The Octomom Decoy
I keep seeing stories about this:
Suleman — already a single mother with six young children — gave birth to the octuplets through in-vitro fertilization, fueling controversy. News of her collecting public assistance for some of her children also outraged many taxpayers.
It seems like there’s always some nonsense story in the media that people pay more attention to than what’s really going on.
Meanwhile, the US government has given AIG 170 billion dollars.
Here’s a little perspective: Social assistance payments in California can be up to $793 per child. Assuming she gets the max, for each child, that’s $11102 per month.
What’s been given to AIG would pay her children’s support costs for 1.28 million years.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:34 am
The old right wing conservative welfare story lives again. But I think people are outraged that this woman did this on her own, with the help of her doctor and the donor, by design for whatever reason and will now be collecting from the state for years to come. She knowingly had those embryos implanted, wouldn’t have some aborted when given the chance and now here we are with a disaster waiting to happen. And It won’t be until one of the children dies or is severely injured that they will be taken from her and it is almost inevitable that this will happen. Suleman is not a rational, stable person to begin with. And another point here, there needs to be more attention to the doctor who helped get her into this fix. His actions were unconscionable and he should be brought to task on this and there needs to be a law. Implanting eight embryos into a single welfare mother who already has six children is outrageous.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Excellent point!
March 24th, 2009 at 8:50 am
I think that people don’t like being screwed over, independently of the scale of said screwing. I don’t like welfare moms who keep having kids they can’t afford, and I also don’t like spending billions of dollars bailing out private institutions that are so badly run that they give out millions in bonuses when they are on the dole. Both are examples of people cheating the systems put in place to help those truly in need and both are wrong. I don’t think excusing a vice of that nature based on the scale of the offense is correct.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Do she realize that whether she pay the nurses or have Angel in Waiting all health professionals are obligated to report any abuse of a child that they may be aware of.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Actually, it’s the AIG decoy. Remember way back when W was in office and he proposed the $700 BILLION TARP? Well, the Congress and the Senate took a while to pass it because they were so worried about oversight. They were all bla bla bla about how they wanted to know where every last cent went.
What happened? NO ONE, not one of them did anything about tracking the money. There was $350 BILLION released and no one to see where it went. No one. Where is the outrage? That amount is over 2000 times what the amount going to AIG is. It made me throw up in my mouth a little when I was watching all these violently indignant speeches by politicians, virtually calling for a lynch mob for theses AIG Execs. While I certainly don’t condone those bonuses, there seems to be a little bit of a double standard. The Congress and the Senate get to throw away $350 BILION with no repercussions. Let’s hold them accountable too. Just for fun…
March 24th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Excellent point Stephanie. Big or small, no one deserves a pass. After all, there is only one or two AIG situations and possibly tens of thousands of Mad Nad type abuses. Not ot the same extent as Suleman but they do add up.
March 24th, 2009 at 10:50 am
You forgot about the millions already going from our taxpayer dollars into hospital bills for the care these children have received by the NICU units. That is not chump change- that is millions.
March 24th, 2009 at 10:51 am
The nurses are mandated by law to report any suspicion of child abuse or endangerment. Hooray for them for doing the right thing.
If Suleman has nurses in the house now they are from Kaiser Hospital, which provides free [yes, your tax dollar and mine] transition care/training for new babies. How much time each day they are on Suleman’s premises is anyone’s guess. I would expect not a whole heck of a lot and probably for very short duration. Will the Kaiser nurses allow the other 4 babies to come home? Who knows? They might see what Angels in Waiting did and file their own child endangerment report.
So why the outrage about all this when the bucks are small in comparison to the AIG hoist? Simple: we’re talking about 14 innocent lives.
The public is outraged at Suleman because what she did was reprehensible and of her own choosing with no thought to the welfare and emotional well-being of ANY of her children. It’s not onyl about the money.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Gloria Allred filed a request for Child Services to check on the endangerment issue long before AIW was in the home. That was one of the reasons AIW was chosen, a little blackmail in my opinion. AIW is a 2 person operation that had dollar signs in their eyes when they came up with a totally ridiculous $135K a month plan. They were adamant that this plan was critical, the octuplets absolutely had to have all these nurses and therapists. We have seen since, it was not as critical as they said. Allred says it is all about the children, well what happened to the care that was so critical pared down to Linda CONtorti and one sidekick just training the nannies. No donations? No need for the “wrap around” care. Did you see the AIW website that was changed on the announcement of them taking care of the 8, to include an area where you could include them in your will and sign over your 401k??? What a scam.
While I have always been severely critical of Mad Nad, I want to base my derision on facts. Allred the media whore and AIW the money hungry “pros” are bloodsuckers that only care about their own agenda.