by Steve Lough, the Single Payer Healthcare guy! — candidate for SC 5th CD — Aim High, Vote Lough!
in the June 12, 2018 S.C. Democratic Primary
Photo Backstory
It’s 1988, I’m on tour with Ringling Bros. B&B Circus and we’re playing New Haven, CT. We (me, Greg and Chris) go out for lunch and on the way back to the building to get ready for the show, we came across this guy in yellow and pink in the park next to the building. He would approach people and tell them he was a real Ringling Bros. Clown. “Take a picture with a real Ringling Bros. Clown! $3 a picture!” and he carried a Polaroid camera. Well sir! Being circus fans ourselves, we were amazed at our good luck!
I paid the $3 and he asked some lady passing by (free labor for his profit!) to take the picture. We asked him what life was like on the road and he gave us kind of a non-detailed answer...”lots of fun”...”really interesting”...and crap like that. No details of what he actually did as a clown with the Greatest Show On Earth! No stories to tell. That’s what always trips up a fraud. (Sidebar: being this was New Haven, it is theoretically possible that this guy was a Yale student...he could be a lawyer today...he could have gone to work for Goldman Sachs... you never know...)
Kershaw Co. meeting 3/12
Regular monthly meeting. Phyllis Harris was the Chair. Normal business mostly, until at one point she called me out as a candidate in front of everybody and asked me to pledge to support Archie Parnell “when” he wins the primary. (in Japan this kind of behavior is so rude, it’s shocking) I said “Sure. But I would like to ask Archie to take the exact same pledge. It’s a two way street!” An older couple up front nodded their heads in agreement with me. The chair just blew it off. Then I said “And you know, there is another candidate for SC’s 5th District CD besides me. His name is Mark Ali, lives in Rock Hill, he is a formerly undocumented immigrant, now 100% US Citizen, from South America with a wife (she is African American) and 4 or 5 kids. His big thing is Single Payer Healthcare and raising the minimum wage, kind of like me.” The older couple looked happily surprised. I could see this made the Chair furious! Oh, she wasn’t having it! Hahaha! She said something about how he should support Archie or something like that...word salad. She then said something about how everything had to go through her and kind of indicated that she had an in with the Sheriff, so nobody should do any “unapproved” canvassing or whatever. (As a clown, this kind of anger is hilariously funny! Lots of clown gags are based on people’s anger, frustration, greed, etc. All through history, clowns have spoken truth to power...Shakespeare, anyone?)
Fairfield Co. meeting 3/13
The meeting was in Winnsboro, SC. On the way up there, we passed by the S.C. Railroad Museum on the left side of the road. I did a double take as we passed...there, in all their glory, were 3 Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey train cars! I guess they bought them when the show closed. I almost drove off the road! (this whole campaign has been like that...always some kind of sign, some connection to the circus, wherever we go, it’s kind of strange...)
We got to the meeting and started talking with a gentleman there, forgot to get his name...big in theater in Winnsboro...and he told us about going to see Ringling Bros. in the old Madison Square Garden as a kid! Felt right at home!
The Chair is Eugene Holmes and he ran the meeting. He was at the Newberry convention and introduced me as having been in the “service”...I said “Sorry, I must have spoken too fast. I was in the Circus, not the service.” That got a big laugh, so I was happy.
I gave my speech, they took care of business, convention details, promoting the convention, resolutions for the SC State Dem Convention, etc. People are boiling angry about the VC Summer Nuclear plant fiasco! How the execs walked away with bonuses, etc. and they are stuck paying for them with higher electricity bills! (I bet it’s tough to find a pitchfork for sale in Fairfield County! Sold out!) Stopped by to take a photo with the Ringling train cars on the way home. They are from the Red Unit, #32, #60, and one other passenger car. We used to live in a car like #32 on the Red Show...hmmm…
Spartanburg County Convention 3/15 — dirty tricks
We reserved a display table. Shelly Roehrs was the Chair. (she stepped down at the convention, she was incredibly fair and sincere) Put out our wares, clown costume & shoes, juggling balls, Ringling Circus programs, a life-sized poster of Michu (remember the TV show Alf? Michu was the actor in the Alf suit!) and lots of books that inspired me to run for office...(I’m going to do a long reading list one of these diaries and ask for suggestions). Handed out business cards. Talked to people.
They played some music and Shelly wanted people to dance and get pumped up, so I went down front and juggled five balls. I guess they were pretty surprised! Hahaha! Got a good reaction!
