Check The Back Story Of Every Dem Sob Story - Road to the Middle Class

THE RIGHT-WING blogosphere has been having a grand old time with the Democrats’ latest poster child. A 12-year-old boy gave the Democrats’ weekly radio address a couple of weeks ago and used the opportunity to advocate for the S-CHIP program, a government health program for not-so-poor children.

Democrats have recently passed an expansion of S-CHIP and President Bush has vetoed it. So Democrats have been hauling out the sob stories to develop the political momentum to override the president’s veto.

The centerpiece of their campaign, reported by Samantha Sault on the Weekly Standard blog, is

Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old boy from Baltimore, MD, whose parents relied on Maryland’s S-chip program to pay for his health care following a severe car accident.

The MSM dutifully copied the Democrats’ talking points without using its army of editors and fact-checkers, but the blogger icwhatudo did check up on the Frost family. Among other things he found out that

Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the Park School, a private school that costs $20,000 per child.

Their parents live in a recently remodeled 3,000 sq ft home and father Halsey Frost owns his own business.

We’ll see a lot more of this sort of shell game from the Democrats and I have a theory about it.

Liberals really don’t know any poor people, so a lot of the juicy government programs don’t really go to benefit poor people: they go to benefit well-connected Democrats like the Frosts. And why not? If you can save on health insurance for the kids and get the taxpayers to foot the bill why then you can spend money on private education and home-remodeling.

(But I suspect that the Frosts also have some private money. Check with grandma, fellas.)

The thing about government programs is that there’s only about enough media bandwidth for the average person to know about, say, five programs. After Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the public schools the whole thing starts to become a blur. Who has the time to do the research to find out what program you are eligible for?

I’ll tell you who: well-connected Democrats. Imagining, advocating, managing, and just knowing about government programs is what they do in life. So you are always likely to find a well-connected Democrat at the head of the line for the next government handout.

Bottom line: checking on the back story of Democrat sob stories is going to be a rich vein for conservative bloggers to mine. Because the chance is always going to be high that any poster boy or girl that the Dems present for a media opportunity is going to be only a couple of degrees of connection from a powerful Democratic politician.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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