Thursday, July 07, 2011

Does Herman Cain Have A $40 Million Problem? One That Could, As They Say, Come Out?

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The devastating Herman Cain video (above), posted by the Ron Paul camp should have put a quick end to whatever there is of Cain's campaign for the Republican Party presidential or vice presidential nomination (although I suspect he'd be equally happy with a secondary ambassadorship)... but it didn't. Inside the GOP these days, support from the Koch brothers for one of their lackeys trumps good judgment-- or even common sense.

Herman Cain wasn't just the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and he wasn't just the Godfather's Pizza guy either. A confidential DWT informant wrote the following guest post for us:
Two black Republicans walk into a restaurant... in Omaha... in 1986... could be either of their joints. They both are in the restaurant biz. One of them sang for two presidents. The other wants to be president. Well, maybe they've never been in each other's restaurants and even though they both would gain notoriety for their banking skills, maybe they have never traded one thin dime. But Omaha is a great big small town...

In Herman Cain lore, the man singlehandedly saved Burger King (and it still takes two hands for Chuck Norris to handle a Whopper!), and so impressed were the powers that be at Pilsbury that they made Cain head doughboy in charge of the faltering Godfather's pPizza chain. Cain was able (sorry) to turn Godfather's around in 14 months! So wildly profitable, goes the yarn, that Pilsbury sold the chain. (Scoobie say, "hhhrrrrrunnnnhhh???") You don't often see the name of the buyers in this tale of food and glory, but it was a group of manager-investors lead by one... Herman Cain.

Godfather's was a mess, but not on the brink of bankruptcy. Still, the mission statement on their website declares that they aim "To profitably provide consistently good food and great service." Now, I personally wouldn't target "profitability" as Job 1 on my customer-accessible website along with toppings and coupons, but I digress. Anyway, the truth is that Godfather's was only on the brink of not being worth Pilsbury's time, and it stayed that way for two years under Cain. Then they sold it to him and his investor friends for a rather curious sum (more on that later).

Who were these investors who had money for the slice? This was 1988, and restaurants were and remain dodgy investments, especially when a huge food conglomerate is giving them a vote of no confidence. When adjusted for inflation, Cain's long reign over Godfather's saw a 46% drop in profits and Godfather's went from the 5th to the 11th ranked pizza chain in the United States (which explains that mission statement, all campaign rhetoric aside).

Omaha is tornado country, so when I say it's a great big small town, I'm talking acreage versus gossipy connectivity. It's flat and spread out with few tall buildings, but everyone is a whisper away from everyone else's business. It's not so big as to be home to two up-and-coming black Republicans with strong ties with the bigwigs in the Republican Party who could never cross paths. Restaurant people of all colors make it a point to know each other. To know what secrets wandering waiters and chefs may have taken with them as they move from job to job, etc... Wealthy Republicans are an even tighter clique. Wealthy black Republican restaurateurs in Omaha Nebraska in the late '80s were more likely to have been twins than not to have social if not business ties.

Lawrence E. King was a fixture in the Omaha black community. He had seen his opportunity gathering up black folks' money in a credit union known as the Franklin Credit Union, which he'd taken over in 1970. By 1976 there where whispers about this 300-pound socialite living large. There were minor stabs at investigating him, but the police did not want to be seen as the big bad white guys picking on the little ol' great big black man.

Tales of King entertaining guests with cocaine, hookers and hustlers were pervasive, but Omaha has some strange code of silence. It had been for many years a sort of mob neutral zone. "Tony might whack Vinnie in Chicago," but in Omaha their kids and wives would peacefully shop, play and picnic together. Drawing attention is not acceptable. Bush flew to Omaha on 9/11 in a very standard emergency protocol, and not one in ten Americans ever knew. Lily Tomlin and her partner Jane Wagner were a known couple around "The Big O" long before Lily came out. Omaha had lots of stories and still does, but none of them are news.

