Posted on 01/02/2015 5:23:17 AM PST by Kaslin
Jonathan Gruber, sage of MIT and proud champion of the Affordable Care Act, may well have had the worst year in American public life. His repeated demonstrations of arrogance, contempt for the American people and smug self-satisfaction brought mortification to his party and president. His glib references to the redistributionist aspects of the Affordable Care Act gave the lie to the Democratic Party's dubious claim that the mandate was not a tax, along with the excruciating (to Democrats) acknowledgment that -- presidential oaths to the contrary notwithstanding -- Democrats regard "nontransparency" as their friend.
So, all hail the verbally incontinent Gruber for revealing the truth underlying Obamacare: It would not have passed if it had been presented honestly. Gruber, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company didn't ever succeed in hoodwinking the majority of Americans. Obamacare was unpopular when proposed and despised when passed, and it remains disliked to this day. Gruber's contribution was to put a frame around its essential deception.
Enough to secure the "worst year" award? Yes, but as it happens, there was something else that emerged about him that dredges up some unfinished business from a decade ago.
Recall that the 2005 best-seller "Freakonomics" made a huge splash with the claim that Roe v. Wade was responsible for the drop in crime America experienced starting in the 1990s. The theory, simplified for space, was that fewer unwanted babies began to be born after 1973. These aborted babies did not turn 18 in 1991 and, accordingly, did not commit crimes, leading to the dramatic drop in crime.
It turns out that the study on which the "Freakonomics" authors based their chapter on abortion and crime was authored by none other than Jonathan Gruber (and others). In their 1997 paper, Gruber and his co-authors concluded that "for the marginal child not born due to increased abortion access, the odds of living in a single parent family would have been roughly 70 percent higher, the odds of living in poverty nearly 40 percent higher, the odds of welfare receipt 50 percent higher." They continued, "From these results, we estimate that the legalization of abortion saved the federal government over $14 billion in welfare payments through 1994."
Considering that 30 percent of abortions are obtained by African-American women, though they constitute just 13 percent of the female population, Gruber was in effect arguing that reducing the number of poor black children was, not to put too fine a point on it, a positive good. One cannot begin to imagine the outcry if a conservative academic (that rare specimen) had published similar conclusions with such sang-froid.
Leave aside the moral obtuseness of arguing that abortion is justified because it reduces crime or welfare expenditures (which party is supposed to be stingy with welfare again?) and consider the many possible explanations for the drop in crime that began in the 1990s. There was the waning of the crack epidemic. There was New York's introduction of "broken windows" policing in 1994. New York's crime rate declined by 70 percent between 1990 and 2000 and then dropped another 30 percent by 2005, a decline that was twice the national average, and that was itself responsible for a significant percentage of the overall drop in crime numbers in the U.S. Or consider that the incarceration rate -- local, state and federal -- quadrupled from 1980 to 2001.
But let's imagine that Gruber was right -- that legalizing abortion eliminated a big cohort of the criminal element and led to a drop in crime. Did every one of those aborted criminals merit the death penalty? The car thieves? The embezzlers? Did each one deserve a pre-emptive death penalty? Before trial? Before the crime itself? Oddly, progressives tend to oppose harsh punishments for convicted criminals while quietly celebrating the ultimate penalty for those too young to have committed any offense.
Of course, most of the babies aborted, despite growing up in less-than-ideal families and neighborhoods, would never have hurt a fly. Some would have grown up to be Ben Carsons, Anne Hathaways, Walt Disneys, Oprah Winfreys and Sonia Sotomayors. Most would be happy to be alive.
Gruber's thesis that abortion caused America's crime drop is almost certainly false. But what's more revealing is the casual readiness to calculate lost lives as so many numbers on a balance sheet. If it makes you uncomfortable that such a person helped design Obamacare, you're not alone.
How did he have a bad year? He made MILLIONS from your tax dollars, and won’t have to give a penny back, not face any government sanction. Oh, and ObamaCare is law, and will never be repealed, because the GOP likes it (and people like Jeb have made a lot of money off it). I’d say Mr. Gruber is doing just fine. It is Joe American who had the worst year.
Willard the RAT (laughing): "We have Grubered them all!!!"
"At the foundation of our civil liberties lies
the principle that denies to government officials
an exceptional position before the law and which
subjects them to the same rules of conduct
that are commands to the citizen."
