Tammy Baldwin hits Tommy Thompson on 'false and vicious' 9/11 ad

Tammy Baldwin hits back at Tommy Thompson's incoherent and despicable 9/11 ad. And he totally deserves it.

"Tommy Thompson's ad is a disgrace," the announcer says. "The truth: Time and again, Tammy Baldwin has supported honoring victims of 9/11.

"And Tommy Thompson? He got a government contract to provide health care to 9/11 first responders. But Tommy took advantage, leaving them without the care they were promised. Tommy Thompson personally made over $3 million off the deal. Tommy Thompson should be ashamed."

Wow. Thompson is trying to hit Baldwin over a single, symbolic vote, when he actually profited off of 9/11? True? Absolutely. First, Factcheck.org calls Thompson's ad " false and vicious," saying  "this is a case of cherry-picking a vote to distort the facts. Baldwin did honor the victims of the terrorist attacks."

And did Thompson profit personally off of government contracts for care he did not provide to 9/11 first responders? You betcha.

Tommy Thompson was the Health and Human Services secretary for four years, and now is president of Logistics Health, Inc., which in June won an $11 million contract to treat Sept. 11 workers and volunteers who now live far away from the New York-area hospitals treating the bulk of ground zero patients.

Some patients are complaining that two months since the handover, they have yet to hear from Thompson's firm, which is based in La Crosse, Wis.

"I have absolutely no help from anybody," said Ed Persico of Missoula, Mont., who was a Red Cross volunteer at a New York City landfill where the ground zero debris was examined for human remains.

Persico wasn't alone. Thompson's company failed so drastically at providing the care it was paid to do, that Dr. Jim Melius, chairman of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Steering Committee, said HHS should cancel the contract.

"I just don't have any confidence that they (LHI) have the capacity or the understanding to do this," Melius said. "They are doing a disservice to these people. There are hundreds more in the medical treatment program and thousands more that need medical monitoring, and they're not getting it."

But the cronyism in the Bush administration continued and Thompson'Bush's former secretary of HHS'kept the contract, and the profits.

This is a can of worms Thompson should have been prepared to have dumped over his head when he ran that ad attacking Baldwin, but apparently didn't foresee. His desperation to salvage his candidacy must be blinding him.

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