The latest liberal deception is their “tug the heartstrings” story which they rolled out nationwide by using a 12 year old kid named Graeme Frost from Maryland to give the radio response to President Bush. The kid was in a accident with his sister and were severely injured. The Baltimore Sun:
Graeme, a seventh-grader at the Park School, has a message for the president.
“If I could speak to him, I would say, ‘You have to sign this bill,'” he told reporters yesterday during his first visit to the Capitol. “I’m guessing he wants this money for Iraq. Our future isn’t in Iraq. It’s here.”
The blond, bespectacled youth rose at 6 a.m. in his family’s home in the Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore yesterday for the trip to Washington.
Earlier in the week, two staffers from the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had called to ask Graeme about his health care experience.
Graeme and his 9-year-old sister, Gemma, were passengers in the family SUV in December 2004 when it hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Both were taken to a hospital with severe brain trauma. Graeme was in a coma for a week and still requires physical therapy.
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.
Having priced private insurance that would cost more than their mortgage – about $1,200 a month – they continue to rely on the government program. In Maryland, families that earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level – about $60,000 for a family of four – are eligible.
The Senate staffers wrote the script for Graeme.
So here are the facts as laid out by the Democrats. The kids parents only earn 45 grand a year and they receive no insurance through their work. Getting insurance on their own would cost 1200 bucks.
But the internet is an amazing thing. You can fact check stories like never before and this one was indeed fact checked by icwhatudo at Free Republic:
His sister Gemma, also severely injured in the accident, attended
the same school prior to the accident meaning the family was able to
come up with nearly $40,000 per year for tuition for these 2 grade
schoolers. Confirmation both attended Park found here
using edit-“find on this page”-Gemma. It will take you to an article in
the schools newspaper about a fundraiser for Gemma class of 16, and
Graeme class of 13.Here are photos of
the school’s 44,000 square foot Wyman Arts Center: two galleries, an
outdoor ampitheater, Meyerhoff Theater, Macks-Fidler Black Box Theater,
practice rooms, rehearsal space, and ceramics, 3-D sculpture,
woodworking, jewelry, painting, photography, digital graphics studios,
recording studio, and keyboard lab.In a Baltimore Sun article the family claims to be raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. “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.”What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company “Frostworks”,since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as “bookkeeper and operations management” prior to her recent 2007 hire at the “medical publishing firm”. As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well.
His company, Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. A building that was purchased for $160,000 in 1999. The buildings owner is listed as DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CENTER, LLC whose mailing address is listed as 104 S Collington Ave which is the Frost’s home. The commercial property he owns is also listed as the business address for another company called Reillys Designs which leads to the question of whether rental income is included in the above mentioned salary total
The current market value of their improved 3,040 SF home at 104 S Collington Ave is unknown but 113 S COLLINGTON AVE,
also an end unit, sold for $485,000 this past March and it was only
2,060 SF. A photo taken in the family’s kitchen shows what appears to
be a recent remodeling job with granite counter tops and glass front cabinets
Lets do the math here. The value of their house is up over a half a million, the value of the commercial property would have to be close to 300 grand or so now, and the family may be renting some of the property out to another company for more income. Now we come to their mortgages which I’m sure cost a bit but this family was able to send two of their kids to a private school at 20 grand a piece, so the mortgage’s couldn’t be killing them.
About that tuition. Didn’t the article state they only make 45 grand combined per year? So after sending their kids to school they take home 5 grand for the whole year. Riiiiight. I smell unreported income here or they received tuition assistance
from the Park School which would mean a couple with four children have two of them attending a private school rather then a public school at the expense of taxpayers.
Oh, and one more thing, the cost of private insurance IS NOT 1200 bucks. Rather its 700.
A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641
with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays.Adding a deductible of $750
(does not apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That’s almost a third
of the price quoted in the article. Doesn’t anyone bother to check the
facts?
This is the family the Democrats chose to represent SCHIP? If there was a more perfect family why SCHIP should not be expanded its this one. They are doing quite well with their own business, a 3000 square foot house with a beautiful kitchen:
Now this is what our tax dollars should be going to!
Sigh……
Other’s Blogging:
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How could the Dems be that stupid? Oh I know, they think we are that stupid. People pay or don’t pay for their choices. I don’t want to. Yes Mr. President, thank you.
Maryland requires medical coverage in your auto insurance on the vehicle.
That would have paid for the accident outcome before SCHIP.
Also were the kids wearing seat belts?
A whole lot more in the comments on the thread at FR.
Brought to you via Family Matters another Soros funded issue machine.
Oh, that poor S-CHIP family! A nice home, private school for the kids, a kitchen remodel (with granite counters), their own business, dressed in rags, and living on a mere $5,000 a year. And, poor Graeme, he can’t get medical treatment because all the money is going to that war in Iraq. A war which we were misled by the bad President Bush.
Yeah, right. Can you spell A-U-D-I-T?
The Dems opposition to the war is all about money for their domestic programs. It is through domestic programs that they buy votes. It’s called putting power before country. Then they trot out a family of 6 who live a life that most middle class families would love to say, poor me, I can’t buy medical insurance. A person who owns their own business can write off the cost of medical insurance from their taxes.
Sounds like massive tax evasion. One of the honest employee’s of the IRS should take this to task tomorrow morning.
Just wanted to say Thank You! for the link.
Have a great week!
The Park school says 18% of the kids get funding assistance from 1K to full scholarships.
If these kids are both on full scholarships they could afford the insurance.
If not they are choosing bad priorities.
Public school no good, but public health care suck it up.
Friggin lemmings…How about some FACTS…wake up you sheep:
1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.
2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.
3) They bought their “lavish house†sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.
4) Last year, the Frosts made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.
5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.
To Lattesippinliberal, I’m a liberal democrat, but I am siding with the other side on this one. Poor American workers, who either do not have, can’t have or their children are above 18 are deprived of access to the problem the Frosts are able to game to have their health insurance gratis.
Not only do they live in a house that is worth half a million, they hide the fact that they collect rent on part of their business property. I have to wonder if either of the parents, especially F. Halsey Frost collects a trust fund. His father has the money to provide funding to Princeton, and to blow on luxuries. Poor Americans are forced to borrow from struggling relatives, but rich spoiled brats like F. Halsey Frost are allowed to leech off the system because he acts irresponsibly. The democratic leaders in the congres can’t be bothered to address the realities of those truly suffering.
Truly poor and struggling Americans are told to sell their junker cars and go without transportation to find some money to pay for medical care. I know of a family where the husband and father died of a cancer, he had been waiting for an organ transplant and was seriously ill, who was denied the state coverage because his daughter was 18, despite the fact that he was too ill to work, and was denied the care of the specialist he needed at the public hospital.
The expansion of the CHIP program, of which the Frost family, are a clear example of the problems that exist which allow the system to be gamed, will only serve to continue a two tiered system that is too easily exploitable and will continue a rationale to not address those most suffering. But then again, the same democratic leaders who weep crocodile tears about poor illegal aliens (and find their coffer filled by corporate elites, and corrupt foreign nationals) rationalize policies that abandon poor and the declining middle classes who are black, brown and white to destitution.
It’s the reason the majority of democratic voters are anticipating voting for republicans, not greens or other hypocritical third parties. Democrats have abandoned any and all credibility, and if we have to vote for a republican, we might as well vote for those who are willing to admit it.
So be snide, the only ones who listen to you are the every decreasing number of those who live above the glass ceiling.
You know, people work hard for their money. This family had 3 kids in critical condition due to one accident. Should the family have to sell everything to pay for the bills???