Republican Tsunami Creates Critical 806 Day Period For America...

[Selene]

Jonathan Gruber

Contact Information

Phone: (617) 253-8892

Fax: (617) 253-1330

Email: gruberj@mit.edu

Address:
MIT Department of Economics
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Bldg E17-220
Cambridge MA 02139

http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/gruberj

From his CV:

JONATHAN GRUBER
MIT Department of Economics
50 Memorial Drive, E52
-
355Cambridge, MA 02142-1347

Phone: 617-253-8892
Fax: 617-253-1330

E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Web: http//econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/gruberj/

[Selene]

Harvardd must be rascisst - there are almost no black folks on the Economics Department list.

Maybe the janitor is black...

A...

[Selene]

The New York Post’s Kyle Smith does an excellent job of summing up the Jonathan Gruber scandal, and its significance:

Gruber, the MIT economist who (in the words of The New York Times) “put together the basic principles of” ObamaCare and helped Congress “draft the specifics of the legislation” is one of a long line of liberals driven by the belief that the stupidity of the American people is so insurmountable that persuasion is futile. …

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” Gruber said, in a newly unearthed 2013 video that went viral last week. …

What’s important about Gruber’s words is that they highlight the fact that ObamaCare isn’t just “controversial” or “divisive” or “hotly debated.” It is fraudulent. Being based on lies, it is illegitimate.

The arguments made in its behalf were tainted. When Democrats including Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and even the elves who run the White House website wanted to push the idea that impartial experts agreed with its sunny projections about ObamaCare, they turned to…Jonathan Gruber.

“Objective Analysis Shows Reform will Help Small Businesses, Lower Premiums for American Families,” said a Nov. 4, 2009 White House blog post that referred to Gruber’s supposedly unbiased opinion.

As the author notes, this scumbag was "on the take" and "on the take" from 2009.

Yet Gruber joined the HHS payroll right after Obama took office, in March 2009. He was paid $392,600 to consult on ObamaCare. Some might call this kind of arrangement “corruption.”

It’s like an expert witness appearing in court to swear that BP never spilled any oil while working as BP’s $400,000-a-year publicist.

But that’s not the only way Gruber personally profited from the Affordable Care Act. After he “pretty much wrote ObamaCare” (liberal health-care journalist Sarah Kliff), he hit the road to promote it — and got paid via funding provided by the same law.

Minnesota paid him $400,000 of ObamaCare money to attend one meeting, print a copy of a report and participate in an e-mail list, The Washington Times reported. Wisconsin and Vermont each paid Gruber $400,000 for similar “work.” West Virginia, Maine, Colorado and Oregon also hired him, though the Times didn’t say how much they paid him. So Gruber has made more than $1.5 million from ObamaCare — that we know of.

But don’t worry, the Government Accountability Office already investigated, and cleared him.

As Smith notes, Gruber wrote numerous op-eds extolling the virtues of Obamacare without disclosing that he was on the take, to the tune of at least $1.5 million.

There's much more...

Byron York writes, “Grubergate shines spotlight on Obamacare profiteers.”

Remember when Nancy Pelosi declared that Obamacare was a jobs bill? “It’s about jobs,” Pelosi said in 2011, during a news conference to mark the first anniversary of passage of the Affordable Care Act. “Does it create jobs? Health insurance reform creates 4 million jobs.”

I had actually forgotten that particular lie.

Like many other promises about Obamacare, that hasn’t worked out. But there is no doubt that Obamacare created a lot of work for at least one American — MIT professor Jonathan Gruber. Gruber’s frank admissions that he and others deceived the public about Obamacare have drawn a lot of attention in recent days. But the money that Gruber made from Obamacare raises yet another issue about his involvement in the project. Throughout 2009 and 2010, he energetically advocated a bill from which he stood to profit. And when it became law, the money rolled in.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/grubergate-highlights-the-corruption-of-the-obama-administration.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

[Selene]

Mark Stein has an excellent concluding paragraph from his column called "A Phalanx of Lies."

