Not even pretending anymore, these Republicans:
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain used campaign funds to buy his own books from his motivational speaking company, Federal Election Commission records show.
Although his autobiography was published by a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., Cain paid Stockbridge, Georgia-based T.H.E New Voice Inc. $36,511 for books. His campaign spent $4 million through Sept. 30, including more than $64,000 paid to his motivational speaking company for airfare, lodging and supplies, as well as the books.
“They are buying my books and my pamphlets,” Cain said in an interview in between appearances in Arizona yesterday. “The campaign is buying them from T.H.E New Voice.”
Cain’s autobiography, “This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House,” made its debut over the weekend in fourth place on the New York Times bestseller list. Cain said the sales are in compliance with FEC rules because the campaign is paying the going rate for the material.
I guess everyone has figured out the GOP base is an easy mark. It used to be just the religious frauds like Jim and Tammy Faye who took them to the cleaners, but the pols figured out where the money is.
JPL
As soon as the media is done discussing fast and furious, the president’s telepromter and his czars, they will discuss misuse of funds by the gop..
deep cap
Wait, so he bought a ton of his own books so he could artificially get them on to the NYT bestsellers list?
Am I understanding this right?
jonas
Wow. Take people’s donations, use them to buy your own books. Cash royalty checks.
Nice work, if you can get it.
soonergrunt
If they’re falling for these grifters, whose grifts are so obvious and balls out front, then they deserve it. It’s not like Cain or Bachmann or Palin ever had a realistic shot at the Presidency, nor wanted to be President. I’m perfectly OK with these people taking their money, because that’s less money to end up in the hands of somebody with a chance, and more likely to lead to the grifted staying home on election day, either because they’re pissed off at being grifted, or because they can’t have their favorite candidate.
Corner Stone
So obvious. Never any doubt. The absolute worst thing that could happen to Herman Cain is if he lets his ego out of check and starts to actually believe he’s really running for the R Presidential nomination.
Because he isn’t, and never was.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@deep cap:
Surely there’s an easier way, right?
soonergrunt
@deep cap: That, and it’s a money laundering scheme. He can’t simply take donations for a presidential campaign and live off them. Christine O’Donnell got in trouble for that. But his campaign can buy copies of his book (as campaign literature, see) which then generates revenue to him in the form of royalties.
Then, of course, the campaign can sell copies of his book at events and offer to give it to people who donate to the campaign, thus perpetuating the grift for another couple of FEC cycles. Additionally, anyone who buys the book through other means also ends up paying him a royalty.
And last but not least, the campaign takes a tax write off (as does the imprint and the publisher, I believe) on any books that get remaindered.
rikryah
G-R-I-F-T-E-R-S
the ENTIRE lot of them
Only Rachel Maddow has explained it in no uncertain terms.
Cain is running for Fox News gig.
He’s not running for President.
He’s the Koch Brothers A.B.C.
Thoughtcrime
Herman “Kingfish” Cain.
dmsilev
@deep cap: No, it’s worse than that. His campaign, using donated money, bought a bunch of books from what was effectively Herman Cain, Inc. It’s transferring money from campaign donors to his own pocket, pure and simple.
Impressive in its own way; usually GOP grifters extract in-kind payments, such as the Palins’ Nordstrom’s shopping spree. Cain has figured out how to monetize the process.
Rafer Janders
I guess everyone has figured out the GOP base is an easy mark. It used to be just the religious frauds like Jim and Tammy Faye who took them to the cleaners, but the pols figured out where the money is.
OK then, why aren’t we doing this? Why isn’t there a Balloon Juice PAC targeted at religious right voters? Tell them the gay-married Mexican socialists are coming to get Tunch, and then sit back and watch the dollars flow in? Why should the right-wing pols be the only ones grifting these morons?
Thoughtcrime
Better for the rubes’ money to go to these grifters than to real campaigns.
piratedan
hah! these guys are pikers compared to who really owns them….
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/18/1027608/-Bank-of-America-reports-$62-billion-profit-for-third-quarter,-but-must-haveyour$5?via=blog_1
where we can charge you for the privilege of having access to your own money…..
cmorenc
I’m not sure that a campaign purchasing 36K of books of a candidate’s bio is of itself a sign of worrisome grifting the way Sarah Palin has turned cult personality politics into a way to support a lavish lifestyle. The real substantive question would be the extent to which the books, air fare, etc. “reimbursements” merely represent a bookkeeping shuffle of payment for expenses vs an actual conduit of personal profit for the candidate. I’ll agree that if it’s mostly merely the former by Cain, he’s going about it in a way that needlessly raises potential suspicious appearances, especially since there are other feasible ways of going about the same ends that avoid this problem.
Let’s hold off for a bit on the “grifter” charge against Cain. If he’s really a grifter type, it won’t be very long before he does something more unarguably egregious, but in the meanwhile exaggerated accusations can only serve to dilute and distract from the many other huge bona fide problems with Cain as potential Presidential timber (inexperience, 999, and legion other matters). We’d do better to concentrate on the many adverse aspects of Cain which have demonstrably solid legs than to indiscriminately chase every scrap.
Rafer Janders
I guess everyone has figured out the GOP base is an easy mark. It used to be just the religious frauds like Jim and Tammy Faye who took them to the cleaners, but the pols figured out where the money is.
Damn it, post in moderation because of the dreaded S-word….
OK then, why aren’t we doing this? Why isn’t there a Balloon Juice PAC targeted at religious right voters? Tell them the gay-married Mexican soshulists [sic] are coming to get Tunch, and then sit back and watch the dollars flow in? Why should the right-wing pols be the only ones grifting these morons?
BGinCHI
GOP = Grifters Only Please
(Fleecing the American Citizen One Fucking Moran at a Time)
Culture of Truth
You gave Herman Cain money. What did you think he was going to do with it?
SiubhanDuinne
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
I gotta grift these marks til I die,
Can’t help scammin the G.O.P.
MonkeyBoy
Cain’s book could use some input on its Amazon tags page.
David in NY
Only slightly OT. Here, on Bloomberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, a certified editor of the National Review, meets the Tea Party and is appalled. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/bad-math-hurts-herman-cain-s-good-tax-intentions-ramesh-ponnuru.html#disqus_thread
It’s a pretty good take-down of Cain’s 9-9-9(=30) plan. But what’s better are the comments in which Ponnuru is called not a conservative, a Rhino (sic), and worse. And being heckled by people who simply will not believe anything he has written because they already know the truth. And his testy responses to the monster he has helped create. Pie fight all the way.
catclub
I found it odd that they never mentioned Newt Gingrich.
I thought that he pioneered the use of one’s own corporation to provide services to a campaign. Isn’t that wht he is doing right now (if he actually is getting any donations)?
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: Tom Lehrer’s version was also appropriate:
Shark’s gotta swim, bat’s gotta fly.
Stillwater
I get it now. All that conservative talk about bootstrapping is just shorthand for the grift. Nice.
deep cap
@dmsilev:
Yeah, except didn’t he donate something like 5 mil to his own campaign? So by buying his books, he’s basically giving money back to himself?
Warren Terra
I think you’re reading this wrong. If I recall correctly, Cain has given his campaign a lot of money, and he’s hardly going to cash in big on the sales of 36,000 books, no matter where the money comes from or who owns the vendor. Even if he managed to pocket a quarter-million on the deal (keeping about $7 per book in royalties and vendor fees), it wouldn’t affect his net worth (unlike Palin, who had little when her grift started).
The real questions seem to be:
1) Has this maneuver allowed him to rig the bestseller lists? I know the New York Times is supposed to discount bulk sales somehow, but don’t know the details.
2) Aside from whether he’s lining his own pockets this way (which I don’t think is a major factor), who else is “T.H.E New Voice Inc”? Is he propping up the business, perhaps helping out a kid or something? Someone who’d benefit from a few hundred thousand in income in a way that Cain wouldn’t?
Culture of Truth
Grifting aside, it’s also an attempt to move his book up the bestselling list, which aside from promoting sales, give the impression of popularity which helps with the campaign.
amk
@deep cap: No, he didn’t use his ‘own money’. That pos grifter used the campaign dough to pay himself.
BGinCHI
Speaking of idiots. TPM headline:
Am I the only one who read “Bachmann fesses up: I blew Ed Rollins”?
I know, gross, but that’s where my eyes went.
Corner Stone
@deep cap: I think he just “pledged” that amount but hasn’t ponied up yet. From CBSNews:
“That includes Cain, who lacks any sort of real fund-raising network: He raised just $2.8 million in the summer fund-raising period (including a $175,000 personal loan from the candidate), and has just $1.3 million on hand.”
