Cain's Amateur Hour

I'm a big fan of non-politicians seeking political office. I'd love to support Herman Cain. If he winds up being the GOP nominee, I'll vote for him. But, I'm troubled - no, make that VERY troubled - about what his campaign could indicate about a Cain Presidency:

First, there's the problems with and false characterizations of Mr. Cain's 999 Plan.

Second, there's Mr. Cain's lack of cohesion in answering questions regarding his pro-life beliefs.

Now, we've got the sexual harassment kerfuffle. POLITICO, as I'm sure you know by now, broke the story that Mr. Cain was accused by at least two women of inappropriate behavior.

Since then, Mr. Cain has offered a variety of denials and a variety of details that are, at times, contradictory. Then his campaign chief of staff, Mark "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" Block, last night came out on Fox News and blamed - by name - current Rick Perry staffer Curt Anderson for leaking the story. Mr. Anderson was a former staffer for Cain during his 2004 Senate campaign. Then today, Mr. Block - also on Fox News - backed away from the accusation of Mr. Anderson. Now just within the last hour or so, I heard with my own ears, Herman Cain himself accuse Curt Anderson again on the Sean Hannity radio program.

Does anybody in the Cain camp know what they're doing, or for that matter, what anybody else in the camp is doing?

Right now, the best argument against Mr. Cain is that his campaign has shown abysmal crisis management skills. How can this do anything but reflect poorly on Mr. Cain's own characterizations of himself as a "problem solver"? I find myself wondering how he managed to be a success in business when:

He hasn't been able to handle questions succinctly - particularly on issues he had to have known that he'd be asked about, like abortion.

His campaign had ten days forewarning from the POLITICO reporters on the sexual harassment story and they couldn't even come up with a consistent "no comment" or "baseless accusation" reply that the candidate himself could stick to, much less have a consistent message from the campaign as a whole.

He's made verbal missteps such as characterizing the People's Republic of China as "trying to develop nuclear capability", when they've had nuclear weapons since the mid-1960s.

I think Herman Cain has a great life story. I am wholly inclined to call the sexual harassment charges a load of BS until there's some actual evidence or eyewitnesses on the table. If he expects to actually contend to be President of the United States though, he's got a whole lot of work to do.

And he doesn't have much time to get ready; the one-on-one debate "Lincoln/Douglas"-style with Newt Gingrich on Saturday could finish him.

Here Comes the A-Bomb...

...and Herman "999" Cain is in the bomb sight, and no not for an atomic bomb, but for abortion.

Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway provides a very complete run down of Mr. Cain's recent Q&As on the pro-life issue.

I'm not going to rehash Mr. Cain's recent both-sides-of-the-fence statements on abortion, as Doug did such a good job. I agree that Mr. Cain's stance is coming across as basically pro-choice, in that he is using the "personal choice" argument, while also saying the practice should be "illegal"; two, mutually exclusive positions.

I did dig up this interview given by Mr. Cain to Human Events during his run for the US Senate seat from Georgia, dated October 3, 2003. In it, there is the following exchange:

HE: Where do you stand on abortion?

CAIN: Pro-life, conception to the grave.

HE: Do you favor a human life amendment?

CAIN: Explain to me what you mean by the human life amendment?

HE: Well, the human life amendment, which has been in the Republican platform since, I think, 1980, and would go in the United States Constitution, stating just that an unborn child has a right to life from conception.

CAIN: I would support that, stated the way you state it. Yes, I would.

Ok, what are we to draw from all of this? I will take Mr. Cain at his word that he is pro-life, but his equivocation on government's role in assuring the sanctity of life is disturbing, particularly in the shortcomings he's shown in responding to pointed questions on other issues. His explanation is lacking to say the least, but I do believe that there is a constitutional explanation that could be brought into play.

I raise this possible explanation only as it is directly related to my own, very strong pro-life views.

999: Right but Mostly Wrong

GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain is to be commended for issuing his "999 Plan". Mr. Cain's plan is "Right" in that he is the only candidate who is - so far - beginning the discussion of tax reform with a complete scrapping of the current tax code. I agree with him. The current system is completely broken and, whether it can be fixed or not, should not be fixed but replaced.

Several prominent economists, notably Dr. Arthur Laffer, have come out in favor of 999. I have come to the conclusion however that the 999 Plan is not the solution. My main problem with the plan centers around the second "9", which Mr. Cain characterizes in his public statements and on the plan's page as a "9% Business Flat Tax" on "gross income less all purchases from U.S. located businesses", or simply as a "9% business income tax". Trouble is, it isn't. It's a value-added tax (VAT), and therefore I have to judge it as "wrong".

In an op-ed published today by Dr. Laffer in the Wall Street Journal, the mis-characterization of 999 as a "9% flat-rate tax on net business profits" persists.

I encourage everybody to look at the supporting documents for 999, both the "9-9-9 Scoring Report" and the "9-9-9 Scoring Tables". I'll be citing page numbers from the report below.

In the scoring report, the business tax is properly called a "Business Transactions Tax" (page 7).

Each business would pay tax on gross receipts less payments to other businesses. Allowing the subtraction of payments for intermediate goods yields the value added by the company. Subtracting investment as well yields a subtraction method value-added tax." (my emphasis)

So, there it is in black and white, a VAT. It is not what I'll call a compound VAT since business purchases of materials and resources for production are deducted, but there is one important cost of production that is not deductible from revenue: labor costs.