Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Cliff Notes Version of Sen. Bill Frist's Problems

Sen. Frist (R, TN) had a blind trust to hold some of his investments. the idea being that if he doesn't know what is in them, he can't have a conflict of interest between his financial portfolio and his work as a senator that might affect the investments.

The problem comes when Frist acts in ways that benefits his company in that 'blind trust'. well, that's the start of the problem. the rest comes in when, in 2003, Sen. Frist was
told (in writing) that a significant amount of (his family healthcare company) HCA, Inc., stock had been added to his blind trust. As you can imagine, Blind trusts do NOT come with such seeing eye dogs. Two weeks after that event, he goes on record to state that he did not believe that he owned any stock in HCA. "I have no control," said Frist.

That is called 'lying' if you were wondering.

2 comments:

CSH said...

With all the other trouble happening to republicans these days, is this one going to be able to stay afloat? And if so, is he going to get any help? Don't they need to be circling their wagons and only using their political currency on other, potentially more important, troubles? If they circle the wagons who gets left out?

Polly said...

Frist is in a difficult position. he wants to run for prez and he keeps pandering to the wingnuts. the only problem is that they use him to get what they want and then toss him aside with a crude "well, that's not good enough". if it wasn't such an outright pander, i'd feel bad for the guy...so anyway, where was i?

OH, yeah, so he wants to go for prez but panders exclusively to these people that are luke warm to him (the wingnut base). he's also retiring (in '06 i think? or is it '08?) either way, he's the Senate leader but he's about to be gone, so he's lame ducking himself. others are already jockeying for his spot and who needs to dive in and save this guy who's gonna bail anywhay? see what i mean? not in a good position.