Frist's World of Hope Awaits 2008
posted on: Monday, December 19, 2005
While the leaders of so-called self-regulating national nonprofit infrastructure organizations ducked their heads in the sand in 2004, NCRP took on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s “World of Hope” fundraiser and condemned it as an exercise in the misuse of charity and philanthropy.
In truth, we erred because we didn’t do enough. With limited resources to deploy, we issued a stinging critique and left it at that when we should have probably taken apart Frist’s increasingly stellar imitation of his House counterpart, Congressman Tom DeLay. We simply never imagined that Dr. Bill Frist’s creation of a nonprofit to raise money—at the Republican National Convention—for AIDS charities, some of a highly dubious nature, could approach the disgraceful depths established and honed by Tom DeLay and his DeLay Foundation for Kids and proposed Celebrations for Children.
Under the guise of providing housing for foster children, DeLay was raising money through his foundation from power players without having to reveal, per 501(c)(3) regulations, who the donors might be, what benefits might be given to sitting members of Congress and their families, or just about anything else for that matter. In addition, Celebrations for Children was to be staffed by DeLay’s daughter and others who were all staff members of his political campaign or the various DeLay-related Political Action Committees. NCRP even went as far as calling for the Internal Revenue Service to deny Celebrations for Children nonprofit tax status.
Maybe we simply couldn’t believe that Bill Frist could function much like someone of the increasingly visible corruption of Tom DeLay, recently an indicted visitor in Texas state courts and likely to be caught up, like his colleague, Ohio’s Bob Ney, in the rapidly unfolding scandal around Jack Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation. Maybe we were deterred by Frist’s promise, notwithstanding the 501(c)(3) status of World of Hope, to reveal the names of the donors to the organization.
At the time, NCRP alone among the national nonprofits challenged Frist, though we hadn’t had even a peep of support from the supposed nonprofit leadership groups when we took on DeLay, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Saxby Chambliss, or even Jack Abramoff for that matter. We suggested that Frist’s fundraiser, whether he intended it or not, would serve as a venue for donors to buy invaluable “face time” with senior Republican lawmakers, some 10 or so from the Senate to be the featured attractions at the World of Hope fundraiser. We criticized Frist’s pledge not to accept lobbyists’ donations as meaningless, since the corporations that hired lobbyists would be able to make the donations directly to buy access. We raised questions about the AIDS charities that Frist had preselected for support, noting one’s leadership by a pastor known for his high-profile support of President Bush’s faith-based initiatives, another run by the son of Rev. Billy Graham. And we noted that the Senator’s charity was run not by AIDS services professionals, but by Frist campaign operatives.
An Associated Press wire story (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/17/politics/main1134721.shtml)
lays out the case against Frist. Here are the facts from the AP story, with some extra information from NCRP:
World of Hope finally filed its Form 990 information with the IRS, nine months late, revealing that despite Frist’s earlier revelation that 96 named donors contributed to World of Hope, the “lion’s share” came from 18 donors. Which of the 96 were actually the 18 whose donations ranged from $97,950 to $267,735 was not revealed in the 990—that’s confidential. One can guess that the big donors might include 3M, Eli Lilly, and Goldman Sachs, listed among World’s financial sources, but whether and how much, no one will say. All the AP report revealed, probably from the identity-redacted 990 information, is that 11 of the charity's 18 biggest donors gave $97,950 each, that one gave $100,000 and that the rest gave more than $245,000 each.
The fundraiser generated $4.4 million in contributions, but only $3 million went to the AIDS charities. The remaining $1.4 million went to overhead, including more than $450,000 in consulting fees to two companies run by Linus Catignani, Frist’s chief campaign fundraiser. The AP story revealed that one of the Catignani’s firms was co-run by Linda Bond, the wife of Missouri Republican senator Kit Bond.