Loneoak
I wonder if there are any conservative “bestsellers” that actually sell their quantity listed to people who read the books. It’s become such a core component of wingnut welfare to have some think tank, and now campaign, buy your book that I doubt more than 10% of these are sales to actual human beings.
Well, none of them go to actual human beings, I mean to actual shells of humanity rather than the back of a warehouse in Branson.
Catsy
I’m struggling to understand how this is legal. Man takes campaign contributions. Uses that money to buy bulk copies of his own book. A portion of which purchases are paid to him personally as royalty checks. In short: man converts campaign contributions into his own personal funds.
For someone who is sincerely trying to get elected, this might not matter much–the FEC moves pretty slowly on this sort of thing. Oh so sorry, didn’t think of that, here let me pay back those contributions plus a nominal fine now that I’m elected. Never do it again, promise.
But for someone who’s trying to grift, the fact that you might have to pay a fine and repay the money sort of defeats the purpose of the exercise.
I mean, am I missing something here?
amk
@BGinCHI: ftw.
Culture of Truth
It may be that the Cain campaign is giving away copies at rallies, and so considers it a campaign expense.
Judging from his Meet The Press appearance he doesn’t seem overly familiar with it.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
Heh.
Culture of Truth
If he spent $5 million on this campaign I would certainly not trust him with my taxpayer money.
cmorenc
@catclub:
Newt Gingrich has, over the last 15 years, been a prime example of living large off the conservative think-tank and media-circus welfare state. He’s even more successful a grifter as Sarah Palin, only more smoothly embedded into the GOP informal non-government infrastructure.
QUERY: When the final flames of Newt’s 2012 Presidential campaign die out, can he still make a living off the THUNK-tank circuit? (Will his time on the think-tank circuit be finally over?)
cat
This is why politicians, even democrats, write books.
It is an easy way to launder money and monetize their position.
You want into a pols good graces? Buy a few cases of their book to ‘distrubute’ to your employees, membership, garbage men.
If you aren’t donating the royalties of your book to a non-affiliated entity its very unseemly at the least.
beltane
I’ve always thought that the Republican party was made up of two types of people: con artists and the victims of con artists. The victims of these con artists are not without blame as their own propensity towards avarice and greed make them vulnerable to the grifting schemes of others. I seem to remember a quote from an actual criminal whose name escapes me that was something along the lines of “you can’t cheat an honest man”.
Culture of Truth
@catclub:
but they don’t get far if they try.
Catsy
@beltane: I’m sure it has been said elsewhere in other forms, but I remember that from a Heinlein book. Time Enough for Love, I think.
The Ancient Randonneur
I miss the good ol’ days of hookers, Congressional pages, wetsuits and diapers. Making fun of the Greedy Old Parasites political base is starting to feel like making fun of kids in special ed classes.
FlipYrWhig
I have a book coming out soon. It’s destined to have very few readers. I need to get on this gravy train, fleece a few rubes into buying it to save the republic, and watch the FlipMentum build. If I do it right, I’ll probably be the Republican frontrunner about 3 weeks later.
Warren Terra
@Catsy:
It’s also pretty much the whole plot of the Mamet film House Of Games.
PS not topical to Cain, but topical to campaign finance: no love for the story about how Perry kicked off his campaign by accepting a big, illegal in-kind donation?
SiubhanDuinne
@Catsy: @beltane:
It was the title of a 1939 movie starring W. C. Fields.
Lolis
@David in NY:
Wow, those comments are something else. I am always amazed by the alternate universe most Republicans seem to inhabit. Did they grow up next to meth houses or what?
PaminBB
@Corner Stone:
If he only raised 2.8 mil over the summer, how has the campaign spent the 4 mil mentioned in the piece quoted at the top? How long has the Cain “campaign” been going on? Just curious. It does sound more like an attempt to manipulate sales figures, unless his company is marking up the books above what they paid.
neil
Herman Cain, though, is not a pol. He’s a businessman and public speaker, like, well, Jim and Tammy Faye.
By the way, did you realize that relative to the rest of the field, he’s practically middle class? With a net worth of $4.4 million, he’s not even as rich as Obama (being president really inflates your book sales). Mitt Romney has spent probably 4 times Cain’s net worth on his own campaign at this point and yet he’s tied with the guy in the polls. What a mess.
Bubblegum Tate
@David in NY:
Wow. I doubt Ponnuru will change his ways at all, but it is pretty amusing to watch him have to confront the idiocy of his fan club — or rather, former fan club, as he is now no longer a True Conservative because he made some mild concessions to reality.
