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THE MEDIA
COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY
PART FIVE: ANSWERING THE SKEPTICS
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By Carolyn Kay And
David Podvin
"It's difficult
to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not
understanding it."
— Upton Sinclair
Introduction
In this series, we have presented the truth
about the circumstances surrounding the media Consortium's cover-up of the Gore
victory. When we became aware of information regarding the destruction of our
democracy, that knowledge carried with it a moral obligation to share the truth
with the public. We presented this information knowing that most Americans are
more comfortable believing the self-serving mythology that has been presented to
them by the corporate media.
Our presentation of the facts
is not designed to convince the skeptics who have political motivations for
rejecting the overwhelming evidence that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential
election. It is our goal to arm patriots with the truth about the
rape of our democracy, since we disagree with the patronizing
establishment view that the average American is too pathetic to
deal with reality.
The common denominator of every detractor's
letter has been the basic premise that, since the authors of the series have
not proven to the detractors’ satisfaction that we have appropriate
credentials, the unpleasant facts we introduce can be dismissed as lacking an
official seal of approval. One
skeptic said that our writing is “impressive,” which is irrelevant to
him unless we can “prove” that we have the proper pedigrees.
The nature of the criticism indicates that
some readers have missed the point of the series; it is the people with the
“proper pedigrees” who have consistently deceived you. The
mainstream media has blatantly and provably lied to you, as when NBC/GE
propagandist Andrea Mitchell was caught lying about White House vandalism by the
Government Accounting Office, and went unpunished by her employer. The
mainstream media has deliberately and provably misled you, as with
the media Consortium's ludicrous contention that they have absolutely no way of
knowing the trend of the ballot study. The mainstream media has
deliberately and provably concealed the truth from you under
false pretenses, as when the Consortium chose to withhold the results of
the ballot study by using the blatantly false excuse that all of their political
reporters were covering the war on terrorism.
It has never been our desire to inflict
distress on those who shield themselves from reality through ignorance and
hostility. We are simply stating
the truth, and we are confident that it will be confirmed by subsequent events.
It is appropriate to be skeptical of what you read. It is relevant that not
one skeptic has been able to successfully refute any of the facts we have
presented. We know that, as events unfold, those of you who are strong
enough to remain open minded will become increasingly convinced that
what we have reported in this series is true.
This is the last formal article in this
series, but we will continue to send updates to those who have asked to be put
on the mailing list. (Click
here and then click Send to be added to the mailing list). The
updates will include more interviews and other information when it
becomes available. As people come
forward, on or off the record, we will keep you up to date on the information
that is revealed to us or in other publications.
We are also starting
work on another series. More on
that later.
Recommendation for Action
Throughout this series, we have said we would
ultimately make a recommendation for concerted action.
The corrupt agenda of the Republican Party and
the Bush Administration is exclusively designed to reward GOP campaign
contributors at the expense of the average American. The Republicans are
so corporate-centric that they reject anything that is designed to benefit
ordinary people. The Bush
administration has consistently been indifferent to the vital needs of our
citizens, while operating a free candy store for large corporations.
The level of heartless greed has been
disgusting, especially as it relates to those who are most vulnerable.
Retroactive tax cuts for multinational drug companies have replaced campaign
promises of prescription drug aid to the elderly Americans who built and
defended this country. Money to fund child abuse prevention clinics
has been redirected to welfare for oil companies.
Depriving old people of necessary medicine and
subjecting children to preventable violence is not just wrong; it is
immoral. It is the evil that inevitably comes from worshipping power and wealth.
Democrats have also succumbed to the
lure of lucre. As
former Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright wrote recently, “Looking
at [the amount of money contributed to national political campaigns], we might
ask ourselves: Who really picks our nation's leaders today? Is it the people? Or
the contributors?”
Since September 11, the unpatriotic
opportunism of the Republicans has been appalling. The GOP has clambered
over the dead victims of terrorism in order to promote drilling in the ANWR,
more tax gifts for the rich, and handouts and bailouts for a host of
corporate campaign donors. Their Democratic counterparts have been less than
heroic in fighting for the interests of the common people.
You would think that the GOP would
be ashamed to flaunt their despicable greed so openly during a time of
national crisis. You would think that the Democrats would feel morally compelled
to defend the interests of those who voted for them..
You would be wrong. Twice.
Politicians will only listen to the needs of
ordinary people when ordinary people are the main supporters of political
campaigns. Public financing of
campaigns would be ideal, but the current crop of national politicians will
never put such a notion into practice. They were elected under the current
rotten system, and they are unwilling to allow any major changes to the process
that personally serves them well.
