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Fitrakis Fight Back Podcast October 6, 2012 Dr. Fadhel Kaboub

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is Assistant Professor of economics at Denison University (OH) and Research Associate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (MA), Levy Economics Institute of Bard College (NY), the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability (MO), and the International Economic Policy Institute (Ontario, Canada). He has taught at Drew University (NJ), where he was also co-director of the Wall Street Semester Program; the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC); and Bard College at Simon’s Rock (MA).

from: http://personal.denison.edu/~kaboubf/bio/index.htm

FightBack-20121006-1edit

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Anti-Democratic Fever Sweeps The Nation

Bob Fitrakis

“Voting Rights Act is Challenged as Cure the South Has Outgrown” cries the New York Times front page headline from February 18, 2013. In my diagnosis, not only does the South remain sick while retaining a race and class based system of voter suppression, the rest of the nation including my home state of Ohio is infected with the same illness.

In 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed, the United States for the first time met the bare minimal standard for a democracy. For the first time, we would have two or more parties, the adult population including black Americans would be allowed to vote, and the votes would be fairly counted thanks to federal oversight.

Beginning with George W. Bush’s fraudulent election of 2000, the ugliness known as the Jim Crow South reared its head in the battleground states including Ohio. The blatant purges of poor, black and elderly likely-Democratic voters was well documented by BBC reporter Greg Palast. The Free Press documented the largest disenfranchisement of voters since 1965 by Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell during the 2004 presidential election.

Instead of acting like the South is “cured,” we should admit that our whole political process is contaminated and only the inoculation of a new Voting Rights Act can save the last remnants of U.S. democracy.

See https://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2013/1963

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Broken Democracy

The U.S. election system is broken, but you’d never know how bad it really is if you read the Columbus Dispatch. Citing a recent Pew Charitable Trust study, the Republican-owned paper stresses that Ohio ranks 29th out of 50 states in terms of worst voting practices.

A much better perspective of the nearly 6 million lost votes in the country from the 2008 election is offered by BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast. His book “Billionaires and Ballot Bandits” is a must read for those seeking to grapple with the real facts surrounding U.S. democracy. Ohio has a history since the stolen 2004 election of allowing Republican secretaries of state to purge voters in record numbers.

Those that somehow succeed in registering and voting in a state dedicated to the proposition that minorities, the poor, young, and the elderly should face difficult obstacles, often find that their votes were not counted. In the Dispatch’s recent article, they lauded Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted for moving in the right direction.

I guess that means he did OK by doubling the amount of uncounted provisional votes from 17,000 to 34,000. That’s absurd. It is also a travesty that people who haven’t voted in the last two federal elections lose their voter registration.

The only way to protect U.S. voters is through a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. The truth is, our system is beyond flawed. It is one that targets the most vulnerable of our citizens for election purges and vote theft.

See full article https://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2013/1961

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Bob Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck Discuss Election Integrity Via Chuck Todd, NBC, U.S. Election Integrity

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Election protection, electronic voting & the future of America democracy

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
January 23, 2013

The re-election of Barack Obama was made possible in part by the triumph of a new social movement—a great grassroots upheaval aimed at election protection and meaningful universal suffrage, that must include a transparent and reliable vote count.

The Republican Party’s concerted effort to steal the presidency again failed in 2012, but only because of major breakthroughs that have been forcing their way into the mainstream since Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004.

Throughout these past dozen years, the GOP “suppress and shift” election theft strategy has focused on two main tactics:massive disenfranchisement of citizens (mostly non-white, poor and young) suspected of voting Democratic; and the manipulation of electronic voting machines and tabulating devices with software capable of flipping thousands of votes with a few late night keystrokes.

This year the Republicans’ blatant, barely concealed disenfranchisement efforts evoked a major national outcry, and a significant backlash that carried all the way to the op ed page of the New York Times. Because activists have focused on the issue since Florida 2000, there was in place a fast-growing awareness that millions of legitimate voters were being stripped from the registration rolls, especially in key swing states.

Less widely accepted has been the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. Manipulated tallies were used in Volusia County, Florida in 2000, and throughout Ohio in 2004 to elect and re-elect George W. Bush. In 2008 and 2012, Obama’s popular vote margins were sufficient to overwhelm the potential theft in key swing states. But the possibilities of electronic vote theft are stronger than ever. In the long run, if the US is to ever have a meaningful democracy, electronic voting and tabulating machines must be eliminated in favor of universal hand counted paper ballots.

