The thorn in Gruber’s side
I wondered who had found those videos of Gruber, and someone has covered that story, too. It’s a great one:
Rich Weinstein is not a reporter. He does not have a blog. Until this week, the fortysomething’s five-year old Twitter account had a follower count in the low double digits…
Weinstein dates his accidental citizen journalism back to the end of 2013 and the first run of insurance cancellations or policy changes. He was among the people who got a letter informing him that his old policy did not meet ACA standards.
“When Obama said ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period’””frankly, I believed him,” says Weinstein. “He very often speaks with qualifiers. When he said ‘period,’ there were no qualifiers. You can understand that when I lost my own plan, and the replacement cost twice as much, I wasn’t happy. So I’m watching the news, and at that time I was thinking: Hey, the administration was not telling people the truth, and the media was doing nothing!”
So Weinstein, new plan in hand, started watching the news. “These people were showing up on the shows, calling themselves architects of the law,” he recalls. “I saw David Cutler, Zeke Emanuel, Jonathan Gruber, people like that. I wondered if these guys had some type of paper trail. So I looked into what Dr. Cutler had said and written, and it was generally all about cost control. After I finished with Cutler, I went to Dr. Gruber. I assume I went through every video, every radio interview, every podcast. Every everything.”
There’s a guy after my own heart: he does his research. I’m pretty patient, and I’ll follow a trail pretty far, but I doubt I’d have the persistence (and the tolerance for crushing boredom) that Weinstein has shown.
Doesn’t this story have a wonderful hubris/nemesis quality? As in definition #3 of the word “nemesis” here, Weinstein becomes the “agent…of retribution or punishment” for Gruber, and in some way (perhaps) of Obama, too, by exposing what Gruber said. And all because he got angry at being lied to.
The networks appear to be mostly ignoring this and/or minimizing/excusing it, as is their wont. But today the WaPo saw fit to cover it with some thoroughness, albeit from an initial angry-Republicans-out-to-get-Obamacare angle. The news must be reaching enough people that Obama felt the need to issue a disclaimer, which basically says what Gruber said is “not true” and that Gruber really didn’t have much to do with Obamacare anyway. Obama also reminded us that he heard very few of Reverend Wright’s sermons, and we can keep our doctors.
The media have voluntarily turned themselves into Pravda for the democrats. They would report on this like they report on Obama’s school grades.
It is testimony to the incompetence of the Republicans that they did not dig up these Gruber videos to use in the campaign. As usual, they lazily and idiotically assumed that the media would dig up all relevant ammunition for them.
Either that, or they don’t really care about getting rid of the Obamacare monstrosity and don’t want to make an appeal that might generate expectations they have no intention of meeting.
“White House BLAMES GOP After Videos Reveal Obama Admin Lied to Public About Obamacare (Video)”
“White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said Republicans were the real liars.”
Love to see an ad where it went back and forth between Obama, Gruber and Josh Ernest comments with Obama and Ernest’s nose doing a Pinocchio…
Pres. Obama: “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.”
ObamaCare architect Gruber: “the American voter is too stupid to understand the difference.”
WH spokesman Ernest: “I think it’s actually Republicans who haven’t been honest”
Pres. Obama: “If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too.”
ObamaCare architect Gruber: “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,”
WH spokesman Ernest: “I think it’s actually Republicans who haven’t been transparent”
Pres. Obama: “The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.”
As Obama speakes that lie, scroll across the bottom of the screen: CBS: “penalties for failing to secure a health-insurance plan will rise steeply next year, which could take a big bite out of some families’ pocketbooks. ” 11/12/2014
The MSM is NEVER going to tell the truth, the GOP and conservative PACs have to start a campaign of ads to educate low-info voters.
The msm is the problem, that is why the new media is so important, and that is why ‘progressives’ hate freedom of speech they do not want the peasents to hear.
I believe that all political debates, particularly Presidential debates, must not, MUST NOT, have journalist-media-reporters that work for the liberal meanstream media. The Conservative Candidate and his staff must say “NO” to all those requests by Liberals who want moderators from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc….