El Tiburon
I always wondered what kind of income grifters like Newt and Santorum made on running for Pres.
I guess it’s like being a rock band on an arena tour while it lasts: first class or private air travel; 5-star hotels and limos; padding the bank account.
Can anyone give a snapshot of what a candidate earns while running?
neil
A candidate earns nothing. Haven’t you heard that Mitt Romney is unemployed?
NonyNony
@neil:
This is part of his appeal with Republican voters. He comes from a poor background, worked his way through college and now he’s rich, but not “Kennedy” rich or “Romney” rich or “Paris Hilton” rich, rich like your boss’s boss is rich.
The Republican base love rich guys, but they REALLY love rich guys who validate their worldview that anyone could be rich if they really tried and that the problem with the poor folks in the US is that they’re lazy. That is one of the reasons why they’re starting to love Herman Cain.
Mitt Romney has probably spent Cain’s net worth on his wardrobe.
El Tiburon
@cmorenc:
No – I think it adds to his right-wing street cred: Newt Gingrich: 2012 Presidential Contender…”
Also, right-wingers are so starved for leaders to mindlessly follow. They have Joe Six-Pack ferchristsake.
The Populist
I sense many of these “candidates” run knowing they can use the campaign funds for whatever AND command higher speaking fees.
The Populist
@PaminBB: Don’t waste your time on that troll. He/She/It can’t even debate with honor.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I have often wondered how much an African-American who has repented of his evil liberal homocommunist ways could make off the fRighties before moral nausea took hold.
I’ve even got a book title: “My Journey from Left to RIGHT.”
Annoyingly trite, is it not?
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: Behind-the-scenes tales of _working_ on campaigns always take place in a milieu of seedy motels in boring states with pizza crusts piling up in the corners of the rooms. But, now that you mention it, I don’t remember many scenes depicting the _candidate’s_ accommodations.
The Populist
@NonyNony: Funny part is I am certain Herb Cain (yes, just love that Palin called him that) benefitted from Affirmative Action. He’ll deny it, and I am fine with that, but this is something that kills me. Nobody is demanding to see HIS grades, his record from his time as CEO of Godfathers, etc.
The baggers might like him now so they can say “See, we aren’t racists!” but most of them will never pull the lever for him in the end.
Paul in KY
@David in NY: Good job getting in the muck & talking reality. Thanks for the link. Enjoyed reading the whining.
The Populist
@El Tiburon: Speaking fees. Palin is proof that if you stay in the limelight regularly, it leads to a ton of speaking engagements, jobs with Fox News and other media opps that one does not get out of the spotlight.
cathyx
I actually saw a Cain for President bumper sticker yesterday at the grocery store parking lot. I had to do a double take. I figured I’d see Romney ones eventually, but a Cain one already, and in this blue state?
beltane
This post about grifters is bringing up an ad for an on-line “Bible Degree” program. If any of you are in need of some extra money, I see a career opening in fleecing those lost souls who will go into debt earning a worthless Bible study certificate. Someone’s gonna grift from these people and it might as well be you.
The Populist
@Stillwater:
The grift is on. These people are the ultimate welfare queens. I am offended that these morons talk crap about poor and middle class folks yet they are the biggest scumbags this country has to offer.
They use the system enrich themselves, their friends, their business allies and the like (yes, many dems do it too but not the whole) so they manipulate and lie about government being a big weight around our collective necks all while making big bucks off the carcass.
This grift is as old as this country and it’s time people force a stop to all of it.
Emma
@David in NY: Holy God. What are those people smoking?
NonyNony
@The Populist:
He’s lucky then – because I don’t think there’s any way Cain WANTS to be President.
He saw this run as another self-promotion vehicle – promote the Herman Cain brand. He wants to expand his radio audience, maybe pick up a FOX gig, and get his name around. There’s no way he REALLY wants to be President – that would be hard work for relatively low pay – when he could be doing a motivational speaker gig and maybe have his own TV show.
pk
Is it possible for Cain to win the nomination? Everyone else has flamed out (Trump, Bachmann, Perry). There literally is no one else left for all practical purposes. The primary voters hate Romney, they chose the hated McCain over him. Why would they not choose Cain? Everyone seems to be assuming this won’t happen. Why not? I don’t know enough about the GOP primary process to understand why Cain cannot win.
neil
Cain’s B.A. is from Morehouse, a historically black college, so I don’t know if affirmative action applied there. He then went to Purdue in 1971 while also working as a military contractor; both categories eligible for affirmative action at the time. But then, this quickly leads to the fallacy of underestimating ‘suspected’ affirmative-action beneficiaries. Cain is, by all indications, a smart, successful person, even if he is not qualified to be President. His accomplishments definitely can’t be explained away just by referring to the red-meat rhetoric he’s learned to dish out as a public speaker.
