Dont think this has been posted before:


Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/04280...2804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold


2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/04280...2804landes.html


3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/04280...2804landes.html


4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/...ain632436.shtml

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886


5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/colu.../03/03_200.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/03100...04fitrakis.html


6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?...icle&sid=26

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php


7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm

http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html


8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/04280...2804landes.html


9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evo...es/pfindex.html


10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm


11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm


12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml


13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html


16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/baxterVPR.mov.)

http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190


17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/...ain632436.shtml


18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAfterm...esBushIsOut.htm

http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=m...cle&sid=950

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm


19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee...cal/7628725.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Oct29.html


20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAfterm...esBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttop...1,97614,00.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/

http://nightweed.com/20AmazingVotingFacts.html

How unusual. One could almost think then that Bush being "elected" was stage managed. One would, of course, have to be a rabid communist atheist un-patriotic terra' loving satan-worshipping child molester to think this though.

The American "Election" of Bush did make me laugh out loud in disbelief, just before the killing started. Then I stopped laughing. The Greatest Democracy in the World is just a sham. (Twice...) Who is going to have the balls (male or female..) to clean this pigsty up ?? Do you have enough space in your prisons for the Bushevik's, because it looks like there is a lot of them....

They'll need lots of soap, too, for those intimate shower-room encounters.....

The sad part is the complete and total apathy the majority of the country gave to these elections. Hell, even Mexico showed more emotion than us with their crap election down there. The really funny thing about people is that when you supply them with documentation stating the true facts (as you have above), they still look at you as some crackpot alien whose frontal lobotomy has finally taken hold.20 years from now those same people will be saying " How did this happen?", and our kids will be out of luck because of the shorsightedness of the voters of today.

I am appalled!

AND six years is a long, long time to condition the sheeple with terror alerts, "attacks" stopped "just in the nick of time," starting an illegal and unwinnable war, and recruiting fringe groups like the Swiftboaters and the VFF to do the dirty work not already done.

Thanks for posting that nygreenguy...it should be in every newspaper in the land.



Catherine

No problem, i like that fact it has links to back it up!

Thanks for reposting that. I posted it a few months back and it got burried. It is inportabt to keep these points alive.

I did not know you had originally posted that, Max. Kudos to you, too! When things this important are posted, please don't let them fall below the radar. Bump them back up, please.

Do any of you know what, if anything, is being done to correct this obviously very serious problem? Otherwise, I'm afraid that more and more people just simply won't vote at all, which may be one of the bottom line reasons the voting machines are being used...either way, the neocons seem to win. I'm really discouraged by this but I'm also very angry that I can't seem to find any real evidence that a concerted effort has been launched to fix it. At least Lieberman didn't win in CT...maybe that's one small ray of hope.

When I was growing up, our teachers used to always tell us that if we didn't exercise our right to vote, we could lose the right all together. Of course that was back in the 60s, before things went to hell in a handbasket.

Catherine

Great list Greeny and Max. I'd like to use it for some letters but I think it would also be helpful to add the numbers of individuals who control all of the major media outlets (I know it's small). Can anyone give me a number?

http://www.mediawatch.com/wordpress/?p=12#more-12


10/9/2004
Media Mergers: Meager News
Race and Class

— ann

Oligopoly: The Big Media Game Has Fewer and Fewer Players by Robert W. McChesney (The Progressive, 11/99) is an excellent assessment of our current media dilemma.
He lists 9 media giants who currently dominate our waking reality:

Time Warner,
Disney,
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.,
Viacom,
Sony,
Seagram,
AT&T/Liberty Media,
Bertelsmann,
and GE.

In regard to these media mergers McChesney writes, “They do a superb job of maximizing profit for their shareholders but a dreadful job of providing the basis for a healthy democracy.” We are not informed as citizens of the impact these media mergers have on our lives.

The press provides a background of merger cheerleading by focusing on superficial details. Time’s coverage (9/20/99) wrote about how CBS’s Karmazin dangled Howard Stern as bait to woo Viacom’s Redstone. This is informative news? The same article included an empty debate concerning which president will most likely become head CEO.

The public is yet to be given sufficient information that would enable it to question an information system based on greed rather than the non-commercialized disbursement of vital information. Merged conglomerates form vertical integration that enables a company to increase profits by cross-promoting products—creating unfair advantage to anyone outside their ever-shrinking circle.

