Downing Street Gruber

jonathan-gruber-1Isn’t Jonathan Gruber worse than the Downing Street memo?

Gruber, who was paid half a million dollars to design Obamacare, is on tape bragging about how the Democrats relied on “the stupidity of the American voter” to pass that law. Which, ironically, was sort of a stupid thing to say on camera.

By now there are so many tapes of Gruber explaining how Obamacare fooled stupid Americans that they’re being released as a boxed set in time for Christmas.

Gruber, who will hereafter be known as “the architect of Obamacare,” said:

“If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — if you made it explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

The Downing Street memo consisted of minutes from a July 2002 meeting of British labor, defense and intelligence officials during the run-up to the Iraq War, in which the MI6 head, Richard Dearlove, reportedly said that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

These notes from a British cabinet meeting were called the smoking gun of Bush’s lying his way into war.

The Downing Street memo was written about in dozens of New York Times articles — including six hysterical Frank Rich op-eds. It has been mentioned more than a hundred times in The Washington Post. It was covered on ABC’s “Nightline,” by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” on NBC’s “Meet the Press” — even on the “Today” show. It was discussed nightly on MSNBC, where Keith Olbermann covered it like it was Kim Kardashian and he was the E! Network.

By contrast, this week, NBC’s Chuck Todd dismissed the Gruber tapes as “a political story” and The New York Times said of Gruber: “In truth, his role was limited.” (NYT, March 28, 2012: “Mr. Gruber helped the administration put together the basic principles of the proposal, (then) the White House lent him to Capitol Hill to help congressional staff members draft the specifics of the legislation.”)

But when the Downing Street memo came out, conservatives weren’t allowed to say, Yeah, well, the British memo writer didn’t have anything to do with the president’s decision to go to war — even though that guy really didn’t have anything to do with it.

Those weren’t Tony Blair’s notes. They were a secretary’s interpretation of the MI6 chief’s interpretation of the Bush administration’s argument to the United Nations. It’s like a movie review, written by someone who knew someone who had seen the movie.

The memo writer also wasn’t being paid $400,000 by the Bush administration to make Iraq War policy. Jonathan Gruber was paid that much — plus another several million from the states — to design Obamacare.

You don’t pay a half-million dollars to someone who is only peripherally involved in making policy. (Unless we’re talking about Obama himself.)

There was no tape of Bush and Blair running around saying: Trust this guy — the memo writer is our guide! But that’s what Obama, Nancy Pelosi, then-Sen. John Kerry and other Democrats said about Gruber.

– Kerry on Oct. 1, 2009: “(Gruber) has been our guide on a lot of this …”

– Pelosi on Nov. 5, 2009: “Our bill brings down rates — I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber’s MIT analysis …”

– Obama’s Organizing for Action website, until the tapes surfaced: “Jon Gruber, who helped write Obamacare …”

Gruber had more than a dozen meetings at the White House during the drafting of Obamacare. The Downing Street memo writer had no meetings at the Bush White House. Even the guy he was quoting had only one.

The outrage over the Downing Street memo concerned the claim — in the memo writer’s words — that the intelligence was being “fixed” around a policy. Although a number of commentators claimed that the British meaning of “fixed” is more like “arranged,” let’s assume “fixed” implies trickery.

It’s still one word! Gruber has given six different speeches rambling at length about how Obamacare was intended to deceive “stupid” voters.

You can’t say the Downing Street memo was a totally legitimate news story, but that the Gruber tapes are meaningless.

Ninety-nine percent of Americans were utterly unaffected by the invasion of Iraq — other than to be made safer, until Obama threw our victory away. Every American is affected by Obamacare.

The bald-faced lies told to pass Obamacare expose not only that law, but all Democratic economic claims. When Obama boasts that it will be a huge boon to the economy to give amnesty to millions of low-wage workers, who won’t pay income taxes but will need a lot of government services, remember: Obamacare was supposed to save money, too.

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  • Bamaguje

    Gruber epitomizes Obama Democrats’ contempt for Americans.
    GOP must take full advantage of the Gruber confession videos to regain the White House in 2016.

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    Lib-Commies are ruining America!! Until someone,anyone in the media(mainstream media) brings this out to the public and continually makes it an issue do not expect any major change in our government. If anything it will get worse until Full Blown Communists are installed and the vote is meaningless. Beware…it’s closer than you think !!

