November has not been kind to Jonathan Gruber, a very smart man who has said some astonishingly stupid things. Several videos have surfaced this month showing Gruber, an MIT professor who is widely recognized as one of the key architects of Obamacare, mocking the intelligence of people who bought the party line about Obamacare (although Gruber refers to the “American voter” as being deceived, it’s pretty clear he’s using that in the same way most politicians do when they claim to speak for the “American people” – they only mean those who agree with them already).
Now it’s starting to look like those videos might cut into his multi-million dollar income from Obamacare. Watchdog.org, one of my favorite sources for news, has the following story:
Vermont halts payments to Obamacare architect Gruber
By Bruce Parker | Vermont Watchdog
MONTPELIER, Vt. — The state of Vermont has stopped payment on the contract of Jonathan Gruber following a series of video statements showing the Obamacare architect repeatedly insulting voters and intentionally misleading the public in the crafting of the Affordable Care Act…
As of this week, Vermont has paid Gruber $160,000 on a contract that began July 21 and was expected to continue until Feb. 15…
Last week, a series of videos went viral in which Gruber made disparaging comments about the “stupidity” of American voters.
One video, shot by TruthNorthReports.com and released Friday by Vermont Watchdog, featured Gruber attending a 2011 Vermont House Health Care Committee meeting and quipping that the written concerns of one Vermonter regarding single-payer might have been written by his “adolescent children.” Those comments actually were written by John McClaughry, a former two-term Vermont state senator and adviser to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s…
So I suppose I ought to clarify my comments above. When talking about the “stupidity” of the “American voter,” Gruber was referring to the Democratic base who believed what he said about Obamacare, but he’s certainly not above also insulting anyone who dares to disagree with him either.
*UPDATE
I should also mention that my colleague here at The Heartland Institute, Peter Ferrara, has been on top of the deceptions, distortions, and lies offered by Obamacare advocates from the very beginning. I highly recommend his book, ‘The Obamacare Disaster,’ published by Heartland.
Sean Parnell ([email protected]) is a research fellow for health policy at The Heartland Institute.
