Prices for Diebold stock shares are soaring out of the 7-year basement this morning, where they have been sitting for the past several months since a coordinated insider sell-off by a dozen or so officers on the very same day last August, when the stock had been near its 52-week high at $53.04/share. Within days after the sell-off, the company renamed its humiliated Diebold Elections Division to Premier Election Solutions, and the stock has been falling, some 50% in total, ever since. Until today.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported a take-over attempt of the entire company by defense contractor conglomerate United Technologies Corp. (UTC). The initial $3 billion hostile bid to buy Diebold at $40/share is “a 66 percent premium over Diebold’s Friday closing price of $24.12,” according to the Times’ report.
As of 2pm ET today, Diebold’s share price has soared some 60% to more than $38/share.
Diebold’s board had unanimously rejected a similar offer from UTC two years ago, and the company once again rebuffed a private offer in February, requesting that United Technologies “refrain from contacting any of its directors.” Over the weekend, UTC went public with its offer, which has both Wall Street and Election Integrity advocates abuzz.
As The BRAD BLOG has covered in detail over the years, Diebold, the 150-year old company and second largest American manufacturer of faulty, hackable, error-prone voting systems, faces myriad financial and legal problems.
It is currently under investigation by the SEC, under investigation by the DoJ, is facing a Securities Fraud Class Action suit, was recently forced to restate earnings to admit that it had overstated its election business in 2007 by some 300% in the wake of report after report showing its voting systems to be failures, leading a number of states to decertify many of their voting machines. Last month the firm announced planned layoffs of 5% of its workforce, some 800 employees, as its share price continued to dive. As well, the company may be facing still more fraud suits and liabilities in the future in the wake of problems and failures with its voting machines found with alarming consistency in state after state.
The UTC offer seems like a difficult one for Diebold’s board to justify turning down, at least to shareholders who have lost so much of their investment value in the company over the past six months, even though it has alarmed Election Integrity advocates, who are troubled to see yet another defense contractor encroach on the business of America’s public electoral system…
“This transaction creates significant and immediate value for Diebold shareholders with no operational risk, while creating long-term value for U.T.C. shareholders,” UTC’s chairman and CEO, George David, said in a statement posted to their website on Sunday.
In his letter to Diebold’s Board Chairman, John Lauer, released with the UTC announcement, David explained his reasons for announcing the hostile bid to the public.
“Failing an ability to engage in discussions with Diebold’s board and management, we believe it is in your shareholders’ interests to know of this proposal,” he wrote.
His statement went on to say, “Diebold represents an excellent fit with UTC, with its strong market position, U.S. footprint, and balance between product and service revenues. In addition, Diebold will benefit from UTC’s international presence and disciplined operating systems.”
The “excellent fit” is precisely what has Election Integrity advocates abuzz with concern since the announcement yesterday. Our email inbox is virtually bursting with folks writing in with their various concerns.
According to Wikipedia, UTC, which would effectively take control over 30% to 40% of the nation’s privatized public voting systems, received more than $5 billion dollars in military contracts in 2005 alone. Diebold is also a major defense contractor.
Further, according to Wikipedia, UTC, like the company it hopes to take over, is a major sponsor of the Republican party. “During the 2004 election cycle, UTC was the sixth largest defense industry donor to political campaigns,” says Wikipedia, “contributing a total of $789,561. 64% of UTC’s 2004 contributions went to Republicans.”
“This is really interesting, and scary,” writes one BRAD BLOG emailer, describing UTC as “a big time defense contractor and war profiteer.” He goes on to write that the company “did $22.5 billion dollars in defense contracts between 2002 and 2006, ranking them 7th among all defense contractors just behind KBR [formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton].”
“Do we really want these folks to count our votes?” he asks.
Mark Crispin Miller, the NYU media professor and author of FOOLED AGAIN
“It gave me the chills,” another emailer wrote after seeing the report in the Times on the “major defense contractor’s” bid for Diebold. “This should be banned by law, as should any private ownership of any aspect of public elections. This is becoming surreal,” he wrote.
When it comes to corporate irresponsibility, UTC also sounds like an “excellent fit” with Diebold.
Once again, from Wikipedia:
With a record like that, it’s hard to figure how Diebold could turn their brothers at UTC down. Given that the Otis Elevator Company is another one of the many companies now controlled by UTC, perhaps they’ll end up weathering the continuing “ups and downs” of the ongoing struggle against the corporatized privatization of America’s voting system a bit easier than Diebold. Even if it’s the voters who end up, yet again, getting the “shaft.”