  • PhillipGaley

    Okay, Pardner, I hear what you’re sayin’ an’ all but, lemme tell ya’, there’s Rand Paul, he says: “We probably can’t get rid of Obamacare.”; and, there’s Mitch McConell, and Mitch McConell ya’ know is the head of the whole Senate, and Mitch has done told us it can’t be voted out because, “We can’t repeal it.”, . . . so, . . . so there we have it, . . . we’re just plain stuck; and, nuthin’ we can do about it, . . . an’ mostly, I guess, because we can’t, . . . we just can’t, . . . may as well all go home and have dinner or something because, we can’t do it, . . . it can’t be done, . . . no way, . . . maybe give Mr. Putin a call, . . . he’d probably have some ideas, . . . but we don’t, . . . we can’t, . . . we may be jus’ done fer, . . .”.

    Oh well, on another note, . . . looking ahead, maybe, . . . maybe we can find something we CAN do, . . . But I don’t know, . . . prob’ly not, . . . an’ I’m jus’ like you, . . . I hate t’give in an’ give up an’ all, an’ turn myself in to the gov’ment, but, . . . there it is, . . . right from a horse’s mouth, . . . we just can’t; so, . . .

    • WW4

      It’s hard to overstate just how badly Republicans messed this up. The ones who actually cared–the ones who proposed solutions–most proposed solutions that looked very much like Obamacare.

      A few others proposed mere band-aids like tort reform. Common sense, but effectively symbolic.

      Still more refused to admit the looming crisis, and crowed obliviously about “the best system in the world.”.

      When it came time to do something. McConnell chose obstructionism–pure and simple. His main objection was political. And thus he turned many who would otherwise have supported this plan into equivocators, and began spreading nonsense about s-c-lism and death panels. And he lost. Republicans have ceded health care to the Democrats. Say what you will about the Democrats–they did something, while Republicans did nothing.

      So yes, now the ACA will be tweaked rather than scrapped, until people begin to agitate for universal care.

      • PhillipGaley

        Well, has it never occurred to anyone else that, the forces who use the 17th Am. to finance the Republican politicians also, wish that, Obamacare should remain in place, . . . and likewise also, that, open borders be the New America?

  • Eagle

    This effectively shows that mainstream journalists are anything but impartial. Mainstream journalists are disrespectful of all the pillars of American society, particularly the pillars of honesty, integrity and incorruptibility. This is no surprise because to work for mainstream media you have to sell your soul to the devil.

  • redmanrt

    Breaking news: Standartenführer Jonathan Gruber cut from White House staff

  • redmanrt

    “You don’t pay a half-million dollars to someone who is only peripherally
    involved in making policy. (Unless we’re talking about Obama himself.)”

    Well, the potted plant in chief is a special case.

  • WW4

    So we know now that the Bush Administration intended to go after Saddam prior to 9/11. Do you think he would have been elected if that intention had been part of his platform? No. It remained a secret until Rumsfeld and Cheney saw their opportunity on 9/12/2001.

    Obama, on the other hand, made health care reform a priority, and he was elected in part on that platform. What do you imagine people expected? Probably all sorts of things: Obama was for universal coverage during the campaign. Once elected, rather than repeat the mistakes of the Clinton plan 20 years prior, Obama let Congress do the heavy lifting.

    And they did in a bipartisan way until the individual mandate surfaced. Of course, the plan itself was structured on previous Republican proposals, and many Republicans previously supported the individual mandate, but it became McConnell’s touchstone for opposing the bill, because his main goal was to keep Obama from appearing successful–rather than, say, helping the American people.

    And so this massive piece of legislation got passed, and most people didn’t really get it–for lack of trying, of course. And also thanks to the massive conservative misinformation campaign.

    Meanwhile, Republicans, who know for a fact their audience is dumb as a box of rocks, spread b.s. about “death panels” etc. God forbid Obama should do something to help people! And the objections changed complexion with each new success–of course, typical of Republican’s lack of any grounding principles.

    Comparing the Downing St. memo to Gruber’s ho hum statement? Ann must really think you guys are stupid.

    • tagalog

      I’d have voted for George W. Bush for President if I’d known that he intended to go after Saddam Hussein. Saddam sought to assassinate George H.W. Bush while he was in office. For that alone, he needed to be wiped off the face of the earth.

      • WW4

        Bush himself says that was not part of his reason, though. BTW I do believe Mr. Bush acted in what he thought was the best interest of the country/world. I don’t believe his early advisors, however, cared that much. I find it the height of cynicism to immediately go into “attack Iraq” mode after 9/11, as Rumsfeld and Cheney did.

        • tagalog

          I was writing about MY reasons, not George W. Bush’s.

      • Pete

        Plus there is the fact that Timothy McVeigh got help.

