The ghost of Jerzy Kozinski just died a little on the inside:
For months, reporters and political operatives (including me) have been pointing out that Ben Carson’s campaign bears many of the hallmarks of a political scam operation. Now Carson seems to agree. On CNN on Tuesday, Carson discussed his year-end staff shake-up:
“We had people who didn’t really seem to understand finances,” a laughing Carson told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “CNN Newsroom,” adding, “or maybe they did—maybe they were doing it on purpose.”
It’s a remarkable statement—especially because he’s so blithe about it.
Carson has taken in incredible amounts of money during the race. His campaign has raised more than any other Republican presidential rival, though they’ve raised more when super PACs are included. But he’s also spent more than any of them, so that despite his prolific fundraising, he has barely $4 million in cash on hand.
Related StoryWhere Is Ben Carson’s Money Going?
That’s because Team Carson has been plowing a huge portion of the money it raises back into fundraising, using costly direct-mail and telemarketing tactics. Pretty much every campaign uses those tools, but the extent to which Carson was using it raised eyebrows around politics. First, many of the companies being paid millions and millions of dollars are run by top campaign officials or their friends and relations, meaning those people are making a mint. Second, many of the contributions are coming from small-dollar donors. If that money is being given by well-meaning grassroots conservatives for a campaign that’s designed not to win but to produce revenue for venders, isn’t it just a grift?
I mean sweet jeebus. At least Sarah Palin’s stupid self was in on the grift. In his defense, this isn’t brain surgery.
Davebo
Well if it’s truly just a grift some of these folks have to be kicking some cash back to Ben.
But even assuming they are, how much could it be and what are the risks of being found out? Does he just enjoy campaigning because there are easier ways to make money. Or is he looking at the long term benefits of bigger and better book deals and speaking engagements?
Of course, one has to consider the possibility that outside of putting his hands in people’s brains Carson really is a pretty dull tool. I certainly wouldn’t discount that possibility.
muddy
OT: But still conserva-grifty. Millions in food stamps per year just in this one wacked out religious colony.
Mike J
Fred from Slacktivist is betting on Franklin Graham doing the grifter run next cycle.
Adam L Silverman
@Davebo: Nope, he’s the primary mark. Without him being completely earnest, there’s no con to pull the money in from the rubes writing the checks. Dr. Carson isn’t in on it. There’s no indication whatsoever that he has any financial stake in any of these firms. And there’s plenty of evidence that he’s somewhere between a naif to being neurologically impaired, so there’s no way he’s a willing participant. Rather he was the first victim and what was taken/grifted from him was his good name.
Bill E Pilgrim
So this is intresting:
Presumably the current Grand Lizard who’s taken on Sporck’s historical role is Count von Sippy Cup.
Robes, cross, Texas, check. What’s to be concerned about?
This may be the most disturbing part though:
Man, I thought boxed wine was bad enough.
WaPo, via NYMag
Gin & Tonic
@muddy: I bet it’s a rounding error when compared with Kiryas Joel.
trollhattan
Over the last year I lost count of how many little old white ladies in tennis shoes driving Toyota RAV4s and Priuses sporting Carson 2016 stickers. For awhile, he had the “I just want to elect a polite young[?] man.” It’s been, frankly, weird.
StellaB
Affinity fraud. Dr. Carson was played.
SiubhanDuinne
That’s nice.
trollhattan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Sounds like the place Cheney plugged his lawyer. Jason Jones’ TDS report on the joint was deeply disturbing.
“Here, we have these pen-raised birds that we stuff under bushes and you walk up and shoot them. We have pointing dogs to show you where they are. Here’s the rate card.”
“How much to shoot a dog?”
And, scene.
? Martin
I challenge anyone to provide a a clear test to differentiate between a Republican campaign and a grift. These are the people that invented the practice of selling your book to the party so that you can get on the bestseller list.
Fair Economist
Carson did probably sell some books and increase his speaker fees, even if he didn’t get anything directly.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is the only explanation at this point for this entire election year, for me.
heckblazer
“Dammit, Smithers, this isn’t rocket science, it’s brain surgery!”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/33701
PurpleGirl
@muddy: IIRC, I read somewhere that the polygamous wives and children are also on welfare. That’s the only way a man can support the number of wives and children they have.
@Gin & Tonic: Ah, but Kiryas Joel is only big families, the men still have only one wife and one house to take care of. The polygamous Mormons have multiple wives, many children and often times several houses.
