Uh oh ...
6:10am ET
STEVE RATTNER: Jonathan Gruber was, back in the day, in 2009, the guru on health care, as you said. He designed the Massachusetts plan for Romney. I think if you go back and look at the Washington Post or the New York Times or anything from that period, you will find Jonathan Gruber’s name all over it, as both someone who’s the leading expert on health care quoted by everybody, and as someone who the White House was using — I don’t think we knew the dollar numbers he was paid at the time — but I remember that when I was in the White House, he was certainly viewed as an important figure in helping to put Obamacare together. And so, it’s exactly what you said. The problem is not that Gruber helped them put Obamacare together, because he was the man. The problem is what he said in the last two weeks and how the White House has handled it.
Limbaugh unleashed: Obama is a 'sociopathic' liar
"Limbaugh paraphrased Paul Newman’s character in the 1973 film “The Sting,” who noted “the key to the con is that it’s never over. You never let the person you conned know he’s been conned. Never. The con goes on. Well, that’s what’s happening here. They have run a giant con game on the population of this country of Obamacare, and they are continuing to run the con. They are not giving it up.” “Obama is now fully exposed as nothing more, in common parlance, as a lying con man.”"
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How the WH Used Jonathan Gruber’s Work to Orchestrate the Appearance of Broad Consensus
Far more troubling, however, is the lack of disclosure on the part of the White House, the Senate, the DNC and other Democratic leaders who distributed Gruber’s work and cited it as independent validation of their proposals, orchestrating the appearance of broad consensus when in fact it was all part of the same effort.
The White House is placing a giant collective bet on Gruber’s “assumptions” to justify key portions of the Senate bill, which they allowed people to believe was independent verification. Now that we know that Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work performed as a contractor to the White House and paid for by taxpayers, it should be made publicly available so others can judge its merits.
Gruber began negotiating a sole-source contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in February of 2009, for which he was ultimately paid $392,600. The contract called for Gruber to use his statistical model for evaluating alternatives “derived from the President’s health reform proposal.” It was not a research grant, but rather a consulting contract to advise the White House Office of Health Reform, headed by Obama’s health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle, to “develop proposals” for health care reform.
How did the feedback loop work? Well, take Gruber’s appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage for his testimony. On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Ezra published an excerpt.
White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber’s Senate testimony and Ezra Klein’s article on the White House blog. “We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day” he said, pointing to Gruber’s “objective analysis.” The “transparent” part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber’s contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody in the three-hit triangle bothered to disclose.
see entire article for more...
FR thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3228278/posts
Steve Rattner: Jonathan Gruber was ‘the man’ on Obamacare
Politico ^ | November 18, 2014 | By KENDALL BREITMAN
Thanks for the ping. Rattner was running a con on the auto bailout too. They took a 5 million dollar car dealership from a Repub and gave it to a Democrat.
See Limgaugh article
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3228157/posts
They have run a giant con game on the population of this country of Obamacare, and they are continuing to run the con. They are not giving it up.” “Obama is now fully exposed as nothing more, in common parlance, as a lying con man.”