This story simply astounds: the arrogance that breeds such contempt for everybody else, the dishonesty, and the knowledge that this kind of thinking is the sine qua non of every pro-government thinker today (or else the guy wouldn't have said it). The article was flying all over yesterday. It's about words spoken by the "architect" of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber (the initial quotes are Gruber talking):
“Mark [Pauly] made a couple of comments that I do want to take issue with, one about transparency in financing and the other is about moving from community rating to risk-rated subsidies. You can't do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing”¦and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that 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, okay. 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.”
Gruber also points out that Obamacare's individual mandate–the provision that requires most Americans to buy government-approved insurance, or pay a fine–was described in the law as a “penalty” instead of as a “tax” in order to hide the mandate's effects. “I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the [individual] mandate as taxes,” said Gruber. “If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so [the law is] written to do that.”
I watched the video and found myself wanting to grab the smug weasel by the neck and wring him. The consummate intellectual, dishonest ass, wrapped in the unquestioning self-assurance that he's right and can't possibly be wrong. There's no other way to put it.
And then the University of Pennsylvania deleted the video. Simply shameful. Or no shame. Your call.
But what's not your call: Your decision ever to trust big government or its cohorts (like big education). That's simply not reasonable in the wake of a revelation like this.