But that’s life in the Republic of Paperwork, isn’t it? The remorseless diversion of time and energy to “futzing around.” That’s why so much of American life seems to be seizing up, why so many routine features of human existence require time-consuming bureaucracy-heavy painstaking navigation (to borrow a term from Obamacare’s “customer-service representatives”). America would benefit from an opposition party that offered a serious de-futzing of the nation: a platform on the scale of Mrs. Thatcher’s privatization program in 1979 or Sir Roger Douglas’s in New Zealand in the Eighties that offered to make ordinary life comprehensible to non-wonks once more. Instead, the Obama crowd have bet that, after the usual whining, you’ll settle down and get used to it: higher co-pays, higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher mountain of paperwork, higher futzing. But the fact remains that nowhere in the Western world has the governmentalization of health care been so incompetently introduced and required protection by such a phalanx of lies. Obamacare is not a left–right issue; it’s a fraud issue.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362922/phalanx-lies-mark-steyn

A...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

One of the hardest things to dislodge in a war of ideas is the adherence of celebrity TV people with bad ideas, but enough of a reasonable face the public refuses to think about them as partisan. These are the true carriers of the flame to the mainstream culture. The fringe is like a compass, but these folks are like giant ships going in one direction. The public can think the compass is off at times, but not the entire ship.

So when you lose someone like Bob Schieffer, this, to me, is a big deal.

The part that interests me is not when Schieffer blasted Gruber, but when he said:

I'll be honest, while I favor health insurance, I am not wild about the new plan and how it became law either.

My gut tells me there's something deeper in those words than just those words.

Also, maybe I did not pay attention as the Gruber affair unfolded, but Schieffer came up with a new quote from Gruber I had not grokked yet:

First by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people and we all know it's really a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.

Dayaamm!

The conservatives stuck oil with this dude.

I only hope they don't replace Gruber's bullshit (meaning that of the left-wing progressives) with their bullshit (right-wing progressives).

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yesterday on Real Clear Politics, there was a video where Obama said he had just heard about the Gruber mess.

Obama on Gruber Comments: "I Just Heard About This"

Direct quote from that video:

The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters, is no reflection on the actual process that was run.

Here is Obama in 2006 saying he stole ideas from Gruber, implying he admired Gruber that much.

Drip... drip... drip...

(That is the sound of the drops of truth slowly cutting through Obama's credibility with the general public.)

Michael

[Jules Troy]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

[moralist]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

...and do you know why?

It's because the US has a truly representative government which was created by the political majority in their own image. Obama lives by the very same values held by the majority of people who inhabit America... and yet are not Americans.

They elected one of their own... twice.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

...and do you know why?

It's because the US has a truly representative government which was created by the political majority in their own image. Obama lives by the very same values held by the majority of people who inhabit America... and yet are not Americans.

They elected one of their own... twice.

Greg

Via massive vote fraud.

--Brant

[Selene]

Looks like Gruber's, how did he phrase Kennedy's idea,"rip-off" is up to six million dollars [$6,000,000.00].

Life in prison is too short a sentence.

A...

[moralist]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

...and do you know why?

It's because the US has a truly representative government which was created by the political majority in their own image. Obama lives by the very same values held by the majority of people who inhabit America... and yet are not Americans.

They elected one of their own... twice.

Greg

Via massive vote fraud.

--Brant

That matches the values of the political majority, too.

Greg

[Selene]

Now this is hilarious...the little Democratic hog who impersonates a Federal Senator from the State of Louisiana just got rebuffed by her own Democratic buds which are filled with marxist environmentalists.

Ms. Landrieu — who, if re-elected, will lose her coveted position as chairwoman of the Energy Committee when Republicans take the Senate majority next year — spent the past few days working furiously to round up Democratic support for her bill, which she had hoped would be her last, best chance of holding on to her Senate seat.On Tuesday morning, she was at least one vote short of the filibuster-proof 60 votes she needed. And despite cajoling, persuading, browbeating, and making an impassioned plea to her colleagues during a closed-door lunch — which one attendee described as “civilized but pretty contentious” — Ms. Landrieu, who has so often bulldozed her way to success through sheer force of will, came up just short.

The little midget from Cal. tried to hold her sister's pants up...

Even Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who did not support the bill and said Keystone XL stood for “extra lethal,” was sure to note that credit for the legislation belonged to Ms. Landrieu.

“Senator Landrieu is the only reason that we are debating this today,” Ms. Boxer said. “Set the politics aside. Let the record be clear forever: This debate would not be before this body were it not for Senator Landrieu’s insistence.”

dog and pony show is over for now...

