Gruber And Our So-Called “Betters”
[guest post by Dana]
That Jonathan Gruber is so smart! Just like he knows the American people are stupid, he also knows that abortion is worth its weight in economic benefit and societal gain. Life? What life?
We find evidence of sizeable positive selection: the average living circumstances of cohorts of children born immediately after abortion became legalized improved substantially relative to preceding cohorts, and relative to places where the legal status of abortion was not changing. Our results suggest that the marginal children who were not born as a result of abortion legalization would have systematically been born into worse circumstances had the pregnancies not been terminated: they would have been 70% more likely to live in a single parent household, 40% more likely to live in poverty, 35% more likely to die during the first year of life, and 50% more likely to be in a household collecting welfare. The last of these finding implies that the selection effects operating through the legalization of abortion saved the government over $14 billion in welfare payments through the year 1994.
No wonder this infamous architect had the president’s ear and no wonder Obamacare is laden with abortion subsidies.
In a smart column today, Thomas Sowell questions the whole lot of our “betters”. You know who they are: the Grubers of the world, the complicit media and “professional” journalists, and the Democrats and legal experts who spew their mumbo-jumbo legalese in an attempt to defend president’s outrageous disregard for the Constitution. In other words, those who know better than us. And sadly, if Americans weren’t so stupid, everyone would understand that we are talking about something that, in the long run, negatively impacts both sides of the aisle. It’s not what we’ve gained, but rather it’s what we’ve lost.
No one can know for sure what motivated Professor Gruber to do what he did, or what motivated the media to stonewall as if he had never spilled the beans, or the liberal law professors to give Obama cover while he violated the Constitution.
But running through all of their actions seems to be a vision of the world, and a vision of themselves, that is a continuing danger to the fundamental basis of this country, whatever the specific issue might be.
Probably few people on the political left are opposed to the Constitution of the United States, much less actively plotting to undermine it. But, on issue after issue, what they want to do requires them to circumvent the three words with which the Constitution begins: “We, the people…”
Many on the left may want to help “the people.” But once you start from the premise that you know what is best for the people, better than they know themselves, you have to figure ways around a Constitution based on the idea that the people not only have a right to choose their government and control government policy with their votes, but also that there are vast areas of the people’s lives that are none of the government’s business.
Jonathan Gruber’s notion that the people are “stupid” is not fundamentally different from what Barack Obama said to his fellow elite leftists in San Francisco, when he derided ordinary Americans as petty people who want to cling to their guns and their religion. We need to see through such arrogant elitists if we want to cling to our freedom.
In the meantime, responding to a letter from Rep. Darrell Issa requesting Gruber to answer questions about the lack of transparency and deception regarding the Affordable Care Act, Gruber agreed to testify next month.
“From the outset, the health law has been the poster child for this administration’s broken transparency promises,” Issa said in a written statement.
“Jonathan Gruber, one of ObamaCare’s chief architects, publicly lauded the ‘lack of transparency’ that was necessary to pass the law and credited ‘the stupidity of the American voter’ that allowed the administration to mislead the public,” Issa said.
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (8e74ce) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:05 pmBack atcha!
Gazzer (cb9ee2) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:10 pmWhat Gruber is really advocating is Eugenics. Something Hitler also liked. About time Godwin’s Law was invoked.
Tom (1c889b) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:13 pmHiya, gorgeous.
How much would we have saved if Gruber had been aborted? What a filthy little beast he is.
nk (dbc370) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:17 pmGruber isn’t really an abortion thing he’s mostly an obamacare thing and kind of a government sucks thing
that’s just sorta the limit of his utility i think
happyfeet (831175) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:20 pmI am becoming more and more impressed by Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society.
htom (9b625a) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:36 pmWonder if Isa will ask about the intended monthly premiums
seeRpea (ff2cfe) — 11/25/2014 @ 5:53 pmhttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/24/jonathan-gruber-warned-of-obamacare-premium-spike-/
Hello and thanks for Mr. Sowell’s piece.
mg (31009b) — 11/25/2014 @ 6:06 pmActually I’m thinking Mr. Gruber is right in 58 million cases. Those being the folks who voted for his Barryness.
f1guyus (647d76) — 11/25/2014 @ 6:36 pmain’t that just a DAMN shame?
Gruber’s losing contracts from various state governments… and it’s Demonrats who are calling for their cancellation.
i’m sure there will be an incoherent voxsplanation for this shortly.
could someone read it and get back to me? 😎
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 11/25/2014 @ 6:42 pmThe totalitarian temptation in leftism is an integral part of it. Lenin loved “people” in the abstract but hated them in the particular or the actual existence. That is not unusual among the left.
The French Revolution gave us our first real example of the left at work when they actually had power. Jean Paul Marat was the best example. His newspaper was called “L’Ami du people”, or friend of the people
“At the outbreak of the Revolution, wearied by the persecutions that I had experienced for so long a time at the hands of the Academy of Sciences, I eagerly embraced the occasion that presented itself of defeating my oppressors and attaining my proper position. I came to the Revolution with my ideas already formed, and I was so familiar with the principles of high politics that they had become commonplaces for me. Having had greater confidence in the mock patriots of the Constituent Assembly than they deserved, I was surprised at their pettiness, their lack of virtue
In fact, it is believed that he was indulging a personal grudge against Antoine Lavoisier , who was the greatest chemist of all time. Lavoisier had once criticized a paper written by Marat.
