In Case It Wasn't Obvious

How to get rich by running for president

The year 2008 was great for Mike Huckabee—but not as a politician. The former Arkansas governor bailed out of the presidential race in March of that year after losing steam in the early primary elections. But simply running for president elevated Huckabee to the status of celebrity, while helping him build a devoted following among southern and Midwestern evangelicals. Huckabee has since converted the renown that comes with running for national office into a business enterprise that has made him wealthy, with a palatial beachfront home, access to private jets and other perks of the 1%.

Huckabee is running for president again, of course, which makes him one of perhaps 12 or 15 candidates likely to enjoy free media attention and additional publicity funded by donors—even though polls show they have virtually no chance of winning. The presence of so many obscure candidates in the 2016 race—Jim Gilmore, Lincoln Chafee, James Webb, George Pataki, and so on—prompts an obvious question: Why are they running? Huckabee’s experience suggests one answer: Because running for president can be a highly lucrative form of work.

No serious candidate* will admit to running for president purely as a self-promotional stunt. Some may be trying to gain exposure for a more serious run for office in the future. Others may be using a run to promote their companies or personal brands, like Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000 and Donald Trump now. And many candidates no doubt feel they have a serious message to convey to voters, while perhaps also angling for a Cabinet position, ambassadorship, or other plum job if their party’s nominee ends up winning the White House. “You can emerge from the campaign as a power broker, as somebody influential with the media and with lobbyists,” says Julian Zelizer of Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. “I’m sure that’s on the mind of some of these candidates.”

Still, savvy candidates can nonetheless parlay the fame that comes from televised debates, a decent showing in a couple of early primaries, and wall-to-wall media coverage into a juicy 7- or 8-figure income. Huckabee serves as a good case study of the business of running for president because his financial disclosures represent an instructive before-and-after story. Huckabee was Arkansas governor for 12 years, from 1996 to 2007, living for most of that time on a modest salary of around $70,000. He announced his first run for president almost immediately after leaving the governor’s office, in January 2007, when he also started giving paid speeches and accepting other business offers fitting an ex-governor.

At the time, Huckabee was comfortable but far from rich. On the 2007 disclosure form he filed (required for all presidential candidates), Huckabee listed business income of about $325,000, including his governor’s salary, book royalties and a one-time consulting fee of $40,000. He also earned speaking fees of nearly $140,000 during the 15 months prior to filing the 2007 disclosure form, most of it in the first quarter of 2007. Overall, his annual income back then was close to  $400,000.

That was pretty good, but life was about to get much better for "Huck," as he's known. After dropping out of the 2008 race, he scored a Fox News TV show and a national radio program. Huckabee had written several books before running for president, but the books he’s written since then have sold much better, including his 2015 bestseller "God, Guns, Grits & Gravy."Huckabee now earns two to three times as much for giving a speech -- and he gives a lot more of them. He also runs a group of companies called Blue Diamond that handle his travel, publishing ventures and other lines of business, with his wife Janet on the payroll of at least one of them....

I just love how Yahoo! states that Huckabee was 'far from rich' whilst earning $400,000 a year.  Which is about 1400% more than the US' individual median.  But evidently...still...not enough.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with cashing in on fame, as countless other Americans have done in just about every industry. Huckabee, for his part, is an entrepreneurial character with a folksy personality that makes him popular in broad patches of middle America. Santorum has gravitated away from a traditional revolving-door career and found a way to make a living that's more in line with the conservative social values he espouses as a candidate. Both are capitalizing on opportunity in ways many other Americans would if they could.

Besides, Huckabee and Santorum are serfs compared with some other prominent candidates. Democrat Hillary Clinton typically earns at least $225,000 per paid speech, and she pulled in nearly $12 million in speaking fees in the 15 months ended March 31 of this year. Her husband Bill, the former president, earns even more....

The best thing about the business of running for president is that other people typically pay for it. A few superrich candidates fund their own campaigns—as Donald Trump is doing, and Steve Forbes and Ross Perot did before him—but most candidates spend only what they’re able to raise from donors. Huckabee raised about $16 million when he ran in 2008. All of it came from donors, meaning none of his campaign spending was self-financed. But Huckabee’s haul was a tiny fraction of what party nominees John McCain and Barack Obama raised, which limited his staying power in the primary races.

...

Huckabee, who now resides in Florida, has reportedly developed a taste for the good life, prompting controversy over whether he’s duping donors into funding what is basically a private venture that principally benefits himself and his family. But Zelizer of Princeton says most donors know what they’re paying for when they help fund a low-probability candidate. “Some of these donors may be gullible, but I think they’re making other bets,” says Zelizer. “Maybe they’re able to walk into the room with a power broker.” There are worse ways to spend money, if you've got a lot to spend.

There's the problem, right there.  We're talking about someone making a high six-figure income as if he were working poor, and the same person making millions as a relative 'serf'.  And the billionaires above that level, well of course it's all monopoly-money, play-money if you will.  And inevitably, someone with that much spare cash, will play with it.  Why the fuck not ?  You could never spend it it in your lifetime, you've already got trusts set up for your children & grandchildren; What else are you going to do with the excess cash ?  Burn it in a giant bonfire for kicks & giggles ?

The best economic arguments for more progressive taxation are fiscal ones, but above and beyond that, closer and closer concentration of wealth, is inherently toxic to democracy.**  The US has at this point passed the boundary from 'nominal democracy' to outright plutocracy.  And the tone of this article suggests that the media at any rate, are still in total denial about that fact, so removed from ordinary economic realities as they would seem to be.  Eight decades ago, even the more radical right-wing American politicians saw the dangers of continuing inequality, the threat of outright revolution if they couldn't contain the rot.  Today, we're leaving the former gilded age behind, and entering uncharted territory.  Whatever happens next, like as not, won't be pretty.


* Huckabee is a serious candidate ?

** Especially when idiots in the Supreme Court decide, à la Citizens United, that somehow money and free speech are one and the same, and that there should be no upper limits or restrictions on expenditure to buy elections.

Speaking of Which...

As All of America/The Entire Republican Party/Fox News Viewers/A Handful of Political Junkies eagerly await the pretend Republican debate(s) on Fox News next week, meanwhile, the actual debate of Republican candidates not named Trump, with an actual chance at the nomination, will take place in southern California this weekend as charisma-less son and brother of former presidents, JEB!, personal puppet-doll of the Kochs, Scott Walker, lunatic clown, Ted Cruz, pretty boy, Marco Rubio, and for some altogether inexplicable reason, failed businesswoman Carly Fiorina compete for the chance at being the billionaire Koch Brothers' chosen bitch in the coming Republican primaries.

Although the remaining eleven 'serious' candidates & Carly, may have a chance of being chosen for the historically most-often powerless VP spot (Darth Cheney, and to a lesser degree, Uncle Joe aside), really, most of the others have no chance of winning, and know that full well, but are running anyway, because...they have nothing the fuck to lose in so doing, and can hoover up oodles of cash in the name of an utterly futile campaign.  They could also have counted on oodles of attention from the media, were it not for one attention-crazed multiple-bankrupt property-developer entering the race...

Fiorina's presence puzzles me a little.  I can only assume, that either, a) the Kochs have her in mind for the VP slot, thinking that her possession of lady-parts somehow lessens Hillary's chances in the General Election, or that b) they think it's needful to string her utterly hopeless campaign along a little longer at least to counter the idea that the GOP is solely a party of rich white men.  Which to be true, it isn't.  It also includes a lot of people, who desperately would rather they were rich white men, and are more than happy to paper over any differences in order to gain even a junior seat at the big boy's table.

Regardless, keeping the Donald's joker-card in mind, almost certainly the nominee will be one of these four assholes: JEB!, fascist fuck Scott Walker, the always entertaining idiot Ted Cruz, or, less likely by the day, 'I'm so Young and Pretty; Isn't Hillary an old Hag' Marco Rubio.  The rest of the crowd is just so much entertainment-value, funded not just by the Brothers Koch, but by the rest of the billionaire-establishment that made Citizens United possible (H/T Chief Justice John Roberts, H/T as always Harriet Miers).

Of course, the Koch-sucking show will all take place behind closed doors (please let someone have sneaked in a camera, please !) as the top candidates get down on their knees and promise various ways in which they, if president, will personally advance the Kochs' agenda of maximally increasing their own personal wealth and power, at the expense of any other single consideration of humanity.

But don't worry, proles, though you are, and long have been, completely shut out of decision-making in your own so-called democracy, at least you'll get to laugh at the pretend candidates in the 'debates' on Fox.

What you won't get, which our more wise historical overlords knew the value of of, was the chance at public dunkings, and throwing rotten fruit.

Jimmy Carter Acknowledges the Obvious

Emily, '16, Yeah!

Feel like I've neglected the US stuff lately, but frankly, short of the daily stories of white cop shoots black or brown guy for looking at him the wrong way, or decades-long neglect of infrastructure and/or complete disregard for the environment & human safety leads to completely needless disaster, most of the political stories in the US consist of trying to make a remotely reasonable spin on the latest bullshit to fall out of a Republican candidate's mouth.

So hey, here's this, only a few days old, and only slightly indicative of how fucked up the Supreme Court's decision on campaign-finance was that turned a run for president into a financial and promotional no-brainer for any semi-conscious Republican wanting easy easy money and free publicity.

Emily Farris Is Not Running for President

Pollsters included the name of a random woman in a survey—and 20 percent of Republican primary voters said they dislike her.

Pity Emily Farris. Republican primary voters just don’t like her very much.

