Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   11/18/2014

Fooling the American electorate

If you would like to see and hear the newly elected Superintendent of the Tehama County Department of Education, the Tea Party Patriots will host Charles Allen in the 6:30 portion of their 6:00 meeting tonight at the Westside Grange, 20794 Walnut St. A mild suggestion: Anyone with concerns or animosity over Common Core should be aware that Mr. Allen has, in all likelihood, nearly zero ability to nullify it for our county schools.

The controversy and outrage over MIT economist Jonathon Gruber’s surprisingly frank and revealing statements should inform our view of the formulation, legislation and implementation of Obamacare. Obama’s apologists, defenders, spinners, liars and apparatchiks have no credibility whatsoever if they try to minimize Gruber and his statements.

To summarize, for those with blinkered viewing limited to the networks and non-Fox news sources, and who don’t either listen to conservative talk radio or read the many legitimate conservative blog sites, here’s what Mr. (or is it “Per-fess-er”) Gruber had to say: 1) “If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in…and sick people get money—it would not have passed; 2) “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.” 3) “Americans are too stupid to understand the difference” (when Democrats altered the language of the bill to gather public support).

4) (Per Rich Lowry, nationalreview.com) “Gruber crowed about the exertions undertaken to make an unpopular tax on expensive health-insurance plans, the so-called Cadillac tax, more palatable. It was levied on employers instead of employees. No one (i.e. voters) realized, Gruber explained, that the tax would be functionally the same even if not directly imposed on workers.”

5) Gruber dismissed as the writings of “my adolescent children” concerns about the law such as: “ballooning costs, increased taxes, bureaucratic outrages, shabby facilities, disgruntled providers, long waiting times, lower-quality care, special interest nest-feathering and destructive wages and price controls.” Far from the immature expressions of children, those were written by John McClaughry, a former Vermont state senator and adviser to President Ronald Reagan, “who (Mr. McClaughry) knew something about health care systems.”

6) Gruber bragged and showboated to “Frontline” in a June 13, 2012 interview about his role in an Oval Office meeting with several experts, as well as President Obama. White House visitor logs for July 20, 2009, have Gruber meeting with Obama in the West Wing for almost four hours. Gruber: “The next time I see him (Obama) is summer 2009. The big issue there is that he really wants to make sure I’m moving forward on cost control. [Coverage looked good] but he was worried on cost control. So we had a meeting…on what can we do to get credible savings on cost control that the Congressional Budget Office would recognize and score as savings in this law.”

Gruber then explained that when employer-provided health insurance is not taxed, unlike wages or salaries, it is effectively a “tax subsidy” and they all, including Obama, brainstormed for ways to get some of the “$250 billion per year in (lost) tax revenue” into the CBO calculation. “And Obama is like, ‘Look, I can’t just do this…politically. The bill will not pass. How do we manage to get there through phases and other things?’ And we talked about it. And he was just very interested in that topic.”

Review, please, #4 above to understand that Obama was part of, if not the inspiration for, the duplicitous machinations to turn a direct tax into “savings” that employers/insurance companies would pay. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft: “Obama was at the center of this deception. He specifically ordered Gruber and other ‘healthcare experts’ to find ways to game the CBO numbers so that the bill would pass…Gruber has clearly identified President Obama as the source of the lie behind the Cadillac Tax. The story is…about the deliberate lie the President used to pass this monstrosity of a healthcare law.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: “The strategy was to hide the truth from the American people. That is a threat to the American republic.” Gruber’s comments confirm what we on the right have criticized for 5 years regarding “the ethos of modern progressive liberalism—smarter-than-thou zealotry masquerading as for-the-greater-good pragmatism.” (Ian Tuttle) “Complexity is a staple of liberal policymaking. It is a product of its scale and reach, but also of the imperative to hide the ball. Taxing and spending and redistributive schemes tend to be unpopular, so clever ways have to be found to deny that they are happening. (Obamacare’s) supporters didn’t want to straightforwardly admit how much the law was raising taxes and using the young and healthy to subsidize everyone else.” (Rich Lowry)

Moreover, Jonathan Gruber typifies the policy wonk/rent seekers that attach themselves to the progressive machine. The New York Post’s Kyle Smith chronicled the largess from taxpayers that found its way into Gruber’s hands: $392,600 from the HHS payroll; $400,000 of Obamacare money from Minnesota; another $400,000 each from Wisconsin and Vermont, in addition to sums from West Virginia, Maine, Colorado and Oregon. He wrote numerous op-eds without disclosing that he was “on the take.” Gruber, Obama (Care), Pelosi, Reid—frauds all.