In a statement today, explaining the reasons for the Diebold’s rejection of the offer, they say “the board believes that now is not the right time — and that it would not be in the best interests of the corporation or its shareholders — to pursue discussions with UTC.” The release goes on to characterize the purchase attempt as “opportunistic.”
CNN reports that financial analysts see it different than Diebold’s board does. They quote Deutsche Bank’s Nigel Coe as describing “Diebold as a ‘fixer upper’ that could benefit from United Technologies’ track record of significantly improving ‘problem-child’ businesses.”
Rich Smith at the Motley Fools writes excitedly today, “Diebold Lives!” and goes on to surmise “that Diebold thinks it’s worth a bit more than what UTC wants to ante up. I’m not so sure it is.” He says “UTC is offering an entirely fair price today.”
As usual, though, Diebold knows best how to run it’s company deepest into the ground at the expense of shareholders and, not incidentally, of American voters.
Phone messages left for comment with several UTC spokespersons have not yet been returned. The BRAD BLOG will, as you may have guessed, continue to follow the story. Unfortunate elevator company puns and all…
You rebel against the government you have for the Government you wish you had—Someday
Hmmmmm … they already (via Shawn “Maytag Repairman” Whitworth) do the certifications of the machines … why not own the companies too?
Southworth
Great, election machines owned by an affiliate to the military industrial complex. Not good.
Yup, It would help the fix being in if they also supplied the machines, certified ’em and got tons of profit if their team/choice/republicans were ‘magically’ elected. I just can’t see anyone believing the results if the rep’s win, Right? There’s gonna have to be a ‘terror’ attack to go along with all the playing up of scare talk(got ricin?) lately…they’re gonna have to freak the heck out of a bunch-o-people in the next few months to have a so-called credible reason why a pro war stay-the-crazy-course republican could win.
Dredd –
Southworth worked for Ciber, and now Systest. Do you have info that UTC was somehow in the testing mix already???
If so, I’m unaware of it, but would welcome any info, of course.
I just made a new post trying to make sense of Kos,”Fintan Dunne,” Hertzberg, “Kelvin Mace” of Democratic Underground, and how Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, and other progressives like Cindy Sheehan have been thrown under the bus. There are also some links provided concerning Kos and Diebold.
{Anyone who wants to join in, mi casa es su casa. Anyone who is into exposing internet fakes based on proof is more than welcomed.}
I’m also curious what happened to John Dean’s blog where he attempted to expose Kelvin Mace of DU. It seems to have been scrubbed. I haven’t noticed him posting here of late.
“Fintan,” Hertzberg, Kos, DU, Brad, Bev, and the Raw Story
http://allaircraftarenotinvolve...t160.html#1403
Why not just privatizes the fucking mint and let utc buy that too . . .
Floridiot #3, Brad #6
We did some digging in this thread and realized that Southworth (the sole and soul of electronic voting machine testing) worked for a company that did contracting for the defense industry (read pentagon military industrial complex) in Huntsville (mil town) Alabama.
A company that thru one of its aliases had a republican lobby there getting questionable no-bid contracts for them according to local articles listed in the thread. (BTW xGov Siegelman was mentioned in those articles dated 2001.)
A lot of dragging the tree to coverup the corporate trail was done by Ciber and its aliases, but back then we took it no further than to make the initial connection.
The company going after Diebold (UT) is at the core of that industry:
(Wiki). No one seemed interested so Floridiot and I sorta dropped it.
My take is that the pentagon would rather not have an out in the open coup, but instead would like to control the apparatus via electronic voting machine systems.
There is no other major reason to buy a looser company than to take over elections and thus plant their people “religiously”. I mean, there really is lotsa faith in electronic elections, so they will keep the faith baby and keep the ammo for other use.
Appreciate the detailed wrap-up! linking
RE my post #9
John Gideon is pulling no punches on the story. I read his thread and his usually reserved comments agree with mine (usually not reserved) on this matter.
BTW some links in the old bb thread (linked in #9 above) have disappeared (specifically the quotes by military contractors about how they check out electronic voting machines). They were hot and may have been scrubbed. I don’t know.
You know something though ?
