The firebaggers are at it again:
Dear John –
For almost the entirety of the health care debate, the Obama Administration has relied on economist Jonathan Gruber to make the public case for its idea of reform – even the most unpopular parts. But as Firedoglake revealed on Friday, the Obama Administration has failed to disclose that it paid the same economist more than $780,000.
Jonathan Gruber’s work has been cited by the White House, Members of Congress, and countless media outlets, but not once did the Obama Administration disclose it was paying him more than $780,000 in tax dollars. This is a huge ethical violation that undermines the entirety of health care reform.
***The Obama Administation’s $780,000 “buy-an-economist” scandal threatens to shake the foundation of health care reform. We need to get to the bottom of this.
The truth is that this is no big deal. Gruber’s grant is from HHS, not the West Wing; it’s basically the same kind of thing as, say, an epidemiologist receiving a grant from the National Institutes of Health. You wouldn’t ordinarily say that this tarnishes the epidemiologist’s credentials as an independent analyst on infectious diseases, unless you want to say that nobody receiving a research grant can be considered independent.
The only reasons you might see this differently would be if Gruber were either receiving a sweetheart deal, or seemed to have changed his views to accommodate his sponsors. Neither is remotely true. Gruber is very much the go-to guy on modeling reform: it’s hard to think of who else could be doing the work better. And his position on reform has been entirely consistent.
***What the folks at Firedoglake should ask themselves is this: do you really want to become just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals?
The bottom line is this: Jon Gruber is a technical expert, some of whose research has been supported — entirely properly — by government agencies. And we need his input into policy.
Actually, yes. They do thrive on an endless supply of fake scandals. Once we bring down the Obama administration and bring to power the vaunted teabagger progressive alliance, we are gonna party like it is 1994.
And that was noted O-bot Paul Krugman, whose open contempt for Obama and Obama’s health care plan were clear for all to see during the primaries last year, debunking the BS.
schrodinger's cat
@John Cole
Taking a break, you are doing it wrong.
Step away from the computer and go for a walk.
Tom Hilton
I finally unsubscribed from the FDL e-mails when I got this one. Under reason for unsubscribing, I wrote: “because Jane Hamsher is a batshit crazy Republican ratfucker”.
ReNewMan
What should should the firebaggers be called? O-Negative Nellys?
Comrade Jake
Now now. I really don’t feel it’s fair to call Jane a Republican.
John Cole
@Tom Hilton: Funny, I unsubscribed before I posted this and my reason was “Because you all have officially lost the fucking plot.”
General Winfield Stuck
Like I said it only gets worserer.
I saw Marcy Wheeler on Msnbc this morning with the “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” garbage. Seems Gruber initially confirmed he was getting paid by the government, but since then hasn’t announced it every time he says or writes something. These morons are doing their best to get Palin or some other wingnut in the WH.
but not once did the Obama Administration disclose it was paying him more than $780,000 in tax dollars.
edit– this is not true from what I heard from Wheeler this morn.
wasabi gasp
Behold the magic of creme filled wafers covered in chocolate.
chopper
hey, these rats aint gonna fuck themselves.
Face
Shortest. Break. Evah.
JenJen
I feel oddly pure for having never once subscribed to an FDL list.
In other news, Conan O’Brien isn’t taking NBC’s offer. Someone on Twitter just asked what color we should make our avatars to show our support for Conan. I thought that might cheer you up, Cole. :-)
John Cole
Wait til they find out Obama is paid 400k a year by the taxpayers and HE IS SHAMELESSLY SHILLING FOR HIS PLAN!
Davis X. Machina
There are those who believe.
FDL is about to enter its “Who Promoted Peress?” phase….
Chad N Freude
But isn’t it obvious that you can never trust anyone who has ever received a research grant?
Leelee for Obama
You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Punchy
Can we now officially call her The Jane Hamshers of the Right?
beltane
I mentioned it in the last thread, but Cenk Uygur is now advocating for an alliance with the teabaggers on economic issues. I disagree with him, but I’ll give him an A+ for perfect right-wing framing of the issues. “I got mine screw you” is not just for wingnuts anymore.
gex
@chopper: Too true. FDL could question the assumption that the rats require fucking at all, but seem not to have considered that option.
madmatt
Gruber should be wearing a BOUGHT AND PAID FOR jumpsuit, just like nascar…then we can make our own judgements…personally I don’t believe anybody getting 3/4 of a million dollars from the govt would say anything other than what the govt wants him to. Why should I…everything that this admin pushes is based on lies.
CT Voter
I’m sorry (for purely selfish reasons) that you’re going to take a break.
I am going to miss sentences like this:
Perfect succinct summary of what FDL has turned into.
beltane
@Tom Hilton: That was good. I unsubscribed without a word because I didn’t want to expend any effort whatsoever on these ineffectual clowns.
Yossarian
Krugman is a sellout. He needs to be primaried by someone progressives can trust.
I suggest Grover Norquist.
Frank Chow
I too received this email and unsubscribed, noting: “receiving your emails are like getting the progressive version of RedState. It is hurting more than it is helping. ”
@Tom Hilton I restrained from commenting about Jane, but since you mentioned it….every time I read her emails or posts it is *headslamondesk
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
There was never the possibility Cole would take a full week off. Never happened, never will, unless he goes to prison, and even then as long as he has smokes to trade for webtime, it’s nolo contendre.
Loneoak
Seriously, JC, none of us would hold it against you if you actually took a break. Just walk away … We’ll look for you next week or something.
Tom Hilton
@Comrade Jake: she’s working for the Republicans; I don’t much care if she’s doing it wittingly or unwittingly.
chopper
@gex:
what is the sound of one rat fucking?
Neutron Flux
@chopper: See madmatt @18
gwangung
@madmatt: Doing some research would help, dude. Some of us here HAVE gotten sizable grants from the government.
Comrade Jake
@madmatt:
Is this snark, or are you for real?
I would appear to be bought and paid for by NSF, NIH, AFOSR, ARO, and a whole host of government agencies. This really does come as a shock to me. I’m not sure how I’ll live with myself.
Anne Laurie
Aww, the Firebaggers must really like ya, John! They heard you was feeling bad, so they went out an’ bought ya a new troll!
Ash Can
The pursuit of ideological purity makes people do fucked-up shit. The end.
John, take a deep breath and pour yourself another glass of bourbon. You deserve it.
Tom Levenson
I got that email too, and resisted the temptation to waste time I could be spending with my son to write back a flame. That this is a wilful attempt to market a futile and self-damaging political strategy is obvious to anyone not filled w. da kool aid, but life is too short to waste attempting to persuade the committed of the fact that what they have been committed to is the asylum.
That said, anyone who thinks that alliances of convenience between left and right to destabilize the center might want to chat to Ernst Thälmann. That it would be a one sided conversation is, of course, the point.
(Do I get prizes for unusual subtlety in Godwinizing the thread?)
Davis X. Machina
I find the spectacle of TBogg playing the piano player in the whorehouse profoundly depressing
clonecone
Jane is sending out fundraising emails yet she doesn’t disclose that her PAC is paying herself thousands of dollars every month for “strategic consulting.” FEC reports don’t lie.
beltane
Over the weekend the firebaggers declared war on Henry Waxman and Lynn Woolsey for their sin of not supporting a primary challenge to Jane Harman. Some of their comments were borderline antisemitic which is becoming par for the course with this crowd.
The Raven
On the other hand:
GregB
Form the circle, aim, fire!
Let’s go off topic and discuss the absolute meltdown in relations between Israel and Turkey. The Israeli foreign minister actually told Turkey “If you want to fight, we’ll fight.”
There are rumors that hostilities will resume in the Gaza due to renewed rocket and mortar fire also.
The Jerusalem Post is covering the melee.
-G
Davis X. Machina
My earlier Nach Palin, uns! didn’t even raise a hackle, and the Thälmann reference is even more recondite.
TR
@Davis X. Machina:
Same here. He’s the only reason I’ve gone there in a long while, and now that FDL has largely gone full-on PUMA-level insane, I just feel guilty about giving the site any extra hits.
Can we put together a fund to rescue and deprogram him?
Tom Hilton
@madmatt:
You sound exactly like the climate change denialists: “Follow the money. The science will say whatever will generate the most grant money for next year.”*
*Direct quote from a denialist wingnut.
Mike Kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Marcy has always been a hack and conspiracy theorist.
It’s now clear that Fitzgearld had Cheney for lying to federal officers and he chose to sweep it under the carpet. Of course he is Marcy’s hero, so she just covers for Fitz’s covering for the establishment.
ReNewMan
@John Cole:
that’s why I come to this blog, please don’t take a break, I like your bitter sarcasm, it’s getting me through the cold European winter
beltane
@clonecone: Hollywood Jane is herself a corporatist sellout? I never would have guessed.
General Winfield Stuck
@The Raven:
What about the term reform don’t you understand?
edit – troll better
TR
@madmatt:
Personally, I think you’ve made it clear that you don’t have the slightest clue as to how government funding of academic research works.
Ash Can
@GregB: Am I the only one who immediately thought “oh, fuck” at the idea of the geniuses in the Israeli government shaking their fists at a NATO ally?
asiangrrlMN
@Davis X. Machina: Ditto this. He was the only reason I read FDL and the only reason I subscribed. I got the above email today, too, and unsubscribed without a word. Sad, sad, sad.
P.S. Cole, seriously, at least take one day off. I worry about your health. And, TUUUUUNCH!
kay
Although….the health care discussion here has been wonderful. Sincerely. I’ve learned an enormous amount and moved my own position, based on arguments I read and back and forth I engaged in here.
Contentious, sure, but worthwhile and really interesting, for me, anyway.
Mike Kay
@beltane:
Considering their irrational fear and hatered of Rahm, it’s was only a matter of time before they sunk to low blows.
me
So why do people trust the CBO so much. After all, they’re paid with tax dollars!
Mike Kay
Under the NATO charter, an attack on one is an attack on all.
maus
@beltane:
Are they calling chickenhawk Americans and conservadems who unconditionally support Israel and Zionist policy as terrible, or what?
