Greg Palast, always good, on the almost total disenfranchisement of native Americans. As a summary (in the home of the brave and land of the free):
In 2004, Native Nations gave John Kerry the votes he needed to win New Mexico and the presidency, but Kerry was never inaugurated… Because those native votes were never counted. That’s right. Never counted.
According to studies by the MIT-Caltech voting project, the chance your vote won’t get counted is 300% higher if you’re black or Hispanic or Asian American than if you’re white
If you’re American Native, the chance your ballot will not be counted for some technical reason is approximately 1200% higher than if you’re White.
The United States federation is like the BBC: neither of them is - in reality - anything like the towering reputation for fairness and honesty that they give themselves so assiduously. Each is approximately the diametric opposite of their endlessly self-publicised image, in real-world truth. Disgusting rackets, great edifices of deceit, in hard-nosed fact - from the very outset, in each case. Disillusioning, isn’t it…?
There are, of course, some mitigating circumstances in each case. Never entirely creations of the devil. But does any other large ‘venerable’ institution ever really live up to its self-awarded reputation? Anywhere?
[quote=“RhisiartGwilym, post:2, topic:717”]
The United States federation is like the BBC: neither of them is - in reality - anything like the towering reputation for fairness and honesty that they give themselves so assiduously.
[/quote] Exactly. And one more from Palast:
More evidence from Greg - who clearly knows a lot more about it than I do - that vote swindling in the US is nothing new, and has been going on since long before the 2000 election swindle. Jim Crow is all about that, amongst other things.
We in Britain should finger-point, though, with ‘our’ FPTP swindle; instituted and clung to assiduously from the beginning, as a very effective instrument for the prevention of genuine democracy, in the hands of the English raj class who regard themselves as the only legitimate wielders of power in Britain. Hence the utterly ridiculous situation where we now have the inadequate clown-aristo Boris - and his equally hapless Bojoids - nominally in charge, whilst the gics who own and run them make hay out of our public wealth; and something like half the British electorate is now effectively disenfranchised, so that we don’t even have nominal ‘representation’ of our vital interests in Paedominster.
