Tumulty is married to Paul Richter, who covers the State Department for the Los Angeles Times.
Posted on 10/11/2007 6:04:41 AM PDT by kristinn
Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced first-hand to something else that most kids his age haven't: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age. It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website Freerepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also noted that his father purchased a $160,000 commercial space in 1999.
SNIP
And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.
In short, just as the radio spot claimed, the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help.
SNIP
While the family continues to support the vetoed bill that would expand the program to 4 million more children, they are hoping to remove themselves from the middle of the storm. After giving a few interviews, Halsey and Bonnie Frost now say they don't want to say anything more, though network camera crews have planted themselves in front of their house.
SNIP
Politics has never been a gentle game. As far back as 1895, satirist Finley Peter Dunne's fictional saloonkeeper Martin Dooley observed that women, children and prohibitionists would do well to stay out of it, because "politics ain't beanbag." But surely, even Mr. Dooley could never have imagined a day would come when a mere seventh grader could be swift-boated.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
My previous response was a little snarky, I apologize.
But your post DID remind me of a funny book I read on home repair. It’s first topic was how to add a second floor to your house. The first step: Remove roof, set aside for later use.
Sometimes, writing the step is a lot easier than performing it.
With much respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I was looking around for SCHIP analyses, and that came up, the fact that low-cost insurance plans were few and far between, because of SCHIP.
OKhere’s my apology...sorry you did say that.
I’m not arguing that this is an impoverished family that should get heath insurance/health care paid for by the taxpayers. I’m arguing that we need to be very careful when launching this sort of attack. When we stick to documentable facts (e.g. as Buckhead and Little Green Footballs did with regard to “Memogate”), we have a great deal more impact, and give ourselves a lot more credibility, than if we present a pile accusations, including some significant ones that we have no evidence for, and that political opponents can quickly put us on the spot over.
When the matter under debate is the ability of a family to afford private health insurance, claiming they had $40,000 a year to spend on private school tuition, when in fact they did no such thing, is not a minor detail. We would do much better to ask questions like, why, with the education and family wealth that they have, they are earning so little money. The real answer is likely to be that they choose not to do types of work that would pay better, because they have ways of maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle without doing better paying work. That’s an uncomfortable fact that wouldn’t sit well with many of the truly financially troubled people who push their representatives to vote for programs like this.
What’s unfortunately getting lost in the shuffle is the problem that formal income is the only criteria for eligibility for this program. Assets don’t count! You could have a billion dollars worth of assets, and as long as you’ve got them invested in things (e.g. art, jewelry) that don’t produce actual income for tax purposes, you can qualify for this program.
Agreed.
“With much respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
LOL.
Sorry, I have the tax documents and home appraisals that demonstrate what I say.
How long have you been involved with Maryland real estate?
sitetest
Please tell me how you KNOW they did NOT spend $40,000 a year on their two children’s tuition. Facts please.
I apologize for being a bit snarky in my response. I know that my use of the generic phrase “shooting the messenger” could have been misconstrued, and while I tried to ameliorate that possibility, it was certainly to be expected that some would still interpret “messenger” literally.
As to the other item, I think from your subsequent responses that you are not saying you saw a specific item that said the granparents donated money, but that it was a reasonable inference. I haven’t been able to find ANY news sources that have clarified the amount the family pays, which children go to which school, and how much the parents or other family members donate to the school.
I’m not attacking you for it, or even trying to pester you, I just thought I might have missed an important piece of information.
Thank you for the post.
Endowments from alumni and other sources. I would bet that most students get some scholarship unless their parents have an upper middle class income. No doubt the Frosts are experts at making their income look low so they can qualify for the most scholarships and handouts.
Your point is well-taken. If we can argue that the parents of the child, before injecting him in a national debate, should have prepared themselves for the consequences of that act then we ought to adopt the same rule for ourselves. Whatever we say will be scrutinized by those seeking to use it for partisan purposes, and they’ll use it out of context in any event, but why give them a free shot?
2. THE Rich Grandparents paid
3. The Rich grandparents "donated" $40,000.00 to the school, tax Deductible and then the school GAVE a scholarship to the kids.
4. Alumni paid
5.the Tooth Fairy paid.
WHO PAID...let's see some DOCUMENTATION!!!
If your post #44 is not true, then you need to tell the moderators to retract it.
I found thwe picture of the Eliza Corwin Frost Child Center of Christ Church banner on Google but I can’t find the thread on FR that it was on....and THAT is where it was discussed that the grandparents DONATED the $40,000 and the kids got a $39,000 break on the tuition. dON’T KNOW IF IT WAS CONJECTURE OR FACT....I do want to know.
Unless you can show some evidence that the grandparents donated anything to the school, you need to retract your post #44.
Thanks. That gives me some stuff to search for.
No bias in that article. /s
When RATS started hiding behind CHILDREN with lies is when politics turned nastier. They are no better than the cowards that do the same thing in the Middle East.
These RATS are the same people who want to get immunized before they go campaign at NASCAR! I guess they think they are going to get cooties or something by being around NORMAL, middle class people.
Tumulty is married to Paul Richter, who covers the State Department for the Los Angeles Times.
Remove my post #44 til proven true...thanks. I was re-stating something from a thread yesterday.
As you note, a tax assessment is NOT a reliable indicator of "value."
DBM reporters like Tumulty, who use the tax assessor's figure as a measure of "value" are misleading readers who probably think it means market value. It doesn't!
It's recent sales of "comparables" that are more indicative of a house's value than a tax assessment. And the fact that a smaller house, on the same block as the Frosts, sold for $485,000, makes me think $260,000 is a very lowball figure.
it was built in 1936 and has one bathroom
That's what the official record states, but we don't know if that's still true. Like the tax assessment, it might've been recorded years ago, before "improvements" (officially permit-ted or not) were made.
And we do know the Frosts have made recent "improvements" such as this fancy new kitchen.
Tax assessors can miss a lot, too. I had a tax assessor re-evaluate my property a couple of years ago. When I let him inside, he just glanced around for a few seconds and didn't bother going above my first floor (I have 2 1/2 stories). He also simply took my word for it how many bathrooms we have!
Btw, I wonder if the tax assessor (and the Drive-Bys) have noticed that Frosts have a "carriage house" at the rear of their property?
FReeper RGSpincich discovered the Frosts have had some work done on the "carriage house" when he pulled up the online public record of construction permits.
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