Saturday, October 26, 2013

Greg Palast — Naughty Nuns, Bad Bankers and Ballot Bandits

On May 6, 2008, 12 fraudulent voters, dressed as nuns, attempted to cast ballots in the presidential primary in Indiana.
Luckily, ten of them were caught, stopped cold by Indiana's new voter photo ID law. The law had been found to be constitutional by Federal Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
It turns out the nuns that Posner's ruling turned away were, in fact, nuns. All the sisters had photo driver's licenses, but they had expired (the licenses, not the nuns). The Sisters of the Holy Cross, had, mercifully, given up driving (they were pushing 90 years of age. 
It was a cute story that ran nationwide. What wasn't so cute, and ran nowhere in the US press, was that 72,000 black voters were blocked at the polls by this Posner-blessed photo ID law.
It was Posner's decision that first allowed states to return to the Jim Crow vote suppression tactics that we thought had vanished with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
In his newly released autobiography, the aging Posner, hearing the wings of mortality and the gavel of Judgment Day coming down, admits that he was stone cold wrong. Posner now concedes that that the voter ID rule was a Republican partisan ploy in intent and viciously racist in practice.
Posner, seeking forgiveness, says it wasn't his fault. He wasn't "really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disfranchise people [who are] entitled to vote."
Sorry, your Honor, you're still going straight to Hell. For fibbing.
Read on. Palast takes University of Chicago law professor and US appeals court judge Richard Posner appointed by Ronald Reagan apart at the seams. Palast received a bachelor's degree from University of Chicago and also a master's in business administration."Palast majored in economics at Chicago from the advice of a Weather Underground member he met at Berkeley who suggested Palast "familiarize himself with right-wing politics and learn about the 'ruling elite' from 'the inside.'" (Wikipedia)

2 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

We need more Greg Palasts.

Tom Hickey said...

Greg Palast is Hunter S. Thompson's successor in gonzo journalism, and Matt Taibbi is probably in first place to step into Thompson and Palast's gum shoes. They are investigative reporters with flare that personalize their work with emotion, humor, and sometimes pretty outrageous tactics.

I. F. Stone's successor, on the other hand, is Seymour Hersh. But Hersh is 76 now and it's not clear who is going to be his successor at the top of the chain in deeply researched investigative reporting. Stone and Hersh are almost academic in their approach, and they have been acclaimed as first-class public intellectuals.

Need both styles.