Despite Dem claims, trash-talking Gruber was well-paid adviser for ObamaCare and more

Face of the Democrat Party.

During the heyday of the ObamaCare push, Jonathan Gruber was whiz-kid-in-chief. His number-crunching on the benefits of the plan was frequently cited by Democrats trying to sell the proposal to the public.
Now, Washington Democrats have a new message: He’s not with us.
After a string of videos have emerged showing Gruber gloating about how the law’s authors exploited Americans’ “stupidity,” the White House has distanced itself. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi even claimed: “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.”
But while Jonathan Gruber might not have been a familiar name until this week for many, Pelosi and the rest of the lawmakers who pushed the law certainly knew who he was in 2009 and 2010.
A look at the record shows he was in fact paid to advise the Department of Health and Human Services. And he continues to play a role in health policy elsewhere, even as his unearthed videos cause headaches for the administration, just ahead of this weekend’s Round 2 enrollment launch.
Gruber, an MIT professor and economist, has lived amid the health care debate in Washington for at least 20 years.
Gruber was retained by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009 on a $297,600 contract to provide “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform.” Gruber also confirmed to The Washington Post that he was paid another $95,000 before that, for a total of nearly $400,000. 
Around this time, his analysis was not only featured on Pelosi’s House speaker website in 2009, but cited by the White House several times. Though he often was billed as an analyst in media interviews where he touted the merits of the plan, critics complained his financial ties to the administration weren’t disclosed.
Gruber also spent a good deal of time testifying on the Hill and in meetings at the White House – 19 visits from 2009 to June of this year, according to publicly available logs
Aside from his work in Washington, he went on to bag similar contracts for health care work at the state level after that, working six-figure deals with multiple states.
“He talks himself about being in the Oval Office, on loan to Congress, particularly the Senate Budget Committee,” Rich Weinstein, who helped dig up the Gruber tapes, told FoxNews.com.
Weinstein has made a hobby of sorts out of researching Gruber’s involvement. Weinstein said after losing his own health insurance plan due to ObamaCare, he decided to do some background research on the “architects” of the bill, who were making the rounds on the TV circuit promoting the benefits of the legislation.
He first unearthed some Gruber remarks in July, showing him at a January 2012 forum appearing to suggest that ObamaCare was designed to pressure states to set up health care exchanges or risk valuable tax subsidies. (The precise ACA language on subsidies and Congress’ intent is now the subject of a federal lawsuit, King v. Burwell, which the Supreme Court agreed to take up last week.)
That video attracted some attention, but he unleashed a bombshell this week – a video where Gruber is heard referring to the American public as stupid, forcing Gruber to respond. Conservative group American Commitment and others circulated the video, and it went viral. 
In the clip, Gruber suggested the law would not have passed if it was made explicit that healthy people would “pay in” and the sick would get money for coverage. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass,” he said.
Weinstein said while it’s a question how much of the law Gruber actually wrote – it’s a sausage with many makers – there’s no doubt his stamp is on it.
Gruber, an MIT economics professor who specializes in cost modeling for health care policy, also helped design the individual mandate system in Massachusetts, otherwise known as “RomneyCare” – which Obama aides said was the basis for their proposal.
In a 2012 interview with PBS, he made his involvement crystal-clear: “I helped [Governor] Romney develop the Massachusetts health care reform, or Romneycare. I then worked with the Obama administration and Congress to help develop the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare.”
The involvement didn’t end there. In 2011, he published a graphic novel, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works,” promoting the ACA.
Gruber is still in demand to help other states overhaul their health care systems. According to reports in July, he was hired by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin for $400,000 to study how to create a revenue stream for a single-payer health care system. Records show Minnesota paid him nearly $330,000 for health care work in 2011 and 2012. And around the same time, a 2012 contract from Michigan offered $481 million for health care analysis to a team of three firms, including Gruber and his “Gruber Microsimulation Model.”
Some ObamaCare critics already are calling for hearings in response to the videos.
“They’re going to have to answer to the American people on C-SPAN in a transparent way -- even though they didn’t do it when they passed the bill, they’re going to be held accountable in public view this time,” Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News. 
Defenders of ObamaCare say the tenets of the law have been transparent from the get-go. If anything, they are blaming Gruber for getting it wrong. Brian Beutler of The New Republic wrote, “His suggestion that the key cost-sharing tradeoffs weren’t widely discussed just isn’t true.” 
Jerold Duquette, political science professor at Central Connecticut State University, argued on his blog that "all legislation is framed for maximum political acceptability and minimum pushback" and "includes spin intended to short circuit opposition spin." He wrote: "The incredibly phony outrage of conservative pols and pundits is pitiful." 
Gruber, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, expressed regret for his comments on Tuesday on MSNBC. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret making those comments.”
Several more videos have emerged this week since the “stupidity” clip. They included speeches where he talked about how the so-called Cadillac tax on high-end health plans was envisioned to charge insurance companies rather than consumers, all the while knowing the enrollees would get hit with higher prices anyway as a result.
In one clip, he said of the Cadillac tax: “They proposed it and that passed because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest disagreed with Gruber, telling reporters on Thursday, “The fact of the matter is, the process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”
But ObamaCare opponents say this is more proof the administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill misled lawmakers and voters. “This guy keeps digging himself a deeper and deeper hole,” said Phil Kerpen, of American Commitment, a conservative nonprofit which has spent millions on issue ads favoring Republicans in the last two election cycles. “And all Democrats can do is pretend that this guy wasn’t the architect who was central to writing and passing the law when all the facts say he was.”