They (UT) might as well buy that white elephant Diebold because the sales to states portion of it was already tied into Burson-Marstellar (Mark Penn) to the IFES, both of which have ex military peeps employed by them.
The IFES was the middle man for hack box sales to (most of) the States anyway and I’m sure UT has some good old boy connections to these other outfits like Ciber et-al.
Just a matter of digging it up I guess
I mean come on, let’s get real here.
The voting lines were 10,000 miles long in Dem districts in ’04, Bush beats Kerry by 52% to 48% ?
Now this year the Dems are out ahead by almost 3 to 1 in the primaries people wise and almost 5 to 1 in fundraising?
So if McCain comes out winning 51% to 49% in Nov. we’re supposed to buy that shit ?
Fuck that
There you have it folks, when the military industrial congressional lobby oil complex takes over your tortured election process, what else can you call it butt… fascism????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Ooops, forgot media in that complex for profit system! Heil, the freidman free market system!
he-he Ancient, do you mean Brad Friedman ? The CIA plant ? lol
No Flo, that would be ol uncle wilty milty economics freidman. And sorry for another oops, but after watching a documentary on LINK TV about the slaughter of Apalachain mountain tops and communities/people in West Virginia… it should have been oil/coal in that complex!
IMO he’s a big brother to the neocons.
I was thinking this morning, if major industrial countries got together and pledged 10% of their military spending on renewable energy for nonprofit world redemption, we’d solve our energy global warming problem NOW. Just a thought.
Dredd –
Thanks for the clarification. By “they” you were referring initially to the “military industrial complex” as a whole, as opposed to UTC in specific.
Thanks for clearing up the point. I didn’t think I recalled hearing about UTC, specifically, in the election biz anytime prior to all of this, as I had interpreted your original message to be suggesting.
Brad #20
We just never followed it down. John’s post pulls no punches, and I posted a link there that shows direct links between military voting systems and civil voting systems via personnel changeover.
Like Vu leaving Ohio and going to California.
BTW, Diebold, Inc. is not the same as Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. legally either just like UT is not
involvedinterested in elections either … wink, winkThey have scrubbed some of the stuff we dug up … no one was interested then or we would have looked deeper. UT has a division that deals with electronics and that is where I would look.
You aren’t getting kosways with us are ya Brad man?
United Technologies, which among many things makes parts for Airplanes which satisfy FAA certifications, is undoubtedly a better company to manage the production and design of vote-counting hardware and software than Diebold. On airplanes systems are designed so that no single failure can bring down the airplane, and for critical systems, three or even four systems are independently capable of operating a given system.
THAT is what our election process needs, is some design that makes it not prone to single-point failure (or single-point tampering). Multiply independent systems which are all separately auditable would be a huge step forward in election integrity.
That isn’t to say UTC will actually implement such a failsafe system, but they’re a lot more likely to do it than Diebold. Didn’t IBM used to make vote counting and census taking machines decades ago (until they decided it wasn’t a good business for them)?
Headline: “Dingoes Acquire Day Care Center”
Nothing to see here folks…….
From the website of The Carlyle Group (Remember The Carlyle Group from Fahrenheit 911?)(my bolding):
It seems that United Technologies isn’t just any old defense contractor. . .
United Defense – hmmm..
In 2001, and just in time for our celebration as fool suckers for believing that the most expensive air defense system in the world could surely stop a couple of lumbering 767’s from crashing into the most conspicuous, though twice condemned and under waver for asbestos (yet fully insured under double indemnity after their recent purchase that summer by Larry, a smart guy known for paying billions for condemned buildings), the head of CNN Foreign Policy Editorial Board was Robert Kimmit, who, by the way, was also United Defense’s CEO (a work-aholic, no doubt).
When CNN’s mutated Zio Zygotes, Paula Zahn, Wolf the “AIPAC Blitskrieg” Blitzer, Anderson the CIA butt-boy Copper and every other chosenesque pretender at CNN were center stage for our national commiseration, we must not forget that PNAC Rober Kimmit, CEO of United Defense, was calling all the shots that day (why do you think Bin became the fall guy, despite the fact he denied doing it and despite the fact the FBI says they don’t have enough evidence to convict him).
