Bowling Avenue Partners. That's the name to remember. It's Bill Frist's family stock partnership that was kept separate from his blind trust partnerships governed by Senate ethics rules.
This decidedly non-blind trust, run by Dr. Billy's brother, Tommy Frist, earned the senate majority leader $265,495 in dividends and other income over four years. The AP has the details:
Ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict.
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.
HCA is the Frist-family company of for-profit hospital chains. Frist earned millions from the sale of HCA stock that may have benefited from insider information. And, of course, it's murkier than that. Because while Frist was making millions upon millions of dollars through his stock in this medical company, he was VOTING ON MEDICAL LEGISLATION.
With his background as a heart surgeon as well as majority leader, Frist has been at the forefront of legislation that would affect the hospital chain. Among the issues: a Medicare prescription drug benefit and limits on medical malpractice lawsuits.
Frist kept HCA stock in Bowling Avenue Partners and the Tennessee blind trust — but outside the Senate-approved trusts — between 1998 and 2002.
His investments in Nashville-based HCA are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission after an AP report that the senator had asked administrators of his Senate blind trusts to sell his HCA holdings.
Remember the Bush/GOP line about changing the tone in Washington? I think they meant changing it back to more of a Nixon/Warren G. Harding kind of tone.
Now, if you were Dr. Billy's campaign advisor, what would you be saying to him now about how to run against John "Straight Talk" McCain for the GOP nomination in 2008? I would be saying, "Um, I quit."