(Allegedly, Jean-Paul Marat also had it in for Lavoisier personally, on account of the latter’s having blown off Marat’s pre-Revolution scientific efforts.)
Marat is the model for revolutionaries who hate the person but love “the people.”
Mike K (90dfdc) — 11/25/2014 @ 7:02 pmIt is really such a shame that we all put such burdens on people like Professor Gruber. Without out mindless grubbing after freedom, his work in running our lives would be so much easier.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 11/25/2014 @ 7:11 pmSounds akin to an argument in the book “Freakenomics”, that Bill Bennett caught hell for when he quoted it from the book and disagreed with it, accused as if it was his idea, instead of recognizing he condemned it. In fact, I bet there are still people today who think Bill Bennett is a racist because he wants to abort African-American babies.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/25/2014 @ 7:21 pmGruber isn’t really an abortion thing he’s mostly an obamacare thing and kind of a government sucks thing
Pfft! Abortion is an Obamacare thing, happyfeet. It’s one and the same and Goober is all over it.
Dana (8e74ce) — 11/25/2014 @ 8:18 pmbut this is just a paper he helped with in the 90s
he didn’t commission the study it doesn’t look like
he’s an economist on a team of economists doing an economic analysis of a policy shift
that’s just what economists do
it’s embarrassing to see how the lifeydoodles at the link don’t engage with his analysis and offer a competing economic analysis as a rebuttal – which means his claims go unchallenged
i just don’t get it
obamacare is the policy with his fingerprints all over it
the whole roe v. wade thing not so much
happyfeet (831175) — 11/25/2014 @ 8:29 pmand now from our Sceintist betters:
http://aas.org/posts/news/2014/11/aas-issues-statement-shirtgateshirtstorm
Any members of the AAS here?
seeRpea (ff2cfe) — 11/25/2014 @ 8:29 pmFirst off , the second “A” should be an “S”
secondly – why are you still a member?
So the babies that were aborted would have been worse off being born than having been aborted? So living in poverty is worse than being dead? I guess that is how the ‘superior’ intellect of the average liberal works. Being poor and having to work to improve your situation is worse than being dead. Genius. Pure genius.
Tom Seaver (5cb2de) — 11/25/2014 @ 8:41 pmAlthough they were channeling Margaret Sanger, Gruber and company had no citation to anything written by Sanger about eugenics advantages of abortion.
slp (347e33) — 11/25/2014 @ 9:23 pmUnless you’re a white male who wears a silly shirt.
htom (9b625a) — 11/25/2014 @ 9:44 pmOur results suggest that the marginal children who were not born as a result of abortion legalization would have systematically been born into worse circumstances had the pregnancies not been terminated.
I wonder who will squirm the most about such a statement: The percentage of conservatives who are quite exasperated when women who have no business having children go through life raising kids in a dysfunctional environment, or the percentage of liberals who believe even a hint of eugenics is racist and that society should have as many docile, downwardly mobile, government-dependent people as possible, and the numbers of such people in America should never be discouraged but instead should be celebrated and cheered.
Mark (c160ec) — 11/25/2014 @ 10:01 pmre #19: even when your boss is female.
seeRpea (ff2cfe) — 11/25/2014 @ 10:02 pmConsidering the Mike Browns and the Trayvon Martins of the world, the more abortions the better.
Jack (a742cc) — 11/26/2014 @ 2:40 amIn the videos it appears that Gruber is gleeful about using his numbers to game the CBO. If he is willing to lie with Obamacare, how do we know he isn’t lying about this too?
Tanny O'Haley (c674c7) — 11/26/2014 @ 7:21 amThomas Sowell:
What irony!
Those three words that Sowell quoteswith which the Constitution begins: “We, the people” were themselves intended to circumvent the then-existing Constitution of the United States!!
Text of the Articles of Confederation
In Article XIII:
But the 1787 Constitution says:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/constitution/text.html
Article VII:
The constitution is clearly invalid.
Not only was the ratification different, they also wrote it in a special convention, which s maybe not the same thing a Congress of the United States, although that’s arguable.
How did they get around the fact that the new constitution stepped outside the provisions for amendment of the old constitution?
Sammy Finkelman (f0d6ed) — 11/26/2014 @ 7:46 amTanny O’Haley (c674c7) — 11/26/2014 @ 7:21 am
The CBO didn’t score that.
Of course it could still be an exaggeration, or have other problems with it.
For instance, if a mother hadn’t aborted one child, she might not have had as many other children as she did later, so the total savings to the government from abortion are exaggerated.
Sammy Finkelman (f0d6ed) — 11/26/2014 @ 7:49 amYou don’t say?
http://riehlworldview.com/2014/11/jonathan-gruber-aborting-the-poors-marginal-children-saves-government-money.html
DNF (3b2963) — 11/27/2014 @ 7:40 am