        His co-conspirator did not go to the Phillipines to meet his in-laws (he did not take his wife) nor did he visit the usually fleshpots (zex tourism).

        It is kind of hard to have a nation agree on foreign policy when one factions avoids the truth at all costs and is not the least bit curious.

  • WW4

    “Ninety-nine percent of Americans were utterly unaffected by the invasion of Iraq — other than to be made safer, until Obama threw our victory away. Every American is affected by Obamacare.”

    Thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands non-Americans dead, Iraq destabilized, Iran emboldened, ISIS formed, etc. Not quite the “democracy domino” we were sold.

    vs.

    Millions more insured, pre-existing conditions can’t be turned away

    Gosh, tough one!

    Yep, Ann must really think you guys are stupid.

    • tagalog

      Yes, after we overthrew Saddam Hussein, it would have been smart for us to bow to all those who clamored for the United Nations to take over the administration of Iraq and get out with the win chalked on our score board.

      Then we could have gotten out and left the bungling to the U.N.

      Oh well, hindsight is always 20-20.

      • WW4

        We could have gotten rid of Saddam and skipped the nation building, or listened to those who advocated for incorporating some of the old regime, I suppose.

        I always say we didn’t know much about the region before, and one of several good effects that came of the Iraq War was actually beginning to understand that region’s balances of power and tribal allegiances.

  • tagalog

    You know, when FDR told Americans that they would be giving up part of their earnings to build a pool of government money to provide a modicum of money to be redistributed to the retired, widows and orphans, people went along with it.

    When LBJ told Americans that part of their earnings would be taken to pay for health care for the poor, people went along with it.

    So why was there this great need to deceive Americans about Obamacare? What was so unacceptable about it that they needed to lie about what it means? I don’t think we’ve learned all of the nasty little secrets of the Affordable Care Act yet.

    • WW4

      I don’t know about deception. Gruber actually supports the plan he helped design. His comment was toward how to get legislation this massive through when people didn’t really know what it was. So, politics.

      The plan itself is a smorgasbord of compromises. That’s hard for anyone to get excited about. But if you promise “everyone will be covered” you can keep your base happy while fending off the inevitable cries of “government takeover.”

      • tagalog

        You aren’t acknowledging that Gruber himself repeatedly said that the ACA was deliberately fashioned to keep people from concluding that this was another redistribution of taxpayer money.

        If you promise “everyone will be covered” when they won’t be, isn’t that deception?

        Who cares if Gruber himself supports the ACA? That has zero applicability to the issue of his deceiving people.

        • WW4

          Well, who cares whether Saddam had anything to do with 9/11? To continue the article’s analogy that was as germane to how the Iraq War was “sold” as not publicizing the redistributionary aspect. Some people understood all along Saddam was not related to 9/11, just as I’m sure some people knew all along there’d have to be some redistribution going on. It’s politics.

          How much do Americans know about what goes into any bill? How much do they know about what their health care plans consisted of? If Republicans had said, “Hey, this is essentially what we’ve wanted for the last 30-40 years while you guys kept holding out for universal care” that’d be one thing. But it became apparent that the opposition was going to throw it’s eggs in the “it’s a government takeover basket”. So the plan is going to be, “How do we show it’s not?”

          • nightspore

            At this point you’re wandering off topic. I’m fascinated by the way you types always try to have the last word, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. I suppose there’s some sort of psychological lift involved – or is it to maintain the facade of superiority at all costs?

          • WW4

            It is no different than the way “you types” operate. If you had a shred of self-awareness or a set of principles, you’d see that.

            It’s hard to expect that level of thinking from someone who thinks I’ve wandered off topic when I’ve actually kept to the premise of this article the entire time, while responding to prompts from one of the few posters here who actually does know how to argue a point.

          • nightspore

            Whether or not you’ve “kept to the premise of this article”, you didn’t answer tagalong’s point.

            “If you had … a set of principles by which you lived your life” eh? That’s a pretty adventurous inference!

            Hang on, WW4, you’re beginning to lose it!

          • WW4

            Sorry, did I generalize about you the same way you did about me? You do appear to have a sense of humor. Perhaps some self-awareness is not out of the question for you?

            I think I did answer his point. Gruber’s supposedly scandalous “admission” is in fact typical of a lot of legislation, and certain aspects were “couched” for political reasons, just as the reasons (and indeed genesis of the idea) for nation building Iraq were couched for political reasons.

            Interestingly (and yes I am now going OT here a bit) congressional Democrats were for the Iraq War before they were against it, in much the same way the mechanisms and mandate of the PPACA were Republican ideas until they were adopted by Democrats. And now both somewhat disingenuously deny they ever supported such concepts.

