Frist's Wiggly World
Do Bad Liars Beget Bad Liars as well, or is Bill the first in a new line?
Bill Frist, Republican Senate Majority Leader, anachronistic haircut model, sometimes reluctant White House rentboy, long-distance video diagnostician, lucky stock liquidator, Splendide Mendax:
AP: Frist Accumulated Stock Outside Trusts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:55 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show.
The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate.
However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict. . . .
But back to the matter of those so-called "blind trusts" about which Frist received regular holdings reports:
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, said she doesn't believe the Senate trusts or the Tennessee trust insulated Frist from a conflict because the senator or his brother were advised of transactions and could influence decisions.
''What I find most appalling is the Senate calls it a qualified blind trust when it's not blind,'' Clark said. ''Since the Senate says it's OK, the Senate has made it a political question. It's up to the voter. But there's no doubt it's a conflict of interest.''. . .
Comments
My god, what the freaking hell is that book?
Nice description of Frist, by the way. Keep on this blind trust stuff, because I don't get how it would possibly work.
It's one thing to have a retirement fund and mutual fund managed and you don't know exactly what you are invested in other than 'growth' or 'global'. Most of us are in that situation by laziness since nothing is more boring than a prospectus. But how can you hold one company, one that you are intimately familiar with, in any sort of blind trust and avoid conflict of interest while making laws that will affect that industry and company directly and predictably?
The suspicious sale is just the icing on the cake here.
Posted by: parvenu | October 12, 2005 5:52 PM