“Poor” Family Owns Home, Business, Etc.
So, in a typically cynical bit of sappy and brainless emotional indulgence, the Democrats recruited some twelve year-old kid to deliver their Saturday radio address. His name is Graeme Frost and his family is from Maryland. Predictably, he told a sob story (written for him by Senate staffers) about how his hard working parents need other taxpayers to pay for his health coverage.
Then icwhatudo on Free Republic decided to pull some records.
So, to summarize –what he found out about this poor and needy family. It:
- Sends their kids to an expensive private school.
- Own a commercial building which was purchased for $190,000 in 1999. Even using modest figures, it would have to be worth at least $300,000 today.
- Owns a 3000 square foot home, in an area where a 2000 square foot home recently sold for $500,000.
Indeed, working from a Baltimore Sun article on the subject – which mentions that their mortgage payment is $1200 – we can guess that their mortgage on the house is roughly $200,000.
In other words – taking into account the value of the home, the value of the father’s business, the value of the commercial property they own, and so forth minus their mortgage and whatever they might owe on the commercial property (and other sundry debts) an educated guess would suggest that this family has a net worth of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500,000.
And they want the rest of the American people to foot their bill for their health care?
posted by Adam Yoshida at
2:22 AM
2 Comments:
Dude, I don't get you.
I know nothing about these people, and, your thirdhand analysis notwithstanding, neither do you.
Maybe you know nothing about Baltimore, but the cost of living there is awfully high. I live near Washington, D.C., which has about the same cost of living, maybe a little higher. My wife and I bought a house in March with her mother, father and grandmother for $560,000, roughly. It's about the same size as theirs. We can afford the mortgage, but my wife makes $70,000 a year, and her father $40,000 a year. (I take care of our baby who was born in March, and work from home on my own small non-profit, so I'm not earning anything of note right now.)
My point is this: we're getting by pretty well right now, but if something happened, and somebody got badly sick, we'd be screwed if it weren't for my wife's insurance, which covers me and the baby, and her father's insurance, which covers him and my wife's mother. Her grandmother, I believe, gets some kind of federal insurance, since she's 81.
So we're all right. Even if we had a case of cancer or a heart attack, we could get by, I guess and hope, but it might be tricky.
These other people have no insurance from his work, and I gather she doesn't work. So maybe you think he should have gone to work for some company that gives insurance to its workers. Well, meybe he couldn't get that job. Maybe he didn't want that job. He's trying to live his life the way he and his family wanted, and something catastrophic happened, and now they're in over their heads and they need some help. Well, I'll tell you as a guy who has learned to have a little empathy in my life, I'm happy some of what we pay in taxes is going to help these people--or at least it would if Bush hadn't vetoed the bill. That's not so bad; we live in a society, and I happen to think that we're all in this together. Sometimes we all give up a little to help each other.
The odd thing about you is that you seem incapable of putting yourself in most other people's shoes. You think it's an insufferable outrage that Americans should have to chip in a little to help pay for catastrophic health insurance for children. To you, that's outrageous, since you can only see yourself paying taxes, never needing any help yourself, and the extra money you would have to shell out in taxes every year--not a lot--to you is an intolerable burden.
But you have no qualms about asking others to bear rather heavier burdens than a few more dollars in taxes every year if you think YOU might benefit. You don't mind people being tortured if you think it'll make you feel even just a tiny bit safer. You said some while back that it was great when the U.S. slaughtered the American Indians, since they were, paraphrasing you, "wasting" the land. A few hundred dollars more in taxes is unconscienable, but wiping out hundreds of thousands of people is A-O.K. with you if you happen not to care about or identify with them.
I don't know what happened to you in your childhood to make you turn out this way, but you could use some psychological help. I sy that not to insult you, but to suggest you see about getting that help you so badly need. You don't have to live everlastingly scared, angry, bitter and selfish.
And by the way, many schools give scholarships to students who can't afford the tuition.
Here's something else you might find interesting, if you care enough to look:
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2007/10/next-time-you-g.html
You might just TRY having a little bit of empathy for your fellow men, women & children someday; it's a big step ingrowing up.
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