          • Pete

            Your off in your World War count.

            If you think we are living through WW4, try WW7 or WW8.

            It depends on your definition. The French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War were part of larger world wars.

      • kasandra

        What do you mean “I don’t know about deception.”? Gruber admits on video that they hid the Obama tax as a “penalty” so that the CBO would score the ACA as being about a zillion dollars less costly to the economy than it was in order to get it to pass. I’d say that’s a pretty big deception. Wouldn’t you?

        • WW4

          A bill that refers to taxes as another name? Shocking.

          A bill attempting to avoid any appearance of controversy? Shocking.

          Someone talking about voter “stupidity?” Shocking.

          You may find me cynical, but I find the “scandal” of this even more cynical. Would that all legislation were prepared in as public and drawn out a way as the PPACA. Would that more people were so interested in the lawyering of language in legislation, instead of just now.

          Perhaps most cynical of all–you’d think the opposition would have maybe figured this out at some point prior to Gruber’s statement. It is their job, after all.

          I mean, they put a lot of effort into the “death panels,” which were not even in it. You’d think they would have found what was actually in it.

          • kasandra

            Apparently you find it difficult to follow what is known as a train of thought so I’ll make it simple. You said “I don’t know about deception” in your post about Gruber and the passage of the ACA. I said you may want to rethink that given that Gruber himself admitted that they deceived the CBO by calling what they knew to be a tax a penalty, which makes a great substantive difference in how CBO scores the bill. Of course, he also directly admitted deceiving the public by concealing the Cadillac plan tax as something that would be paid by insurance companies rather than their subscribers and that the whole scheme was designed to take money from the well and give it to the sick in a redistributive way. So you reply by making a fully unsupported and unresponsive (as well as wrong) statement. Way to go there WW4. Now how about responding to whether the ACA was or was not deceptive and sold in a deceptive manner as admitted by Gruber?

          • WW4

            I am following the train of thought begun by Ann Coulter. I am pointing out that the type of “deception” being practiced here was also integral to the controversy surrounding Downing Street memo and to case for the Iraq War in general. You, I suppose, want me to make an academic point about deception. Fine: deception of this type is ubiquitous.

            This endless to-and-fro is my least favorite part of everyday political discussion: our standards do not apply to our our own parties. Coulter makes a mistake, here: she actually sets up a comparison. Of course, only tagalog is interested in actually addressing that part, coming from a point of view of genuine policy interest rather than partisan point scoring. And he makes a darn good point in his original post: Why hide what in earlier days was more explicit? I try to answer that.

            Because why would any typical partisan follow through with Coulter’s comparison, since a.) it would immediately reveal the hypocrisy at play here and b:) show that Gruber was actually right, and the outrage now being expressed is from people who really were apparently too stupid to have made those objections when it mattered and something could have been done.

            “the whole scheme was designed to take money from the well and give it to the sick in a redistributive way” Yes, wow…almost like the way insurance works.

            Thanks for telling me my reply to you was wrong and unsupported, but not bothering to point out how.

          • kasandra

            I don’t care whose train of thought you’re following. You said “what deception” and I told what deception you right out of Gruber’s mouth. This bill was a partisan travesty passed by lies and bribes. Just admit it. You’d be much better off arguing “So what. We won.” But it’s an old and true saying, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

          • WW4

            Come on, “partisan travesty?” It’s a freaking Republican bill in all but name of the party that passed it–a FACT no one cares to acknowledge.

            As far as “travesty,” yes, Republicans have tried that tack from day one. They just could never figure out the reason why it was a travesty. Still haven’t.

          • kasandra

            You’re a laugh riot. It’s a Republican bill because no Republican in the House or Senate voted for it and because it doesn’t contain a single amendment that was offered by the Republicans. Great thinking there. Why don’t you just try to argue “It’s Bush’s fault.”?

          • WW4

            Are you being willfully disingenuous, or do you really not know the history of the PPACA? You do at least remember the last Republican nominee for president, right? Or the Speaker of the House from the Clinton era (also a presidential hopeful)?

          • kasandra

            Tere is simply no way to argue that the ACA is, as you called it, a Republican bill. If Romney, as governor of a deep blue state with a Dem legislature signed a different bill so what? Most Republicans would oppose it and it is a thoroughly respectible Republican argument that the States are the laboratories of democracy and that you might want to experiment with an approach in a state and see how it works in practice. That doesn’t make the ACA a “Republican bill.” When you get to college you may want to take a course on logic.