US midterm elections: Barack Obama’s legacy could be ruined in one day

[JDGRUEN]

@Publicus - Post # 467.....

Gallup/USA Today polling in June 2010 revealed that 42% of those surveyed identify as conservative, 35% as moderate, while 20% identify as liberal.^[2]In another polling in June 2010, 40% of American voters identify themselves as conservatives, 36% as moderates and 22% as liberals, with a strong majority of both liberals and conservatives describing themselves as closer to the center than to the extremes.^[3] As of 2013, self-identified conservatives stand at 34%, moderates at 38%, and liberals at 23%.^[4]

^{Leftists ... Who knows ... ?}

^{A Hundred Million ... out of 325 or so million Americans... are you using Pelosi math?}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideologies_in_the_United_States

[hawker9000]

Your post might be getting a tad focused on the poster instead of the issues.

The poster is the one trying to ignore the fact that Obama has admitted that he does not have the right to bypass congress and implement this on his own, but he is doing it anyway. He is acting like a dictator - contrary to his own word.

...more like a petulant and completely self-interested child if you ask me...

[Chicog]

Except on the obama propaganda channels, Americans are in a uproar over the revelations about J. Gruber - obama' chief consultant on obamacare... Nope obama's legacy will not be ruined in one day... just a slice of it everyday as more and more of the scandalous secrets come out... The Affordable Care Act - what a misnomer - 47 million Americans now without health coverage with 9 million under obamacare... and these jerks laugh...

The number of people without insurance has fallen under Obamacare by 10-12 million.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119623/obamacare-one-year-seven-charts-show-law-working

Edited November 16, 2014 by Chicog

[Publicus]

I never said that.

You said that.

You said I said that.

You said it in your own post.

Find and point out to me my post(s) where I said what you falsely said I said.

Have a nice day....

Me thinks you're a politician.... say something, then deny you said something... say something... then deny you said something....

Find in my posts where I said what you said I said.

Point it out in my posts and quote from my posts.....

The problem here is the very old one of a poster trying to put his own words into the mouth of another poster....when it's done as a pattern it becomes disingenuous.

[Publicus]

This is the link you provided....

.http://www.gallup.com/poll/163169/immigration-reform-proposals-garner-broad-support.aspx

So if I got it wrong - it was your sources that I followed... The points were typed as is from your link which was an image file....

You forgot your meds again.

My god.

The comprehensive immigration reform package 75% of Americans across the political spectrum support does not have amnesty in it, not the word, not the reality of amnesty. Anyone posting the word "amnesty" alongside mention of the comprehensive immigration reform package is writing fiction.

Only the politically extreme on the right are trying this completely discredited tactic. People who say things that are discredited do in fact discredit themselves.

Using.the word.”comprehensive” excessively give K Publicus' arguments more validity, at least in his mind.

This is a common tactic of the left...keep saying the same thing over and over until it becomes perceived as ”fact”.

Well Dr Freud the bill has a formal name, which is the...

Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S-744

If you want to see what "comprehensive" means in this bill that Prez Obama will act on by executive order, you can look at a discussion of its contents and provisions at the following link:...

http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/special-reports/guide-s744-understanding-2013-senate-immigration-bill

The common reference to the measure is "comprehensive immigration reform" which is how Gallup and other pollsters have stated it to their survey samples and it is the common reference used by the MSM.

A swarm of people around here love the word "amnesty" which is not in the title of the reform measure nor is it in the body of the bill's contents. Some troubled souls however like to accuse Prez Obama of pursuing "amnesty" but they themselves write fiction.

[bkkcanuck8]

Using.the word.”comprehensive” excessively give K Publicus' arguments more validity, at least in his mind.

This is a common tactic of the left...keep saying the same thing over and over until it becomes perceived as ”fact”.

Well Dr Freud the bill has a formal name, which is the...

Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S-744

If you want to see what "comprehensive" means in this bill that Prez Obama will act on by executive order, you can look at a discussion of its contents and provisions at the following link:...

http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/special-reports/guide-s744-understanding-2013-senate-immigration-bill

The common reference to the measure is "comprehensive immigration reform" which is how Gallup and other pollsters have stated it to their survey samples and it is the common reference used by the MSM.

A swarm of people around here love the word "amnesty" which is not in the title of the reform measure nor is it in the body of the bill's contents. Some troubled souls however like to accuse Prez Obama of pursuing "amnesty" but they themselves write fiction.

Politicians will name things for PR reasons -- even if the name were to be the complete opposite of what the bill was intended to do.... Of course they are not going to call it amnesty -- but legally it gives amnesty to a large number of people. Why won't they use the word amnesty - because Reagan did and the public did not generally like amnesty even when Reagan did it (and that supposedly was going to be the last one - so they now use other names for the same thing).

With central american newspapers publishing things like "Children of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras may receive refugee status in the United States since December, according to an announced yesterday by the country's vice president, Joe Biden, in the US capital plan." expect another wave to be added to the non-amnesty amnesty.

Edited November 16, 2014 by bkkcanuck8

[Publicus]

Personally - I think obama - his henchmen and minions - various operatives will continue to stoke the fires of Ferguson Missouri until there is a near race war... The current obvious intentional stirring of the racial pot there in that East St. Louis area is quite visible and is cause for concern - about what is next.

Can obama pull that off as part of his Legacy ... Time will tell.

Speaking of this manufactured race conflict... As part of building his Legacy obama sent high level Administration representatives to Brown's funeral .... But in the same week not one high level civilian official of the obama Administration was sent to the funeral of Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, a two-star general who had been killed in Afghanistan... But of course the leftists on this thread could never see this intentional act to be part of obama destroying American traditions ...

I know that's you Rhett Butler making these Old Confederacy legacy posts against the 44th POTUS.

Gotcha thinking tho eh

New experiences can be good.

[bkkcanuck8]

What does this all say - if you want to come to the US to live and work - you would have to be a moronic idiot to obey the laws.

[chuckd]

Politicians will name things for PR reasons -- even if the name were to be the complete opposite of what the bill was intended to do....

You are 100% correct.

As an example, the real title for Obamacare is...Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".

It neither "protects the patients" nor is it "affordable".

[Chicog]

Politicians will name things for PR reasons -- even if the name were to be the complete opposite of what the bill was intended to do....

You are 100% correct.

As an example, the real title for Obamacare is...Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".

It neither "protects the patients" nor is it "affordable".

How does having Healthcare when you haven't had it before not "protect the patient"?

The affordable bit is also moot based on the figures at the link I provided in my last post.

The number of people for who premiums have gone up roughly matches the number for whom they've gone down.

[JDGRUEN]

Personally - I think obama - his henchmen and minions - various operatives will continue to stoke the fires of Ferguson Missouri until there is a near race war... The current obvious intentional stirring of the racial pot there in that East St. Louis area is quite visible and is cause for concern - about what is next.

Can obama pull that off as part of his Legacy ... Time will tell.

Speaking of this manufactured race conflict... As part of building his Legacy obama sent high level Administration representatives to Brown's funeral .... But in the same week not one high level civilian official of the obama Administration was sent to the funeral of Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, a two-star general who had been killed in Afghanistan... But of course the leftists on this thread could never see this intentional act to be part of obama destroying American traditions ...

I know that's you Rhett Butler making these Old Confederacy legacy posts against the 44th POTUS.

Gotcha thinking tho eh

New experiences can be good.

Pretty Lame -- come on you can do better than that...

[chuckd]

Politicians will name things for PR reasons -- even if the name were to be the complete opposite of what the bill was intended to do....

You are 100% correct.

As an example, the real title for Obamacare is...Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".

It neither "protects the patients" nor is it "affordable".

How does having Healthcare when you haven't had it before not "protect the patient"?

The affordable bit is also moot based on the figures at the link I provided in my last post.