Justice Louis D. Brandeis
He may have gotten kicked around a bit for his “fifteen minutes of fame”, but he’s sitting on a pile OF YOUR DOUGH, SUCKERS.
He is also the face of the Dhimmocrat party—too late for voting, you see.
No it's not. Like it or not, it's doubtless one cause. Not the only one, but one. That doesn't change the basic moral argument.
Far from it.
The conniving Obama calculated the ACA to consolidate Democrat power that was supposed to install a permanent Dumbocrat majority. So much for that ding-dong idea....b/c 30 lockstepping Dumbocrats who voted for it were ousted in the 2014 Democrat Demolition Derby. Several retired knowing they could not be reelected.
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WHERE IS THE MONEY? O/care also allocated some $6 billion tax dollars----spending money for Dumbocrats ----which has yet to be traced.
The Untraceable $8 Billion ObamaCare PR Budget---truly govt fraud at its finest. Egged on by Pelosi, Democrats slavishly voted for Obamacare by an historic straignt-party line vote. But not one Democrat told Americans about Obamacare's Section 4002---which mandates an $8B untraceable fund to "promote" Obamacare (apparently b/c Boobamba had so little confidence in his signature legislation).
THE PAYOFF--WHO GETS THE MONEY? In 2010 Taxpayers are extorted $500 million, in 2011, $750 million, 2012, $1 billion, 2013, $1.25 billion, 2014, $1.5 billion, and, in 2015 and on, $2 billion
<><> Where is all that money going?
<><> Was cashing-in the incentive in getting the thing passed?
The sound of West Wing wire-transfers to states and to offshore banks is almost palpable.
===================================================
REFERENCE ACA SEC. 4002. PREVENTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH FUND.
(a) PURPOSE. It is the purpose of this section of the ACA to establish a Prevention and Public Health Fund (referred to in this section as the ‘‘Fund’’), to be administered through the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary, to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs.
(b) FUNDING.—There are hereby authorized to be appropriated, and appropriated, to the Fund, out of any monies in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated—
(1) for fiscal year 2010, $500,000,000;
(2) for fiscal year 2011, $750,000,000;
(3) for fiscal year 2012, $1,000,000,000;
(4) for fiscal year 2013, $1,250,000,000;
(5) for fiscal year 2014, $1,500,000,000; and
(6) for fiscal year 2015, and each fiscal year thereafter, $2,000,000,000.
(c) USE OF FUND.—The Secretary shall transfer amounts in the Fund to accounts within the Department of Health and Human Services to increase funding, over the fiscal year 2008 level, for programs authorized by the Public Health Service Act, for prevention, wellness, and public health activities including prevention research and health screenings, such as the Community Transformation grant program, the Education and Outreach Campaign for Preventive Benefits, and immunization programs.
(d) TRANSFER AUTHORITY.—The Committee on Appropriations of the Senate and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of may provide for the transfer of funds in the Fund to eligible activities under this section, subject to subsection (c).
(read how insiders got even more $$billions below)
The most unsavory was Landrieu's $4.3 billion "Louisisana Purchase."
THE PAPER TRAIL IS HUGE Sen Landrieu (recently lost her reelection bid) sold her aye vote in what Forbes Magazine dubbed "The 'Louisiana Purchase" that included a massive $4.3 Billion to Landrieu
FORBES REPORTED the Democrats’ nailed Landrieu’s support for Obamacare w/ a greenback bribe. Landrieu, critics believe, pledged her vote in exchange for some $200 million more additional federal funds for Louisiana. Except that, due to a drafting error, the law ended up giving Louisiana $4.3 billion: more than twenty times the assigned amount. MORE HERE http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
===============================================
BACKSTORY In the fall of 2009, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was trying to get the necessary 60 Dimocrat votes to pass the Affordable Care Act. He needed every Dim on board, which gave waffling senators a great deal of leverage. In Landrieu's case, she connivingly saw that selling her aye vote could get her maybe $200 million federal dollars. Obama complied. Reid chalked up another vote for Obamacare----not the measly $200 million but $4.3 billon was attached to the Obamacare bill earmarked for Landrieu.
=================================================
How $4.3 billion to Landrieu was calculatedly attached to the Obamacare bill, and how Obama and Reid failed to catcH and fix it, is yet another indictment of the Obamacare atrocity.