SYSTEMATIC DISENFRANCHISEMENT:

Preventing unwanted voters from casting their ballots in key elections is a long-standing national tradition. It dates back at least to the Jim Crow days in the post-Civil War south, when the Democratic party and its terrorist wing, the Ku Klux Klan, systematically prevented African-Americans from voting in the eleven states of the former Confederacy , and elsewhere.

In Florida 2000 the Republicans used an old Jim Crow law disenfranchising former felons as a pretext for stripping the voter rolls of at least 90,000 voters. Most were African-American and Hispanic, and the vast majority weren’t ex-felons at all, but people with same or similar names or the same date of birth to other citizens who may or may not have been ex-felons, and may or may not have been residents of Florida.

In Ohio 2004, more than 300,000 voters were stripped from registration rolls in heavily Democratic urban areas throughout state. In the city of Cleveland, nearly 25% of all voters were eliminated from the voting rolls. Also, Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell deployed a wide range of deceptive tactics aimed at misleading voters and suppressing turnout. Democratic areas were shortchanged on voting machines and denied paper ballots. Tens of thousands of voters were forced to use provisional ballots which were then discarded.

Federal Judge Algernon Marbley in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville suit, in which we are attorney and plaintiff, ordered Ohio’s 88 county election boards to preserve their voter records for a statewide recount. But 56 of the counties illegally destroyed all or some of their election records. No prosecutions have resulted and no recount has ever been done.

After losing in 2008, even after purging 1.2 million voters from the rolls, the Republicans came into 2012 with a massively escalated campaign to suppress the vote. The 2012 purge of the registration rolls in Ohio topped 1.1 million voters. Led by Indiana and Georgia, GOP-controlled legislatures began passing laws demanding state-issued photo identification cards. New York University’s Brennan Center estimated such laws could disenfranchise more than ten million voters.

Republican secretaries of state, especially in Ohio and Florida, worked hard to trim early voting opportunities for suspected Democrats. Once again inner city polling places were plagued with long lines and extended waits. But the worst happened during early voting in cities like Cincinnati and Cleveland, where Ohioans—mostly African-Americans—waited up to five hours to vote. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted revived many of the tactics used by Blackwell, which were also adopted by GOP operatives in other states. Among other things, Husted would only allow one early voting center in the major urban areas, predictably creating long lines.

Tens of thousands of voters were also forced to vote with provisional ballots. A disproportionate number were African-American. Many were tripped up by detailed demands imposed by Husted apparently designed to nullify as many votes as possible.

But this year the activist community was prepared. Heavily challenged in court, the photo ID laws were largely overturned. As in 2008, thousands of volunteers worked in key states to make sure people came out to the polls and to protect their rights once they did. Angered by the GOP tactics, thousands of nearly disenfranchised voters made a point of waiting through hours of contrived delays to cast their ballots. Many were still standing in line to vote even as Barack Obama was proclaiming victory.

The Obama campaign and various voting rights groups challenged Husted in court over early voting hours, provisional ballot directives, and voter ID rules.

Overall, the response of the election protection movement was powerful and effective. Obama’s re-election was essentially secured by a movement that prevented the Republicans from disenfranchising enough voters to guarantee their victory.

ELECTRONIC VOTE THEFT

But no turnout for Barack Obama or any other candidate could have withstood a full-scale electronic vote shift. Unlike the widely accepted understanding that massive disenfranchisement can swing an election, assertions focussing on electronic vote theft continue to arouse divisive passion.

Yet there remains a simple bottom line: there is absolutely no secure means of monitoring, confirming, recounting or legally challenging a vote count that has been registered and tabulated electronically. In reality, our entire electoral system is sitting duck, and is far more vulnerable to electronic manipulation that it was in 2000.

Back then, at a critical moment on election night, 16,000 electronic votes from Volusia County, Florida, were deleted from Al Gore and 4,000 added to George W. Bush. Though the count was later reversed, Fox News commentator John Ellis—Bush’s first cousin—used the shift to reverse pronouncements that Gore had won the election.