The number of people for who premiums have gone up roughly matches the number for whom they've gone down.

Many of the people covered under obamacare are being covered under Medicaid, which has been there for years. All they had to do was avail themselves of the opportunity to enroll earlier.

The co-pay has risen, lifetime maximum has risen and the rates for 2015 were only released yesterday.

Hospitals and doctors are refusing to accept any more Medicaid patients at all and doctors are choosing to retire earlier than before.

Surprisingly the new rates weren't available prior to the mid term elections. Just a coincidence, of course.

Nobody as yet has come up with how much the government will have to spend to bail out the insurance company losses. That amount could be staggering.

[up-country_sinclair]

In the 2008 campaign, then Senator Obama said that he was going to try and pass comprehensive health care reform. He didn't keep this as a secret, he

spoke about it on the trail every day. He was elected in an electoral college landslide--winning more than double the electoral votes of his challenger.

In 2012, President Obama ran for re-election, (after his health care law was passed by both houses of congress, and upheld by the United States Supreme Court) and if the American public wanted to send a message about the popularity of his signature piece of legislation, this would have been the time to do. But the president won approximately 65% of the electoral votes.

If Republicans had won the presidential election in 2012, the ACA could have been repealed two months from now, but they didn't. So the law won't be repealed until at least January 2017. But for that to happen, the Republicans will have to hold the senate (possible, but not likely) and win the presidency (unlikely). I base these two predictions on the number of republican senate seats up in 2016, and the probability of a Hillary Rodham Clinton bid.

The extremist right-wingers who are crying about the Affordable Care Act now had their chance in 2012, and for whatever reason they couldn't get it done. Now that it's 2014 and literally millions of Americans have health insurance who never had it before, it's going to be very difficult to make "this train" go backwards".

And just for the record, while I think that health insurance policy in the US needed to be fixed, I'm not sure that the Affordable Care Act was the best solution. But based on the numbers out of the Congressional Budget Office, it does seem to have been an improvement on the status quo.

Edited November 16, 2014 by up-country_sinclair

[Ulysses G.]

In the 2008 campaign, then Senator Obama said that he was going to try and pass comprehensive health care reform. He didn't keep this as a secret, he

spoke about it on the trail every day.

Yes he did. He lied about it over and over again to trick the public into voting for him and he kept lying about it afterwards to get it passed.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/

Edited November 16, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[up-country_sinclair]

In the 2008 campaign, then Senator Obama said that he was going to try and pass comprehensive health care reform. He didn't keep this as a secret, he

spoke about it on the trail every day.

Yes he did. He lied about it over and over again to trick the public into voting for him and he kept lying about it afterwards to get it passed.

If what you write is true (and not hysterical hyperbole), why wasn't he tossed out of office in the 2012 elections?

[Ulysses G.]

Because he did not earn himself Lie of The Year until several months later. If the media had done their job before the elections, it is very unlikely that he would have won.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/

[chuckd]

If the media had done their jobs in 2007-2008, he would never have been in there in the first place.

He was the great unknown candidate, with no real accomplishments in his two Senate jobs (State and Federal), no known personal accomplishments in the private sector, former connections with convicted murderers and terrorists, shady real estate deals, all life history hidden away under lock and key, no real knowledge of his political beliefs, a surrendered Illinois law license for unknown reasons and 25 years of association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his church of Black Liberation Theology

He was elected because he is black, makes a good speech when one is written for him, strikes a commanding pose, supposedly a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law, was managed by the Chicago political machine who knew how to get the vote out and had the women, college age voters, Blacks, Hispanics and labor unions in his pocket...and he promised every one of them something for free.

He was reelected because he still had the same hard core of Democrats on his side, even though many were becoming disillusioned with him. Still, the labor unions and that infamous 47% voted as they always seem to do...straight party line.

He suffered defeat in 2014 because people started realizing the emperor had no clothes. His legacy legislation, Obamacare, is a mess, foreign policy is a mess, race relations in the US are in tatters, scandals right and left (i.e. Fast & Furious, IRS, Benghazi, Obamacare roll out, transparency nonexistent, VA) and he was out of touch with real people.

The saving grace in all of this is term limits for the Presidency. There is no way that 47% will again be mobilized as it was in 2008 and 2012...even for Hillary. Besides the term limit, he has also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the office of President was much more challenging than his abilities, experience and knowledge could handle.

In conclusion, the media failed in their responsibility to keep the public honestly informed. They ran stories favorable to him and shut out all criticism that made him look bad.

I notice the same old progressive liberals are starting to do the same with Hillary. In an interview Katie Couric had with Chelsea Clinton in the past week or so, she (Couric) made the comment that Hillary would be the "Grandmother of the Year" and Chelsea would be the "Mom of the Year".

I think it's called...pandering.

[Ulysses G.]

One thing that really makes me POed about McCain is that he knew a lot of this stuff through opposition research in 2008. He decided to take the "high road" and not use it. He stuck the rest of the world with the worst president since World War II, because he wanted to be a nice guy!

Edited November 16, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[up-country_sinclair]

There are (seemingly) scores of posts on this thread stating that Jonathan Gruber was the "architect" of the Affordable Care Act.

I just read an article which questions that claim with the following facts:

1. Gruber was not a member of the White House Staff, but just a paid consultant.

2. He has visited the White House only 12 times since 2009.

Surely the "architect" of a project of this size would be a member of the White House staff. And if for some reason he wasn't, how could he only have visited the White House 2 times per year. Especially in 2009 and 2010 when the were getting it off the ground.

It just doesn't add up.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-health-care-112930.html?hp=c1_3

[JDGRUEN]

Legacy building done obama style ... obama has this prize AG - Holder - who not only directed that members of the New Black Panthers get off on charges of blatant voter intimidation - caught on video, In addition, this same Attorney General Holder has been caught up in the Fast and Furious Scandal of Running Guns into Mexico in a convoluted scheme to made a case against gun ownership. Now AG Holder is accused of being Chief Antagonists in the manufactured racial crisis in Ferguson, Missouri...

obama not only appointed Holder - but has made excuse after excuse about Holder's conduct... If any President wanted to have a Legacy built on Honor and Integrity, that same President would have never appointed Holder in the first place and WOULD HAVE certainly removed him by now... that is - IF obama had any desire to have honesty and integrity in the office of Attorney General ...

You Get What You Sow.. obama has sown dishonesty in appointing Holder and keeping him in office against all evidence contrary ... Excusing the law breaking of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States Government is a crime unto itself.

When is Enough - Enough ?

Scathing Letter to Obama, Former FBI Assistant Director Slams Holder as "Chief Among Antagonists" in Ferguson

"...former FBI Assistant Director and Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund President Ron Hosko has sent a scathing letter to President Obama detailing the damage done to the relationship between law enforcement and DOJ over the past six years... "Your attorney general, Eric Holder, is chief among the antagonists."

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/11/14/exclusive-former-fbi-assistant-director-writes-scathing-letter-to-obama-n1918681

Edited November 16, 2014 by JDGRUEN

[JDGRUEN]

There are (seemingly) scores of posts on this thread stating that Jonathan Gruber was the "architect" of the Affordable Care Act.

I just read an article which questions that claim with the following facts:

1. Gruber was not a member of the White House Staff, but just a paid consultant.

2. He has visited the White House only 12 times since 2009.

Surely the "architect" of a project of this size would be a member of the White House staff. And if for some reason he wasn't, how could he only have visited the White House 2 times per year. Especially in 2009 and 2010 when the were getting it off the ground.

It just doesn't add up.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-health-care-112930.html?hp=c1_3

It would be expected that Gruber would be a contractor... that is the nature of things when doing brain trust things for the government... Why would he be a member of the White House Staff? No reason that he should be.

