Rating: 
Summary: Whither our democracy?
Review: In the months leading up to the 2000 election, Palast broke the news that in Florida thousands of registered voters-mostly Democratic-leaning African-Americans-were being wrongly deleted from the voting roles, ostensibly because they were convicted felons. In fact, most weren't, but the Republicans in charge of Florida's election system did nothing to right this blatantly partisan and shamefully anti-democratic "mistake." Yet an even greater crime was that US media showed no interest in the story-Palast had to go to the English <em>Guardian</em> to publish his piece. Even during the post-election wrangling over the Florida result, with so much hanging on a few hundred votes, the American media ignored the tens of thousands of Floridians who were turned away from the polls on election day.
As Palast makes painfully clear in this powerful book, the Florida debacle is just the tip of the huge money-grubbing, lie-spinning, self-enrichening sleaze-berg that has taken control of our political system. He goes on to rake through the muck of Bush family ties to the Saudi royal family; fat cat machinations of the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF; the barely-legal dealings of pharmaceutical companies; and, in a now especially prescient chapter, the Enronization of US energy policy, which brought power shortages to California and the great blackout of `03 to the Northeast.Palast's most gripping message is that American democracy is suffering a death of a thousand well-financed blows. Power in America has almost nothing to do with counting votes, and everything to do with counting money. The "checks and balances" of Jefferson and Madison have given way to the checks of corporate lobbyists boosting the balances of our so-called representatives. Most of the mainstream media is on the take. Fortunately, Greg Palast is on the case.
Rating:
Summary: An inside look and what American's don't see in the news
Review: Greg Palast covers everything from the 2000 bought election with documentation and a "twisted" comment from K. Harris from Florida. Not only is this book a page turner. Palast shows on every page how the big corperations and cons are out to hide the truth and their dirty dealings without every being caught.
It is unfortunte that such a gifted jouranlist has to write in England when he should be over in American settling the score with the Bush Adminstration and the people about what REALLY goes on such as the bought election, global cons, Bush and Saudi's. This is book is not only worth reading once, but over and over again. One of the best quotes in the book other then President Bush being in the "too dumb to fly" in the Texas Airguard. (He missed that by 1 point, for a good laugh) was "George W. Bush was born with a silver oil well in his mouth.....". I would highly suggest reading this book! I didn't cover everything but everything you need to know or wanted to know about the title is in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Intrepid Investigative Journalism - Poor Writing Skills
Review: Palast's findings are quite disturbing and will certainly shake any man's confidence in carte blanche market capitalism, checks and balances between government and industry, and the American political machine. America would be a better (at least more infomed place) were its citizens to inform themselves of findings like his. It's an eye opening read. HOWEVER - Palast could sure use a writing coach. He should save the editorializing for another genre. His research sufficiently supports the conclusions that he draws. There is little need for his gratuituous "pseudo-witty" comments. Keep the prose professional - you're writing, Mr Palast, will be many times cogent and persuasive if you do.
Rating: 
Summary: Keep your eyes on the global elite
Review: No matter where your political or religious affiliations may fall, the information in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" affects everyone in the United States and elsewhere. It looks like the global elite (the IMF, the World Bank and WTO, etc.) and those who control the monetary standard of life leave no stone unturned in their evil plans to control the world, and they show no remorse for its adverse effects on the common populace. This is highly recommended reading and a book that every world citizen should own.
Rating:
Summary: Keep your eyes on the global elite
Review: No matter where your political or religious affiliations may fall, the information in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" affects everyone in the United States and elsewhere. It looks like the global elite (the IMF, the World Bank and WTO, etc.) and those who control the monetary standard of life leave no stone unturned in their evil plans to control the world, and they show no remorse for its adverse effects on the common populace. This is highly recommended reading and a book that every American should own.
Rating:
Summary: Great. but typos, repetitive style, & 1 glaring error .