In Ohio 2004, which would decide the presidency, CNN reported shortly after 11pm that John Kerry had defeated Bush by more than 200,000 votes. But at 11:14 pm the electronic tally was shifted to a computer bank in SChattanooga, Tennessee. Soon thereafter the lead definitively shifted to Bush, who officially won the state–and thus the presidency—by some 118,000 votes. The exit polls clearly showed Kerry winning.

Secretary of State Blackwell’s no-bid contract for the Ohio 2004 electronic vote count had been awarded to the Akron-based GovTech Corporation. Its founder, Michael Connell, was a long-standing associate of the Bush Family. Connell ran the GOP’s lead IT company, New Media. New Media processed Ohio’s votes through a server farm in Chattanooga, which also housed the email of the Republican National Committee, and of Karl Rove. The owner of the server farm was born-again political activist Jeff Averbeck of Smartech.

On November 3, 2008, Connell was deposed in Cleveland by attorneys Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck as part of the King-Lincoln federal lawsuit. Questioning focused on his possible role in electronically flipping the 2004 Ohio vote count. On December 19, while facing a follow-up deposition, Connell died in a mysterious private plane crash.

By then it had become clear that no recount of the Ohio 2004 election would be possible. Judge Marbley had issued a decision requiring that all 88 county election boards preserve all balloting records from Ohio 2004. But when Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner went to collect them, she discovered that 56 of the 88 counties had violated Marbley’s ruling. Accompanied by a series of widely varying excuses, the boards of election had made it impossible to track the true presidential vote count in the deciding state in one of America’s most bitterly contested elections.

In 2012, the GOP was prepared to repeat history. For a decade the Help America Vote Act had been spreading electronic voting machines throughout the US. More than half the nation’s votes were cast and/or counted this year on electronic devices. Yet the courts have ruled that the software on these machines is proprietary, meaning the public has no access to how they are coded, or how the votes are counted.

In Ohio, nearly all 2012 votes were cast and counted electronically. The Free Press reported that in Cincinnati, the notoriously insecure and unreliable Hart InterCivic voting machines were deployed by a company, HIG Capital, controlled by major Romney campaign associates who are investment partners with Romney family members.

The widespread belief that Ohio could decide the presidential outcome helped make that FreePress story go viral.

Just prior to election day, documents leaked to the Free Press from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office confirmed that an uncertified and untested software patch had been appended to ES&S machines on which 80% of the state’s votes would be cast and transmitted. The software had no safeguards to prevent an inside party from altering the vote count.

Further Free Press research uncovered the operations of Scytyl, a Spanish-owned company hired by a number of states to manage the overseas electronic vote count. But Scytyl’s software was also capable of manipulating the vote count in entire states, again without meaningful public access or recourse.

As Election Day approached, Democrats complained that touch screen machines had them pushing the button for Barack Obama while seeing Mitt Romney light up. In Colorado, Republicans claimed they were pushing Mitt Romney’s name while Barack Obama lit up. The complaints resembled those in Youngstown, Ohio 2004, where voters complained they were attempting to vote for John Kerry while George W. Bush’s name lit up. Mahoning County election officials in Youngstown, Ohio explained that the vote flipping was “only” happening on 31 machines.

This year, amidst saturation election night coverage, Karl Rove urged Fox reporters to refrain from calling Ohio for Barack Obama. Rove’s confused, angry outburst mentioned crashing websites run by the Ohio Secretary of State, and seemed to mirror the fateful Foxist backtracking of Bush cousin John Ellis in Florida 2000.

As in 2008, Barack Obama’s wide margin put the 2012 election out of reach of electronic vote theft. He could have lost Florida, Ohio and Virginia and still won in the Electoral College.

But the outcome in a close election might well have been different. Both Ohio and Florida were vulnerable to electronic flipping by the Republican governors and secretaries of state that controlled the electoral apparatus in both states. In a close election, they could easily have put Mitt Romney in the White House.

The electorate and much of the media reacted this year with great anger to the GOP’s national disenfranchisement campaign. Many people who came out to vote and stayed in long lines voiced angry defiance of the Republican attempt to deny them the right to do so.

But the reaction to the possibility of electronic vote theft has been muted and even hostile. The official lie propagated by the Democratic Party and their apologists is that there has not been a single case of vote tampering. In fact there have been hundreds of such cases (once case in point comes in a 17-page Free Press report (at freepress.org) documenting phantom electronic votes in Miami County, Ohio). Some Democrats worried openly that talk of the possibility of electronic vote theft might discourage people from voting at all.