And Gruber billed the obama Administration for millions of dollars and has been paid... But you know -- he wasn't involved... Nancy Pelosi claims she never heard of hiim ... But GRUBER believes he was very much involved.

Maybe you better do a wider search ... Huge Billings by Gruber,..

[mgjackson69]

Ms Pelosi also said ”We need to pass this bill so we can find out what is in it.”

I see two possibilities...Gruber is a shit-talker who is trying to make himself famous, or Obama is trying to distance himself...or it could be both.

[chuckd]

There are (seemingly) scores of posts on this thread stating that Jonathan Gruber was the "architect" of the Affordable Care Act.

I just read an article which questions that claim with the following facts:

1. Gruber was not a member of the White House Staff, but just a paid consultant.

2. He has visited the White House only 12 times since 2009.

Surely the "architect" of a project of this size would be a member of the White House staff. And if for some reason he wasn't, how could he only have visited the White House 2 times per year. Especially in 2009 and 2010 when the were getting it off the ground.

It just doesn't add up.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-health-care-112930.html?hp=c1_3

It would be expected that Gruber would be a contractor... that is the nature of things when doing brain trust things for the government... Why would he be a member of the White House Staff? No reason that he should be.

And Gruber billed the obama Administration for millions of dollars and has been paid... But you know -- he wasn't involved... Nancy Pelosi claims she never heard of hiim ... But GRUBER believes he was very much involved.

Maybe you better do a wider search ... Huge Billings by Gruber,..

Gruber was a very highly paid consultant to Health and Human Services (HHS) when the bill was being written and after the bill was passed to attempt and keep the Congressional Budget Office in line with what the bill had passed and Obama had promised.

He allegedly billed various state and federal government agencies for in excess of $5 million for his services. His primary contact would have been with the various agencies he was performing his services for, notably HHS.

I honestly believe, with all the evidence in front of you, that Gruber actually did what he claims he did and simply does not have the common sense to keep his mouth shut.

[thaibeachlovers]

He is a good President and a descent person.

I hope the USA people would recognise that and give him the control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Honour your good people.

Are you on drugs? In my book, and the "books" of a few million others, this POS is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Presidency, or the US for that matter. This jerk spends more time on a golf course than in the Oval Office, and has done just about everything he can to disrespect and dishonor ALL American service men & women and veterans. He has done his best to destroy the American Constitution, and uses his "Executive Orders" to totally bypass Congress whenever he feels like it. And if Obama Care is soooo good, why isn't he on it? If the guy dropped dead tomorrow, the only tear I would shed is the one over the fact that it didn't happen sooner.

All Americans are actually effected by the Obamacare law including Obama. There is no such thing as being on Obamacare. It's not national health care. It's simply a way to greatly expand access to health care through already existing means ... private health insurance, medicare, medicaid, and now expanded medicaid in the non-right wing controlled states.

Many Americans are finding that they can't afford healthcare due to the huge amount they have to pay BEFORE receiving anything on Obamacare. That amount has gone up because Obamacare covers so many politically correct things like contraception.

[thaibeachlovers]

In the 2008 campaign, then Senator Obama said that he was going to try and pass comprehensive health care reform. He didn't keep this as a secret, he

spoke about it on the trail every day.

Yes he did. He lied about it over and over again to trick the public into voting for him and he kept lying about it afterwards to get it passed.

If what you write is true (and not hysterical hyperbole), why wasn't he tossed out of office in the 2012 elections?

Because the Republicans couldn't come up with a decent alternative. It doesn't mean that Obamacare is a good scheme though, and people didn't vote on a single issue.

[Publicus]

Politicians will name things for PR reasons -- even if the name were to be the complete opposite of what the bill was intended to do....

You are 100% correct.

As an example, the real title for Obamacare is...Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".

It neither "protects the patients" nor is it "affordable".

How does having Healthcare when you haven't had it before not "protect the patient"?

The affordable bit is also moot based on the figures at the link I provided in my last post.

The number of people for who premiums have gone up roughly matches the number for whom they've gone down.