But We, The People, can take matters into
our own hands. And that is what we must
do. The only way to get our
government back is to buy it back.
We propose the formation an organization that
would make it easy for ordinary people to contribute only a small amount of
money per month ($5 to $10—more for those who can afford it) to fund
organizations, publications, and candidates who would represent us, the people,
instead of corporate CEOs and rich people who never had to face the hardships
that most Americans encounter in providing for themselves and their families.
This organization would provide funding to
start a new media outlet dedicated to telling the truth, and that covers issues
the American people need to know about, rather than Democratic politicians' sex
lives. It would stress the positive
aspects of our country, our government, and our common goals, while exposing the
pitiful tactics that are used by a small minority of conservative
elitists to maintain control over the debate in our country. Robert
Parry of consortiumnews.com has called for the formation of a “Superstation
for Democracy.” The
superstation can be a non-profit entity, like the Guardian and the BBC in the
U.K., so that no one could buy it out and shut it up.
Buy Back Our Government would support many of
the fine websites that keep the light of truth burning while the mainstream
media deceive us. With enough participants, it could provide enough
funding for candidates to make the Democratic Party earn votes by fighting for
the best interests of the everyday people who vote for it.
We believe that this is the only way the Democrats will ever stand up for
us.
The organization would specifically focus on
combating the effects of the wealthy members of the Scaife family, the Coors
family, and the Olin family, who spend millions of dollars per year to support
organizations, publications, and candidates that promote exclusionary right wing
interests. It is time for them to be aggressively challenged by those who
believe that a government of the people means a
government of all the people.
Buy Back Our Government will be organized
locally in Chicago with the help of the political director of a progressive
member of Congress. We will move
west, south, and east, as the organization grows.
Click
here to read the organization’s proposal online.
Click
here and then click Send to be added to a discussion group for starting the Buy Back Our Government organization.
Answering the Skeptics
Breathtaking situation. Please
have the media deal with this story.
The refusal of the media to deal with
this story is the story.
[W]hat kind of background do you
and David Podvin have? Are you journalists?
We are deliberately de-emphasizing ourselves because the facts that we
have presented should be the sole focus in this matter. We are extremely
confident that subsequent events will verify these facts. We also seek to
contrast ourselves with mainstream journalists who claim to have
“credentials” while reporting things that are false, at times things they
undoubtedly know are false. By maintaining an extremely low profile, we force
those who want to discredit our reporting to successfully refute our facts,
rather than using their traditional method of killing the story by killing the
messengers.
We are not relevant to this story. Judge the validity of our account by
the facts that we have presented, and by the inability of our critics to
disprove them.
Who are your sources?
We will never reveal those who are in
positions of vulnerability within the organizations that we have identified.
Other sources will reveal themselves on their own timetables, including
this week.
Perhaps reporters for foreign newspapers, since the American media have proven their disdain for anything associated with this story, will find disaffected GE employees and others who are willing to come forward and corroborate our information. Jack Welch has fired enough people to populate a small city. There are bound to be people who will talk on the record.
[D]o you have at least one other source to corroborate all of this
information? This is pretty
incendiary information, and even though there are realities of sources wanting
to remain anonymous, a story like this shouldn't come out -- at any time -- with
only one source. With Watergate, if
you recall, they got corroboration for information from anonymous sources.
The quotes
are accurate and multi-sourced.
Why won’t your sources come forward?
This is the beginning of the long and
difficult effort of revealing what really happened in the 2000 election. As the
process continues, some sources will come forward and identify themselves. It
would be unsafe for others to do so. They
would lose their jobs and come under the kind of attack that Anita Hill and
Julie Hiatt Steele endured.
The original source will probably never go public. The people who have gotten in touch with us since the first article was published, people who worked on the ballot project, can not come forward until after the results are released, and even then some may have to deny they were sources for us, because they signed confidentiality agreements. Their concern is that if the results are postponed indefinitely, they may never be able to come forward at all.
By now it is abundantly clear that if the media companies could have been
persuaded by duty, conscience, or public pressure to tell the truth, they would
have already done so. I am so, so disgusted. I am not exaggerating when I say I
am shaking with anger as I type this. It does no good for "make them
accountable" to tap dance around naming names of the people at the head of
the corporations responsible. For god's sakes NAME NAMES! We need to write to
THEM, NOT the NEWSPAPERS!!! We need to expose THEM. We need to mount protests
against THEM. We need to Picket on THEIR corporate doorsteps!! We need to
boycott THEM!!