Redshift
@Adam L Silverman:
Come on! Newt Gingrich? Mike Huckabee? I think it’s plausible that Carson wasn’t in on it, but it’s not like this sort of grift can’t work with the figurehead being a grifter instead of being earnest.
NotMax
@trolhattan
Can easily suss out how you can tell that they’re white but if you can discern their footwear perhaps you’re driving way too close.
;)
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: I will offer this small defense of the truly horrible voting populace of Georgia: while I have seen several Carson signs and bumper stickers, I have seen not one for Cruz.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bill E Pilgrim: :-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
maeve
Somehow I got on a conservative mailing list – I think someone transcribing donor lists got me wrong – I got all sorts of mailings, was invited to join republican “inner circles” for a mere $1000 donation etc-
Two years ago I got mailings from “Draft Ben Carson for President” – the gist of which was “he’s black so 60% of colored folks will vote for him automatically – its the only way we can win”
Its a long con.
(Also got a mailing from a California Congressional candidate who was basically running against FDR – felt like mailing him and saying “I’d love to support you but I’m on social security and can’t afford it” (which I”m not but thought it ironic)
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: Different type of con. Speaker Gingrich and Governor Huckabee are clearly part of the con, specifically they are in on it. Dr. Carson is clearly the primary mark. Without leveraging his good name and seeming and real obliviousness, there’s no con there at all.
Anoniminous
Give the GOP base bigotry, ignorance, and ressentiment and they’ll buy it.
Literally.
Steve in the ATL
@maeve: I got a misdirected email today from our buddy Alan Grayson. Made repeated references to the “unDemocratic Party.” Obviously, I immediately sent a large check.
muddy
@PurpleGirl: In the article, they are making the people give up their food to the church, and making them buy the food only from a couple of church owned stores. Looks like someone’s going to jail. That would be a refreshing change.
Bill E Pilgrim
@NotMax: Does Toyota make RAV and Prius golf carts?
cokane
strangest thing, im rewatchng the Wire, and guess which current prez candidate gets a shoutout in the middle of season 4?
muddy
@Steve in the ATL: I got 3 large cards today from Hillary, identical. Some kind of printing fart I suppose.
I also received a super racist robocall on the answering machine, a PAC for Trump. “You can’t say I’m a racist for wanting to see beautiful white children at school together, you can’t say I’m racist for this that and the other racist reason.”
It was bizarre.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m not saying that on that side he wasn’t. My guess is that his business manager convinced him it was okay to do it. I haven’t gotten the impression that Dr. Carson is a very strategic thinker or a long range planner.
Steve in the ATL
@muddy: To their credit, the Trump PAC obviously who their supporters are!
Bill E Pilgrim
This is what I keep saying lately, if you look at FOX News, it’s not just that they’re right wing propaganda, the whole air about it is also in the style of the worst get-rich-quick no-money-down three-days-to-millions half-hour late night info scam you’ve ever seen. And they demolish their competitors with that stuff.
It’s such a successful approach it’s kind of amazing that our elections haven’t been turned into pure infotainment scam before this, frankly.
As is not uncommon, Matt Taibbi had one of the best lines so far in a piece yesterday:
muddy
@Steve in the ATL: I picked the phone up part way through and yelled FUCK YOU! You ARE a racist! Before I slammed it down dramatically. It felt satisfying even though I know it was a recording.
I looked up the number, and they did this in Iowa and other places already. But the screed this time was much more detailed in its racism from what I read they had before. Turning it up to 11.
Kropadope
@srv: I don’t suppose any of them have endorsed Trump?
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: They do come up with the greatest expressions. “Binders full of women”, “pyramids full of grain”.
Adam L Silverman
@muddy: I think this is the PAC the Stormfront guys started for Trump. He’s both claimed he’s got no knowledge of it and that he disavows it. Who knows what he really thinks/believes.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman:
rikyrah
The entire GOP is one grift
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I saw that the other day. Doesn’t surprise me. The real question is is he doing the actual tweeting/retweeting on the account or is he paying someone to do it for him.
JGabriel
I’ve suspected for a while now that it was a grift, and that Carson might not be in on it.
This confirms it.
Felonius Monk
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, it’s not like those qualities would be useful or even necessary for someone who aspires to be President of the U.S. of A.
Adam L Silverman
@Felonius Monk: pshaw. That’s crazy talk!
muddy
@Adam L Silverman: It’s this.
