By Jim Hoover
Herman Cain is thought to be a “stalking horse” for the Koch Brothers, who have poured a great deal of money into their causes, mostly through politicians and political action groups formed to promote their interests. Cain doesn’t seem to have a viable organization in primary states like New Hampshire, Florida or South Carolina, but is stirring up a lot of interest in policies that favor radical causes, mainly the causes of the Koch brothers, issues like the flat 9-9-9 tax that falls most heavily on the middle class and the poor and came from AFP people.
Or did it? It is also almost identical to a simplistic tax plan that the board game, SimCity came up with 9 years ago. Wouldn’t that be a self-serving joke for Koch Industries?
Those behind the stalking horse do not reveal themselves, like hunters hiding behind a friendly-looking horse out of view from unwary prey – the prey being voters in our case.
Accordingly, Herman Cain was and is not a direct employee of the Koch Brothers but the ties to them and their political interests are more than coincidental. Also not coincidental is the fact that he did work for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch family funded political action group. AFP is a well-known front group that funnels cash to politicians who work to weaken private and public sector unions, oppose environmental regulations and undo Obama’s health care reform law, in the past through the Tea Party.
Cain’s ties to the Koch brother money serve to weaken his outsider claim and independent entrepreneurial mantra, while his long-term political ties expose the fraud of a claimed non-political image. Any denunciation of his direct ties with Koch Industries is easily discredited when you look at his secret plutocratic strategy meeting with the Kochs last January and his headlined speech in June for the Koch-backed anti-climate rally in NY against the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Denial of man-made global warming is a natural for billionaires with a coal shipping company, several huge oil refineries, pipeline networks, and fertilizer plants.
In his pursuits, Cain found his way to personal prosperity by being a fierce political fighter for plutocratic interests. As president-elect of the National Restaurant Association, he challenged Bill Clinton on the costs of the employer mandate contained within the Clinton health care plan of 1993. His public clash with Clinton was called his “auspicious debut on the national political stage.”
After he stepped down as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza in 2002, he vied for the Republican nomination for President in 2000, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2004, and starting working for the AFP in 2005 until 2011. He gained real national exposure by travelling the country in 2005 and 2006 helping to form state-based AFP chapters from Wisconsin to Virginia.
In Wisconsin, he met Wisconsin Republican operative, Mark Block, who had just finished serving out the stipulations of a suit barring him from politics. After a long association with Block, Cain hired him to run his presidential campaign.
More proof of his Koch club membership includes barely-masked payments from AFP. The organization tried to obfuscate responses to New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer’s inquiries about Cain. According to public-record tax forms, AFP paid $127,794 to the Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB), which booked Herman Cain speeches for AFP. Mayer’s perusal of Cain’s records showed that his company, New Voice, was paid “unspecified payments of between $50,000 and $100,000 by WSB, covering only part of his employment period.
Cain’s rise with the help of AFP shows the incredible influence that outside groups controlled by super-wealthy individuals with specific agendas can have on the political process.
We might not even be talking about this if several Supreme Court Justices had not attended Koch brother secret meetings of plutocrats before the “Citizens United” 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling against the people, which enabled the rich to give unlimited money without disclosure to promote their egregious agenda.
Larry
26 Oct 2011who isn’t taking special interest money ?
Stacey
26 Oct 2011Seriously? Cain has less money than anyone in this deal, Obama already has One Billion dollars (I don’t suppose any special interests donated?) and they are going to really care if Cain get’s support from Koch? If it is true, who cares? Then PLEASE dig up Obama’s supporters and donators!
John
26 Oct 2011BHO does not have a billion $. Some folks expect he may get a billion but he doesn’t have it now.
Jim
26 Oct 2011Hey the Koch brothers are cool. What’s the prob?
Chuck
26 Oct 2011Wow. It’s like, there’s this whole sect of people who are living in an alternate universe.
What I love about the paradigm is how elitists just slap their constituents in the face and keep them coming back for more.
Republicans can steal your life savings and burn down your farm, and they can do it right in front of your face. And they know that all they have to do is say, “Hey! Look over there! It’s a LIBERAL!”
And you guys will fall for it every time.
I mean, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. If only I lacked a soul and conscience, I could be a Republican politician, pundit, or lobbyist. All you have to do is repeat the exact same four things – and they’ve been the exact same things for at least forty years – and people will go along with it, no matter how many facts are placed in front of their face, and no matter what the results of their decisions and policies.
I am truly in awe of people like Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, and Karl Rove. They have taken the lessons learned from CIA mind control techniques and implemented them so perfectly on the U.S. populace.
Listen, folks. Don’t underestimate the enemy for a minute. They have decades of experience in this game – and they’re all so rich that it’s all just a game to them. They are so wealthy and elite that they’re completely sheltered from reality, which makes them extremely dangerous. It’s all just lines on a spreadsheet to them. They have no consideration for life, human or otherwise.
And they know their target audience so well. They know the inner psyche of the Republican voter, and know exactly what buttons to push to elicit the prescribed response.
Never forget that the people who made our country this way did so on purpose, and did so for a reason. They didn’t steal all this money and consolidate all this power just to give it away because there are people in the streets. They’re in this fight for the long haul, and so must we be.
Simone
26 Oct 2011They helped bankroll our crummy Governor who’s already being investigated by the FBI for stuff he did as county executive here in Milwaukee Co.
Really I’d be happy with getting all this money out of politics, we’d have less stupid campaign ads on. I don’t know who would be against that