Read Part
Four. Note the names Jack Welch, Robert Wright, Douglas “Sandy” Warner, Mel Karmazin, and Michael Eisner.
.
Your accounts on the Consortium recount and especially Jack Welch's
influence on the 2000 election are interesting. How about some references?
They would make your articles much more compelling.
No one is going to believe you. I will only send out to others if
references are available.
We have
sources in the upper echelons of the mainstream media and in the coding process
at the NORC ballot study.
Although I'm very interested in the articles posted on your web site, I would really like to see some footnotes showing where you are getting your information. By not citing your sources, you end up doing the same thing the main stream media did regarding the 2000 presidential campaign. While I certainly don't disagree with your conclusions, I have a difficult time discussing such issues with my associates when I don't have source material to back up my opinions.
There are two styles of writing factual information. One is to footnote assertions, and the other is to make the assertions and list sources at the end. We have chosen the second approach, because so much of the information is readily available from common news sources. The information from our sources helped us put it all together in a way that has not been done before. Links to many articles containing corroboration of our statements are available on the series page.
[W]hat I don't see are specific citations in your stories about what is
the source/evidence for your specific charges. If you expect people to believe
you, you must present an unbroken chain of events based on primary sources, not
bits and pieces of other people's work. Part of that chain is your own
reputations, experience and standing, showing that you have avoided conflicts of
interest and ideology. As to the founding fathers, they were great politicians,
not journalists. Sam Adams was a great patriot, but I wouldn't trust anything he
said about British parliament.
You totally misunderstand where we are coming from. We have an admitted bias. Just look elsewhere on the website and it will be obvious to you. We do not purport to be "professional" journalists, and that is a good thing, not a bad thing. The "professional" journalists just put George Bush in the White House, and he has taken us from peace and prosperity to war and recession.
So far, I haven't heard it anywhere else, and I can't help but doubt that
a story this explosive would long go unreported if there was any substance to
it. There are too many independent media who would be more than happy to jump in
where the New York Times fears to tread. I present this line of reasoning to
give you some indication where I'm coming from. My first response to a story
like David's is to wonder who David Podvin is and how reputable a source he is.
I'm sorry if that offends you, but I consider such skepticism both healthy and
necessary if one is going to rely on the Net as a source of information.
You should be skeptical, if your skepticism
consists of waiting to see more information before reaching a conclusion. We are
not trying to convince you of anything; we are presenting the truth in the
confidence that subsequent events will verify our account of events. In
January, 2001, we were the first to reveal that the mainstream media was lying
en masse about White House vandalism. The same primary source who provided
information about that story has been a major contributor to this one. An
intelligent reader would have been skeptical in January, but would have remained
open minded until further information (the Government Accounting Office report)
resolved the matter several months later.
Whether you remain receptive to seeing
more information before making up your mind has less to do with our credibility
than it does with your ability to think independently.
We challenge our critics to disprove what we have reported.
If you truly believe what you have written, it is your responsibility to
get with an experienced news editor and present your findings in a manner that
can be more readily accepted and less easily dismissed.
The “experienced” news editors have buried this story. In fact, the entire mainstream media and a majority of America want to put the 2000 presidential election theft behind them. We are unwilling to accept that.
I so want to believe the
"Gore won" article that I will accept it as fact. However, how might I
verify it to the more skeptical?
Do not waste your time trying to reason with
those who only believe what serves their interests. For your own information,
however, watch the torrent of stories that are emerging about FCC actions
and media consolidation. Look closely to see who is involved. Follow the money
trail.
Better Check your sources!
According to people on the scene, Gore lost again. Bush won by several
thousand votes.
We have interviewed
numerous people who have observed the coding process in person. They uniformly
report that the pro-Gore trend was dramatic and impossible to miss. The
Republicans who witnessed the ballot study described themselves as being
"very unhappy" with the proceedings and preemptively declared them to
be invalid.
Who ever gave you the information
is definitely mistaken. People on the scene at one time said "The only way
Gore could of won, was if every nick and mystery vote was counted then Gore
could have won." These were the only statements bandied about to at
least 2 of the people connected with counting and recording totals.
Using Florida state law, which involves
determining the "clear intent of the voter", Gore won decisively.
How can this be kept secret? There are so many people are involved.
It is not a secret; it is simply unreported by
the mainstream media. The
biggest mistake that the average American makes is assuming that TV covers all
of the big stories. If they do not see something on television, they believe it
must not have happened, and is a “conspiracy theory”. By that standard, the
most important story in America during the first eight months of 2001 was Gary
Condit. Many important stories get
very little TV coverage.
