Critics Accuse Herman Cain of Stealing the 9-9-9 Plan From a Video Game

Critics have accused Herman Cain of lifting his much-touted “9-9-9″ plan from the Electronic Art’s video game SimCity.

We are not making this up.

“You said you had original ideas, successful people around you thinking ideas up,” the Huffington Post quotes a reporter saying to Cain. “Is it an original idea or modeled after a game?”

“It’s an original idea, and to people who say it’s modeled after a game — it’s a lie,” Cain replied. “That‘s all I’m going to say. It is a lie. You see, that’s the difference when you become one or two in the polls. People make up stuff. That is a lie. I’m not going to take it back and not going to politically say, but unfortunately, that is not totally true. It’s a lie.”

Nevertheless, the makers of the video game have decided to weigh in on the issue and have released a video that claims that Cain did indeed plagiarize his proposed tax plan:

Newser reports:

While Cain swears he didn’t take the idea from the video game, Electronic Arts is temporarily dropping the price of SimCity games online to $9.99 to highlight the link.

. . .

EA claims they’re just “having fun with this possible connection and have created this video in good natured fun.”

Interviewed last week by Rachel Maddow, Cain defended “9-9-9″ as an original plan, and called the purported SimCity connection “a lie”—four times.

Watch the segment on the Rachel Maddow show where Cain denies the connection (content warning: excessive smugness):

If it is true that politicians are lifting their ideas from video games, then it finally explains where the Obama administration got its inspiration for the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

“Take a painkiller!“