Many of the people covered under obamacare are being covered under Medicaid, which has been there for years. All they had to do was avail themselves of the opportunity to enroll earlier.

The co-pay has risen, lifetime maximum has risen and the rates for 2015 were only released yesterday.

Hospitals and doctors are refusing to accept any more Medicaid patients at all and doctors are choosing to retire earlier than before.

Surprisingly the new rates weren't available prior to the mid term elections. Just a coincidence, of course.

Nobody as yet has come up with how much the government will have to spend to bail out the insurance company losses. That amount could be staggering.

Let's hold off for a couple of years at the least in running the long train of possible horrors, which is an old and much discredited tactic of those who are debate and discussion challenged.

Obamacare doesn't fully implement until after the year 2020 and perfecting amendments, as they are called in Congress, will be implemented as the new law continues to take effect.

It's also the case that corporations that pay no taxes need to have their shoulder put to the wheel so that we individual taxpayers can be relieved of being overly taxed while tax evaders laugh at the taxman revenuer to his face. A Democratic president and a Democratic party controlled Congress would be the only possible way to realize this wise goal of good and sound economic and fiscal policy.

Very importantly, it would be good economic and fiscal policy if the Republican controlled states would establish online health care exchanges so Obamacare can become readily available to our citizens who need it, which would also increase the participation numbers and rates. Republican controlled states also need to participate in the Medicare provisions of Obamacare.

Republican controlled states, the dozen or so of 'em, need to become Americans first and political party hacks and partisans later on down the line of issues, to include comprehensive immigration reform.

2018:

• Taxing "Cadillac" plans: An excise tax will be imposed on high-cost, employer-provided health plans beyond $27,500 for family coverage and $10,200 for single coverage; it will increase to $30,950 for families and $11,850 for individuals, retirees and employees in high-risk professions.

2020:

* The gap in Medicare's prescription drug coverage, known as the "doughnut hole," is fully eliminated after years of phase-out. After that, seniors will pay 25 percent of the cost of their medications up until Medicare's catastrophic coverage kicks in.

Many provisions are already in effect, including:

—Co-payments for preventive care for all ages have been eliminated.

—Young adults can stay on their parents' insurance up to age 26.

—Insurers can't deny coverage to children with health problems.

—Policies can't limit how much they'll pay over a person's lifetime.

—Older people save money through improved Medicare prescription benefits which are phasing in through 2020.

— A temporary program helps people with pre-existing health problems get coverage.

—Cuts in reimbursements for hospitals and insurers under Medicare have started and will cut deeper over time.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/more-changes-coming-obamacare-phases

[Publicus]

Gruber ... obama's architect for obamacare ... supposedly an affordable healthcare program ... to be presented to a Nation - a Constitutional Republic under guidance of democracy ... a nation of the people - and a government responsible to the people as per the U.S. Constitution ... and obama pushes this kind of thing down our collective throats... Six Videos of this Chief adviser on the construct of obamacare... glib, disrespectful, goading, lying and worse... All of the videos are totally undeniable products and evidence of the obama mania to subdue the American public and Force a program down the citizen's throats in totally absence of honesty ... a used car salesman's wet dream... deceive, deny, obfuscate, lie... THIS IS OBAMA'S LEGACY ... a big fat lie - pushed on Americans - as it will be written in books of history...

That is quite the photo of Willard Mitt Romney's main man outside of the state government when the then Governor Romney successfully implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts.

Nobody heard of this guy before now in this early runup time to the 2016 presidential election and no one will know or remember him after the election.

Dredging this up from the past is a part of the Republican's and the fierce campaign of the far right to try to drive down voter participation in the 2016 presidential election. The more people are disgusted, the more are the people who don't vote. It looks as if the fringe fanatics on the extreme political right have decided they must destroy democracy in order to save it.

It won't succeed because the demographics of the country have changed radically and because the mid-term election participation is always lesser in the mid-term year than it is in the presidential year election.