The Welch involvement in this matter was not
widely known, but General Electric's appalling record of criminal conduct while
he ran the company is known, and the mainstream media treats him with deference
and adulation. The multinational corporate culture is amoral—the stock rose
while Welch was in charge, so he is a great man. Bush will do the bidding of the
multinationals that own the media, so he is "legitimate". Do not seek
to transpose your moral convictions onto those who do not have any.
This is business.
The NORC website says the results will be made available. Why are
you reporting that they won't?
The NORC is under contract to the members of
the media Consortium, and has stated that there is not a definable time when the
report would be released to the public, absent Consortium permission. We have
never written that the "results" would not be released; we have
written that our sources report there currently is no intention to release the
accurate results.
Would you please stop? Do you realize that you do more harm than
good? Your failure to seek any information that does not make good fodder
for your fundamentalist rants discredit the well-reasoned and legitimate
criticisms coming from more thoughtful quarters. One may disagree with the
media's decision to postpone the release of the ballot evaluation (and I am
familiar with the methodology used and there is no "count"). A
criticism well worth voicing, I think, but not one that bespeaks a
"cover-up" at all. Cover-ups are planned. Yet a
few weeks ago those same "media elite" that you unjustly slander were
in fact all sitting together in an office at NORC coordinating the imminant
release. Unfortunately, someone screwed it up by running into the room and
announcing "the world trade center has been attacked." Needless
to say, the meeting ended there. Damn them.
Members of the media Consortium have not been
honest in their portrayal of the ballot study. Their stated reason for delaying
release of the result, which was a lack of available reportorial personnel, is
provably false. The Washington Post does not have enough reporters to cover the
story of who really won the presidency, but they recently assigned a full time
non-sports journalist to cover Michael Jordan. It is a matter of priorities, not
a lack of resources.
Their contention that “no one can possibly
know” because the final tabulation has yet to occur is sophistry. Observers in
the coding rooms, including Consortium observers, know that the trend for Gore
was identifiable and overwhelming.
Insofar as your account that they “in
fact all sitting together in an office at NORC coordinating the imminant
(sic) release” at the time of the
attack on the World Trade Center, that sounds a little too conspiratorial for
us.
Julie Antelman of NORC sent me an email message that says:
Podvin and Kay are wrong in their
assertions… As of this writing,
the consortium has not received the data set.
NO ONE has analyzed it, and NO ONE knows what the data will show.
We are assured that the media group members will begin their part of the
project when they have the resources to allot to it.
Ms. Antelman did not observe the ballot coding process extensively. According to those who did, the trend was “decisively pro-Gore”. When we spoke with Ms. Antelman, she also told us that no one could know the results because the coders did not know which number on each ballot stood for which candidate. When we asked her if someone knew which number was for which candidate, could that person then get an idea of how the count was going, she said yes. And that is exactly the information we have from people who were actually there for extensive periods of time.
The Republican observers knew which number stood for which candidate. They also knew what the results were showing. It is inconceivable that they kept this information to themselves.
If the voters cared enough about their votes to make absolutely sure that
the ballot was clearly marked with the intended choice, there would have been no
doubt as to the outcome. Some of the voters are stupid: others are merely
careless. You may take your choice
as to which group lost the election for Gore.
Ballots
where the voter both punched/circled Gore’s name and wrote his name as a
write-in candidate meet the legal standard of establishing the ‘clear
intent’ of the voter. Including these illegally disqualified ballots, Gore won
by thousands of votes.
If we use
your standard and disqualify the ballots in Florida that were cast by voters in
a stupid way, then Gore won the state by about 2.9 million votes.
That Part Four article about Welch et al
was awesome, but if I showed it to my conservative friends they would still just rant
about the liberal media...ah, the power of propaganda.
Many conservatives are not willing to question the assumptions on which their beliefs are based. It will take a concerted effort to change those minds that can be changed. The right wing has been working at their propaganda campaign for at least twenty years. We will need to match them in patience and persistence.
Believe me, that article about the recount is funnier than any Coulter
satire that you could ever come up with. If
the "pro-Bush" banks control the NYT, why is it so flamingly liberal?
Perhaps your premise about the NYT being flamingly liberal is incorrect.
The page with the cartoons on it may be
liberal, but the political coverage is relentlessly pro-Bush. The recent spate
of articles by Richard Berke lionizing Bush is just the latest example of the
extreme conservative bias of the reporting in the Times.
Why would an overwhelmingly democratically controlled press (the ones who
announced Gore had won Florida long before the poles were even closed) choose to
turn on their favorite candidate by switching sides?
