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Here’s how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I’m not kidding.

And shoot me for saying this, but it won’t be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they’ll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.

For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We’ve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here’s how they’ll do it, in three easy steps:

Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind

On November 7, 2006, American citizens will be engaged in an exhausting host of insane behaviors known as voting, despite the fact that the corporations and criminal operatives that have pre-scripted and stolen every election since 2000 for the George W. Bush machine remain untouched. Welcome back to hell, again.

The march of Bush's machines

The American vote count is controlled by four hard-wired Republican/neocon corporations: Diebold, ESS, Sequoia, and SAIC.

Every single aspect of every election is controlled and manipulated, by these corporations, with help from corrupt politicians and officials, the corporate media and, lest anyone forget, the US Supreme Court.

The trend of ever greater spending for political campaigns continues in the USA. In California, over $500 million is being spent for the November 2006 election, a record high. In 2004, the candidates for president spent over $880.5 million, up 66 percent from the year 2000. The special interests who provide the money include corporations, farmers, lawyers, unions, and ideological organizations. Living in California, where there are 13 state propositions on the ballot, any time I turn on the television, political ads dominate the commercials. Many of the ads are misleading, exploiting the ignorance of the voters. It's a crazy way to enact policy.

The corrupting influence of money in politics is widely deplored, and some reformers are seeking the superficial remedy, government financing of political campaigns. They call it "clean money," as it does not come from the special interests who seek and get privileges and subsidies in exchange for their funding.

We the people once owned our democracy. We elected “representatives” to run it for US. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we lost our democracy.

It was foreclosed by wealthy and power elites that corrupted our “representatives” who literally sold us out. Our homeland was foreclosed right in plain sight. Sure, we citizens still reside in the USA, but we no longer own our democracy. We pay rent through our taxes. But we no longer have any equity. Our democracy is owned by the rich, and their partner foreign elites and governments, which is why in a strict sense it no longer is a democracy, but rather a plutocracy.

Oh, goody. According to the White House press office, President Bush will spend much of the next two weeks discussing what a swell economy we have. Did you know that the Dow Jones industrial average is at its highest point EVER? And the NASDAQ, ditto. Wow, breathtaking, huh? But the Dow is not a good indicator of how thing are really going for the majority of Americans.

I just love listening to the Bushies play with numbers. When Bush took over in 2001, he predicted a surplus of $516 billion for fiscal year 2006. Last week, the administration announced a 2006 deficit of $248 billion, missing its projection for this year by $764 billion. Bush said the numbers are “proof that pro-growth economic policies work” and are “an example of sound fiscal policies here in Washington.”

This is highly reminiscent of Dick Cheney’s recent observation about the Iraqi government, “If you look at the general, overall situation, they’re doing remarkably well.”

News media have heralded that the population of the USA is now 300 million. This is a good year to be a student of economics, because it is easy to calculate per-capita figures.

For example, the GDP, total output, of the U.S.A. is $12.6 trillion, which divided by 300 million, yields a per-capita GDP of $42,000. By comparison, the world GDP is about $61 trillion, which for about 6.55 billion persons is a global per-capita GDP of about $9,300.

The U.S. government debt is $8.5 trillion, which is $28,300 per person. Each new baby born in the U.S. is inflicted with this average debt as a future taxpayer.

About half the US population is in the "labor force," those who are either employed or actively seeking employment. That puts the U.S. national income per worker at $84,000. About two-thirds of national income is wages, one sixth is land rent, and one sixth a return to capital goods, so the average gross wage is $56,000, before taxes.

19th October 2006 - Jim Lobe, IPS