Photo by Flickr/Gage Skidmore

The story the GOP presidential candidate won't tell you about his years in corporate America.

What GOP presidential contender Herman Cain lacks in political experience, he likes to say, he makes up for with decades' worth of success in corporate America. He climbed the corporate ladder at the Pillsbury Company, chaired the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and rescued the failing Godfather's Pizza franchise. That business-centric message has won Cain his share of admirers: a focus group convened after a recent Fox News presidential debate overwhelmingly declared Cain the winner.

"I think that over 40 years of business experience is resonating a lot more with people than simply having political experience," he said on a recent Iowa visit. "Knowing how Washington works isn't necessarily an advantage. As a businessman going in, I don’t want to know how Washington works. I want to change Washington D.C. and so by not knowing how it is supposed to work I can ask tough questions that will help change the culture."

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.

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.

But this financial trickery couldn't save a listing ship. In 2002, Aquila teetered on the brink of collapse. And for Aquila's employees, the result of the company's foray into energy trading was devastating: The company's employee retirement fund, overseen by the board of directors, lost more than $200 million in 2002. The reason: At the same time Aquila's executives and directors were investing more and more in highly risky energy speculation, they were selling their employees on the conservative nature of Aquila and pushing them to invest their retirement savings in company stock.

For years, the lawsuit says, executives urged employees in company speeches to reinvest in Aquila, lauded those who did so as "Aquila partners," and even offered a 15 percent discount to buy company stock. Executives and board members also made it more difficult to sell off company stock by implementing lock-up periods, during which employees couldn't cash in their holdings. At the end of 2000, 85 percent of Aquila employees owned common stock in the company. What's more, 60 percent of the employees' retirement fund consisted of Aquila stock—even though financial experts say that total should never be more than 10 to 20 percent.

The spectacular failure of Aquila's trading venture practically wiped out the hard-earned retirement savings of veteran employees. Richard Itteilag, a plaintiff in the Aquila class action, lost 87 percent of his savings. Robert Goodson, a 20-year Aquila employee, lost 75 percent. Michael Reinhardt lost a staggering 94 percent. All told, thousands of employees saw their retirement funds eviscerated thanks to Aquila's Enron-esque activities. (In 2007, Aquila settled with the employees for $10.5 million. Not long after, Aquila merged with other Midwestern energy companies and now no longer operates as Aquila.)

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. A month after the Kansas City Star reported on the hefty bonuses in July 2002, the company laid off 500 employees, and the losses to employees holding company stock had reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a board member, Cain would've had direct knowledge of Aquila's activities, says Fred Taylor Isquith, a New York attorney who litigated the employee class action. Asked if it was fair to place blame on Cain for the debacle at Aquila, Isquith replied, "Yes, I believe it is."

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones.

Excerpts from an article first posted in motherjones.com by Tim Murphy on May 25, 2011

Herman Cain's Muslim Problem

Photo by Mark Hirsch/ZUMA Press

On Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain dropped by Glenn Beck's radio program to argue that his previous promise to not appoint any Muslims to his Cabinet had been "misconstrued." As he put it: "I did not say that I would not have them in my cabinet. If you look at my career, I have hired good people regardless of race, religion, sex gender, orientation, and this kind of thing."

Cain's position now is that only radical Muslims would be prohibited from serving in his administration. That sounds reasonable. Except he told Laura Ingraham in April that he's never met a Muslim who didn't fit his definition of a radical—and in the same interview, alleged that Rep. Keith Ellison (D–Minn.), who's Muslim, has pledged his loyalty to Allah, not the Constitution. But even if Cain's original statement, and subsequent defenses of it, were misconstrued, he still hasn't adequately explained the rest of what he told Think Progress back in April.