Doing the compensated legal work for the charity was the law firm of Jill Holtzman Vogel, a Republican candidate for the state senate in Tennessee who, according to the AP, has received substantial political contributions from Catignani & Bond. It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Frist’s spokesman is Jill’s husband Alex Vogel, co-founder of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, formerly chief counsel to Senator Frist and counsel to both Frist’s PAC (Volunteer PAC) and, of course, World of Hope.
World of Hope gave money to six charities, not five. One of them, as noted, was Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, receiving $490,000. Senate records reveal, however, that not long before the World of Hope fundraiser, Senator Frist went to Chad, Sudan, and Kenya on a junket paid for by Samaritan’s Purse.
NCRP of course has done its own additional research on the World of Hope connections and would add the following to the AP story:
We found at least three Frist trips sponsored by Samaritan’s Purse, one shortly before the Republican convention between 8/06/04 and 8/11/04 to Chad, Sudan, and Kenya costing $1,594, a one day trip on 9/19/03 to Nashville, TN (with Mrs. Frist) costing $1,524, and a third from 8/27/03 to 9/01/03 to Namibia and Kenya (costs undetermined). Since the Convention fundraiser, Samaritan’s Purse has continued its subsidization of Frist’s trips, including a one-day trip on 9/04/05 for the Senator and his son to Mobile, AL costing $3,311 and a trip on 10/07/05 to 10/08/05, again for the Senator and Mrs. Frist to Asheville, NC for $2,130. (see Political Money Line at www.fecinfo.com for a complete database on the sponsors and costs of trips for members of Congress)
This isn’t the first time that Samaritan’s Purse has appeared on NCRP’s radar screen. NCRP’s study of conservative foundations’ support for evangelical religious organizations in the political “culture wars” shows conservative foundations funneling $6.6 million into Samaritan’s Purse between 1999 and 2002. Samaritan’s leader, Rev. Franklin Graham, has received substantial publicity for delivering the sermon at President Bush’s first inauguration and, more recently, for denouncing Islam as an “evil” religion. Less well known is Samaritan’s Purse scoring a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2004 to work on abstinence programs to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, a grant received despite the agency’s previous censuring of Rev. Franklin’s charity for engaging in proselytizing while working with federal money providing assistance in earthquake-ravaged El Salvador.
NCRP’s research reveals that Pacto de Esperanza, run by Rev. Luis Cortes, was quite connected to the Bush Administration, with Cortes playing a leading role in organizing the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, featuring President Bush, in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Cortes’s Philadelphia-based community development arm, Nueva Esperanza, not surprisingly in 2002 scored a $2.5 million grant in the first round of President Bush’s Compassion Capital Fund grants for faith-based organizations, plus in 2004 another $2.76 million as the first installment of $11 million over three years in 2004 from the Bush Administration’s Department of Labor. While close to Bush, Frist, and other conservative Republicans, and identified by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelicals, Cortes is politically ambidextrous, only last month having met with Howard Dean “at the Democratic National Committee headquarters to discuss the shared values and priorities between the Democratic Party and the Hispanic and faith based communities”, according to a DNC press release (http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/11/dnc_chairman_de_3.php). The DNC announcement didn’t mention Esperanza’s AIDS program which appears to focus on ministering to people with AIDS to save their souls while on their death beds.
Senator Dr. Frist cares about AIDS, but not without other considerations seeping in. When questioned on national TV in late 2004 by an incredulous George Stephanopoulos, Frist said he didn’t know whether or not tears and sweat could transmit HIV and AIDS, a canard propagated by far right evangelists. Of course Frist knows the truth (he finally acknowledged to Stephanopoulos that it would be “very hard” to contract AIDS from tears and sweat), but he played dumb to maintain this foothold with the religious right. With World of Hope, he may have cared about funneling some money to AIDS charities, but he was also thinking about his image. A Linda Bond memo to lobbyists before the fundraiser underscored that the fundraiser’s success is “hugely important to Senator Frist”. No wonder, since his campaign staff for a potential 2008 run for President has been waiting, honing its skills, and getting paid behind the camouflage of his World of Hope charity.
