Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Tommy Thompson to Run for Senate? Nah, He Already Did His Time!

(AP) Tommy Thompson, ex Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush Administration, passed on running against Herb Kohl for a Senate seat. Tommy’s office said he was “enjoying his work in the private sector and decided against a return to public office at this time.”

Translated, this means Tommy has been raking it in since retiring from Health & Human Services in January 2005 and he has no intentions of leaving his personal gravy train. Just after quitting the Bush administration Tommy got numerous offers for work and he took many of them. In February 2005, ex. Sec. Thompson became President of Logistics Health Incorporated, a provider of medical readiness and homeland security solutions. LHI is owned by TA Associates, a Boston based investment house. When TA decides to cash in their investment, how much money will Tommy rake in?

Sec. Thompson also joined Deloitte & Touche’s consulting practice as Chairman of the company’s Center for Health Solutions and became a General Partner in the legal lobbying firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Life is too good to take that huge pay cut to be a Senator. The democratic capitalistic idea is to put in the time in “public service” and then to cash in personally. Tommy seems to be doing this quite well at the moment.

Making the jump with Tommy to Akin Gump was Ladd Wiley, the Governor’s longtime counsel in Wisconsin and later at HHS. Had Tommy made the run for the Wisconsin Senate seat how much would it have cost him? And what would Ladd have done, follow his longtime mentor or stay at Akin Gump? How much would it have cost Ladd?

P.S. The AP at the beginning of the post represents the author's initials

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