Free Republic

In a somewhat ironic fashion, if Jonathan Gruber has taught us anything, it’s that telling the truth won’t get you far in the political world. After famously describing how the success of Obamacare relied heavily on the gullibility and short attention span of the voters, both former and prospective employers have been scurrying away from him like he was an Ebola dog. First he saw his old friends Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi stricken with shocking bouts of amnesia where they seemed unable to even recall his name. Then a plush job with the the state of Vermont –...

The most important effect of the revelations of the Administration’s flunkies’ history of cheesy lies about Obamacare is that liberals must now answer one threshold question before discussing the substance of any new socialist scheme: Why should we trust anything liberals say about anything? Grubergate is just one of the score of scandals, frauds, and failures that have destroyed any trust in this collection of creeps by anyone except the most leftist and the most stupid, two sets which, if graphed in a Venn diagram, would be represented by a single circle. IRS oppression. Executive amnesty. VA death lists. The...

Following President Barack Obama’s speech announcing his executive order on illegal immigration, CNN political commentator and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich unloaded on the President, likening his speech to statements made by ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber and that those in the “elite” class “really underestimate” the disdain Americans have for unfortified borders. Responding on CNN in the minutes after it ended, Gingrich opined that it was wrong for the President to go against the incoming Congress as it had “repudiated his policies in the election” a few weeks ago. Gingrich then slammed what viewers just heard as “a...

The state of North Carolina has given Jonathan Gruber the boot, firing the ObamaCare architect after he was caught on camera repeatedly calling American voters “stupid.” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) went “On The Record” tonight, explaining that Gruber was hired one year ago to help with a health care plan that dealt with Medicaid recipients and the uninsured. Meadows said that Gruber was supposed to be an unbiased individual, but after these reports, the auditor decided that he’s not so unbiased after all. …

I understand we've turned the page to the next controversy -- Obama's unconstitutional immigration pander -- but I'd like to dwell a little longer on the previous travesty. Obama administration health-care consultant Jonathan Gruber was discovered to have boasted that Obamacare was designed to exploit the "stupidity" of American voters and elude honest accounting by hiding both its cost and the taxes necessary to pay for it. When asked about this in Brisbane, Australia, the president rolled his eyes at the controversy. "I just heard about this," Obama said. "... The fact that some adviser who never worked on our...

In recent days the Obama administration has attempted to separate itself from MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber’s comments regarding the torturous way that Obamacare was written, and the “stupidity of the American voter.” Not to let President Obama’s signature achievement be sullied by potential bad press, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and others have disavowed their connection to Gruber despite long, consistent government ties to the consultant. The Daily Caller reports that “All told, Gruber has earned at least $5,893,100 for his work for federal and state governments,” with $4 million coming from the federal government since 2000. If Gruber’s a nobody,...

America loves streaks. For our parents and grandparents, it was witnessing (via radio or the morning paper) Joe DiMaggio‘s 56-game hitting streak in 1941, a record that will likely never be broken. For later generations, it was Cal Ripken playing in 2,632 consecutive games — another record that won’t be touched. There are streaks in broadcasting as well. The most notable being broken two years ago after ABC’s Good Morning America finally beat NBC’s Today Show after an astounding 852 consecutive weeks at the top, a streak spanning over 16 years. But then there are dubious streaks as well, like...

Economist Milton Freeman said the promotion of bad policy requires two types of advocates. "Do-gooders," he said, act in good faith but out of ignorance in promoting counterproductive policies. The second type are the "special interest" rent-seekers, those who stand to personally profit from the scheme. For economist Jonathan Gruber, the primary architect and intellectual godfather of both Romneycare and Obamacare, we need a new category. Gruber is a two-fer -- both a do-gooder and a rent-seeker. Gruber, so far, has pocketed $6 million advising the federal and state governments on the very law he helped design. Massachusetts retained MIT...

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor currently getting a dose of media scrutiny generally reserved for conservatives, said something you can hear daily in Washington, D.C. From bars in and around Capitol Hill to cocktail parties in Georgetown, the elites roaming the halls of power think you, the American people, are stupid. This belief is not unique to Democrats; it’s truly a bipartisan idea. In fact, the very concept of modern government in the United States is based on it. Since the start of the progressive movement, self-appointed intellectuals, academics, the wealthy and politicians have based their actions on the conviction...

Let's remember that just months ago, Kevin Trudeau was sentenced to prison for making ... well, not really FALSE health care claims, but MISLEADING health care claims in the literature he published. From the Chicago Tribune: >>>Trudeau has been jailed since Nov. 12 when he was convicted by a federal jury of criminal contempt for lying in several infomercials about the contents of his hit book, “The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About.” Prosecutors said he ignored a previous court order by describing the program as easy when it actually called for punishing calorie restrictions and...