However, even had the Senate passed the bill, Mr. Obama was not expected to sign it into law.

Before the vote, White House aides stopped short of an explicit veto threat, but left the impression that the president would reject the bill if it made it to his desk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us/politics/keystone-xl-pipeline.html?emc=edit_na_20141118&nlid=53564225

[Selene]

The kind of tunnel vision thinking that gets these assholes in trouble...House member talks about a "rescision" Bill

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/18/top-republican-floats-new-attack-plan-for-obamas-immigration-action/?intcmp=latestnews

While "rescission" would allow Republicans to propose a bill to repeal Obama's immigration funding, like any other bill, it would need to pass both chambers -- including a likely 60-vote threshold in the Senate -- and survive a presidential veto.

Even with control of the House and Senate next year, Republicans likely would not have the votes to override a veto.

"Umm, glaring problem here," a Senate Republican aide told Fox News, in response to Rogers' idea. "A rescission bill isn't some sort of special bill. It's just like most bills. The president would still have to sign a rescission bill. If he vetoed, we'd need 67 votes to defund executive amnesty. So what's being proposed here is giving the president the money and we wouldn't be able to take it back. Nice try."

The aide said the plan would amount to a "capitulation" to the president.

They are too clever by half. When are the establishment Republicans going to learn the rule KISS [or, in Schumer's case, Keep It Simple Schmuck].

[Peter]

Adam wrote:

They are too clever by half. When are the establishment Republicans going to learn the rule . . . . end quote

Who ya gunna call for golden ideas? Robert Tracinski! This sounds like a workable stateegerie.

Peter

The Tracinski Letter

November 18, 2014

The First Rule of Amnesty Fight Club

. . . . Moreover, I think Obama is personally eager for the conflict. He really thinks the history books will record that he went down in a blaze of glory fighting a defiant battle against evil Republicans. That fits his world view and his grandiose pretensions, and to be honest, it's just about the only legacy he's got left. So what can we do? Just give up and wait him out?

No. But we can fight a battle that's a lot easier for congressional Republicans, using powers that are fully within their sphere of authority and targeting an enemy that is more likely to feel the pain. Don't make this a battle between Congress and the president. Make it a battle within Congress. Specifically, cut off Democrats in Congress. From everything.

Traditionally, our legislative system is not characterized by absolute majority rule. There is a longstanding system of power-sharing, in which the minority still has some role in the system, even if it can't get its own way. Members of the minority can still sit on committees, draft legislation, propose amendments, participate in official hearings--and in the Senate, they have even had the ability to filibuster legislation and the approval of appointees in the other branches. So long as your party can summon 40% of the vote, it can exercise a minority veto on much of the business in the Senate. But none of these rules are in the Constitution. They all exist because the majority chooses to allow them to exist, and they have remained in effect through a form of mutually assured destruction: each party knows that it might someday find itself in the minority, so it has an interest in making sure that it won't be totally disenfranchised when it gets there.

In the Senate, Harry Reid has already breached this mutually assured destruction by eliminating the filibuster for judicial appointments and by preventing Republicans from moving any of their own legislation. The Democrats are not-so-secretly hoping that now that they are about to be in the minority, Mitch McConnell will restore the old rules and everything will be fine.

He should let them know that he would like to do that--if Obama renounces unilateral executive action, on amnesty or on any other issue. If not, then the minority gets cut off from everything. Same in the House: they don't even get to sit on committees. They will spend the next two years as ornaments, able to do nothing. Maybe Republicans can even cut their staffs and give them the really tiny, out-of-the-way offices.

Of course, Mitch McConnell might be willing to make exceptions for those who choose to caucus with Republicans, like Angus King, the Independent from Maine who now caucuses with Democrats. Or maybe West Virginia's Joe Manchin might consider a switch in party affiliation to match the political change that's already happening in the state he represents. You get the idea. The beauty of this strategy is that it targets people who are likely to fear the damage to their interests and on matters where the congressional majority has pretty much total power if it chooses to use it. Yet as far as the wider public is concerned, this is not a high-profile fight over immigration. It's an inside-the-Beltway squabble over congressional rules--the kind of boring procedural issue the public usually tunes out.

