In a not at all shocking development, Ted Cruz is a grifter who once again did something shady to benefit himself while showing no remorse, respect for the law, or any interest besides enriching his own pockets or getting in front of a TV camera.
I know that’s a hell of a long run-on sentence but I am just so mad that I could spit.
We have all seen this grift before. It’s an absolute cottage industry in the world of Boring Books Conservatives Didn’t Even Write by Themselves. They find a publisher to give them a big advance, and they put out a book. Next, their Super PAC, full of anonymous donations, buys about 50,000 – 100,000 copies of the book. This helps the sumbitch in several ways.
One: For conservatives to believe that their ideas are more mainstream than they actually are by getting the book on some bestseller lists. Fortunately, the New York Times now puts a dagger symbol to denote that the book is only a best seller because of bulk buys like this. Recently, Donny Jr and other conservatives have gotten many social media views with “PROOF THAT NYT IS A LIBERAL RAG THAT HATES CONSERVATIVES.”
Two: The money used to purchase 50,000 -100,000 copies of Fled Cruz’s books has now been laundered. Of course, the publisher has to withhold royalties from these book sales, or they have to at least publicly say that they do. But Ted Cruz is no idiot. A charlatan? Yes. Idiot? No.
Instead, his PAC, using donated funds, purchased “sponsorship advertising” from a company called Reagan Investments, LLC. Reagan Investments, LLC, then purchased his books with those same dollars, netting him his 15% royalties, and effectively laundering political donations into his pocket. How do I know for sure? Well, they wrote “BOOKS” under the “sponsorship advertising” part when transmitting the money. Here’s the full article: Now Ted Cruz may be buying his own books through a mystery company | Salon.com
Are you with me?
Cruz puts out book —-> Voters and Anonymous people give Cruz millions in a PAC ———-> Cruz gives the PAC money to Reagan Investments ———> Reagan Investments buys books, and since they aren’t a PAC the publisher doesn’t have to withhold royalties ——> Cruz personally pockets 15% off the top.
But yall, that isn’t even what this complaint is about. There’s more.
In a completely separate grift, this sumbitch spent campaign dollars on at least $18,000 in Facebook ads urging his supporters to go buy his book. There’s no ability to trace how much campaign money he spent on other ads because that’s not available to the public. So he takes $18,000 in campaign money, runs ads for people to buy his book, and each dupe that buys it nets another 15% back into his pocket which is a violation of FEC rules.
Of course, nothing will happen because he’ll use his campaign money to pay for a big fancy lawyer and his good ole’ boy buddies way up high will get him out of trouble because even though they hate him as much as we do, they all do the same thing and they like the system the way it is.
It’s hard to explain, of course. But do you know what happens when you piss off a broad with a nice tall glass of sweet tea, steel-toed boots and a love for graphic design? Infographics. You get infographics.