The basic problem with the conservative philosophy is that false premises lead to false conclusions. Rupert Murdoch is a Democrat? Jack Welch is a Democrat? Michael Eisner is a Democrat? We do not think so.
The early calls were correct. The state of Florida went for Gore. The exit polls were correct, and it was only machinations by the Bush machine, including Bush’s first cousin John Ellis calling the election for him at Fox News, and Jack Welch’s presence in the newsroom the night of the election, making it very clear that he wanted George Bush to win, that skewed the results.
If you believe that Al Gore was the media’s favorite candidate, then you
have not read the series carefully, and you may not have seen the Bush
Questions page of the MakeThemAccountable website.
The media were part and parcel of the Bush campaign team.
They may as well have been getting paychecks from Bush political guru
Karl Rove.
Do you really believe the
outwardly liberal media would be convinced to tow the company line in exchange
for the almighty dollar? No way! What was Jack Welch going to do, have all
three liberal nightly news anchors fired during the election cycle? Not a
chance!
I think you would be best hooking up with Oliver Stone. Maybe he will produce a movie about this and you could profit from it, and since you despise anyone profiting from their efforts you could give your share to the DNC or the twin Towers fund.
Jennings and Brokaw are on record as
saying that they believe that conservatives should have a greater voice in
network broadcast journalism, so there would be no need to fire people who
already “got my mind right, Boss”. We
will be donating our profits from any upcoming Stone movie to the lords of GE,
so that they can scrape together enough money to remove their toxic sewage from
the Hudson River.
My point is that your efforts would be best served looking forward, not
back.
We are most certainly looking forward. We are looking forward to further erosion of our civil liberties, endless war, and depression, unless the Republicans are soundly defeated. They can only be soundly defeated if we have election reform (among other things). We can only have reform if we fully understand and acknowledge what happened in the last election. When the man who was elected president is not the man in the White House, something is seriously wrong.
What is that something? How did it happen? Why did it happen? Once we know those things, how can we fix it?
Only then can we start to believe we might have fair elections in the future.
No media outlet
has dared report the final numbers, and that makes me as suspicious of the
result as it does you. However,
rather than the craven motives you assign them, I think they have a real fear
that if people knew the truth, this country would be in for quite a period of
civil disorder. They've undoubtedly
been encouraged in this by the Bush team, and have remained willing participants
in the cover-up.
Civil disorder is the chance we take. According to retired professor Dave Berkman, writing in December of last year, “It would seem to me that a level of protest which, in its magnitude, matches the thievery that placed an illegitimate president in office, is more than justified.”
Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have shown a trend against the "messiness" of the political process and toward the "niceness" of more control for the Supreme Court.
This is the problem: If information is to be kept from the American people, who gets to decide what information is kept from us? We do not believe that any self-appointed elite should be allowed to make that kind of decision for us, even if they believe that it is “for our own good.” They do not want to “bother” us with the fact that democracy died on December 12, 2000. If we let them get away with that, then we do not deserve a democracy.
"We urge you to pass this article on to EVERYONE YOU KNOW!"
Have you lost contact with reality?
Admittedly a large percentage of my contacts are more or less liberal,
but it would be "coals to Newcastle" for them, and many of them are
trying to "move past" this horrible event as one moves on after a
death in the family. There is
enough depression in the world already.
We are glad to have finally found the person responsible for deciding what the American people can “handle” and what they're psyches are “up to.” If one is dedicated to the truth, one tells the truth. No matter what the timing is. No matter who does not like it. No matter who does not want it told.
If you believe in a higher power, we suggest you take up the matter of timing with Her.
If I send it to contacts who are more conservative, they will use it
merely as an occasion to discount other things I choose to tell them that I try
to make factual -- like *numbers*! When
someone says, "Bush would have won anyway," I want to be able to say,
"No, that is incorrect! According
to an unbiased accounting by the major news media," including specifically
those preferred by the one to whom I speak, "Al Gore won by xx,xxx
votes!" Period!
The Consortium study results will not declare a winner. NORC's assignment was to classify the ballots only. What we contend is that the number of votes that were clearly intended for Gore but were not counted, in some cases even though it was illegal not to count them, is so large that it will be obvious to any sane person that Gore won Florida. If your conservative friends are not sane, they will not believe that Gore won Florida. No matter what we tell them. Or when.
[I]f senators can't stop leaking classified information and journalists can't stop lapping it up to get a scoop, how on earth could they keep a lid on something like this that would please them to the core to leak?
When is the last time you deliberately did
something to threaten the financial well being of your employer?
