and a special evening GA. Though anti-Occupy propaganda and general burnout had taken its toll on numbers, a hardcore group of protesters, who through shared goals have forged strong bonds over the past year, came out to celebrate their numerous tangible achievements (most notably in the realm of foreclosure) and their new American Dream: that another – fairer – world is possible.

Visit our gallery for more pictures of OccupyLA’s first anniversary.

[..]

by Steven Whitney

When Mitt Romney recently declared that 47% of us are “dependent on government,” he made it sound like a bad quality – starkly un-American, as if we were all addicts smoking the administration’s crack pipe.

Yet dependency in and of itself is neither a good nor bad attribute – it’s just a part of who humans are on the most basic biological and anthropological scales. We are a social species – it’s in our DNA – and everything we do that has any meaning is dependent on social interaction, whether it’s buying and selling to make a living or profiting emotionally by just hanging with friends and loved ones.

No one exists in a vacuum. We live in families and tribes and cultures, and sub-tribes and border cultures – whether it’s surf bums or car enthusiasts or school parents or Wall Street self-proclaimed “Masters of the World” – we are all dependent on some grouping that sustains us emotionally, psychologically, and often financially. We seek out others who share our interests, passions and values to give us a sense of belonging, precisely so we don’t feel isolated and alone as we float down the river of life on something akin to Sartre’s ice floe.

This is the most basic concept of what it means to live and work in a community. And, with the freedoms America offers, it’s normally a community of our own choosing – be it a church, a bowling league, a book club or rotisserie league, or even a political party.

As a devoted acolyte of the self-interest rationalization (objectivism) of Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan can be excused for not knowing this simple human truth. But Romney should. Whatever their faults, Mormons famously take care of their own – perhaps to the exclusion of those outside the Latter-Day Saints circle, but Mormons comprise a real and ongoing community.

But just maybe the extremely insular nature of the church has impacted Romney more than its communal practices. As Romney has shown almost every day of the campaign, he is uncomfortable with and wary of outsiders, or “the other,” a trait commonly found in minority sects that robs them of any real sense of either a national or global community.

Mormons make up just 2% of our population – yet as a group they are so tight-knit that the other 98% have become “those people.” Ann Romney is afraid of giving “those people” tax returns they might use as ammunition, and Mitt said his job is not to worry about “those people.” So one has to wonder if it’s a lack of empathy or social skills on their part or an extreme level of xenophobia – but none of those can or will play well on a world stage that foreigners and all sorts of “those people” inhabit.

As time (and the song) has shown – people need people. The well-being of every person on earth – and every nation – begins and ends with dependency on our social and professional interaction with other people, for companionship, for work, for sex, and for love. We cannot be free or happy if we are imprisoned in our own solitude.

Indeed, study after study shows that prisoners in solitary confinement inevitably suffer from schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. Free in society, those who isolate themselves are prone to paranoia, obsession, depression, agoraphobia, pre-senile dementia, and early onset Alzheimer’s.

Many experts in the mental health field define true madness as the loss of self. If they’re right, and madness ensues from extreme isolation, then it follows that we lose at least a part of ourselves – of who we are – when we forego social interaction, when we lose our connection to other people. The “other,” then, becomes not only necessary for our optimal survival but must also be an integral part of each of us. Who of us, for instance, does not carry inside someone living or dead – a parent, a lover, a friend, or mentor – who in some way changed the course of our life and helped make us who we are?

Even higher education – colleges and universities – was originally conceived not only as a venue of advanced learning but as a necessary social and psychological bridge from narrow adolescent groupings to the larger adult society.

Especially in democracies – which are by definition created “of the people, by the people, and for the people” – we are dependent on other people in every aspect of our lives.

But Romney and Paul Ryan are distancing themselves and their party from the immutable truth of community and what it means by adopting a by now all too familiar “I did it all by myself” stance.

First because it’s not true – both Romney/Bain and the Ryan family have depended greatly on government contracts, subsidies, and corporate tax exemptions. Romney often puts forth his involvement in Staples as proof of his extraordinary skills as a businessman. But one of Staples’ biggest clients is the Department of Defense – our military – with $13 million in orders. And in the second quarter of 2011, Staples received a $21 million tax refund through a special exemption. As for Ryan, his grandfather built the construction company that has provided for three generations of privilege on the back of government highway contracts.

Secondly, it’s just too much too bear from the neo-Gatsbys of Massachusetts and Wisconsin who were more than a tad bit dependent on the rich families that gave them a leg up. Someone has to explain to these two the old axiom that if you’re born on third base you did not actually go to bat and hit a triple. They did not build lives of privilege and elite schools and exceptional opportunities all by themselves. They had help from their DNA, those who loved them, and many others. To be successful, it does indeed take a village.

Mitt and Paul and all of us are dependent on workers who make furniture, who build houses and apartment complexes, who labor on the assembly lines, who pack our microwave lunches, and who make with their hands all the things the rest of us need. And yet, like the soldiers in Afghanistan, Mitt didn’t find them worthy of even one mention during his convention address.