House votes to approve Keystone pipeline, showdown looms in Senate

The House voted Friday to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, sending the bill to the Senate for a showdown vote next week that could -- for the first time -- put the legislation on President Obama's desk. 
The measure passed Friday on a 252-161 vote, with 31 Democrats joining Republicans to approve it. An identical bill is expected to be voted on in the Senate on Tuesday. 
The legislation has re-emerged after Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu began championing it, in a bid to not only help the energy industry but also her struggling runoff Senate bid. In response, Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, who is running against Landrieu in the runoff, sponsored the House bill that was approved on Friday. 
Though the Louisiana election battle is a driving force behind the latest Keystone push, the legislation nevertheless could land on Obama's desk if the Senate passes it next week. Senate supporters said they were confident they'd have the 60 votes needed for passage. 
This would force Obama to either sign it -- defying his environmentalist supporters -- or veto it. 
The pipeline has been stalled by environmental reviews, objections to its route and politics for six years. The White House has threatened to veto similar attempts to move the pipeline forward. 
In response to the latest efforts, Obama, traveling in Burma on Friday, indicated he still wants to let a review process run its course. 
"I don't think we should short-circuit that process," he said. He said the administration thinks the project should be judged on the basis of whether it accelerates climate change, and pushed back on claims that it would be a "massive jobs bill." 
After Friday's vote, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said it was time for the president to listen to the American people, especially after the Republican gains in the midterm elections, and sign the bill. 
"Thousands more Americans would be working today if President Obama had put their priorities ahead of his political interests and approved the Keystone pipeline. Instead, he continues to block the project, and the new jobs, lower costs, and increased energy security it would provide," he said in a statement. "The president doesn't have any more elections to win, and he has no other excuse for standing in the way. It's time he start listening to the vast majority of Americans who support Keystone and help get more people back to work." 
The 1,179-mile project is proposed to go from Canada through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. 
Advocates say it will create thousands of jobs and aid energy security, but environmentalists warn of possible spills and say the pipeline will expedite development of some of the dirtiest oil available. 
The State Department said in a Jan. 31 report the project would not significantly boost carbon emissions because the oil was likely to find its way to market by other means. It added that transporting it by rail or truck would cause greater environmental problems than if the Keystone XL pipeline were built.

Darren Wilson's fatal encounter with Michael Brown was brief, report says

As a grand jury weighs the option of indicting a St. Louis officer on charges of shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown, new video shows the encounter between the two individuals was very brief.
Video and records obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch show police officer Darren Wilson leaving for the hospital two hours after the shooting with his union lawyer and other officers.
Wilson returned to the station about two and one-half hours later.
Wilson was searching for a thief that matched Brown’s description, the paper reported. Brown allegedly attacked Wilson prompting the officer to fire upon Brown.
After calling for backup, Wilson reportedly continued his search on foot, but claimed Brown charged at him prompting more gun fire.
Witness accounts vary.
Dorian Johnson, Brown’s friend who was with him at the time, claims Wilson grabbed Brown by the throat and attempted to put him in the SUV Wilson was driving. He also has said the fatal shot came when Brown’s hands were up.
A grand jury could come up with a decision at any time.
Protesters in Missouri are reportedly planning to shut down Clayton, Mo. after the verdict.
 The protesters want to financially hurt Clayton, a city of roughly 15,000 residents that borders St. Louis, where organizers met late Thursday to hopefully attract hundreds if not thousands of people to show up on the first workday after the grand jury reaches a decision, KTVI reports.
The protesters will meet in public spaces and may spread out in small groups, possibly to take part in civil disobedience like shutting down roads.
“We want people to know these meeting are about non-violence direct action,” said Michael McPherson, co-chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition. “Some of it will be people talking to people, expressing themselves. There’s nothing we’re doing to try to create violence. We don’t want to diminish tension without there being change.”
Attorney General Eric Holder said Justice Department officials have been working with local officials to make sure the law enforcement response to any protests is appropriate.
"Certainly we want to ensure that people who have First Amendment rights have the ability to protest as they deem appropriate while at the same time making sure that we protect people in law enforcement and that we minimize the chances that any legitimate protest devolves into violence," he said.

Obama’s immigration overhaul could put burden on states

President Obama’s looming announcement on major changes to the U.S. immigration system could take a financial and economic toll on the states, some critics say – as undocumented residents come out of the shadows and, in some cases, become eligible for benefits.
The White House has not confirmed the details or the timing of the president’s executive action plan, but the president has vowed to act before year’s end. As Fox News reported on Wednesday, the president could act as early as next week – and a draft document calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a deportation reprieve as part of that plan.
This would immediately raise questions about the impact on states where illegal immigrant populations are concentrated.
"State and local governments and taxpayers will pay the price if President Obama takes immigration into his own hands,” Republican Texas state Sen. Kelly Hancock told FoxNews.com in a statement.
The draft Obama plan calls for expanding a program known as “deferred action,” which currently allows some undocumented residents who came to the U.S. as children to stay. The potential expansion would extend that to anyone who entered before they were 16, and before January 2010 – a change estimated to affect up to 300,000 people.
The bigger change would, according to the draft, extend the program to some illegal immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents – affecting up to 4.5 million people.
The impact on the states is a subject of speculation at this point, as it’s unclear whether states would give these newly protected immigrants access to things like driver’s licenses, health care and in-state tuition for college.
Dan Holler, spokesman for the conservative Heritage Action, said, for starters, “it will have a ripple effect on jobs” – because they likely would be handed a Social Security card and the ability to work in more varied occupations.
“That’s going to put extra pressure on a job marketplace that is, by most accounts, not doing so well,” he charged. “Some communities will be hit hard and others won’t, based on where the illegal immigration trends are, and what the job markets are like. There is a jobs component here that just can’t be ignored.”
While giving immigrants who are here illegally “deferred action” status likely would not make them eligible for green cards or the panoply of federal social services, including Medicaid, each state has its own laws dictating the level of state-funded benefits such as protected immigrants can get. Some are more generous than others. One guide would be how states reacted when the administration enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2012.
After that measure, the U.S. approved 550,000 applications. Five states had 60 percent of the approvals: California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Arizona, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Those DACA immigrants are now able to get driver’s licenses in 10 states and access to in-state college tuition in 17 states.
California, Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington, D.C., also now offer low-income DACA recipients health insurance. Others states like Texas and Nebraska offered no new benefits under DACA.
Under any future changes, states like California and Texas probably would see the biggest impact based on their populations.  
According to the most recent statistics by the Department of Homeland Security, there were 11.4 million people in the U.S. illegally in 2011. State Census figures in 2010 showed that 2.5 million lived in California and 1.6 million in Texas, representing 6.8 percent and 6.7 percent of their total populations, respectively. Many of those, particularly in California, may be eligible for new benefits, under any new deferred action policy. (Currently, however, 23 states already offer illegal immigrants a host of health care and other welfare services, with eligibility varying.)
“Right now it is up to the states what kind of care they want to give illegal immigrants. After DACA, some states gave illegal immigrants access to a full range of services, others did not,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the push for an executive order.
“I think it is a very unsettled question, but I do believe the largest states will go ahead and make people eligible for their programs,” she added. “There’s not likely to be new tax revenue to pay for that [at the state level]. It’s just not there unfortunately.”
Not everyone sees the executive order plan as an economic negative. “There is a thorny constitutional question that needs to be addressed, but from a pure policy perspective such an action will have positive effects on the United States,” said Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute.
“Legalizing some parts of the unauthorized immigration population will allow them to come forward,” said Nowrasteh. “It will also allow these unauthorized immigrants to be legal workers which means they will become more productive, making higher wages, competing on a fair and even step with the rest of American workers.”
And as for paying for it, Wendy Feliz of the American Immigration Council said the millions of working immigrants who would be paying new taxes would be contributing to the revenue stream.
“They will get work permits now and that will ensure that 100 percent of them will be paying income taxes,” she told FoxNews.com “The states would benefit. Really, it would make them more accountable, it would make them pay more and they will be able to participate more.”  
Republican Texas state Sen. Charles Schwertner, disagrees, saying he believes the states will be more fiscally burdened because Obama’s executive actions would encourage more illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. in the long run. He said Texas will continue to resist offering new services to unauthorized immigrants, “protected” or not.
“I guess it will put a strain on our medical system, our social safety networks,” he told FoxNews.com. “It encourages further lawlessness, and it is unfair to those seeking to immigrate legally.
“Texas is going to take the stand it needs to – we’re going to protect our citizens.”

