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Subscribe to RSSA major conservative advocacy group, funded by Koch family oil interests, says it is reviewing its "financial dealings" with a Wisconsin charity headed by Herman Cain's campaign manager, raising fresh questions about the source of tens of thousands of dollars in funds that were used to pay expenses for Cain's presidential campaign.
The Center for Public Integrity reported late Thursday that Americans for Prosperity, one of the largest and most prominent of conservative political groups, has confirmed unspecified financial transactions with two closely linked Wisconsin non-profits -- Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Prosperity Network -- that were founded by Mark Block, Cain's campaign manager.
One of those groups, Prosperity USA, paid for $37,000 in expenses, including iPads, charter flights and items, for Cain's presidential campaign, according to financial documents disclosed this week by the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
Non-profits are barred by law from paying for campaign expenses, and when the allegations first surfaced this week -- at the same time as the sexual harassment charges against the presidential candidate -- Cain said he would order an investigation of whether there were improper campaign violations.
Cain's campaign lawyer, Steve Bienek, declined to answer questions from NBC about the transactions between the Wisconsin charities headed by Block and the campaign, saying only that the campaign has retained an outside law firm to review them.
"We take these allegations very seriously," he said.
But the Center for Public Integrity report by Peter Stone raises additional questions as to whether Americans for Prosperity (AFP) funds were used by Block to pay Cain campaign expenses. AFP had "financial dealings with Prosperity USA and/or the Wisconsin Prosperity Network," Levi Russell, the spokesman for AFT is quoted as saying.
(Russell confirmed the transactions to NBC News, but declined to elaborate, and added that the group had no reason to believe there was any wrongdoing on its part.)
Some of those transactions are hinted at in the documents released by the Journal-Sentinel: They show a $5,000 expense in February 2011 for Cain to attend a meeting of a group called RightNation "at request of AFP" and that Block made a trip to Washington to meet with AFP's president Tim Phillips and David Koch."
Koch and his oil industry brother Charles Koch were the founders of Americans for Prosperity, but the group -- like most non-profits -- declines to identify its donors. The group is having a major conference in Washington starting Friday at which Cain and other presidential candidates are scheduled to speak.
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The conservative black man is in the lead.....ATTACK,DESTROY!!!!!
The master at flip flop politics--
Obama's Flip Flops: Who Is Barack Obama??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft_Mb-4nXJk
He's in the lead until you find out these women are White, then what teabaggers?
I bet all funding will stop immediately and his poll numbers will plummet...
the Koch brothers are like a deadly virus that has infected our political system. this country needs a really good chloroxing once and for all.
getting money out of politics is going to require amending the Constitution since the SCOTUS believes the 1st amendment means not only the freedom of speech of citizens but additionally the freedom of unnamed donors from multinational corporations to spend as much money as possible. If the Koch brothers want to stand on the corner with a mega phone and speak their mind so be it. The first amendment does not guarantee the right to buy the biggest microphone with which to poison the Nation I will guarantee that the founding Fathers never intended the freedom of speech to apply to foreign corporations and their ability to spend undocumented and unlimited money on political issues and more realistically used to spread lies against good candidates. The SCOTUS is full of bullsh!t if they really believe they got that one right! Even though Constitutional amendment is a very drastic measure I believe the Founding Fathers understood that there would be some issues around which the masses, no matter of party affiliation, can coalesce. If we the people take money out of politics this handful of rich white guys would be as harmless as they are impotent.
1000s times worse than anything ACORN did. Actually ACORN didn't do anything wrong. Yet ACORN gets media smeared. These clearly illegal actions by Citizens United will not be aired by the Corporate Media... proving the abosule corruption in the Corporate (WALL STREET) Media.
Now, we have to ask ourselves why the Kochs are supporting Herman Cain in the first place given the other choices available?
Answer: Their influence grows by having a "brokered" GOP convention, when they can choose an "unvetted by the media candidate". Herman Cain's candidacy could prevent Romney and Perry from securing enough delegates to win the nomination on the first vote, thus opening the convention floor to nominations of Christie, Rubio, or one of their personal favorites, Huckabee. In fact, any or all of those candidates could already have been told to stand by and wait for the call from the convention.
In this year's GOP primaries, only 16 states and DC allocate their delegates by some form of Winner-Take-All system, whereby the winner in a state or Congressional District wins all of that state's convention delegates. However, new RNC rules put in place last year stipulate that primaries before April 1st cannot use winner-take-all, so that even a 2nd or 3rd place finisher is likely to win delegates. In addition, virtually every state provides for "uncommitted" delegates, usually the state GOP chairs, that can vote any way they wish.