The leak about the 100 percent chance of retaliation if we bombed Afghanistan came from Orrin Hatch, after a briefing by John Ashcroft. What is the military reason for keeping that information from us? Why would Orrin Hatch “love” to release the information that the man he helped put in the White House is not a legitimate president?
How do you know they are lying about Gore winning Florida decisively?
We have evidence from people who participated in the coding. We have evidence from people who observed the coding. The reporting on the early stages of the ballot study indicated that Gore was gaining considerably over Bush. Every time a partial recount was completed by some newspaper, especially the Miami Herald, the results were contorted and distorted so that the headlines could read, “Bush Won.” But when you read down to the middle of the article, or read the next day’s article, it was obvious that Gore won, even those partial recounts.
At a time when so many national figures seem to be obsessed with propping up Bush’s credibility and legitimacy, why would the major newspapers hesitate to prop him up further with additional “Bush Won” headlines? It can only be because they cannot say that Bush won.
As a reader of the articles said,
1. If the recount results do not actually show a large lead in Gore ballots, then this can be shown by publishing the results. No sophistry can overcome this fact.
2. If the consortium continues and continues not to show the results, then we are free to use all evidence available to us in drawing inferences about the facts that the consortium fails to show. Any argument that it is improper to draw such inferences can be answered by referring back to point number (1).
I have followed all of the recounts and have not seen any results that are
in line with your claim that Gore won the state.
You have never seen a recount that included all of the ballots that met the legal standard of “clear voter intent”, because there has never been one. This ballot study is the first examination of all the legally cast votes in Florida.
Is there any corroborating information on any of your assertions in any
mainstream publications?
The Daily Telegraph of London has printed some of our contentions. That same article was reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Aren't some of the activities you describe in Part Two illegal?
Yes.
According to Maia Cowan, who has published an article on this subject, “Not only does this double-marking of the same candidate NOT make it impossible to discern the voter's intent -- it's defined in the Florida statute as a legal vote that SHALL be counted (that's the legalese SHALL, as in ‘you don't have any discretion in the matter: do it’). There's no excuse for elections officials not knowing this aspect of Florida election law.”
If you can legally prove wrongdoing, then do so.
There were as many as 50 fairly easily provable illegal activities before, during, and after the election in Florida. None of these has even been investigated by the Republican administration in Florida. Senator Dodd was about to start an investigation before September 11. The list is culled from published accounts by reputable newspapers.
If [you are right], why is no one in Florida being indicted and tried for
their illegal activities?
Who would indict and
prosecute them? The state, which is run by Jeb Bush, who is suspected of playing
a part in some of the suspicious activities? Or the federal government, run by George Bush, the man who
benefited from the illegal activities?
In light of the events of
September 11, wouldn't it be better to wait before publishing these articles?
The events of September 11 have deliberately
been misinterpreted to be a validation of the right wing agenda. The
patriotic view of September 11 is that it clearly defined the difference
between democracy and violent intolerance of dissent. Somehow, the mainstream
media has contorted that into a demand for capital gains tax cuts, destruction
of the environment, and attainment of the conservatives' ancient hallowed goal:
the elimination of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against arbitrary
governmental search and seizure.
What September 11 should mean is that
democracy must be protected in order to protect Americans. The best way to
protect democracy is to practice it. We can begin by telling the truth about the
last election.
How long are you willing to wait for the news to come out? It may be the intention of the Bush handlers to delay this news at least until Bush has been re-elected. Are you willing to wait three years? Or 7-1/4 years, when Bush has to give up his grasp on the presidency altogether, unless he and the Supreme Court have declared by then that there will be no more elections? What if the results are never released?
Would a disclosure of this nature not be beneficial to our country
right now? Could it become an aid and comfort to bin Laden and the
Taliban?
It does not harm bin Laden for America to have
an un-elected president who is in the process of destroying the civil liberties
of the majority of citizens who opposed him. It does not harm bin Laden for
American democracy to be a farce, or for the American media to be corporate
propagandists. If you can get an ironclad date on which the right wing will give
permission for anticonservatives to aggressively begin fighting for the
interests of the dispossessed majority of Americans, then let us know.
There has never been an "beneficial
time" to contradict the corporate media's version of events.
And there never will be.
We have great confidence in the American people's ability to judge issues properly in the long run. There is a certain collective wisdom that works very well as long as they are being given all the facts.
[W]ill the results be made broadly
public, in your opinion, within the next several months?
As a result of increased public
awareness, it is probable that results will be made public. As the Miami
Herald recount showed, it is highly doubtful that the results will be
presented to the public honestly.