An economist who said “the stupidity of the American voter” helped pass the complex federal health care law has agreed to finish his work on Vermont’s health insurance systems for free, a top state official said Wednesday. But the state will continue to pay assistants working with Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who advised the Obama administration as it crafted the Affordable Care Act. Vermont will likely end up paying about $280,000 of the original $450,000 the state had agreed to pay Gruber's team and a subcontractor, said Lawrence Miller, director of health reform for...

Academics often believe they are the smartest people around, and they like to tell others how best to live their lives. Add the government’s power to control people’s lives and you have a dangerous combination. Americans got a taste of this elitism when MIT’s Jonathan Gruber mocked "the stupidity of the American voter." But American voters aren’t the only ones who make mistakes. Time after time, the “architect" of ObamaCare underestimated costs and overestimated how many people would be covered. Like so many Ivory Tower academics, Gruber doesn’t understand how the real world operates. Could it be that those “stupid”...

Tommy Chong, star of such films as Up in Smoke and until this week a contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, was the #OneLuckyGuy on Fox News’ Outnumbered (for some reason) Wednesday, and while he was there he weighed in on issues like marijuana legalization (naturally), health care, and immigration. But when the issue of Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber’s controversial comments came up, Chong surprised the show’s co-hosts by comparing it to another hot topic on Fox: Benghazi. Andrea Tantaros and Harris Faulkner were expressing outrage over Gruber’s comments and the Obama administration’s reaction to it when Chong decided...

House Speaker John Boehner became eligible for Medicare when he turned 65 years old Monday, but he’s not planning to sign up. Instead, Boehner is going to keep his “expensive” Obamacare insurance plan. The Affordable Care Act required members of Congress to get off the federal government’s insurance plan and, in most cases, enroll in an Obamacare policy. When members turn 65, they become eligible for Medicare as well. When asked at a press conference on Tuesday about his health care coverage plans, he paused and laughed. “I’ll continue to purchase my expensive health care coverage,” he said in an...

The ObamaCare consultant drawing fire for mocking the “stupidity of the American voter” visited the White House on nearly two dozen occasions and met with President Obama in the West Wing, according to a review of visitor logs. MIT professor Jonathan Gruber held a series of high-level meetings with administration officials beginning in 2009 and extending through June of this year. During the height of 2009’s ObamaCare debate, Gruber met repeatedly with former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, and Jeanne Lambrew, the deputy director of the White House Office of Health...

..."He also serves on the Massachusetts board that oversees the state’s new health care exchanges. Along with these credentials, Mr. Gruber’s position as an adviser to the influential Congressional Budget Office also left him perfectly positioned to advise the White House on health reform. “The most important arbiter of everything was the C.B.O.,” said Neera Tanden, who was a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Jonathan Gruber was “the man” behind Obamacare, according to a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “The problem is not that Gruber helped them put Obamacare together, because he was the man,” Steve Rattner, who worked as Obama’s lead adviser in 2009 for the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “The problem is what he said in the last two weeks and how the White House has handled it,” Rattner added. Rattner said his influence was enormous. “Jonathan Gruber was, back in the day in 2009, the guru on health care,” said Rattner,...

If you’ve been paying attention to the story about the myriad Jonathan Gruber videos, you’ve probably heard the sum of $400,000.00 bandied about. That’s how much the Department of Health and Human Services paid him to trick the CBO, lie to the American people, and help pass a bill that was reliant on “the stupidity of the American voter.” Since HHS has no real money of its own, that’s actually how much you, the taxpayer, paid him to con you. Unfortunately, it’s also just the beginning. In fact, $400K is only a drop in the Gruber ObamaCare money vault. So,...

Since all Democrats think everyday ordinary people can't function without government sticking their nose into everyone's life, and making decisions for them, it is now time to change the name of the Democratic party to THE GRUBERS. Meet someone and talk politics: are you a Republican or a GRUBER? Talk about a political race: are they a Republican or a GRUBER? Ask someone how they voted: did you vote for the Republican or GRUBER? Don't let this opportunity to nail the GRUBERS to the wall. It's time to get them out of our business!

It appears that hoodwinking the American people can be fun and profitable. Fox News found, via a review of state and federal websites, that Jonathan Gruber earned $6 million in fees over the last 15 years. But the real question is, why does Gruber still have a job at MIT? He has admitted to fraud, lying, and deciet.