The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Review by Ben Sekora
Connect the dots: Globalization, Corporate America, Political Lobbies and, don’t forget, a Presidential Election. Investigative reporter and expatriate Greg Palast delivers a macabre picture of a New World Order.
Palast’s subjects include the Clinton/Gore White House, our current Bush/Cheney debacle, Jeb Bush, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, Tony Blair and many other all too familiar names.
The international journalist saves his readers from the dismay and horror his information spawns by infusing a “no duh” attitude in his expert reporting. Palast presents facts, figures and insider information topped off with his satirical wit and biting humor. Rather than hide under the covers in shame and disgust, I wanted to open the front door and shout, “See, here it is. We all know its true. Let’s do something about it!!”
The Great Florida Ex-Con Game (see the sidebar for an excerpt) tells the tale, perhaps too late for some concerned readers, of a systematic purging of legal voters in an American presidential election, orchestrated by Brother & Co. Why was it not told earlier? Maybe because CBS News asked Palast for his information about the story and ran with it … right to Jeb’s governor’s mansion. “I’m sorry, but your story didn’t hold up,” said the formerly enthusiastic producer, “we called Jeb Bush’s office.” Read the book. It’s all there.
Florida may be irreconcilable, but there’s more. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank, bastions of Western reform and international aid for Democracy, don’t live up to being the well-intentioned caregivers their charters declare. Privateers? Palast backs it up.
Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank Chief Economist and chair of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, revealed to Palast the true nature of the individual analyses conducted by the bank for countries seeking aid. Wham! Here you go, a personal program for success … the same four miracle steps for all. Palast writes, “in just 15 years Tanzania’s GDP dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, literacy fell and the rate of abject poverty jumped to 51 percent of the population.” The bank’s response? “One legacy of socialism is that most people continue to believe the State has a fundamental role in promoting development and providing social services.” (See page 15, The Globalizer Who Came In From The Cold, a mere morsel compared to the treasure trove of information contained in “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”)
Why do struggling nations fall short of success when courted by the World Trade Organization and helped by the WB, IMF? “Conditionalities.” The international money comes only when governments agree to what New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman told Palast were “key steps.” Here are just a few of those Friedman listed: “Cut government … privatize just about everything … open every nation’s industry to foreign trade, without tariffs and foreign ownership without limit … cut pensions, welfare, subsidies; let politics shrink and let markets guide us.”
Palast has numerous copies of “Assistant Plans” for needy nations. Among them are Ecuador’s orders to “… raise the price of cooking gas 80 percent … eliminate 26,000 [government] jobs and cut real wages for the remaining workers by 50 percent …” And don’t forget to shift ownership of your biggest water system to foreign operators.
Where did this master plan for Globalization come from? In what Palast calls a “figurative” comment from Friedman, it was “‘tailored by Margaret Thatcher … Ronald Reagan sewed on the buttons.’”
Things sound bad for these developing nations—but how about California? In December 2000, an energy market based on deregulation tactics perfected in Britain, and practiced in Pakistan, gave the Golden State a “1,000 percent” increase in wholesale electric prices since1999 and natural gas prices that “jumped 1,000 percent in one week.” Palast reports that minutes across a California border gas cost $1 per unit. In California, in the same pipeline, American citizens were paying $10. Wait! George W. Bush’s solution: Complete environmental and economic deregulation. Palast’s opinion: “The brilliant method by which profits are privatized and losses are socialized.” Globalization comes home.
Let’s move across the Atlantic to 10 Downing Street, the personal residence and offices of Britain’s Prime Ministers. “In return for Tony-praising tabloid coverage the government offered Rupert Murdoch’s News International valuable amendments to the competition and union recognition bills … Enron reversed a government plan to block their building new gas-fired power stations ... in secret meetings with the deputy prime minister following a £11 million donation to the Millennium Dome, Tesco won exemption from the proposed car park tax.”
Palast reported all this and more. He went undercover. He taped conversations and phone calls. He received front-page coverage. The headline read, “The Liar.” Who did they slam? Palast, not the corrupt politicians. The headline Palast chose: “Cash-for-Access —‘Lobbygate’: The Real Story of Blair and the Sale of Britain.”
There are people that actively produce evidence and defenses against the New World Order. Palast makes sure to include personal tidbits about these colleagues and their work. They are all inspiring, and depressing, and too many included death.
Palast’s book and continued reporting give us knowledge. Knowledge is power. Palast not only indicts the world’s governments, he proves it. What did it take to publish a book that verifies corporate greed, Western hegemony through privatization, and government officials’ exact price tags? For Palast it simply took combining articles that nearly every major media outlet on two continents refuse to print, in a single hardback volume.
Ben Sekora is a freelance writer who lives in Ashland, Oregon.
April/May 2002
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Review: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
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The
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The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy
Greg Palast
Pluto Press, 2002
ISBN 0-7453-1846-0
Hardcover, 212 pages; $25
