Jonathan Gruber and His Defenders Think Their Audience Is Stupid

“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… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” Jonathan “Grubby” Gruber, University of Pennsylvania in October, 2013.

As the media circles the wagons around Jonathan Gruber, Obama and ObamaCare, it’s really important to remember one key thing. They – like the people they’re trying to protect – think their audience is stupid. Media Matters, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, think that their readers’ confirmation bias makes them easy to fool, aka- stupid.

https://twitter.com/AndrewStilesUSA/status/532195507746385920

That line in the WaPo article has since disappeared – and has been replaced with:

Gruber’s comments were part of a broader public conversation between him and economist Mark Pauly on the economics of health care reform. Gruber was responding to a remark by Pauly about financing transparency in the law and the politics surrounding the ACA’s individual mandate. The political process, he said, striking a critical tone, resulted in inefficiencies in the law which should be corrected.

“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which explicitly said that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed,” he said. “You can’t do it politically, you just literally cannot do it. It’s not only transparent financing but also transparent spending.”

 Gruber went to the Regime’s propaganda arm MSNBC to explain his comments  and apologize for the confusion on Tuesday afternoon during an on-air interview with Ronan Farrow.

“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” Gruber said. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”

Although Gruber apologized for the language he used, Gruber said that the larger point he was trying to make centered on the political pressures that shaped the law. He added that those pressures “led to an incomplete law with some typos.”

The typos would later lead to “speak-os” as evidenced in the American Commitment video Gruber vs Gruber. (Watch with the words, “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”…in mind.)

Note, that Gruber had chosen again to appear on the Regime’s propaganda arm to peddle this howler: “It is unambiguous this is a typo. Literally every single person involved in the crafting of this law has said that it’s a typo, that they had no intention of excluding the federal states.”

What Gruber said in January of 2012 was specific, detailed and in direct conflict with his later typo and speak-o claims.

And what he says is exactly what challengers to the administration’s implementation of the law have been arguing—that if a state chooses not to establish its own exchange, then residents of those states will not be able to access Obamacare’s health insurance tax credits. He says this in response to a question asking whether the federal government will step in if a state chooses not to build its own exchange. Gruber describes the possibility that states won’t enact their own exchanges as one of the potential “threats” to the law. He says this with confidence and certainty, and at no other point in the presentation does he contradict the statement in question.

Remember what I said yesterday, about the low opinion elites like Gruber have of the “American people” – not us, of course. Not conservatives because we were never fooled – but the lofos and liberals like those in the dwindling MSNBC audience . The guy peddles his BS where the Obama dead-enders congregate. They will apparently believe anything.

Linked by Liberty’s Torch in The Anti-Transparent Administration, thanks Francis!