That’s where he’s focused all of his econometric efforts.

That’s the product he was selling.

Only now Fox is writing up what I posted days ago: Cadillac plans are UNION plans.

Very few corporate executives have Cadillac plans — which are oriented towards mass enrolments.

There are just not that many highly paid executives in the nation — certainly not in comparison to union memberships.

The only viable solution: Cadillac plans will disappear — taking the purported tax revenues with them.

A father of a kid I grew up with had a great term for these people: “Intellectual Idiots”. He was a WWII ace, pilot and then senior flight instructor for UAL. A no -nonsense sort of guy; RIP. After spending my 30 years in academia, I now understand he was spot on with that description.

Neo:
Which I could take the credit but it is from the springeraz blog.
However, like Mrs Whatsit, I did notice the similarity between rubes and Grubes, really quite handy.

That legal rule is irrelevant here.

Here’s the legal rule:

Like its federal counterpart, New Jersey Rule of Evidence 613 allows for a witness to be impeached through evidence of a prior inconsistent statement. One a witness has been so impeached, a judge might give the jury the following charge:

“If you believe that any witness or party willfully or knowingly testified falsely to any material facts in the case, with intent to deceive you, you may give such weight to his or her testimony as you may deem it is entitled. You may believe some of it, or you may, in your discretion, disregard all of it.”

It is a rule of evidence that only applies in the following circumstances (a) a trial, in which (b) a witness has testified, and (c) has contradicted him/herself in his/her testimony. Then, the judge can make the above statement to the jury, to the effect that the jury members have the discretion to believe all the testimony, some of the testimony, or none of the testimony.

In this case, the subject matter is Obamacare. We only know that Gruber (and others designing the bill, or in the administration, or in the legislature, or on that side in general) lied or at least twisted the truth to sell Obamacare to the American public and get a good CBO scoring. But even according to the “false in one, false in all” rule (if this were some sort of trial), the jury member would have discretion to make the judgment as to whether to disregard all or even any of the witness’ other statements, or to believe them. But more importantly, in the case of Gruber (or actually, any other case), there is nothing in the rule that says it applies to any other situation in which the witness has been involved; just the matter of this particular trial.

One certainly can believe liars tend to lie not just in one situation but in many. But the liar usually has to have a motive (unless he/she is a sociopathic pathological liar who llikes to lie just for fun, which doesn’t appear to be Gruber’s problem). In Gruber’s case, there was (as I have said) no equivalent motivation to lie about Romneycare. There was no one who needed convincing, and so few Republicans that they were essentially irrelevant, and the fact situation was different in many many other respects as well.

A witness in a trial may be lying during that trial for a particular purpose, but that certainly doesn’t mean (either legally, or logically, or psychologically) that that person is lying in another situation that looks superficially similar but is in fact not similar at all, and where he/she has no motive to lie.

But look how long he was able to get away with it. It’s only because one guy dug deep into the files on Gruber that the videos have been highlighted at this point.

I know the story of how Rich Weinstein dug up the videos. It was some good internet sleuthing, but straightforward enough that any determined and internet-savvy person could have done it. IMHO, Gruber was very, very lucky that the videos did not turn up sooner. But they did, and now he’s got a sh*tstorm on his hands to deal with (and would have even if it took another year or two for them to become public).

And even now I’d bet most people are unaware of them [the videos], because the MSM is keeping relatively quiet about it.

If nothing else, this scandal is quite harmful to Gruber, right? Would you want this kind of dung-heap sitting on your reputation?

Gruber played Russian roulette with his own reputation and lost. And without being Pollyanna-ish about this, these videos surely do not help the cause of Obamacare. Sounds like pretty dumb behavior to me.

So he probably thought there would be few if any consequences, and felt safe saying exactly what he was saying.

I considered this perspective before I wrote my comment–and stand by my judgment that he was stupidly reckless. Do you really think broadcasting this kind of gross cynicism (at least three times that we know of, maybe more) and then just hoping it never comes out is a smart strategy?

No. Gruber is probably a very intelligent man who did something very stupid. Most likely a case of hubris trumping IQ.