I remember what Katie Couric did to Sarah Palin. Just look at NeoNeoCon’s previous post about Candy Crowley.
The RNC and GOP must not allow their candidate to get blindsided playing on such a leftward tilting playing field.
There also must have been hundreds of academics at these meetings– none of them ever thought to question or criticize Gruber? I’m guessing they found him highly amusing. Our universities at work!
Now:
“I don’t know who he [Gruber] is,” she told reporters. “He didn’t help write our bill.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Nov. 2009:
I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill for those who seek insurance within the exchange.
Reliance on the stupidity of the American voter goes viral. If mere ubiquity of something would establish it as mainstream then stupid would be typical, common, routine… yes? Another thing, is there a possibility of running out of stupid? I mean, this country has been tapping that well quite often over the last half century. Is someone, somewhere, hydraulic fracturing for stupid?
Gruber thinks we’re so dumb, he even wrote a comic book to educate us on the beauty of Obamacare: Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works
Love the blurb by John Kerry: “Having spent years working to make health care work for Americans, Jonathan Gruber has now provided another service: walking everyone through the benefits of the Affordable Care Act reforms so consumers are armed with accessible information. In an age when information is power, Gruber’s book is fun and informative, and it boils down the facts of health care reform for all Americans.”
“I’m guessing they found him highly amusing.
“Obamacare Architect: Americans ‘Too Stupid to Understand’”
GRUBER: “Well that’s pretty much the same thing, why’s it matter? You’ll see. And they were both in and that passed, because the American voter is too stupid to understand the difference.” [Crowd laughter]
If the MSM ever do decide to take a closer look at Gruber, I wonder if this aspect of his careeer will loom large in their coverage:
“Jonathan Gruber is a big deal in health economics for two reasons. First, he was an architect of Massachusetts’ universal coverage expansion in 2006 – the law that, four years later, Obamacare would closely mimic. Gruber was so key in Massachusetts’ reform efforts that Gov. Mitt Romney thanked him by name in the speech he gave when the law passed.”
I’m glad that there was someone who decided to research Gruber on his own. Gruber sure was hiding in plain sight, making his “Americans are stupid” comment at least three times on camera. And the latest clip out today is from PBS’s Frontline, where Gruber explains that Obama was in the room while all of the complexity was purposely added to the bill to hide the true costs and who would be bearing them.
Oh, and I checked out his comic book explaining Obamacare on Amazon (using “search inside the book” feature). Yes, he does think we’re stupid. Looks like this book was written for 4th graders, which explains why John Kerry liked it.
I’m glad that there was someone who decided to research Gruber on his own. Gruber sure was hiding in plain sight, making his “Americans are stupid” comment at least three times on camera. And the latest clip out today is from PBS’s Frontline, where Gruber explains that Obama was in the room while all of the complexity was purposely added to the bill to hide the true costs and who would be bearing them.
I checked out his comic book explaining Obamacare on Amazon (using “search inside the book” feature). Yes, he does think we’re stupid. Looks like this book was written for 4th graders, which explains why John Kerry liked it.
Ann, I had read that Gruber was a major force behind Romneycare, but I hadn’t heard that Romney thanked him publicly. That’s just perfect. Romney used Gruber before Obama.
Ray: “The media have voluntarily turned themselves into Pravda for the democrats.”
Just so. And conservatives have been on to it for a long time.
Our MSM and our government will not do the things they are supposed to do. So, citizens, like Mr. Weinstein, have taken up the cause.
Here’s another instance of citizen activism:
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-veterans-sue-big-banks-for-facilitating-iranian-terrorism/
One of the first things our government should have done was go after the financing of terrorism. They didn’t. Some veterans are doing it. Good on them.
Gruber in concentrated form:
The Worst of Jonathan Gruber | SUPERcuts! #124 – YouTube
Ray Says:
November 13th, 2014 at 1:58 pm
I keep saying that they’re worse than Pravda. The reporters and editors of Pravda told lies and spread propaganda for fear of being sent to the gulag. Those in the American media do it willingly. They are true believers. That’s pretty scary.