Clearly this didn’t happen in 2008 or 2012. But it’s also clear that the vulnerability of electronic voting continues to put our democracy at profound risk. Until it is done away with altogether, and replaced with universal hand-counted paper balloting, the sanctity and reliability of our vote counts is moot.

The grassroots election protection movement that has arisen to deal with these issues has attained significant nationwide status. Given its popular momentum and gravity of the cause, it seems destined to take a place among the great political campaigns of our time.

It has already won some tangible victories. US Attorney-General Eric Holder has now endorsed automatic universal voter registration. The palpable anger over GOP attempts at mass disenfranchisement will not soon be forgotten. There is much new talk—nowhere near powerful enough—about abolishing the Electoral College. And the potential for electronic vote theft is at least being discussed as never before. Hard hitting reports by Forbes.com among others was accurate and admirable throughout the 2012 election cycle.

But there are also disturbing developments on the horizon. The courts continue to rule that software on electronic voting machines is proprietary, and thus beyond the control of scrutiny of the public. Thus we are still prey to having our public elections controlled by private corporations.

And in response to another round of long lines and voter disenfranchisement, there is talk of “convenience voting” by internet and cellphone. These are terrible ideas, as they can never be secured and are even more vulnerable to hacking than the touchscreen machines now in place.

So the public has no access, no guarantees, no recourse. The veracity of our electoral vote counts remain a blind item. Though Barack Obama won this election, other down-ticket races—past, present and future—may well have been manipulated.

For example, California’s bitterly contested referendum on GMO food labeling is still being subjected to a detailed recount. Mathematicians and social scientists are now reporting unexplained patterns of vote shifting that appear to be based on the size of precincts. The larger the precinct, the more the vote differs from the predicted norm.

Over the coming years, this new grassroots election protection movement will battle it out over the life-and-death issue of the integrity of our voting process. Banning money from politics, abolishing the Electoral College, automatic universal voter registration, universal hand-counted paper ballots, easier access to voting, the removal of partisan private for-profit companies and more will be at its core.

But even at this young age, the movement has played a critical role in electing and re-electing a president, and in preserving the integrity of countless elections, with an eye toward a vastly reformed system.

Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan and Canada all use universal hand-counted paper ballots. Ireland has just pitched its electronic machines to do the same.

That and a few other key democratic reforms would be a dream come true for this new movement. As election protection activists, we will be proud to watch that happen here in the United States as well.

——————–

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored five books on election protection.

original article posted here:
https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2013/4885

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No 4th Tues Movie, Bring back Columbus Public Access

