Former Gov. Tommy Thompson's back-tracking and self-serving contradictions on really important issues in pursuit of a US Senate seat - - earlier on Amtrak, and now health care and women's reproductive rights - - is nothing short of astonishing.
Does the man have any shame, or awareness of how weak and grasping his vanity-driven, run-to-the-right campaign is making him look?
There's no end to it:
This line appears on his campaign website, in blue bold-face type:
He's spent so much time on the trivialities (like hair dye) of appearances - - yet here's a case where the appearances make a difference and are damning, yet off he goes, oblivious.The Original Reformer
Way too much ego and opportunism and interest in personal advancement over policy and civic representation these days, though I note an exception in Republican State Senator Dale Schultz's stand-out, stand-alone political courage on the mining bill.
Take a look at this report about Tommy, in part:
Thompson’s campaign refused to take a stand on the highly controversial Blunt amendment this week, but a Facebook post on his official account last month expressed outrage over a rule requiring employers to offer contraception coverage in their health care plans.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examination of Thompson’s mandatory candidate personal financial disclosure report, notes that the former governor served for seven years on the board of directors of Evofem, Inc., a San Diego-based maker of women’s health products including “contraception and conception productions.”
He received at least $5,000 in compensation for his consulting services from the company. It also reveals that Thompson’s huge healthcare investments include somewhere between $15,001 and $50,000 in stock in Teva Pharmaceuticals and between $1,001 and $15,000 in Watson Pharmaceuticals — both makers of emergency contraceptives.
Well, I can tell you, it's been hard to "absorb" the behavior of politicians in recent months and years. But by god, it's been infinitely more painful to see and hear the behaviors of American men lately. Talk about an attack of the zombies. Un-dead ideas rise again and walk in the daylight unashamed, dragging all sorts of unexpected Nasties along with them.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't fun. It's not fun to see "it" from men on Right or left, nor from the women who support them. And I use that phrasing because it's become so very clear that while we decry the "barbarism" of the Taliban and other such entities, in America, it's still the men who are calling the shots.
I find Thompson's own words very telling. In a blurb about this EvoFem product (a company owned and controlled by men) he shows that he knows the score. He talks about how this product - originally designed to (sorry to speak bluntly to squeamish boys, but this is true) collect menstrual blood in lieu of pads or tampons- might also be used as a barrier to pregnancy. But the sad part is where he says it can be used by a woman without her sexual partner's knowledge OR CONSENT. Meaning Thompson knows that many women around the world live, work and have sex while in complete male domination, to the point where they have to use contraception IN SECRET, because they are after all - men's property. Thompson admits to understanding this, that a women might have to hide her efforts to use contraception or "get into trouble" with her man (owner).
Thompson does not work to CHANGE this, nor does he even work to educate, nor even criticize it. He works to PROFIT from it and to aid a male-owned company in also profiting.
So there's his marketing niche - he is selling a product to overly dominated women who need a birth control device that can be used while denying you are using it so you don't get your ass kicked.
Do these women scrimp and save and HIDE the money they use to pay for this (primitive, it sounds like an old-fashioned diaphragm with new packaging) contraceptive device too? I have to assume that there is a whole chain of sad realities surrounding this "secret" contraception product Thompson advises about while mamaging to sound forward-thinking and "compassionate".
No one will get mad at him though - he's just found a clever way to make money off of an underclass without changing anything. The Koch Bros. will respect that, they have a long history of messing around in Third World countries.
If the "secret" birth control user "gets caught", it won't be the businessmen who get hit, it won't be Thompson. That's the woman's problem. Tommy just has a nice product he wants to sell her.
I say he does stand for something, he stands for making and increasing his personal profit in any way that he can. Tommy stands for Tommy.