This is Herman Cain.

I feel called to publicly support true patriots that have the right stuff for the job of saving our country. I’ve found one in Michigan that you should know about. Pete Hoekstra is committed to solving the great challenge of our day- the rising federal debt resulting from the growth of government.

He’s the best chance for Michiganders to play their part in this important fight. That’s why I am supporting Pete Hoekstra and why I am asking you to join me today.

As one of the first supporters of my 9-9-9 economic growth and jobs plan, Pete Hoekstra has shown he is not afraid of bold solutions to fix what is broken in America. Pete has balanced budgets and pinched pennies. He understands taxpayer dollars come from our pockets and they should not be used as an ATM service for politicians in Washington. He supports eradicating wasteful spending, easing federal regulations, and reforming the tax code. Pete Hoekstra is the kind of commonsense leader we need in the U.S. Senate.

In fact, I believe so much in Pete’s candidacy for US Senate that I just finished a four city tour around Michigan, meeting the locals and doing what I can to spread the news about his campaign. We need penny pinchers like Pete in Washington, and I will do all I can to see that he gets there in November. I need you to join Pete and I today. Will you support his campaign with a donation right now?

The election cycle has already become very heated and Pete has become the focus of Democrats’ ire. That’s because the Democrat machine most fears Pete. With the help of the liberal media, they have already shifted into high gear and are doing their best to convince concerned folks like you that big-spending liberals like Debbie Spend-It-Now are the answer.

I am going to help Pete fight back. And I need your immediate support to make it happen.

We have the greatest country in the world. America has long led the world in productivity and innovation. However, currently America finds itself experiencing some of its roughest days. And politicians like Debbie Stabenow are at fault.

All is not lost though. We can bring those inspiring and monumental days back and make them a reality again by doing what is right for America, starting by supporting conservative candidates for federal office like Pete Hoekstra of Michigan.

Fellow penny pinchers, we can unite behind Pete Hoekstra and defeat Debbie Stabenow- if you give today.

I consider it a privilege to continue traveling across this great country and communicating with concerned citizens like you. Thank you for staying engaged with me.

Warmest regards,

Herman Cain

The so-called stimulus package passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama in 2009 was not the first such attempt by Washington to stimulate economic growth by spending money the government did not have. It was merely the most obscene, and the clearest evidence yet that such “stimuli” is akin to the kind people often put into their bodies.

Figuring that a $100 billion stimulus package like the kind that saw the Bush Administration send taxpayers $1,000 checks in 2008 was for small-timers, Obama convinced an all-too-willing Congress to go even bigger and balloon the deficit by $862 billion to supposedly spur economic growth.

The economy was in big trouble, so we needed to think big! Translation, spend big! If we didn’t, the president warned, unemployment would exceed 8 percent.

As we all know, the unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent after the impotent stimulus. Even now it has not been below 8 percent since it first exceeded that level, and it is currently hovering around 8.5 percent.
In 2011, unable to pretend the economy was getting better, Obama asked the new Congress that now included a Republican House to give him another $400 billion stimulus. This time, he was told Congress had cut up his stimulus credit card.

Why doesn’t economic stimulus work? When it comes in the form of federal spending, it doesn’t work because it’s based on a completely wrong notion of what spurs prosperity. In that respect, it’s much like a drug.

Consider the effects that a stimulant like caffeine has on your body, or even a stronger stimulant like amphetamines. These stimulants merely provide a very temporary boost to your energy – keeping you awake when you should probably be sleeping, or keeping you operating at a high level when you need rest. They make the body act in an unnatural way, and that doesn’t come without consequences.

Some artificial stimulants, such as cocaine, can really give you a short-term kick, but can also accelerate your heart rate so intensely that they can kill you. None of these stimulants have any nutritional value. They just give you energy that your body wouldn’t produce if left to its own devices, then they wear off and you either crash or take more. It’s a vicious cycle and its long-term effects are usually very bad.

When the government tries to stimulate the economy with deficit spending, it is essentially doing the same thing. Healthy sustained economic growth comes from value-added production that serves markets that want the goods and are able to pay for them. When not enough of that is happening, economic growth slows or sometimes goes backwards for a short period of time. No one likes it when that happens, but it is often a necessary correction to something that has skewed the market.

What the government then tries to do is replace the value-added, market-serving production that generates real economic growth with the gratuitous spreading-around of borrowed money.

That doesn’t work.

