Are the Abramoff and DeLay scandals related to Frist? I have no first-hand knowledge, but I'm beginning to wonder how deep the culture of corruption goes.
First of all, please realize that this is my first diary here. And although I've followed this site off and on for a while prior, I started seriously monitoring it within the last couple of months. And when I say "seriously" I mean it in very relative terms, lol! Hey, I'm busy! But one thing I particularly like about this site is that it does not require me (or anyone else) to make unwarranted leaps of faith: almost anything anyone says here is ultimately well documented, either up front or in the discussions. That is a wonderful thing, and thank you all very much! I should also mention that I am generally considered a "lower-tier" conduit by many of my friends who are also trying to make sense of it all, but who have even less time than I to ferret things out. So I feel something of an obligation to them to provide a certain modicum of objective truth. So much for my preface.
Anyway... a few days ago a friend of mine alerted me to potential improprieties regarding Bill Frist's charity, World of Hope, Inc. At the time I had other things to do. Besides, I regard Frist as essentially a lame duck. He's not running for the Senate again (or so he says), and I would rate his chances at a serious run at the presidency at around nil. On those bases I dismissed any charges against Frist as something of a second-tier priority, at least in any political sense.
But then I got to thinking about the whole "culture of corruption" thread. It was then that the similarities hit me. And since I haven't seen the specific connection made here before (and forgive me if I am merely ignorant), I thought I'd bring it up. The argument is as follows...
Jack Abramoff ran a charity by the name of the Capital Athletic Foundation which, despite it's disingenuous name, was supposed to benefit various faith-based children's advocacy groups. The trouble is, many of the groups listed on their tax returns as receiving donations claimed never to have received them:
http://www.statesman.com/...
According to the article just mentioned, around the same time Abramoff's charity claimed to have donated $300,000 to P'TACH of New York, a nonprofit that helps Jewish children with learning disabilities (which apparently never received the money), DeLay (who already had connections with Abramoff's charity) started a charity of his own by the name of Celebrations for Children. It was begun with - can you guess? - $300,000 in seed money. By the way, according to that article, Delay's charity...
"Celebrations for Children was a short-lived effort to raise money for children's charities by providing donors with special access to DeLay, plus yacht trips and other enticements, during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Watchdog groups protested, claiming the fundraiser violated a new ban on accumulating unlimited "soft" money, and DeLay dropped it in May 2004."
So all of a sudden the charges against Frist don't seem so isolated. According to CBSNEWS...
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
... "Frist's charity, named World of Hope Inc., received 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."
That same article also mentioned that Frist reported a TOTAL of 96 donors. They claimed they distributed $3 million to charitable AIDS groups. The rest they claimed as overhead. So let's see... that's $1.4 million in overhead to oversee donations from 96 people - which, by the way, could have realistically donated directly to said charities. So WTF??
I seem to detect a pattern emerging here. Essentially, my question to all you more politically savvy types is this: do you also see a pattern here? Is it just me? Apart from (or in addition to) that, is this pattern of potential abuse fundamental to the convolution of faith-based charities and politics? This seems to me to be the ultimate in hubris and hypocrisy. It is hard to fathom anything more egregious. Additionally, and quite independent of that question, does anyone have any well-founded ideas as to how wide-spread the intertwining of charities of any type with politics is, regardless of (and in addition to) pedigree?