When asked for examples of the "creeping attempt...to gradually ease" Islamic sharia law into the American judicial system he explained:

One judge did it up in New Jersey, and ruled in a case. Then last week we heard about a judge down in was it Texas? It might have been Texas where a judge said there was a dispute in a mosque and he was gonna consider 'eclesiastical' law in his deliberations, because of a dispute that was going on inside a mosque. This is the United States of America. Just because it's going on inside a mosque doesnt mean you execute the laws based on what's going on in the [mosque]."

Cain is right: This is the United States of America. But everything else here is inaccurate. In the civil case in question—which was in Florida, not Texas—the judge (a Republican) ruled that he was going to use "ecclesiastical" law because both parties had agreed, per their mutually agreed-upon contract, to settle their dispute through ecclesiastical Islamic law, in the form of a Muslim arbitrator. That's totally normal; Christians and Jews also take advantage of independent arbitrators to settle disputes. If the government were to ban the use of such forums, it would mark a dramatic encroachment on the First Amendment's freedom of religion—I'm fairly certain that Herman Cain doesn't want to run for President on the platform of restricting Christians' free speech rights. The actual trial, the judge noted, would be conducted according to Florida civil law; he was simply assessing whether the arbitration process had been handled properly.

Anyone can make a gaffe, which is how Cain is spinning his "no Muslims" comment. But the more serious problem isn't that Cain misspoke; it's that he has taken an extreme, unconstitutional position based on a conspiracy theory that could have been debunked in 30 seconds.

Excerpt from an article on The Huffington Post 11/9/2011

Herman Cain's campaign may want to verify facts before confirming anything on television.

Mark Block, Cain's chief-of-staff, spoke to Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday, and wrongly claimed that the son of a woman who accused Cain of sexual harassment in the 1990s works at POLITICO.

"At the press conference it was brought up that Karen Kraushaar had come out as one of the women, so we've come to find out that her son works at POLITICO, the organization that originally put this story out," Block said.

When Hannity asked if the information about Kraushaar's "son" was confirmed, Block said: "We've confirmed that he does indeed work at POLITICO and that's his mother, yes."

Josh Kraushaar, the man Block appears to be talking about, denied these claims. On Tuesday, Kraushaar posted numerous messages on his Twitter page that refuted Block's "confirmed" allegations.

Kraushaar acknowledged working at POLITICO from 2007 to 2010, but said he had been at the National Journal for over a year. His Twitter bio lists his current job title as the executive editor of the publication's blog The Hotline. He's also not related to Cain's accuser.

"For a presidential spokesman to go on TV and make up blatant falsehoods doesn't speak well for his boss, either," Kraushaar wrote.

Kraushaar did manage to keep his sense of humor about the whole situation. "The only positive benefit about being smeared by Mark Block on Hannity is I'm getting 100 new Twitter followers a minute."

According to CNN's politicalticker blog, Karen Kraushaar accused Cain of sexual harassment when he led the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s. She was the second woman to come forward publicly with allegations about the GOP presidential candidate, but only did so after her identity was revealed by the iPad news site, The Daily.

Karen Kraushaar, 55, is a registered Republican who works at the Treasury Department. Through her attorney, she has described the alleged harassment as "a series of inappropriate behaviors and unwanted advances from the CEO," NPR reported. See next article:

Click on Herman Cain's Tax Lien to see documents.

Herman Cain Used Campaign Funds To Enrich Himself And His Associates!!! ....Oh....That's Right He's a Republican, Never Mind!

Excerpts from an article by Andy Kroll on motherjones.com Mon May. 23, 2011

Excerpts from an article first posted in motherjones.com by Tim Murphy on May 25, 2011

Role in the defeat of the Clinton health care plan

1996 Senior Adviser of Dole/Kemp Campaign

2004 U.S. Senate candidacy

2012 presidential candidacy

Economic

Taxes

Fair Tax

Bank bailouts

Federal Reserve

Gold standard

Welfare

Social Security

Religion

Abortion

Education

Energy and the Environment

Health Care

Immigration

Marriage

Supreme Court Justices

Second Amendment

Israel

Iran

North Korea

Russia

Cancer

Race