Jimmy Carter, refused to have his photo taken with his own state flag fully visible because it included the Confederate flag's Stars and Bars

 

Carter, The Kochs and The Donald
By Greg Palast

I couldn’t stomach Jimmy Carter–until my view of him turned around 180 degrees just four years ago.   Like most Democrats who supported Ted Kennedy’s run against him, I tagged Carter as just some grinning anti-New Deal Bible-thumping goober. And his post-Presidential “peacemaking” was often dangerously naïve, as I saw in Liberia where Carter had boosted the presidential candidacy of war-criminal Charles Taylor for president because Taylor, a murderous monster, proclaimed he’d been born again in Jesus.

I nick-named Carter, “The Dangerous Christian.” But then, while staking out the current Governor, the vote-suppressing racist Brian Kemp, I did a little re-con outside Kemp’s office. I had my face to the wall, pretending to study the official portraits of the State's governors.  I was struck that only one, James Earl Carter, refused to have his photo taken with his own state flag fully visible because it included the Confederate flag's Stars and Bars. In Georgia, at that time, 1971, that took immeasurable courage.  That took integrity.   Alav ha-Shalom, President Carter. Here’s the work that the Palast Team Will be focusing on in 2025 The Long Knife of the Kochs Now the work begins. Are we just going to lick our wounds and cry into our pillows over the Election? Nope. The battle for survival is on. For our part, we are completing our investigation of Charles Koch and his climate denial campaign. The man whose net worth is north of $60 billion today earned his first billion the old-fashioned way:  He stole it from American Natives. Charles Koch personally oversaw the theft of over $2 billion in oil from the Osage Nation of Oklahoma.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which was supposed to protect the tribe, literally conspired in the theft and its cover-up.  That’s according to our courageous whistleblowers from inside the BIA, the FBI and Koch Oil itself.  Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and Osage spiritual leader Everett Waller want us to tell their story about Koch and the BIA—a story that’s not over.  As the Chief says, “This is Occupied Territory,” where the US government, called“Maheta” or “Long Knife” in the Wah-Zha-Zhi language, still lords over the Osage.

Today, the Osage are fighting to have the feds, the Kochs and other oil companies clean up the 16,000 oil wells they abandoned on the Osage Reservation. The Koch-funded climate science denial campaign is a direct threat to the Osages’ demand to plug these methane-spewing, Earth-broiling holes. We need your support to complete our investigation and film, Long Knife: The Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the New Killers of the Flower Moon.  Donate and receive a screen credit as a Producer, Co-Producer or Supporter. Or simply be a film backer. Did Voters—or Vote Suppression—Elect Donald Trump? The 2026 and 2028 elections start NOW. And so, our investigation of vote suppression revs up NOW.   This is the dangerous moment, when progressives who gave literally billions for their candidates, cry into their beer and crawl back into their burrows.     But the Palast Team won’t, and I trust you won’t either. First, we are working feverishly to get the data to calculate the effect of racist voter suppression trickery on the election’s outcome.  Not unexpectedly, we are getting stonewalled by red-state officials about the number of provisional ballots uncounted (above 42.3% we find from well-hidden data), the number of  mail-in ballots discarded (we know it’s way over two million), and the number of vigilante challenges to legit voters (we’ve counted 852,000 so far).   U.S. media will write about vote suppression tactics during an election. But never would the media report on the effect of suppression on the November 5 vote count.   But the Palast Team does, with precision, based on data and facts.  And here’s what the numbers are telling us so far.  Absent vote suppression tactics,    “The wholesale attack on votes and voters cost Kamala Harris Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia—which would have brought her to a winning 286 Electoral votes.”    As Gerald Griggs, President of the Georgia NAACP told me, “Vote suppression and voter intimidation won.”  Stay dialed-in to this space for the full explanation, with hard numbers, of the cost of denying the vote to Americans like Major Gamaliel Turner (Ret.) of Columbus, Georgia, who, like so many African-American soldiers, was denied his vote twice. Major Turner’s fight for his ballot and the votes of hundreds of thousands of others, is featured in our film, Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you must.

Still from Vigilantes Inc. – Dolls found on plantation mansion in Georgia

Who says so? Rev. Jesse Jackson. The Reverend and his daughter Santita met with President Biden and Kamala Harris a few weeks before the Election and told Biden and Harris they had to, “Watch Greg Palast’s film”—and then take action. Harris, I’m told, replied by saying she’d sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Act once she took office. Excuse me, Kamala, but as you know from the results, if you don’t do something about vote suppression before the Election, you ain’t getting elected. In fact, if we don’t restart the voting rights movement now, the 2026 and 2028 elections will be decided by vigilantes and violence, not voters. If you would like us to continue this investigation of vote suppression, please make a tax-deductible donation. The Palast Fund can only do its vital work with your help. And for those who have given support, let me express our true gratitude. We can still have a Happy New Year. Yours, Greg Palast and the Investigations Team https://mailchi.mp/gregpalast/carter-the-kochs-and-the-donald?e=4b1df69a84

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and the book and documentary, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His latest film is Vigilantes Inc.: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen