I have not been on FaceBook for a couple of months or so as someone had hacked my account. I decided to fire it up again yesterday and have seen my sister and some other friends and family talking up Herman Cain. I had not jumped into the fray yet but went on a little search to get some facts.
I just posted an article from Mother Jones written by Andy Kroll called Herman Cain's Enron-esque Disaster.
This is quite an eye opener regarding his time as a board member with Aquila, Inc., an energy corporation.
My search also sent me to Wikipedia and low and behold there is not a mention of his business experience on the board of directors of Aquila. I guess he is not very proud of his time there.
Herman Cain seems to be pushing his pro business credentials but ignoring his own history of bad management of his own employee's pension money.
Cain clearly believes that his pro-business message is what GOP voters want to hear. So much so, in fact, that on Saturday he officially unveiled his candidacy for the 2012 GOP nomination. But scrubbed from Cain's official story is his long tenure as a director at a Midwest energy corporation named Aquila that, like the infamous Enron Corporation, recklessly dove into the wild west of energy trading and speculation—and ultimately screwed its employees out of tens of millions of dollars.
It seems like the company had pushed the employee's to invest their retirement money in company stock. This retirement fund was overseen by the board of directors and lost more than $200 million in 2002. Guess who was on the board of directors when this happened? A little hint his initials are HC.
Cain served on the board of directors throughout Aquila's ill-fated trading misadventure and the subsequent collapse of the company's retirement fund. In fact, he chaired the board's compensation committee, which, according to the lawsuit, had direct oversight of the push to get employees to invest more and more in Aquila stock. As chair of the compensation committee, Cain also saw fit to dole out $30 million in bonuses, not including stock options, to the top five execs at Aquila in 2002, with the company's stock plummeting.
He seems like a good GOP candidate to me. Steal from the workers and dole out huge bonuses to the upper management. Perfect combination for the GOP.
Herman Cain also has a Palin/Bachmann type of problem and it fits right in with the usual republican candidate credentials these days. It seems like he was lecturing Americans to reread the Constitution. Think Progress had this gem on Herman Cain:
Lecturing Americans To ‘Reread’ Constitution, Herman Cain Confuses It With Declaration of Independence
Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in the Declaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier.
I think some republicans are excited about Herman Cain, including some friends and family, but this man will never make it through the primaries as there are too many racist/bigots in the grand old party to elect a black man let alone nominate him for the presidency. I wonder if we have any Kossacks who are very good at editing Wikipedia? I think this information should be on there for all to see the facts.
Update: First time on the wreck list. Thank you.
Herman Cain claims the federal government can't regulate bankruptcy law.
http://youtu.be/...