Listen to the Monitor - Enron trial. Andrew Gumbel on election theft

[SophieZ]

It's your world. Understand it!
April 2, 2006: The Monitor


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ARCHIVES
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<> 6:00 pm CST -- HEADLINES

<> ~ 6:10 pm CST -- KPFT Local News reporter Lisa Cohen on the Enron trial


Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling (1998)


Lisa Cohen is a KPFT Local News reporter who interviewed authors, activists, and ambassadors before becoming KPFT's Enron trial correspondent. A longtime Houstonian with a background in political science and law, she is the only radio journalist in the courtroom daily for US v. Skilling and Lay.

Lisa will catch us up with the trial, which has run 9 weeks so far in downtown Houston. The federal prosecutors have closed their case, and the defense is about to launch its case. Both Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay are expected to testify on their own behalf, with Skilling expected on the stand as soon as next Wednesday or Thursday.

Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson has a special interest in Enron, having spent a year doing research on it, including work for the book Power Failure by Mimi Swartz with Sherron Watkins.

Add'l Recommended Book:
The Smartest Guys in the Room, by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind

Recommended Video:
ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room


<> ~ 6:35 pm CST -- ANDREW GUMBEL reviews the history of American stolen elections



Andrew Gumbel is a U.S. correspondent for the London newspaper The Independent. Based in Los Angeles, he is the author of Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Nation Books), in which he documents countless elections stolen by nearly countless methods. Publishers Weekly calls the book a "a riveting and frightening account" of election fraud in America from the 18th century to the present.

Before coming to the United States, Gumbel was stationed mainly in Europe and covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc, the Yugoslav wars of secession, the rise of the prototype corporate media mogul turned politician, Silvio Berlusconi, and the swinging democratic fortunes of post-Hoxha Albania. He also writes the award-winning American Babylon column for the alternative Los Angeles weekly LA CityBeat.

BOOK:
Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America


HOST: Pokey Anderson.

TIPS or COMMENTS:
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ARCHIVES of the past 60 days are now at:
http://archive.kpft.org Just look for MONITOR and the date of the show, and you can listen or download for later.

March 26
-- acclaimed investigative reporter SEYMOUR HERSH: September 11 to Iraq (part two)
-- ION SANCHO, Florida election official who invited a hack team to test his election machines. They waltzed right in and stole the test election. Also, a clip from Finnish computer expert Harri Hursti, telling how he did it.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Yeah, well, I've seen this argument: It's always been rigged--

used to deflect the extraordinary danger of GUARANTEED fascist election, via rightwing Bushite corporations gaining control of the entire nation's vote 'tabulation' with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. Electronic voting with secret code can accomplish the change of millions of votes, at the speed of light, leaving no trace. No human eye can see it. There is no concrete evidence.

You're not going to find the ballot box in the river, to even START an investigation. You are going to (and have) seen NOTHING.

And, really, the only proof you need for GUARANTEED fascist election is what Bush and his criminal gang and his "pod people" Congress have been doing, with a 30% approval rating. Bush openly committing felonies and Bushites defending him. FEMA in shambles. Nothing done. Utter disaster in Iraq. No plan in sight. $8 trillion deficit, and not a breath of a suggestion of the slightest cut in numerous tax breaks for the super-rich. Thousands more jobs downsized and outsourced every day, and not a word from the president or cronies. Policy after policy in outright contradiction of the views of most Americans. And trotting out "illegal immigration" as the "gay marriage" of the '06 elections (post-election 'talking point' to explain the Bushites' impossible comeback victories, compliments of Diebold and ES&S).

No checks and balances. War profiteering corporate news monopoly exit polls cannot be trusted. Supreme Court in Bush's pocket. And the guaranteed 'endorsement of the American people' by means of "trade secret" vote tabulation.

There is no chance for a correction of course. There is no way to influence what occurs in Washington DC. This is not just dirty elections. This is not just rigged elections (which, you may notice, we now KNOW were rigged, because there was EVIDENCE). This is not just stuffed ballot boxes. This is not just corrupt campaign money, and corporate control of political debate.

This is tyranny. This is what it looks like. Nothing.

