It seems like a column called “News To Make You Furious” is an exercise in redundancy these days. The last year (at least!) of news has been a virtual volcano of vitriol as our nation’s election system has sputtered and gasped to produce two of the most widely disliked and arguably corrupt candidates ever to run for President. “Why?” sobs the electorate. “How could this possibly happen?” There are many answers, but one is undeniable… while our votes may or may not actually matter, they aren’t the driving force in elections anymore. Politicians used to pander for votes, then they pandered for the money to reach the voters instead. Now they’ve cut out the middlemen and pander for just the money, and the voters are mere inconveniences that need to be removed. If you think that’s hyperbole then get ready to get Furious because if anything, it’s an understatement…
Investigative reporter Greg Palast, for better or worse, was the inspiration for our monthly “News To Make You Furious” column. His 2009 article “Stick Your Damn Hand In It: 20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie” made us so furious that we ran it in its entirety in our newsletter. The response was so strong that we’ve made a point to follow his example every month by shining a light on some little noticed issue of abuse, corruption, or waste. This month Greg himself takes the stage once again with his newest movie “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy”.
Donald Trump’s paranoia has conjured a reality where people register and vote illegally by the millions and ALL against him, but without any evidence and in spite of the evidence against it happening at all. He’s blathering about voter fraud, and it’s fictional. But election fraud… that’s something different. Voter fraud is one person voting illegally or multiple times, but election fraud means changing the votes of multiple people or worse, preventing valid voters from voting at all. We know election fraud happens because some of it, things like card check, gerrymandering, pay for play, voter purges, and more, are happening in the open. Palast addresses some of these issues, but is primarily concerned with the abomination of the Crosscheck program, designed to steal a million votes by November and now in use in 30 states. Crosscheck is controlled by a Trump henchman, Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who claims his computer program has identified 7.2 million people in 29 states who may have voted twice in the same election–a felony crime, if it were true at all. What these people have in common isn’t repeat-voting (which they haven’t done) but that most of them are minorities—in other words, mainly Democratic voters.
The lists of “potential duplicate voters” are confidential, but Palast and his investigative side-kick Badpenny manage to get their hands on the actual data. They analyze it and go find some of these 7.2 million American “suspects” whose votes are threatened this November… an action that neither Kobach nor the voter-security thugs have bothered to do themselves. They confront Kobach with the evidence of his “lynching by laptop” and they find and confront the billionaires behind this voting scam. This real life detective story is told in a film noir style with cartoon animations, secret documents, hidden cameras, and a little help from Rosario Dawson, Willie Nelson, Ice-T, Richard Belzer, Shailene Woodley, and Ed Asner.
There are two aspects of this film that, strangely, DON’T make us Furious. The first is that our own Tom Dwyer has supported this project from its Kickstarter beginnings and is credited as a producer of the film. Yea, Tom! The second is that our political cartoonist Keith Tucker played a huge role in the film, doing the storyboards for the movie, creating the animation that is such a strong part of the storytelling, and creating the comic book adaptation of the movie.
We want everyone in America to see this film, not just to make you Furious but to get you involved! We (and Greg Palast) have several options to make it easy… stop by the Dwyer shop to pick up your FREE DVD copy (while
supplies last), or go here to order the DVD or book, or go here to stream the video, or go here to download the 57-page comic book. And then, PLEASE, share this critically important information with your friends and family… BEFORE the next election!