Adam L Silverman
@muddy: Not Stormfront, but equally as odious.
Adam L Silverman
@srv: There is. There is a minimum support requirement. When Dr. Carson passed it in the Fall, when he was polling well, he immediately asked for Secret Service protection. This was intended to cement the polling based impression that he was at the front of the field. Donald Trump did the same thing right around the same time.
sigaba
@Adam L Silverman:
Once you start the bone saw you’re sortof committed to getting your hands dirty.
OTOH I have this pet theory that Carson might only be a passable surgeon but has a good reputation because of his bedside manner. An acquaintance of mine is a pediatric neurologist and he says that 90% of his job is telling parents their kid is going to die.
The aggregate effect of Carson’s entire campaign is delivering the “bad news” that America is dying and he doesn’t know if he can fix it but he’ll try his best. In a debate it doesn’t really work at all and he looks like a nutcase, but if you were in the waiting room and you were told this eminent neurosurgeon was going to look at your kid, I think Carson would be a savant in that situation. A lot of brain surgeries just don’t work, but you get the feeling that if Ben were doing the telling post-op, he’d convince everyone, even people who watched him work, that God was in the room, regardless of wether he actually succeeded or not.
Tellingly, he became a surgical superstar after a conjoined twin separation, even though that surgery was pretty much a failure. He has repeated the feat four more times since, two sets of twins died, one set had one dead sibling and another left blind; one was a success. The mother of the first pair openly regretted getting them the surgery and thinks they would have at least had a richer life conjoined, though they may not have lived much longer. I dunno, maybe by the standards of neurosurgery that’s Aces. If it is I weep for neurosurgery.
Adam L Silverman
@sigaba: So despite the conventionally trafficked wisdom that he was a superstar doing the conjoined twins separations he was basically 1 for 5? I realize that its a near impossible procedure and the prognoses are never good, but that’s a terrible success to failure ratio.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m tracking. I’m a big fan of trying something if there’s a chance, but that’s just an astoundingly high failure rate for what is always going to be a small N population.
agorabum
@trollhattan: 7
sigaba
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah I don’t know, as I said, I’m informed that pediatric brain problems are almost always a death sentence or at least incurable. I just think it’s interesting that that was the case that got him the motivational speaking career and the book deals.
I’m totally sold that Carson has a gift for delivering what he believes is bad news — being very religious probably helps in this area. It may also give him the confidence to undertake actions that other people would consider extremely dangerous, and eliciting the support of others while doing them. He seems to be totally sanguine about everything, to the point where you wonder if he even understands risk, or if the stakes in a situation are real to him, this bit with the grifters only being the latest example. The way he’s run his campaign has a certain blithe recklessness.
@efgoldman Yeah I know. I guess my deeper question is: does such an attitude make a great doctor? Or even a good one?
mark
That headline is something I’d read in theonion. Hilarious.
I’m telling you, I’ve worked around doctors for over 20 years, many times in critical situations at the hospital. There are plenty who, while great at science, are stupid as hell.
NotMax
Darn it, TCM. You ought to know by now that I am completely incapable of not watching Network whenever happen to come across it being shown.
Nate Dawg
These are evangelical Christians. They believed Santorum was he savior, and before that Mike Huckabee, and even further back, Pat Robertson. They still tell themselves Clinton’s economic boom was due to George HW Bush and that God turned his back on the country when prayer was “taken out” of schools. In their minds, we are one great leader away from having every public school turn into a Christian private school, teaching how dinosaurs dies in the Flood that created the Grand Canyon.
Needless to say, they have an abysmally low amount of credulity. And Dr. Ben is their FUBU candidate.
Which is to say, he’s definitely the Mark.
ruemara
I kind of pity the man. i suppose it’s my feeling that something is wrong with him.
sigaba
@NotMax: Watch for Tim Robbins at the end.*
superpredators4hillary
@ruemara: Maybe so, but every mouse has a weenie.
mclaren
@sigaba:
American presidential candidates in 2016 are really just aspiring hospice workers. Their job is to make the middle class more comfortable as it perishes in its final death agonies.
NotMax
@sigaba
First viewed it in a free preview just prior to the official first release, and several score more times since.
Never grow tired of it. Robert Duvall’s studied, monomaniacal characterization remains astonishing (but among that stellar cast almost no one mentions his performance).
Davebo
@Adam L Silverman:
I think that’s possible, but also a pretty forgiving assumption.