Transparency Cartoon

ISIS, Al Qaeda affiliate reportedly unite to fight US-backed rebels in Syria

ISTANBUL –  The two most brutal terror groups in Syria reportedly have struck an alliance, in a deal that poses serious problems for the Obama administration’s efforts to prop up “moderate” rebel factions in the country.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that militant leaders from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, agreed during a meeting in northern Syria last week to stop fighting each other.
Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington's strategy against the Islamic State. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moderate" rebels to push them back on the ground.
Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together. One official claimed the Islamic State and Nusra already have agreed to work toward destroying one prominent, U.S.-backed rebel group.
The Islamic State, which also operates in Iraq where U.S. troops already are stationed, had fought with the Nusra Front for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.
The developments came as the top two U.S. military officials testified on Capitol Hill about the status of the Islamic State fight in both Iraq and Syria. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, responding to some concerns about the progress of the war, said there is “no change in strategy.”
But he and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a cautious assessment of the progress in the three-month-old war against Islamic extremists.
And Dempsey said an effort to move into Mosul, an area in Iraq now held by ISIS militants, or to restore the border with Syria would require more complex operations. He suggested this could involve U.S. forces.
"I'm not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we're certainly considering it," Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee.
Meanwhile, a U.S. official with access to intelligence about Syria told the Associated Press the American intelligence community has not seen any indications of a shift in the strategy by ISIS and the Nusra Front, but added that he could not rule out tactical deals on the ground.
According to a Syrian opposition official speaking in Turkey, the meeting where the deal was reached took place Nov. 2 in the town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, starting at around midnight and lasting until 4 a.m. The official said the meeting was closely followed by members of his movement, and he is certain that an agreement was reached. The official said about seven top militant leaders attended.
A second source, a commander of brigades affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army who is known as Abu Musafer, said he also had learned that high-ranking members of Nusra and ISIS met on Nov. 2. He did not disclose the exact location, but said it was organized by a third party and took place in an area where the FSA is active.
According to Abu Musafer, two decisions were reached: First, to halt infighting between Nusra and ISIS and second, for the groups together to open up fronts against Kurdish fighters in a couple of new areas of northern Syria.
The Nusra Front has long been seen as one of the toughest factions trying to oust Assad in a civil war estimated to have killed more than 200,000 since 2011. The Islamic State group entered the Syria war in 2012 from its original home in Iraq and quickly earned a reputation for brutality and for trying to impose itself as the leading faction in the rebellion behind which all pious Muslims should unite. Al Qaeda initially rejected ISIS’ claims to any role in Syria, and Nusra and other factions entered a war-within-a-war against it. But the Islamic State group swelled in power and became flush with weapons and cash after overrunning much of northern and western Iraq over the summer.
According to the opposition official, the meeting included an ISIS representative, two emissaries from Nusra Front, and attendees from the Khorasan Group, a small but battle-hardened band of Al Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The official said ISIS and the Nusra Front agreed to work to destroy the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, a prominent rebel faction armed and trained by the United States and led by a fighter named Jamal Maarouf. They agreed to keep fighting until all of the force, estimated to be 10,000 to 12,000 fighters, was eliminated, the official said.
During the meeting, ISIS also offered to send extra fighters to Nusra Front for an assault it launched last week on Western-backed rebels from the Hazm Movement near the town of Khan al-Sunbul in northern Syria, the official said. IS sent about 100 fighters in 22 pickup trucks but Nusra ended up not needing the assistance, he said, because Hazm decided not to engage in the fight. Sixty-five Hazm fighters defected to Nusra, he said.
Tom Joscelyn, an American analyst who tracks terror groups for the website Long War Journal, said he hasn't seen any messaging that would confirm that the two groups have formally joined forces on the battlefield. But he said there has been information emerging before the reported Nov. 2 meeting "that would seem to fit in with that being what they were driving at. There has been a big push on the al-Qaida side to get this (alliance) through."
If they work together, the jihadis will be more effective in Syria, he said. "If there is less blood being spilled against each other and they don't have to worry about that, that's going to make it easier for the jihadis to go after Assad or any Western-backed forces."