The $4.3 billion handoff to Landrieu should be investigated as an indication of how EVERY Democrat came to vote for Obamacare....and how tax dollars were laundered to get lock-stepping Democrats' votes.
FBI TIPS PAGE https://tips.fbi.gov
Foolishness.
First of all, Gruber his own self has made a killing, and continues in the lucrative business of telling state regulators and cabinet officials that they too can learn to spin straw into gold.
Second of all, by participating in the charade on Capitol Hill, he has drawn attention away from al the other Grubers who are to the Federal government as ticks to mammals, who can now in blessed anonymity continue with their “research” and “studies” to allow Congress, with a clear conscience, to continue destroying our liberties.
Gruber should have been the Time magazine man of the year. All of the Grubers together (there are thousands) constitute a previously unknown, and very powerful, Fifth Branch of government - and they aren’t going anywhere.
I've seen ticks on snakes. Perhaps a better analogy to our dear federal gummint.
bump
Gruber got hollered at by Trey Gowdy for part of a day and then he cried all the way to the bank. So what.
Ironically, in her failure, Hillary set this in motion - and her legislative failure provided a blueprint to this administration and the Congress that passed Obamacare. They knew they couldn't ram something down the throats of the insurance companies, hospital administrators, major pharmaceutical firms, etc. all at once.
The pushback they got during the Hillarycare debacle provided them with a lesson they learned well. They needed to split their opposition, so they cut deals. Practicing physicians lack political clout and were not among those they needed to ‘deal’ with - so they cut them out.
In short, it was all driven in a highly cynical political manner, and the comments by Gruber are just a single example of this. They played politics with American medicine, because they could. I don't know what the answers are at this point, and I also think that there are likely a significant number of Republicans in office who are being told by some of their corporate donors that they should not repeal Obamacare - specifically because those corporate entities would be happy to get out of funding medical care entirely - and to shift the costs to taxpayers. They too would be happy with an eventual single payer system - as long as they're not paying.
I personally think the only way to successfully and definitively derail Obamacare is to simultaneously propose a well thought out, well delineated alternative plan/solution that embodies freedom of choice and incorporates free-market principles into the mix. A ‘one size fits all’ solution won't work, so this will require a deep examination of all the factors and circumstances involved, and political courage. Not sure that in these days we have the kinds of politicians necessary to make this happen.
Well said.
Recall that the 2005 best-seller "Freakonomics" made a huge splash with the claim that Roe v. Wade was responsible for the drop in crime America experienced starting in the 1990s. The theory, simplified for space, was that fewer unwanted babies began to be born after 1973. These aborted babies did not turn 18 in 1991 and, accordingly, did not commit crimes, leading to the dramatic drop in crime. It turns out that the study on which the "Freakonomics" authors based their chapter on abortion and crime was authored by none other than Jonathan Gruber (and others)... "From these results, we estimate that the legalization of abortion saved the federal government over $14 billion in welfare payments through 1994." Considering that 30 percent of abortions are obtained by African-American women, though they constitute just 13 percent of the female population, Gruber was in effect arguing that reducing the number of poor black children was, not to put too fine a point on it, a positive good.An on-the-street interviewer, protected by heavily armed escort, should ask black spectators of the rioting if they had been aware that the defacto author of Obamacare had claimed that the reduction in black births via abortion had reduced crime, and (2) whether the spectators thought that was true.
American taxpayers had the worst year.
If you make millions of dollars committing fraud and get caught bragging about it on tape (over and over) it’s a pretty good year if you stay out of jail and keep your job.
and I’ll add, he’ll probably over time get plenty of nice speaking engagements, book deals or do nothing job gigs that pay big money.
Damn, it’s the - New American Dream - TM!
F over your Country and get treated like a rock star.
I’m on the same page as you. I’m a musician, and I’ve played some embarassingly bad gigs in my time. Instead of getting $50 for total humilation I could see things in an entirely new light if I got paid, say $3-$6 million for the next time I play Proud Freekin’ Mary.
Gruber spoke publicly the way liberal elites speak to each other. Notice when Gruber was speaking at meetings no one was objecting to what he was saying... they were smiling along with him.
How else could the people of places like MIT rip students off for hundreds of thousands of dollars while working 10 hour weeks?
Ah the Shicklgruber.
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