Posted on 08/02/2014 9:16:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many of you probably heard about the “Halbig” decision, in which a federal court struck a blow against Obamacare by ruling that the IRS was wrong to arbitrarily grant subsidies for health insurance policies purchased through a federal exchange.
And why did the judges rule against the IRS? Well, for the simple reason that the Obamacare legislation specifically says that subsidies are only available for policies purchased through exchanges set up by state governments. My Cato colleague Michael Cannon explains:
The PPACA authorizes the IRS to issue health-insurance tax credits only to taxpayers who purchase coverage “through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” The tax-credit eligibility rules repeat this restriction, without deviation, nine times. The undisputed plain meaning of these rules is that when states decline to establish an Exchange and thereby opt for a federal Exchange — as 34 states accounting for two-thirds of the U.S. population have done — the IRS cannot issue tax credits in those states.
The legal fight isn’t over, of course, and it’s quite likely that the Supreme Court will make the ultimate ruling (which is worrisome since Chief Justice Robertsalready has demonstrated that he’s sometimes guided by politics rather than the law).
But that’s an issue for another day.
Our topic today is humor. Or maybe it’s hypocrisy. Or perhaps it’s duplicity. Heck, it’s all of those things and more. Why? Because a leading supporter of Obamacare (who often conveniently forgets to disclose that he got $400,000 of our tax dollars to help draft and promote the law) has been caught with his pants down.
As you can see in this video, Professor Gruber is now pretending the Halbig decision was wrong even though he repeatedly acknowledged in the past that states would have to set up exchanges in order for their citizens to get subsidies.
#GruberGate: Tale of the Tapes
Wow.
I’ve never seen a more brutal video. And it’s effective because Gruber is hoisted on his own petard.
Heck, this puts him in the same category as Paul Krugman, who also has been caught changing his views (he used to admit that unemployment benefits increase joblessness, but more recently made the opposite argument to boost Obama’s agenda).
Though I should admit that hypocrisy and duplicity aren’t limited to the left. I’vecriticized Republicans, after all, for occasionally justifying their anti-tax views by citing the Keynesian analysis of the Congressional Budget Office.
But let’s not digress. Instead, let’s simply enjoy the emasculation of a statist.
And because the video is so enjoyable, I guess I’ll put it in the humor category.
And if you like humorous Obamacare-related videos,here are some other examples from the archives.
Algore never would have invented the internet if he had known how inconvenient it would make it for liberals to lie about what they have actually said and done.
All Algore wanted was easier access to porn.
Gruber is a”Lying,LibTurd,P.O.S”(as are his”employers”).As far as Justice Roberts is concerned,I would refer his”August Attenetion”to Article 1,Section 7 of The United States Constitution.”All Bills For The Purpose of Raising Revenue SHALL Originate In The House of Representatives”!What part of”All” and”Sghall”don’t you understand,Mr. Roberts??As far as The Congress is concerned:What Part of”Congress Shall Make NO Law”don’t you Understand?????
I wasn’t impressed with the video — not coherent enough or concise enough to make the point clearly.
I can understand why the guy gets so obnoxiously and deceptively defensive over this.
Gruber is the chief architect of ObamaCare, which has demonstrated ridiculous failure at every step. Despite his protestations about “democracy”, ObamaCare never really had popular support; it had to be rammed through Congress and become increasingly unpopular with its every failure along the way. Only 37% of Americans have a favorable view of Gruber’s baby. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/01/obamacare-hits-a-new-low-in-popularity-but-its-not-a-dominant-issue/ It’s probably no coincidence that a comparable fraction gets “free” or heavily subsidized insurance that must be paid for by taxpayers.)
Two-thirds of Americans live in states that so despise the law — Gruber’s baby — that they did not create exchanges.
Gruber may be a duplicitous academic and a failure at restructuring the health care sector of the US economy, but he has done pretty well for himself with over $400,000 of cool cash from Obama. I’m sure he’s had other revenue streams from this scam as well. I agree with the folks at Cato, however, that it is entertaining to watch him squirm.
I have some of the same sentiment expat2. But I still liked it.
It does need to be “tightened up” - and I would like to know why he wanted/needed States to set up exchanges.
As I understand it, there were two or three reasons: (i) the cost of the program came out too high if all the exchanges gave out subsidies, (ii) they wanted to incentivize the states to set up their own exchanges, (iii) there were some questions about whether the fed exchange giving out subsidies was kosher.
It's a video for political junkies who already understand the issues, written for people who think at the speed of video games, reading the text and processing the audio content simultaneously.
Why is this news?
I think what would be more newsworthy is if an Obamacare Statist ever told the truth. (No, I'm not holding my breath)
I think it’s bigger news when an Obamaton gets caught telling the truth.
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Pet peeve. To the author. The professor was not hoisted on his own petard. A petard is not a flagpole or ship's mast. A petard is a small bomb. The professor was hoist by his own petard.
Petard hoisting is not even appropriate here, since he did not “fall into his own trap” (another meaning of the term) since he was not setting a trap - But he was certainly caught lying over and over again...
More closely resembles the phrase “Methinks the lady doth protest too much”
Mr. Roberts(not deserving being called Chief Justice) is probably very busy watching over his cache of money deposited in the Vatican Bank on Malta. Photo of him with briefcase about to enter bank is on FR. Event happened at time his ruling was made.
Now I'm left watching the word 'moot' gradually take on a meaning exactly opposite to what the word moot means. 'Moot' means subject to debate or open for discussion. Journalists now use it to mean settled and no longer open for discussion.
And while I'm at it, 'short-lived' with a short 'i' is becoming the preferred pronunciation. The long 'i' is the correct pronunciation.
"Short" is an adjective. Adjectives describe nouns, not verbs. Therefore, the "lived" in "short-lived" must be referring to the noun "life" as opposed to the verb "live." If one were to pronounce the i in the short fashion, implying a verb instead of a noun, one ought to say "shortly-lived."
And, yes, I know. The OED changed the preferred pronunciation to the short 'i' around 1993. But other dictionaries are split.
And while we're at it: YOU KIDS GET OFF OF MY LAWN!
I see you’re full of vim today.
Yes, but no vigor. I’ll mail you about it soon. Is Elen improving on the Strat?
She’s been away all summer, teaching merit badge classes in nature-stuff. She did ask her Dad to bring her guitar for the week of Seabase (now), but I don’t know whether he did. I was not involved in the loading-up.
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