Dad works two jobs, Mom works one and takes care of the kids, and this family has the temerity to feel they’re entitled to food or to some kind of basic housing? A soldier in Iraq gets his legs blown off and now expects healthcare? A senior citizen who paid into Social Security every two weeks for more than fifty years now has the balls to demand the government fork over a check every month? What an outrageous lack of personal responsibility!

More than 400 years ago, John Donne wrote an elegant prose section in Meditation XVII that he later turned into a poem.

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . .
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Still, when referring to 47% of our population in what was supposed to be a top secret briefing to financial backers, Romney says: “My job is not to worry about these people.”

That doesn’t cut it – a President’s job is to represent and worry about all the people – the richest and the poorest, the healthiest and the most infirm, the overworked and the unemployed, and everyone else. You cannot lead if you do not care for all the people.

So for Mitt and Paul – and all the rest of the rugged Republican individualists who built everything by themselves with absolutely no help from others, all of them who are not in the least involved in mankind – the death knell of the upcoming Presidential election tolls for thee…and, hopefully, for your sociopathic mindsets as well.

Related Posts:
Political Ramblings And Random Thoughts
From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar
Modest Solutions To Voter Suppression
Character. . . And The RNC
The Do-Damage Congress: Who’s Responsible?
Worse Than A Do Nothing Congress
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

by Steven Whitney

Nation-building is a perilous task, mostly because the people you are allegedly “saving” from oppressive regimes often don’t share the same world view or want the things we think they should want.

For decades, hard line American foreign policy experts found it expedient to install or keep in office leaders whose greatest (and sometimes only) asset was their pro-American stance, aided by billions of American foreign aid dollars. They didn’t care if we were propping up a royal personage (Hassan II / Morocco), an upwardly mobile warlord (Barre / Somalia), a cruel dictator (Pinochet / Chile), or even an outright mass murderer (Pol Pot / Cambodia). It was a classic devil’s deal: as long as these puppet dictators let the USA pull their strings, we supported them, usually disregarding the popular (and underground) leaders who might have been elected by a democratic process. It was and is an anachronistically paternalistic policy – America as Father Knows Best – and it is thankfully dipping below the horizon of our history.

In the meantime, the excesses of these tyrants eventually turned their countries against them, most recently in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. And we supported the rebellions. But if America is going to promote – or at least not get in the way of – democracy abroad, it must realize that it is often not going to like the results. These new democracies are not created to please us, but rather to free their own people and let them choose their own leaders – that’s what democracy is about.

Like life itself, politics is a messy business, especially when you do the right thing and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted or expected. In this new century of global integration, we have to stop acting like spoiled children accustomed to always getting our way and learn that self-determination means just that.

There’s a price to be paid for freedom…and often it is spread around unpredictably.

Republicans and Fox News howled when they discovered that “God” was not mentioned in the 2012 Democratic Platform. A veritable hue and cry followed. Democrats hastily put together a Yay or Nay convention floor vote with no audible winner. While the word “potential” was eventually changed to “God-given,” the DNC might have seized the opportunity to point out that the Constitution of the United States, the document office-holders are sworn to uphold, also does not contain the word “God.”

Look up the Constitution on the web. Then click Find for the word “God.” It won’t come up…because it isn’t there.

Our founders were extremely clear about the separation of church and state. Anyone who thinks otherwise should spend the rest of their days searching for God in our Constitution.

In most cases, children first discover the world at large in their local library…and adults find almost anything they need to learn or want to enjoy. Except for actual schools, libraries contribute more than any other institution to our growth as human beings and to the society we live in. They are the social hub of information sharing and, unlike most elected officials, libraries serve their entire communities, so when even one is in danger of closing, it’s imperative that the community push back.

Faced with just such a threat the good citizens of Troy, Michigan pushed back against the Tea Party / Grover Norquist tax fanatics. Watch this short video to see how the smartest use of reverse psychology I’ve ever witnessed saved their library.

These voters are not only informed, but amazingly creative. Bravo!

Writers generally love words. Lately, one phrase keeps intruding on my thoughts – “to the manor born.” It holds visions of British aristocracy, Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. But now American has its own version.

Doesn’t Mitt Romney (and to a lesser extent, Paul Ryan) perfectly embody the concept of “to the manor born?”

Time magazine recently reported that more than one hundred bird species, including chickens, engage in some sort of homosexual behavior, much of it “casual sex.” And a study at Virginia Tech in 1964 discovered that cockerels placed in cages only with same sex chickens started getting it on pretty quickly. Of course, the bible on the topic is Bruce Bagemidhi’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which confirmed Darwin’s finding that diverse sexual behavior – homosexuality, bisexuality, and more – naturally occurs in almost all animal species, including humans and chickens.

As a result, anonymous sources have revealed that in an all-out effort to prevent gay chickens from hitting their grills, CEO Dan Cathy has commissioned famed Minnesota sex orientation adjuster Marcus Bachmann to visit every one of Chick-fil-A’s facilities to “pray the gay away” from their otherwise magnificently heterosexual chickens.

