Nerve Endings Firing Away

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The SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) bill has provoked an intense debate in United States’ political sphere. A bipartisan bill that would add nearly $35 billion over five years to the program for children from the lower-income class was recently vetoed by George Bush. His justification - it increases spending and takes us a step closer toward ’socialized medicine’. Never mind that we are bleeding nearly $10 billion per month in the Iraq war and have increased Medicare spending (Plan D) more than we ever would for SCHIP.

Anyway, Washington is currently experiencing intense activity trying to override Bush’s veto by getting more Republican House Representative to switch their votes . The Senate already has enough to override the veto. Regardless of their intentions, Democrats engaged in an political exercise that almost always proves to be counter-productive if not done exactly right. Senator Harry Reid, the Majority Senate leader used a 12-year-old boy, Graeme Frost to make their case by highlighting the care he received three years ago under the SCHIP. Graeme’s parents raise four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year hence qualifying for SCHIP. This resulted in conservative bloggers digging up dirt on the family to make a case against SCHIP. The bloggers tried building up their case against the SCHIP by combing through and posting the Frost family’s private information online. Some bloggers even called and visited the family’s home and place of business to ‘fact-check’ the story that Democrats tried selling to the American public.

Now regardless of your political opinion on any government program, making personal attacks on individuals or families for political gain is despicable; more so if they happen to be ordinary folk. The conservative bloggers that rushed to prove that the Frosts were more than able to afford their own health insurance made hasty conclusions. True, the children attend a private school but only on a scholarship. You cannot dictate that the parents’ occupation of woodworking is merely a hobby and they should get a ‘real’ job. Moreover, the fact that they own residential and commercial property that has appreciated over time (nothing new) shouldn’t be held against them as long as they fulfill the criteria for SCHIP and lastly, their contention that the family had finances to remodel their kitchen turned out to be utterly false. This kind of mob justice is nothing new among bloggers who descend on folks that are unable to defend themselves. And even after they have been proven wrong in some cases, rarely do they apologize.

But are the conservative bloggers only to blame? Well, I would also blame political parties that use individuals and families as political props, making them extremely vulnerable to attacks. Moreover, it is extremely easy to poke holes in such propped up cases thereby making an effective case against the issue for which they were propped up for. It may not be true that since Frosts proved to be a weak case for justifying SCHIP (and they haven’t), the entire SCHIP is flawed. This political exercise might go either way but it certainly hasn’t bode well for the Frost family who has needlessly been targeted by partisan politics. I doubt any family in the future will subject themselves to such scrutiny even if they strongly believe in a cause. And that is an unfortunate thing.

by Patrix | on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 11:53 am | Politicking, The world is ill, United States . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.