{"id":3894,"date":"2014-11-16T08:46:51","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T13:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=3894"},"modified":"2014-11-16T08:54:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T13:54:46","slug":"who-thinks-were-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=3894","title":{"rendered":"who thinks we&#8217;re stupid?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/images-11.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3896 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/images-11.jpeg\" alt=\"images-1\" width=\"135\" height=\"142\" \/><\/a>I wrestled this morn with which of the week\u2019s most significant stories to write about&#8230; do we discuss how a man who assisted in writing the Affordable Care Act admitted that to pass the legislation, they had to play on the \u201cstupidity of the American voter\u201d? &#8230; or do we wrestle with the wisdom in the President\u2019s approach, with his intent to bypass all others, creating legislation on his own? Bear with me, friends. I have a feeling the two stories will easily, semi-profoundly merge together.<\/p>\n<p>Meet Jonathan Gruber: story #1. He\u2019s an MIT Econ professor, teaching there for the past 22 years. He was heavily involved in crafting Obamacare. Wikipedia refers to him as a \u201ckey architect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As now reported by multiple sources, Gruber has said the following about the Affordable Care Act (<em>also, please take note of the intelligence necessary to become a professor at MIT):<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The legislation \u201cwould not have passed\u201d had the administration been honest about the income-redistribution policies embedded in its insurance regulations.<\/li>\n<li>The \u201clack of transparency is a huge political advantage.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCall it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Gruber visited the White House five times in 2009. Pres. Obama\u2019s campaign featured Gruber in a re-election video. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said last week she didn\u2019t \u201cknow who he is,\u201d but a video quickly surfaced showing Pelosi directly referring to and supportive of Gruber\u2019s work. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) once referred to Gruber on the Senate floor as <strong><em>\u201cone of the most respected economists in the world.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On to story #2&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Near two weeks ago, America sent a message to Washington via the election. As discussed, the Intramuralist believes the primary message was \u201cone, you\u2019re acting arrogantly,\u201d and \u201ctwo, we don\u2019t like the way you\u2019re acting.\u201d That includes Congress <strong>and<\/strong>\u00a0arguably, <em>especially<\/em> the President.<\/p>\n<p>Pres. Obama announced the next day that he will take action on immigration reform on his own before the year\u2019s end. Granted, a new Congress was just elected, but Obama intends to bypass them before they are ever sworn in.<\/p>\n<p>Now the Intramuralist believes that reform should be taken on immigration; the influx of illegals in this country has posed some incredibly challenging economic, social, and national security issues. We need to manage this is a more effective, reasonable way. Yet by bypassing the legislative branch in its entirety <em>&#8212; even though the purpose of the legislative branch is <strong>create<\/strong> the law and the purpose of the executive branch is to <strong>enforce<\/strong> the law &#8212;<\/em> the President has decided to create.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that immigration reform has yet to pass both houses of Congress. It is also true that when Obama had super majorities in the House and Senate, he did not prioritize any immigration measures. For Obama to proceed now via Executive Order &#8212; completely avoiding Congress &#8212; is to this current events observer, an obviously arrogant approach. It does not adhere to the message of the most recent election.<\/p>\n<p>It also makes me wonder how frequently\u00a0people perceive\u00a0the American voter as &#8220;stupid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Respectfully&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrestled this morn with which of the week\u2019s most significant stories to write about&#8230; do we discuss how a man who assisted in writing the Affordable Care Act admitted that to pass the legislation, they had to play on the \u201cstupidity of the American voter\u201d? &#8230; or do we wrestle with the wisdom in &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=3894\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;who thinks we&#8217;re stupid?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[475,474],"class_list":["post-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event","category-current-issue","tag-immigration-executive-order","tag-jonathan-gruber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3898,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions\/3898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}