SCHIP becomes "friend" to small business?

Blue Crab Boulevard looks at the wretched family who were props for the Democrats latest ad for their health insurance for the middle class give away and find some surprising facts.

This is one for the record books. The "poor" child who read the Democratic radio address turns out to be nothing of the sort. Mark Steyn at The Corner:

President Bush, are you smarter than a seventh-grader?

Apparently not. Graeme Frost of Baltimore is 12 years old, a seventh-grader at the Park School, and he understands why children need health care and their parents need help paying for it. He explained it during a rebuttal to the president's Saturday radio address. Yes, we know, Senate staffers wrote the speech for Graeme. That doesn't take away from the message. Does anyone really think President Bush writes his own material?

Of course not. And nor does The Baltimore Sun, which did a nice fluffy soft-focus story typing out the Dems' press release and not querying a word:

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.

If it ever occurred to Matthew Hay Brown, the Sun's "reporter", to look into just what kind of "woodworking" Mr Frost did, he managed to suppress the urge.

"icwhatudo" at Free Republic, however, showed rather more curiosity than the professional reporter paid to investigate the story and did a bit of Googling. Mr Frost, the "woodworker", owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects; etc. This is apparently the new definition of "working families"....

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There is much more with a round up of comments on the latest props as "victims" put up by Democrats. The findings should be scandalous, but don't hold your breath for the Washington Post or NY Times to embarrass the Democrats with the truth. Somehow Mr. Frost has managed to turn down the cold calls selling health insurance to furniture makers and their employees that come many times a week. You would be amazed at the many and varied plans that must have been refused.

It is surprising that Democrats would show so much compassion for small business. Perhaps they can offer the Frosts' a tax cut with which they can buy their own health insurance. Hat tip Larwyn.