The economy is way past the point where the federal government can “stimulate” it back to health. That’s why Obama’s $862 billion boondoggle did not work.

Based on President Obama’s latest State of the Union address and speeches, he would probably grade his performance in the first three years of his presidency as an A or no less than a B. Let’s examine the facts and see what the facts say about promised results versus actual results.

STIMULUS BILL ($862 billion): The Congressional Budget Office reported in November 2011 that 700,000 jobs may have been sustained as a result of this massive spending measure. The administration projected 3.5 million jobs would be created. (That’s more than $1.2 million per job, assuming it’s true.) The administration then concocted a definition for “saved” jobs to boost the results. Only liberals bought the phony definition and the result was still way short of projection.

The president also said the spending would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. It has not been below 8 percent since he made the prediction, which is a post-World War II record of 35 straight months above 8 percent. The administration (specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics) has now changed who gets counted in the work force and who gets counted as unemployed to make the rate appear to be lower than it actually is.

Hush! The real number is over 15 percent, but don’t tell anybody.

OBAMACARE: We were supposed to be able to keep our current insurance if we liked it. Insurance premiums were supposed to come down and more people would be covered. None of that happened. Even worse, a majority of the public did not even want ObamaCare.

NATIONAL SECURITY: The world is not safer. Defense spending is on a downward trajectory. Our military is being stretched. Terrorist attempts continue. Our southern border is not secure. The START treaty was a mistake because the president gave away too much, and now he wants to voluntarily reduce our nuclear arsenal. I don’t feel secure.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: An extended moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, refusal to approve the Keystone Pipeline, mandatory reporting of “greenhouse gases” and a regulatory onslaught on the coal industry are not the path to energy independence. Energy dependence, which is what these policies produce, is a threat to our national security.

INVESTMENT IN SO-CALLED “GREEN JOBS”: More than a half a billion dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted on companies like Solyndra and Fister Automotive, which have filed for bankruptcy. Government should not be in the business of trying to pick winners and losers, and this administration has only picked losers. So-called “green jobs” will not save this economy.

FANNIE and FREDDIE: These giant mortgage holding companies were the catalyst for the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009. They are still at the heart of the housing crisis and are still being heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. The administration has just allowed business as usual to continue at these entities at our expense, and received no new oversight in the big-banks-biased Dodd-Frank financial deform legislation. Speaking of which . . .

DODD-FRANK: This bill was supposed to help prevent another financial meltdown, which we are very close to again because this legislation did not solve the problem. This bill has also had the consequence of forcing a lot of perfectly healthy smaller community banks out of business due to increased regulatory requirements.

There are many theories about why Russia and China last week vetoed a United Nations resolution endorsing an Arab League plan to transfer power from Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Some say Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to go against a fellow strongman because a lot of them have been losing power lately, and he doesn’t want to be next.

China has tended to follow Russia’s lead on this issue – also joining in a two-party veto in September of a U.N. resolution condemning Assad’s autocratic behavior and the violence it is engendering.

They won’t even condemn the violence?

But there is one thing that should be abundantly clear from this action and many others that have occurred in recent years: Russia and China are not friends of the United States. Recognizing clear facts like this is what I mean when I talk, as I did during my presidential campaign, about peace through strength with clarity.

There are reasons that Russia and China pursue interests that diverge from our own – not that we justify these reasons, but we certainly must understand them and account for them as we develop strategies to counter the challenges these nations pose.

Russia and China have different cultures, different political traditions and different geo-political realities of their own to face. Russia and China may also have a different definition of peace than we do, and they certainly want our strength. That’s clear. A foreign policy that would ignore all of this would be a mistake.

But a wise foreign policy recognizes simple facts, which start with the fact that certain countries are rivals of the United States. We don’t attempt to deny the obvious when it comes to hostile regimes like those in Iran and North Korea. Indeed, the leaders of these nations do a fine job all their own of expressing their hostility toward us.

But for various reasons – many of them foolishly of our own making – we are reluctant to be clear about the nature of regimes like China and Russia.

We owe China a lot of money, of course, because we have refused for generations to be fiscally responsible in federal budgeting. It is also a major trading partner, and while there is no hard-and-fast rule that you can’t be a trading partner with a hostile nation, the compromised nature of our economic relationship with China makes it harder for us to see or speak clearly about the fact that its interests are not the same as ours.

