Greg Palast

"Steel was strong, but the truth is cold, He sold out the workers for a bar of gold." This song, which was created by the Thom Hartmann Program, was inspired by Greg Palast's latest article for the Hartmann Report,The Great American Tariff Scam — read it here.   The Great American Tariff Scam Lyrics   [Verse 1] He stood in a mill with his red tie tight Told the boys in hard hats, “I’ll stand and fight” But behind that grin and the photo flash Was a deal with the devil and a payday stash Steel was strong, but the truth is cold He sold out the workers for a bar of gold Laid off in Gary, gone in Duluth While the billionaires laughed in their tailored suits [Chorus] 🎶 It’s the Great American Tariff Scam A fist full of promises, a smoke screen sham Jobs fall down while the prices climb And the ones who get rich are the friends of the crime He said “I’m here to help,” then he took what he can— That’s the Great American Tariff Scam 🎶 [Verse 2] Steel rolls rustin’ by the railroad track While Wall Street wolves keep slappin’ our backs They killed the deal that could save the plant Now the furnaces cool and the wages slant Imports rise with a tariff tax Domestic jobs? Ain’t comin’ back From cars to cables, we all pay more While they cheer from behind their private doors [Chorus] 🎶 It’s the Great American Tariff Scam Wrapped in a flag with a glory cam He blocks the fix and blames the flame Says “I’m the hero!”—but he lit the game He’s the arsonist in a fireman’s van— That’s the Great American Tariff Scam 🎶 [Bridge] He said, “I’m here for the working man” But he hands the loot to the richest hands From Nippon Steel to the union hall It’s always the worker that takes the fall [Verse 3] Now the ladle’s dry and the silence loud As the union boys stand heads unbowed They know the truth from the spin and smoke From every empty promise that the huckster spoke [Final Chorus] 🎶 It’s the Great American Tariff Scam With a hard hat lie and a photo glam The jobs went south, the truth went cold But he sold you pride like it’s solid gold Steel don’t bend, but a worker can— In the Great American Tariff Scam 🎶 [Outro – spoken over a slow fade] “Praise me,” he said, “I stopped the fire.” But he was the one with the gasoline and the lighter. Subscribe to The Hartmann Report.  

Don't count on government or political parties to save your vote.  You need to get active. Learn more at: GregPalast.com Support independent journalism, buy Greg a coffee!

You can ignore Trump slyly hinting to the Lord’s chosen that he just might call off the next election. But don’t ignore this: Trump won’t be calling off the election because he doesn’t have to. The Fix for 26 is already in. “Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.” The Republican plan is to win next year’s election this year. Yes, the voting will be bent, jacked and hammered this year, 2025, one year before the official voting. Find out how. Listen to this Election Crimes Bulletin and read my latest report at: GregPalast.com Support independent journalism, buy Greg a coffee!    

The Asian American community is the fastest growing voter group in America. Since the last presidential election, 2 million more Asian Americans have become eligible to vote. There are now 15 million potential Asian American voters. When you look at swing states, like Georgia, there are 328,000 Asian Americans eligible to vote in Georgia. That's the state that Biden won by less than 12,000 votes. And there’s almost 1.1 million Asian Americans in Texas.  If they are allowed to vote, Texas turns blue.  It's also a young demographic, and Asian Americans tend to vote three quarters Democratic. So, the GOP's doing everything that they can to crush the Asian American vote. It is racism by statistics. ▶️ Get the full story at GregPalast.com

Let's stop counting Biden's brain cells, and start counting vigilantes. This election is going to be a Vote Suppression Bacchanalia — I’ve never seen anything like it. Mark Elias, who's considered the number one voting rights attorney these days, has said it’s is a virus coming out of Georgia. And it is. Before the last election we found that under a little-noticed provision of Georgia’s 2021 voting restriction law, SB202, 88 GOP operatives had filed challenges to block a breathtaking 180,000 voters from having their ballots counted. One woman alone had challenged a staggering 32,379 voters in Cobb County. This new Georgia law circumvented restrictions on states removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election, by allowing individuals to challenge an unlimited number of voters. And now this vigilante vote challenge tactic is spreading to other swing states. The organization that created the challenge lists is a group out of Texas called True the Vote. In Georgia in 2022, when they first launched this vigilante game, they had 88 vigilante vote challengers, now they have an army of 44,000 operating in battleground states across the US.   But understand where this vigilante voter challenge scheme comes from. The Ku Klux Klan created this system in 1946 when they incorporated themselves as Vigilantes Inc. According to the FBI, the Klan challenged every single black voter in many counties in Georgia. And it worked. The Klan got their chief strategist, Eugene Talmadge, elected governor.  Here's the strange thing... In 1946 — before the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act — Harry Truman's FBI was about to arrest Talmadge for leading this mass attack on Black voters, but days before they were going to arrest him, Talmadge drank himself to death. So, it was illegal in 1946, and now we have the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Civil Rights Act, and somehow mass challenges of voters of color are perfectly fine with our federal courts?!? The NAACP and Reverend Jesse Jackson, of Rainbow PUSH, have begged Biden to sign an executive order to stop these vigilante vote challenges. They're a clear violation of federal law, even without the Voting Rights Act. They're also a violation of our Constitution. And that's what the FBI under Harry Truman thought — so why isn't the FBI saying the same thing today? It was illegal in 1946, and it ought to be illegal now.    For more on this, subscribe to our newsletter.

