One Bush Left Behind
by Greg Palast
Here’s your question, class:
In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.
Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.
Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”
So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?
-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.
-$20 won’t cover the cost of the final book in the Harry Potter series.
If you can’t buy a book nor pay tuition with a sawbuck, what exactly can a poor kid buy with $20 in urban America? The Palast Investigative Team donned baseball caps and big pants and discovered we could obtain what local citizens call a “rock” of crack cocaine. For $20, we were guaranteed we could fulfill any kid’s dream for at least 15 minutes.
January 30, 2008
Greg Palast Did the Math
Greg Palast's SOTU
Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union 
Published January 24th, 2007 in Articles
by Greg Palast, Tuesday, 23 January, 2007
There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.
In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.
[…] First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.
There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.
But the Founding Fathers didn’t imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our “status.”
[…] Did you catch the one about doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? If you’re unfamiliar with the SPR, it is supposed to be the stash of oil we keep in case the price of crude gets too high
[…] Instead of unleashing the Reserve and busting Big Oil’s price gouging Bush will double the Reserve, which will require buying three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. This is a nice $40 billion pay-out to Big Oil from the US Treasury. Compare this to the President’s health insurance plan which will be “revenue neutral” — that is, have a net investment of zero.
But the $40 billion in loot the oilmen will get from us taxpayers for doubling the Reserve is nothing compared to the boost in the worldwide price of crude caused by this massive, mad purchase. While the Congressional audience didn’t even bother polite applause for the reserve purchase plan, there’s no doubt they were whooping it up in Saudi Arabia. Clearly, the state of the Saudi-Bush union is still pretty good.
January 12, 2008
Don’t Tase Me, Chick!
What happens to the brain when being Tasered? What kind of long term damage might occur from shooting 50,000 volts directly into a human being? I'm most disturbed by the rush to find better ways to hurt each other. Civilization needs to evolve beyond better ways to club each other to death.
For those who like a little music with their personal protection: the Taser that plays MP3s
Richard Wray, The Guardian, Wednesday January 9 2008
[...] Arizona-based Taser International sells the handheld stun guns under the rather hyperbolic banner of "Changing the World and Protecting Lives". It maintains that the iTaser "allows for both personal protection and personal music for people on the go".
[...] Half a million Tasers are already in use globally despite warnings from Amnesty International that they have been linked to more than 70 deaths in the US. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a further 18 people have died after being stunned by a Taser in Canada.
Taser International, however, maintains that the devices merely stun people and, with proper training, are otherwise harmless. The guns shoot two small probes, at speeds of more than 48 metres a second, which are connected to the device by insulated wire. Those probes deliver an electric charge that causes instant neuro-muscular incapacitation, causing the victim to crumple to the floor. They also lose the ability to move for a few seconds.
[...] The gun generates a staggering 50,000 volts but the actual ampage - which is potentially very dangerous to life - is a mere 0.0021 amps, while a household plug carries 13 amps. The ampage is so low that the Taser's two lithium camera batteries can stun 100,000 people, but used in a digital camera they would provide just 100 photo flashes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/09/gadgets
November 27, 2007
Learning to Love Your Economic Hit Man
Greg Palase will never bore you, even when talking about hanging chads and caged lists. This American reporter who can only get a real audience (and employment) through the BBC was THE MAN with regards to the stealing of the 2000 election. This new report by him should be enlightening, coming to us in the thick of phony salutes to our in'juns, Cristóbal Colón, aka Columbus, and the working class stiffs who think th
ey have the rights to, well, anything!
Greg Palast investigates for BBC Newsnight - TONIGHT
Chevron: "Nobody has proved that crude causes cancer." BBC Television Newsnight has been able to get close-in film of a new Cofan Indian ritual deep in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. Known as "The Filing of the Law Suit," natives of Ecuador's jungle, decked in feathers and war paint and heavily armed with lawyers, are filmed presenting a new complaint in their litigation seeking $12 billion from Chevron Inc., the international oil goliath.
[...] For Newsnight, reporter Greg Palast, steps (somewhat inelegantly) into a dug-out log canoe to seek out the Cofan in their rainforest village to investigate their allegations. Criollo says his three-year son died from oil contamination after, "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood."
[…] "It's the largest fraud in history!" asserts Chevron lawyer Jaime Varela reacting to the Cofan law suits against his company.... What about the Indian kids dying of cancer? Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez asks, "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible." The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
[…] Watch the story live on BBC2 or, in the US, on the net at http://mailings.gregpalast.com/lt/t_go.php?i=55&e=MzU4MDY=&l=-http--news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm after broadcast - or via a link from http://www.gregpalast.com/.
WARNING: The day's news events may require Newsnight to delay broadcast to another evening.