Review: Palast's book and work is awesome, no doubt 'bout that. But he could have used the help of another editor... plus, there's one glaring error in the book: in it he says George Schultz was Secretary of State under Nixon. He held that job under Reagan; in fact, under Nixon he was Treasury Secretary. But otherwise, awesome, simply stunning.
Rating:
Summary: a wake-up call for America
Review: I'm only on page 115 of this book, but it was well worth the cost up to this point. In fact I plan to buy more copies for friends and relatives. I had moved on from the Florida election escapades and put it out of my mind as a bad experience that surely won't be repeated. This book has snapped me out of that dangerous mindset. It erased any fraction of a doubt I may have had about whether and how much manipulation goes on behind the scenes to control as much of our lives as possible. We must all maintain an awareness of what is going on if we are to survive as a Democracy...or should I say, RESTORE our Democracy.
THIS BOOK SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING IN HIGH SCHOOL.
Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opener
Review: Great investigative reports on various political, economic, and religious national and international topics. Names such as John F. Kennedy, Bush family, Pinochet of Chile, Pat Robertson of the 700 Club, Ken Lay of Enron, Putin, Clinton, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and others are mentioned and discussed. This book tends to give more focus to the Republican's policies, but it also discusses the Democrat's mischievous ways. All in all, after reading this book I understand better why I don't support the dual party system that we have in the US (both parties are sell-outs to big money corporations and special interest lobbyists) and why I support third & fourth party independent candidates.
Rating:
Summary: Capitalism: the new theocracy; global return to Middle Ages
Review: "I 'debriefed' Stiglitz over several days--at Cambridge University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington during a big confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in April 2001...The ultimate insider was now on the outside. In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz... US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I'm told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz's having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank-style...In Washington [Stiglitz and I] talked about the real often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank and the bank's 51 percent owner, the US Treasury..." Greg Palast
THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY
From Chapter Four: "Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree" When one reads past the first chapter that uncovers both the total sham of our last election and the corrupt nature of the American press in BEST DEMOCRACY by Greg Palast, you suffer the feelings of total outrage and deep-seated grief at what our country the USA has actually become. But long before you finish the book you will realize the bitter irony in the mesage of the religious fundamnetalists and their patient wait for the second coming: the anti-Christ is actually the patron saint of their beliefs, AND AS SUCH HE IS HERE. "Mary Frances Betty, chairperson of the US Civil Rights Commission, said the real horror of the 2000 election was not the vote count that so transfixed our media, but what she calls 'the no-count'--THE MEANS OF KEEPING CITIZENS FROM VOTING OR HAVING THEIR BALLOTS VOIDED. And Florida used more than the voter purge in their 'no-count' bag of tricks. In February 2001, I found a doozy...In a preidential race decided by 537 votes, Florida simply DID NOT COUNT 179,855 ballots. And whether your vote counted depended a lot on your color... The adjoining county, [predominantly black] Gadsden, also had machine-read paper ballots (as the ballots in predominantly white county Sancho, where the ballots with mistakes were mechanically shot back into the voter's hands), BUT DID NOT ACTIVATE [the voting machine's] REJECT MECHANISM...As the Tallahassee official demonstrated to me, whether a ballot was counted or not had almost nothing to do with the voter's education or sophistication--but an awful lot to do with the type of machine deployed AND HOW THE BUTTONS WERE SET." From Chapter Two:
