Tom Ridge-- Impoverished Public Citizen

[Rooktoven]

(reprinted with permission from the author, Verlin Henderson)

Is Tom Ridge bucking for a raise? The former Pennsylvania governor and current Secretary of Homeland Security is hinting that he may chose to retire from public life so that he can earn money and put his children through college. Millions of middle-class and working-class Americans can identify with the secretary's need to save for their children's education. But do you understand the depths of the struggle that Tom Ridge faces?

Currently, Secretary Ridge makes do on the mere $175,700 per year he earns as cabinet secretary. The secretary and his wife are proud of their modest, ramshackle $873,000 home in Bethesda, keeping it neat and tidy despite the squalor that surrounds them. Despite their meager living, the Ridges have managed to put away some savings - but only around three quarters of a million dollars in stock and mutual fund holdings, a pittiance in a country as rich as ours. Clearly, Tom Ridge lives in one of the "Two Americas" that vice-presidential candidate Senator John Edwards talks about in his stump speeches.

Seriously - what the hell is wrong with Ridge? We're about to enter the heart of the campaign here, the Dems have just finished a convention where populist themes were the overarching message (okay, the other overarching message besides "Did you know John Kerry went to Vietnam?"), and Ridge pops up in the news whining that he can't put his kids through college on $175K/year?!?! If I'm a DNC strategist, this is prime campaign fodder for why the Bush administration is way out of touch. If I'm George W. Bush, my head is spinning in disbelief.

(From the Business Week MBA forums)

[rumguy]

1. a ramshakle $873,000 home?

hahahahahahaha

[gauguin57]

3. orrrrrrrr

is it that Tom Ridge is totally ineffectual as Homeland Security chief (despite the "high level of threat" supposedly going on right now, we never SEE the guy!) ...

and this is his way of quietly turning the office over to some freaking Bushista fascist?

[gauguin57]

2. huh?

OK, now hold it. After being a decorated staff sergeant in Vietnam, Ridge was an attorney in private practice, a six-term U.S. Congressman, a nearly-two-term Governor (which includes housing, of course!) and a cabinet secretary.

Are you telling me that, among all those jobs, the man doesn't have the dough to send his two kids to college? Where's he sending them ... the Sorbonne in Paris -- living in a chateau instead of a dorm?

Hell ... if THIS guy can't afford to send his children to college ... what in the hell does THAT say about the state of the country under his boss, Bushie?????

[Rooktoven]

4. maybe all that money went into his nose

I mean his HOUSE...

[BiggJawn]

6. And I'm supposed to send my kid to college on $38,600 a year?

Shit, if Tommy Timer-Toes can't do it on 4 1/2 times as much money...

What, his kids smoke a little Boo and get caught, norw they can't get loans?

[Hutzpa]

8. That he is one of us....hahahahaha in his dreams n/t

:wtf:

[democrat_patriot]

5. Please email this to all media...

thanks.

[Doctor_J]

7. As Tom Delay recently said,

" I defy anyone to live on what I make" ($156,000/yr).