This guy anyway is a professor at MIT. Anyone who's spent any time around MIT knows it is full of arrogant elitists of the Willard Mitt Romney and Republican party type.

The paymasters in HHS certainly knew who Gruber was.

This from a blog that I can't verify. The article is from the Mail and it is blocked in Thailand.

More to follow but I must take the wife to Erawan Cave for lunch.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has billed federal and state governments at least $5.9 million

.

Four U.S. states and the federal government have padded Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber's wallet to the tune of $5.9 million since 2000, including millions connected to his work on the Affordable Care Act.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist has been pilloried for collecting $392,600 from the Obama administration's Health and Human Services Department while the law was being written, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Gruber's consulting contracts give states and the feds access to a proprietary formula that can determine how changes in a health care system's structure will affect costs.

http://www.discussionist.com/1015273718

Gruber is basically a jerk who likes to make stupid statements about how he is privy to if not the prime mover of secret back room deals and machinations whether in the Massachusetts capital or the nation's capital. The guy is a geek MIT economist with effective cost models but he is also the poster boy of an elite's self-important anal cavity.

Here's another of his precious quotes from his central role in economizing Romneycare while Willard Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts...

The dirty secret in Massachusetts is the feds paid for our bill, OK? In Massachusetts, we had a very powerful Senator you may know. His name is Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy had basically figured out — Ted Kennedy and smart people in Massachusetts — had figured out a way to rip off the Feds for $400 million a year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/14/despite-what-jonathan-gruber-said-romneycare-didnt-secretly-rip-off-medicaid/

Gruber is blowing smoke about the federal program that helped Massachusetts set up its 2006 coverage expansion signed off on by GW Bush and which later became the basis for the Affordable Care Act. The fact is hardly a secret.

The long and the short of it is that basically Massachusetts was receiving special Medicaid funds through a waiver to fund care for populations the program didn't include. In 2005, Prez Bush wanted to end that funding which had been worth about $350 million. But Ted Kennedy, working with then Gov Romney packaged a deal to keep the funds and then some by expanding Medicaid and providing subsidies to help low-income people buy private insurance. The Bush administration signed off on that deal, giving us Romneycare which then gave us Obamacare

The renewed and dredged up attacks exploiting Gruber's naivete and political clowning around are coming from the far out right wing marginals who gave us the infamous and false "death panels" and the "government takeover" bogeyman as well as "illegal aliens" getting health insurance, all of which were always 100% bullchit. These hard core recividist rightists also gave us the completely bogus $714 million cuts in Medicare that also proved to be 100% false.

The fact is we are hearing again from these very same people that are the repeat offender creators of fiction and outright boldfaced lies. The right wingnuts are not bastions of truth or of fairness whether it be the new healthcare law or comprehensive immigration reform or in respect of anything else. I don't trust them to be honest or truthful or in any way credible in any or all of their political statements, not at any time or ever.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Publicus

[Ulysses G.]

"Gruber is basically a jerk"

True enough. A jerk who is telling the truth about how Obamacare was sold dishonestly to the electorate. Of course, we already knew that. We just didn't know the extent of it.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/

Edited November 17, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[Ulysses G.]

I don't trust them to be honest or truthful or in any way credible in any or all of their political statements, not at any time or ever.

The pot calling the kettle black.

[CMNightRider]

The fact is we are hearing again from these very same people that are the repeat offender creators of fiction and outright boldfaced lies. The right wingnuts are not bastions of truth or of fairness whether it be the new healthcare law or comprehensive immigration reform or in respect of anything else. I don't trust them to be honest or truthful or in any way credible in any or all of their political statements, not at any time or ever.

Huh??? What??? "The right wing-nuts (make believe people) are not bastions of truth or fairness-I don't trust them to be honest or truthful." Lets think about this for a minute. You think Obama is honest and truthful? Obama has told so many lies, he can't even remember them all. This guy makes Nixon look like a choir boy.

Edited November 17, 2014 by CMNightRider