The Election Crimes Bulletin is back for the 2024 Election season. In this week's episode we reveal how the Trump plan for 2024 — to use an army of vigilantes to challenge Black voters — is the exact same plan the Klan successfully used to elect Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge  in 1946. Learn more at: GregPalast.com  

35 years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, causing America’s greatest environmental disaster, investigative journalist Greg Palast explains why you shouldn't buy big oil's fable of the drunken captain. Get the full story at: https://www.gregpalast.com/dont-buy-exxons-fable-of-the-drunken-captain-2/

Before Scorsese’s film, before Grann’s book, there was a poem... Osage poet Elise Paschen reads “Wi’-gi-e”, the poem which inspired the title of the book and film, Killers of the Flower Moon. We filmed her special reading of the poem, which she dedicates to Lily Gladstone, who portrays Osage Native Mollie Burkhart in the film. If there is any justice in this world, Gladstone will win the Oscar for Best Actress. It was Elise, co-founder of Poetry in Motion, whose poem is spoken in the voice of Mollie Burkhart, who first brought Mollie’s story to wider attention. (In the film, Mollie’s husband, Ernest Burkhart, is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.)  After you hear Elise, make sure you catch the trailer for our documentary, Long Knife, produced by George DiCaprio and Greg Palast, which brings the story of the Osage up to date, focusing on the Osage Nation’s fight against the thievery of the Brothers Koch. This video was filmed by Battiste Fenwick on the Osage Reservation and edited by Esther Shubinski | @manytrailsproduction. Elise Paschen 's poem “Wi’-gi-e” is published in Bestiary (Red Hen Press, 2009). #KillersOfTheFlowerMoon #ElisePaschen #LilyGladstone #MartinScorsese #LeonardoDiCaprio #AcademyAwards #AcademyAwards2024 #Oscars #Oscars2024

A federal court in Georgia has just ruled that a challenge to 360,000 Georgians’ right to vote—suspiciously targeting Black voters—does not violate the Voting Rights Act. This decision poses a devastating threat to the 2024 election. Judge Steve C. Jones slapped aside the suit brought by Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight against Texas group True the Vote, which had created the hit list of voters. The judge cited “lack of evidentiary support”—but he refused to hear our evidence, which is featured in our film Vigilante. And because the ruling came down from a federal court, True the Vote has a green light to expand its mass challenge of voters to other states including, according to the triumphant group itself, Arizona, Texas and several other swing states. One disastrous decision by the court helped sink Fair Fight’s case.  Fair Fight needed to show that the 80 vigilante challengers relied on True the Votes’ target list. The incriminating evidence was caught on camera and included in our film Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman.  Republican Party official Pam Reardon personally challenged a breathtaking 32,379 voters. Reardon told me, cameras rolling, that she didn’t bother to check any of the info on these voters because she simply took the list from True the Vote.  GOP official Reardon said, “I can’t go through 32,000 people. I was handed the list by True the Vote.” Case closed…except the judge would not let Fair Fight put our film into evidence. To match the expansion of True the Votes’ vigilante  vote challenge tactics, we're expanding our exposé.  Support our new film, Vigilantes Inc. (out Fall 2024), and help us stop these mass voter challenges. ➡️ Donate and get a screen credit: https://palastinvestigativefund.org/vigilantes-2024/

Set your hair on fire right now, because a recent ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals virtually repeals the last living section of the Voting Rights Act. This ruling, at the moment, applies to Arkansas, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri. But it's going to go to the US Supreme Court, then look out. Because if the SCOTUS judges go along with this ruling, the whole of the United States will be Jim Crow’d. ► For more on this go to: https://www.gregpalast.com/court-says-only-voting-rights-violators-may-sue/