While the leaders of so-called self-regulating national nonprofit infrastructure organizations ducked their heads in the sand in 2004, NCRP took on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s “World of Hope” fundraiser and condemned it as an exercise in the misuse of charity and philanthropy.
In truth, we erred because we didn’t do enough. With limited resources to deploy, we issued a stinging critique and left it at that when we should have probably taken apart Frist’s increasingly stellar imitation of his House counterpart, Congressman Tom DeLay. We simply never imagined that Dr. Bill Frist’s creation of a nonprofit to raise money—at the Republican National Convention—for AIDS charities, some of a highly dubious nature, could approach the disgraceful depths established and honed by Tom DeLay and his DeLay Foundation for Kids and proposed Celebrations for Children.
Under the guise of providing housing for foster children, DeLay was raising money through his foundation from power players without having to reveal, per 501(c)(3) regulations, who the donors might be, what benefits might be given to sitting members of Congress and their families, or just about anything else for that matter. In addition, Celebrations for Children was to be staffed by DeLay’s daughter and others who were all staff members of his political campaign or the various DeLay-related Political Action Committees. NCRP even went as far as calling for the Internal Revenue Service to deny Celebrations for Children nonprofit tax status.
Maybe we simply couldn’t believe that Bill Frist could function much like someone of the increasingly visible corruption of Tom DeLay, recently an indicted visitor in Texas state courts and likely to be caught up, like his colleague, Ohio’s Bob Ney, in the rapidly unfolding scandal around Jack Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation. Maybe we were deterred by Frist’s promise, notwithstanding the 501(c)(3) status of World of Hope, to reveal the names of the donors to the organization.
At the time, NCRP alone among the national nonprofits challenged Frist, though we hadn’t had even a peep of support from the supposed nonprofit leadership groups when we took on DeLay, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Saxby Chambliss, or even Jack Abramoff for that matter. We suggested that Frist’s fundraiser, whether he intended it or not, would serve as a venue for donors to buy invaluable “face time” with senior Republican lawmakers, some 10 or so from the Senate to be the featured attractions at the World of Hope fundraiser. We criticized Frist’s pledge not to accept lobbyists’ donations as meaningless, since the corporations that hired lobbyists would be able to make the donations directly to buy access. We raised questions about the AIDS charities that Frist had preselected for support, noting one’s leadership by a pastor known for his high-profile support of President Bush’s faith-based initiatives, another run by the son of Rev. Billy Graham. And we noted that the Senator’s charity was run not by AIDS services professionals, but by Frist campaign operatives.
An Associated Press wire story (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/17/politics/main1134721.shtml)
lays out the case against Frist. Here are the facts from the AP story, with some extra information from NCRP:
World of Hope finally filed its Form 990 information with the IRS, nine months late, revealing that despite Frist’s earlier revelation that 96 named donors contributed to World of Hope, the “lion’s share” came from 18 donors. Which of the 96 were actually the 18 whose donations ranged from $97,950 to $267,735 was not revealed in the 990—that’s confidential. One can guess that the big donors might include 3M, Eli Lilly, and Goldman Sachs, listed among World’s financial sources, but whether and how much, no one will say. All the AP report revealed, probably from the identity-redacted 990 information, is that 11 of the charity's 18 biggest donors gave $97,950 each, that one gave $100,000 and that the rest gave more than $245,000 each.
The fundraiser generated $4.4 million in contributions, but only $3 million went to the AIDS charities. The remaining $1.4 million went to overhead, including more than $450,000 in consulting fees to two companies run by Linus Catignani, Frist’s chief campaign fundraiser. The AP story revealed that one of the Catignani’s firms was co-run by Linda Bond, the wife of Missouri Republican senator Kit Bond.
Doing the compensated legal work for the charity was the law firm of Jill Holtzman Vogel, a Republican candidate for the state senate in Tennessee who, according to the AP, has received substantial political contributions from Catignani & Bond. It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Frist’s spokesman is Jill’s husband Alex Vogel, co-founder of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, formerly chief counsel to Senator Frist and counsel to both Frist’s PAC (Volunteer PAC) and, of course, World of Hope.
