A Stitch in Haste

The original question regarding Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's holdings and transactions in the stock of the company his family founded, HCA, was how he could know the holdings of, and order transactions in, an allegedly "blind" trust.

Now comes word that Frist not only controlled HCA stock in the blind trust, but also had even more stock in a trust created solely for the purpose of holding HCA stock:

In that case, the HCA stock was accumulated by a family investment partnership started by the senator's late parents and later overseen by his brother, Thomas Frist. The brother served as president of the partnership's management company and as a top officer of HCA. Sen. Frist holds no position with the company.

The senator's share of the partnership was placed in a Tennessee blind trust between 1998 and 2002 that was separate from those governed by Senate ethics rules. Frist reported Bowling Avenue Partners, made up mostly of non-public HCA stock, earned him $265,495 in dividends and other income over the four years.

So now we've come full circle. Frist first maintained that it was "no big deal" to own huge swaths of stock at the same time he was controlling legislative processes, policies and agendas that directly affected the value of the stock.

Then he claimed that it was "no big deal" because the stock had been placed in a blind trust.

Then he claimed that of course "blind" doesn't really blind, but it was still all okay because those (sorta kinda) blind trusts were within Senate rules -- in the same sense that the New Orleans levees were (sorta kinda) up to government standards.

Then it turns out that much of his holdings weren't even in those (sorta kinda) blind trusts anyway. But it was still okay because the Senate rules actually didn't allow that stock to be put in the (sorta kinda) blind trusts anyway.

And -- passing Go and collecting $265,495 -- Frist then ends up right where he started: asserting that controlling the Senate while having a direct equity stake in the outcome of health care policy is "no big deal."

Why is it "no big deal"? For the same reason we're told that Harriet Miers is "no big deal" -- "um, just trust us."

I would have preferred to trust the trust funds. Go figure.