Frist Notches Down to a Lower Circle of Hell
Stitch in Haste blog
By Kip
Senate Majority Leader Bill "AIDS from Tears" Frist was nice enough to set up an AIDS-based charity in 2003.
Which, of course, benefited people with AIDS -- among other people:
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 [$1.4 million] 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.
The charity also hired the law firm of [Frist's lawyer's] wife, Jill Holtzman Vogel, and Frist's Tennessee accountant, Deborah Kolarich.
I'm not an expert on charitable giving, but a 32% overhead rate seems excessive to me to say the least. Then again, this is Bill "She's Not Vegetative" Frist, so "excessive" is par for the course.
I guess it's simply well-settled now that the standard of Congressional ethics -- especially by leaders like Bill "What Insider Treading?" Frist -- is no longer "avoid even the appearance of impropriety" but rather "don't stop until the indictment is handed down."
The fundamental difference between libertarians and governmentalists is that libertarians reject the prevalence (and perhaps even the existence) of true "public servants" among politicians and bureaucrats. We see mostly the power-hungry and the corrupt.
Which is the same as saying: We read the newspapers.
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