PJ Tatler: Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber: Obama Was in the Room When the Cadillac Tax Was Created
“It is testimony to the incompetence of the Republicans that they did not dig up these Gruber videos to use in the campaign. ”
I agree with you in part. I think a bigger problem is that the Republicans in charge are basically Statists.
Their main goal is to drive the car. They view those in the party that want to minimize the role of the Federal behemoth as the enemy. The Democrats are members of the same group think. It is the peasants that we have to watch out for for we are the Elite. And we know what is best for the peasants. If you doubt that read the definition below and ask yourself how the Dems or Republik leadership does not support this view? 🙁
Wikipedia on Statism:
In political science, statism is the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree. Statism is effectively the opposite of anarchism. Statism can take many forms from minarchism to totalitarianism. Minarchists prefer a minimal or night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud with military, police, and courts. Some may also include fire departments, prisons, and other functions. Welfare state adepts and other such options make up more statist territory of the scale of statism. Totalitarians prefer a maximum or all-encompassing state.
Here’s a most interesting read at a most unlikely place. Note the post date in 2010
***
Gruber says he believes in transparency, and claims to have a spreadsheet for his simulation model. On February 27, two days after the presolicitation of his HHS contract began, Gruber participated in an HHS hearing on modeling health insurance data. According to the transcript, Gruber said:
“As much as we can do in groups like this to be transparent about modeling the process, I call my model a black box, but in fact I have now put together a spreadsheet which lays out every single one of the assumptions that is in the model, in a document which describes it all. I think we all need to be as transparent as possible in what is going into the models, so that ultimately folks like ASPE and CBO and others who need to use these to make policy can understand why we are getting different answers and what is going on.”
Recently Bill Black, Eliot Spitzer and Frank Partnoy called for the release of AIG emails and internal documents, asserting that the public now owns 80% of the company and should be able to examine them in order to be able to ascertain what happened in the past. Likewise, now that it is known that Jonathan Gruber was a White House consultant, the assumptions that have been used by the White House to estimate the impact of the health care bill will for decades to come should be made publicly available.
Both Congress and President Obama owe us that kind of transparency before committing to a path that could have serious consequences for the health and prosperity of all Americans.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/13/gruber/
BTW, if you follow Gruber’s arguments — for him health policy == tax policy == health policy.
For most of 0-care — for Gruber — turns on how to get taxation UP on employer provided health care plans.
This hot button issue is behind his ‘Cadillac plans’ tax.
&&&
There is great irony here: Cadillac plans were started by the UAW! IIRC, that’s where they picked up the nic-name.
Cadillac plans are UNION plans. They are UNION creations.
No small practice attorney or doctor ever dreamt them up. They were, and are, the result of Leftists inside blue collar labor unions. (!)
For many a year, UAW members could visit a doctor with NO CO-PAY whatsoever. As you might imagine, ‘medical usage’ took off like a rocket. The Big Three had to bargain it out of the contract. They got the co-pay all the way up to $5. That was enough to cut member’s medical usage down by 40%. (!)
[ The worst offenders: new mothers. They were clogging the pediatric offices something silly… “Well-baby visits”]
Very few white collar positions receive Cadillac plans… which are in corporate life largely restricted to the executive suite.
That’s actually a very small crowd in a nation of 300,000,000.
De facto, 0-care rolls back the UAW’s health care benefits. The Big Three can no longer pass on the largesse. Wages must erode.
Pingback:No newspapermen did his job, no, not one | John C. Wright's Journal
Professor “Grubber”- One of the 1%’s and like a typical modern liberal- “Do as I say, not as I do.” This also does not include whatever pittance he gets for being a tenured professor at MIT. 🙁
The federal government has paid Jonathan Gruber at least $4 million since the year 2000, for his work as an expert witness, a legal consultant and for his consultation on Obamacare.
That comes on top of at least $1.6 million the MIT economist has been paid by several states to consult on their health care bills.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/14/gruber-has-made-at-least-5-9-million-for-government-work/
Gruber is so representative of the sneaky, underhanded ideological Left, he could be their Poster Child.
For many people lying and getting away with it would be sufficient. It’s fascinating, for Gruber, that wasn’t enough and that he needed others to know and applaud him.