Fowl behavior, indeed.

Our Worse Than a Do Nothing Congress recently set a new and shameless low in governing standards. On September 21st, members of Congress recessed for the all-important business of getting re-elected in November. It was the earliest exit from D.C. in over 50 years.

Congress reconvened from its summer vacation on September 10th – and worked nine full days before calling it quits – obviously spent by their oppressive workload. They might not have come back at all but, as always, Republicans had some important bills to block.

First up was the Veterans Jobs Bill, which would have created jobs for 20,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It actually passed 58 to 40, but Senate Republicans killed it by lodging an objection that then required a 60 vote passage.

House Republicans also stalled the Farm Bill because its $23 billion cut in farm subsidies over ten years was not nearly enough. And, too, the GOP wants to replace subsidies with a new privately run “crop insurance” program with projected costs of over $1 trillion that creates myriad irrational incentives for small farmers (while, of course, favoring huge agribusiness concerns).

Attached to the farm bill was a provision passed by the Senate cutting food stamps expenditures by one-half of one per cent. House Republicans want to quadruple the cut, so the bill was effectively tabled. Food stamps help feed 46 million Americans, many of them working families, part of the 47% of Americans Romney/Ryan accuse of feeling “entitled to food,” and if the GOP has its way, “those people” will be dining only at Midnight Missions throughout the country

Due to so much unfinished business, Congress will reconvene after the November election. Since some – and hopefully many – Republicans will be lame ducks by then, perhaps a few will veer from the hard party line and actually use their votes to help everyday Americans.

The biggest mistake President Obama made during what is hopefully his first of two terms was during his State of the Union address before Congress in January, 2009. Back then he should have declared that in the almost 3 months since the election he had been briefed on every aspect of our government and that everything was much worse than we – and he – had been told.

I’m sure he wanted to use that forum to regenerate his message of hope, but his lack of candor supplied the GOP with their rallying cry today: “He didn’t fix our mess fast enough!”

The Bush/Cheney administration left our country in disastrous ruin on almost every front and it would take more than even the full team of Avengers to repair the damage, especially when Congress does nothing but obstruct proposed bills that would help us regain our fiscal health.

Instead, Obama’s first SOTU address fostered what by then was unrealistic hope and, when truly miraculous change didn’t happen, the President was blamed by every screaming Republican.

The truth is that Bush/Cheney dug us into such a deep hole, it might take a full decade or more to recover, even longer if the GOP maintains its obstructionist posture or, heaven forbid, gains power and returns to the policies drove us off the cliff in the first place.

On Election Day, all you really have to do is remember who led us into the quicksand of failed policies from 2001 to 2008. And then vote.

Related Posts:
From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar
Modest Solutions To Voter Suppression
Character. . . And The RNC
The Do-Damage Congress: Who’s Responsible?
Worse Than A Do Nothing Congress
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

An excerpt from Greg Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, including a comic book by Ted Rall and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In 1996, Republicans were investigating President Clinton, that is, sniffing at his zipper and a wet cigar.

But I follow the money, not the semen. My target was an electric company, Entergy, one of Hillary Clinton’s law clients whom I’d been tracking since 1985.* The Entergy money trail took me from Little Rock, Arkansas, to China, and right into the Oval Office. This was a hell of a lot more serious than an intern under the desk.

When Bill Clinton became president, Hillary’s Little Rock client suddenly became a transglobal power-industry behemoth. Entergy bought the Indian Point nuclear plants in New York and the entire electricity system of London, England. Its big score was to team up with the Riady family of Indonesia, ethnic Chinese billionaires with big plans to run the power systems of China.

But the Riadys and Entergy needed Clinton and his Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to grease up the Chinese for them, beginning with Brown taking Entergy bosses on a deal-making trip to China.

Secretary Brown was not pleased. According to his long-time business partner and love interest, Nolanda Hill. Brown fumed, “I’m not Hillary’s motherfucking tour guide!”

The problem for the secretary was not the deed but the price. Brown, previously chairman of the Democratic Party, had enthusiastically endorsed a Hillary cash-for-access scheme: $10,000 for coffee with the president, $100,000 for a night in the Lincoln bedroom. But he resented the discount rate Hillary put on US executives joining Brown’s own lucrative trade missions. The commerce secretary pouted, “I’m worth more than $50,000 a pop!”

But Brown had nothing to fear regarding his price: the Clinton campaign chest got a lot more than fifty thousand for the “pop.”

Now follow this:

On June 22, 1994, the billionaire James Riady met with Webster Hubbell, former associate attorney general and Hillary Clinton’s former law partner.

On June 23, Riady met with Hubbell for breakfast, then went to the White House, then returned to meet again with Hubbell, then made two more treks to the White House.

On June 26, videotape shows the beginning of a meeting in the Oval Office between President Clinton and Riady before the tape goes blank.

On June 27, Riady retains Hubbell as a consultant to Entergy.

How much advising Hubbell could do from prison, it was not clear.

At the time of his meetings with Riady, when he got his check, Hubbell was under indictment for fraudulently inflating his legal bills, a felony. He pled guilty.

