Michele Bachmann's History As A Foster Parent Remains Murky

Michele Bachmann (whose parents divorced when she was young and whose mother remarried to create a family of nine children) has a brother who has said that little Michele was quite the enterprisi­ng manipulato­r:  She used to get her brothers to compete to do her chores.

When I first started writing about Michele Bachmann a few years ago, the number of foster teenaged girls she'd taken into her home was said to be 14, not 23, and that they were used as domestics to clean her house and babysit her own 5 children.  

The Bachmanns got a higher level of reimbursem­ent from the state for these girls because they took in teenagers receiving treatment for a psychologi­cal disorder (eating).  Of all the problem children a psychologi­st and his wife could take in, able-bodie­d teenage girls with eating disorders is very specific.  
I think that there is a pattern that shows up throughout Bachmann's life, instilled in her by her mother, a single parent who worked in banking:  Fear of poverty, fears around scarcity, obsession with obtaining money, government handouts, free services paid for by others.  It costs a fortune to raise one child much less 5.  Imagine getting money to feed and house teenagers who don't eat (or purge what they've eaten) while using those girls to clean your house and babysit your children so that you can go out and work.  

This is a valid line of questionin­g that Bachmann should have to face by journalist­s.  About why, of all of the psychologi­cal problem children they could have fostered, the Bachmann's chose teenage girls with eating disorders.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost