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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

You have to read about the giant cancer that is growing in Minnetonka.

Or is it a cosmic cesspool? Or a giant leech? Read the five Business Week reporting pages. Look at the distinguished past service their people have on the resumes. Then pick your metaphor.

THIS LINK.

Does it make you proud they're headquartered in Minnesota?

No item screenshot, but this photo from the Business Week item:



Doesn't he look as warm and compassionate as Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paulson from Goldman Sachs, the $700 billion TARP bailout man, with a little help for his friends?

The man is Hemsley, now CEO of the cancer, who according to Business Week was a former chief financial officer of the now-defunct, discredited and disgraced Arthur Andersen accounting firm. A migrant from that now-defunct former Enron consort, now ensconced in Minnesota.

There's more.

Goldman Sachs' ex-head lobbyist, now doing the same, for the Minnetonka operation:

In August 2007, the company hired [Judah C. "Jud"] Sommer, who previously headed global lobbying for Goldman Sachs (GS). He quickly built a new Washington team of former congressional aides and other K Street operatives. One key acquisition: Cory Alexander, former chief of staff for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), an influential moderate Democrat. Alexander had been lobbying for the huge mortgage financier Fannie Mae (FNM). Today, Sommer directs a team of nearly 50 people from UnitedHealth's spacious Washington office on Pennsylvania Avenue, equidistant between the Capitol and White House. The company spent more than $3.4 million on in-house and outside lobbying in the first half of 2009.

Sommer has retained such influential outsiders as Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate Leader who now [...] sells his expertise to UnitedHealth, which opposes any such public insurance plan. Among the services Daschle offers are tips on the personalities and policy proclivities of members of Congress he has known for decades.


So says the Business Week item, p.4. Here, if you want to see what Sommer looks like.