Blind Trust, Blind Faith It is fair to say that the American people haven't the slightest idea what motivates their representatives in government. For example, take United States Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from the great state of Tennessee. I look at those alien-orb eyes of his, and I don't know... I can't make out anything in there. Ever since he crawled over Trent Lott's back to get his post, Frist has made one unpredictable move after the other. We're not talking about anything he's done with regard to crafting the law; he's been a rubber stamp for the president's agenda, nothing more. Rather, the Senator's forays into controversy have come in the form of his knee-jerk responses to the pressures constantly applied by social conservatives. Doctor Bill was at the vanguard of the Save Terri Schiavo crowd, making such a memorable ass out of himself that he now automatically bristles every time the subject comes up. Then, just a few months later, he denounced President Bush's ban on federal funding of stem-cell research. That appeared to be a turning point, but his recent swoon of support for "intelligent design" (anathema to any true man of science) shows that the stem-cell thing was merely a centrist vote-grabbing stunt. Whatever way the wind blows Frist on those issues which have nothing to do with actual governance, a bigger problem has arisen in the form of dual stock-sale probes by the SEC and the U.S. Attorney's office. Without a doubt, our federal investigative bodies threw away the white gloves a long time ago, but Frist's suspiciously-timed sale of HCA stock is going to be awfully hard to ignore since HCA is a company that was founded by Frist's father and brother. Ah, but there could be no conflict of interest as he toiled for his constituents in the Senate, because his millions of dollars' worth of investments were placed in something called a blind trust. "Senator Frist had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock," said his spokesman, Bob Stevenson. Frist himself has answered these questions before. In January of 2003, he was caught on television saying, "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." In the same interview, he blurted, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea." So he probably just left all those letters unopened on his beautiful desk, the numerous ones sent by his trustee, M. Kirk Scobey, Jr. He kept Frist notified of his shares throughout 2002, including an HCA update just two weeks before Frist and several other company insiders dumped their stock in anticipation of a limp earnings report. Maybe his secretary simply mistook them for junk mail (read: any envelope that does not contain a check). Frist is going to need all the money he can get if he wants to reap all the political goodwill he has sewn. He wants to be president very badly, you see, and the GOP must surely sense that anybody named Bush would be swamped by Hurricane Hillary in 2008. John McCain's wildest dreams aside, Bill is the ticket unless this impropriety can somehow derail him - although the protectionist mindset in our government makes that a very unlikely proposition. The Founding Fathers, wealthy White property owners one and all, did not attempt to forge a nation based on crony capitalism. They were far more concerned with the common good of the public, an inclination that Bill Frist neither possesses nor understands. This makes him unfit for the office he presently holds, and wholly undeserving of the one he seeks. No matter how this shakes out, nobody should expect Republicans in or out of power to step up and present a respectable front. If this blows up in Frist's face, they will denounce it as a partisan attack. If it blows over, they will dither that the story was a media concoction, much ado about nothing. Either way, their usual dishonest herd mentality will speak volumes about the collective content of what passes for conservative character. Paul Heller 9/28/05 << back to the archives
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