Did my speech...the mention of Bernie Sanders (when I explained healthcare) got a large vocal reaction! That was cool! A couple women came up to us after and said they liked the way I talked about teachers and kids, healthcare and guns, how Sandy Hook took away some of the happiness of my life. I promised I was going to do whatever I could to get some real change on both issues. Dirty Tricks
Talked to Mark Ali, in a low, respectful whisper, when other stuff was going on. He told me the Parnell campaign supporters tried to convince him that the filing fee was $10,000! The actual fee is $3500, so $10,000 is an egregious lie to try to get the nice, non-millionaire, immigrant guy, with a wife and kids, to drop out of the race! He also said he has experienced bullying and intimidation from the Parnell campaign in other ways. Not surprisingly, Ms. Harris, the Kershaw County Chair, also basically told him that he would get NO support of any kind from her. Is that even legal? I don’t know, but I know it’s not right and it’s not ethical. His experience dovetails with what I have experienced from the Parnell campaign as well. They say a fish rots from the head…
After it was over, and we were packing up the coolest table at the event (Hahaha!), one of the campaign staff from a 4th District CD candidate came over and told me he had lots of friends from Circus Smirkus in Vermont! I told him I did too! I had my Bernie action figure out. They laughed out loud at that! Another connection to Bernie! Hahaha! Then I noticed Trav Robertson had his hat on…a nice short brim pork pie kind of hat...and since we were having so much fun with the juggling and circus tales, I showed him how to do a couple of self-working hat tricks, and balanced his hat on my nose, then popped it down onto my head. He was laughing and smiling. (He didn’t like me at first, so I was happy to break the ice. Ms. Harris from Kershaw County will eventually come around too, when she understands the younger generation wants a fundamental change and not just window dressing on the issues. But real change is scary, so I understand her fear.)
Goldman Sachs
When I get mad, I read. After Spartanburg, I began a deep dive into Archie and Goldman Sachs (the 20 years on his resume’ that he refuses to acknowledge, which always puzzled me). Found out why he hopes nobody Googles the subject...Goldman Sachs...Rolling Stone...Remember the 2008 Financial Crisis? Goldman Sachs not only pushed the bad, bundled mortgages on unsuspecting investors, they knew those mortgages would fail, so they made $20 billion betting against those bundled “securities” by shorting them. The definition of insider trading and fraud! Like Bernie Sanders explains about Wall Street in general. Remember $4 per gallon gas? Goldman Sachs was responsible for that by changing the rules so you could speculate on oil futures without being prepared to take delivery of said oil! Complete fraud and market manipulation!
Hong Kong Hooey!
In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid exactly $14 million in taxes to the the U.S. Treasury, effectively 1%. (the 1% pays 1% in taxes while a different 1% goes and fights in foreign wars) How did they manage that? Well, Archie Parnell was one of the “tax experts” on that one! “Archie the Architect” of Tax Dodging. (nice ring to it, huh?) It’s all documented...the actual statement paper itself is on Fitsnews...the rest of the scams are explained in the Rolling Stone article from 2009 or so on Goldman Sachs. Archie, and his pals at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, lobbied the Hong Kong govt. to change the rules so that foreign corporations could claim Hong Kong as their home to shelter profits from their United States operations from paying taxes in the United States. I mean Archie Parnell, in the flesh, is one of the guys who was involved in that. He helped facilitate those corporate trillions in offshore accounts you hear about on the news. Money that we need for the VA...education...Medicare...Medicaid...nutrition for poor children...
And get this...apparently Goldman Sachs is trying to put up people all over the US to run for Congress and Senate in an organized effort...I’m just a clown, but it looks like, to me, from what I have read, that Archie and his friends from Goldman are going after either Social Security or some other huge pot of money they think they can essentially steal from taxpayers...lots of people commented how strange it was that Archie just appeared out of nowhere in SC, after 30 years abroad, in February 2017, and hit the ground running with an organized team from day one. The phony baloney story is that he went to the Women’s March and was inspired...I don’t buy it. Some folks on Fitsnews say Archie went to the Republicans first, to run as a Republican...that seems more likely...Mick Mulvaney was a big Goldman Sachs guy...maybe the plan was to sneak into Congress with the Special Election in 2017 for Mulvaney’s seat, before anyone could Google him...Ralph Norman is not very popular so Goldman Sachs thought they could replace the old Goldman guy with a new Goldman guy and sell it as “CHANGE!” in the Anti-Trump heyday…and of course, Goldman Sachs is Archie’s #1 largest campaign donor! What are they buying?
Full disclosure, I have a relative who works for Goldman Sachs out west. I love them. If they want to get rich, that’s fine, go for it. However, at the same time, I would NEVER vote for them if they ran for Congress, let alone as a Progressive Democrat. No way. No how. I’d vote for the other guy or gal.
There may be some reasonable explanation of the whole thing...but there are far more questions than answers at this point about Archie’s resume’ and the voters deserve much better than what they are getting now…
Which brings me back to the photo at the top of the diary...Can you spot the imposter yet?
I’m Steve Lough, the Single Payer Healthcare guy! Running for SC’s 5th CD.
Aim High! Vote Lough!
The SC Democratic Primary is June 12, 2018!