I'm glad you are part of the very
small minority... It's only the lunatic fringe such as yourself and those
like you that try to demonize those who have a different political agenda.
My guess is we won't see any of the sky-is-falling predictions you made
regarding depression, war or civil liberties. We have a government of checks and
balances to make sure this doesn't happen.
The war and the confiscation of civil liberties have already begun. So far, there is no depression, just a severe recession. As to checks and balances, where are the brakes on this runaway conservative train?
Members of the Consortium may find another way to lie and say that Bush
won. What good are our efforts if they do that?
The best way to confront people who are doing
evil things is to make it unavoidably clear that you will never stop pursuing
them, and that you are going to be a problem forever. The key is to be
relentless. In other words, remember that you are not a Democratic member of
Congress, and you therefore have no obligation to capitulate to bad people.
Why isn't Al Gore or the Democratic Party supporting your efforts?
The Democrats, Gore included, have decided
that the winning approach for them is to be non-confrontational. This explains
why, other than the aberration of pugilistic Bill Clinton, the party has been in
decline for decades.
In fairness, it is hard to fight for something
when you do not passionately believe in anything. There can be absolutely no
question that Gore and his fellow Democratic leaders knew for a fact that their
black supporters in Florida were deliberately and illegally disenfranchised by
Bush in Florida. That did not stop Gore from laughing, along with the
Republicans who despise him, as he jauntily rejected the gallant effort by the
Congressional Black Caucus to address the matter in January.
It is the nature of the beast: Republicans
fight tooth and nail to address nonexistent injustices, such as the persecution
of the rich. Meanwhile, the Democratic political class politely shrugs off
the theft of an election.
What confounds me is why so many so called "educated people" in
this country blindly accept the unending propaganda as gospel.
Does greed blind them, or are they that shallow?
It has taken the conservatives at least 20 years of patience and persistence to put forward their dishonest agenda in dishonest ways. We will also have to have patience and persistence, but it will not take us as long. What we want, and what we are fighting for, is what is in the best interest of most of the people. We will prevail.
We are not free here in America, we have duct tape over our mouths because
Bush does not want the truth about himself and his family and what the
Republican Party has done over the years. Are
we any different than the Taliban when keeping the news from the American
people?
No.
By publishing this type of crap
you're doing more damage to the Democratic cause than you realize.
We are not advocates for the
“Democratic cause”. We support “democracy”, which is enhanced by
“reporting the truth”.
I have come to the conclusion that proving Bush's illegitimacy is a losing
proposition, a wild goose chase that will take time and attention away from
higher priorities. Even if the consortium releases the results of the study, it
will be spun for the umpteenth time to favor Bush. The current reality is
that public sentiment is on his side; the media is on his side, big moneyed
corporations are on his side. As a loyal Democrat who supported Gore I am NOT on
Bush's side, but I have to face the fact that my limited time and resources are
better spent pushing to get Democrats elected to Congress in 2002 rather than
pushing for proof of Dubya's illegitimacy.
As a Democrat, you need to come to
terms with the fact that your party is unwilling to fight for the interests of
the people who vote for it. Until that happens, you will continue to be backing
the losing side. What is the
point of “pushing to get Democrats elected” if they refuse to represent your
interests? Or if the GOP is just
going to steal the election, anyway? And what is to stop them unless they are
brought to account for stealing it the last time?
"If this is true, then why haven't any ethical journalists broken ranks to reveal the information?
They can't all be corrupt."
Who might they be? What would they say?
"I'm Claire Shipman, and I have something to reveal because I never want to
work again."
I’ve never been too excited about it because the Florida legislature
would have sent Bush electors no matter what, so there is no way Gore could have
won.
Maybe so, but would that not be “changing the rules after the election”—expressly prohibited in Title 3 of the United States Code, Section 5? That is the section that the U.S. Supreme Court said was not violated by the Florida Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.
Would it not have been better for us all if the U.S. Congress had been forced to choose between two slates of electors—one chosen by the people and the other chosen by the legislature? The Supreme Court saved Congress that "messiness" by usurping ever more power for itself in its indefensible decision.
It’s a well known fact that
Dade, Broward, and West Palm Beach have the most corrupt elections in the U. S.
and have since the Metro vote in the mid-50's
It’s also a well known fact that Nixon was a great foreign policy president, but that does not make it true. Republicans said many times during the aftermath of the 2000 election that “Democrats have ALWAYS stolen elections.” If that is the way Republicans have felt, why have they not exposed the wrongdoing? Why have they not urged us all to work with them to fix the problems and to make elections fair?