If Democrats squawk, Republicans have an unanswerable rejoinder. Why should they care about having power in Congress, if the laws passed by Congress are just going to be ignored by the president? If Democrats aren't fighting for the prerogatives of the legislature against the executive, then they're just fighting over who gets the personal perquisites. Which is what we've always suspected they were really fighting for. Would this plan work? Perhaps if Republicans inflict enough pain on congressional Democrats, they will eventually put enough pressure on Obama that he gives in. At any rate, this makes it into a fight between an obstinate president and the poor saps from his own party that he's trying to sacrifice for his own vanity. And even if it doesn't work on Obama, this would set up a nice conundrum for the Democratic nominee in 2016. In debates, she can be pressed to answer whether she would pledge to renounce unilateral executive power. If not, then she would be condemning every Democrat down the ticket to more years of irrelevance.

The biggest objection to this idea is the fear of setting a bad precedent, compounding one assault on the American system, the lawlessness of the president, with another, the disenfranchising of a congressional minority. That's why it should always be clear that the goal is to restore the old system, because the republic is better off for it, and because someday Republicans might be back in the minority again. But it's worth maintaining a little strategic ambiguity about when the old rules will return, so that Democrats in Congress don't think they can just wait the Republicans out. I think this is the best option we have left, if Republicans can be convinced to remember the first rule of Amnesty Fight Club. Don't talk about amnesty. Make this fight about the one issue it's really about.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What's wrong with calling Americans stupid?

Gruber's soulmate, Bill Maher, asked this. That's not me being snarky, either. Maher identified himself that way on camera.

He said the government (meaning the elites, meaning him) has to put the pill in the dog food, otherwise the dog won't swallow it.

The dog is us.

Let that settle because he means it. He honestly thinks like that.

The dog is us.

Do you want to swallow Maher's pills?

Arf arf!

http://youtu.be/nJa4GyVVtvU

I love the fact that his progressive guests agree with him so solidly. They actually look relieved on that video (right before their smirks), like they can finally take their masks off.

Keep talking, folks. Go on and blabber your way into total irrelevancy.

I so hope they keep it up.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Stupid is as stupid talks.

They can't believe they're stupid out the gate much less how much more stupid they are than that. That's why they obliviously pile on.

Rand had it right when she said a Newton Minnow you could hypothetically talk and debate with, not the crap that followed. Think how many decades ago that was. She was prescient. She could see way into the future looking at bits of the present.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Peter, with whom does the entrenched bureaucracy share power with? They're the real power wielders. (I would include realized corporate and military interests under bureaucracy.)

--Brant

[Peter]

And the press.

Brant wrote about Ayn Rand:

She could see way into the future looking at bits of the present.

end quote

She did not see what she wanted to see or just what she feared. Her predictions were not examples of the psychological term projection and that is astonishing. I can visualize probable futures but I am wrong most of the time, which may be the difference between flights of fancy and true predictive ability based on rational facts.

So, what are the RINO's going to do? I think they should continue suing The Prez, look at ways to thwart him, and then ignore him (literally, when they get before a camera say Obama is a lying, thieving, elitist, Progressive, lame duck and then ignore him) and then come up with some great Constitutional ideas. And continue working on parliamentary ways to exact revenge against the Senate and House Democrat's in 2015, of course. So I suggest they Ignore the SOB and think positive.

Old Hickory Clinton is very vulnerable.

[Peter]

Brant wrote:

Peter, with whom does the entrenched bureaucracy share power with? They're the real power wielders. (I would include realized corporate and military interests under bureaucracy.)

end quote

Want to share power with a third Bush? Not me. Townhall.com has an interesting article by Michelle Malkin that the politically interested might check out. Here are some excerpts.

Peter

Jeb Bush: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Waterboy

Michelle Malkin | Dec 17, 2014

Allow me to unite America's left, right and center in just three words: No, Jeb, No . . . . Well, I hate to break it to Jeb Inc. There's no popular groundswell for Bush Part III. None, zip, nada . . . .

Jeb's indulgent (and ultimately doomed) enterprise has three privileged constituencies: Big Business, Big Government and Big Media. This iron triumvirate explains how the failed campaigns of so-called "pragmatic," "thoughtful" and "moooooderate" liberal Republican candidates such as John McCain, Jon Huntsman and Bob Dole ever got off the ground. The "Reasonable Republican," anointed and enabled by the statist Big Three, serves as a useful tool for bashing conservatives and marginalizing conservatism.