Now, I’ve conducted investigations of lawyer over-billing. How can one law partner fake detailed time logs without the complicity of another lawyer in the firm? Hillary’s logs were worth close inspection by authorities.

Funny thing about Hillary’s billing records: when requested for disclosure in an unrelated matter, they dis-appeared. First, her law firm’s computers went kablooey. Then the paper printouts vanished. But during the 1992 presidential campaign, just before the logs disappeared, her partner Web Hubbell secretly combed them over, line by line.

Hubbell knew his own logs were phony, and he understood the consequences of exposure: prison. Ultimately, the bloated hours on those records caused him to lose his law license, his Justice Department post, and his freedom—twenty-one months in the slammer.

What did Hubbell see and know about Hillary’s own billing logs? Hubbell won’t say, except for a cryptic remark, after seeing her bills, that “every lawyer” fabricates records. Does “every” include Hillary? Hubbell wouldn’t say.

If he ratted out Hillary, he might have bargained himself an easy plea bargain. But Hubbell was a champ: silent. Why would Hubbell choose to do time on the chain gang over testifying about Hillary? Could it be the $100,000 from the Riadys? (Altogether, Hubbell collected half a million dollars in the weeks up to his entering the slammer.)

Hillary’s billing records finally reappeared, two years later, just outside her office, right after Hubbell’s refusal to testify against her.

Maybe the Clintons knew nothing about the Riady money flowing to prison-bound Hubbell. Knowledge of the payments would suggest they were buying Hubbell’s silence. That would be a criminal offense. An impeachable offense.

In notes I’ve obtained of the FBI’s conversation with the president (who was under oath), Clinton first said he couldn’t remember if Riady mentioned the $100,000 payment. Then, Clinton slyly opened the door to the truth, telling the agents, “I wouldn’t be surprised if James told me.”

Neither would I.

In all, James, his father, and Riady reps met with Clinton some ninety-eight times.

Four years after the Hubbell-Riady-Clinton meetings and payments, on December 31, 1998, Republican Senator Thompson’s Governmental Affairs Committee shut down. They hadn’t called the key witnesses against Clinton, and had issued no subpoenas for the key documents. Why? Why did the Republicans suddenly halt their inquiry into Clinton’s fundraising just as they were closing in on the damning evidence?

It was the same day Chairman Thompson shut down the investigation of the Koch Brothers.

I could put two and two together. But just to make sure, I called the committee to confirm that two plus two made four. Sure enough, my insider, requesting anonymity, confirmed it was a secret straight-up deal between Republican and Democratic senators.

“A truce: You don’t do Triad and we don’t do Clinton [on Riady cash].”

PS: How did some unknown governor from the Podunk state rise like a rocket from Little Rock to the White House, zoom out of nowhere to become, in 1992, the nominee of the Democratic Party? But Bill Clinton didn’t exactly come from nowhere: he came from the Democratic Leadership Council. DLC Chairman Bill Clinton presided over this new caucus of conservative Democrats, and his nomination as the Democrat’s presidential candidate ended half a century of control of the party by the tough-regulation philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt. Rather than FDR, the DLC’s antigovernment rhetoric, its complaining about bureaucrats, rules, and regulations, echoed the philosophy of the Koch-funded Cato Institute.

And that’s not surprising: the DLC was funded by $100,000 from the Koch Brothers.

Did the DLC investment pay off for the Kochs?

Once in the White House, Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order to force agencies to halt or roll back regulations based on costs to industry. Public health, welfare, and safety would no longer rule. The chief of Clinton’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government, Vice President Al Gore, directed the anti-regulatory attack with gusto, announcing he was “ending the era of big government.” Gore created “regulatory partnerships,” giving official review powers to executives of regulated industries. The Clinton-Gore administration radically slowed the movement to cap greenhouse gas emissions by heavily promoting a system of indulgences, “pollution credits,” that allowed polluters to simply purchase the right to pollute. C. Boyden Gray, then head of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the lobby group founded by the Kochs, devised this “cap-and-trade” system.

In later years, the Kochs’ Citizens for a Sound Economy became FreedomWorks, the precursor of the Tea Party. The Kochs’ chairman of FreedomWorks, that same Boyden Gray, is today leading the Tea Party crusade against “cap and trade,” the pollution credit system created by . . . Boyden Gray. If you think that’s a contradiction, you’re not paying attention. The strategy of well-timed, stepwise manipulation of national policy debate evidenced here is nothing if not brilliant. The Kochs play an elaborate game of chess and we can’t even see the board.

And did I say that the Kochs funded the rise of both presidential nominees, Clinton and his opponent, Bob Dole? Sure did. Billionaire Rule Number two: Don’t bet on a horse when you can buy the whole damn racetrack.

But there was still the little matter of criminality. Riady money from Indonesia, Koch money through “Children’s Future,” fake-o foundations and political hit squads posing as think tanks, all this funny juice running through political arteries was, of course, illegal.