Could it be so that they could use supposed lawbreaking by others as an excuse to break the law themselves? And a justification in their own minds for doing so?
From a “good” GE employee:
Wow....an amazing, if fatally
flawed and inaccurate picture of both Jack Welch and the company.
As a former television reporter and as a confirmed liberal, it offends me
that you would concoct such tripe that purports to be journalism.
Al Gore didn't get many breaks, but there isn't a conspiracy here.
Sorry that your friend isn't still working at NBC News.
I have tremendous faith in the integrity of Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert,
Andrea Mitchell and my other colleagues there.
Good luck peddling this nonsense.
You've added 2+2 and gotten 0.
In the case of Mitchell, her reports alleging
vandalism of the White House and burglarizing of Air Force One by departing
Clinton aides were proven to be false by a General Accounting Office
investigation requested by Rep. Bob Barr. To this day, she has never retracted
her false claims, or apologized for falsely accusing innocent people of
committing felonies. Your definition of this behavior as "integrity"
lowers the journalistic bar to Nixonian levels.
If your "faith" in Brokaw and
Russert is more than a rhetorical bluff, then contact NBC News president Andrew
Lack and urge him to honor his commitment to send to Rep. Henry Waxman the
in-studio election night videotapes of Welch talking to Brokaw and Russert
immediately before they inaccurately called the election for Welch's favorite
candidate.
If you know facts that refute what we are saying, let us have them.
Although I believe that most of what you are saying about the inside
machinations of Jack Welch are undoubtedly true, your article has little value
other than that of a well written opinion piece if you can't prove it.
Proving the truth is an evolving process—stay tuned. And what is really interesting is that no one is disproving it. We are getting more and more corroboration.
I see what happened to Steve Kangas and James Hatfield and read The
Greatest Vendetta on Earth in Salon and I wonder...aren't you afraid they will
do the same to you? Manipulate your life in such a way that you will be so
depressed you will commit suicide or can be killed with impunity?
One of the paranoid people
Yes, we are very well aware that there may be repercussions over this. We expect that if our message gets out as we hope it will, the corporate henchmen will find everything they can to use against us. These are ugly people, and they do ugly things. All in the name of "democracy." Perhaps our troublemaking genes are overly expressed. We refuse to let them get away with this if there is anything we can do about it.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean there is not someone out to get you.
I am not going to vote at all. Ever.
The supreme court can vote for me.
This is just the time to reaffirm that you will vote, and that you will try to get everyone you know to vote. It is more important than ever. And join Buy Back Our Government.
I read this--and your other articles--and it makes me very depressed. What
hope is there for any truth about Bush EVER coming out?
If the media is corrupt it all seems hopeless.
Keep your chin up. It has to
come out. As Benjamin Franklin
said, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
We have to defeat them. We
have to be smart, and patient, and persistent. We have to try a lot of
things to find out what works. Our republic has never been in such danger, and
it is not from external terrorists
For one thing this plot makes Watergate look like the Ted Mack Amateur
Hour. Unlike Watergate, whose
plotting was the result of a few misguided political operatives and insiders,
this scandal runs much deeper. That
may be good news, because the more people that are involved the more likely it
will be that someone will spill the beans.
Yes, this is both deeper and wider than Watergate--by a long shot. Fortunately, most of the people involved are quite arrogant. And that makes them careless. People are afraid to come forward because of the mighty power of those involved.
The scary part is could this be only the beginning?
If they keep on like this all pretense to democracy will fade away, and I
am afraid of what we'll have then. We
have got to find a way to energize the democrats.
Its hard to believe that, as politicians, they have passed up on knocking
out of the park all the softballs the conservatives and business elite have
unintentionally tossed their way. I
hope the democratic leadership is just weak, as opposed to being in collusion
All of your statements are correct, and yes, the Democrats have no guts. We believe that the only way we are going to get justice for all the wrongdoing that took place in Florida and elsewhere before and during the 2000 election is to elect many more politicians who are beholden to us ordinary folks instead of to corporate CEOs. And we can best accomplish that goal by forming an organization like Buy Back Our Government.
I've concluded that most Americans wouldn't recognize Democracy these days if they saw it. Now, it's all about "winning" by whatever means. Too many have lost the sense that we're all Americans together, and that rights they deprive others of today could be the rights they lose tomorrow. Keep up the good work. I despair for our country, but we can't give up.
What is worse is that so many people agree that big corporations should not be able to do what they are doing, but seem to believe that we can not do anything about it. Or that we have no right to do anything about it. Buy Back Our Government can overcome these limitations.
As we said earlier, stay tuned…
