First, maybe we should consider the 9-9-9 plan itself. Cain has explained that he was not the author of the plan alone, but that he had consulted with some of the top economists in the country. But when pressed by Chris Wallace on Fox News, he refused to provide any names, citing the need to "protect their confidentiality".

When Cain was unable to fill in any detail on his plan, Wallace stated that his staff at Fox News had analyzed the plan and that "It looks to us like under your plan, corporations and the wealthy will pay considerably less than they currently do, and lower-income people particularly, the 45 percent, roughly, of Americans who don’t pay income tax now will end up paying a lot more.”

Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform (ATR) has also been somewhat critical of the plan. Ryan Ellis, ATR’s tax policy director, said Cain’s plan to tax more on the consumption side was a positive step. But Ellis also worried that, if a new national sales tax was implemented, Democrats would try to use it to expand the scope of the federal government.

Analysts from Bloomberg Financial News said that, based on 2010 information, 9-9-9 would have brought in close to $2 trillion, compared to the government’s actual collections of $2.2 trillion under the current taxation laws, actually increasing the deficit rather than reducing it.

So many have some serious questions about Cain's plan. Democrats, Socialists, un-named critics? No. There are some of those, for sure. But certainly Fox News, Grover Norquist and Bloomberg Financial can't be counted in that category of critics, even by the most right-leaning supporters of Cain.

As far as the "unnamed critics" who you wanted identified, doesn't the public have the right to know who Cain consulted with to come up with his plan? To have them speak to the economics of how the plan will work? To specify what the underlying assumptions are? So far, the 9-9-9 plan is nothing more than 32 bullet points on Cain's website, most of which are glittering generalities like,

• "Current circumstances call for bolder action",

• "Amidst a backdrop of the economic boom created by the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan, I will begin the process of educating the American people...",

• "Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy" and,

• "It would make it possible to end the IRS as we know it."

C'mon, if the public supports someone running for POTUS who presents no more detail than this as the foundation for his fiscal policy, we're going to deserve what we get.

Like I said, some of the candidates must think we're not listening. Maybe some of us aren't