Illegal, that is, until 2010, until Citizens United and SpeechNow. For $200 and a post office box provided by a sketchy lawyer, the Riadys, the Zetas Gang Inc., British Petroleum, Qaeda Corp, Charles Manson LLC, and Vladimir Putin Partners can all incorporate and dump cash into US campaigns till their dark hearts are content. And so too the Christian Coalition and the Chinese politburo, giving a whole new meaning to the term “Manchurian Candidate.”

One other thing: Just who are these “Citizens” that were “United” for Citizens United? How could this teeny group hire a supreme lawyer like Ted Olson to argue before the Supreme Court? Olson, former US solicitor general, doesn’t work for peanuts. How could Olson keep body and soul together during this time-consuming litigation? Apparently he was given leave from his duties as legal counsel at . . . Koch Industries.

Read the rest in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. For more info visit: BallotBandits.org

* I was originally asked to investigate the company in 1981 by the attorney general of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. But I was a big-shot New York investigator with no interest in working for some small-time politician from Dawg Patch. Too bad: I could have put him on the straight path.

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My goal was simple: to make it through the long Occupy Anniversary weekend with my person, camera, flash memory, and liberty intact. I managed to do this, but many of my fellow activists and journalists didn’t.

An organizer I’d chatted with while covering a protest outside Mitt Romney’s fundraising breakfast for billionaires on Friday, September 14, was essentially preemptively picked up two days later during a Sunday afternoon Occupy Anniversary concert at Foley Square. When we’d spoken, he’d voice concerns about the possibility of arrest since his name was on an #S17 Facebook event page. It therefore wasn’t a complete surprise when I heard he was indeed taken off the streets by authorities ahead of the big day.

I’d also witnessed multiple arrests while shooting a march to Zuccotti Park on the Saturday night, and over the weekend a pattern of a snatch and grab arrests targeting journalists had started to emerge* – likely in an effort to get their cameras off the street (the authorities apparently don’t like it when the whole world is watching their misdeeds). I therefore approached Monday, September 17 with a good deal of caution. Indeed, to an extent, it would be accurate to say law enforcement’s intimidation tactics were working on me.

A serious back injury means my running days are over – and being tackled to the ground might mean even my walking days are – so I was not exactly physically suited to covering the planned #S17 wildcat marches and swirl of mini-occupations in NYC’s financial district. Instead, I chose to cover a more chill gathering in Battery Park ahead of the big evening birthday Zuccotti Popular Assembly.

The park is supposed to be open to the public 24/7, however, shortly after the birthday cake was served, at 10 PM a mixed group of NYPD and private security employed by Brookfield (Zuccotti’s corporate owners) swept the high spirited but mostly well-behaved occupiers out. The park had been surrounded by barricades and a heavy police presence throughout the day, and with around 180 activists and journalists – not to mention a startled Wall St. trader (who was guilty of getting his iPhone out at the wrong time), an NLG legal observer, and a priest (I wish I was kidding) – already behind bars, most quit while they were ahead and called it a night, though a core group refused to be moved by the legally questionable display of force.

With Occupy gold in my camera I headed home to edit and upload my photos, however one of my colleagues who’d been covering the swirls of resistance I’d missed wasn’t so lucky. I’d been introduced to photojournalist Julie Reinhard via Occupied Stories, an OWS affinity group dedicated to publishing first person accounts from the movement. The group had asked to republish my series of posts from the Chicago NoNato protests in May of this year, and I’d since met up with them in person in New York. Julie is a very sweet, kind, and conscientious individual. She is certainly not the archetypical “trouble maker” you’d expect to see in the crosshairs of the NYPD. But then these are strange times, and our police forces nationwide seem to have a strange idea about who they’re there to protect and serve.

Below is Julie’s first person September 17 story. Suffice to say, it didn’t end quite they way she expected.

– Nicole Powers, SG Ed

UPDATE: 24 September, 2012
* Case in point, radio show host John Knefel, who just days before had interviewed SG contributor Greg Palast for his popular Radio Dispatch podcast. He’d fallen victim to NYPD’s snatch and grab tactics, and had written about it in a blog for Truthout. A video subsequently surfaced on Youtube which clearly shows three police officers pulling John off the sidewalk (where protesters were permitted to be) and into the street, where he was arrested in an exceedingly brutal manner.

There’s rarely a dull moment when they go marching in the land of Occupy, and the weekend of the one year anniversary ramped up to revive a lot of the energy seen swirling around Zuccotti Park last fall.

After a year of shaping their vision, forming their message, and battling with the police, the movement had a broad range of actions planned for Monday, September 17th, the day of the anniversary of the first tent pitched in Liberty Plaza [now know by its corporate “slave” name Zuccotti Park]. The overall plan showed that the past twelve months have forced Occupiers to evolve. No longer would the activity be focused on one massive march, but rather dispersed and mobile, adapting to responses by the police, but with the same goal they had from the beginning: To protest the machinery of Wall Street finance by shutting it down.

