Isn’t that just typical of the liberal tedia? Everyone knows that the real problem is welfare queens in foodstamp Cadillacs, but the *NY Times * article slants things so that it appears that the bulk of the fraud is being commited by white guys in suits!
I’m not a Republican.
No, my son has never been beholden to my emotional well being. The reason why we have him enrolled in CHIP is for his well being. I simply cannot wait until I can start paying my own way rather than being a net drain on society, opening up the possibility that some worse off than I can participate with my son’s withdrawal, simultaneously fulfilling my desire to be a successful and productive member of society. How selfish of me to feel that way, I know. You can continue to pay for my child in perpetuity if you like, unselfish as you are. I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement that would benefit him, simultaneously benefiting me.
I agreed with this further up in the thread.
I thought you were in the military.
I am. I am a traditional Guardsman and a full-time student at the moment.
Then I don’t get the “net drain on society” business.
It’s a damn shame that we all should be embarrassed about that those people who love the military so very much as they wear their lapel pins couldn’t really give a shit about the military in the form of the men and women in it enough to provide them and their families with decent support.
You may be a net drain on the reasonable political component of the SDMB, but on society - I just don’t get that.
Perhaps you should not have wasted so much time in uniform, Dave. Perhaps if you had enrolled in the White Studies Program earlier in life, you could be more productive, selling loud, shiny crap, or New Coke? Then you might well have more personal wealth, which as every real American knows, is the definitive indicator of virtue and social value.
Our relations are not cordial, but that is your choice, and not mine. Nothing you have revealed to us in these pages, over the years, gives me any reason whatever to think that you have something to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite.
I know that the folks on the right of the political spectrum dislike Keith Olberman, but here is a look at KO and Rachael Maddow talking about this last night on Countdown.
Ms. Maddow is an Air America host, so I don’t expect the usual suspects to give her thoughts any credence, but what they are saying is what I was trying to articulate in the OP.
Attacking a 12 year old boy and his family for simply stating the facts of their particular case, and how a governement program helped them is reprehensible.
They have lost sight of what informed, articulate debate is about, and are covering anyone who disagrees with their mindset with lies, slime and spittle.
I’d really be interested to know how deep Sen McConnell’s office is involved in this.
Sometimes you need to read more than just the headline.
Even just the 10% is “billions per year”.
Spitzer’s been NY Gov for what, eight months? Pataki was gov for a dozen years, during the period all this fraud was going on in a NY-government-administered program.
Let’s not forget that years ago, certain people (I won’t mention their political affiliation) picked on a certain 13-year-old girl for her looks. Remember “White House dog”? Some people just enjoy being insufferable pricks.
If I’m the one who introduces the cite, yes.
It’s the duty of the person who links to a piece of any length in support of a point to point out the most relevant part(s), AFAIAC.
The alternative is that I can link to online documents that are hundreds of pages long in support of an assertion, and it becomes your duty to read those hundreds of pages to show that there isn’t anything in there that backs me up. That seems unreasonable to me.
That NY Times piece was eight web pages long, and they weren’t short web pages. I wasn’t going to wade through it all on spec.
I guess it depends on how you define “attacking.” Yes, calling the family names, wishing harm on them, and harassing them are out of bounds. But questioning whether or not a family that sends their kids to private school and lives in a wealthy neighborhood deserves to have government health care is legitimate. As I stated above, this kid was not defending SCHIP as a policy expert. Instead, the kid went on the radio saying that their family had benefitted from SCHIP so the President should support SCHIP expansion. It makes sense, then, to examine whether or not that family should be getting a subsidy. The family volunteered for scrutiny by basically saying that “families like us benefit from SCHIP and that’s why it’s good.” Well, then, should families like them benefit from the taxpayers’ dollars?
To put it another way, if a policy analyst goes and starts attacking SCHIP in the media, it’s fair game for the media to analyze that analyst’s numbers and point out information he may have ignored. So when a family goes public to support SCHIP based solely on their personal situation, it makes sense to examine their experience and find out whether or not they left out pertinent information. They were selling their personal story to advance this program. Exploring their personal story to see if there was other relevant information makes perfect sense to me.
The quoted parts that he and I referenced were found on the first page.
Just came across this:
Seemed relevant, since Michelle Malkin was leading the hyena pack here.
That’s nice.
Then why did you feel the need to comment on how the cite doesn’t support his claim? Feel free to say that you’re not wading through 8 pages to find the facts, and put the onus on him to quote the relevant parts. Instead, you seem to be in a race to fire off snarky comebacks as quick as your fingers can type.
Ultimately, though, it looks like Moto’s facts were right, and we’re not talking about the billions wasted on fraud, we’re talking about how Moto is a lousy debater.
The significance of the article is shaded slightly, but significantly. In the midst of a spat about how deserving or undeserving the family may be, we are offered a citation about fraud in the system, as if to suggest that the cited article supports such a position. In fact, the cited article has much more to say about exploitation of the program by providers.
While it is true that the article is not directly misrepresented, this salient fact is not pointed out. It ought to have been.
You’re right - I mistakenly assumed that the big news would be in the headline or the opening paragraphs. From the amounts mentioned in the first 5-6 paragraphs of the story, it looked as if the headline accurately represented the article.
I agree that Mr. Moto now has his cite. Miracles do happen! 
Are there any shitheels left here who want to take up the argument that the boy and his family should have been subjected to the swiftboat smearing that they received?
Apparently not. But there are several shitheels trying to change the subject.