Warren Terra
I feel badly for TBogg and Ackerman.
asiangrrlMN
@me: And the cops! They’re paid for with tax dollars. And the roads! And and and….
@jeffreyw: Awwwwww! Puppehs!
cleek
@Davis X. Machina:
especially now that they’ve decorated his little nook with all their dumb-ass “Finish it right” flash.
gnomedad
Hey Rocky, watch me take a break!
Justin
Ha! Same here. I really can’t remember the last time I’ve unsubscribed from something.
Anyway, I wrote, “not interested in attacking Obama over petty issues.” But your response was better.
jeffreyw
Mrs J returns from the shelter with some new puppy pics.
Nellcote
@GregB:
“The Israeli foreign minister actually told Turkey “If you want to fight, we’ll fight.”
Why do countries loose their shit right after McCain & Lieberman go to visit?
Nazgul35
This just proves to me we should have nominated Kucinich when we had the chance!
Can we impeach everyone until he gets the job?!
Mike Kay
Paul Krugman is an enemy of the people.
Mary
You go John. From now on, I’m choosing my bloggers by those who have the guts to stand up and be counted as saying that the Empress Hampsher has no clothes.
I’m starting to think that the explicit call to align with the teabaggers and the nonsensical pairing up with Grover Norquist were taken to explain taking large sums of money from the right wing to convey their message. The message throughout has been a classic ratfucking operation, ala Nader.
They’re going to say bad things about you now, John, as the FDL cult members take their cue from their corrupt leader Hamsher.
Firedoglake belongs on the blogroll in the category of “Blogs We Monitor and Mock As Needed.”
Ash Can
@Mike Kay:
Precisely. Not cool.
Max
I must admit, I take great pleasure in how crazy Obamarahm makes the Hamster’s and Sirota’s and Aravosis’ and PUMA’s of the world.
In less than a year, he’s been able to expose them for the self-serving, opportunistic, phoney’s that they are.
Well done sir(s).
licensed to kill time
@madmatt:
“Gummint Bad! Real Bad! No trust Gummint! Oogabooga!”
rootless_e
I went on FDL last night to inform them that I have discovered that the CBO estimates are prepared by people who are paid by TAXPAYER DOLLARS and that all the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are ALSO PRODUCED BY OBAMAS SHILLS! The extent of this scandal is enormous. The entire government is full of people PAID WITH TAX DOLLARS and all the universities too. That’s why we can only trust unbiased private research from AEI and Heritage.
ruemara
Cole, a break would require not posting. Just an FYI. POST MOAR TUNCH!
liberal
They do thrive on an endless supply of fake scandals.
Which is pretty sad, given that there’s a pretty big non-fake scandal (the bankster bailout).
kay
It’s hard to watch because I feel as if they’re getting played.
I could absolutely be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.
It’s the real reason you probably shouldn’t ally with Grover Norquist. He lies all the time, and he’s slippery.
arguingwithsignposts
@John Cole:
Funny, I mentioned unsubscribing in your Going Galt thread. I mentioned Grover Norquist in my reason.
lurkergirl
@John Cole: LOL. I gave up on FDL around the time they dumped T-Rex and morphed themselves into a tedious hybrid of the GOS and Huffpo. I check in once in a while for Tbogg and Thers, but the rest of it is pretty much unreadable.
If you’re really not going to blog for a while, at least keep putting up pet pictures. I mostly come here for those and DougJ’s media chat questions.
Rick Taylor
Paul Krugman has been consistent. He thought Obama’s health plan wasn’t as good as the other Democratic candidates because it lacked a mandate. Moreover, he was critical because Obama attacked the Clinton plan for having a mandate, and attack “from the right,” that might make it difficult for who ever the winner was to push health reform later. What he did not foresee, and what is ironic, is that after Obama embraced a mandate, and after the public option was scrapped, the attack would come from the left.
arguingwithsignposts
@JenJen:
Actually, I don’t remember having subscribed to anything from FDL either. There are a lot of progressive e-mails I get that I never signed up for. I think they all share e-mail lists.
alex
I understand that (at least some of) the Firebaggers think slagging on Obama is some brilliant way to move him to the left. It’s incoherent, but it has a certain rhythm. But why does anyone think the Teabaggers are or would be open to alliance with “progressives”? Are they just out-of-their-skulls loony? I guess the idea is that teabaggers are angry and… populism? something? bailouts?
I mean, teabaggers and firebaggers, notwithstanding their shared crazy, speak an entirely different language from one another. But who know, things might change. I tell ya what, though. I think we hear Hamsher talking up Sarah Palin before any teabagger endorses the public option.
asiangrrlMN
@kay: Mebbe. But at this point, they are willing to let themselves get played.
And, might I say, I’m loving the “Show Me On the Doll Where Rahm Touched You” tag? Rahm can touch me any time.
Tom Hilton
Tangentially, I laughed my ass off (figuratively; literally, my ass remains attached) when I saw a Big Government headline on Memeorandum that described Code Pink as Obama’s ‘allies’. (Turns out they have a running series trying to tie Obama to Code Pink.) Riiiiight…and FDL are Obama’s BFFs.
liberal
@Ash Can:
Why shouldn’t they? After all, when they tell the US government to jump, its response is “how high?”
El Tiburon
For the love of God, take your break.
Did you even care to read FDLs response to this?
Now FDL are the Firebaggers. Nice. Very fucking nice.
Shade Tail
@Yossarian (#21):
*Primaried*? He’s a columnist and university professor. If you care to try to set up a “primary” for that, be my guest. I could use a good belly laugh.
And considering his track record of being near-constantly correct about everything, *this* progressive trusts him just fine, thank you very much. If you have problems with him, feel free to read someone else.
=====
So anyway, away with you, Mr. Cole. Away, I say! [shoo-ing motions] Take a real break.
Tom Hilton
@arguingwithsignposts: You have to sign up with FDL to comment on any of their blogs (Tbogg, in my case); I assume that’s why I was getting their spam.
Chat Noir
@Tom Hilton: I also received this e-mail after I previously unsubscribed to another FDL e-mail a couple of weeks ago. Both times I gave the reason as being that I read Balloon Juice and that the folks here aren’t shrill.
valdivia
@me:
FTW.
According to this logic all research scientists who get grants are whores of the govt. Oh noes, most of the people I know, love and work with are whores! Even worse, my career goal is now the equivalent of aspiring to be a whore.
I really cannot get past the stupidity of this. I am sad I unsubscribed weeks ago because I would have loved to give them a piece of my mind on this.
Tom Hilton
@Shade Tail: I think Yossarian was making joke.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
They are both playing and being played. As it becomes more evident that many on the right wing are gelling into a group that, if it can’t get it’s way, all of it, then let the fucker burn down (country) and then we will be first to glue back the pieces into our ideal of things. And the left side nihilists are just a different side of the same coin to get their big chance.
I doubt they are consciously thinking this way, but it is the direction they are going all the same.
Emma Anne
@Tom Hilton:
Me too. Though I put “because we don’t agree anymore.” I wonder if they are getting a bunch of unsubscribes.
asiangrrlMN
@Shade Tail: S/he’s joking. See following comment about Norquist.
clonecone
@Shade Tail: Recognizing sarcasm isn’t listed in your skill set.
Nellcote
@Shade Tail:
It would be pretty funny if we could vote for columnists.
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
Sweet peas the little guys are!!
CaseyL
@Loneoak: Speak for yourself. I loves me my Daily Cole, and am very happy that his definition of “taking a break from blogging” is “blogging less than six times per day.”
I don’t think I ever email subscribed to FDL, because I figured it for a Jane Hamsher Fan Club years ago, but I did used to donate every month, to support Marcy Wheeler’s journalistic enterprise. But I cancelled that the day Hamsher made common cause with Grover Norquist and they did that goddamned anti-HCR phone push poll. They’ve only gotten worse since then – doubling down on the dumbfuckery – and now I’m not sure I’d piss on any of them if they were on fire.
beltane
@alex: Actually, Hamsher at least once defended Palin from “sexist” attacks. Then, only a couple of months later, she launched some virulently sexist attacks on Caroline Kennedy that could have come straight from Ann Coulter.
mcc
Got this email, unsubscribed from the FDL list with a note saying why, came here and saw this. Kind of interested to see I wasn’t the only person who reacted that way. Geez, I realize that this blog comment section is not a representative sample, but I wonder exactly how much of its subscriber list FDL lost today.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Tunch, PULL THE PLUG!
Shade Tail
@asiangrrlMN (85):
I did see the Norquist bit. Considering the usual state of mind of ‘net trolls, it didn’t strike me as particularly out of place. But, OK.
@clonecone (86):
Sarcasm doesn’t translate over the internet. That’s a pretty basic rule.
FormerSwingVoter
@TR:
I think you’ve made it clear that you don’t understand how conservative thinking works. Even a basic level of understanding of a subject is completely unnecessary to forming opinions. Instead, you can just hallucinate a sequence of events that seems sort of logically consistent, and then just demand that everyone else tell you how right you are and how smart you are and what a good boy you are and give you a biscuit.
Chat Noir
@Tom Hilton: I believe I got on their list because I gave money to Act Blue during the 2008 campaign. I only learned about Jane Hamsher from reading Balloon Juice.
asiangrrlMN
@mcc: For me, it was the proverbial last straw. I had quit commenting on Tbogg’s blog during the HCR debate when he had a series of posts about how Obama had sold out the progressives. Still, I never bothered to unsubscribe, mostly out of inertia–until today.
@Shade Tail: I think I pretty much just assume that everything written here is sarcastic unless evidence suggests otherwise.
TR
@Tom Hilton:
Which should have been evident by saying Grover Norquist was “someone progressives can trust.”
Faux Reality
But, if you repeat a lie three times while clicking your heels and facing towards Ronald Reagan’s final resting place it automatically qualifies as a Faux Nooz headline. Impeach, Impeach, Impeach!
I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue
mcc
I’m not sure but I think how this happens is that at some point or another you sign a petition, maybe without being clearly aware who is running the petition, and the petition doubles as signing up for the email list. I for one don’t generally mind this, I’ve gotten some really useful information via email lists I didn’t technically mean to sign up for…
Cat
People say stupid thinks and make bad inferences from facts all the time. Why the rush to condemn usually factual and progressive blog because they maybe off in the weeds on this issue? Am I missing them being consistently wrong?