In a survey released on Wednesday, Public Policy Polling found that Farris near the bottom of the GOP field. She polled well behind fellow Texans Rick Perry and Ted Cruz. Just 3 percent of voters had formed a favorable opinion of her, while 20 percent reported unfavorable views. Only embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie faced a wider gap.

And Farris isn’t even running. She’s a political science professor at Texas Christian University, whose name was included within the enormous field of Republican hopefuls as a statistical control. “It’s a little surreal to think that 20 percent of Republican primary voters have a negative opinion of you, when they most likely don’t know you,” she told me.

Farris’s unlikely journey from scholar to subject of political polling began with a PPP poll of Iowa voters, in April, that included Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Paul Egan, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, called up PPP director Tom Jensen to make sense of the results. Snyder, Jensen told him, was effectively unknown. “If I had polled you for favorability with Iowa Republicans, you would come out with the same number he did,” Jensen said.

He put that proposition to the test in PPP’s next poll, of Arizona Republicans. It turned out that Jensen had been mistaken. Snyder was viewed favorably by 5 percent of respondents; Egan, the reporter, actually outpolled him with 6 percent support.

Farris, who teaches an upper-level class on polling, was puzzled by the inclusion of an unfamiliar name. PPP explained its logic. “Well, next time throw my name in the poll as someone with no national profile,” she tweeted to PPP. “It'll amuse my Survey Research students.” And then, on Thursday, she spotted reporters trying to figure out why a quarter of Republican voters had opinions about “Emily Farris,” when they’d never heard of her.

Yep, there are so many B-list and C-list candidates on the clown-car-train for the Republican nomination in 2016 that voters don't even know who the hell they are any more, but will express an opinion anyway, even for a completely random made-up candidate.  I'll joke: Sure gives ya faith in democracy, huh ?...  But seriously, I do wonder whether the results would be the same if repeated with Democratic voters.*

Thanks Chief Justice** Roberts !


*No, really, I am completely serious as in whether this has anything to do with the ability or lack thereof to admit ignorance or failure, that seems to characterise certain types of political leadership, and how that might be reflected in the electorate.  Isn't funny, because it isn't meant to be.  And I'm genuinely interested.

**Thanks Harriet Miers !

No. 1, No. 1 !

The UK is the most unequal country in the EU, according to a new report.

The Dublin foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, the EU’s agency for life at work, found that the UK had the worst Gini coefficient of any EU member state.

The Gini is one of the most widely used measures of inequality and calculates how income is distributed among a nation’s residents.

According to the results, the UK’s GINI rating is 0.404, a rate that has soared since the financial crisis in 2008. The result is well in excess of the EU average which is 0.346 and even exceeds the United States’ rating of 0.4.

Well sure.  Keeping in mind of course that the UK is really made up of at least five different countries, one of which, 'The City,' is to the British economy what California is to the US economy, were California several times wealthier, exponentially more plutocratic, almost completely devoid of any actual human residents, and the size of my toilet.*

*These comparisons are of course completely made-up, and any seeming resemblance to actual reality is purely a product of your imagination.

Today in The Prescott Bush Dynasty News

Of course he did.  Gotta get that all-important Hispanic vote after all.  Not like you could just promote, cough, Marco Rubio, cough, some random extremists, cough, Ted Cruz, cough, within the party to blatantly pander to the mentally challenged...

And in 'baby-bump' news...

Uh, I'd forgotten she even existed, but yeah, thanks for that.  I should totally send them a card or something.  Take heart banksters & hereditary pol's, you're only slightly being out-bred by the browns.  And 'Today correspondent'. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Wonder what ever happened to that Chelsea chick, huh ?  Keeping a low profile and living out her life far from the public eye ?

Fuuuuccccccck...

Killing Joke: Money is not our God

Kirsty MacColl: Us Amazonians

Can it really be fifteen years since Kirsty MacColl was killed/murdered ?  I couldn't believe the numbers when I looked, but it seems to be so.  So many societies drift along without justice ever done.  Presumably it was an accident, of some sort, but with the plutocratic default of our system, one can't but suspect the worse.  I had originally assumed a blameless but horrific accident, from the event, and the more I read, the less I want to know.

Still, I somewhat envy Kirsty and those of a similar generation, for having an optimism and a hope that has never seemed rational in my generation (whatever keeps the millennials going I'll never know).  How much of that is the one or the other, or something else entirely I could hardly say, though not having known her of course myself, Kirsty always seemed to me one of the blazing bright lights of humanity, and a credit to her generation.  I want to believe in the Kirsty's of this world.  They inspire, they encourage, they give hope.  They take on the world, take on racism and misogyny and their ilk, and tell whoever gets in their way to go fuck themselves.  And then, some rich privileged asshole comes along and runs them over in a speedboat...and gets away with it.

One thing I could say is, that although she grew older, Kirsty never got old...never dull...never lost her edge...never lost her passion.  And she went out in her prime...as a confident mature woman, and as an unshakeable talent.  Hers is one fire that'll never fade.