Top funders made billions from US Treasury

by Greg Palast
for NationOfChange

[Thursday February 23] Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the federal government’s 2009 bail-out of the auto industry, “nothing more than crony capitalism, Obama style... a reward for his big donors to his campaign." In fact, the biggest rewards ­­– a windfall of more than two billion dollars care of US taxpayers ­­­–– went to Romney's two top contributors.

John Paulson of Paulson & Co and Paul Singer of Elliott International, known on Wall Street as “vulture” investors, have each written checks for one million dollars to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC supporting Romney’s candidacy.

Gov. Romney last week asserted that the Obama Administration’s support for General Motors was a, “payoff for the auto workers union.” However, union workers in GM’s former auto parts division, Delphi, the unit taken over by Romney’s funders, did not fare so well. The speculators eliminated every single union job from the parts factories once manned by 25,200 UAW members.

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by: Greg Palast, Truthout | Op-Ed

The Plan is working.

Mitt Romney's biggest backer didn't want him to win.

We know that Paul "The Vulture" Singer, Romney's Daddy Warbucks, organized the "grassroots" campaign to replace Romney with Gov. Chris Christie back in September.

That flopped, so Singer and the billionaire boys' club that courted Christie moved over to Romney. Not that they had a choice. They knew Moonrocks Gingrich, who thinks he's running for Master Jedi, and Saint Santorum who thinks he's running for pope, would end up road kill in November.

But despite their million-dollar checks for Romney's campaign, the billionaires are handling the ex-governor with very long and slippery tweezers. The fact that Singer and the Koch brothers went on bended knee to Christie means they are just nauseated over Romney, a man losing a war with the English language and his own tax returns, carrying their standard against President Obama. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post

I arrived into this world at the Queen of Angels hospital in Los Angeles into the hands of Dr. Sidney Kolodny.

Queen of Angels, judging by the number of nun-nurses running about, is a Catholic hospital.

Dr. Kolodny was Jewish.

Last night, I heard Senator Rick Santorum tell us that President Obama has attacked Catholics and freedom of religion by barring church-controlled businesses from excluding contraception care in their employees' health plans. (Show me more...)

The untold story of the sources of the loot controlled by Paul "The Vulture" Singer and why he needs to buy the White House

by Greg Palast for TruthOut/Buzzflash - update

Greg Palast has been investigating Singer and other finance vultures for BBC Television's Newsnight. His new book is Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores.

It's out of the closet –– or, more accurately, out of the coven.  The list of the billionaires who have given at least $1 million to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney Super PAC, is headed by Paul Singer.  Singer and his hedge fund crew at Elliott Associates, with their donations to the Republican National Committee and other "independent" groups like the Swift Boat campaign, makes it likely that Singer is now the top funder for the GOP.

For BBC-TV, I've been tracking Singer for five years.  And this is the key fact you need to know about the man whose cash would pick our President:  Paul Singer likes to breakfast on decayed carcasses.

The carrion king is known as Singer The Vulture. I didn't give him the moniker. The name Vulture was tagged on him and his speculator colleagues by the Prime Minister of Britain and the World Bank. Recently, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Winston Tubman suggested I ask Singer or his business associates, "Do you know you're causing babies to die?"

What does this guy do—put poison in kiddies' milk? Worse: he takes away the milk. (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast for Truthout/Buzzflash - update
Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores.

The call came in to BBC Television Centre, London, from the office of Mitt Romney's billionaire backer and "advisor" Paul Singer.

Singer, top donor to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee had a message for the news chiefs at the prestigious broadcaster:

"We have a file on Greg Palast."

I bet they do. (Show me more...)

See Palast on TV breaking through the US airwaves. If you missed his 20 city book tour, here's your chance to hear the stories from Vultures' Picnic - his acclaimed new book out in stores now.

Check out the CSPAN listings here for times - and make sure to spread the word.

How the Election Games are fixed by the Koch gang,
Karl Rove and their buck-buddies

Part 1 - THE GAME

In the Beginning

In early 2010, a man named Karl Rove met with a financier known as the Ice Man.  The billionaire had more than his share of legal and political troubles.  Rove told him he had a plan to defeat Barack Obama and seize control of Congress for the GOP.

The Ice Man said, "I'm in," and handed over a check for $20 million.

And Ice Man promised more.

"Karl is the best political mind out there," he said.

Way out there. 2012:  Ballots Up the Congo

How I ended up here, up the Congo River, hunting for missing ballots in the US presidential election, well, that's a story in itself.  I'll get to that.

But first, I have to take you deep into the Heart of Darkness, Washington DC, where, in 2004, this same Karl Rove arranged for his pudgy little poodle to take on a terrible and cruel assignment.  The poodle, Tim Griffin, had the small hands, small mind and small heart perfectly suited for the job of re-electing the President, by hook or crook.   Mostly crook.

Rove, then Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, said,

"We are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored glasses."

Rove wasn't complaining.  He was boasting. (Show me more...)

For Firedoglake

by Greg Palast

“They threatened me. Last night I got a call and they threatened me. If I talked.”

“Pig Man #2,” a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid.  He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow away the XL Keystone Pipeline project.

His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety equipment, the “Smart PIG,” has a flaw known to the industry but concealed from regulators.

The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected – and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements.  But there’s a catch. Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode – and kill.

Federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run a PIG, a Pipeline Inspection Gauge, through big oil and gas pipelines.  The robot porker, tethered to a GPS, beeps and boops as it rolls through, electronically squealing when it finds dangers.

But whistleblowers told us (Show me more...)

By Greg Palast

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of No Child Left Behind.
Before George W. Bush invaded Iraq he knew he would have to invade our classrooms first.

While the occupation of Iraq has ended the brutal occupation of our classrooms by the Forces of Stupid remains.

Herewith is a reprise of our original warning:

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT

They take away your overtime, your 40-hour week, your regulatory protection against corporate marauders, your right to courtroom justice, your protection against unfair trade, even the right to get your ballot counted. But there's always hope. Hope is the last thing to go. And your hope is your kids, that they'll have an opportunity you didn't have. On January 21, 2004, the President told you they'd have to take that away too. On that night, deep into his State of the Union sermon to Congress, when sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, our President opened a new front in the class war. And like the one in Iraq, it began with a lie. "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act," our President told us, "We are regularly testing every child...and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." (Show me more...)

by Greg Palast

Click on the image to watch the segment

I don't usually watch Today or any American TV because my reports appear on the British Broadcasting Corporation, a network run by highly-educated America-haters.

But there I was, last Friday, in this hotel room in Atlanta, a city pretending there's no Depression, chewing my complimentary morning donut, and Today is telling us about the "new face of American poverty." (Show me more...)