Robert is now [also] the assistant secretary to our Treasury. His family tree has a history of murder and war mongering. His Brother, old spit shine General Kimmit, was the boss at Abu Gharib when all thosee poo-poo pee-pee photos were released. For his effectiveness as head honcho at Abu Gharib, General Kimmit was promoted to a Pentagon Position – in the rear with the gear – where he now polishes flesh knobs in the Pentagons 5th floor potties (once a potty freak always a potty freak!).
But the lineage doesn’t stop their. Back when the Iranians decided they had had enough of the CIA’s run secret police murdering their neighbors, and kicked the war criminal Shah off the throne, Jimmy Carter had a sure fire chance to get the hostages back without any blood shed. He could have simply called the Iranian Revolutionaries as asked for an accommodation. But he didn’t. He decided to be GI Joe based on the tick in his left ear, the father of the Kimmit Brothers, John Kimmit, one of the Zio Zygote Minions that began infesting our Whore House about the time of Johnson, who advised Jimmy to load up planes and helicopters and send some US meat to die on the sands of Iran.
Yeah those Kimmit brothers and United Defense – there’s almost as many of them in our government as there are Israelis. In fact, we have more Israelis (dual citizens) in our government than Israel.
United defense and Diebold both should be brought to the bar for their roles in the massacre of 9 slash 11 and the fraudulent elections that got Mr 93 IQ – yep – our dunce of dunces, George, as president. Now Diebold and United Defense want to insure their continued war crime profits by acquiring more fraudulent control of our election process.
Bye Bye American Pie.
.
Dear Disillusioned
Hmmmm – do they also make those flight control systems that allow uploads of “flight plans” to commercial airliner navigation systems that can redirect the flight path of an airliner and lock the pilot out of the loop?
Hmmmm … it’s all starting to make sense now.
Dear Cadavre:
United Defense and United Technologies are not the same company.
But your posting is interesting. I just hope your mistaking United Defense for United Technologies isn’t an indication of the reliability of your information.
For myself, I must admit my own mistake in my comment above yours. It seems that Carlyle’s website indicates that it has “exited” QuEst, the program that services United Technologies.
I still wonder, though, about connections.
Should have renamed Diebold “Premier Independent Selected Solutions or PISS
Dear Barbara,
Thank you for the correction.
Let me assure you so those demons of falsehood that hide under our beds don’t sneak in to your dreams. Heres The PR for Robert Kimmit’s ssignment at Time Warner
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/...668808,00.html
Here’s but one story about Robert’s Brother, General Kimmit, dungeon and feces honcho at Abu Ghraib.
And here’s some links to documents (under FOIA) that are part of the National Archives. After Kimmit help assure a Reagan Victory. 2 Years after Reagan AIAPAC was formed. Kimmit moved seamlessly from Carter to Reagan.
I hope this info helps to ward off those “I think you’re talking out of the side of your mouth Demons”!
good info…We know as kids war is wrong, US wouldn’t be in iraq if ‘they’ haven’t secretly been pumping to kuwait since ’03(Popular Mechanics accidentally showed the new pipeline,commented on it. A pipeline built so fast it must have been planned before the war, wish I knew about who built it! Anyone have access to Accounting records that show Anything to do with the oil pipelines,pumping amounts since then,etc?) We know if the republicans win the next one with all their debt, countrywide gloom, fiscal meltdown and loss of US’s Reputation All around the world it will definately have been due to fixing the Machines. I think a public database with everyone able to check that they’re on it and that their name/S.I.N/etc is in the correct column would be fairly good, easy to add up and so on.
Weird..After writing the last post I’m suddenly hearing about a new investigation into the pipelines’ accounting after years of nothing, When I wrote cnn about getting/telling us the gps co-ordinates when the Iranians captured the Brit ship awhile back, a half hour later(4am)the Brit’s unexpectedly released their self-serving version of the co-ordinates ‘breaking news’ style. It’s happenned occasionally. I’ve also seen my firewall backtrace to the “U.S. ARMY” trying to get in after writing politically here+ there. If they can do any of this stuff on law abiding people no wonder they want to let the internet co.’s off the hook, didn’t they record everything for a time(like dem’s checking foreign bank accounts, bordellos etc). geez just email me and bribe me to shut up and/or submit strategy ideas,my idealism is waning +I figure what’s gonna happen’s gonna happen…
This blog should be called “Bonfire of the Paranoids”. Too funny!
The Military Industrial Complex is finally gaining control of our voting process. It’s about time we had someone organize it properly.
lol