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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCruz Uses Campaign Money To Buy His Own Book Just To Resell At Huge Markup To Gullible Supporters
You may remember Cruzs book, A Time For Truth, causing a bit of controversy when it debuted because the New York Times repeatedly left it off its bestseller list. It now appears they had reason to be suspicious of the books strong sales. According to a recent FEC filing by Cruzs campaign, he dropped $122,000 of his millionaire-backed war chest to buy hundreds of copies of his own book. Even by generous estimates, this means Cruzs campaign purchased around 8,000 copies of his own book using donated money.
But heres where the rampant money-grabbing comes into play:
As the New Republic reports, Cruz or a hapless campaign volunteer then signs the books and sells those copies for a rather slight upcharge of 303% of its retail value on his campaign website.
This highlights a growing trend of political candidates publishing books, then using those books or their publishers to essentially funds campaign activitieswithout actually calling it as such. Publishing books allows them to meet thousands of supporters and push their agendas, while holding onto the precious cash that acts as their campaign lifeblood.
And its actually much worse than the admittedly awful way it already looks. While campaigns argue that this sort of one hand feeds the other profiteering is meant to benefit the campaign, its also making Ted Cruz a fortune. When he inevitably bows out of the race, hell be left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account from book sales he made during the election, and his supporters will be left with an unread Ted Cruz book collecting dust on a shelf.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/21/cruz-uses-campaign-money-to-buy-his-own-book-just-to-resell-at-huge-markup-to-gullible-supporters/