June 25, 2011
...Johnson's plastics company (click here) paid him $10 million in deferred compensation shortly before he was sworn in as Wisconsin's junior senator, according to his latest financial disclosure report.
The first-term Republican declined to say how his Oshkosh firm, Pacur, came up with a figure that so closely mirrored the amount he personally put into his campaign fund.
"You take a look in terms of what would be a reasonable compensation package, OK?" Johnson said this week. "It's a private business. I've complied with all the disclosure laws, and I don't have to explain it any further to someone like you."...
Johnson's business experience is all in the family.
...According to his campaign biography, (click here) Johnson moved to Oshkosh in 1979 to join Pat Curler, his brother-in-law, in running Pacur, which had recently relocated to Oshkosh with a new name and a new product line.
The company, formerly known as Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supply, was founded by the Curler family in 1977 in New London to produce shipping pallets. A Feb. 16, 1986, Northwestern company profile indicates the city of Oshkosh and its industrial-development arm, Chamco Inc., lured the company to Oshkosh in 1979 by securing a $75,000 federal grant to build a rail spur and by providing assistance with construction of a 20,000-square-foot factory in the North Industrial Park....
...Johnson’s biography describes Pacur as having “grown from a company supplying a single customer to the largest producer in the world of a specialty plastic used in medical device packaging and high-tech printing.”
That early single customer at the time was evolving into the plastics giant Bemis, which had named the Curlers’ father, Howard Curler, CEO in 1978. Jeff Curler, Jane Johnson’s brother, is now executive chairman of the board of directors.
Bemis continues to be an important customer, having purchased $9.5 million to $12.6 million in goods and material from Pacur for each of the last 10 years, according to proxy statements Bemis has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission....
Johnson is a rhetorical Republican. He won his Senate election based strongly on his opposition to the 2008 bank bailout. Basically, what he says is never the truth, factual or considered a good policy statement. If one has to stick a name on him; he is a reactionary talking head.
For example, the cash Johnson (click here) received from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC on August 27 and the American Bankers Association PAC on July 8 and July 30 came from, amongst others, hardcore Treasury bailout beneficiaries such as JP Morgan Chase, SunTrust, Bank of America, Regions Financial, Zions and First Horizon. The money Ron Johnson received from the Bluegrass and Senate Majority Fund PACs came, in part, from one of the greatest bailout beneficiaries of them all, Goldman Sachs. Despite statements about staying out of politics this cycle, Goldman donated to both PACs on March 31 of this year. On June 24, Ron Johnson's campaign received two $5,000 donations from the Bluegrass PAC, a day later the campaign received two donations from the Senate Majority PAC in the same amounts.