Check out this old Youtube video of CEO Cain debating Bill Clinton to a draw (IMO) in 1994. He doesn’t win on style or on rhetoric (and he’s no politician) but his performance against one of the most gifted and intelligent pols of our time is genuinely impressive.
Ash Can
@soonergrunt:
This, exactly. Some people just have to learn the hard way, and others never will, no matter what.
cleek
it’s all your own fault that you don’t have enough money to artificially-inflate your own book’s popularity.
catclub
@Warren Terra: I read it.
“Brian D. Pardo said he told the Perry campaign to reimburse him whatever federal law required for use of his jet. ”
Wasn’t Brian Depardo the announcer on some game show?
Seriously, anyone who says “Just pay me what feels right.”
is clearly donating to the cause, rather than accounting for actual costs, and billing like… those.
catclub
@The Populist: “This grift is as old as this country and it’s time people force a stop to all of it.”
I think the whole point about grifts that are as old as the country is that they are not going away.
But I applaud your ‘consarn it, it’s time people woke up’ attitude.
TenguPhule
Yes, but then the Palins spend that money and get happiness and benefits from that, which is not okay.
Now if there were a modern Robin Hood who’d rob them blind and leave the grifters as bad off as their victims, then it would be okay.
Pennsylvanian
I support this completely. If the GOP voters want to support these grifters by giving them money to funnel into their own pockets instead of real, actual campaign stuff, I’m behind them 100%. That just means less money for attack ads against dems and fewer dollars for self promotion of their toxic GOP agenda and failed policies.
This is win-win for dems, as far as I am concerned.
Kola Noscopy
From the title of this post, I assumed the discussion was about ABL.
My bad.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Tiburon:
Shall we start taking bets now on how long it takes before they lower a 3 foot high replica of Stonehenge onto the stage of the GOP debates?
handy
If this gets any traction I’m sure BillO and the rest of the talking points circuit are ready to go with the “but Obummer wrote books too” riposte. As it is this is too much comedy.
Barry
@El Tiburon: “I always wondered what kind of income grifters like Newt and Santorum made on running for Pres.
I guess it’s like being a rock band on an arena tour while it lasts: first class or private air travel; 5-star hotels and limos; padding the bank account.
Can anyone give a snapshot of what a candidate earns while running?”
I think that the simplest explanation is that at that levels, There Are Ways of blurring the boundaries, so that some of the money sticks (probably through multiple layers).
amk
@handy: But you see, obummer donated his royalty to charity.
neil
Obama most certainly did not donate his royalties to charity. His tax returns are all public, don’t ya know.
catclub
@neil: speaking of public, thinkprogress has a copy of cain’s personal financial disclosure, which one can, in principle, read, but the copy was illegible. Was this on purpose?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Lunch, meet monitor. Monitor, meet lunch.
@neil: Thanks for that. I’ve always found Brown person = AA beneficiary insulting and frustrating, especially since it is impossible to disprove AA had anything to do with getting hired, admitted to college and so on.
I know several people (including myself) who left the race block blank on college apps in an attempt to pre-empt this line of thinking. It worked about 50% of the time.
Calouste
I think people are giving Palin too much credit as the inventor of the Presidential campaign grift. That dishonor goes to Rudy Gulliani, who managed to turn $50 million into 2 (two) delegates and a lot of consultant fees.
Ben Cisco
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Haven’t touched that block since I left the USAF. Oddly enough, my percentages have been pretty close to yours.
Culture of Truth
“You may say I’m a grifter
But I’m not the only one…”
Thoughtcrime
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
They should do the debates in Dubly.
Thoughtcrime
@catclub:
You must be thinking of Don Pardo of The Price Is Right, Jeopardy, and Saturday Night Live: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Pardo
Ben Cisco
@Culture of Truth: I see what you did there.