Attention Free Press activists: There will be NO Fourth Tuesday Free Movie at the Drexel this month.
Help restore free speech forum in Columbus: Please see below for an action you can take to support the city of Columbus to bring back public access TV:
Action Alert:
City Council will be finalizing its budget over the coming days … please send a note evidencing your support for public access to the following member at your earliest opportunity. Also, please ask others in your circle to do the same. Troy Miller chairs the Technology Committee, which is where we presented our testimony and where we sent our follow up letter/written request:
ajginther@columbus.gov
mmmills@columbus.gov
atmiller@columbus.gov
eypaley@columbus.gov
prtyson@columbus.gov
hfcraig@columbus.gov
zmklein@columbus.gov
Dear Neighborhood Leaders:
I am writing on behalf of the Ad Hoc Committee for Public Access Television, and requesting you to contact Columbus City Council and voice your support for city funding for the return of public access television to the residents of Columbus. Our proposal seems to have been received favorably by council member Troy Miller and Technology Director Gary Cavin, and additional public support could tip the scales toward funding as council makes final budget decisions over the next several days.
The Ad Hoc Committee for Public Access Television (CPAT) is comprised of Central Ohioans who believe that the public interest would greatly benefit from a more diverse local media. In December budget hearing testimony and follow up correspondence, we have asked Columbus City Council to allocate $55,000 in the City’s 2013 budget as seed funding for returning public access television to Central Ohio. The community has been without this important communications medium since 2003, when funding for it was ended because of budget constraints. With the City’s budget vastly improved such that millions of dollars are being placed in the Rainy Day Fund, the CPAT believe that now is the time to restore funding for public-access TV. We ask for your support in this effort.
The City wisely kept the infrastructure in place for a return of public access TV. Local channel 21, which was previously the public access channel, is a community bulletin board that could easily again accommodate public access programming. Moreover, advances in technology have drastically lowered the costs of operating a public access station. As a result, running the station on the relatively modest budget that has been proposed is entirely feasible.
Many of us remember the controversial content of dubious-to-questionable merit that was at issue on public access a decade ago. Our committee has proposed a membership-based organization of content producers who agree to adopt community standards similar to the public broadcast standards, and within that umbrella of decency fully supporting the expression of diverse views consistent with our first amendment rights.
We believe that public access TV offers many benefits to Columbus. Among the major ones are the following.
Increasing civic participation
In his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putman of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government describes Americans’ decreasing community involvement. He cites lower rates of voting, attendance at public meetings, membership in civic associations, service on committees, and work with political parties. He believes that these trends weaken the means by which Americans have traditionally worked together for the good of the entire community.
Our understanding is that at least some Area Commissions are trying to increase the public’s civic participation by compiling lists of organizations in their areas and helping the organizations connect with one another and the local government. Public access TV would facilitate the achievement of those goals.
Public access TV enables nonprofit groups to inform a mass audience in Central Ohio about who they are, which issues they are working on, and what opportunities for volunteer work they offer. This information motivates citizens to connect with one another and with their local government to work on important issues. It is a means of reversing the lack of civic engagement that scholars such as Putman bemoan as undermining democracy.
Improving Central Ohio’s economy
Employment has become harder to find in recent years, with millions of manufacturing and service jobs having been outsourced to other countries. In Franklin County, thousands of manufacturing jobs were lost in the last decade. Even some white-collar jobs have been outsourced or are in danger of being eliminated.
In response to these problems, many scholars are advocating that the U.S. promote employment in the creative sectors of the economy. Public access TV would give local music and video artists widespread exposure of their ideas and works. At present, they need to go to other cities for such exposure on television. The exposure spurs economic activity by increasing demand for their artistic creations and opening up more venues where they can display their talents.
In the long term, the increased knowledge and skills the public would develop by learning about and using the public access station’s technology would likely translate into many new jobs in the private sector.
Enhancing cultural enrichment
In 2006 researchers at the Urban Institute found that Columbus has the most festivals per capita in the nation. This shows that Columbus residents love exposure to new ideas, music, products, cultures, and ways of enriching their lives.
Public access TV would enable citizens to display their creativity and cultural diversity to a mass television audience in ways similar to how they do it at the community’s many festivals. Television viewers who enjoy the festivals would surely enjoy these offerings too. Similar to the festivals, the programs would be a source of education, growth, relaxation, and rejuvenation.
And for viewers having disabilities that prevent them from attending the festivals, they would be able to obtain some of the same types of information and entertainment on TV.
Counteracting local media consolidation
In recent decades the national trend has been for large media companies to acquire local news outlets. It has gotten to the point where a few gigantic conglomerates dominate the news industry and determine the views that Americans are exposed to in the mass media. Many scholars and journalists have pointed out that this consolidation has harmed democracy by crippling the media’s willingness and ability to inform the public.
Media consolidation in Columbus has gotten as bad as anywhere in the U.S., and is far worse than in many other American communities. In 2011 The Dispatch Printing Company purchased virtually all the print publications in Central Ohio, including the main alternative newspaper, The Other Paper. That’s in addition to its ownership of local TV and radio media. Recently the company announced that it is closing The Other Paper. Some have described the current Columbus media situation using terms such as “propaganda” and “mind control.” And they have quoted Carter G. Woodson’s famous statement: “If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.”
Public access TV could help counteract these problems by allowing a diversity of voices to reach a mass audience in Central Ohio. Unlike other voices currently heard on TV, the voices of the public would not be funded by big-money interests, which have gotten even more powerful on TV after the U.S. Supreme Court’s widely criticized 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.
Additionally, the voices of the public would help keep the local news media honest. Media executives would be less likely to operate in a one-sided and biased manner if they knew that members of the public had the ability to correct any propaganda and misinformation in front of a mass television audience.
Conclusion
Many more reasons could be given for supporting public access TV. But the CPAT believes that these four major ones are more than sufficient justification for it.
Because of the important benefits of public access TV, hundreds of U.S. cities offer it. Columbus’ failure to do so can put the city in an unfavorable light when compared to those other cities. For example, some in the local Somali community have expressed disappointment and bewilderment that Columbus does not have public access TV whereas Minneapolis, with its large Somali community, does.
In fact, the law appears to require NOColumbus City Officials to strive to provide public access TV to the community. Section 595.01(E)(4) of Title 5 of the Columbus Code states that the City’s policy regarding cable communications systems includes “the promotion of increased public . . . access and programming, in terms of quality and amount.” The law’s drafters and enactors obviously understood the significance of this subject.
Public access TV is an extremely important communications medium and would greatly benefit Central Ohio. We therefore ask you to urge City Council to approve the requested funding for it.
Jonathan C. Beard
President and CEO
Columbus Compact Corporation
1051 E. Main Street
Columbus, OH 43205
Phone: (614) 251-0926 ext. 301
Fax: (614) 251-2243
www.colscompact.com