This sounds a lot like the reaction here when some LGBT group makes some factual but over inflated claim about the Administrations stance on LGBT issues.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Well, that’s sort of a big picture, I guess, but (as you know by now) I’m more narrow than that.
I just think yelling every day that the government is taking over health care in order to secretly make it worse is not a productive liberal argument, particularly because every liberal Senator endorses the basic plan, and voted it out of the Senate.
I think it leaves you in a place where you’re talking about primarying Bernie Sanders, and I don’t know where you go from there,
Legalize
I unsubscribed. I Don’t know why I didn’t do that earlier frankly, as I’ve been unsubscribing from everything I can lately. It felt wrong to break from FDL – until the *click* was completed. Now I just think about how much time I’ll save by not even having to bother putting FDL emails in the trash.
The Grand Panjandrum
This is all very upsetting, especially with the added horrible news that Simon Cowell is leaving American Idol.
fraught
I want to know who Jane Hamsher voted for in 1992 and 2000. I’ll bet it was Ralph Nader. This “Purer than Thou” attitude is right from his playbook. Nader thought that if you elect a fascist the electorate will eventually move left and every thing will be just how he likes it. Unable to discern the real damage an incompetent like Bush could do, and un-prescient about the dangers of a regent like Cheney, Nader-bots find themselves with a degraded Democracy and a hysteric like Jane screaming that she’s entitled to her massive swing into radical leftism.
Can I quote what Jane responds when commenters disagree with her? “Go fuck yourself.”
Sly
@John Cole:
The CBO is also taxpayer-funded and they say it reduces the deficit. WHERE DOES THE CONSPIRACY END?
jeffreyw
@mcc: Count me in as a fresh unsubscriber, tho I did have to dig it out of the junk mail folder to do so. I did leave a message why, “because you are fucking insane”.
jibeaux
Can I just return to that for just a second to point out, OMG, how stoooopid was it for us to spend all that time nitpicking between the infintesimalist details between Obama’s plan and Hillary’s health care plan? Did we really not know that we were gonna get a hunk of sausage (mmmm, the Nebraska parts are really sweet….) that really didn’t bear much resemblance to the plan (which I guess in this analogy would be the original animal, the pig or whatnot)? But that’s not to detract too much from Krugman, who I like and admire immensely, but yes, he’s an academic and not necessarily really attuned to political realities.
I wish I could unsubscribe again from FDL, but I did it earlier in the firebagging cra-haziness.
dadanarchist
I saw that email too and it was too far for me too. I also unsubscribed from FDL though I will keep reading Ackerman/laughing along with Tbogg.
In a dumb email this was the dumbest part:
Even conceding that it was a “huge ethical violation” (which, per Kthug, is also nonsense), how does Gruber therefore “undermine the entirety of health care reform”?
That is a stretch, to say the least.
Legalize
Also. Cole is a sell-out. He needs to be primaried by someone who will actually take time off when he promises to do so. Worse. Than. Bush.
asiangrrlMN
@Cat: Because Hamsher joined up with Grover Norquist? Because they want to primary Bernie Sanders? Because they are calling everyone who is not as pure as they are sell-outs? That’s just off the top of my head, of course. Others can chime in as well.
In other words, this isn’t a one-off reaction.
Mnemosyne
I unsubscribed last week — I think my statement was something along the lines of, “Because we need healthcare reform.”
I wonder how many lurkers who never comment did the same thing. It would be fascinating to see how many subscribers they’ve lost over this.
FormerSwingVoter
@Legalize:
John Cole is the black Jimmy Carter.
jibeaux
This is a lovely and succinct summation…
Grumpy Code Monkey
That’s exactly what the firebaggers are saying. And the AGW denialists. And the anti-evolution nutjobs. If you receive money from the government in any form, then you cannot be objective by definition (as opposed to taking money from a private special interest group, like the pharmaceutical industry, or the oil industry, or the Discovery Institute).
HyperIon
I hope everyone realizes that HE didn’t get 3/4 of a megabuck. From 40 to 60 percent of that amount went to his university as indirect costs. Personally he probably some summer salary and travel funds with the rest going to equipment/staff/money for surveys.
JMY
I must say John, my biggest fear when Obama became president and then after the recovery package debate/debacle, was that the left were going to transform into the crazies on the right. Not even a full year into O’s presidency, and that fear has been realized. Quite frankly, it’s very sad. It almost makes me wish that O wasn’t elected and that people would have rather had HRC as president.
I won’t be surprise if the firebaggers start making racist comments about Obama. When that happens, shit will hit the fan.
Shygetz
OT…loving the new tag. Very clever and apropos.
David in NY
Go away for a while, John. Amazing, but not much will have changed when you come back (lamentably, mostly), and you’ll have gotten a little relaxation and maybe fun.
I mean, would you feel bad if you’d missed the concern about Harry Reid’s racially awkward statements? I suspect not.
robertdsc
Fixed. <3 the Tunchinator.
Sly
@madmatt:
And I honestly thought my ability to hold other liberals in utter contempt was no longer necessary after June 3rd, 2008.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
I take heart in seeing that people like Sanders and most of the rest of the liberal dem caucus in congress is not reacting much to this nonsense. The blogosphere is new and imo is in a mode of weeding out the rational from the crazy shit slingers, toward one day becoming a genuine political force for liberal policy advocacy and activism. And the congress critters seem to see the difference, thank goodness.
Mnemosyne
@Cat:
Given the past couple of weeks, I’m now starting to question the times where I thought they were right. If they’re this reliant on flimsy evidence and innuendo for something as important as healthcare, where else have they cut corners or made things up?
4tehlulz
Has Jane endorsed Scott Brown for Teddy’s seat yet? He said that he’ll go back to the drawing board for real health reform!
maus
@mcc: I think it’s more that your email was used to create a FDL account.
kay
@jibeaux:
The CNN poll on Obama:
Not liberal enough 10%
Just about right 42%
Too liberal 46%
Now, you and I know he’s not all that liberal, and there has been a concerted right-wing/media effort to portray him as this raging leftist, and that has succeeded, to a certain extent, but…it’s still just 10%, at “not liberal enough”.
David in NY
Also, I got that e-mail (though I don’t think I ever subscribed in the first place) and just ignored it. I’m going back right now to unsubscribe.
geg6
Well, tangentially related to the firebaggers and FDL, there are sane people out there trying to make this bill more palitible to people like me who will be subject to the Cadillac tax (and yes, I understand that I, personally, won’t be paying the tax; however, it will affect me and many like me). Thankfully, the unions are having an effect by discussing this directly with the president and making it clear to him that, though they probably won’t tell their members to go firebagger, that the leadership cannot control the enthusiasm of their members and their loved ones in 2010 or 2012. The specter of NAFTA hangs over this and it is a serious concern. As the president’s poll numbers inch down and the polling shows that it is due to the HCR plan not being progressive enough, having labor talk reality to the WH is good and, based on this, it’s possible the president is listening:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/whatll-it-take-obama-woos-labor-over-controversial-health-care-tax.php
As for FDL, it’s just sad. I am appalled at what has happened to that site and the crazies who frequent it. I hate the HCR bill as it stands, but I would never hitch up with teabaggers or the current GOP over it. I might lose any GOTV enthusiasm and stop donating to any pols who pass it, but I would still vote Dem in the hope that someone might finally get brave enough or remember what it means to be liberal enough to fix it.
Mr Furious
Wow, John. Two whole hours!
(Of course we all understand that the portion of your WVU salary that can somehow be traced to federal dollars means you are a bought-and-paid-for shill for the Administration, and you must keep serving your master…)
schrodinger's cat
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
What do they want to do, kill all independent scientific research and go back to the stone age?
Midnight Marauder
@El Tiburon:
When have they not been firebaggers? They invented the term for themselves, for crying out loud.
@Shade Tail:
I am afraid you are very much so in the wrong place, friendo.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Shade Tail:
__
Good to know that you’re aware of all internet traditions.
clonecone
@kay: I don’t know how they plan to primary him anyway. He’s an independent. Independents, by definition, don’t run in primaries.
freelancer
OT – This is for all my BJ cat-loving friends out there:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1758
KCinDC
I do wonder whether at some point some of the people who allowed their blogs to be absorbed into the FDL empire in recent years will express some misgivings about being associated with the rest of what’s going on there.
mcc
@Midnight Marauder:
Wait, really? I’d be curious to see this if you still have the link.
scav
Translate? It’s the native tongue in certain largish backwaters.
jwb
@Shade Tail: “Sarcasm doesn’t translate over the internet. That’s a pretty basic rule.”
Don’t hang out much here, do you?
ellaesther
Oh honey! This is no good, no good at all!
I was going to send you links to delightful things, but honestly: You need to just turn the computing machine, and the teevee machine — and, I suspect, the radio machine — off. They have switches, you much use them!
If you DON’T use the off switch, as I suspect you might not, here is a small bunch of happy things to distract yourself with. (If you want more, go to the “Good stuff” category. You’ll find very loud music and painted Pakistani trucks and Steve from Blues Clues, and so on and so forth. All of it good. AND NOT POLITICAL!)
asiangrrlMN
@mcc: Me, too. I did not know that.
@freelancer: Hahahaha!
@ellaesther: I love that Pakistani truck link (saw it before), and thank you for the Eddie Izzard link. He rawks.
Stooleo
I unsubscribed from FDL a couple weeks ago. Teaming up with Grover was just too much.
Midnight Marauder
@Legalize:
John Cole never ran on taking a break.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Best. Tag. Ever.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
The unions understand how to do politics: they publicly complain and present their arguments. If they’re satisfied with the negotiations (or even if they aren’t), they’ll announce that. They know what they want and they know they’ll have to negotiate to get it.
What they don’t do is go running around with their hair on fire screaming about how Obama is Just Like Bush and no one should vote in the midterms.