The danger to this democracy is NOW. And it is THIS: "trade secret" proprietary vote tabulation controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, in collusion with the war profiteering corporate news monopolies who, in 2004, FALSIFED their exit polls (Kerry won) to FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won), thus denying the American people major evidence of election fraud; and with the collusion of too many corrupt or fearful people in the Democratic Party leadership.

We are in very, very great danger--with no course correction possible. This is UNPRECEDENTED, I don't care how many stuffed ballot boxes you cite from the past. At least they had ballots. At least they had boxes. At least they had a CHANCE to expose the fraud and catch the perps. And we worked HARD as a country to stop that kind of fraud, to have honest vote counting and enfranchisement of all citizens. With the "Hack America's Vote Act," engineered by the two biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, all of that has been overturned.

We have NO accountability, and NO checks and balances, in our election system. They are gone!

[Stevepol]

2. They may have falsified the exit poll data, but the real data isn't gone.

NEDA, Nat'l Election Data Archive (uscountvotes.org), along with many others, has the data, which was accurate up to 1:30am as most DU-ers know, and Mitofsky admits the data up to that time was not re-calibrated and that it was impossible for those exit poll data and the election results (funneled in from cyber space) to have both happened together by chance. In other words, either the polls or the election was fraudulent.

NEDA is still working on this and I believe they deserve the support of DU-ers. Presently they're trying to show that the latest theories being floated by Mitofsky and his statistician cohorts (explaining how the discrepancies could have happened as a result of faulty exit polling I presume) are bunk. Mitofsky et al. are presenting before some statisticians I think and NEDA could use some money to make the trip for the Numbers Fight at the OK Corral. Inquire about it or go to the uscountvotes web site and if you think it's worth spending a few rubles, send some their way.

Steve Freeman's book is coming out soon too I think, some time this summer. By that time, maybe it will create a little stir, tho it's anybody's guess if that will actually happen given the moribund MSM. It should have happened two years ago.

Incidentally, I agree with you totally Peace Patriot. Stay well. I think we have to learn to laugh sometimes too at what is so ridiculous and outrageous it boggles the mind. It's been said that for those who feel, life is a tragedy; for those who think, it's a comedy. We have to laugh to keep from crying.

[nicknameless]

3. Thank you Peace.

[kster]

4. KR.nt

[nicknameless]

5. K&R. I haven't had a chance to listen, but Andrew Gumbel is great at

shredding those committing election fraud in his City Beat columns.

[Peace Patriot]

6. I don't mean to dis Andrew Gumbel in any way. Haven't heard him.

Haven't read his stuff. Will make a point of doing so.

I'm just touchy on the "it's always rigged" meme--because I've seen it misused--and our country is in incredible danger from these machines and those who put them in place.

GOOD SUGGESTION: Go to UScountvotes.org and DONATE. People doing fabulous work, helping save this country--unsung heroes!

If we have any hope of catching the perps THIS TIME, UScountvotes is taking the right approach for that goal.

I didn't mean to say there is no evidence of 2004 election fraud. There is an overwhelming mountain of it. But the vote tabulation itself was NON-TRANSPARENT, either no record at all, or largely inaccessible records, and no access whatever to the secret programming code. Outrageous!

[BeFree]

7. Hey, Peace Patriot

What ever shyness you may have about starting a thread - get over it already. (grin)

Your words need to be front and center for all to read and not hidden in the bowels of threads, so please, consider starting some threads here. I'm sure others feel the same, right people?

[nicknameless]

8. I didn't think you were dissing Gumbel. I thought you were being critical

of the inclusion of incidents of voter fraud, prior to the introduction of these dastardly machines, in current discussions of MASSIVE voter disenfranchisement by the e-voting machines and vendors. I agree completely with your previous post. That's why I thanked you for it. No ballot box stuffers could ever come close to the crime wave that's being perpetrated against us now.


Here are a couple of Gumbel's articles. The one about Mischelle Townsend is quite a jaw-dropper.

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1013&IssueNum=55
“DOWN FOR THE COUNT”

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1652&IssueNum=88
WHEN REGISTRARS ATTACK!

(Edited to clean up a sloppy sentence)

[Zan_of_Texas]

9. Listen on archive.

Real One works well. Or, download for later.

Gumbel starts about 35 minutes in. Goes about 20 minutes.

http://archive.kpft.org -- scroll down to MONITOR, April 2.