King-- who had been recruited by the RNC to get out the black Republican vote-- in his rise through the Republican ranks, was able to be the sum of their black best friends, as it were. He sang the national anthem at the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. In 1986, the Franklin Federal Credit Union moved into brand-new digs that also served as headquarters for King's burgeoning catering and food-service empire. King began making donations to the Omaha Press Club, the Republican Party and even gay rights organizations (especially those funding area youth programs). Upon being told he had no style by a ten-year-old boy, he went shopping and became a clothes junkie, big-time-- thus earning the nickname "Reverend Alice." People really began talking. Franklin Federal Credit Union seemed to be all right until an audit of King's taxes revealed what appeared to be some missing funds. A phony "certificates of deposit" scheme. Initially it was thought that $400,000 had disappeared. Then $4 million. Ultimately $40 million was determined to have vanished.

The FBI raid of the credit union sparked rumors that drugs and child pornography were discovered in the lower levels of the facility. It had been whispered that King had used the basement of the credit union as a "waiter academy" to train young men (twinks and blinks) in the fine art of waiting tables for what was hopefully to become his restaurant empire. In an Omaha World Herald interview, he spoke about how he wanted his places to be real elegant; the waiters would wear white dinner jackets. But King's deeper desires were rumored to be something quite different.

There was a lot of recruiting going on for guys to come be part of King's catering business. Many teens and young men talked of being expected to "put out," and rumors of pornographic video shoots circulated in the gay and black communities. After the raid there was an investigation into what had become of the missing funds. Eventually a private investigator was hired by the state legislature to look into stories of an international child prostitution ring. He interviewed dozens of waiters and folks around Omaha who had been curious about King's lavish gifts and extravagant ways. But things seemed tempered by the fact that King hung out with presidents, and area journalists. And owned a bank, and a sushi bar and...

The investigator is said to have flown to Chicago to meet with a person who had damning photographic evidence as to what was going on in the bowels of Franklin. That investigator never made it back to Omaha. His plane mysteriously blew up on the return flight. Primary witnesses suddenly changed their stories, and those who did not were convicted of perjury. One rent boy who testified that he was farmed out to several closeted power brokers in and around Omaha died mysteriously in New Mexico.

King was convicted of bank fraud and served nearly 10 out of the 15 years to which he was sentenced, but the grand jury concluded that all of the salacious allegations were merely "a big hoax" (wtf!). These allegations included supplying children for satanic blood rituals in Spain and supplying teens to a sex party in Washington, D.C., where some of those teens claimed they saw George W. Bush in attendance.

The story is larger and dirtier than what is within the scope of a DWT guest blog, and in fact was the subject of a Discovery Channel investigative report. Alas, that program was "purchased" a week before it was to air by some anonymous party...

Everybody in Omaha knew about this story, and everybody knew somebody connected to it. I almost opened an account in Franklin, until a friend who worked there told me not to put my money in "the booty bank."
So what happened to the $40 million that King ripped off from the Franklin Federal Credit Union? It's not very clear, but the year Franklin was raided, a small group of restaurant managers and a future black Republican presidential candidate bought a chain of mafia-themed pizza joints from Pilsbury for $40 million.


UPDATE: The Banned Video

What a cover-up this has been!



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16 Comments:

At 11:43 AM, Blogger Cirze said...

Dynamite!

And it's a "gunshot" analogy for all the stories we've only got a portion of in the past.

Thank whoever for real investigative reporters!

S

 
At 2:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that everyone in Omaha (and Lincoln, etc.) was touched by the Franklin mess; still affected by *cough* mysteries never dragged out of the crawlspace into cleansing sunlight.

 
At 3:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Last I heard no priests had been prosecuted for child abuse in Nebraska.

So either the RC hierarchy there was immune from the problems found elsewhere or the fix was in.

 
At 7:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

all ron paul supporters are sore losers because you support someone who cannot win. cant you figure it out by now nobody gives a shit about ron paul. yall try to attack other candidates because your candidate is so weak. fyou.

 
At 10:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well OK then. We will just have to see to it that this site and this piece gets some traction.

Omaha, we never knew.

Now watch this piece grow some legs!

 
At 8:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice work! When I look at Hermann Cain my skin crawls - literally. He fits right in to the superficial hypocrite that the Repubs have been famous for - not that they are any better or worse than the democrats. Teh Cain story of picking hiself up by the bootstrap is looking sillier by the moment. As silly as gingrich being a family values man.