Midnight Marauder
@mcc:
I just know that the first times I ever saw the phrase was when I was perusing the comments on various FDL posts. Or maybe, it was rather that they were willingly embracing the label, just like the moronic teabaggers had done not too long before them. Either way, they’re idiots. That’s all I’m trying to say. That, and that El Tiburon is once again acting like a disingenuous asshole. Also.
alex
@geg6 You know, it might make emotional sense to lose enthusiasm for voting in, and funding, Democrats, but if your desire is to see an improvement in the reform beyond where it currently stands, your interest is served by having more and better Democrats, as I see it.
It’s a two party country, which kind of sucks, because neither party is all that great, but isn’t likely to change any time soon. With one party being luke-warm, and the other saying the way out of a major recession is to freeze spending and cut taxes for rich people, you gotta go with luke-warm.
I had forgotten about FDL shielding Palin against supposedly sexist criticism, but that wasn’t quite what I was talking about. More like a full-on endorsement.
kay
@clonecone:
Hah! I like to picture them meeting with him because he’s always so exasperated on television, when he has to explain something. His shoulders slump when he finishes his big, elaborate run-down and the bobblehead gets it all wrong and he starts over, completely frustrated and despairing….
I honestly worry about him.
Yossarian
@jibeaux:
This is a really interesting point. I think on the whole, it IS fair to judge candidates in part on these policy nuances, both because they can make a real difference if implemented and because sometimes they can give you larger clues as to where the candidates’ priorities lie.
Having said that, in Obama’s case we all overestimated the importance of the granular details because, as Ezra Klein has pointed out, strategically this administration is above all congressionalist at heart. We are so used to having presidents come in and essentially write the legislation before submitting it to Congress (e.g. Hillarycare in ’93) that none of us were prepared to have a president who backed off and let Congress do the heavy lifting. This inevitably will produce legislation that looks somewhat different than what the candidate proposed, but the political scientist in me is warmed to the nerdy cockles of his heart, and the pragmatist in me thinks Obama/Rahm were correct to think it was the best way to get a bill passed.
The problem is, no one, and I mean NO ONE, was really prepared for an administration to approach the job like this. Certainly not the media, which only understands personality and charisma and thus refracts everything through a presidential lens, not the voters, who if we ever paid much attention to Congress have certainly had that trained out of us through decades of executive branch aggrandizement, and most frustratingly, not Congress itself, which in a feat of stupidity and responsibility-avoidance so raw it would have killed James Madison if he wasn’t already dead actually complained on several occasions that Obama expected them to LEGISLATE TOO MUCH.
I realize I’m wandering far afield on what was a perfectly entertaining thread of purity-bashing, so please pay me little mind. But there’s a running theme here that we’d do well to recognize, and in the long run it might actually be healthy for our broken democracy.
jwb
@JMY: “It almost makes me wish that O wasn’t elected and that people would have rather had HRC as president.”
What, you don’t think we’d be facing almost the same crazy if HRC had been elected? If so, you REALLY haven’t been paying attention.
Fergus Wooster
@asiangrrlMN:
They want to primary Bernie Sanders??
Jeebus H. Christmas, I hadn’t heard that. Mainly because they’re dead to me after allying with Norquist, but still. How long has this been going on?
Tom Levenson
@Davis X. Machina: Damn…I missed the Nach Palin…I’m slipping.
Ugh
I love the Rahm tag too, but I think it needs to be in all caps with an exclamation point, as if someone was pleading/demanding an answer from you, sort of a louder “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again” kind of thing.
chopper
yeah! follow the money! my brother just received a big research grant. obviously, he’s now a parrot for obama. i’m a cut him out my will for being such a damn sellout.
GReynoldsCT00
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
I just noticed… LOLZ!!
Grumpy Code Monkey
@schrodinger’s cat:
Where the YEC/anti-evolution crowd is concerned, the answer is most definitely yes (although not all the way back to the stone age; pre-Enlightenment will do just fine). As for the AGW denialists, they just don’t want to give up their first-world lifestyle. I haven’t got a clue about the firebaggers. I just find it interesting that a lot of the same arguments I saw from YECs in talk.origins a decade ago are being recycled in so many different places.
licensed to kill time
@mcc: Look at Midnight Marauder’s comment #28 on this BJ thread where he reposts the FDL “call me firebagger” debut.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@HyperIon:
I think this is more a consultant contract than a grant, so you’re probably not totally correct here. That being said, most universities have ceilings on consultant income, and lots of times it’s only allowed to buy lab equipment, pay staff salaries, etc–but it varies significantly from university to university. I don’t know what MIT’s policy is.
feral1
That’s funny. I unsubscribed yesterday because of that email. I was an early FDL supporter and it’s been really sad to see what’s happened over there.
HyperIon
Bart Stupak was on CSPAN last night doing a town meeting in his MI district. He was quick with details, firmly debunked several stupid rumors that audience members brought up as facts, dissed the Senate bill, and overall sounded like a fucking progressive on everything except abortion funding. I never entertained the notion that he was either stupid or lying. In fact I found him impressive.
He also stated that he would not vote for the Senate bill under certain circumstances (some NOT related to abortion funding) and that he thought it was better to re-introduce a new bill in 30 days that addressed the points of disagreement between House and Senate than to vote for a “bad bill”. This is the first time I have heard a rep or senator suggest that re-introduction was a viable scenario. It is an option that I like on the table. I don’t want to be the enemy of the perfect but am comfortable being the enemy of the ineffective.
His pet phrase was “quality over quantity” and on another public access channel (UWTV in Seattle) at the very same time another fellow was showing powerpoints that highlighted exactly the same thing. So it appears that some Dems are getting their talking points organized around FACTS and doing a good job at communicating them to interested audiences. I see the debate moving forward.
Svensker
Got that e-mail, too, and didn’t unsubscribe but did send them a note back asking what they hell they are thinking.
The problem is,once you get your head wrapped up in a conspiracy theory, everything fits so beautifully and it’s hard to realize how crazy it all sounds. (Speaking as one who was once pretty convinced that Hillary had offed Vince Foster…)
I’m hoping that Jane will have the scales fall from her eyes and she’ll find her way out of the woods. She did yeoman’s work back in the day. It would be nice to have her back among the sane.
asiangrrlMN
@Fergus Wooster: Since he was the bigger man and took back his amendment for a single-payer system. This was FDL’s response. Per usual, I am linking to a commentary on the action not the actual action itself, which I find actionable. That link is in the link I link, anyway.
BombIranForChrist
I don’t have the same level of contempt that you seem to have for the “firebaggers”, dude. I think what you’re saying is right, but wow.
Tom Hilton
@Warren Terra:
@Davis X. Machina:
@KCinDC:
I had forgotten about this, but when TBogg moved to FDL, a lot of his regular readers (myself included) were less than thrilled about it. It always struck me as a very odd fit.
Cain
@Sly:
I don’t know if you know this but OLD PEOPLE are also taxpayer-funded! It ENDS with OLD PEOPLE! FUCK!!!
cain
slag
Holy Christ! Seriously, John, I thought you were being melodramatic with all your Progressives Gone Wild rants. But the evidence is now definitively on your side. It’s crazy out there. And I’m afraid it’s not going to get better any time soon. Very sad.
Tom Hilton
@asiangrrlMN: Jeezus, FDL is too crazy for fucking Corrente? You’ve got to be pretty fucking crazy to be too crazy for those crazy fucks.
mcc
Yeah, I don’t think what you’re describing here from “crazy” is coming from HRC supporters or people who ever were HRC supporters. That entire FDL axis supported Edwards, didn’t it? But for some reason nobody wants to stand up now and say “if only Edwards had won”.
Zifnab
@asiangrrlMN:
I’ve been on the internet too long. That made sense.
Tom Hilton
@HyperIon:
I think that’s a brilliant strategy. You know what else is a brilliant strategy? If there aren’t any unicorns handy, instead of just riding a horse, you insist on a unicorn. That’s the ticket!
asiangrrlMN
@Zifnab: Heh. I think you have because it wasn’t suppose to make much sense.
@Tom Hilton: Yup. Or really really desperate.
geg6
@alex:
As I said, I won’t stop voting Dem. I just won’t be killing myself to help any of them that supported this version of HCR. I’ve explained this here many times, but I’ve spent money and time I don’t have over the last 30 years on Dems. But I’ll be damned if I’ll do it again any time soon for any that are happy to screw people like me. And too many of them have, lately. I’ll still be supporting and voting for Dems, but it may not be the ones who are holding office right now who love the Senate HCR bill.
licensed to kill time
@mcc:
And here’s a link to the original FDL firebagger page, see post #66
(yes, too much time to kill)
Shade Tail
As long as Mr. Cole is taking a “break”, let’s amuse ourselves with Red State Strike Farce’s “Operation Leper“. The database is apparently no longer being moderated, if the flood of entries that started today is any indication.
I put in an entry myself just a few minutes ago and it’s already up.
BruinKid
Yep, being in academia as a grad student right now, I just unsubscribed from their mailing list after getting that attack piece on Gruber. I love Marcy for the good work she’s done over the years, but she doesn’t seem to understand how academia works. And yes, this is the exact same craptastic argument I deal with when talking with climate change deniers who accuse scientists of being paid off.
Bill H
@JenJen:
What does that make me? I have never even visited the website.
Thank you for reading them so that I don’t have to.
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
But, he got a huge concession for that, right? He got 10 billion dollars, for community health centers.
That’s what I mean. Rather than introduce a ceremonial amendment, he got 10 billion dollars for a really progressive experimental program, that actually provides health care.
I don’t get that. They will never, ever convince me that the purely ideological introduction of an amendment beats 10 billion in health care delivered, and the seed money for expanding an experiment that works, now. I know this makes me short-sighted, but, please. I’m not that abstract. Just humor me, and give me the 10 billion.
ellaesther
@asiangrrlMN: He does indeed! And I actually recently saw some metal nightstands painted by Pakistani truck painters being hawked at CB 2, if I’m not mistaken. I kind of want to get one. But I think I’d rather have one of the trucks.
HyperIon
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: yeah, i can’t seem to find anyplace at NIH where the actual contract is documented. was it awarded through a request for proposals? wouldn’t one expect to find an NIH announcement of the award and description of the work to be funded?
i know NIH from the scientific grant side (sponsored research?). thanks for pointing out the difference between that and other ways to get NIH money.
Zifnab
@HyperIon:
He’s singing Olympia Snowe’s song. I don’t like it.
Given the deals that were cut and the feathers that had to be smoothed, I don’t know what other bill our 60 vote Senate would have allowed.
I think we’ve got to pass the Progressive meat of this bill in Reconciliation if it is going to have a chance. Another whirl through the meat grinder of the Senate isn’t going to improve anything. Dragging this bill out another month is just going to give Republicans a new chance to kill it. You’ve got architecture in this bill – insurance exchanges, regulations, minimum coverage levels, subsidies and taxes – that the industry desperately needs one way or another.
Stupak might be singing a progressive tune, but “Wait 30 more days” is the same song conservatives love to play. He can be as progressive as he wants if the bill doesn’t pass.
asiangrrlMN
@kay: Holy shit. I did not even know this. I Googled it, and yeah, you’re right. Then I double don’t get the ‘Sanders has to go’ meme. Maybe I’m being overprotective because I think of Bernie as the avuncular grampy I never had, but shit. If he’s not pure enough for FDL, then who is?
@Zifnab: My thoughts exactly, but better stated. Stupak can DIAFF for all I care.
@MikeJ: Wrong! What the world needs is love, pure love.
Chad N Freude
@Shade Tail: Somebody’s snarkmeter needs a tune-up.
MikeJ
I say what the world needs is
tbogg.balloon-juice.com
and
attackerman.balloon-juice.com
rootless_e
Just for the record, FDL was slandering Obama during primaries.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/7/451754/-Swiftboating-on-the-Firedoglake
eemom
@Tom Hilton:
Jane used to have the main guy from Corrente on FDL a lot when they were both shilling for Hillary. Then, like so many others, he………..displeased her.
Speaking of which, Mr. Cole, you DO realize that you will now become the target of petitions to have you excommunicated from the blogosphere because Marcy Wheeler has just uncovered evidence that you may at one time have been paid for doing an actual job……and that Lady Jane will now be calling you nasty names like “bottom feeder” as she did to Booman.
Also that an angry mob of avenging Janebots is probably headed this way to unsubscribe from YOUR blog — oh wait.
Zandar
Firebagger, n.
Somebody who constantly accuses the Obama administration of moving ahead at Rahmming speed.
les
@kay: @HyperIon:
Check the Krugman piece; it’s an HHS grant, not NIH; not surprisingly, for economic modeling. Wowzers, what a fucking concept–making public use of publicly funded research!!11!eleventyone! I’m with the zeitgeist, this is falling into creationist/denialist territory.
gwangung
Isn’t Mr. Cole a teacher at an institute of higher learning? A STATE-FUNDED institute?
Cat
@asiangrrlMN:
Bernie Sanders is an independent, I’m not sure how you can ‘primary’ him. Regardless, I think your point is Jane Hamsher don’t agree with his politics on HCR and wants to run a Democrat and thus will lose the seat to a Republican? I’m not sure how else you move a politician if you don’t threaten to vote him out of office. Strongly worded letters don’t have a history of working very well.
Jane Hamsher’s position on Rahm Emanuel’s role in the accounting scandal while he was on the board of directors of Freddie Mac is certainly melodramatic, but his actions shouldn’t be allowed to disappear into history either. I can say picking Grover Norquist to be your fellow traveler on this topic is pretty crazy, but I do think it shows both the left and the right tired of corporate board malfeasance. Its obviously a political mistake to partner up with him as its apparently blinding people to their message because all they see is “Grover F’ing Norquist”. However the underlying message isn’t something to be ignored.
Nobody owns the democratic party, Jane Hamsher is wrong to try to force people out of the party.
So she’s a fairly poor political activist, time to discredit and deride all the work the other bloggers on FDL do because of her?
Dee Loralei
I unsubscribed too. I told her aligning with Grover was bad enough but misunderstanding government funding of research was too much. I asked if they were going to join the global warming deniers since climate scientists also recieved gov funds. I begged them to get sane again, told them they were wonderful during the Bush years.( And begged them to go back to that business model.) Agreed that Obama and the legislature needed to be hit from the left. And then said not even Ackerman nor TBogg would draw me back until they quit getting ratfucked and quit ratfucking the progressive movement.
Basically I begged them to become sane again. And I think I might have mentioned that they reminded me of Larry Johnson.
I wonder if they’ll actually read any of our notes.
John, go take your break sheesh.
Bill E Pilgrim
Wow.
I used to log into the blog-o-sphere Stateside and there were progressive sites, and then right wing sites. And maybe some sort of undifferentiated sites in the middle, but most of those seemed to sort of be on the same side as we were on the progressive/liberal ones.
But now look!
I can’t leave you people alone for a minute, yeeesh.
I got talking with this guy the other night, actually it was New Year’s eve, a professor who specializes in “the chase”, e.g. chase scenes, as his field of study in cinema and literature and etc. Real nice guy, actually a part-time prof who works in the hotel biz also to make a living, but just passionate about the idea of “la chasse” because, he finally spilled after we had enough glasses of wine, it just so focuses things, he just loved that passion and energy that comes only when something is in hot, total, blinders-on pursuit of something else. It gives it all meaning, was his point.
“Well”, I found myself thinking, “that’s really all there is, right? I mean between life and death it all amounts to our “pursuits”, and in fact the universe itself, between the big bang and whatever happens at the other end, what else is an expanding universe other than one giant chase scene, essentially? Without that, it wouldn’t be an expanding universe but just a sort of dead, floating collection of objects, aimlessly devouring each other, going in circles.
In fact I hate to admit it, but I suppose I actually said all that too (hey I was drinking the same wine) out loud, as we leaned on the windowsill looking at the view.
Anyway you get my point. A shame about that focal point being dissipated, and I mean I blame everyone, him, us, you, them, everyone. But still a shame.
Midnight Marauder
@licensed to kill time:
Sweet, you found the original. Knoxville (the person who authored the “Call Me Firebagger/Last True Progressive Standing” post) was just killing it in some of those threads that week. All kinds of crazy rantings and transmissions from Bizarro World. Tell me, do you remember this happening (from the same link):
No, no of course you don’t. Not here in Reality.
HyperIon
@Tom Hilton:
well, i often ask myself: why did the house and senate give in to bernanke and paulson when they put the “do this or the economy craters” gun to our head? the result was a stampede to pass what now looks like a sweetheart deal for wall street and not much for us peons.
evidently you believe the folks who say: either pass HCR now or be prepared to wait for another decade. that might be a false dichotomy. jes’ sayin’ in a totally non-snarky way…
Osceola
Bullshit.
Gruber got a CONTRACT, not a GRANT, despite what Krugman says. The contract, or contracts, were for him come up with something for the White House to use in the health care debate. Contracts can be awarded at will, apparently. Grants from HHS (i.e. NIH) are peer-reviewed and actually very hard to get, with success rates in the single digits after the Bush II reign. A grant from NIH is conflict-free. A contract from the tobacco industry, for example, not so much. Since HHS (read the White House) had an interest in the outcome of his work, Gruber’s money was not conflict-free. A scientist (I know because I perform research using grants from NIH, AHA, etc.) absolutely must specify where his/her funding comes from. To fail to do so is serious academic and scientific misconduct. Gruber didn’t because he felt he had something to hide. Nothing he has written can be taken at face value because he hid his source of funding, his “expertise” notwithstanding.
asiangrrlMN
@Cat: My point about Bernie Sanders is that if he isn’t progressive enough for her, then nobody is. And, any alliance with someone like Grover Norquist is enough to put me off my feed on anyone. I don’t like batshitcrazy, no matter which side it comes from. I don’t find FDL to be a particularly good blog in general (full disclosure, I mostly read Tboggs), and I see what she’s doing as extremely discrediting to the site as she is the nominal figurehead of it.
mcc
Perhaps it was because they had a gun to our head?
I guess technically “shoot the hostages” is one way out of a hostage situation, but maybe it is not a very good one.
eemom
they’re heeeeeeeere…….
Nellcote
@HyperIon:
If the R takes the MA senate seat, the bill needs to get passed asap or it never will.
Stupak is just supporting the gop crawl.
HyperIon
@les:
thanks. that explains my NIH site search failure. i haven’t gotten to krugman YET.
Cat
@Mnemosyne:
I could have a sample size problem, but this recent ‘paid government flack’ attack on a grant and contract recipient is the first thing that I noticed that didnt pass the sniff test as being completely off base.
GReynoldsCT00
@eemom:
no kidding…flame war commencing 3,2,1
les
@Osceola:
Citation needed. Not that you’re not obviously a superior source to Krugman, but…
Midnight Marauder
@Shade Tail:
You have just more than redeemed your failed Snark-O-Meter from earlier. This is amazing. And what is with this scale that they’ve put together to categorize their displeasure with the degree of “leprosy”?
I love that. “OLYMPIA SNOWE DID WHAT?! UGH! You get a 5 on my leprosy scale, Senator Snowe! A 5! UGH! to you, good madam!” Also, the submissions that have come in (all of the new ones are from today. Like, since Shade Tail posted this.) And they are fantastic:
kay
@Cat:
Why not? It was investigated by a GOP Administration and he was cleared.
Why shouldn’t it disappear? Because it would be irresponsible not to speculate wildly on a cover-up?
She had jack shit on Emanuel there, and she made up a scandal out of whole cloth. How accusing people of nefarious cover-ups with little or nothing to back it up is “liberal” completely escapes me.
That’s a witch hunt, and I don’t care if it’s Rahm Emanuel or someone she agrees with who is the target, she didn’t have enough to launch the accusation.
For someone who runs around blabbing about the Rule Of Law she’s mighty quick to convict.
MikeJ
Word from the Fed today that they’ve made $52b on interest on loans form the bank “bailout”. The taxpayers are actually coming out ahead.
rootless_e
All you need to know about Stupak’s amendment and motives is that when the amendment passed there was a bunch of congratulations and back-slapping and then Stupak and the backslappers went in to the republican meeting room to celebrate.