In the case of Russia, the U.S. was justifiably excited after the fall of communism about the opportunity to develop a different kind of relationship with a free Russia – on everything from economic and trade relations to issues concerning nuclear proliferation. But as the one-promising Yeltsin government became mired in corruption, and it gave way to the increasingly autocratic leadership of Putin, the U.S. became unwilling to face facts. One of the worst examples was the Obama administration’s decision to welch on the U.S. commitment to install missile defense systems in Eastern Europe – all because the Russians didn’t like it.

A nation with clarity in foreign policy matters would have understood that its first responsibility is to its own security and that of its allies.

As President Obama continues his class warfare rhetoric, insisting that the rich should pay more in taxes, he continues to show that he has a different definition of fairness than most of us. In addition to his so-called “Buffet Rule” and saying that it is not fair that Buffet’s secretary pays more in taxes than her billionaire boss, Warren Buffet, he recently invoked the words of Jesus to try to intimidate or shame people out of opposing his desire to raise taxes on the rich.

By the way, who defines rich? Is there a Department of Definitions that has been secretly established in Washington, D. C. that we don’t know about? Maybe it is next door to the Department of Happy, since President Obama, his administration and the Democrats believe they can make people happy by continuing to tax, spend and give away other people’s money.

The lame example of Buffet’s secretary is comparing apples and oranges. Warren Buffet’s accountants have mastered the complex and unfair tax code to shelter as much of Buffet’s income from taxation as is legally possible. By contrast, Buffet’s secretary pays income and payroll taxes on her $100,000-a-year salary.

As a result, President Obama shows once again he is not interested in fixing the real problem, which is the tax code. He wants to add the words of Jesus Christ to his inventory of class warfare rhetoric. But making people envious of other people’s money or property was not a teaching of Jesus.

By the way, Obama completely misunderstands the passage he was quoting, which was Luke 12:48. In fact, the passage was part of a parable Jesus told about money managers who had been entrusted with different levels of their master’s wealth – and those who did well with the man’s wealth were rewarded, while those who did not were beaten.

The meaning of the parable was that when God gives people gifts, He expects them to be fruitful with them – not that people who “have been given” wealth (as if wealthy people just had their money given to them) are supposed to turn it over to the government. The real meaning of the passage could not be more different from what Obama wants it to mean.

So instead of rhetoric and bad Bible teaching, let’s look at some hard income tax facts from the latest available Internal Revenue Service data. For 2008, the top 10 percent of taxpayers paid 70 percent of all income taxes. The top 50 percent of taxpayers paid 97 percent of all income taxes, which means the bottom 50 percent paid 3 percent of all income taxes.

That’s not fair enough for Obama!

Some of us know that this is not about fairness at all. It’s about total redistribution of income to punish those who work hard and take risks, and to make those who do not more dependent on Big Brother government.

The class warfare rhetoric is also not about helping the needy. Churches and community-based organizations do a much better job of helping the needy than any government program. And where do those community organizations get most of their funding from? They get it from those greedy evil “rich” people, plus a lot of people who are not rich but have big giving hearts.

In a sea of negativity and distractions in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, I decided to throw my support behind former Speaker Newt Gingrich because I can now see much clearer distinctions between President Obama and Newt than I do between Governor Mitt Romney and the president.

These distinctions are between Obama’s hodgepodge of foggy small ideas, which he talked about in his State of the Union address, and Speaker Gingrich’s clear and bold solutions for solving the crises we face as a nation. And yes, my bold 9-9-9 tax reform plan is a serious consideration for Speaker Gingrich, which is why I accepted his invitation to co-chair his Economic Growth and Tax Reform Advisory Council.

The polls do not agree with my assessment of Speaker Gingrich, and it appears that the so-called political establishment does not agree. But remember, I’m Mr. Unconventional, and the ability of the Republican nominee to highlight distinctions clearly in the general election campaign will be critical to achieving the ultimate mission of defeating President Obama.

My decision was not based on the political pundits’ attempted labeling of the candidates as conservative, most conservative, moderate, liberal Republican, not a true conservative, not a real conservative or any other of the concocted labels by which they try to pigeonhole candidates.

My decision to support Speaker Gingrich was also not influenced by all of the attacks and dirt dug up from Newt’s personal and political past, which all of the campaigns are guilty of doing – including Newt’s. As a reminder, Newt specifically tried to stay out of the negative attack mode but was forced into it after being bombarded with attacks in Iowa, and some early attacks in South Carolina, where he not only survived but won the primary.

The bombardment of attacks on Newt is being launched again in Florida. I believe he will survive as the clarity of his solutions rises above the rhetoric.

