{"id":5325,"date":"2005-09-22T10:42:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-22T14:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5325"},"modified":"2005-09-22T10:42:12","modified_gmt":"2005-09-22T14:42:12","slug":"frist-is-still-searching-for-an-excuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/frist-is-still-searching-for-an-excuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Frist is still searching for an excuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s campaign committee suffered big losses and came up short<\/a> of money needed to cover a bank loan, there were few consequences. An occasional joke about why he’d want to privatize Social Security in light of his investment record, but that was about it.<\/p>\n

Likewise, when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a detailed (and rather incriminating) expose<\/a> on alleged fiscal mismanagement and bizarre investment strategies on Frist’s part over the last several years, the political world seemed to let out a collective yawn.<\/p>\n

And yet, as of now, Frist seems to have a genuine problem on his hands. News broke this week over Frist selling all of his stock in his family’s hospital corporation (HCA) miraculously<\/a> before an earnings report drove the price down. Much to Frist’s chagrin, this is not just a one-day story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has maintained for years that his stock holdings in the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain posed no conflict of interest for a policymaker deeply involved in health care matters. He even received two rulings in the 1990s from the Senate ethics committee that blessed the holding of the stock in blind trusts.<\/p>\n

So when Frist decided in June to dump all the stock, and later cited as the reason his desire to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, eyebrows went up among ethics experts and congressional watchdogs. Why did he do it at that time?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the question for which there is no answer, at least not yet. Yesterday, Amy Call, Frist’s chief spokesperson, said<\/a>, when asked why he hadn’t sold the stock previously, “I don’t know that he’s been worried about it in the past.” But that answer doesn’t make any sense.
\n
\nSomething<\/i> prompted Frist to change his mind. It couldn’t have been Senate ethics rules; he’s been there 11 years and been cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee to own the stock. So what made him, in his spokesperson’s words, “worry” about the stock now?<\/p>\n

The Washington Post quotes<\/a> plenty of experts on ethics and securities law, all of whom seem to believe Frist’s sudden decision raises fairly serious questions, none of which Frist’s office has responded to.<\/p>\n

But the Post added this little gem at the end.<\/p>\n

According to Thomson Financial, a reporting service, seven senior HCA executives sold 574,882 shares worth $19,942,610 between May 17 and June 10. A company spokesman, Jeff Prescott, said the executives are entitled “like other stockholders [to] make personal decisions . . . about when to sell.” He said the executives complied with “blackout restrictions” imposed by the SEC to prevent dealing within a certain period prior to restatements of earnings.<\/p>\n

An SEC spokesman said it is the commission’s policy not to comment on investigations, and would neither confirm nor deny that it is probing insider trading at HCA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could Frist really have been this stupid?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s campaign committee suffered big losses and came up short of money needed to cover a bank loan, there were few consequences. An occasional joke about why he’d want to privatize Social Security in light of his investment record, but that was about it. Likewise, when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}