Mr Frost works "intermittently"

This has been an interesting debate. But the debate appears to be mainly on one side. The Right/Conservative/Moderate side debates the merits of socialized medicine. The Left screams and lies.

Both The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times have stories on the Frosts this morning, and the interesting point is the matter of whether they do, in any useful sense, represent the "working poor":

Mr. Frost works intermittently in woodworking and as a welder, while Mrs. Frost has a part-time job at a firm that provides services to publishers of medical journals.

Mr Frost works "intermittently". The unemployment rate in the Baltimore metropolitan area is four-percent. Perhaps he chooses to work "intermittently," just as he chooses to send his children to private school, and chooses to live in a 3,000-square-foot home. That's what free-born citizens in democratic societies do: choose. Sometimes those choices work out, and sometimes they don't. And, when they don't and catastrophe ensues, it's appropriate that the state should provide a safety net. But it should be a safety net of last resort, and it's far from clear that it is in this case.

Some of us have asked what Mr. Frost's parents and grandparent have done to help him. Of course the thought of members of a family helping out their kin has become slightly ridiculous in modern American when the government has replaced the black father in female headed households. It appears that well-to-do parents have turned their children who are looking to "find themselves" in their mid-forties over to the tender mercies of the State welfare system. Rugged individualism is as ridiculous as patriotism in this part of the population.

Mark Steyn pointed out (in addition to the paternal grandfather owning a big architectural firm), the maternal grandfather, who died last December, was a successful engineer with Douglas Aircraft and Bendix Avionics, and later was the VP of Engineering at Nurad Technologies, then worked at Tracor, before retiring and consulting for the Navy until he died.

Also, the follow-up stories in the Baltimore Sun and New York Times, now the Frosts claim they were refused insurance because one of the kids had a preexisting condition. This is a direct contradiction of the original Sun article which claimed they could not afford the cost of $1,200 per month.

I remember that, because they said it was "more than their mortgage". Now it comes out they paid $55,000 for their house in 1991. And they are still paying the mortgage on that and the commercial building.

The father, Halsey Frost, disbanded his company 1999, and "works intermittently". Disbanded in 1999, the same year Frost bought his $160,000 building? That seems odd.

Also, the NYT article admitted the Frost's receive rental income from the building.

I think Bonnie and Halsey Frost are the black sheep of their respective families. Afterall, Bonnie is college graduate but was working as a receptionist at veterinarian when they were married, then worked for Halsey's "company", and now works "part-time" for a book publisher. I think they are scammers who milk the system for what ever they can get from it.

I would not be surprised if Halsey Frost's "intermittent work" involves a lot of cash-only deals building cabinets and the like for people.

According to the Baltimore Sun http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.frosts10oct10,0,2541063.story?page=1&coll=bal_tab01_layout
the Frosts refused to show the paper their 2006 tax returns.
I have a feeling it’s because a huge chunk of their income is from sources other than work- rental income, parents, investments. I have a feeling the Frosts did very little work in 2006.

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