Under Republican Party rules, a candidate needs 1,212 delegates to win the nomination. That’s half, plus one, of the total 2,422 delegates. With an “early knock-out” win by any candidate made unlikely by an extended calendar, one highly plausible scenario is the emergence of a brokered alternative.
Al Cardenas, former President of the Republican Party of Florida...
Very informative. This seems to be the only chance the GOP has. The white knight rides against the socialist black magic.
Kinda makes sense out of why such a weak field. The only problem I have with this is isnt this a huge waste of money? Maybe looking for the best VP?
Meanwhile at the Cain headquarters: Please don't pay attention to those to men behind the curtain the Great and powerful Oz's brothers say so. Cain " I am sill getting paid for this?"
Oh puulllleeeeeeze.....you dopey liberals are sooooooooo two-faced.
Are any of you really so stupid that you think the Obama Administration isn't loaded with people who have "financial ties" to George Soros money???
May the most money win!
It's the conservatives that have shoved "money is free speech" and "corporations are people" down our throats!!!
Now the presidenstial race is going to cost 2 billion dollars...
"Fair and Balanced"
LOL, this is really getting funny..... I guess they didnt get all they wanted with the sexual harrasment crap they came up with so they are still digging to see what else they can find.... I got a suggestion.... lets find out more about where obama went to school and how his grades were, and also why he took a muslim name..... then we can move on to where he was really born, not some phony birth certificate they tried to fool us with. How about more on Fast and Furious? Lets get some real news, or is Obama still untouchable? Im tired of the typical democrat trick of throwing mud around until something sticks....
Yes rememeber the reports out of Alaska? Over night hundreds of lawyers showing up in Palins home town, knocking on doors looking for anyone with anything they could call dirt. They then turned the small court system that was already strained for costs into a circus of hunderds of baseless claims that gutted the finacial coffers of the state inside a month?
If only the repbulicans could stoop that low and dish it back but then, I'd lose respect for them too if they did.
Agreed, They can also ask why he has a Conneticut social security number and why that numbers shows up as fraudulent when entered into the national everify system. They can also ask why a person by the name of Harry Bounel shares Obamas soc. sec. numbers and why is Harry Bounels address the same as obamas Chicago address? Or they can ask the document experts that looked at Obamas certificate and declared it fraudulent, the biggest reason being that typewriters do not have the ability change letter styles from the beginning to the end of the document. The so called investigative journalists deserve to jailed for this malfeasance or in this case, cover up.
3rdpartyadvocate,
Yes, once put in the spotlight, reporters did descend on Sarah Palin's home town. None of them found anything really damaging, other than the fact that she wasn't qualified to be Vice President, which she revealed, and continues to, all by herself. Mr. Cain is following a common GOP theme.
Mr. Kirschner,
As a victim myself of Social Security errors, I can tell you that it happens all the time. No big conspiracy. But go ahead and spend lots of time on that and the birth certificate issue. They're both big winners for the GOP in 2012.
Well, MikeMike...... if you have not had enough of your "hope and change" president yet, wait until he throws his 1% tax at you on every bank transaction there possible can be..... more class warfare, more taxes, more money to donate to his great voting base that does not work. He controls the entitlement bragade, his army of welfare thugs, black panthers, ghetto thugs, communists, terrorists, in other words, all his friends. Gosh, there are about 8 communists just in his Czars...... all buddies, friends, Komrads.
Why investigate. If anonomous says it's true then that's good enough for liberals.
Why is it Cain can run his mouth and the women can't...
He didn't take a severance package nor did he sign anything saying he wouldn't talk. I happen to experience a boss of mine being put through this about 20 years ago. Of course his wife was devastated, and his kids shamed only in the end for the woman to drop all the charges because she didn't want to go to court.
My boss did not back down, he fought the chrages tooth and nail. And even though the accuser ended up diappearing, this mans life was left in shreds.
Let this be a lesson to any CEO to wear a camera on their lapel at all times and make everyone knows what it's for. Because if this is all it takes to ruin someones reputation then we are all sitting ducks.
Rememeber the DUKE LACROSSE case? REMEMBER the recent IMF Cheif who lost his chance at being the president of the IMF?
Funny how it's fine with you because the charges are against someone you dislike. Careful the same thing doesn't come around and tap you on the shoulder.