Triassic Sands
Can I get rich by writing my own autobiography (that no one is interested in reading) and they buying all the copies myself? That sounds like a great get-rich scheme, but I just can’t figure out how to connect all the dots. Do I have to run for president too? I’d prefer this path to riches over the more conventional route of helping some poor Nigerian prince get his money out of the country and safely into foreign bank accounts, but unfortunately, there are plenty of Nigerian princes willing to give me step-by-step instructions and, so far, nobody is willing to give me detailed instructions to becoming fabulously wealthy by writing and buying my own book. If anyone can help, I’d appreciate it.
PS: Do I even have to actually write the book — after all, no one is going to read it? So, can’t I just pretend to write it, pretend to buy it, and pretend to read it, and somehow accumulate real billions, or at least millions of dollars.
PPS: I’m not trying to get out of working, it just seems like the US currently has lots of rich people running around who acquired their wealth without doing anything productive. Is it so wrong to want to be another great-American success story?
PurpleGirl
@jonas: Typically, when there is a bulk purchase the author doesn’t get a royalty, especially if there was a discount. However, the NY Times listing should have an asterisk connotating that there was a bulk purchase of the book.
ETA: He may be planning to hand out the books as an incentive to donate to his campaign or hand them out at speeches. The Times listing still needs to note the bulk sales.
quannlace
Don’t know if this makes me happy or sad. Rather relieved to know that there aren’t that many people thirsting for his deathless prose, to put him on the NYT’s best seller list legitimately.
Paul in KY
@Triassic Sands: If you can get other people to give you contributions, which you would then use to ‘buy’ your ‘book’, then:
Profit!
Tell us how it goes.
quannlace
“
Hey, this could be a new version of “The Producers.”
bcinaz
This kind of stuff doesn’t stop when Republicans achieve elected office either. For example. Once Bush and Cheney took up permanent residence in the Capitol, they proceeded to start a war in Iraq which led to shoveling gazillions of dollars at Halliburton, Blackwater, et al, in an absolute orgy of crony capitalism.
BTW whatever happened to Jim Brennaman and the 12 billion in 100 dollar bills left on the tarmac in Baghdad?
Triassic Sands
@Paul in KY:
I’m working on a plan: The 33-1/3 – 33-1/3 – 33-1/3 Plan. Of course, it only applies to incomes under $200,000 a year. It’s simple. It’s bold. It’s easy to understand.
The Populist
@neil: Fair enough but Morehouse was founded as an all black school and Cain was reportedly from a modest background when he got in. Either way, he benefitted from the very thing HE whines about now. Had there not been a black college that took him on what I have assume was merit, he’d have probably gone to a public college with affirmative action being his basis for attending. Until I know what he was like as a student (what’s good for the goose right?) I have to assume he may have gotten a scholarship somewhere other than Morehouse.
Either way, he would have won due to a system he sits here complaining about.
The Populist
@neil: I am not downgrading his intelligence. He’s a sharp guy from everything I can see. What I am saying is he claims racism wasn’t so bad and if that was true, why the need for an all black university? Without a Morehouse, a lot of talented folks like Cain would have found attending a college harder to come by unless they were admitted thanks to A.A.
He succeeded and I am more than happy to give him his props there. The next problem is that guys like him have no concept that the system is now rigged against anybody of modest means succeeding in our society and this is the whole point of the 99% protests.
FlipYrWhig
@Triassic Sands: It wasn’t a great skit otherwise, but I did like the SNL bit where Kenan Thompson as Cain delineated other numeric plans he would propose. His “3-3-3” plan for health care was that everyone would get 3 pills, 3 days off, and 3 chicken noodle soups.
Hob
A lot of people are making the assumption that Cain only gets royalty checks out of this. Doesn’t that depend on whether he bought wholesale or retail? He’s buying books from his own company, which presumably got them at wholesale price from the publisher. So if he’s reselling them to his campaign at full price, that’d be a profit of half the cover price on each copy (plus the royalties). I couldn’t tell from the article (it depends on what he means by “paying the going rate”, although good luck trying to tell what Cain means by anything he says).
Hob
@cmorenc: Seriously? I can’t imagine any way to construe this kind of thing as “a bookkeeping shuffle of payment for expenses”. Can you?
And how is anyone “indiscriminately chasing every scrap”? Bloomberg reported a story which, if true, the FEC may have reason to look into. People here are commenting on it. What do you expect? This seems a bit concern-trolly even if that wasn’t your intention.
Paul in KY
@Triassic Sands: Best of luck! Sounds better than any plan I’ve seen the Repuboclowns put forth.