Secret US spy program targeted Americans' cellphones

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.
The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.
Planes are equipped with devices—some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. unit that produces them—which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information.
The technology in the two-foot-square device enables investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location, these people said.
People with knowledge of the program wouldn’t discuss the frequency or duration of such flights, but said they take place on a regular basis.
A Justice Department official would neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a program. The official said discussion of such matters would allow criminal suspects or foreign powers to determine U.S. surveillance capabilities. Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, the official said.
The program is the latest example of the extent to which the U.S. is training its surveillance lens inside the U.S. It is similar in approach to the National Security Agency’s program to collect millions of Americans phone records, in that it scoops up large volumes of data in order to find a single person or a handful of people. The U.S. government justified the phone-records collection by arguing it is a minimally invasive way of searching for terrorists.

Obama won't budge on Keystone ahead of House vote

The King has Spoken.

President Obama would not budge on the Keystone pipeline ahead of a key House vote on Friday, indicating during a press conference that he wants to let a review process run its course even as lawmakers threaten to send a bill fast-tracking the project to his desk.
The president spoke during a joint press conference in Burma with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. As the House prepares to vote on the pipeline -- and the Senate is set to vote next week -- Obama made clear his position has not changed. 
Obama said his administration believes the project should be judged on the basis of whether it accelerates climate change. Obama also insisted the pipeline would not be a “massive jobs bill” and would have no effect on U.S. gas prices.
The looming vote will mark the ninth time it has been voted on in the House as lawmakers look to finally secure approval of the delayed proposal after numerous environmental reviews, legal challenges to its route and politics. 
But the pipeline was only put on the lame-duck Congress agenda because Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu pushed it on the Senate side -- in an apparent effort to not only boost the energy industry, but boost her own re-election bid in a tough runoff next month. Landrieu’s race for re-election goes to a runoff next month against GOP-hopeful Bill Cassidy. Landrieu is considered an underdog in that election.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, traveling with Obama in Myanmar, told reporters that the president takes a "dim view" of legislative efforts to force action on the project. Earnest stopped short of threatening a veto, but reiterated Obama's preference for evaluating the pipeline through a long-stalled State Department review.
Obama has repeatedly ordered such reviews under pressure from environmental groups, who say the project would contribute to climate change.
Senate Republicans and several moderate Democrats have pushed for the project to be approved for years, and backers of the project got a major win after Republicans took control of the Senate. Supporters say the construction of the pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs.
But the project divides Democrats, with environmentalists in opposition while some unions as well as energy-state and business-minded lawmakers support it.
The Sierra Cub issued a statement opposing the measure, as did Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who urged Obama to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
Supporters of the measure appeared to have at least 58 of the 60 votes they would need for approval next week. That included all 45 Republicans as well as 13 Democrats, among them Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, whose office confirmed his support during the day.
Another obstacle in the pipeline is getting approval for it to go through Nebraska.
The administration has put off announcing any decision pending a Supreme Court ruling in Nebraska on a challenge to the law that allowed the route of the pipeline to be set.
The Nebraska Supreme Court's decision is expected before the end of the year.
That case involves a lawsuit filed by landowners and activists opposed to the project who are seeking to overturn a 2012 state law that allowed Republican Gov. Dave Heineman to approve the pipeline's route through the state.