CW 378: When Deregulation Becomes Decriminalization with Greg Palast Author of 'Vultures & Vote Rustlers' & 'Billionaires & Ballot Bandits'

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse , The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review. His books have been translated into two dozen languages. His brand new film of his documentary reports for BBC Newsnight and Democracy Now! is called Vultures and Vote Rustlers. Palast is known for complex undercover investigations, spanning five continents, from the Arctic to the Amazon, from Caracas to California, using the skills he learned over two decades as a top investigator of corporate fraud. Palast, who has led investigations of multi-billion-dollar frauds in the oil, nuclear, power and finance industries for governments on three continents, has an academic side: he is the author of Democracy and Regulation, a seminal treatise on energy corporations and government control, commissioned by the United Nations and based on his lectures at Cambridge University and the University of São Paulo. In the 1970s, after earning a finance degree from the University of Chicago while studying under Milt Friedman and other "free trade luminaries," Palast went on to challenge their vision of a New Global Order. He did this while working for the United Steelworkers of America, the Enron workers' coalition in Latin America and consumer and environmental groups worldwide. Palast is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. His writings have won him the Financial Times David Thomas Prize. Palast was called"An American hero," said Martin Luther King III and the ultra famous political activist Noam Chomsky says Greg "Upsets all the right people." Palast won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award for his BBC documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, where he exposed George W. Bush dodging the Vietnam War draft. His accomplishments go on and on, so we encourage you to learn more about Greg at http://gregpalast.com