The Franklin cover up is being resurrected by the Penn State homos. We'll see who starts dropping dead in that case. I like how Cain's wife said he would have to have a split personality to do that stuff. Yup - that's exactly how they do it.

 
At 10:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Omaha has many things that do not get in the media. One is Boys Town, and the role it played in the Franklin scandal. Also name the richest man in the world, and put a pin on a map where he lives. John Decamp wrote a book about all of this. You can find a documentary on Google video about the Franklin Credit Union and the child pedophile ring King was in charge of for the GOP and other world leaders. Google Johnny Gosh. Do your homework.

 
At 11:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow!

This stuff with ritual child abuse will not go away for the sick people related to it. No matter how much they try to cover it up. There was an un-aired Discovery Channel documentary called "the Conspiracy of Silence" which covers the sick goings on at Boystown and the Franklin Savings scandal. It was never aired because of threat of lawsuits, but can be found on the web. Why do we still let this sick stuff go on quietly?
Homosexuality and drugs are a personal choice, but child abuse is intolerable.

 
At 12:14 AM, Blogger Rexblade said...

To the douche who attacked Ron Paul because of this story... Sorry your candidate is a slime ball and that you can't accept he's a scam perpetuated by the establishment that told you he wasn't part of the establishment. Besides what are you complaining about? Didn't you get the memo? Your supposed to be supporting Newt this week....Here's a heads up on that though he's not really a conservative either. It's kind of scary that the neocon borg hive seems to completely lack a moral compass and supports whoever they are told even if they are against everything they are supposed to stand for.

 
At 1:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

$40 million.... for a restaurant chain presided over by Herman Cain... a restaurant chain that was valued somewhere in the neighborhood of $110 million a few years earlier when Pillsbury bought it along with Burger Kings.

Funny number, $40 million.

 
At 5:02 PM, Anonymous Wm B. said...

Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha was originally named as co-defendant in Paul Bonacci's abuse lawsuit against Larry King.

 
At 4:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So far, the only clean candidate who is and talks and votes like a GOP platform WHEN IT USED TO MEAN SOMETHING, is Ron Paul. If he didn't uphold the real traditions of the GOP party, there wouldn't be a GOP party, it would be called the "Whatever the International wall street bankers say" party. Ironically, those mothers control both parties, so where is a body suppose to go in times like these?

Not only are both parties owned, but so is our government. We need to "purge those bankers out of here" like some blog said, do it like Iceland did and recover. Throw the criminals in jail. Did you know that bankers went to jail in the past for laundering drug money? Did you know that was illegal to do??? Yup. One set of laws for us and one for them, different.

 
At 7:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ37lFha8Uo

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

 
At 7:58 PM, Anonymous Joe J said...

DeCamp's book is here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0963215809

 
At 1:29 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

For the most accurate and verifiable account of Franklin, see Nick Bryant's "The Franklin Scandal" published in 2009.

 
At 12:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

New info: Lawrence King is employed by Thomas Moorehead at sterling bmw in sterling va. Moorehead is from Omaha and graduated with a masters degree in 1977 in social work. He was once voted the wealthiest black man in American history. No one has been able to define exactly what kings job was. He would show up with his vehicle and put a full tank of gas. One day the employees got contacted and told about kings past. He had been working with children.

Today moorehead employs the son of former Oklahoma senator Don Nickles as his general manager. They cut their employees pay by over half. He essentially said that he could get a bunch of Mexicans in there who would do the work for less. The warranty girls filed paperwork for years to get money back for warranty and it was supposed to be divided between the people in parts. First thing he did was take it away.

And how the mooreheads talk about their charities...while stealing wages from their employees and employing a child defiler.

Then there was the ride the Muslims wanted to do in DC. Moorehead offered his Harley dealership for muslim bikers to rest their weary selves.

I could leave links...Thomas moorehead has his credentials list available with a quick search. A phone call to general manager Nickles should be proof enough on that score. Ask to speak to the warranty girl who filed all the paperwork and you'll understand.

 

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