World of Hope gave money to six charities, not five. One of them, as noted, was Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, receiving $490,000. Senate records reveal, however, that not long before the World of Hope fundraiser, Senator Frist went to Chad, Sudan, and Kenya on a junket paid for by Samaritan’s Purse.
NCRP of course has done its own additional research on the World of Hope connections and would add the following to the AP story:
We found at least three Frist trips sponsored by Samaritan’s Purse, one shortly before the Republican convention between 8/06/04 and 8/11/04 to Chad, Sudan, and Kenya costing $1,594, a one day trip on 9/19/03 to Nashville, TN (with Mrs. Frist) costing $1,524, and a third from 8/27/03 to 9/01/03 to Namibia and Kenya (costs undetermined). Since the Convention fundraiser, Samaritan’s Purse has continued its subsidization of Frist’s trips, including a one-day trip on 9/04/05 for the Senator and his son to Mobile, AL costing $3,311 and a trip on 10/07/05 to 10/08/05, again for the Senator and Mrs. Frist to Asheville, NC for $2,130. (see Political Money Line at www.fecinfo.com for a complete database on the sponsors and costs of trips for members of Congress)
This isn’t the first time that Samaritan’s Purse has appeared on NCRP’s radar screen. NCRP’s study of conservative foundations’ support for evangelical religious organizations in the political “culture wars” shows conservative foundations funneling $6.6 million into Samaritan’s Purse between 1999 and 2002. Samaritan’s leader, Rev. Franklin Graham, has received substantial publicity for delivering the sermon at President Bush’s first inauguration and, more recently, for denouncing Islam as an “evil” religion. Less well known is Samaritan’s Purse scoring a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2004 to work on abstinence programs to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, a grant received despite the agency’s previous censuring of Rev. Franklin’s charity for engaging in proselytizing while working with federal money providing assistance in earthquake-ravaged El Salvador.
NCRP’s research reveals that Pacto de Esperanza, run by Rev. Luis Cortes, was quite connected to the Bush Administration, with Cortes playing a leading role in organizing the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, featuring President Bush, in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Cortes’s Philadelphia-based community development arm, Nueva Esperanza, not surprisingly in 2002 scored a $2.5 million grant in the first round of President Bush’s Compassion Capital Fund grants for faith-based organizations, plus in 2004 another $2.76 million as the first installment of $11 million over three years in 2004 from the Bush Administration’s Department of Labor. While close to Bush, Frist, and other conservative Republicans, and identified by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelicals, Cortes is politically ambidextrous, only last month having met with Howard Dean “at the Democratic National Committee headquarters to discuss the shared values and priorities between the Democratic Party and the Hispanic and faith based communities”, according to a DNC press release (http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/11/dnc_chairman_de_3.php). The DNC announcement didn’t mention Esperanza’s AIDS program which appears to focus on ministering to people with AIDS to save their souls while on their death beds.
Senator Dr. Frist cares about AIDS, but not without other considerations seeping in. When questioned on national TV in late 2004 by an incredulous George Stephanopoulos, Frist said he didn’t know whether or not tears and sweat could transmit HIV and AIDS, a canard propagated by far right evangelists. Of course Frist knows the truth (he finally acknowledged to Stephanopoulos that it would be “very hard” to contract AIDS from tears and sweat), but he played dumb to maintain this foothold with the religious right. With World of Hope, he may have cared about funneling some money to AIDS charities, but he was also thinking about his image. A Linda Bond memo to lobbyists before the fundraiser underscored that the fundraiser’s success is “hugely important to Senator Frist”. No wonder, since his campaign staff for a potential 2008 run for President has been waiting, honing its skills, and getting paid behind the camouflage of his World of Hope charity.
posted by NCRP at
10:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Blog Home