Posted on 10/08/2007 3:28:15 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
The media piled on when President Bush used his veto pen on this children's health insurance bill. They tried to drop the absolute moral authority bomb on it big time and paint him as not caring about children. Now it looks like a little backfire is on the horizon.
On September 29th, 12 year old Graeme Frost of Maryland got to do the Democrats’ radio address, in which he told his story of how he and his sister were seriously injured in a car accident, and if it hadn’t been for SCHIP, they wouldn’t be here today. The Baltimore Sun did a story on the family, in which it stated the family couldn’t get health insurance through their work.
"Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work."
There were many others in the media that swallowed the story whole with its hook. All of them were missing greatly in one major thing, facts.
Freerepublic's icwhatudo, managed to find plenty of missing facts using google:
"First, Mr. Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, owns his own woodworking design studio, Frostworks, so his claim that he can’t get health insurance through work is shockingly deceptive. He chooses not to get health care for his family. Second, Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the very exclusive Park School, which has a tuition of $20,000 a year, per child. Third, they live in a 3,000+ square foot home in a neighborhood with smaller homes that are selling for at least $400,000. "
Dan Collins concludes:
"I’m glad little Graham and his family were able to get help, and I hope he reaches full rehabilitation. But perhaps the Democrats ought to take more care in the spokespeople they choose, if they wish to tug at our heartstrings."
Then again, as Mark Steyn says:
"But who needs facts when you've got the human-interest angle sewn up?"
Roundup of blogosphere reactions at Stop The ACLU
bump
How many reporters does the WaPo and Old York Times have and they get scooped by the pajama truth brigade.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Has it been verified beyond a doubt that the two children attend the expensive private school?
Hats off to icwhatudo. The MSM doesn’t seem as invincible as they want us to believe when good people take them on. I wait for the day when we read about the MSM as a matter of history. They do not deserve the freedoms they have.
So many questions. Who was driving the car the kids were in? Uninsured? Who was driving the other car? Also uninsured? Was either one drunk, or an illegal alien?
There were many others in the media that swallowed the story whole with its hook. All of them were missing greatly in one major thing, facts.
Freerepublic's icwhatudo, managed to find plenty of missing facts using google: "First, Mr. Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, owns his own woodworking design studio, Frostworks, so his claim that he can’t get health insurance through work is shockingly deceptive. He chooses not to get health care for his family. Second, Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the very exclusive Park School, which has a tuition of $20,000 a year, per child. Third, they live in a 3,000+ square foot home in a neighborhood with smaller homes that are selling for at least $400,000. "
So regardless...how to they pay tuition of $20k for 2 kids and a $400k home on 45 grand? Either A- they lied or B- the MSM lied.
“What Liberals fear the most is exposure of their lies and deceit.”
Think: cockroaches and sunlight.
Thanks.
Wow use of our “great” public schools freeing up tens of thousands of dollars spent at a private K-12 school could buy one a decent amount of insurance.
The fact that we didn’t take the boy’s word for it, and checked out the story to see if it was true, just shows how mean-spirited conservatives are. lol
Perhaps one day in the future we will see another headline which reads “Baltimore man arrested for tax evasion”.
Now I’m going to have to pay more attention to the details of those kinds of articles.
This is exactly why demorats want to shut down talk radio and gatekeep the internet. So this kind of lie cannot be exposed to the unwashed masses.
Hats off to you, icwhatudo!
I’m not applauding until I see some actual facts from the anti-Frost side. I’ve seen several versions of this diatribe claiming that the family is clearly able to shell out $40,000 a year for private school, but not one iota of evidence for that. Most “exclusive” private schools have a lot of kids on scholarship, and for kids from families earning $45,000 a year, often full scholarships. We don’t know that they’ve paid a dime for tuition, but if they own a home in Baltimore (even if they have no equity whatsoever in it) you can be sure they’re paying huge taxes to fund the public schools that are too dangerous and academically useless to send their kids to.
The Baltimore Sun article says the family couldn’t find private health insurance for less than $1200 a month. Do we know that’s not true? Do we know that one of the parents or children didn’t have some pre-existing condition that made cheaper private insurance unavailable to them? And given that the state program was available to them at their income level, would all the accusers really have opted for the $1200/month private option?
And about this woodworking business that the accusers are quick to assume is profitable and could sell it’s building “purchased in 1999 for $160,000” to round up plenty of cash, do we know if the equity in the building (if any) is pledged to the bank that has financed the business and the building purchase? This sounds like calling family farmers “rich” because the land and equipment they own, and eke out a modest living with — all mortgaged/financed up to the hilt — is worth a million dollars.
The very nice house? Perhaps they were trying to make money by renovating and selling the house, making use of the father’s woodworking business to render the project profitable.
If we’re going to accuse political opponents of playing fast and loose with the facts, we need to be a whole lot more careful about the “facts” that we use in our accusations. Maybe they really are big-time moochers, but if we’re going to make that accusation as part of a political argument, we’d better do some real fact-checking first.
I don’t think government programs are the right answer, but the existence of government programs and regulations (like the one mandating free emergency treatment for everyone, including gangbangers and illegal aliens) are the reason medical care and insurance are so expensive that many families really can’t afford it, especially after they’ve been taxed for all the government programs they aren’t eligible for or wouldn’t dream of using (think Baltimore public schools). We’d advance our political objective a lot better by carefully explaining how government medical and other programs are the underlying cause of many working families’ inability to handle their medical expenses privately, rather than making a bunch of unsupported claims about how this particular family could have afforded to.
I’ll have you know that’s me holding the second sign in the back...it was an operation I ran with Protest Warrior and yes I am 100% serious....the woman in the front is a 4-foot 11-inch conservative live wire named Rona...
YOU ARE AWESOME. I wish I could have joined you.
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