General Winfield Stuck
@Cat:
Jane Hamsher can do what she wants, and John Cole does what he wants, and I do what the Druid Spirits want.
This is how it works. Nobody owes anybody anything, lest they want to. Jane wants to primary Bernie “soshulist” Sanders, others want to slam Jane for that (amongst other insane stuff), her blog, and the horse they rode in on. It is the ecology of politics and hardly ever kind. It’s NOT personal. It is the way of the mighty FSM.
Otherwise, you did yeoman’s work polishing that turd.:)
HyperIon
@mcc:
That doesn’t address the false dichotomy aspect. I’m not suggesting shooting the hostages. I’m suggesting the “this” they proposed was not the only legislation that could have been passed to “save the economy”.
But it would have taken longer to sort that out. And some folks decided that the time wasn’t available to do that. So they rushed it and now we are pretty much stuck with the horrible parts of the bill. I would like to avoid repeating this scenario with HCR.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Heh, I, too unsubscribed from the FDL spam list… without anyone else saying boo.
Reason:
Jame Hamsher
S. cerevisiae
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes.
Well, not the stone age, just pre-Enlightenment.
demkat620
I unsubscribed. I swear if they don’t pass this bill soon, I am going to scream.
General Winfield Stuck
@Osceola:
Then why is is that I heard Marcy Wheeler say this morning on Shuster that he actually did mention this back in the summer, or whenever, but that he failed to in later writings?
S. cerevisiae
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Damn – too slow.
Cat
@asiangrrlMN:
This makes me wince.
I’m a bit more forgiving. I’m not willing to write the whole site off as I’m not sure where I’d get the same coverage from emptywheel, tbogg, and Attackerman blogs.
rootless_e
The Gruber “scandal” is exactly like the ACORN “scandal” – the Republicans and their stooges go after sources of strength in the Democrats. ACORN registered a lot of voters. Gruber provided the high speed/media credible smack back on Insurance company “studies”. Can’t have that.
Laertes
Glad to hear I’m not the only who who unsubscribed in disgust. In the box where they asked for a reason, I simply wrote: Grover Norquist
It’s fascinating to read the comments. It’s got the exact same stink of old leather and fresh cat urine that comment threads at HillaryIs44.com used to have.
Reading it is a bracing reminder that there are stupid, dishonest, paranoid fuckwits at every point on the political spectrum.
The insufferable smugness, the pigheaded fingers-in-earsism, and the bitter hostility to any dissenter is no different from RedState or FreeRepublic.
Osceola
@les
If Gruber had a bona fide GRANT from HHS (which would come from NIH) to study health care delivery, you would find it here:
http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm
Apparently he does have one grant to study Medicare Part D, awarded to the National Bureau of Economic Research with him as Principal Investigator. Nothing about the current hullabaloo though.
Incidentally, he would never be awarded a grant to study HCR without divulging how is “proprietary” model works.
kay
@MikeJ:
The head of the teabaggers in Michigan called off the teabag protest at the auto show because she’s an ex-GM-er, and as you know, we bailed out GM and Chrysler and basically saved the entire region where I live from bread lines.
But we can’t talk about that, because it’s a FACT.
I’m having these ridiculous conversations here locally where UAW are screaming that bail outs didn’t help the working man, and I’m thinking, “yeah, except you, and every other manufacturing and retail and housing entity within 70 miles”.
I might need a vacation myself.
Cat Lady
@Shade Tail:
That link is so full of all kinds of awesome fucking win.
…
slag
@asiangrrlMN:
See…that’s the thing. Bernie Sanders is out; Grover Norquist is in. And I’m expected to think these people are working toward progressive causes? Not happening.
That deal that Sanders made was exactly what I wanted to see more liberals doing. Leveraging their votes for my benefit. Not taking their ball and going home, which does absolutely nothing for me.
The tragic thing is that, once upon a time, FDL appeared to be serious about using activist power for progressive purposes. Ahhh…the good ol’ days.
Osceola
@ General Winfield Stuck:
Probably because he felt he had something to hide as the debate continued and the Administration was using his justifications in their arguments. A scientist always has to divulge his funding source, every time he/she presents his work in written or oral form. Every time.
Cat Lady
@kay:
Let’s all us BJ’ers find out where John’s at and all show up and surprise him. We’ll all bring our pets, favorite 80’s songs and recipes and have a pajama party!
Cat
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’m still confused as to why this make Jane Hamsher batshitcrazy, assuming you overlook the fact he’s an Independent. I mean were they BFFs and then she awakes up the next day and thinks he’s the devil?
I mean the discussion we are having is about if Jane Hamsher is as batshitcrazy as the teabaggers. This isn’t another “internet blogger” is hurting the Dems electoral prospects and jeopardizing Obama’s agenda and must be burned at the stake thread?
*stupid typos*
Tom Hilton
@Cat:
I haven’t seen anyone here deride or discredit TBogg or Attackerman.
There are good people who blog at the FDL portion of FDL (if that makes sense)–Dave Dayen and Blue Texan, for example–and it is unfortunate that they are associated with a forum that has otherwise gone so spectacularly off the rails. The reality, though, is that it’s Jane’s little world, and her lunatic crusade is bannered above every page at FDL, and as far as I can tell most of the other diarists and commenters have gone off the rails with her, so it’s not exactly unfair to deride FDL as a whole.
General Winfield Stuck
@Osceola:
Well, that’s some brilliant deduction there Sherlock. But blows a hole in the meme they were hiding something when actually they made public from the get go he was getting this money. We have google these days, and stuff can be found out. So you are reduced to claiming he didn’t continue to make it known every time he said or wrote something. That’s a horse of a different color than making unfounded claims he was being unethical by never making it known and is trying to hide something.
Elie
@Yossarian:
Hear, Hear…well said and one of the best comments on this thread…!!!
Unpreprared in every way was the MSM, the advocacy groups, the right AND the left —
I think that explains to some extent the craziness we see now — like someone asked these groups a question that they had never ever thought of — legislate? Who does THAT anymore? Negotiate? Reconcile? Accomodate? Develop?
I think in part we are seeing huge hissy fits from organizations that had a certain fixed view of how the world works (this was non negotiable and unilateral from their point of view only).
In going back to the Congress as a deliberative law making body that would be again learn to use its considerable power after years of flabby passivity and the resulting corruption (like any organ or system that is not used or used properly — becomes diseased) – the O administration put oxygen on our smothered process. As the oxygen continues to enliven this, there is pain, just as there is after a limb comes awake after being cramped in a position that no longer allows for healthy circulation. To me, all parts of this anology apply…
Ailuridae
@jibeaux:
I know this was supposed to be sarcastic:
(mmmm, the Nebraska parts are really sweet….)
but it looks like the end game for Nelson’s bargain is going to be that the Federal Government picks up the entire cost of the Medicaid expansion for all states. In terms of governing, the economy and progressive victories the only thing better would be if they picked up the initial state contributions to Medicaid in perpetuity as well.
Mary
@Cat: I don’t think she’s crazy. I think she is corrupt. I think she ran out of union money and got in bed with the right wing.
tomvox1
FDL/Hamsher/et al:
If they’re not being stabbed in the back by someone, anyone they’re just not happy. Some people can only conceive of the world in terms of being constantly fucked over. The possibility that people might actually have bigger fish to fry than their particular grievance du jour or, heaven forfend, decent if imperfect intentions never occurs to them . Sad, really, and probably a manifestation of a persecution complex. Also makes for really unreliable political “partners.”
kay
@Cat Lady:
Oh, God, I would never do that to him. Surprise parties are sort of my personal nightmare.
Elie
@Cat Lady:
I’m in!
Nice to see you Cat Lady…I have been in and out so may have missed you..
L. Ron Obama
This discussion is headed into an earnest debate on proper kerning in about five minutes.
kay
@Ailuridae:
I heard the health care expert on NPR (I rarely listen, so I don’t know her name) say that carve-outs for special treatment (state-specific) on Medicaid are really common, and have been going on for years, both parties.
I have no intention of searching the legislative record, but that’s what she said. She thought it was a huge ado about a common practice, and being used for political purposes.
But I loathe Nelson, so they should cut it out.
Cat Lady
@Elie:
Back atcha!
General Winfield Stuck
@Cat: I never said she was batshit crazy for wanting to primary Sanders, that’s just rank stupidity. Though I do think partnering up with Grover Fucking Norquist qualifies for “insane Stuff”. My point is please quit whining that we are being unfair to her or her blog and the alleged other good writers on it.
There is no pact between us and this blog doesn’t suffer whining very well. Never has since I’ve been here. Pick an argument, stick to it and argue as hard and mean as you like, but please don’t whine. That was the point of my comment.
Tom Hilton
@HyperIon:
I’ll make a deal: if you can outline a plausible scenario in which either a) this Senate (or this Senate minus one Democrat and plus one Republican) can pass a significantly better bill than this one despite not having the votes for any of the improvements most of us would like to see; or b) a post-2010 election Senate and House (which will almost certainly have fewer Democrats) has the will to pass a significantly better bill than this one despite the spectacular failure of their efforts in 2009; then I will be much less dismissive toward your comments.
Until you do that, dismissive is what you’ve earned.
Cat
@Tom Hilton:
It does make sense and is the one reason I felt I needed to speak up about the non Jane Hamsher posts on the FDL family of blogs.
Its definitely not on the track I’m sure a lot of people thought it would be on, but its not a burning wreck just yet.
General Winfield Stuck
@Cat:
Which ones?
Mary
@Cat: Booman has been saying for weeks that bloggers should be quietly looking for the exits from FDL. It really is a burning wreck, since you put it that way.
Ailuridae
@Yossarian:
That’s a pretty good point about Obama as a congressionalist and one that I think gets lost on people.
@kay:
The best part about the Sanders CHC funding is that it’ll be easy to expand if needed as time goes on as any big city Democrat and any rural politician regardless of party will have to vote for it or risk having someone run against them for “closing the only access to medicine” their constituents have.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@S. cerevisiae:
I’m like a ninja … albeit a really fat and pasty one.
Tom Hilton
@Cat Lady: definitely! But etslay otnay elltay ethay Efday Eeday Ellayers.
