“Outside the blind trusts
By on Oct 11th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
“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,” AP reports. (Via Atrios)
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Drip, drip, drip.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:20 pmWhat was good for Martha has GOT to be good ten times over for Mr. Frist. Maybe more so.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:21 pmStill sounds like a conflict to me.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:28 pmThere are so many problems on the right it is getting really hard to keep up with them all.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:29 pmHaving seen part of a Martha Stewart episode after she got out, her time in prison appears to have given her some experiences and insight that she didn’t have before.
We’ll see how long that lasts.
I think that Frist needs his “horizons broadened”… But I imagine that his friend George will just pardon him, Tom, Karl, Dick,…
Z.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:30 pmDepends on the meaning of “Outside”.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:32 pm#6…
Not really…
Stock that was not held in the Senate approved Blind Trusts. It was held in a non-approved “blind” trust that was managed by…
his brother.
The whole point of a blind trust is that the person who the assets are being held for doesn’t know what assets are held, or what is being done with them. This is intended to avoid any conflict of interest. If his brother was the trustee then it is possible that it was a blind trust, but it does not server the primary purpose of ensuring that there is no APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest.
While Frist was not personally responsible for the trust, it is way too easy for him and his brother to talk about the trust unofficially. If it was truly a blind trust then a third party (preferably completely unrelated) should have been appointed as a trustee.
Z.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:39 pmI know many people believe Bushie will pardon him but at the very least, Frists political career is over. Good riddence.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:42 pmDefinition of a Blind Trust found online…
“A trust in which the beneficiaries do not have knowledge of the trust’s specific assets, and in which a fiduciary third party has complete management discretion.”
I wouldn’t call a sibling “a fiduciary third party” as the appearance of a conflict of interest is what this entire set up is intended to avoid. (If you don’t care about the appearance rather than the fact, why not manage it yourself and say “I don’t have any conflict of interest”?)
Z.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:42 pmKind of hard to give him the benefit of the
October 11th, 2005 at 5:43 pmdoubt when he goes outside the trust to
invest.
Ethics seems to be in short supply on the
right these days.
They break enough laws, but if there were
actually rules on ethics, they would be in more trouble.
#10
Reading the article, I’m not sure that he was “going outside the trust to invest” it sounds like his mother left some privately traded shares to him and his brother. As they were privately traded he couldn’t put them in the senate approved blind trust. So, as it sounds like he couldn’t dispose of them yet due to legal issues, he put them in another non-approved “blind” trust so that he would avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
All of that sounds reasonable enough… But the “blind” trust was not really a blind trust because his brother ran it… Giving the appearance of a conflict of interest…
Z.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:52 pmSusan, 100% correct. I’m here in his backyard (TN) and believe me, he ain’t teflon. It’s starting to stick. There are MANY people here in TN with no health insurance and MANY companies are not required to even offer it and MANY of those same employees could never afford it on their own. SOOOOOOOOO, thank you Bill Frist for profiting on others’ pain. Folks here are disgusted by Frist. Bye Bye Bush Baby.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:54 pmZwack,
I hear what you are saying and I guess in the end it
October 11th, 2005 at 6:05 pmis not completely clear to me what was going on after I
read about it here and there.
One thing is for sure, he did not avoid the
appearance of a conflict.
I get your point though.
Thanks for the response pp. My brother moved to the Knoxville area about 4 months ago. He left Chicago because housing is cheaper. (and he’s kind of laid back and tired of the fast pace here)
I doubt he’ll last there unless Frist and gang are thrown out of office as he has a kid with asthma and to my knowledge he has not been able to obtain health benefits.
He’s living on the equity from his house and expects to get a low paying job to make ends meet. Medical benefits is something he overlooked. In Illinois kids always get medical benefits one way or another, not sure if TN is the same.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:10 pmBill Frist: Banana Republican.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:37 pmI’m with you #4. I can’t keep up with all the graft and general bullcrap. Can somone develope a spreadsheet so we can track all these contempable acts? Please include any indictments that have or may be announced.
October 11th, 2005 at 6:50 pmSounds like Frist and Cheney have been talking stocks lately. As for ethics there WERE actually rules until Tom DeLay bullied the committee into ignoring them.
October 11th, 2005 at 10:07 pmCronies and Crooks – welcome to banana republicans!
October 12th, 2005 at 2:06 am“blind trust” is what neocons have always had for their party leadership… I hope they start to SEE what those people are really about… there are too many concurrent scandals to just blame liberal media, liberal special interest groups or prosecutors with a political agenda, as they’ve typically done…
October 12th, 2005 at 9:55 amReally. I don’t know that you can call holdings you make all the calls on (sell, hold, buy) blind trusts.
Maybe this works with the blind faith republicans who seem to be truly blinded by these guys. If Frist could make a sell call just prior to bad financial reports coming out, that isn’t a blind trust by any REAL definition. Insider trading is what I would call it.
October 12th, 2005 at 10:26 amSusan, I am in the Knoxville area. I moved back after living in NYC for 10 years. I really miss the great med benefits most of all. And no, not every child has insurance. There are so many in between the poverty line (so no medicaid) but still not able to afford the “luxury” of health insurance.
It is a luxury here. If you make the ridiculous minimum wage, you will not have health care. Repubs say that if you give tax breaks to the businesses it will allow them to offer benefits. BULLSHI! It means more profit for the business owners, plain and simple.
So many children here receive nearly 100% of their healthcare from either the school nurse or, if it gets real bad, the emergency room. About the age of 10 years old, the families are forced into backruptcy because of the staggering bill adding up and being compounded with interest. Now with the new bankruptcy laws, they are stuck.
If each parent (if you have the luxury of two in the home) worked at minimum wage for 40 hours each week, there would not be enough for childcare, healthcare, meds and clothes. This state is republican owned. So, no, child healthcare is NOT mandatory.
Kisses, Frist. You should burn for what you make on sick children!
October 12th, 2005 at 10:33 am#13, Afterthought, I agree that it was wrong. I was just pointing out that it looks as though he had no option but to go outside the Senate approved blind trusts initially…
But he definitely should have had a proper blind trust set up managed by someone other than himself. There is more than enough rope there to hang him, but we want to make sure we only attack him for valid reasons… Otherwise everything will be dismissed as “the loony left are making stuff up”
#21 Kindness, no, that’s not a blind trust. A blind trust is one where you have no say in how it is managed, and you don’t know what assets are being held. You should be able to make suggestions, but if you made specific suggestions then the manager should probably ignore them. i.e. if you said “I think company X looks good” the manager might want to look into company X and make a decision based on what he finds. He shouldn’t just buy company X. If you said “sell any shares you have in company Y” the manager should say “Hello, is that the SEC, Frist wants to engage in insider trading.”
Z.
October 12th, 2005 at 11:08 amYup zwack, you’re right.
October 12th, 2005 at 2:09 pmThe only thing blind in the whole Frist affair is his Blind Arrogance!
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