And now, some of the former Members of Congress who served with Newt when he was Speaker of the House are trashing Newt, even though many former members thought highly of his leadership as Speaker. Their trash and attempts to say Newt was not a “Reagan conservative” (here we go again with the labels) are certainly adding credence to the emerging perception that the so-called Republican establishment is pushing hard for Mitt Romney to be the nominee.

That’s because the establishment does not want bold changes in Washington, D.C.

The bottom line is that the voters will decide. That’s why the voters got my first endorsement as announced previously, because the people have to remain inspired or the establishment wins. Most of us just want the people to win, and win with a people’s president in November.

Here are nine of Speaker Gingrich’s positives:

· He successfully led the passage of nine out of ten provisions in the Contract with America when he was Speaker of the House.

· He was a key player in passing welfare reform in the 1990s, and got President Bill Clinton to sign the legislation.

· He left Congress and spent years studying and developing bold ideas and solutions to our problems, many of which he is using as a candidate.

I have been hounded in media interviews to give them the scoop on which Republican presidential candidate I ‘m going to endorse. When I respond that it will be “unconventional,” they go nuts because they cannot conceive of what that means. That’s not the way they think.

So they try to guess what it means based on conventional political practice. You will be endorsing yourself getting back into the presidential race, they guess. Nope. You will be endorsing someone that’s not in the race, they suggest. Nope. You will be endorsing two of the remaining candidates instead of one. No again.

I was an unconventional Republican presidential primary candidate who ran an unconventional political campaign, and achieved unexpected results before I ended my quest for the position of president. Most of the people interviewing me did not get it. Namely, it wasn’t about the position as much as it is about the mission. I am still on a mission to help defeat President Obama, and to make the “9-9-9 Economic Growth and Jobs Plan” the law of the land.

An unconventional endorsement is part of a bigger message. It can also be two-dimensional, a specific candidate and a specific cause. We already know the specific cause. I’m still looking for the right candidate to “adopt” the 9-9-9 plan. If that does not happen, the cause will still be part of a bigger endorsement message, which is to make sure we defeat President Obama in 2012, and that we transfer power out of Washington and back to the people.

Besides, I’m not convinced that one-dimensional endorsements make that big a difference in the outcome of how people vote. They probably do to some extent, but in today’s political climate most of them are not game-changers.

I want to change how voters think about candidates, not in terms of their media-focused flyspecked negatives, but to think of them in terms of their positives and their relevant experiences. I also want to change how voters think about solutions to our national crises.

Namely, stop accepting the usual political rhetoric of “what’s wrong,” because most of us already know what’s wrong. We also know that there is more than enough blame to go around for how we got so screwed up as a country. I want voters to focus on howcandidates are going to fix stuff

I want people to focus on real solutions and real leadership.

I know that’s unconventional political and media thinking, but the conventional thinking, the conventional approach, the conventional compromises, the conventional promises, the conventional rhetoric and the conventional endorsements are not going to save this great country.

We need a Cain’s Solutions Revolution.

We can’t just think outside the box, as the saying goes. We must redesign the box and fill the box with what the people want, not what the political class and the media class want.

We want our power back.

That’s unconventional.

When former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO and Florida Senate candidate Craig Miller (R) announced that he and Herman Cain would be making a joint “major announcement,” Florida politicos immediately speculated that Cain would be endorsing Miller’s Senate bid.

As it turns out, it’s just the opposite.

When the two men appear together in Orlando, Fla., on Thursday, Miller will pledge his support for Cain’s now-legendary 9-9-9 tax plan, a Cain aide told The Hill.

“He is the first U.S. office-seeking candidate to sign on to commit to Mr. Cain’s 9-9-9 plan,” the aide said.

The move is part of a push by Cain — in the wake of his presidential campaign, which ended amid a flurry of allegations of sexual harassment — to keep alive his trademark plan for 9 percent corporate, sales and income tax rates.

At first, it might seem dubious why any other political aspirant would want to attach their name to Cain’s. But in Miller’s case, he needs all the attention he can get.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Miller capturing 1 percent in the Republican primary. At 39 percent, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) is the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination, and the only candidate to top 6 percent.

But appreciative as he might be for Miller’s support for his tax plan, Cain has no current plans to return the favor by endorsing the Florida businessman.

“Mr. Cain is like a father, and now he wants to adopt children, so to speak. He’s saying that kind of tongue-and-cheek, and some people may interpret that” as an endorsement, the aide said. “At this point, that’s not in the stars.”

