2Sa
16:22 KJV So
they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto
his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel.
American Thinker Articles: Smug Filled Rooms http://bit.ly/1zt4jnQ
By Clarice Feldman
As the story broke bit by bit over the internet
-- one angry citizen’s (Rich Weinstein) research established that MIT Professor
Jonathan Gruber, a major architect and salesman for ObamaCare, boasted in 6
separate videos that he lied and that voters were “too stupid” to catch on --
we got to see inside what Professor Charles Lipson smartly coined “the smug
filled rooms” of the Capitol.
Many observed the only “stupid” people were the
Democrats who -- without a single Republican vote -- twisted parliamentary
procedure to pass this into law, accepting California’s constitutional genius
Nancy Pelosi’s admonition, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s
in it.”
The revelations could not have come at a worse
time for the administration.
For one thing, the Supreme Court just granted
certiorari in the King case. That case tests whether the clear language of the
ObamaCare subsidies for those who sign up under state-run plans was improperly
extended by IRS to signers on the federal website, a bit of administration
legerdemain to keep ObamaCare viable after 37 states refused to set up state
insurance exchanges.
You see, Gruber’s arrogance revealed that the
scheme was not only contrary to the clear language of the statute, but as well
to the intent of its authors. He has gravely undercut the administration’s
argument to look beyond the language to sustain their expansion of it. While countless
Democrats -- including especially Nancy Pelosi
-- who credited and relied on Gruber’s work now act as if they never
heard of him, they can’t so easily dispose of him and his role in the creation
of Obamacare .
James Taranto spotted this dilemma:
In March, a group of left-leaning “economics
scholars,” including Gruber himself, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the
case of King v. Sebelius, then under consideration by the Fourth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. (Last week the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of
the case, now styled King v. Burwell.) The March brief appealed to Gruber’s
authority:
‘Economist and MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber
has developed a sophisticated economic model that allows for a robust
prediction of outcomes in the health care system, depending on various policy
changes. The Gruber Microsimulation Model (“GMSIM”) utilizes two primary sets
of data: (1) Fixed information on individuals, derived from 2011 Current
Population Survey data and updated to 2013 and later years; and (2) varying
information on policy parameters, which inform the changes in price and
eligibility of various forms of insurance. . . . The GMSIM has been cited as
one of the leading options for modeling health insurance reforms such as the
ACA [the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act].’
A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit sided
with the administration in King. On the same day, a panel of the U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled for the plaintiffs in
Halbig v. Burwell, another case raising the same legal question -- to wit,
whether the Internal Revenue Service exceeded its statutory authority in making
tax subsidies available to purchasers of medical insurance policies on the
federally run exchange.
The plaintiffs rest their argument on the plain
language of the statute, which limits subsidies to taxpayers “enrolled in
[policies] through an Exchange established by the State.” The administration’s
defenders, including Gruber, have argued that the plain-language interpretation
is counter to congressional intent and that the limitation is a mere “typo.”
That claim is nonsensical, as we observed Monday. Even if it was a drafting
error, it was far more serious than a mere typo.
But as we noted in July, Gruber himself had
asserted on multiple occasions that it was Congress’s intention to limit the
subsidies to state-established exchanges. In that view, Congress’s intent was
to make it so attractive to set up an exchange that no state would refuse.
Last week, the day before Election Day, 18
Democratic state attorneys general, led by Virginia’s Mark Herring, filed a
brief with the D.C. Circuit, arguing that the full court should reverse the
panel’s decision in Halbig. According to them, Gruber is no authority at all:
‘The best that Appellants and their amici come
up with are YouTube videos of Professor Jonathan Gruber, a private citizen at
non-governmental meetings in January 2012, years after the ACA was enacted. But
Appellants fail to demonstrate that Professor Gruber’s message was disseminated
to the State officials responsible for determining whether to build their own
Exchange. In any event, Gruber later corrected himself, calling his earlier
statements a mistake.’
Back in July, Gruber rather hilariously
characterized his earlier comments as a “speak-o.” Presto, change-o, typo,
speak-o!
The Democratic state attorneys, who distanced
themselves from Gruber in their brief, are not alone. As each new video appears
more administration backers claim they never heard of him, he’s “a private
citizen” and such.
But you cannot pay him hundreds of thousands of
dollars, cite him in your speeches and on your websites and in your briefs as
an authority and then credibly pretend you don't know him .
Gruber was retained by the Department of Health
and Human Services in 2009 on a $297,600 contract to provide “technical
assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” Gruber also
confirmed to the Washington Post that he was paid another $95,000 before that,
for a total of nearly $400,000.
Around this time, his analysis was not only
featured on Pelosi’s House speaker website in 2009, but cited by the White
House several times. Though he often was billed as an analyst in media
interviews where he touted the merits of the plan, critics complained his
financial ties to the administration weren’t disclosed.