Cat
@General Winfield Stuck: @General Winfield Stuck:
The ones that are now lost in time due to a working edit feature.
I still feel obligated to mention I made some typos least I be called out for my ethical failures for failing to disclose my casual relationship with proper grammar.
Davis X. Machina
@ ellie
Two minds with but a single thought…
For me, personally, this was exactly the change I was hoping for. Running the Republic as if it were a (barely) constitutional monarchy, with an accountability moment one day every four years, provided you even get a free, fair, and open election on that one day, is an experiment whose time has come and gone, if it ever came at all.
Ailuridae
@kay:
It also is a short walk from the right-wing nutter meme that the financial collapse was the result of a cabal of Fannie, Freddie and the CRA. I’ve always liked Marcy but, to be honest, that was beyond the fucking pale.
Also, I wish in the conversations about Fannie and Freddie being backstopped to infinity people realized that those GSEs stopped being GSEs a while ago and are just another branch of the federal government.
General Winfield Stuck
@Cat:
I am the typo king here and get grumpy when others try to impinge my domane. :-)
Osceola
@ the General
Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not as if anyone in the MSM has a memory that extends beyond what he had for breakfast yesterday.
The thing is: Gruber was paid a lot of money by someone (the Obama Administration) to come up with an analysis of HCR. This money apparently did not go through MIT, which would indeed have been a horse of a different color. He neglected to mention that he has a howling conflict of interest in his most recent work. He is really no different from an academic who takes money from Pfizer and produces a model saying that Zoloft is perfectly harmless. He may be right (though not in this example), but if it comes out later that his research was funded by the company no one will believe him. And if he published that work without mentioning that fact, he will have committed academic misconduct. An appeal to Gruber’s “expertise” as an independent academic is pretty lame, and that is exactly what Krugman (formerly of MIT IIRC) was doing.
Bill E Pilgrim
@L. Ron Obama: This discussion is headed into an earnest debate on proper kerning in about five minutes.
Definitely heading straight off a glyph.
I think I’ll go read up on the la Terreur, just to get a jump on what happens next….
Ailuridae
@MikeJ:
It looks like the government is going to end up out 30B-70B total on TARP. Again, that’s not a large price to pay to stabilize the worlds economy.
However, it would have been a lot more honest for Paulson and the Bush Administration to have just nationalized that handful of major banks that needed it and moved on. But, that’s not a situation Obama could change or that there was a clear way to reverse.
MikeJ
What’s really important here is that Thomas Keller’s recipe for melted onions is incredible. Easy too. Basically just cook all the water out of 8 cups of onions, replace some of that water with one stick of butter. End up with 2 cups of onions to use in sauces, on meat, with other veg. Mmmm. The house smells like slowly cooking onions now. Creamy melted onions.
Cat
@Mary: I suppose if you think your continued associating with Jane Hamsher is bad for your reputation you should leave, but this whole guilt by association thing is vile.
Davis X. Machina
One need not be in the lake to be of the lake.
lol
Remember a few weeks back, John compared FDL (and other manic progressives) to McNulty and someone brought up his ultimate fate?
I think FDL’s officially entered the ribbon-tying stage.
gwangung
Sorry, but this is all rhetoric unencumbered by anchoring facts. The fact is…you’re blowing considerably as much, if not more, smoke than everyone else.
You may, indeed, be correct on the ethical failings of Gruber, but you are far from making your case here. It’s incomplete observations without context and I’m far from prepared to make conclusions without that context (e.g., how was the money administered–education institutes often have several ways to administer funds, and all too often are not very consistent with each other, despite the efforts of administrative people to harmonize them).
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
Did someone shout “squirrel!”?
kay
@Ailuridae:
I live in a rural area and we have a single private entity that has a monopoly on health care delivery, in two counties.
I would dearly love to have the choice of a community health center, so I can stop going to a medical group that denies my clients health care when they have an unpaid bill that goes to judgment.
And that’s what’s happening. I don’t want to go there anymore, but I can’t take a whole day and travel to the next city, for a doctor’s appointment. I think rural people are going to love community health centers.
Mary
@Cat: But they’re all propogating the FDL line, except for Ackerman, who won’t be identified with FDL when he goes on TV. Wheeler, for sure, is completely on board with Hamsher.
gwangung
Me, too, except for the fact that I don’t think there was a legal basis to take over the holding companies for the banks.
mcc
@Cat: So you are suggesting that the writers at Firedoglake should not be held responsible for the writing at Firedoglake?
It’s not like we’re talking about user diaries at DailyKos or something here. These are professional writers working together as part of a single journalist/activist organization.
K. Grant
@Yossarian:
Bingo. We have lived with the idea or the fantasy of the imperial presidency for so long that a great many people are absolutely flummoxed by the idea of the President acting the way the Constitution stipulates.
We always seem to forget that Obama is, at heart, a con law professor. He actually knows a fews things about the Constitution, things beyond the normal knowledge base referenced and stammered out by red-faced pols trying to make a point that their opponents are totalitarians of some stripe because they don’t lurve the CONSTITUTION. Of course, the moment they say something like this(and even moreso if they have a handy little pocket version that they then whip out to prove their slavish devotion to the ‘rule of law’), you absolutely know in your bones that they have never read the bloody thing.
Obama has. Studied it. Pondered it. Wrestled with it and its implications. Likely believes that it is fundamentally a good way of doing business. Thus, when it comes to legislation, he believes that the Legislative Branch should do the heavy lifting. This drives everyone around the bend, because Presidents just don’t do that sort of thing.
Now, this is not a 11 dimensional chess thing, just seconding Yossarian’s idea that perhaps what we are all missing is the fact that Obama thinks that Congress should do the hard work; that he will be glad to lend a hand, but that ultimately it is up to them. I actually hope that he continues to ‘lead’ in this manner. And yes, this will take time for it to soak in, because the Village actually seems to prefer Dictatorships (see: MoDo’s latest yearning to have the President swagger in a manly fashion and protect the kiddies and wimmin folk), and thus they will have to be weaned off of the endless cycle of hero worship and iconoclasm…’the king is dead, long live the king.’
General Winfield Stuck
@Osceola:
Ok, then I will agree that he should be making this known whenever he publishes on the topic especially a final product, if, in fact the money did not go thru MIT first. My point is making claims he is hiding something by hiding his funding, when it was announced early on, is taking things too far.
And this. From Cole thread post letter is apparently not true.
kay
@Ailuridae:
My husband is a former independent who got involved locally in Democratic politics because he became concerned about the survival of the republic during the Bush Years, and he can’t be a Republican, because they’re insane.
He’s started calling the conspiracy theorists on the Left “low information voters”, and he’s not kidding.
Cat Lady
@Tom Hilton:
Or rickBay venOay illBay.
les
@Osceola:
OK, I get the distinction you’re making; shouldn’t have been so hard. The contract info is here. I still don’t see the conflict hoohah, I fear; unless we assume he’s twisting years of work and his reputation for a preordained result (which he was presumably informed of before the contract–so the hapless Obama managed to actually get the Senate to pass exactly what he wanted all along), that just happens to agree with his previous work and opinions. Or, maybe, he crunched the numbers and then talked about the results. Anyone? Anyone? Occam?
General Winfield Stuck
@gwangung:
I bet the money was delivered by Rahm at midnight on The Mall in a brown paper bag.
Mayken
@Mnemosyne: It’s always been my position that if a news organization screws up their reporting on a subject I know well that the rest of their coverage is suspect. This goes double for bloggers. It does make one wonder, doesn’t it?
Osceola
@gwuangung
You are exactly right. I don’t “know” if I am correct about Gruber’s ethical failings or not. But the fact is that he has been lax in identifying the sponsors of his work on an issue that is very important, with implications for all of us, said sponsors having an interest in the outcome of his work. Which means that he has damaged his credibility as an independent analyst. And that is not “rhetoric unemcumbered by anchoring facts” whether Jane Hamsher is the spawn of Satan or not. I happen to believe that anyone who produced “Natural Born Killers” should not be listened to, period. But that’s just me, I suppose.
Elisabeth
@Mnemosyne:
I unsubscribed yesterday with the note “Get Grover to help you.”
HyperIon
@gwangung:
IIRC there wasn’t a legal basis for the Fed to get involved with Bear either, due to the crisis not involving the kind of banks the Fed “regulates”. But they did.
TR
Might be.
Or, we could look at American history, and see that whenever health care reform has been defeated before — under Truman, under Clinton — it has then gone unaddressed for 15-20 years.
And we can also see when reforms have first seem less-than-pure — SS, Medicare — they have successfully been expanded to get what progressives couldn’t the first time out.
It’s really not hard to understand — you know, if you live on this planet.
Osceola
@les
I have no idea whether Gruber was twisting results in a way that might damage his reputation. I sincerely doubt that he was. But anyone can be influenced by his preconceptions, or “preanalytic vision”, to put it as A.N. Whitehead would have. And $400,000 (or is it $800,000?) is a very powerful influence, which means that the onus is on him to prove otherwise. All he had to do is admit up front that HHS paid him for his analysis. We may all have taken him at his word as brilliant MIT health economist that he was on the up and up. That he did not make sure we knew where he was getting paid is suspicious as hell and vitiates the value of his work considerably, whether he is correct or not. Pity.
les
@Osceola:
Is this “later?”
Now, maybe he should say he’s worked on a gov’t contract every time he’s asked his opinion on these matters–even if he’s only asked because he’s the recognized go-to on health care economics–but it’s not been secret, and the implication that he’s fudged his work and his opinions for one consultant pay-off still doesn’t wash. Or maybe, would-be influential bloggers could do their homework before flaming off.
TR
@Osceola:
He did. Repeatedly.
You really need to stop talking. You clearly have no idea how research grants work, no evidence that the grant changed his thinking, no understanding of his work or of the funding process.
That you do not completely eviscerates the value of listening to anything you have to say, whether you are as big of a moron as you appear to be or not. Pity.
Yossarian
Just to be clear: my theory about Obama is not that he knowingly and consciously went into this thing with the express idea of returning our democracy to its legislative roots. He may or may not even think in those terms, let alone make strategic decisions based on them. But this seems to me like one of those happy moments when pure, hard-nosed pragmatism (I’ll need Congress to pass whatever I want, so I might as well gear my entire approach around that fact) might actually have positive political theory outcomes.
