How Little-Known MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber Shook Up Washington This Week

ABC News ^ | November 14, 2014 | Shushannah Walshe

[2ndDivisionVet]

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber may not have been a household name, at least before this week, despite his being described as the “architect” of Obamacare and, previously, Romneycare in Massachusetts.

He sparked a furor this week after video surfaced of his talking about the “stupidity” of the American people, among other insults aimed at the voting public. Now Republicans have pounced, inventing a brand-new word: “Grubering.”

Here’s what you need to know about Gruber and the controversy that’s still swirling.

I've heard the name Jonathan Gruber a lot this week, but what happened and who is he?

He’s an MIT economics professor famous for his critical role in advising the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He’s known as the “architect,” although Democrats involved with the law’s passage take issue with the title.

Before Obamacare, he also advised the creation of a similar law in Massachusetts, sometimes called Romneycare, after Mitt Romney, who was governor of the Bay State at the time. Despite some resistance to the term “architect,” Gruber joined the president’s transition team in 2008 and no one disputes he played a key role in the law’s creation. The Washington Post reports he was also paid "almost $400,000" for the work, controversial in its own right.

Gruber has made controversial comments in the past, but they don’t compare to the comments that came to light this week, six videos in total and counting – including one where he refers to the “stupidity of the American voter.” In another, when talking about Obamacare tax credits, he said, “American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”(continued)

[2ndDivisionVet]

I wonder why this wasn't released before the mid-term elections? [guffaw] $400,000? Isn't that what Chelsea Clinton makes for a 20 minute, off-the-cuff speech?

[BenLurkin]

How Little-Known MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber Shook Up Washington This Week

GOT

CAUGHT

[Diogenesis]

"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

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Grampa Dave]

6 Grubergate videos so far make Nixon’s little missing tape minutes look like a sniffle in preschool.

First You Tube link to Gruber bragging about lying to stupid American Voters about ObozoCare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI

Second Grubergate Video link to Gruber bragging about how stupid American voters are/were to pass ObozoCare.

<http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/12/gruber-video-2-no-really-american-voters-are-stupid/

Third Video from Herr Gruber on stupid Americans wanting Obozocare.

http://weaselzippers.us/205230-three-strikes-third-video-of-obamacare-architect-jonathan-gruber-calling-americans-stupid/

Fourth Grubergate video from Herr Gruber re stupid Americans.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?292478-1/health-care-reform

Remember zero Republicans in Congress voted for ObozoCare. Every stupid rat in Congress voted for it without reading the bill or caring what was in it.

Fifth Grubergate video from Herr Gruber re stupid Americans, Fifth Video Emerges, Showing Gruber Mocking Man Worried About Obamacare

http://dailysignal.com/2014/11/14/fifth-video-emerges-showing-gruber-mocking-man-worried-about-obamacare/

Sixth Grubergate video from Herr Gruber re stupid Americans.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/14/the-hits-keep-coming-gruber-video-6/

[Grampa Dave]

[ConservativeInPA]

I believe this is the first thing to come out of ABC about Gruber. Now they are in the one story club with CNN and CBS. Where is Comcrap/NBC?

[TigersEye]

Most of these videos have been out there for quite a while.

ObamaCare Architect undermines ObamaCare foundation Youtube video 1:18 Published on Jul 25, 2014

[clearcarbon]

"He sparked a furor this week after video surfaced of his talking about the “stupidity” of the American people,"

It's hard to argue with him when they elect his boss twice. Of course, they can try to prove otherwise by correcting that mistake.

[Uri’el-2012]

How Little-Known MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber Shook Up Washington This Week

Jonnie Gruber was a consultant to Hillary on
socialized medicine in the 90s

[blackdog]

Some Brass Ring..............

JONATHAN GRUBER MIT Department of Economics 50 Memorial Drive, E52-355 Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Phone: 617-253-8892 Fax: 617-253-1330 E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu Web: http//econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/gruberj/

Personal Information: Date of Birth: September 30, 1965 Education: Ph.D. in Economics, Harvard University, 1992 B.S. in Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987 Positions: Ford Professor of Economics, MIT, 2014-present Professor of Economics, MIT, 1997-2014 Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT, 2007-present Associate Head, MIT Department of Economics, 2006-2008 Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, U.S. Treasury Department, 1997-1998 Castle Krob Associate Professor of Economics, MIT, 1995-1997 Assistant Professor of Economics, MIT, 1992-1995 Director, National Bureau of Economic Research's Program on Health Care, 2009-present Director, National Bureau of Economic Research's Program on Children, 1996-2009 Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1998-present Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1992-1998 President-elect, American Society of Health Economists, 2014-present Board of Directors of the Health Care Cost Institute, 2011- present Board of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, 2006-present Associate Editor, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2009-present Associate Editor, Journal of Public Economics, 1997-2001, 2009-present Associate Editor, Journal of Health Economics, 2001-present Executive Committee, American Economics Association, 2010-2012 CBO Long Term Modeling Advisory Group, 2000-2010 Member, NIH Center for Scientific Review Study Section on Social Sciences, 1998-2002 Co-Editor, Journal of Health Economics, 1998-2001 Co-Editor, Journal of Public Economics

[TigersEye]

Can you provide a link to that? I did a lot of searching last night and couldn’t find any connection between Gruber and HillaryCare.

[maggief]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/weddings/shushannah-walshe-ari-yasgur-weddings.html

(Author), Shushannah Walshe

The bride, 33, is keeping her name. She is a contract journalist for ABC News in New York currently covering the Republican primary contest for the television network and its Web site, abcnews.com. She is also an author of “Sarah From Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar” (PublicAffairs, 2009). She graduated from Boston University.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks anything re marriage and if so, who/what he might be married to?

[timestax]

bttt

[JudyinCanada]

Pretty sad when, as a democrat, all that is required to shake up Washington is to tell the truth. That’s all he did.

[timestax]

[blackdog]

The guy is a mystery. He never even existed until his graduate work. He appears from nowhere. No home town. No high school. No parents. No spouse.

Nothing, nadda, zip. He's like the New England version of Barry Soeretto.

[marktwain]

Those are only the ones he was willing to be public about.

One wonders what he said when he believed he was in confidence.