As I arrived near Zuccotti Park around 6AM, NYPD forces where already out and ready. Wall Street was barricaded from all sides, as was Zuccotti Park, the bull statue and parts of Broadway. The news media was out in force, with TV trucks clogging both sides of Broadway. Little brings out the news crews in New York City like the possibilities of a potential blood bath…Both the police and mass media seemed ready for that. But the occupiers had other ideas.

By 7AM, about 500 protesters had assembled in one of four assembly points, and led by Episcopalian bishop George Packard and other clerics, started marching down Broadway towards the intersection with Wall Street. The original plan was to block the intersection by sitting down in the street. However, barricades set up by NYPD forced protesters to stay on the sidewalk, and, rather than – as in the past – trying to battle their way through the barricades, the protesters decided to make their point by sitting down on the sidewalk instead. Still, the arrests quickly began, as now they were obstructing pedestrian traffic. The thought that maybe the barricades and lines of cops the NYPD had set up might do a better job of blocking passage than anyone sitting on a pavement ever could probably didn’t occur to the police commander in charge of the scene.

I had found myself stuck in the press penn that was handily provided on one corner of the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway, so I couldn’t see the actual arrests, but several arrestees were quickly led away. Looking for more freedom of movement and better angles for observation and photography, I decided to change venue and moved down Pine Street towards Nassau Avenue. As I reached the intersection of Nassau and Pine, the back side of Federal Hall, another popular flashpoint between OWS and NYPD, I encountered mayhem. Police had started to arrest protesters in this location and cops were grabbing at anything and anyone that couldn’t run fast enough – including a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild, even though he was clearly marked by wearing a bright green hat marked “NLG Legal Observer.” I took some photos of arrests, but soon decided to move on further down towards Wall Street as I heard there were some activities going on there.

As I walked down Wall Street, protesters were marching on the sidewalk across the street from me, chanting and gearing up to block the intersection of Wall Street and Pearl. A massive contingent of police scooters along with cops in riot gear were standing at the ready. A police officer started to read out a dispersal order to the protesters assembled at the street corner, and anticipating a new sit-in and some arrest shots, I crossed the street to photograph the officer with his megaphone, as well as any upcoming interactions.

As I started photographing the scene – the cop with his megaphone and other officers standing around watching the protesters – I hear a voice over the megaphone saying: “If you don’t move, you will be arrested.” I took one more shot of the cops standing at the corner, when the white shirt officer in charge of the scene pointed at me and said: “That’s it. She’s done. Take her.” He promptly grabbed my hand.

I shouted out that I’m an independent photographer, and showed him my credentials from the National Press Photographers’ Association. The officer looked at my badge and said “they’re not ours, so I’m not interested.” (an independent account and a great photo can be found here) I was spun around and felt the zip ties tighten around my hands. This being my first arrest, I was surprised that I felt relatively calm and just let them do their thing, but I did notice that the cuffs were beginning to cut off the circulation in my hands.

The white shirt officer handed me off to one of the cops standing next to him in riot helmets, and designated him to be the arresting officer, which meant he was now in charge of bringing me to the station for processing and staying with me until I was either released on a Desk Appearance Ticket or sent to court for arraignment. A couple of legal observers took my name and information, and several other observers asked for it too while I was being led away. At least I felt people would know where to look for me.

As I was being led to a van, my arresting officer was told that he couldn’t put me there as only contained males. So the officer turned around and called over the radio, “I have a body. I need a car.” While I was out of commission for the moment as a photographer, I still felt very much alive, and found that description of me rather disconcerting. Yet, the numbness in my hands continued to increase, so I decided that, rather than getting into argument with him over terminology, I’d plea my case for getting the cuffs loosened enough for the blood to be able to flow to my hands. The officer explained to me that the zip cuffs they were using could not be loosened without cutting them, and he couldn’t do that unless I was in a van. We walked back and forth searching for a van for me to be put into for another 10-15 minutes, until I was finally placed in front of a door, photographed with a polaroid camera, and placed into a bus – joining four others already in there with my backpack still on and my camera and press pass hanging down my front. When I asked again to get my cuffs loosened, the officer said he didn’t have a knife, so that would have to be done at the station.

Other arrested protesters joined us in the bus and a dialogue started soon amongst everyone: About the day’s protests, Occupy’s philosophy and other topics. One of the protesters started making his case for Occupy to two of the arresting officers sitting with us in the van, who seemed nice enough to engage in the conversation. Whether any hearts and minds were changed remains to be seen, but it seemed clear that once the confrontation of the actual protest was out the way a civilized conversation was possible to be had. Plus, the boss wasn’t listening, and some rank and file officers were not all that unsympathetic.

Blue shirted NYPD officers have been working without a contract for four years now, as their union and police leadership seem unable to come to an agreement over the officers’ compensation terms, pensions being a big bone of contention. The law however forbids providers of essential government services, such as the police department, to strike, so the officers have to keep working while negotiations drag on. Seems the plans being discussed for potential contract resolutions don’t sound attractive to those in the lower ranks.

Before the cops were ordered out of the van again to accommodate more arrestees, one of them finally cut my cuffs. Bt this time my hands were a darker shade of blue and deep imprints from the edges of the cuffs were visible on both my wrists. I was allowed to take off the backpack, put the camera into my bag, stretch out my fingers for a second, before I had to be re-cuffed, thankfully looser this time.

