American voters "stupid," really?


By Jim Killebrew

[November 12, 2014]  Just like a waterfall the cascades of misrepresentations from the Administration just keep rippling from the fountainhead sitting in the Oval Office. The President informed the American people during his early campaigning for the Presidency that his administration would be "transparent" so the American people could actually know what the government was up to. Just to be clear about his transparency, the President's Administration has been much more opaque in his dealings with the American people and much less translucent about his workings than he promised the American people he would be. Another example of that "under the table" non-transparency has emerged in November 2014 with the revelation of almost a minute excerpt from a video of a 2013 24th Annual Health Economics Conference at the University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. That excerpt video recorded remarks from Jonathan Gruber, who was a consultant to the Obama administration and Congress when he worked on the Affordable Care Act, known more commonly as the Obamacare.

Mr. Gruber is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Just a few day ago he was speaking as part of a panel on the subject that was entitled, "The Role of Economics in Shaping the ACA and How Economics Can Inform Inevitable Mid-Course Corrections." During the course of his participation on that panel, and as a major architect of the Obamacare insurance plan, Mr. Gruber made the following remarks:

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK? So it's written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money — it would not have passed. OK? 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 to get the thing to pass. Look, I wish ... we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather have this law than not."
 

So now we have some insight into the making of the bill that was supported by each of the democrat House Members and Senate members, without a single vote from the republicans. Since everything was so non-transparent in the first place, known only to the democrats in Congress, the Administration, including the President, passed in 2010 while the democrats held the majority in both Houses of Congress, remember Nancy Pelosi pushing it through the House of Representatives saying, "We need to pass it now so we can read it to know what is in it." Now comes the so-called "smoking gun" from a major architect who obviously knew what was in it prior to its being passed and sent to the President for signature.

Knowing that information from the very beginning, with the President surrounding himself with leading democrats who also knew from the very beginning what was in the bill, signed it into law, obviously very proud of themselves for "pulling the wool over the eyes" of the "stupid American voter." From that moment the Administration, including the President, began their campaign of lies to again misinform the American people with misinformation, outright lies and attacks on anyone who dared to say anything about the real contents of the law.
 

Now, even more than a year after his involvement with the panel discussion of the Obamacare law at the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Gruber, a major architect of the Obamacare law told the American people the correct formula as to how the Administration practices its deceit of the American people by writing legislative laws in a "tortured way." Seeking ways to articulate the document was language so as to fool the Congressional Budget Office so it "did not score the mandate as taxes." Rather than transparency, it was behind closed doors the democrats plotted with "tortured" language the writing of a bill that was intentionally, purposefully meant to hide the future forthcoming lies they all knew would have to be told to the American people to keep the real purpose of the law hidden from the people.

Mr. Gruber knew at the time, as he stated publically in 2013, they intentionally crafted the Obamacare bill in such a way as to fool the American people with lies rather than truth. Knowing if the truth would be told in the beginning the entire bill would die in the making. But because he, and the democrats who were complicit in the development of the law, wanted the bill to move forward to their President to become law, they essentially forced it down the throats of the American people as a Christmas present in 2010.

In Mr. Gruber's statement on the panel, whose language became known in November 2014, he admitted the subsidies had to be hidden from everyone regarding the requirement that healthy people would be required to pay much more so they could pay in for the "sick people" to get the money. He, and the democrats, along with the President and his Administration knew at the time it was simply a plan of "redistribution of wealth" the President had promised during his campaigning promises.

Mr. Gruber admitted the administration's practices were calculated and motivated by political reasoning. He said, "Lack of transparency..." is a "huge political advantage." Now we are hearing the Administration's and liberal media's talking points that "This administration is the least 'political' administration in history." The media's covering for the President and his administration makes them just as complicit in this gross misrepresentation of facts as the President and his fellow democrats have been.

Finally, Mr. Gruber in his discussion about his reasoning for constructing the Obamacare the way they did, in large part, depended "on the stupidity of the American voter." He continued, "That was critical to get the thing to pass." What a slap in the face to the American voter! Such outlandish gall the elitist, liberal group of democrats who worked on the deceit mechanisms of that bill represented. The irony of the situation is, on November 4, 2014, during the Mid-Term election, the so-called, "stupidity" of the American voter repudiated Mr. Gruber, the President, 26 of the democrat supports of the Obamacare law, and turned instead to seat a republican Senate majority and strengthened the House majority, and increased the number of republican Governors to a majority in the States.

Broken promises, lack of transparency, elitist attitudes toward the American voter, constant lies, continued unyielding contempt for America has its consequences. For those public officials who have been granted the privilege of serving the public interests, but continue to view the American voter as a fool, or being stupid, remember there is a new election cycle that has already begun.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]