If it’s true, it’s a very good thing that Carson has no chance at the nomination.
sigaba
@NotMax: Lumet wrote a great autobiography, all about how he directed. In one chapter he makes a point that crew members always have to be clear of actors’ eyelines: “If William Holden is making love to Faye Dunaway I don’t want him to see a Teamster sipping coffee behind the camera.” (I still can’t hear the word “timeslot” without thinking of that scene.)
*Also it’s not actually Tim Robbins- he staged a minor guerilla war with IMDb in the early aughts to keep it off his resume page, people were so convinced.
scav
Apparently, team R is so convinced that government can’t work and politicians are not to be trusted that they’ll preferentially vote for skimming, incompetant, money-wasting, lying, sexually loose, bombastic, ignorant candidates. Carson’s just not untrustworthy enough on multiple fronts to beat the big-boy front-runners.
BlueDWarrior
@mclaren: And I would argue that it was the lingering after-effect from a Conservative Euphoria induced overdose in the 1980s. The bill for that drug-fueled romp 30 years ago is coming due now, and they can’t pay up.
So you have a lot of thrashing around blaming everyone else for destroying the country since then, when the blame should be squarely placed on the people who brought hook-line-and-sinker into the ‘false prophet’ Reagan and Gingrich, who thought if you just beat up liberals and minorities enough, surely they could stave off what was coming.
And now it’s starting to arrive, a world where no one is ‘safe’ from the maelstroms of globalism no matter what you think you might be able to do, unless you want to act through the one thing you have been programmed to hate above all others – the government.
NotMax
@sigaba
During a poker game one time back in the dim and distant past, we were provided with sandwiches by Faye Dunaway.
Particularly good chicken salad.
(She was the step-mother of someone with whom I was attending high school.)
NotMax
@sigaba
Used an FYWP word in error.
During a p0ker game in the dim and distant past, we were provided sandwiches prepared by Faye Dunaway.
Particularly good chicken salad.
(She was then the step-mother of someone with whom I was attending high school.)
mclaren
@BlueDWarrior:
It’s not clear that even the U.S. government can avert the catastrophic effects of globalized capitalism. Here’s a classic example — “The controversy over a fired Yelp employee’s open letter, explained,” VOX website, 24 February 2016.
Basically, a young woman employee wrote an open email to the head of the company about how she was living on a single bag of rice and woke up hungry every morning because their company’s shitty $8/hour salary wasn’t enough for her to live on in a major city. So the company fired her.
This is not sustainable. When you try to run companies in America by telling your employees that if they complain about waking up hungry every morning because the company isn’t going to pay them enough to buy food, that won’t work.
If this is your model for capitalism (“Stop whining about being hungry all the time and suck it up”), capitalism is doomed.
And this is not due to particular choices made by the U.S. government. This happens because that young woman is competing with some potential employee in a call center in Haiti or Bangladesh who would get paid $2 an hour.
This is not happening merely because of bad labor laws in America. It’s happening because the internet + robots + automation + data mining is driving down the global wage to something between what a person in America makes ($7 per hour) and what a person in India makes (50 cents per hour), and much closer to what the person inIndia makes than what the American employee makes. But people in America can’t live on what the person in India makes unless people in America are actually living like people in India.
Meaning: no running water, no electricity, no flush toilet, a hut with a dirt floor, no car, no TV, no electronics.
How is the U.S. government going to sell that economic agenda to Americans?
It’s impossible. A capitalism that requires that is a capitalism that is going to collapse. A capitalism that tells workers “If you complain about waking up hungry because we don’t pay you enough to buy food, you’re fired” is a capitalism that cannot survive.
mclaren
Excellent description of how the modern American primary system of elections arose from the chaos of the 1968 Democratic convention, which I call “the year of hell.”
“The 1968 scandal that gave us the modern primary system,” VOX website, 2016.
BlueDWarrior
@srv: It’s basic human psychology, everyone is going to rush to where they think the resources are; and the more people rush, the more people get the idea and flow in in their wake. The only way to stop it would be a real socialist ‘command economy’ just outright telling people where they will and won’t go to work, but hardly anyone, let alone Americans would accept it.
Anne Laurie
@sigaba:
That’s a pretty smart theory, actually.
