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December 18, 2005
Walking Funny, America?
... looks like once again, ol' Tennessee Bill's been giving us the whole Frist.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful's nonprofit. The returns for World of Hope Inc., obtained by The Associated Press, also show the charity raised the lion's share of its $4.4 million from just 18 sources. They gave between $97,950 and $267,735 each to help fund Frist's efforts to fight AIDS.
You see what's going on here, right? From the outside, a cynic might say that Frist is using the cover of the global AIDS epidemic to enrich his friends and solicit contributions in exchange for influence. One might wonder if the charity even does any real work, wouldn't you say? Even if you're inclined to believe the absolute best about someone (even when evidence runs thoroughly to the contrary), the most benign explanation for this situation is this: Senator Bill Frist set up a charity that seems to get the overwhelming majority of its funding from fat cat Friends of Bill -- who are then rewarded with juicy consulting contracts to run the charity. In a way, it's uber-weatlhy Republicans using charitable donations to enrich their political operatives. Let's look a little closer, shall we?
The donors included several corporations with frequent business before Congress, such as insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield, manufacturer 3M, drug maker Eli Lilly and the Goldman Sachs investment firm.
Ah... now we're starting to see the rewards structure. Now it's even more clear.
World of Hope gave $3 million it raised to charitable AIDS causes, such as Africare and evangelical Christian groups with ties to Republicans _ Franklin Graham's Samaritan Purse and the Rev. Luis Cortes' Esperanza USA, for example. The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist's longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.
So, under the guise of pretending to be compassionate and concerned about AIDS in Africa, Frist set up a charity that looks to me an awful lot like a dummy... and then forked over some of the money raised to "faith-based" organizations whose impact on the AIDS crisis is neglible at best (somehow, I doubt that ol' Franklin Graham or Luis Cortes are saying a whole lot about condoms, don't you?)... and funneled the rest off to his political machine as "overhead." All while claiming to be doing charity? How ironic that Frist's friends are getting jucily paid because Frist is screwing people over a disease you get from screwing people.
America's not getting fleeced... we're getting Fristed. Take a warm bath and remind yourself that it's a good ache, kids.
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