Posted on 09/06/2002 8:17:16 AM PDT by BADJOE
History teaches some very good lessons. They are hard to learn but our forefathers did a great job.
From the beginning of time man has overthrown one form of centralized government only to re-establish another one in its place. Our forefathers understood this far better than anyone ever had. They said governments are the eternal enemy of free men. They said that in order for man to remain free it would take a bloody revolution every other generation, unless you bound down (bastard) government with the chains of the constitution.
On another site this week a poster asked if anyone else hated government as much as he did. I replied to him
"Hell !! I thought you were not a good American if you didn't love our country and hate our government.
At least that is how I have always felt about it"
I think our forefathers had the same attitude that I have now. And I think it is inherent in the average Americans attitude to distrust and have disdain for any government, including ours. One of the hardest conclusions I had to arrive at as a young man, after having been a product of the public school system, was that our government was not on our side. As James Forrestahl, former secretary of the Navy, who suffered a mysterious death, once said about our State Department's foreign policy, " Stupidity is never a mark of consistancy. If they were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor".
Newt Gringrich put it in a humourous manner when talking about the attitude of Europeans. He related the following story. If you go to Europe and drive on the Autobahn, you feel pretty good cruising down the highway at 100 mph when some some German passes you doing 140 mph. Now he said if the Bundestag passed the 55mph speed limit law, every German would dutifully obey that law, untill the next election. They would vote the 55 mph crowd out of office and the no speed limit crowd in. In America Newt said "A speed limit sign is a benchmark of opportunity.
It is obvious that Yankees and Euros have entirely different attitudes about government's edicts. There are darn few Americans who do not break the speed limit laws everyday.
Now we come to the Free Republic. Once a free wheeling, joyful site for news and discussion of politics, economics, philosophy, ethics and morals. I could not understand the transformation that has taken place in the last six months. Camaraderie, the sense of family, and cooperation seems to have disappeared. Are the Freepers exhibiting the same disdain for the new FR as Americans have for our government?
Being from Texas I did not have the chance to vote for Jeffords. Now who was his primary challenger or 3rd party challenger in his state? This is not rocket science folks. When it comes to congressional elections those elected have to appeal to the voting base that they are competing for. That alone guarantees that in liberal states "Rinos" are going to be elected OR liberals will be elected. To argue otherwise is an obstinate refusal to face reality.
So no one that does not fit the "real conservative" litmus test should be thrown out of the party along with the GOP voters that make up 60% of the "not true conservatives?
And you can pretend Bob Dole didn't help drive a nail in what was once the GOP. So by you reasoning the 1994 Contract with America was not what got the GOP in power huh? Hey I remember 1994 & Conservative Dems couldn't wait to abandon the Democratic Party. Now the GOP is jumping to the DEMs if not in party then in RINO votes on important issues. Strange thing is though it's not the ones who crossed over to GOP in 1994. Simply put the GOP failed to stand it's ground and lost the senate. It is that simple. The DEM's can get liberals in their own ranks but the GOP leadership still can't understand that each time it moves left the Dems move the line further left not further to center or right.
You mean the ones that are now called "Rinos"?
http://tennessean.com/sii/99/09/13/frist13.shtml
POLITICS
Conflict-of-interest issue dogging Frist on health care Gannett News Service
Since his election five years ago, Republican Bill Frist has been the doctor of the U.S. Senate, applying his experience as a heart surgeon to issues such as Medicare and health-care reform.
The 47-year-old freshman senator from Tennessee has won praise from colleagues in both parties, not just for his expertise but also for rushing to treat stricken Capitol tourists.
But Frist's key role this year in blocking President Clinton's "patients' bill of rights" proposal has brought new questions from Democrats and even some Republicans about whether the senator has a conflict of interest in health policy issues -- not because he is a physician, but because of his ties to the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.
Nashville-based Columbia/HCA is headed by Frist's older brother, Thomas Frist Jr., who owns stock in the company worth about $375 million and is its largest individual shareholder. Sen. Frist owns Columbia/HCA stock worth as much as $25 million, and his wife holds stock worth more than $1 million, according to Senate financial disclosure reports.
Sen. Frist rejects suggestions that he has any conflict of interest and says the Senate Select Committee on Ethics backs him up. His background and connections, he says, are an asset when Congress deals with health care. Yet his ties to Columbia/HCA have handed an issue to Tennessee Democrats and touched off dissent even among some of Frist's supporters.
In an interview in Memphis during the congressional recess, Frist said he has never recused himself from any issue before the Senate. He says he keeps the company at arm's length and does not discuss legislation with his brother.
"I never worked for HCA," he said. "I had a tiny, tiny (investment) as a percentage of the company, couldn't influence the company ownership. I've never been on the board."
Frist says he has put those assets in a "blind trust." He acknowledges, however, he is aware that the money remains invested in Columbia/HCA, and he has reported the holdings and the income they produce in annual Senate financial disclosure reports.
Federal records show that the company has a great deal of interest in what happens on Capitol Hill: It has spent $760,000 over the past two years on lobbyists to influence legislation, including "patients' bill of rights" proposals.
The questions about Frist's role have implications far beyond the borders of Tennessee. Senate Republican leaders have looked to Frist, as a highly regarded physician, to sell the country on their vision of limited federal regulation of health-maintenance organizations, even as polls suggest the public is suspicious of managed care and wants more rigorous patient protections.
Frist, elected to the Senate in 1994 in an upset over Democratic incumbent James Sasser, has been regarded as a safe bet for re-election in 2000. His seat is one Republicans are counting on holding as they seek to preserve their 55-45 Senate majority.
But Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a two-term Democrat from Memphis, has begun laying the groundwork for what could become a serious challenge to Frist next year. Ford, 29, part of a prominent political family that has held his House seat for 25 years, traveled the length of Tennessee in August reciting Frist's ties to Columbia/HCA and his role in blocking broader patients' rights legislation.
Frist "has done nothing to distinguish himself in the U.S. Senate but vote to help himself and his company," Ford told a group of lawyers in Knoxville.
Ford points to cases in which Frist's Senate colleagues have taken themselves out of issues close to their own pocketbooks. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., who has a fortune in bank stocks, recused himself from banking legislation this year. And Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has recused himself from certain alcohol issues because of his wife's family holdings in a beer distributorship.
"I haven't talked to either one of them about that," Frist said of his colleagues.
After a bitter fight this summer, the Senate rejected the managed-care regulations proposed by Clinton, which were designed to extend protections to all Americans with health coverage. Instead, it approved a far more limited version pushed by Frist that would extend fewer rights to fewer Americans. Clinton has promised to veto that Senate GOP version, and the issue moves this month to the House of Representatives.
Frist's actions angered some fellow Tennessee physicians, who are generally Republicans and until now have been some of his most loyal backers.
Like doctors elsewhere, they chafe at the restrictions managed care has brought to their practices and resent the federal law that shields most employer-provided health-care plans from lawsuits by patients, a protection that Frist's bill would preserve.
"I really don't think his background is the real issue, but it smells of that," said Dr. David Gerkin, an ophthalmologist in Knoxville who until recently was president of the Tennessee Medical Association. "And when something smells, you don't want it to smell."
Dr. Charles Barnett, a Knoxville internist, said he gave Frist a campaign contribution a few months ago but now feels "sold out" and misled. "I think history has taught us that power corrupts. I hope that's not true about Bill, but I don't know. Facts are facts."
The 1994 merger of two hospital chains -- one of which, Hospital Corporation of America, was founded by Frist's brother and father in 1968 -- created Columbia/HCA.
The company is currently the target of a sweeping Justice Department investigation into allegations that it cheated hundreds of millions of dollars from federal health programs for the poor, the disabled and the elderly. In July, a federal jury in Florida convicted two company executives of defrauding the government.
Thomas Frist Jr., the company's 60-year-old chairman and chief executive, was promoted to that job when the board of directors ousted the previous chairman in 1997 in the face of the federal investigation.
Sen. Frist also says he does not know how Columbia/HCA would be affected by "patients' bill of rights" legislation.
The company, however, warns shareholders that it has a stake in health-care reform. In its quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Columbia/HCA says "proposals adverse to the business of the company" could be enacted. Managed care pays the bills for about 40% of Columbia/HCA patients.
A company spokesman, Jeff Prescott, says Columbia/HCA has no position on patients' rights legislation. But Prescott could not say why the company retained lobbyists for legislation it has no position on. James Free, head of a Washington firm that has disclosed lobbying on "patients' bill of rights" legislation for the hospital chain, did not return a reporter's call.
Prescott says the company defers on the issue to industry trade groups. Rick Pollack, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, says the group prefers Frist's version to the Democrats' bill.
So, does Frist have a conflict of interest on health issues?
The question also arose two years ago when Frist was named to a bipartisan commission formed to recommend reforms in Medicare, even though any reform plan would have enormous consequences for Columbia/HCA and other hospital companies. About 30% of Columbia/HCA's revenue comes from Medicare reimbursements.
In December 1997, Frist received a letter from Victor Baird, staff director of the Senate Ethics Committee, clearing him to participate on the Medicare panel. That letter, however, cautioned Frist that he might confront concerns broader than the points addressed in the Senate's rule book and that the final judgment rested with him.
When Ford began making his charges this summer about Frist's role in the "patients' bill of rights" debate, the senator obtained another letter from Baird. In that letter, dated July 30, Baird says Frist "was not prohibited" by Senate ethics rules from advocating or voting on the patients' rights legislation or "any other legislation of general applicability to the health-care industry."
Frist released that letter publicly, saying it clears him.
"There is no question in my mind," he said. "Is it ethical? Is it the right thing to do, to participate in the debate in the United States Senate? The whole purpose of my coming to the Senate is to bring in real-life experience."
Although Frist says the letter should close the issue, some experts say the ethics panel's staff ruling was based on Senate rules that define conflicts in the narrowest of terms.
Baird wrote that Senate rules permit Frist to vote on health issues because his stock doesn't amount to majority control of Columbia/HCA and because it is not the only company that could be affected by the legislation. To have majority control of Columbia/HCA would require owning $6 billion in stock. Baird would not comment for this story.
"There is a long pattern of the Senate ethics committee looking the other way on what nine of 10 Americans would say is a conflict of interest," said Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group that monitors Congress. "To the average person, someone who is pushing legislation in a prominent way, and they have millions of dollars in holdings, that looks like a conflict of interest."
Frist's leading role in this year's debate over patients' rights, Lewis added, "almost defies credulity. It is incredibly reckless. I don't know what Frist is thinking."
No actually they pretty well stay consevative Senator Campbell-R CO was a plus. BTW if you had actually bothered to read the post I addressed that issue. Tell me when were Spectre, Snowe, Collins, Jeffords, Thompson, Lott, Stevens-AK, and others Dems?
You sure showed him.
I don't get in anyone's face over how they vote so leave me out of it.
It went down .. LOL
And I will not vote for a LOSER!!!
I didn't know it was down.
They'll be back after the lick their wounds. Again.
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