Brad's take on Roll Stone Abramoff, Diebold, Ney, HAVA election story

[Amaryllis]

Last night I started this thread on the Rolling Stone story that included coverage of the Abramoff, Diebold, Ney, HAVA story and how they kept a paper ballot requirement out of HAVA:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x423397

"And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004."

Bradblog broke this story in Jan. in considerably more detail about the Ney/Diebold connection:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm
The Soon-to-be-Indicted Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio's Connection To Electoral Fraud

Please see Brad's April 14 (yesterday) coverage of the Rolling Stone article:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002692.htm

The Dots Connect Between Abramoff, Ohio 2004 Election Smokescreen and Ney's Former Staffer Revealed to be on Diebold's Payroll While Working for White House Law Firm

ROLLING STONE: Abramoff 'Lurking in Background' of Ohio 2004, Diebold, HAVA Issues

More MSM Coverage of BRAD BLOG Reporting...Same Lack of Appropriate Attribution...

Before I register my complaint here with Matt Taibbi's otherwise excellent article on the background of "Mr. Republican" Jack Abramoff and "The secret history of the most corrupt man in Washington," as published in the April 6th edition of Rolling Stone, I'll point to this smart graf amongst many such smart grafs in a very well-researched and informative piece:

<snip>

With those accolades for Taibbi's work now out of the way, allow me to point to this earlier graf in his piece (emphasis added)...

"All along, Abramoff was buying journalists, creating tax-exempt organizations to fund campaign activities and using charities to fund foreign conflicts. He spent the past twenty years doing business with everyone from James Dobson to the Gambino family, from Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist to Karl Rove to White House procurements chief David Safavian. He is even lurking in the background of the 2004 Ohio voting-irregularities scandal, having worked with the Diebold voting-machine company to defeat requirements for a paper trail in elections."

"Lurking in the background" must be MSM code for: Reported by BRAD BLOG but otherwise ignored.

We're glad to see Taibbi pick up on some of our reporting as he writes...

"And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004."

...But it would certainly help to keep such bad guys from affecting so much corruption and damage for so many years before they actually get busted, if Taibbi would be kind enough to point out some of the sources -- independent, alternative, "blog" or otherwise -- who have been trying to blow such whistles for so long.

With appropriate credit and recognition from the mainstream, as we opined a several weeks ago, reporting such as ours and many others would likely have the effect of stopping the bad guys before they manage to wreak quite as much havoc on our once-great American democracy.

We'd hope that even the usually independent-minded Rolling Stone would keep such important points in mind by choosing to give appropriate attribution where possible in their future reporting. As we've said before: It matters.

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002692.htm

[roguevalley]

1. Brad Blog rules. I am so glad that site is such a Constitution and love of

country geek, sweetie. I depend upon such folks to make me feel there is something going to change here.
Hugs and kudos for being ahead of the curve once more. Even if no one else knows, we do.

[BradBlog]

2. Thanks for posting this Amaryllis! (n/m)

[bleever]

4. Big props, Brad.

:yourock:

[Amaryllis]

5. You are most welcome, Brad. You should get credit where credit is due.

[bleever]

3. Sheer coincidence, however, that Abramoff and Rove employed the same

person as their top assistant: Susan Ralston.

Oh look, there she is with Rove on election night 2004, at a bank of computers!



I wonder what they're doing?

[Amaryllis]

6. What do YOU think they are doing, Bleever? we could start a thread on

this... "caption this photo".
Election night, 2004. What is Karl saying?

I will let you do it since you posted it...

[Wilms]

7. What Rove is saying...

"That's right, ten large pizzas, 5 liters of coke, a six-pack of Bud, and 150,000 votes for *. Make that 140,000. Don't want to make it too obvious. And please, use the back-door when you deliver."

[Amaryllis]

8. Dontcha think we should have a caption thread ,Wilms?

[Wilms]

9. Sure.

Ya got my entry.

[Land Shark]

10. Kick, still relevant...