Overall the atmosphere in the van was quite festive. The other arrestees seemed to be at peace with their situation and were looking to make the most of it. One of the late arrivals managed to access his cell phone and started livestreaming from our van. Another one, sitting next to him started reciting some rap poems he had written about Occupy, manifesting some accute wordsmanship and creativity, while another protester accompanied him with a beat by banging against the backwall of the van.

About 90 minutes after my arrest, we were finally delivered to Central Booking at 1 Police Plaza for further processing. There I noticed that we were referenced to as “perps” (short for perpetrator). While this term may seem a tad less dehumanizing than “body,” it still felt hardly appropriate for a group of people arrested for such “crimes” as sitting down in an intersection or photographing on the sidewalk.

As we here herded across the outer courtyard of Central Booking and had our names and addresses taken, any bags etc. were removed. At this point the treatment I received seemed reasonably courteous. I had requested that the Swiss consulate be notified of my arrest, which seemed to make an impression. While I wasn’t necessarily expecting the need of diplomatic interference, I felt it important to ensure access to it, should the need arise. Given how little control I had over my every move (“two steps over here, back against the wall, one step over there”) it also felt good to mark at least a little corner of my territory.

I was pulled aside with another arrestee still wearing his press credentials around his neck. He was a livestreamer and reporter for a website based in Portland, Oregon. We were asked where our work could be seen and what we were doing exactly, then the questioning officer went away. I’m not sure whether he was a regular plain-clothed officer, but he was dressed in civilian clothing. Finally, my press pass still hanging around my neck, I was led into the back door of Central Booking, where my identity was verified. I had to pose for another photo – this time with the arresting officer – and was placed into a holding cell for further processing. My arresting officer seemed pleased with the photo of the two of us and showed it to me. I jokingly asked him whether we should put it on Facebook, he laughed but said no and that he didn’t want to be tagged.

In the holding cell I met one of my colleagues from the Occupied Stories website, who is also trained as a legal observer. She was arrested for hoola-hooping while directing pedestrian traffic in an intersection, leading her arresting officer to complain, “Lady, I don’t even know what to charge you with”. But, on orders of his white shirt officer, he arrested her anyway.

After a while I was taken out of the holding cell and led past the holding den containing many of the male protesters that had been arrested that morning – by that time there were around 70 of them. They were having a party, cheering on every protester who was led by, chanting, drumming, and even dancing. One officer passing by along with me shook his head and exclaimed, “What a zoo!” Others seemed less amused, but unsure what to do about it, so for the time being they let the protesters be. The holding room had glass windows, not merely bars, so the noise level wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been, but they were clearly heard all the way down to the holding pen I was about to be placed into.

I was led to another intake officer who collected all the possessions from my pockets, my press pass, and also my shoe-laces. I was allowed to make my phone call and rang my godmother, whose number was the only one within New York City I was able to remember under the circumstances. Other arrestees behind me where not so lucky. Several out-of-town protesters who had come to New York for the OWS anniversary didn’t have a local number to call. So they were sent off to their cells without being able to notify someone outside as to what had happened.

I was led into a block of nine cells, each designed for one occupant but sanctioned to hold up to four, furnished with a wooden blank with some mats on top, a sink at the wall, and a toilet beside it which didn’t afford any privacy what so ever. The front wall of the cells consisted of metal bars, so everyone walking by could see right in. My colleague and I were placed into the same cell, along with a sleeping medic and two out of town girls. We could also hear and communicate with the occupants from the other cells, which by that point held around 30 other protesters (we maxed out at 37 in our block). The two female intake officers were in a very foul mood, so any chanting or singing between the cells was met with verbal abuse and threats of delaying our release. We knew they didn’t have the authority to make such decisions, but it clearly put a damper on the festive mood in our corner of the building. Still, we quickly built solidarity to resolve the privacy issue the toilet situation presented. Every time one of us had to use the bathroom, the others lined up in a wall around her, facing towards the hallway, to shield her from view. We called it our Pee-ples Wall.

As the day dragged on conversations swerved from philosophy to politics. Also, my colleague gave advice to us less familiar with legal proceedings surrounding arrests as to what to expect in terms of release, possible punishment for different charges, etc. While at that time I was not given access to a lawyer (I had asked my godmother to contact a good one we both know on my behalf), it did feel good to have somebody knowledgeable on the subject in the room. Still, time passed slowly in the prison cell, even with the best of conversations, and gradually we all started to chomp at the bit to be released.

Some entertainment was provided by our guards trying to assemble a proper count of all female inmates in our block. First the one officer passed by, counting each head, expecting four arrestees to each cell. As they passed by our cell their count got out of synch, since we had five people in ours. However it took a moment to sink in, so they passed us by, kept counting, and about 2 cells later started to realize that something was amiss. They came back and counted again, then sent a second counter to do the math. Finally a third realized we had five ladies in our cell. “But it’s not supposed to be that way,” one of them exclaimed, pointing at one of us. “You were supposed to be in number seven.” After a good deal of headscratching they gave up and left things as they were.

