The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Investigative reporter Greg Palast writes for U.K. paper the Guardian and its sister paper the Observer, and he occasionally writes and produces pieces for BBC Television. He’s a Los Angeles native who says he can’t find work in his own country. Small wonder. During the most recent election cycle, while the U.S. media was still sniffing around Monica Lewinsky’s panties and inventing tall tales about Al Gore, Palast was digging around in Florida, where he found Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris scrubbing the voter rolls of 57,700 “felons”—54 percent of them African-Americans, the rest white or Hispanic Democrats, few of them actual felons. That story is here, along with tales of the WTO and Bill Clinton, Bush-Enron’s California energy-intercoursing and much more. There’s enough raging pond scum here to really piss you off, if you still get worked up about such things.