For Republicans who argue that Jeb is the most "electable" choice, I ask: What planet are you on? After two disastrous terms of Barack Obama's Hope and Change Theater, the last thing the Republican Party needs is an establishment poster child for Washington business as usual. I mean, really? A third Bush who's been working for his dad, his dad's friends or the government since 1980?

. . . . One thing Jeb's promoters won't be emphasizing: Over the course of his eight years in the Florida governor's mansion, government spending skyrocketed.

. . . . The Chamber supports the top-down, privacy-undermining, local autonomy-sabotaging Common Core racket. Jeb Bush spearheaded and profited from Common Core -- and accuses those of us who oppose it of opposing academic excellence for our own children. Jeb's problem isn't just Common Core. It's that he has no core. Instead of retreating from the costly federalized scheme that has alienated teachers, administrators and parents of all backgrounds, Bush has doubled down with his Fed Ed control freak allies and corporate donors.

The reign of Obama ushered in massive cronyism, corporate favoritism and Boomtown boondoggles galore. We've lived too long already under the boot of arrogant D.C. bureaucrats who've exploited their power to serve their friends.

No more business as usual: Stop Jeb Bush.

end quotes

Ryan / Paul. Go Bulldogs!

[moralist]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

Of course not, Jules.

NO ONE cares as long as someone else pays their healthcare bills. That's what the majority voted for, so that's what they get.

Greg

[Selene]

Last ripple in the wave of 2014:

POSTED ON DECEMBER 17, 2014 BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN 2014 ELECTION
BREAKING: MCSALLY WINS!
Scott has followed Martha McSally’s race for an Arizona House seat here and here. She’s just been officially declared the winner in the nation’s last remaining undecided House contest, by a margin of 167 votes. From the AP:

PHOENIX (AP) — Republicans will have their largest U.S. House majority in 83 years when the new Congress convenes next month after a recount in Arizona gave the final outstanding race to the Republican challenger.

Martha McSally won a House seat over Democrat Ron Barber by 167 votes out of about 220,000 cast, results released Wednesday show. . .

More interesting in this story is that it appears the usual Democratic “vote finding” tactics didn’t work:

As he saw his lead slip away during the vote count, Barber fought in several venues to get additional votes counted but was turned away at every effort. He tried to get the board of supervisors from Pima and Cochise counties and the secretary of state to order rejected provisional and early ballots counted. When that failed, he turned to a federal judge to get the provisional ballots counted.

Separately, a group of voters tried to get the state Supreme Court to halt the recount because of the computer program used. That too was rejected. (Emphasis added.)

[Brant Gaede]

My C. district butts up against McSally's so I couldn't vote for her.

PAC ads over-whelmed what Barber was able to get on the air. This is Gabby Giffords' old district. There's a good chance Barber will win this seat back in the next election if he runs again. There is no great incumbent advantage. Giffords almost lost her 2010 re-election bid then she was shot by that murderous nut. We'll never know what kind of rampage he would have gone on instead if she had lost.

--Brant

[Selene]

My C. district butts up against McSally's so I couldn't vote for her.

--Brant

PAC ads over-whelmed what Barber was able to get on the air. This is Gabby Giffords' old district. There's a good chance Barber will win this seat back in the next election if he runs again. There is no great incumbent advantage. Giffords almost lost her 2010 re-election bid then she was shot by that murderous nut. We'll never know what kind of rampage he would have gone on instead if she had lost.

--Brant

Interesting.

Well this is another clear example where "every vote counts."

[Selene]

Sadly the majority of people just don't see it or don't care..

The Harvard "professor" class is furious about the PPACA law that is being applied to them, despite the fact that they were huge supporters of its passage.

Guess what's good for the Gods is not good for the peeps below....

Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.

The faculty vote came too late to stop the cost increases from taking effect this month, and the anger on campus remains focused on questions that are agitating many workplaces: How should the burden of health costs be shared by employers and employees? If employees have to bear more of the cost, will they skimp on medically necessary care, curtail the use of less valuable services, or both?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/us/health-care-fixes-backed-by-harvards-experts-now-roil-its-faculty.html?emc=edit_th_20150106&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=53564225&_r=0

[moralist]

That's a recurring pattern... what people do to others gets done to them. Maybe next time they'll think before they act.

Greg