Check the "Back Story" of every Dem Sob Story

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.