Why investigate when peccadillos and irrregularities only become major issues when they involve a Democrat?
You know he did it. The third woman reported it immediately. If he is so clean on this issue why doesn't he pursue it in court or at least allow the restaurant association to release the gag order?
The fact that one woman collected $35K, another got $45K, and a third decided not to press formal charges suggests that there is more to this issue than Mr. Cain wants us to believe. If this guy had been a Democrat he would have joined Edwards and Weihner by now. Instead he is only one point behind Romney in the latest poll. The duplicity of "conservatives" on social issues is difficult to put into words.
Cain ='s bought and paid for puppet of the KOCH brothers.
king of the Syrian States of America
I wouldn't get to worked up over this news. David Koch will not even get a slap on the wrist even if proven guilty. Why? Just too much money padding his wristwatch.
LL
the Koch brothers 2 (80) year ? old greedy power hungry rich manipulators
how long do they still have 3 -5 years if that long.....I think they didn't get the message yet
NOBODY LIVES FOREVER AND YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU
how much money you need to be happy? $ 1 or 50 billion
every country who behaved like we do right now went down the tube from the romans to the french Russians Germans but some learn and some don't.....
we should live like some countries do ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE....
we all should be ashamed of our self we have children dying of hunger and illness we have veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan without jobs or places to live ....and then we have people like the Koch brothers trying to grab every cent with their old greedy wrinkled hands.....the world will be a better place when people like this are gone....and if there is a judgment day and i hope so they will go to a very hot place
Looks like the hunters are becoming the hunted
Getting money out of politics is like trying to get President Clinton out of other womens skirts...not going to happen.
Geee you're so wity...NOT
wolfpackie,
No need to ATTACK, DESTROY!!!!!
Cain is doing a good enough job on his own. Now let's hope the spiritual power of truth can do something with the Kochs.
None of this has anything to do with "black" other than that the Republicans are wanting their own "black man". No one really cares what color this idiot is. What bothers them is that he is an idiot trying to run for president of the USA.
The big question is not what Republicans want, but who do the Ayatollahs support and, in that regard, the only ones with an inside track on that issue are the Koch brothers.
just like all the other's....you feel the power and your brain goes dead...it's all about the money and who has it...
I'm sure you understand brain dead after all.
Republicans want to cut spending and reduce government. They also say if Warren Buffet wants to pay more taxes let him do it. Here is a proposal remove republicans from government and they solve their problem, there will be less government and save their salary money, then the billionaire democrats can pay more taxes. Defit solved.
Sure looks like the media are working double time combing through Cains life. I applaud them. It would have been nice had they done the same when Obama was running for president.
They did - if you have a good family guy with no ties and no lies, what are you going to find?
It sure would be nice for a change to see the speakers deliver their speeches via video from some Federal Prison.
So, what do we now know about Herman Cain? He's a sexual predator, a liar, and now in the pocket of the Koch Brothers through illegal political contributions.
Gee, I'd vot e for the guy! How dumb are these right wing nuts?
Trustus there's more.There areother groups linked to Cain that we are just begining to uncover inWisonsinand elsewhere that trin people on"prosperity builiding".they offer books and semnars with a subltle anti-union bais and are aimed at small buisneses.
This allows Cain to build a network of smallbiz donors under the radar because they are"nonpolitical" and merely encourge people to become active in politics. Some groups have links to AMWAY run by the DeVos family which is powerful in Michigan. AMWAY is 6 billion marketing network of entrepreneurs who make the Cain group look amateurish..
Cain's people do not follow laws.They like to make thing up as they go along then find a law that fits later.
Remember Cain first ran in 2000 for Prez. He is hardly a novice at this. He also ran for office in Georgia and lost.To hear him he's new to this is simply ludicrous
I bet all funding from the KOCH brothers will dry up immediately if we find out these women are WHITE.
In other news: We find that Obama has taken in record funding from groups such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley while he attempts to convince the public that he is 1 with OWS. In addition, major campaign bundlers running Solyndra, Fiskar, and Beacon, have been rewarded by Obama by funneling the taxpayers money to their now defunct corporations. In other news we find that the state departement has used taxpayer funds to buy $70,000 worth of Obamas autobiography to give out around the world. Obama thanks the taxpayers for this generous gesture as it will enhance his book royalties substantially. And finally he gives the taxpayer additional thanks for allowing him to list his 2 daughters as senior staff on Michelles African trip so that he would not have to pay for them out of his own pocket.