"Jim Crow in Cyberspace" Greg Palast documents for all who have the courage to face it the truth about Globilization, and the powerful political/economic forces that are bringing it to fruition in the modern world. In so doing he reveals the cult of the right-wing that is currently in power internationally, masquerading as fiscal/social conservatives, such that the entire field of economics is shown to be the new World Religions of our era, ushering in a neo-feudal age of worldwide subjugation. Indeed, economic structures are now religions that either rise to the potential of man and community, thereby healing millions, or devolve to destructive cults benefiting only its leaders--as is currently being done in America, and around the world. The sickness of the far-right and both their economic theories and practices are shown in ever-increasing technicolor. Palast in fact shows us, with massive documented proof, that absolutely none of its theories of how the new globalized economy will benefit all of mankind have ever been proven correct. Most in fact have been historically proven to be inherently destructive to all but the five percent of the controlling body who invented them. He simultaneously shows how all of the methods to bring them into fruition have been exposed to be deeply immoral. The right wing is seemingly out to prove, in a post-communist ironic fashion, that Marx was right in every conceivable way possible with a shameless vengence. The cancer this becomes to everything from investigative journalism, to the quality of music on the radio, to culture and democracy itself, from the small towns of Chile to the streets of San Francisco and New York, will only hurt your heart to see through his well documented evidence. I became a fan of Palast through his entry in the powerful book INTO THE BUZZSAW, by Christina Borjesson, documenting what journalists are put through by big business. This surpasses it in both quality and importance. It begins with the proof of how the Bush family effectively subverted democracy and stole the 2000 presidential election. It also in later chapters explains the train wreck that is the Chilean economy--and how it ironically, despite its obiovus failure via right wing laissez-faire economic principles, became the Valhalla/Jerusalem of the Chicago School of Economics free-market capitalist myths, invented by right-wing intellectuals and purveyed by political leaders from Reagan and Thatcher to Bush and Tony Blair (the first true sign and hard evidence that we are dealing with a cult), and on and on. This book, like one published reviewer said, would be the journalistic standard and would all by itself bring down corrupt governments--IF WE WERE ACTUALLY LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY. Read this quickly, before the book in its entirety is censored the way the individual stories in it were censored by the corporate media in America.
Rating:
Summary: ... "Freedom from Want and Fear" ... INDEED !!!
Review: ... Greg Palast ends this excellent book with a little story about the medals won by his war-hero dad in World War Two. One of those medals had the following motto written on the back of it: "Freedom from Want and Fear." This same motto could suitably serve as a stand-in for one of the guiding, founding principles of our nation, as Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in The Declaration of Independence: the right to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Thomas Jefferson's famous words would, indeed, seem to encapsulate the motto on the back of Greg's dad's heroically won medal. But, what do these words mean - "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," and "Freedom from Want and Fear" - really? Different people read different meanings into them. ... Here's what I think Greg Palast thinks they mean: I think they mean that the freedom FROM want is just as important as the freedom to DO; that the freedom to live without FEAR is just as important as the freedom to live in LIBERTY; and that a life that is free from WANT and FEAR is a life that can more fully achieve the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS. I think they mean that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" cannot be truly achieved at the EXPENSE of others, only through the free will and free cooperation of others. THIS is the difference between the truly PATRIOTIC and CONSERVATIVE interpretation of these wise words and the modern, neo-liberal, "compassionate conservative" twist and spin on these sacred words. I, myself, prefer to stick with Thomas Jefferson's meaning, thank you. ... Greg gets deep into a lot of information that never saw the light of day in the major news media of this country - and he explains why. ... Show me where the grave of Che Guevara is dug, so I can lay a flower there! Who do these multinational millionaires think they're kidding? Do they think we're all stupid? All afraid? All so apathetic and self-concerned - or totally tired and wasted from trying to make ends meet in this KLEPTOCRACY they have developed - that we have no time left to care at all about our common fate? The class war that continues in this country from before the founding of the republic and before the Demopublicans and Republicrats gained so much power over our lives during the last four Trilateral Presidencies ( Ford, Carter, Reagan-Bush, and Clinton) is a war over WHO will have the right to live a life of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" - only the elite, or ALL of us. I was born in the COMMONWEALTH of Massachusetts. As far as I am concerned, that word implies that the wealth is held in COMMON, for the good of us all. After reading this book, it is quite clear that Greg Palast is a true, American Patriot who feels exactly the same way. ... YOWZA! - The Aeolian Kid
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