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Dear Free Press Supporter

Dear Free Press supporter:

I am extremely proud of our pre-election activism. Andrew Kreig at Justice Integrity Project (Did Expert Witness, Activists Thwart a Rove Ohio Vote Plot?) speculates that we (freepress.org) may have prevented another stolen election. Art Levin at Huffington Post agrees as does Brad Friedman at Bradblog.

We need your support! The Free Press went into the red in this effort. We do not send emails asking for money before we get started, instead we get to work and ask for help later :). As a result, we need to ask our friends and supporters to contribute what you can to support what has already been done.

If you saw the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox News on election night, you might have been unaware that the Secretary of State AND the Cuyahoga County websites went off-line at approximately the same time as Rove’s meltdown. Deja Vu, election night 2004.

What we sometimes refer to derisively as “establishment” media validated our reporting efforts.

Forbes : The Technological Foundations Of Today’s Election Are Shaky, Especially In Ohio
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/11/06/the-technological-foundations-of-todays-election-are-shaky-especially-in-ohio/

Forbes: Dear President Obama, Glad You Won, But Can We Fix The Voting Machines Before 2016?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/11/09/dear-president-obama-glad-you-won-but-can-we-fix-the-voting-machines-before-2016/

Associated Press: Judge rejects lawsuit’s Ohio voting software claim
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2012/11/ohio-voting-software-court-hearing.html

Business Insider: Here’s The Truth About The Story About The Romneys Investing In The Company That Makes The Voting Machines
http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-investment-in-voting-machines-2012-10

Fox News local Channel 19 in Cincinnati.
http://youtu.be/KofzJYE1i9o

Computerworld: Update: Lawsuit filed in Ohio over software updates to vote tabulation machines
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9233274/….

Christian Science Monitor: US judge allows Ohio voting software, alleged to be vulnerable to fraud
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1106/US-judge-allows-Ohio-voting-software-alleged-to-be-vulnerable-to-fraud

Fight Back (Bob’s radio show), interview with Cliff, Gerry and Harvey. (Podcast)
http://www.talktainmentradio.com/podcasts/110712%20Fight%20Back.mp3

We did not plan it this way, but our reporting turned into a three pronged effort.
• First, we reported on Scytl, and again here. Banking Insider called this the “true” October Surprise.
• Secondly, we reported on ownership of voting machine companies, particularly Romney family and business associates of Hart Inner Civic. Vote counting company tied to Romney
• Former National Security Agency data analyst and election software critic Michael Duniho (37 years, retired) testified in the lawsuit brought by Attorney Bob Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck. Duniho’s expertise is beyond reproach and his testimony was powerful.
• Finally we reported on the illegal software patch that was applied (as experimental). We filed a lawsuit in both State and Federal courts in an effort to have this patch removed. The Free Press confirms installation, secret justification of uncertified last minute election tabulation reporting software in Ohio The contract was leaked to the Free Press. If the Free Press did not exist, to whom would this person leak the contract? Who else could be trusted to report it?
We at the Free Press…Bob Fitrakis, Cliff Arnebeck, Harvey Wasserman, Gerry Bello, Suzanne Patzer, myself, the Board of Directors, and many others…agree with Andrew Kreig. We believe we prevented another stolen Presidential election. But we may never know for sure. In any case, we could not have mounted a more vigorous defense of voting rights and democracy. We need your support so that we remain as THE most important and most effective defender of election integrity.