I’ve seen other medical professionals saying similar things about pediatric neurologists in general, and Dr. Carson in particular — all surgeons tend to believe there’s no medical condition that can’t be fixed, or at least mitigated, by a good enough surgeon. And the parents of very sick, possibly dying children are desperate for an “authority” who’ll tell them there’s a chance, however miniscule, that their child may be the very first to survive a prognosis of certain death/disability, if only they have enough faith in the surgeon. Dr. Carson, by all reports, is an excellent surgeon who’s saved many young lives. On the other hand, just by virtue of his faith in his own professional gifts, he’s also messed around in the brains of lots of little kids who didn’t survive, and there are going to be cases where a more cautious doctor would argue that less aggressive treatment might’ve been kinder (if no less fatal in the end).
As you say, his advisers may have spotted an opportunity in urging Carson to bring his medical biases into the political arena.
liberal
@mark: Huh? Doctors aren’t scientists, at least not in their role a clinicians.
Gvg
I think this is letting Dr. Carson off of responsibility on the basis of a kind news story and I am not inclined to this easily. He will keep doing it if not held responsible and he should have known. I will assume he knew without much better evidence and he should have known. No business running for anything and he doesn’t even see that. Crook in my book.
George Hayduke
Dude, we heard you like grifts. we put a grift in your grift, so you could get grifted while you grift.
Steve in the ATL
@BlueDWarrior:
FYI I’m reading this in the movie trailer guy voice
satby
@mclaren:
That is not how the workers who have replaced American jobs in India live. They have better electronics, most if them live in nice modern apartments or condos, many of them hold advanced degrees (Masters level). Many speak multiple languages, not just their own and English. Aside from your obvious ignorance of the situation in other countries where outsourcing has occurred, you also misstated the average wage disparity. The company I worked for, when I had to manage projects moving call center work from the US and Brazil, would go through the expense of moving and the slowdown in service just to save a differential of $4.00/hour. My team in Brazil got $14/ hour, the team that replaced them in Noida got $10. But the corporation got huge tax write offs and that’s the real reason they move these jobs around. India has started having big layoffs too, because now the Vietnamese are waiting in the wings to undercut their business.
Chris
@? Martin:
Seconded. The entire point of the ideology for so long has been to legitimize as praiseworthy behaviors that in any normal society are viewed as corrupt – look at Citizens United, for crying out loud. It’s hardly a surprise if the grift machine ultimately turns on itself like this.
Steve in the ATL
@satby: A previous employer of mine outsourced call center work to India, and the Indian company then subcontracted that to Mexico. Strange days.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: Her letter was extremely snarky, considering her position & lack of any civil service protection. Plus, she publicized it, rather than just sending it to him.
Good points in letter, but not savvy on repercussions from doing it the way she did, IMO.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: 1968 was just about the worst year I have experienced. 2000 & 2001 comes close.
Eric U.
@Steve in the ATL: not quite up to Dilbert level, where the second contractor outsourced Dilbert’s call center back to Dilbert’s company
Robert Sneddon
@Steve in the ATL: There was a case reported in the technical press a couple of years ago where an American organisation (a financial business, IIRC) was outsourcing their database coding to an Indian company which turned out to be a single person who was re-outsourcing the work to American contractors. It only worked because the one-man business in India was skimming a couple of dollars an hour per coder for the shuffle (billing $30/hour per coder, paying $28 an hour) but they had twenty or thirty coders on their books and that brought in a couple of hundred bucks a day for the owner of the contacting company.
Someone who knew more than the usual commentators reckoned it was actually a good deal for everyone, absent the quality of code being generated. If the company took the work in-house it would cost them more in office space, management, labour law, HR, medical insurance etc. than the $30/hr rate they were paying to get the code written. The person (a guy I think but I’m not sure) got a very good return for their efforts given the cost of living in India. The coders in America got paid in a tight labour market, boosted their skills and resume, had employment flexibility and being young folks probably didn’t have big medical expenses to worry about. They weren’t great coders or they’d be earning better than $30/hr so as I said the quality of the code wasn’t guaranteed but automated testing would usually fix most of the problems.
mark
@liberal: Did you make good grades in science and fail reading? Just because a person makes straight A’s in Biology and Chemistry does not mean they understand history or literature or can see through the horseshit of fundamentalist religion. A good doctor who is a good person is imo, the finest human being there is. However, they are so entitled, especially in our society, that many think they are “chosen” by God or whoever to lord over us. I’ve seen them break the Hippocratic Oath hundreds, if not thousands of times for $$ and hear the patient say “Thank you, Doctor” Its disgusting. Btw, highest membership rate by professionals in the Nazi party? Doctors by a huge margin.