THAT'S RICH! TOMMY THOMPSON OFFENDS JEWS, OTHERS WITH MONEY REMARKS; MADE MILLIONS IN OFFICE

THAT’S RICH!

TOMMY THOMPSON MAKES MONEY FOR “FIRST TIME IN LIFE,” HE SAYS, OFFENDING JEWS, OTHERS WITH HIS INACCURATE CLAIMS

Milwaukeeworld asserts Thompson made millions while in government service.

© 2007

By Michael Horne

Tommy Thompson apologized for offensive remarks he made yesterday, Monday April 16^th, 2007, at a conference held by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, (RAC) the Washington, D.C. office of the Union for Reform Judaism, which consists of 900 congregations representing 1.5 million Reform Jews and 1,800 Reform rabbis.

Mistaking the RACs biennial Consultation on Conscience with a Don Rickles Celebrity Roast, Thompson told the attendees, “I’m in the private sector and for the first time in my life I’m making money. … You know that’s sort of part of the Jewish tradition.”

Jews and others considered the remarks to be inappropriate, and Thompson issued an apology through his spokesperson Tony Jewell who has great experience covering for the former Wisconsin governor’s occasional gaffes.

Jewell, however, did not apologize for Thompson’s most grievous factual error in his statement, to wit: “For the first time in my life I’m making money.” That offends me.

“Money” is a relative term, and Republicans like Thompson certainly look at it differently than normal people.

For instance, Thompson made $115,000 yearly as Wisconsin governor, and later $175,000 as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. While secretary, he collected an additional $72,000 annual pension from the State of Wisconsin as reward for his decades on the public payroll here. That’s not money?

He declared a net worth of between $1.5 million and $3.7 million as secretary, some of it in the form of Wisconsin real estate.

If this is “not money” to you, then also consider that Thompson was a very active real estate investor during the period of his secretaryship, and possibly since. According to a September 2004 article by Al Kamen in the Washington Post, Secretary Thompson “appears to have been making some pin money flipping properties in Alexandria [Virginia].”

He started with a $253,000 property in August, 2002, selling it four months later for $295,000, netting $42,000. He made another $42,500 profit within a year selling another condo for $394,000. Once again Thompson realized a $42,500 profit in just two months, selling another condo for $397,500 in the white hot suburban Washington, D.C. real estate market. He only made $16,000 on a $442,000 property he bought on November 17^th, 2003.

He then bought a property at 5057 Donovan Drive in Alexandria on January 8^th, 2004 for $430,000, and Kamen’s story leaves him there.

However, Milwaukeeworld did a little digging, and discovered that Mr. No-Money sold the property on May 5^th, 2005 for $625,000, netting $195,000, or nearly a year’s salary in profit, if you include the pension.

This is all before taking the “real money” jobs at law firms and tech companies and such, including Deloitte and Touche, Logistics Health and Akins Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, a Washington D.C. law firm.

Of course if these companies are actually paying the Boy from Elroy while he is gallivanting around Iowa impressing the Cornhuskers with his cosmopolitan ways, then Tommy Thompson is truly living the Republican Dream.

[Note: Thompson lived in all of the units, and therefore did not have to report the information on his finance statement, there being an exclusion for principal residences. – Ed.]