Please contribute to the Free Press here — https://freepress.org/store.php
or simply send a check to Columbus Institute of Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) at 1021 E Broad St, Columbus, Ohio 43205. You contribution is tax deductible.

Thank you,
Pete Johnson
CICJ Board President

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Come to the Free Press FREE film night – Free For All

Come to the Free Press FREE film night – Free For All
Tuesday, October 23 — 7:30pm

Free For All is a documentary film by John Wellington Ennis. John Ennis is planning to be here for the showing. This is a re-release of his original film with updated information.
How did America get so off track? Nagging doubts about the legitimacy of the 2004 election force John Ennis to get off his sofa and investigate Ohio leading up to the 2006 elections – even though he is just some dude. He meets with journalists, politicians, election officials, attorneys, activists, and everyday Ohioans in a search for truth. Along his journey, Ennis uncovers a web of schemes that swing U.S. election. Re-released with updated information including the mysterious death of Mike Connell.
Followed by a discussion.

Free and open to the public as part of the Free Press Film Night at the Drexel. This screening is co-sponsored by the Free Press, the Columbus Film Council, the Central Ohio Green Education Fund, and the Drexel.

Location: Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley
Phone: 253-2571
Email: truth@freepress.org

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Employees of Romney Family’s secret bank tied to fraud, money laundering, drug cartels and the CIA

by Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis
October 20, 2012

As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt’s “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney’s campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that secret bank hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal.

As reported by ThinkProgress, Solamere Capital Partner’s subsidiary Solamere Advisors is a investment advisory group, providing advice to Solamere clients and boosting sales. Would-be corporate pugilist Tagg Romney is a director. According to the New York Times, all but one of its 11 employees came from the Charlotte office of the Stanford Financial Group, the US investment arm of convicted felon R. Allen Stanford’s offshore banking and fraud network that comprised a host of companies including the Stanford International Bank, Stanford Capital Management, The Bank of Antigua, Stanford Trust and Stanford Gold and Bullion. Three of these employees, Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips, received incentive compensation related to their direct sales of securities linked to a fraud that brought down this banking network.

Tim Bambauer has left his position as managing partner at Solamere Advisors. May and Phillips remain employed as partner and chief compliance officer respectively.

Allen Stanford is currently serving a 110-year prison sentence for convictions on 13 counts of fraud. His companies were placed in receivership. $8 billion of Stanford’s stolen money has yet to be recovered and the victims are in court to recover those funds and incentive pay bonuses to Stanford employees (including Bambauer, May and Phillips) for fraudulently getting people to invest in an operation that later bilked many of them out of their life’s savings.

Stanford’s shady history and criminality did not begin with the fraudulent investments that lead to his downfall, nor was it unknown at the highest level of United State’s Government. In a 2006 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, the US Ambassador to Antigua advised “Embassy officers do not reach out to Stanford because of the allegations of bribery and money laundering. The Ambassador managed to stay out of any one-on-one photos with Stanford during the breakfast. For his part, Stanford said he preferred to conduct his business without contacting the Embassy, resolving any investment disputes directly with local governments. It is whispered in the region that Stanford facilitates resolution with significant cash contributions.”

Similarly investigations by the SEC, FBI and Scotland Yard into Stanford’s empire stalled or failed all the way back to the 1980s. The Independent Newspaper in the UK alleges that Stanford’s network was on the FBI’s radar for more than 20 years. Stanford set up his first offshore bank in 1986, just as Eugene Hausenfaus, shot down while gun running for the CIA in Nicaragua, was being connected to another company named Stanford, in this case the “Stanford Technology Trading Group” owned by Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and 4 unknown other persons, perhaps including Allen Stanford. According to Iran-Contra Whistleblower Al Martin (Lt. Cmdr. USNR ret.) “Anything with the name Stanford on it belonged to Secord”. When finally brought to trial, Stanford employed the same defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, as Iran-Contra defendant Oliver North.

As the Iran-Contra explosion crippled the CIA’s Caribbean bank of choice, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Stanford’s offshore banking empire got using the same techniques and embracing the same moral category of clients. Stanford’s banks were known to have laundered money from the Juarez Cartel and alleged to have done so earlier for the Medellin Cartel, and one of his private planes has been seized by the Mexican government in a drug case.

