Posted on 10/10/2011 10:42:09 AM PDT by Maneesh
Herman Cain isn’t as laughable as I originally affronted. He has been making the media rounds and impressing a few people along the way, even earning himself a flock of supporters. After a recent Fox News presidential debate, a focus group overwhelmingly declared the black Republican and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza victorious. So now that Cain has proven his candidacy as one to be take notice of (but can you blame us for brushing him off at first? Most of president Obama’s would-be contenders were just laughable.), it is only natural that the serious smears of campaign season would arise against him. First up: A business scandal that so closely mirrors the travesty at Enron, it warranted this headline from Mother Jones Magazine: “Herman Cain’s Enron-esque Disaster: The Story the GOP presidential candidate won’t tell you about his years in corporate America.” If our skepticism of him before was baseless, it certainly isn’t now. “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 drove into the wild west of energy trading and speculation – and ultimately screwed its employees out of tens of millions of dollars,” Mother Jones reports. According to a massive class action lawsuit against Aquila’s board of directors – including Cain – he allegedly steered employees into heavily investing their retirement savings in company stock, while at the same time shifting their business model from straightforward energy generation to risky energy trading – the kind of corporate greed that infamously brought down Enron, Mother Jones reports. In the suit, it claims that Cain and other top officials violated a 37-year-old federal law that requires employers to responsibly manage the retirement programs for their employees. Their pensions and life savings were lost. Thus far, Cain has been running as the pro-business candidate who successfully turned around the failing Godfather’s Pizza franchise after working in the corporate offices of the Pillsbury Company. His lack of political experience is always countered by touting his decades’ worth of success in business. Positions at Godfather’s, Pillsbury and his post as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City are listed as part of his official campaign biography. His part in the major downfall of Aquila – where he was on the board of directors for much of the 1990s and early 2000s – is nowhere to be found. Yes, it is expected for a candidate to try and hide his skeletons, but he should also expect to eventually be exposed. Herman Cain, you are exposed.
Okay. So now we REALLY hate Huckabee, Pawlenty, Christie, Huntsman, Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Cain, Paul and Santorum because they are all a bunch of corrupt, low life bass turds. Who da **** DO WE LIKE? I need a break here! Who should I support?
Bump 10 again
If it isn’t true...offer proof. Otherwise, welcome to the Cain vetting process.
The messenger is not the problem.
Some Freepers are just like leftists in their knee jerk responses. I am a life long conservative and like Herman Cain. I want to vette him completely so no surprises come up in the general election.
If this is a non story...terrific. However calling someone a troll for even daring to discuss it is conservative equivalent of a knee jerk liberal where no discussion is allowed.
Maneesh.... keep in mind that paragraph breaks are our friend!!!!
Yeah, I believe it because it’s true. But yes, there was an element of sarcasm. None of our candidates are going to be perfect. We need to be looking for who is best capable of leading us out of this situation and get over hardcore purist positions; otherwise, it’ll be Romney for sure.
Yes actually this HAS been discussed here and elsewhere before. Cain had nothing to do with the collapse of that company.
Have a nice day.
You really have no clue and no class do you? Why are you even on FR if you can’t even bother to use a little common sense?
For Palinistas, Paulinistas, Perrywinkles and those of you in Rio Linda... what this means is:
You apparently missed the Mother Jones headlines about Obama cheating American taxes payers out of almost a trillion dollars in failed stimulus funds... oh wait this is Mother Jones. /sarc.
Agree this is a non-issue as it’s posted from a left-wing rag.
Also agree that Perry gets a lot of left-wing propaganda posted about him too.
What overlord to suppress the TRUTH:
According to five lawsuits filed in federal court in 2004, Aquila’s board of directors—which Cain joined in 1992—allegedly steered employees into heavily investing their retirement savings in company stock. At the same time, the company shifted its business model from straightforward energy generation to risky energy trading, an unregulated market made infamous by now-defunct Enron. The suits, later folded into a single, massive class action (PDF), alleged that Cain and top company officials violated a 37-year-old federal law requiring that employers manage employees retirement programs responsibly. (Cain’s presidential exploratory committee did not respond to a request for comment.)
Founded in 1917 as Green Light and Power, Aquila traditionally made its money operating electric and gas plants and selling the energy they produced. In the years after Cain joined the board, Aquila’s earnings climbed, from $254 million in 1995 to $351 million in 1998. Then, in early 1999, the company’s leadership decided running power plants wasn’t lucrative enough; energy trading and speculation had grown popular, and as the class suit lays out, Aquila wanted a piece of the action.
It was a dangerous move—as a company spokesman later put it, “the risk was huge.” In the end, it proved disastrous. Aquila’s decision to join Enron, Reliant Energy, and the other heavy-hitters in the energy trading markets would ultimately wipe out 94 percent of Aquila’s stock value between 1999 and 2004. The company also faced criticism for using some of the same trading tricks that Enron did as a way to puff up its stock price, the lawsuit says. That included using “roundtrip” trades, a scheme in which Aquila would sell a trading partner some energy and then that partner would sell the same amount back to Aquila, a deal that canceled itself out. In the end, nothing actually changed hands. But it boosted Aquila’s trading volume and revenue, sending a positive signal to the markets. The company also engaged in megawatt laundering, or “ricochet” trading, the lawsuit alleges. In such transactions, Aquila and other companies would buy energy from California at a lower capped price, move that energy out of the state, then re-sell it back to California at a higher price for a tidy profit.
We all need to fight this crap whom ever we are supporting.
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Parody: Infomercial for Herman Cain’s pizza-themed gospel album
Includes: “Sweet Jesus Crust!”
Could we get some Cliffs Notes on those claims?
Nice Lone Star flag on your FR page.
----
Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it.
www.AnySoldier.com
(An entirely free service)
Gee, you sound like a concern troll.
No, I did not ignore you. My wish is that Cain has nothing to do with this and it is a non issue. Your link does seem to indicate that to an extent. Will it stop the regime from going after Cain anyways ? NO. So it is better for our side to be educated and aware of the issue rather than ignore it.
This has been proven untrue. Are you that incapable of reading and/or rational thought? One posted even provided you a link to the paper trail.
So you're taking a leftard hit piece at face value?
“Did not bother to check your source did you? This is a Leftist propaganda cite pretending to be “news”
I bet he did.
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