Greetings from the North American International Auto Show. As I explained last week, I’m going to have a number of discussions about your taxpayer owned car company–GM–today. But the big news of the morning is that Ford won both the North American car and truck of the year, with the Fusion Hybrid and the Transit [...]

A number of people have pointed to this Krugman post, in which he seemingly agrees with the excise tax apologists. I think that states his position too strongly. What Krugman does is argue is that it makes sense to limit the tax exclusion for benefits. At the same time, he admits there are problems with [...]

Earlier today, DDay pointed out that the NYT, after issuing a fairly pointed correction revealing Jonathan Gruber’s ties with the Administration, then used a quote from Gruber without disclosing his role in the Administration. DDay was focusing on the NYT’s actions. But I would like to focus on the quote. Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute [...]

It is here. Yep Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday was yesterday, and that means we are all getting old. So, in honor of The King, lets all have Fools Gold sandwich, a pint or two of beer and watch some football. Football you say? That’s right, Wildcard Weekend is here and that means some of the [...]

One of the biggest puzzles in Jonathan Gruber’s explanation for why he hasn’t been disclosing his $400,000 HHS contract as he has led the campaign to support the bill is timing. By his own admission, he revealed the contract for a disclosure form associated with a December New England Journal of Medicine article. That form [...]

After I learned that Jonathan Gruber–one of the biggest pitchmen for the Administration’s health care reform–had also gotten a significant sole source contract from HHS, I wanted to get a sense of how sound the justification for the sole source on it was. I asked Dr. Uwe Reinhardt about the contract. Reinhardt, a professor at [...]

I was intrigued to see Gruber link–in his response to Ben Smith–to his May 2009 analysis of how to measure affordability for a national healthcare reform plan. After all, I’ve been debating with people who love to cite Gruber on affordability for months, and I’ve never seen them cite it. Now there are several reasons [...]

Ben Smith got a fairly long response from Jonathan Gruber on why he hasn’t disclosed the $392,600 contracts he has had with HHS during the period when he was the chief spokesperson for the Administration’s health care plan. He lays out his qualifications and points to some studies addressing the questions I have asked (I’ll [...]

MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber has been the go-to source that all the health care bill apologists point to to defend otherwise dubious arguments.  But he has consistently failed to disclose that he has had a sole-source contract with the Department of Health and Human Services since June 19, 2009 to consult on the “President’s [...]

The White House has released its summary of the intelligence review on the Christmas Crotch Bomber (and here is Obama’s order for corrective action). The big take-away is: The US Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AGAP attack. But, the summary says, the Watch List [...]