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 ...
I’ll still bet that NO ONE will LEAK.
Given the city injunction, the recent spat of construction on the property and the lack of a principal residence exemption, could be that Frost got caught trying to create seperate illegal rental units.
Possibly converting the Carriage house and/or the house itself. Attempting to slip in a couple of rental units in a residential area always gets the neighbors’ attention.
Swiftly followed by the building inspector’s attention and a stop work order.
We’ll see. It may be that the family will be sufficiently discredited in short order that the fuming Park School parents won’t feel the need to engineer leaks. But I sure wouldn’t want to be working in the school’s financial assistance office right now!
I hear the Frosts have declined to release their tax returns, and while I wouldn’t expect them to release complete unredacted returns, if they were so willing to have their child put on TV to promote this socialist scheme, there isn’t a good reason not to release redacted copies of the 1040 only, showing the key numbers (unless they have plenty to hide).
It's already ugly, babe, so let's get ready to rumble.
Who's got the next birthday - we always plan this stuff out at somebodies birthday party ...................... FRegards
I think you totally missed my points. Though that may be my fault as I made them in a belabored way.
To re-state briefly:
1. Tax assessment figures are not the same as market value.
2. Tax assessment records are not always accurate, e.g. for number of bathrooms.
3. Journalists who try to minimize the value of the Frosts' real estate holdings, by quoting tax assessment figures as if they represented market "value," are misleading their readers.
But good work again, RGSpincich. You're the one who found the Frosts' carriage house.
Now you've found an injunction against their proceeding with alterations? Curiouser and curiouser.
I'm not going to speculate on that carriage house's use, or non-use.
But the very existence of a "carriage house" (!) --and that's the Baltimore building authority's word for the structure, not something you made up-- is just mindboggling.
I mean, if the DBM had done their job and investigated this family before the Democrats pushed their child onto the world stage, and it was revealed that the Frosts...
1. own a large home with a fancy new kitchen
2. own a commercial property, for which they receive rental income
3. and they own a large "carriage house" (!) on the rear of their property...
...would the Dems and the Frosts have wanted to go onstage with this fake "poor family" script?
It's clear the Dems set out to give us a modern-day Cratchit family (complete with Tiny Tim), all set to go up against the eeeeevil Scrooge (aka George Bush). But they blew it!
Why doesn't she and her hubby demand a 1,200 per month reduction in taxes? Why doesn't she ask herself why she thinks other people- for example, single people and childless couples- should be forced to pay for her children's health care, and every pediatrician be for all practical purposes turned into just another government employee?
If she and hubby can't support kids why did she have them? Why is her decision everbody else's fault and responsibility?
Why doesn't she sacrifice some of her wealth and comfort to get this coverage if she thinks it so critical that it is worth using government to steal from other people?
The Frosts were so PROUD that they only made $45,000 a year yet they won’t show us the DOCUMENTATION of that??? hmmmmmmmm...what COULD they be HIDING?
The $1200.00 a month is for insurance NOW...AFTER the kids have the brain damage!! It would have been a LOT CHEAPER BEFORE the ACCIDENT!
Yet when a family willfully injects itself into a partisan political debate about income levels and government welfare, any available PUBLIC records regarding their income and assets are somehow off limits?"
WOW! EXCELLENT POINT!!!
Why thank you.
He did not say "paying"; he said "they were able to come up with...."
They were able to secure the value of these scholarships, with a market value of $40K. It doesn't really matter how. What matters is that liberals think that "free" means no one has to pay. Actually, other parents who pay full tuition subsidize those who don't. Taxpayers subsidize those who use "government" handouts for tuition. Grandparents sometimes are the ones who pay. The point is that the family wanted this luxury level of education, when there might have been other ways to spend their money, such as on health insurance, so that the taxpayers, other parents at the school, grandparents or whomever wouldn't have been "taxed" for their children's misfortune.
Americans, particularly conservatives, are among the most generous people on earth. There is always a great outpouring for real cases of need brought to the public's attention. But most people who work for their money do not want the government to confiscate the money, redistribute it according to "progressive" ideology, and then spin it as "good conscience." It isn't charity if it isn't voluntary.
It is quite possible that this family is ‘hard working’. But they have no right to have multiple vehicles, a nice house, and all their kids in private school, then expect the taxpayers to pick up the cost of their health insurance.
Most private schools are non-profit entities, and have a trust fund or endowment set up by the founder(s). If a wealthy landowner in the 1800s or early 1900s left $100,000 to a school set up in those days, the endowment would compound and its land would appreciate greatly. (The Park School under discussion here was founded in 1912, and the formerly-farm real estate it is sitting on is worth many millions today.)
Such schools also have boards of directors, usually composed of alumni or parents who are lawyers or business persons. They manage and invest the assets of the school, and are usually aware that if you take funds from outside sources such as a foundation, you will dance to that tune. Hence, unless the school is specifically aligned with a progressive agenda, they try to maintain their independence. As one example, another private school nearby to the Park School rents a parcel of its large acreage to a wealthy investment firm for a suburban office complex, deriving substantial monthly income.
Traditionally, private schools were mainly populated by established families and old money, hence, more on the capitalist end of the spectrum. That is now changing; but I don't think the Park School has gone over to the Dark Side yet. (I live in the area.)
Secondly, as anyone who has ever attended a private school or university knows too well, the presidents of these schools may have started out as educators, but end up as Chief Fund-Raising Officers. There is a benefit auction, flea market, golf tournament, celebrity tennis match, gourmet dinner with a distinguished alumni, cruise, raffle, or similar fund-raising event at least monthly and sometimes more often. For the rest of one's life, long after graduation, alumni and their parents and grandparents receive fund appeals several times a year.
I know of a family whose child went to private kindergarten, private K-8, private undergrad and private grad school. They receive appeals from one or another of these schools nearly every week.
And lastly, there has been a great push towards giving underprivileged children scholarships ever since the Civil Rights era, and most of these schools have responded with scholarships for minority kids out of the funds described above.
I’ve seen that “Stillson for Senator” graphic on a couple of threads, and don’t know what it came from — was it a movie?
I truly doubt that. All the private school parents are well aware that the school offers scholarships, and regard it as a community form of charity, part of the price of shielding their kids from the environment in the public schools.
Of course they’re aware the school offers scholarships, but they probably weren’t aware that kids from families who were obviously living very comfortably were paying almost nothing. Public discussion will be muted due to the subsequent accident and injuries to the kids, but private discussion will be intense, and I wouldn’t even be surprised if a head or two rolls. There are no doubt many families there who are living in much more modest homes and working at much less pleasant jobs, while paying a lot more or even full sticker price.
Yes, from the Dead Zone,1983. Martin Sheen is the creepy presidential candidate who uses the child as a shield when he's being shot at. It's meant to show what Hillary and the dems do when they hide behind the kids.
I agree with you on that; however, your earlier post said they would all be phoning the school about it seemingly in response to the news articles. I think your backpedaled assessment above is more likely. And I also think the injuries have probably been heavily publicized at the school already, making anyone who complains feel like a piker.
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