Gruber also spent a good deal of time
testifying on the Hill and in meetings at the White House -- 19 visits from
2009 to June of this year, according to publicly available logs
Apart from his work in Washington, he went on
to bag similar contracts for health care work at the state level after that,
working six-figure deals with multiple states.
“He talks himself about being in the Oval
Office, on loan to Congress, particularly the Senate Budget Committee,” Rich
Weinstein, who helped dig up the Gruber tapes, told FoxNews.com
This pack of lies -- Gruber’s and his
supporters’ -- seriously undercut faith in government and the administration.
As Professor Lipson concludes:
The Gruber videos are devastating because they
say flatly that the deception was premeditated and was used self-consciously to
pass the law. The professor goes further and says the law would have been
defeated if its central provisions had been known to voters.
Assuming Gruber's message is true, it means the
Obama administration deliberately evaded our democratic process to pass its
signature legislation. Its justification, which Gruber makes explicit, is not
only that "we know what's best for you," but also that "you are
too dense to know that yourself."
This arrogant, condescending approach extends
far beyond Obamacare. It is an essential feature of progressive politics for
the past century. From the outset, progressive politics yoked expert advice to
expansive state action, especially redistributive policies to help the poor.
It says, "We are experts who want to help
you, the great unwashed. You are too stupid and uneducated to know how to know
what's best for you. Since we do know, and since we have your best interests at
heart, we will handle those complex choices for you."
It's an intellectual's version of noblesse
oblige.
We do need experts, of course. We need them to
design satellites and sewer systems, plan interstate highways, set safety
standards for food and skyscrapers, and defend our country.
But as a democracy, we need voters and their
elected representatives to make the basic choices about what to do and which
trade-offs to make. It is voters and their representatives who should decide
whether to buy a new sewer system, wage a war, build a new highway or send
rockets into outer space. Those choices ought to be made after vigorous public
debate, not in the smug-filled rooms of the Progressive Policy Institute or MIT
Faculty Club.
If that weren’t enough to cause the purveyors
of ObamaCare indigestion, there’s this: the cost of coverage under the Act will
substantially increase this year. As Tom Maguire notes of the administration’s
suggestion we use the Thanksgiving break to shop around to get the best new
deals on health insurance: “If you like your health plan you can reminisce
about it.”
And there’s more, as they say on the late night
TV gadget ads
Penalties will rise under the individual
mandate and the employer mandate will take effect.
After being delayed for a year, large
businesses (100 or more employees in 2015, 50 or more in 2016) will be required
to offer affordable (and subsidized) health plans to at least 70 percent of
their full time employees or face a $2,000-$3,000 penalty per employee.
This mandate will lead to fewer full time
employees being hired.
You’d think after covering for the ObamaCare
architects during the legislative process, pillorying its critics and sitting
on the Gruber revelatory videos the press would slink off somewhere in shame.
Instead, they continue for the most part to sit
on the story or downplay it, reporting if they do at all that Gruber had also
worked on Romneycare. So what? That made Gruber’s persistent and arrogant lies
about ObamaCare okay?
And now they -- NBC’s Chuck Todd, NPR’s Alisa,
Chang, Peter Foster (Washington editor of the UK Telegraph) and Jeremy Peters
(Washington bureau of the NYT) -- are off on a new angle: contending as a
matter of fact that the Republicans who swept the midterms -- in large part
because voters were not as stupid as the press and knew Obamacare stunk -- have
“an obligation to govern”.
In other words, to prove they are worthy, they
must give the losers what they want. Actually, as Jay Cost reminds us in
debunking past years’ meme -- that the Democrats had achieved a permanent
majority -- that’s not how our republic was designed.
“The rules of the game” at present favor a
Republican Congress and Senate and a Democratic White House, and to govern
without opposition you must win all three. The Democrats didn’t, and their
dreams of a radically egalitarian government is in any event at odds with both
the constitutional scheme and the facts on the ground. That is likely to remain
the state of the union especially now that sunlight has entered the smug
filled rooms which for so long have closeted
academics at the government till and their johns in the Democratic
Party.
Related
Notes
Iraq Vet Continues Battle Against Obamacare |
The American Spectator Matt Sissel takes the government back to court. By David
Catron– 5.5.14 YouTube/Pacific Legal Foundation A year ago I compareddecorated
veteran Matt Sissel ...
Understanding The Scope Of The Obama/Gruber
Lies Within ObamaCare….. | The Last Refuge
~ Hoax and Chains ~ We pointed out in Gruber
video #4how, according to his own admissions, Jonathan Gruber met with Senator
Obama in 2006 -and then again with President Obama in 2009- in the Oval Offi...
I2C 141116aa 2Sa16v22 Smug filled rooms | I2C |
141116 0824 | 2Sa16v22 Smug filled rooms
