Sean Duffy

[TPM on Duffy] [Delong on Duffy] [Duffy Financial Report]

Sean Duffy is another good example of the crappy, elitist politicians in this county. He's about as far as you can get from the "real amuracuns" the republicans like to play to. It's not clear that either he or his wife have ever had to work a real 9 to 5 job at any point in their lives. Most of their positions have been in either the media or politics. Although I'd have to agree that being professional lumber jack seems like it would be tough, I'd really like to hear what real "working" lumberjacks have to say about the "professionals" in the made for TV events. I doubt either one of them would last long as a WalMart employee.

The Duffys do have one thing in common with "real amuracuns", a amazing ability to accumulate debt. Based on what I've found, the Duffy's have accumulated between $415,000 and $900,000 in debt. While they were accumulating that debt, they were reporting less than 160,000$ in income. That's a debt of between 260% to 560% of their income and it seems damned irresponsible to me (see note below). If they weren't part of our political elite, I'm not sure they could have borrowed that much.

Now Mr Duffy is a tax-cutting, small-government republican, paying off his own super-sized debt with a government paycheck while lecturing the people of Wisconsin about the state's dire financial situation that he thinks was created by out-of-control government spending/borrowing. That's just hypocritical as hell. Personally, with his record of personal debt, at least what I can see of it, I'd try to keep him as far as possible from the financial decisions of my state.

NOTE: Median US household income is about $50,000. Debt for this income, at the Duffy's level, would be between 130,000$ to 280,000$. The lower side of this is not completely crazy but the upper end is, at least to me. I'm probably a little overly conservative about debt but have never been above 125% of annual income.

tnb