[wordup] The best democracy money can buy

[Adam Shand]

Via: John P. McDaniel <jpmcdaniel at home.com>
From: http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Palast120100/palast120100.html

Best democracy money can buy - Gregory Palast examines the sources of the
$500m that boosted Bush's bid for the White House

Sunday, November 26, 2000

Last week, I mailed my overseas ballot for the US presidency -- and you
can wipe that smug little grin off your face. I won't put up with
condescending comments about America's democratic rituals from a nation
with an unelected House of Lords occupied by genetic fossils and, soon,
Chris Woodhead.

In fact, you could think of the $3 billion spent in the US campaign in
positive, New Labour terms. Call it 'the efficient privatisation of the
democracy' -- though an outright auction for the presidency would be more
efficient still.

If the guy who lost the vote, George W Bush, nevertheless wins the White
House, he'll have surfed in on a crushing wave of nearly half a billion
dollars ($447 million), my calculation of the suffocating plurality of
cash from corporate America, a good 25 per cent more than Al Gore's take.

George W could not have amassed this pile if his surname were Jones or
Smith. The key to Dubya's money empire is Daddy Bush's post-White House
work which, incidentally, raised the family's net worth by several hundred
per cent.

Take two packets of payments to the Republican Party, totalling $148,000,
from an outfit called Barrick Goldstrike. That's quite a patriotic
contribution from a Canadian company. They can afford it. In 1992, in the
final hours of the Bush presidency, Barrick took control of US
government-owned property containing an estimated $10bn in gold. For the
whole shooting match, Barrick paid the US Treasury only $10,000.

Barrick made deft use of an 1872 gold rush law meant to allow
pan-and-bucket prospectors to gain title to their tiny claims. In 1992,
Clinton's newly elected administration was ready to prevent Barrick's
stunning grab. But Barrick is a lucky outfit. Bush's Interior Department
expedited procedures to ram through Barrick's claim stake before Clinton's
inauguration.

Ex-Pres George Bush was lucky, too. When the electorate booted him from
the White House, he landed softly - on the Barrick Goldstrike payroll,
where he comfortably nested until last year.

Who is Barrick? Its founder, Peter Munk, made his name in Canada in the
1950s as the figure in an infamous insider stock-trading scandal. Munk
headed a small speaker manufacturer that went belly-up, just after he sold
his stock. This is not quite the expected pedigree for an international
minerals mogul.

If we look in the shadows behind Munk we can see the more accomplished
player who provided the capital to set up Barrick - Saudi arms dealer
Adnan Khashoggi.

During Bush's presidency, Khashoggi was identified as conduit in the
Iran-Contra conspiracy. He had already run into trouble with US lawmen
when, in 1986, he was arrested and charged -- but not convicted -- of
fraud. He was bailed out of the New York prison by Munk, who provided the
$4m bond. Bush performed an even bigger favour for Khashoggi: as his last
act in office, the president pardoned Khashoggi's alleged co-conspirators,
key members of Bush's own cabinet. As a result, no case could be made
against Khashoggi.

In 1996, a geologist prospecting in Indonesia, Mike de Guzman, announced
his discovery of the world's richest gold field. Munk rapidly deployed his
president. Bush, on behalf of Barrick, contacted officials of the former
dictator Suharto who were in control of mining concessions. Thereafter, De
Guzman's company was told it would have to turn over 68 per cent of its
claim to Barrick.

Barrick didn't have long to gloat. Jim-Bob Moffett, the tough, old,
Louisiana swamp dog who heads Freeport-McMoRan Mining, had a private
meeting with his old benefactor Suharto. At the end of the meeting,
Jim-Bob and the dictator stood on the steps of the presidential palace to
announce that Freeport-McMoRan would replace Barrick. (Ironically, Barrick
lucked it again. The gold find was a hoax. After Jim-Bob learnt he'd been
suckered, his company invited geologist De Guzman to talk it over. Sadly,
on way to the meeting, De Guzman fell out of a helicopter.)

While Mr Munk's president did not pay the cost of his rental in Indonesia,
Bush could redeem himself in Africa. In 1996, as genocide in Rwanda
fomented civil war in Zaire, Barrick smelt opportunity. We have learnt
that, at that time, Bush spoke with his old golfing buddy, Mobutu Sese
Seko (then dictator of Zaire) about diamond concessions.

I don't know what ex-CIA director Bush told the panicked dictator, but we
do know that Mobutu granted Barrick exclusive rights to mine gold in
north-west Zaire.

Maybe Bush talked about Barrick's mining experience in neighbouring
Tanzania where, according to Amnesty International, Barrick's subsidiary
carried out 'extra-judicial killings'. Amnesty reports that 50 independent
miners who refused to move off the Barrick unit's concession were buried
alive in the pits by company bulldozers. Barrick denies the allegations.

Beyond Barrick, Daddy Bush has many other friends who filled up his
sonny-boy's campaign kitty while Bush performed certain lucrative favours
for them. In 1998, Bush pe`re created a storm in Argentina when he lobbied
his close political ally President Carlos Menem to grant a gambling
licence to Mirage Casino corporation.

Bush wrote that he had no personal interest in the deal. That's true. But
Bush fils did not do badly. After the casino flap, Mirage dropped $449,000
into the Republican Party war chest.

The ex-president and famed Desert Strormtrooper-in-Chief, also wrote to
the oil minister of Kuwait on behalf of Chevron Oil Corporation. Bush says
honestly that he, 'had no stake in the Chevron operation'.

Following this selfless use of his influence, the oil company put $657,000
into Republican Party coffers. Most of that loot, reports the Center for
Responsive Politics, came in the form of 'soft money' That's the squishy
stuff corporations use to ooze around US law which, you may be surprised
to learn, prohibits any donations to presidential campaigns in the general
election.

Not all of the elder Bush's work is voluntary. His single talk to the
board of Global Crossing, the telecoms start-up, earned him $13m in stock.
The company also kicked in another million for his kid's run.

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not
have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons
putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas of US church
leaders, Daddy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk)
sponsored by organisations run by Rev Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax
cheat -- and formerly, the guest of the US federal prison system.

There are so many more tales of the Bush family daisy chain of favours,
friendship and campaign funding. None of it is illegal -- which I find
troubling. But I don't want to seem ungrateful. After all, the Bushes
helped make America the best democracy money can buy.

Blackout in Florida

Vice-President Al Gore would have strolled to victory in Florida if the
state hadn't kicked 12,000 citizens off the voters' registers five month
ago as former felons.

In fact, only a fraction were ex-cons. Most were simply guilty of being
African-American. While 8,000 of those disenfranchised went through the
legal rigmarole of getting on to the voting list, the rest -- enough to
have won the state for Gore - did not.

A top-placed election official (not a Democrat) told me that the
government had conducted a quiet review and found -- surprise! -- that the
listing included far more African-Americans than would statistically have
been expected, even accounting for the grievous gap between the conviction
rates of blacks and whites in the US.

The source of this poisonous blacklist: Database Technologies, a division
of ChoicePoint, and hired by Governor Jeb Bush's frothingly partisan
Secretary of State, Katherine Harris. My thanks to investigator Solomon
Hughes for informing me that DBT is a division of ChoicePoint. Under fire
for mis-use of personal data in state computers, ChoicePoint founder Rick
Rozar made a strategic six-figure soft cash donation to the Republican
Party.

Investigative reporter Gregory Palast writes 'Inside Corporate America' in
the Observer, the Sunday paper of the Guardian of London, where this first
appeared. Contact gregory.palast at guardian.co.uk for comments or reprints.
(c) Guardian Media.

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