On top of legal woes in the United States and Mexico, the London Daily Telegraph reported that Stanford’s Venezuelan offices were raided by Venezuela’s military intelligence over claims that its employees were paid by the CIA to spy on the South American country. When asked about this in a CNBC interview which was cited in a story by independent journalist Tom Burghardt, Stanford declined to comment on any involvement with the CIA rather than outright deny it.

All of the these dealings by Stanford, and the complicity of his employees in facilitating them, was public information before January 2010, when Mitt Romney addressed the first full meeting of Solamere’s investors. Yet his son Tagg chose to hire into his family these alleged white collar criminals as soon as Stanford’s criminal empire collapsed. The Romney family stands by the new employees associated with their secret bank, as evidenced by Tagg’s response to interview questions from ThinkProgress regarding Solamere’s ability to reign them in: “Hey guys, We’re done here”.

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Does the Romney family now own your e-vote?

by Gerry Bello, Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 18, 2012

Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that’s partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House?

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall’s election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who “owns” the White House.

They are especially crucial in Ohio, without which no Republican candidate has ever won the White House. In 2004, in the dead of election night, an electronic swing of more than 300,000 votes switched Ohio from the John Kerry column to George W. Bush, giving him a second term. A virtual statistical impossibility, the 6-plus% shift occurred between 12:20 and 2am election night as votes were being tallied by a GOP-controlled information technology firm on servers in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In defiance of a federal injunction, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties destroyed all election records, making a recount impossible. Ohio’s governor and secretary of state in 2004 were both Republicans, as are the governors and secretaries of state in nine key swing states this year.

As we have previously reported, H.I.G. Capital has on its board of directors at least three close associates of the Romney family. H.I.G. Capital directors John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers. So is former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve. H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney’s campaign. Fully a third of H.I.G.’s leadership previously worked at Romney’s old Bain firm.

But new research now shows that the association doesn’t stop with mere friendship and business associations. Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt’s brother G. Scott Romney.

The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes.

Unlike other private equity firms, Solamere does not invest in companies directly. Instead, Solamere invests in other private equity funds, like H.I.G. Capital. Solamere calls them “partners.” These partners, like H.I.G., then invest in various enterprises, like Hart Intercivic, the nation’s third-largest voting machine manufacturer.

As reported by Lee Fang of The Nation, Solamere was founded by Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, Papa Romney’s campaign finance chair. Ann Romney and Mitt’s brother G. Scott Romney are also invested. Mitt himself threw in $10 million “seed money” to get the fund going, and spoke personally to its first full investors conference. Solamere’s public web presence has been reduced to a front page only, so a complete list of it’s “partners” can not be found. But reportage by the New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire and the Nation have slowly given us a partial picture of which funds are being funded by Solamere. Some $232 million has been raised so far, according to SEC filings and industry publications.

In addition to Romney’s finance chair Spencer Zwick, Solamere has also provided the campaign with its finance director, Richard Morley, and a western regional finance coordinator, Kaitlin O’Reilly. O’Reilly is listed as an “executive assistant” at Solamere, and also at SJZ LLC, which was founded by her boss Spencer Zwick. The SJZ LLC campaign finance consulting firm has billed Mitt’s campaign over $2 million this election cycle as well as doing another $9,687,582 in billing to various Congressional Campaigns. The host of the private fundraiser at which Romney made his infamous “47%” speech was Marc J. Leder, co-CEO of Sun Capital, another “partner” of the Solamere fund.

As in virtually every close presidential race, Ohio may well hold the key to the Electoral College decision as to who will become the nation’s next chief executive. The presence of Hart Intercivic machines in Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, means there is a high likelihood the votes that will decide the presidency will be cast on them. Major media like CBS have begun reporting that Cincinnati could be “ground zero” in this year’s election.

But these Hart machines are deeply flawed and widely know to be open to a troubling variety of attacks and breakdowns. There is no legal or other means to definitively monitor and re-check a tally compiled on Hart or other electronic voting machines. Ohio’s current governor and secretary of state are both Republicans.

Does this mean the Romney investment in Hart Intercivic through H.I.G. Capital and Solamere will yield it not only financial profits but the White House itself?

Tune in during the deep night of November 7, when the electronic votes in swing state Ohio are once again opaquely reported to the nation and the world, without meaningful public scrutiny or legal recourse.

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Gerry Bello is chief researcher for Free Press. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of five books on election protection, including WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA’S 2012 ELECTION? an e-book at Free Press.

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