Alex Rogers reports at Time Magazine that nearly three months after his historic primary defeat, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will be joining investment bank Moelis, earning $3.4 million for the next year and four months and following in the long tradition of lawmakers profiting on their knowledge of the regulatory and political landscape post-Congress. The move to Wall Street wasn’t unexpected as Cantor, one of the Republican party’s most prolific fundraisers, had close ties to the financial services industry.
But Cantor won’t be making as much as he might have as a lobbyist, as the seven figure salaries of some former congressmen can attest. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican congressman who retired in 2005, made $11.6 million in a single year in 2010 while helping to craft President Obama’s Affordable Care Act as leader of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Tauzin did “what loads of other politicians have done -- trading on his expertise and connections to amass great personal wealth,” says Sheila Krumholz. “He’s just more successful at it than others.”
Other beneficiaries of the revolving door include former Oklahoma Rep. Steve Largent whose total compensation as CTIA-The Wireless Association’s top lobbyist was reportedly $2.7 million and Former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd who makes nearly $3.3 million a year as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America - a post Dodd took after promising never to become a lobbyist.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @11:40AM
soilent newx is a shit rag for dick munchers
F U C K
S O Y L E N T
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:01PM
This bodes well for SolentNews - even the trolls are moving from Slashdot!
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 4, Funny) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:03PM
You know, at first I was dismayed at the uptick in negative, non-constructive posts over the last couple weeks, but perhaps you're right. Maybe we've just become popular enough for people to want to piss in our cereal. Thank you for the enlightened perspective!
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:43PM
Maybe because 4-5 people are dominating the queue. So whatever pisses them off gets into the queue. The rest of us are not submitting often enough. So we are going to get a lot of stories that are basically c&p from big green. I am saddened by it frankly. There are plenty of other interesting things going on out there than what some jackass in washington is doing. We could be checking back in on the libressl guys. Picking one of the dozens of cool projects from hackaday. Going in depth on one of the cool things at andatech (who just left his own site!). You know the people doing the things that the guys in washington are trying to stop.
These sorts of stories are nice. But do little other than piss people off. They start fights between R&D's about how their team is better. A better discussion would be how do we remove the value of having money from politics. Is that even possible? My 2 cents would be to have 1 term limits. As that would basically make everyone a dead duck. Not beholden to 'need 3.8 billion dollars to get elected'. However, that is but one small facet of this and creates its own set of issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:03PM
I suggest you go to pipedot.org for these kind of things :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:33PM
Aw man, looks like |. stopped scraping our posts
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 04 2014, @10:14PM
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 04 2014, @11:50AM
Oof. I don't begrudge anyone making money -- but damn. It seems to me anything north of $1 mil/yr is excessive for anyone, only because I don't understand what somebody can possibly do that has that much economic value.
I spent time some working at a financial services firm, watching traders and brokers make 5-10x my salary yet createe nothing of value at the end of the day
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:05PM
It's not what you know it's who you know. He's not being paid that for anything he'll actually do. He's being paid that because he can talk to any of the serving Republican politicians and put forward his employer's case. He's also being very publicly paid that because it sends a message to those serving politicians that serving corporate interests will have a big payout for them too down the line.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:02PM
At the million-plus salary level, it's not about what you can do, it's about what you can get done.
For example, I have all the hard skills it would take to run Ford Motor Company. I understand math and some finance, I can tell people what to do, and I can run a meeting. In a superficial sense I could do that job. The shareholders would be insane to appoint me CEO of Ford Motor Company, because I could not get a damn thing accomplished in that position. I don't understand the industry in depth, I don't have institutional knowledge of Ford, I don't have the confidence of the vice presidents and my professional network doesn't include anyone who can be helpful to the CEO of Ford.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:34PM
To sum up, our society is no longer merit based. It was, for a long while when the US was trying to prove itself, show the Europeans that we were for real, and that a person didn't have to be specially bred or educated to run a nation. One of the points of the American Revolution was to set up a more meritocratic government. We couldn't afford to hand wealth and power to idiots too often. That nearly cost us the Revolutionary War, turning one of our best generals, Benedict Arnold, against us. Lot of Civil War generals were "political generals", politicians who wanted to play at leading men into battle. But the stress of war forced us to turn more towards merit, to win. And so in the North a competent person who had made his career in the military eventually rose to the top. In the South, they became so desperate that they were thinking of training and arming the slaves, an implicit recognition that Africans were competent to fight. The Gilded Age was the first move away from the merit based society but then WWI and WWII pushed us back. To win the wars, had to stop shutting the geeks into the lockers. The Cold War kept us focused on merit until the Soviet Union began to falter in the 1970s.
Many of us here probably could run Ford and all the other large corporations better than the people actually doing it. So why can't we have better leadership? The aristocracy lives on, that's why. The difference is that the people in the executive offices aren't heirs to the naked power of nobility anymore, they're heirs to softer power, the power of great wealth.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 04 2014, @09:20PM
To sum up, our society is no longer merit based.
Disagree entirely. What merits are most applicable to a CEO? People skills, networking, etc. Clearly you don't find those skill meritorious but for a CEO they are the entirety of the job!
Many of us here probably could run Ford and all the other large corporations better than the people actually doing it.
Or maybe the grass is just greener over there.... Everyone thinks everyone elses's job is easy.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 05 2014, @01:46AM
Doubtful. Ford actually has competent leadership. And a lot of the dysfunction that happens with large corporation CEOs is due to perverse incentives. They could run their companies better, but the rewards aren't there to do that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:27PM
Also, because he's a former Congresscritter, he has access to a lot of Congresscritter hangouts where other lobbyists can't go. That's one reason the lobbying firms really really like hiring ousted Congresscritters - that and the previously mentioned implied quid pro quo.
There are also numerous instances of SEC officials getting very comfortable jobs at major banks shortly after deciding to not investigate certain activities too closely. A complete coincidence, I'm sure.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:19PM
Meanwhile, a whistleblower earned minimum wage [soylentnews.org].
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 04 2014, @12:28PM
Minimum wage? He was lucky - a number of whistleblowers have gone to prison.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:35PM
> yet createe nothing of value at the end of the day
These people view you the same way. MechJay just sits around reading Soydot and playing with computers and the damn printer still jams every third page.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mckwant on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:17PM
I'm in no way disagreeing with you, but he should be able to cover $3.4M of "value creation" easy. For an investment bank, that's probably two obscure accounting laws, or helping to keep the HFT "tax per transaction" law theoretical.
That's value creation for the bank, of course, not you and I. What, if anything, the financial sector contributes to the economy as a whole is a different discussion.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:40PM
Just vote with us and hey, if you fark up enough to lose your safe seat in congress we'll hire you! No worries mate, just vote like this.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:39PM
http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/08/24 [gocomics.com]
(Score: 1) by fatuous looser on Friday September 05 2014, @04:03AM
payday is one word