Osceola
Got to go back to work, but to those being patient (or not) with my obtuseness, if Gruber was conscientious about disclosure why has he been reprimanded by those who published his recent stuff for a failure to disclose? Did he tell Ron Brownstein that he was getting paid by HHS? It matters not that once, in a galaxy far, far away he may have mentioned it. He doesn’t have the option as an independent scholar of doing that once and then just crossing his fingers behind his back from then on.
Cheers.
les
I still don’t get the rumpus.
1. He has a contract to model the economic outcomes of proposed legislation.
2. He has opinions based on his studies and MA experience on directions for reform–not all of which favor the legislation, by the by.
So the notion is that his opinions–which he and Ezra Klein agree have not recently changed–are somehow changed/twisted by the existence of the contract? Or is it that he’s twisted his model because of the contract–even though he got the contract because of the model’s record of accuracy? Sorry, quite apart from the “secrecy” shtick, I have trouble seeing the issue.
James K. Polk, Esq.
@Osceola: I guess we’ll just have to “leave it there” then…
Tom Hilton
@Cat Lady: oodgay allcay.
Osceola
Just one more thing, TR. Having gotten just over a million dollars in research grants (i.e., peer-reviewed awards) from NIH and several private research agencies over the past 7 years, I do know how they work. Having gotten research contracts (not peer-reviewed, from private companies) in a previous life, I know how they work, too. It is not up to me or you to prove whether his contract (not peer-reviewed grant) affected Gruber’s thinking. I believe that it probably did not, but that much money is an incentive to make the payer happy. All independent scholars have to guard against much less overwhelming pressures (e.g., just getting something published in a peer-reviewed journal). It is up to him to make sure that we all know where he got his research funding, every time he presents his results, whether they are presented in the NEJM or the NYT or the Washington Post or at second hand in an article for which he was interviewed. That is what an independent scholar/scientist does. Every time.
Cheers. Again.
Pasquinade
@Shade Tail
– obvious reference to PalinSpeech
Havin’ (letter “G” is a leper, remember) some fun!
TR
@Osceola:
So guilty until proven innocent, then? Brilliant.
Phil P.
@les:
Exactly.
Furthermore, anybody who thinks one of the most prominent academic economists in America is going to twist/fake/bullsh!t their modeling work to get preordained results on one of the highest-profile and hotly debated issues in the country just to make some contracting money doesn’t understand the situation.
Gruber’s fellow economists (of all ideological stripes) would happily tear him to pieces if they caught a whiff of the b.s., for one thing. This is his specialty area, and he’s got all the motivation in the world to get the modeling right.
Plus, econ people at Gruber’s level have plenty of opportunities to make consulting money–and lots of it. No need to insert himself into such a high profile mess and start playing politics just for the $$.
I agree that he probably should have made a little more effort to routinely disclose his contract work with HHS. Just to be on the safe side. But this really isn’t a big deal. What exactly Hamsher & Wheeler are trying to achieve by creating this frenzy, I don’t know. But like others here, I’ve been wondering that about them for a little while now.
Osceola
@TR
No gratuitous insult? Why, thank you.
Guilty until proven innocent? Not at all.
But in this case Gruber was not a disinterested observer nor necessarily an independent scientist, for between 400,000 and 800,000 reasons. If he had always (key word, always; it is not up to his interlocutors to go back and check his work over and over for potential bias) noted that his work on this issue was funded by a consulting contract from the Executive Branch, we would have been in a position to evaluate it with that in mind. Given his reputation I would have given him the benefit of the doubt. Probably. If I had known that the contract was worth between 5X and 10X my annual salary, probably not. Let me ask you a question. If the government awarded you a contract for that much money to analyze a problem and you knew what answer they were looking for, would you trust yourself to be dispassionate? To be “scientific”? To ignore the fact that they had just made you very rich? If the answer is “yes” then you are the Dalai Lama. Or someone for whom several hundred thousand dollars is chump change.
The Raven
Sheesh, a bit of common sense, folks. I think FDL went overboard on this one, but they’ve got a point; the Obama administration is not going to hire a researcher they disagree with. And everyone ought to be worried about being too impressed by numbers people–that’s one of the ways finance went off the deep end.
BTW, we can start calling it a Chevrolet tax, or perhaps a Toyota tax.
General Winfield Stuck
@The Raven:
Let’s go completely overboard now and analogize this with the economic collapse.
This logic would dictate never hiring anyone to analyze anything, lest it be corrupt, or short of getting peeps to work for free,.. Go up and read Phil P’s comment@Phil P.:
These people, like Gruber. are at the pinnacle of their professions and taking something like the white hot HCR debate is jumping in a superlitt national fishbowl. It would be akin to professional suicide to get gratuitous with your employer by fudging anything.
No one should take any economists findings as the word of God, as it is and always been an imperfect discipline of one armed wizards to paraphrase Harry Truman. But who else you gonna believe but the premiere specialist in this particular economic realm.
Mnemosyne
@The Raven:
After all, there’s nothing more common-sensical than declaring a researcher must have been paid by the White House to fake his research because he got a grant from the HHS.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Advice for John: If you are perusing posts here and come across a flaming bag of shit, don’t stomp on it.
Piss on it. If it’s still smoking after that, shit on it.
I had to add a few entries to the Operation Leper list just to show my support of lepers.
/leperfistbump
splat
Whoops!
Elie
@Yossarian:
gotcha —
but I am nevertheless pleased if we move in that direction by serendipity
gwangung
Yes, please.
Indeed. You take a look at the numbers and the assumptions yourselves and see if they make sense.
Have you done this?
Elie
@Davis X. Machina:
Always the idealist, eh? :-)
Me too. I hope for this and pine for this and hope we can by accident, if by no other complete design, come to that point…I accept that this is not where we have been — but I hope to keep working it that way…
Do you think that we deserve it? (I’m truly scared to ask that)
Elie
@K. Grant:
This too — very well said…
Ming
Au contraire. One of the striking characteristics of Obama as a leader is his interest in reality-based decision-making (see Cass Sunstein). Obama turns out to be (a) very interested in opposing points of view, and (b) skillful at putting together different points of view to come to an understanding of an issue. I suppose it’s difficult to believe that a policymaker might actually consult someone to *find out* what the best policy is, but just because you’re skeptical doesn’t mean you actually know what the Obama administration is or is not going to do.
Anne Laurie
@Tom Hilton:
Uh-huh. I had not forgotten. Clicked through your link for anti-nostalgia’s sake and this was one of the first ten comments:
Heh, indeed, and FTFY. I believe that was the thread where I got personally reprimanded by one of the foremost FDL Hall Monitors…
Me, again
“These people, like Gruber, are at the pinnacle of their professions.”
Indeed. Which has been true throughout history…but let’s just go back a little under 50 years. Dean Rusk, Mac and William Bundy, Robert McNamara: All men at the pinnacle of their professions. Or back only seven years. The Kagan father and sons, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld: All men at the pinnacle of their professions, too. Or even more recently. Larry Summers, Hugh McColl and Ken Lewis, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke: Once again, men at the pinnacle of their professions. All of them acknowledged experts in their chosen fields. Smart, too. And all committed professional suicide by screwing up royally. Or not. As the case may be.
General Winfield Stuck
@Me, again:
Well, if you’re going to quote me, then do it right. I also said this:
By your reasoning then we should bypass the best in particular fields cause some of them in the past have been wrong. Maybe we should listen to second or third tier people to get around that problem. Then when they screw the pooch we can say they were second rate to begin with so no problemo. Or just ask no experts at all to weigh in and give the presnit advice. And since Presidents have also been very wrong, nobody say nothin; bout nothin. We will just depend on little baby jeevus to guide us.
General Winfield Stuck
@Me, again:
“Screwing up royally” is not the same thing as fudging numbers because you are being paid by the Executive Branch, or Obama, or whatever. That is the claim by some we are dealing with in this thread. People, even experts, screw up and commit professional suicide every day. No one is above error and being wrong. We just do the best we can and hope for the best; That goes for Presidents, experts, and Joe Blow down the street.
Karoli
Hard to know what we should really be concerned with and what’s ballyhooed into a big traffic driver these days, since everything is presented in a shrill tone with very little explanation, just lots of shouting and hyperbole.
I guess I need a break too, or maybe just the opportunity for a long primal scream.
madmatt
I want to thank everybody who chose to “educate” me about how govt grants and research works. I know less about that than I do about how to mount a PR campaign.
Most of you chose to say that you’ve worked for the govt. and aren’t bought and paid for. Good point, how many of you were the face of a NATIONAL CAMPAIGN regarding your research? I’ve read some of you blogs, most of you do a cute little (By the way I worked for so and so on this or that). Fair enough, a glimpse at what started your research. Gruber on the other hand was put out as pure unbiased science with no mention of nearly a million dollars in grants. His research may not be impacted, but its only fair that he mentions the money…and maybe how he prevents that money from influencing his opinion!
And to the guy who compared me to a climate denier…bite me, what kind of scientist who has seen how climatoligists were treated WOULDN”T go out of his way to be transparent?
Osceola
@madmatt
“Gruber on the other hand was put out as pure unbiased science with no mention of nearly a million dollars in grants.”
Yes, he was. And no: Consulting contract, not grant. There is a world of difference despite HHS being the source of his current research grant and his current rather infamous contract. A consultant borrows your watch and tells you what time it is. A scientist supported by a research grant has convinced his peers that he is engaged some kind of legitimate research for which they have provided him with financial support.
“…what kind of scientist who has seen how climatologists were treated WOULDN’T go out of his way to be transparent?”
Perhaps one with something to hide. And that is all I have been trying to get across. There is no public reason to doubt that Gruber is an honest health care economist. But the fact that the White House paid him several hundred thousand dollars for an analysis of HCR and then cited that work as independent evidence for the validity of their proposal is not honest. And no one should believe it to be so absent truly independent confirmation. His “authority” as an MIT health economist is not enough given this history.