Is Herman Cain as big a fraud as I think he is?

[ThomWV]

I don't know a thing about Herman Caine other than he is advertised as the guy who ran some giant national pizza chain and has a silly tax plan he calls 999. I haven't been interested enough in him to check his history or to honestly consider him a threat to liberty, as I understand it. But saturday morning while I was catching up on some other things I had Cspan tuned in for my normal dose of Washington Journal and I heard his name mentioned. The morning host was reading a bit about him from some leading newspaper or journal, I didn't catch which one, but the little snippets of his history sort of surprised me.

This little bit is from memory and I do not claim to have checked out any of nor do I intend to, but if true it sure is interesting. First they said that he left the Pizza place in 1994 or 1996, don't remember which. That would be 15 or 17 years ago. I thought the guy had some sort or recent experience as a captain of industry, but shit, the guy is almost pre-industrial revolution. Then they said that in the intervening years he has actually been a lobbyist, the most vile of all Washington's denizens. Oh, and what did he lobby for, or against. Against health care reform, against finance industry regulation, against this, against that, one right wing cause after the other - and at the highest level too. this guy was no light-weight, he was a Class-A high paid Lobbyist.

I had the notion he had just jumped ship on the pizza shop last week to come out and save the world - but not so. This guy has been on the fringe of the Government teat for a decade and a half, not much more than a parasite.

[gratuitous]

1. Yup, his "business" experience is years in the past

As a lobbyist for the restaurant owners, he worked very hard to blunt efforts to limit or end smoking in restaurants. I look forward to the time when some plucky reporter asks Mr. Cain about this. I don't plan to hold my breath, as I think that Cain's flavor-of-the-month candidacy will be over by Halloween.

Cain's major campaign effort seems to have been to sell his line of self-published "inspirational" books. He has very little campaign infrastructure, and he doesn't have campaign headquarters in every state, as might be expected of a serious candidate. Herman will be among the hermits before long. Look for him to resurface at one of those traveling road shows of "motivational" speakers, alongside Rudy Giuliani, Bill Cosby and Colin Powell.

[lob1]

5. My understanding is that he's been a motivational speaker

since getting out of the pizza business. Or at least the last few years. I'm not saying I'm right, just that that's what I heard.

[bullwinkle428]

14. His speaking engagements are on behalf of the Koch brothers - he

draws his paychecks from "Americans for Prosperity", which is a total Koch-founded and funded organization.

[lob1]

16. Nice to know. Thanks for the info.

[montanacowboy]

2. Yep, wonder when liberals are going to start

to spread this all over, vis a vis Rachel, KO, Lawrence and big Eddy

Pizza my ass - K St Whore

[jmowreader]

3. Why do you think they keep mentioning Godfather's Cheesy Cardboard?

If they said he was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or president of the National Restaurant Association, the teabaggers wouldn't even notice him.

[LonePirate]

4. No. He is a bigger fraud than all of us can possibly imagine.

[Initech]

6. All you need to know: he's friends with the Kochs and has ties to Americans for Prosperity.

[Angry Dragon]

7. He was kicked out of the pizza business

and will not state why is what I have read

[Octafish]

8. Koch Brothers luv him.

Same way they luv all who give them a return.

[Warpy]

9. He was a civilian mathematician for the Navy

which you'd never know from his silly 999 plan. Then he got in on the ground floor and built a pizza chain. Most recently, he's been a right wing radio blowhard in Georgia.

He's not a stupid man. However, I think he's throwing chunks of red meat to Republican idiots because he's likely auditioning for a cabinet post should a miracle of naked fraud occur and put Romney into the White House.

[Viking12]

10. Slight correction...

He didn't build the company from little to big -- he managed the chain first as an employee for Pillsbury Corp, then led a group that bought it from Pillsbury. While he was influential in it's growth, he was not the "individualist entrepreneur" he portrayed to be.

[Warpy]

11. Right, I thought I'd made that clear--he didn't start the company

he just managed to build the brand.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[starroute]

13. Maddow just finished laying out how his entire campaign is a Koch fabrication

It's a classic Maddow evisceration -- catch it when you can.

The short version is that Cain has no campaign organization to speak of, nobody you could even contact if you wanted to deal with a local campaign operation in one of the states. But almost everybody who is listed as part of his campaign works or used to work for the Koch brothers.

In other words, the Kochs decided to buy themselves a candidate and then buy his front-running status. And so far, they've been very successful at it.

[pinboy3niner]

15. At least 99.9%

:evilgrin:



(Old Sci-Fi movie poster updated by DUer GReedDiamond)