A recent example of media bias was the disproportionate amount of news time dedicated to the Egypt Air crash while simultaneous news of a law that will allow banking systems to merge with insurance companies appeared as a mere blip. According to NPR’s report on Nov. 4th, this bill would allow banking and insurance systems to merge. It sailed through with unanimous votes in the House and Clinton signed it into law. Will these merged firms share information? Will bank loans review one’s health history when considering loans? NPR briefly mentioned the negative impact this merger will have on the future of bank loans for low income neighborhoods. On this same news day we were treated to regular and detailed updates of the treacherous waves in Nantucket and the extraordinary depth of the plane’s black box. NPR had ample time to cover the bank mergers in detail, but too often even our “public” radio ( NPR lite) fails to deliver substantive reports. An old-time radio programmer from Berkeley noted that the BBC’s Public Radio International (PRI) sends a “special rendition” of its news for U.S. audiences. The U.S. listener is thought to prefer entertaining news, realized through an emphasis on human interest stories and padded with pleasant musical interludes.

“They do a superb job of maximizing profit for their shareholders but a dreadful job of providing the basis for a healthy democracy.” —Robert McChesney

According to McChesney’s article, the federal government provides a paltry $260 million annually for our entire public broadcasting system while Japan and Britain’s public systems spend between 5 to 10 billion annually.
McChesney outlines in this article a four part proposal for media reform that makes enormous sense.

“1. Shore up nonprofit and noncommercial media. The starting point for media reform is to shore up a viable nonprofit, noncommercial media sector. What exists currently is too small and underfunded.

2. Strengthen public broadcasting.” By this McChesney means to take all the commercials out of Public Broadcasting and “to serve the entire population, not merely those who have highbrow tastes and disposable income to contribute during pledge drives.” He also suggests that federal spending on public broadcasting be expanded to compete with other parts of the world like Britain and Japan.

3. Tougher regulation on public ownership of the airwaves has given the Federal communications Commission (FCC) “a clear legal right to negotiate terms with those who are bestowed the hallowed broadcast licenses.” Today these licenses, in our deregulation frenzy (thanks to Reagan and all the presidents following) are literally given away by our government. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed with little opposition because the populace had little or no information about it. It included, among other nasty provisions, what amounts to a 70 billion dollar giveaway to these media giants in the form of 50 years of free digital access. Things might change quickly if people understood that our government must charge for the use of broadcast licenses especially while the beneficiaries of these free licenses (like cable giant Viacom) refuse to reciprocate with free cable access. Cable companies charge upwards of 40 dollars a month in cable fees and there is no current legal limit on their “need” to raise fees. These fees must be waived as long as the FCC gives away freely what could be enormously lucrative and would greatly benefit the average citizen. Seventy-billion dollars in potential profit is nothing to sneeze at.

A great part of his proposal is his outline for what should be required of all who attempt to get broadcast licenses from the FCC. “First, they will not air any paid political advertising during electoral campaigns unless every candidate on the ballot is given equal time, free of charge, immediately following the paid spot of a rival. This would go a long way toward clearing up the campaign spending mess that is destroying electoral democracy in the United States.”

“Second, we should follow the lead of Sweden and ban advertising to children under twelve. Likewise, we should remove advertising from TV news broadcasts. “Third, broadcasters should donate some percentage of their revenues to subsidize several hours per day of noncommercial children’s news/public affairs programming. Educators and artists should control the children’s programming, and journalists the news programming.”

4. Antitrust Regulation “If ever there was a need for antitrust laws that need is painfully clear in the area of media conglomerates. Not only do the media giants make a mockery of free competition, they impede the very functioning of democracy. Antitrust laws were put on the books at the turn of the last century to counteract the power of a few huge companies over both our economic and our political system.”

McChesney summarizes his four point proposal, meant to begin discussion: “The aim of these combined measures is to produce a media system that is fair and accurate, that scrupulously examines the activities of the powerful, that provides legitimate accounting of the diverse views and interests of society . . . The only bias is a fervent commitment to democracy.”

[©Robert McChesney, The Progressive, 11/99] compiled by Ann Simonton




Edit to add....


http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/


http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Me...ions/Owners.asp


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Sep17.html


http://money.cnn.com/1999/09/07/deals/media_mergers/


http://www.freepress.net/news/16168

Thanks for the list. I have lived in Florida for 25 years. This is the most corrupt place in the country next to DC. That said amazingly our county supervisor of elections has steadfastly refused to allow computerized touch screen paper trail-less voting. She has been in here position for as long as I have been here. I wonder how long she will remain. The developers and agribusiness along with their retired sheeple run this state. The developers are paving over 400 acres a day and agribusiness employes are 80-90% illegal immigrants who are paid slave wages and treated as such. Oh yeah, a Bush is the chief ex. here also.

reedspeed

Florida has always been "an interesting state" ever since it became a state.
Good to have your views from Jebville.

As an aside, not only is Blackwell the Sec of State here in Ohio, but he's also running for Governer in the Nov. elections.......gee I wonder how that will turn out...............

I have a POAC pamphlet in .pdf format of those 20 available for download and distribution.

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/voting.pdf

Great! I'm printing now and will copy kazillions at Kinko's! This is just in time for November!

PLease do. Spread them far and wide.