Around 1PM “lunch” was served, which consisted of two sorry excuses for peanut butter & jelly or cheese sandwiches and a small carton of milk. I didn’t mind the PBJ in principle, but these consisted basically of two pieces of cardboard that had been dragged past a jar of peanut butter and a gotten drop of sugary something plopped on top. I was grateful for some food, and I do understand the impact of budget cuts, but this was ridiculous.

As the afternoon dragged on, one of the out-of-town girls got increasingly agitated as she became worried about what would happen to her and her friend. As she got more and more upset, and started screaming at the cops about not getting her phone call, her friend tried to calm her down, but to no avail. Irrespective of the tone in which she asked to make the call, it was indeed disturbing that she was denied what is ultimately one of her fundamental rights.

Around 5PM I was finally released with what is called a Desk Appearance Ticket and a charge of “Disorderly Conduct” – which photography in public apparently now qualifies as in the City of New York. This DAT gives me a court date for later arraignment, so I wouldn’t have to sit in jail until a judge finally had time to see me. Before I was let out, we had to retake those two Polaroid photos I had posed for during my arrest. Apparently, they had gotten “lost” in the shuffle, but I couldn’t help but notice that this time my press credentials were not hanging around my neck. The entire upper body is visible in these photos, so any press pass hanging around my neck would have been clearly visible.

While I found the experience of this arrest very insightful into a part of America I have never personally encountered before, it also angered me that I lost an entire day’s worth of photographic work over a bullshit arrest. I don’t blame the poor beat cop who got stuck with posing as my arresting officer. This issue begins with his superior who decided to arrest me for whatever reasons he had or was given. I can understand how the prison system can break people, given just how little humanity is showed to those it oversees. Obviously, through the view from my holding cell I’ve only scratched the surface of what prison life in America can be like, but the stories I’ve heard are beginning to make a whole lot more sense. My spirit is fine but my wrists still hurt, and parts of my hands still have no feeling, which sucks when you’re trying to hold a camera.

Also, if intimidation was the goal of me being snatched off the street, the plan has backfired. I have no intention of interfering with events as they unfold, but I believe that the emergence of a movement like Occupy is one of the largest news stories of our time, and as such it needs to be properly documented. That includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, I will keep taking my pictures, like it or not. But obviously, I need to do a better job of staying one step ahead of the body snatchers.

Prologue: September 20, 2012

When I first wrote this account, I was still rather shell shocked from the experience. Obviously, I missed a few surrounding pieces, and the story also had a side aspect I only learned of afterwards.

My arrest on Monday was not my first conflict with the NYPD this weekend. On Saturday evening, after a rather intense march from Washington Square Park down Broadway to Trinity Church, two photojournalists had been arrested within seconds of each other. Cory Clark, an independent writer and photographer from Philadelphia was taken down rather harshly by Deputy Inspector Edward Winski after being warned earlier that he was being targeted for arrest. New York-based photographer Charles Meacham moved into position to photograph Clark’s arrest, and was promptly himself arrested by Officer Winski.

As I set up to photograph that arrest, Winski turned to me, pointed and said, “You’re next!” I walked away without saying anything and continued to go about my work for the rest of Saturday night and all day Sunday without further incident. I didn’t make the connection originally, but upon further reflection I am now wondering whether my arrest on Monday was not indeed a direct consequence of this Saturday encounter.

As I learned after my release, by arresting me, the NYPD even created a minor international incident. As I was being led away from from the scene of my arrest I walked by a fellow photographer and asked her to contact the Swiss consulate. She took down my information and handed it to the NLG, who quickly called the consular legal department. Apparently they were extremely concerned and promptly contacted the State Department. While in Central Booking, I did notice that NYPD tried rather strenuously to make sure they followed procedure with my intake and holding, a courtesy not extended to all of my fellow arrestees.

When I spoke to the consular lawyer after my release I learned that they were clearly not amused about my treatment. I was also informed that NYPD should have called the consulate immediately after I had requested they contact them. Instead, as I was just about to be released, one cop walked up to me and said, “You had a call from the consulate. Do you want us to inform them about your arrest?” And after I said yes, he continued, “This got a bit delayed, as we first had to clear this with the Mayor’s office. But since you’re now being released, why don’t you just call them yourself?” According to the Swiss consular lawyer that was a violation of protocol, and also complete nonsense, as NYPD is well briefed on what to do in such cases.

Last but not least, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about this hack job by the Breitbart crew. I find myself accused of being an activist, rather than a journalist, because I posted a call to join an anti-Syria protest outside their consulate in Midtown on an Occupy forum, at a time when the slaughter of unarmed protesters in Syria was raging at a breath-taking pace but nobody was paying attention to it. How exactly does that disqualify me as a photojournalist? I suppose, I’ve hit a nerve somewhere.

More than 72 hours after my release my hands are still partially numb.

View Julia Reinhart’s Occupy Anniversary photo gallery here.

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