Reply #207: Wilms, I have just one question for you below...

[autorank]

Will you respond to the key points in this message, the underlined points. Leave out the Land Shark, autorank, whomever comments and respond to Greg Palast. It's right here for your convenience.

Thank you for a cogent response to ChoicePoint's latest smear tactics. When ChoicePoint pays Republicans, progressives are up in arms over the conflicts. But when, through cut-outs, they pay a so-called voter protection group, Rove's excuses come out of activists' lips. Shame. Shame. Shame.

And the effect followed the cash: After taking loot from the wife of the CEO of ChoicePoint, VoteTrustUSA's executive immediately ran to the defense of ChoicePoint's ill-making role in wrongly purging African-Americans from Florida Voter rolls. The company testified their executives KNEW the list used by the state included, in their own words, "those who are not felons" ... that is, they watched thousands lose their civil rights, an election stolen, and pocketed the millions.

Arguably, ChoicePoint, because of its culpable knowledge, had more to do with the attack on civil rights and the theft of the 2000 election than Jeb Bush.

I don't mind debating with ChoicePoint (which they refuse to do); but I'll be damned if I will tolerate smears from one of their paid hand puppets smearing my investigative reports while wearing the purloined mantle of voter protection. VoteTrustUSA has violated the public's trust.

This is not the first time ChoicePoint has purchased protection from pretend voter activists. In 2000, their cover was a group called Voter Integrity Project. What we have here is a case of old tricks with new dogs.

I would welcome a public discussion with ChoicePoint executives, especially about my new findings released in my latest book, Armed Madhouse. But they refuse to speak with me on the record. In one of their weirder faints, the company demanded the right to defend themselves on the Randi Rhodes show on condition I not be in the studio. Randi agred -- and placed me in a glass booth just OUTSIDE the studio.

Mrs. Curling's money may not influence VoteTrustUSA. Likewise, Lockheed's payments to Mrs. Cheney may not have influenced our Vice-President. Nevertheless, these marital joint political accounts are the essence of conflict of interest. But the fact that policies and positions quickly align with the cash leaves the uncomfortable impression that Trust can be bought.

Greg Palast
www.GregPalast.com