What could be in the stars — according to Cain’s team — are more federal candidates getting behind 9-9-9.

“I’ll tip my hand on this one: Pete Hoekstra in Michigan is in the works to do the same,” the aide said.

Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman, is the front-runner in the race to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

A spokeswoman for Hoekstra did not respond to a message left Wednesday evening seeking comment.

By Daniel Malloy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CONCORD, N.H. — Herman Cain will not endorse a candidate in the Republican presidential primary, saying that such a move might imperil his larger goal: promoting his 9-9-9 tax plan.

In a phone interview Wednesday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the morning after the New Hampshire primary, Cain said it was “bittersweet” to be no longer competing for the presidency. The campaign of the McDonough businessman was derailed in part by allegations of sexual misconduct that Cain maintains were false, yet still fatal to his bid.

He intends to mount a nationwide bus tour to promote his “Cain Solutions,” most prominently his plan for a flat 9 percent tax on personal income, corporations and sales that became his campaign trail mantra. There is no itinerary yet for the tour, but Cain said he has been flooded with speaking requests.

Cain will speak Jan. 19 at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston, S.C., two days before the South Carolina primary. He said he will use that speech to make an “unconventional endorsement” in the presidential race, which means that he will not be blessing a single candidate.

“My mission is to help defeat Barack Obama,” he said. “I want my supporters to stay excited and enthused. And if I pick one person, some of them may not like that one person, and that would fragment my supporters.”

Cain said he does not plan to seek the presidency or any other political office in the future.

“I never say never,” he said, “but based on what I know today, I probably will not run again, because my biological clock is ticking.”

Cain, 66, said he figures he has nine — yes, nine — good years left, and he does not want to spend them campaigning for office. In addition to the bus tour, Cain will offer commentary on radio and television. He will be a regular guest on Neal Boortz’s radio show on Mondays and Fridays. Cain said he also will appear regularly on Sean Hannity’s national radio and television shows — though the details have not been finalized. Cain also will remain a contributor on Fox News.

Once his new venture is fully staffed, Cain said he will have about 25 to 30 people working to promote his ideas. His chief adviser remains Mark Block, his presidential campaign’s chief of staff. For tax purposes, there are four separate entities Cain operates: a Super PAC, a 501(c)3 charitable organization, a 501(c)4 social welfare organization and an S corporation, the New Voice Inc.

Their immediate goal is to push 9-9-9. Cain said his staff is working on drafting a bill to implement the tax plan — which he insists will incite explosive growth but was questioned by many economists during the campaign and has not been adopted by any of the other candidates. The next step, Cain said, is to put pressure on members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill and build a grass-roots support “so compelling that it will be almost impossible for a Republican Congress to be able to stop it.”

When asked why anyone would pay attention to his ideas anymore as he is no longer running, Cain replied, “If you go to my website, cainconnections.com, we have almost 400,000 people that have already signed up.

I am not making this up.

Our fourth grandchild arrived today! Mother, baby boy and dad are all doing fine.

This blessed arrival is another reminder that no matter how bad we may see things at times, the miracle of life is still God’s most precious gift to us, along with His Son Jesus Christ.

The birth of a new baby is also a reminder of why we do what we do. Some of us run for elective office, while some of us help those that make such a commitment. Some of us build businesses, and some of us work hard just to be good parents and grandparents.

The new year and new babies should remind us all of our collective responsibility to leave this nation in great shape so they can have great futures. Right now we are not doing such a good job with the lack of leadership in the White House and a dysfunctional Congress.

So even though I am no longer seeking the position of president of the United States, I continue to pursue the mission of returning power from Washington back to the people. It starts with replacing our dysfunctional and politically manipulated tax code. You guessed it: Let’s replace it with my 9-9-9 plan.

I continue to receive comments expressing disappointment that I had to end my candidacy, and people’s disgust with the negative and dirty side of politics. But then people also say to keep 9-9-9 alive so we can get it passed.

That’s why this week I will be announcing a national initiative to turn my 9-9-9 economic growth and jobs plan into a national movement by the people. We may not be able to dramatically change a broken Washington from the inside, so let’s change it from the outside.

The Tea Party Citizens movement has demonstrated that we can make this happen, and this new year and all the new babies have inspired me to take on this challenge. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.

The politicians and bureaucrats in Washington forget that they work for us. We will remind them.

A new year, a new grand baby and a renewed energy for 2012.

We will win a victory for the people.