Posted on 10/12/2005 9:49:35 PM PDT by indianrightwinger
Frist accumulated stock in family company Questions of conflict of interest raised
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; Posted: 10:56 a.m. EDT (14:56 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Over a period of four years, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist accumulated stock in a family founded hospital chain that produced tens of thousands of dollars in income -- all outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, documents show.
The stock was held in a family partnership largely controlled by Frist's brother, Thomas, who founded HCA Inc. along with the senator's late father.
Frist, R-Tennessee, has long maintained that he could vote on health care legislation and still own HCA stock because he placed his shares in Senate-approved blind trusts.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Who cares?
Every damned one of 'em is totally on the take, anyway.
Exactly. Every single one of them every day acts in conflicts of interests, because they get donations in order to carve out exceptions to the law, the tax code, or to slosh some government pork someone's way.
The only way to avoid a conflict of interest is either if politicians couldn't take any donations, or if they didn't have the power to affect policy in every facet of american life - in exchange for a nice donation, of course.
Since they're politicians, however, I don't see any of that changing.
I want congress in session only four months out of the year, mandating that they must spend their off months in their home states. And that they don't get paid if they can't bring the budget growth in under the rate of inflation.
Does Ted Kennedy recuse himself from voting or considering any water safety legislation?
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