During the Soviet era, “samizdat” referred to the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state. Since official news sources were little more than communist government propaganda, samizdat was often the only source of truthful reporting. In “Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of Failed Presidency,” Jack Cashill tells the story of how an American samizdat of bloggers, online journals, and citizen journalists challenged the left – and, occasionally, the more “respectable” right – for control of the Obama narrative. In this excerpt Cashill tells the story of unlikely samizdat contributor Rich Weinstein and his role in exposing the scandal underlying Obamacare.
Barack Obama was not alone in thinking his administration was uniquely unblemished. Prominent media gatekeepers had been encouraging him to think along these lines for years. In 2014, New Yorker editor and Obama biographer David Remnick thought it a “huge” achievement that “there’s been no scandal, major scandal, in this administration, which is a rare thing in an administration.” In 2016, New York Times columnist David Brooks insisted the Obama administration was not just scandal free, but “remarkably scandal-free.”
The saying goes that a scandal is not a scandal until the New York Times calls it a “scandal” on the front page, and by that definition, yes, the Obama administration was scandal free. By any sane definition, however, the Obama administration was awash in scandal.
Just on its own, the mischief surrounding the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – also known as “Obamacare” – puts Obama in the Harding-Grant strata of scandal-plagued presidencies.
Again, the major media contributed little, if anything, to uncovering the fundamental corruption at the heart of Obamacare. As was normative during the Obama years, the conservative media did almost all the digging.
Among those who deserve credit is one unsung citizen journalist, a new recruit to the ranks of the samizdat. In the age of informational overload, this fellow showed how routinely big-name journalists overlooked the information that mattered.
Before the samizdat discovered him, Rich Weinstein dwelt in the peaceful anonymity of the everyday suburbanite. An unassuming, middle-aged investment adviser from metro Philadelphia, Weinstein had no aspirations to make waves, let alone make news, at least not before he received that fateful email from his insurance company.
The year was 2013, and the message was simple: his health care plan was not ACA compliant. In a June 2009 speech introducing the Affordable Care Act, Obama assured Weinstein and his fellow citizens, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
Obama made this claim, or a variation of the same, no fewer than thirty times during the months that followed, and he did so every time without equivocation. The lack of qualifiers convinced Weinstein that Obama had to be telling the truth.
“I believed him,” said Weinstein. When Weinstein learned he could keep neither his doctor nor his health plan, and that his insurance premiums were about to double, he began his own personal probe into the mischief-makers behind Obamacare.
Had he a mind to, the average fifth grader could have done what Weinstein did. There was nothing complicated about his search. He identified several of the reputed Obamacare “architects” through Google and found their video presentations on YouTube.
A consultant with the Dickensian name “Jonathan Gruber” intrigued Weinstein more than the others. An MIT professor of economics, Gruber had also helped design “Romneycare,” the Massachusetts health plan implemented while Mitt Romney was governor.
What struck Weinstein about Gruber were his ship-sinking lips. On one occasion, for instance, Gruber publicly admitted his fear Romney could become president, a rash comment for a guy who had made his reputation on Romney’s back.
Gruber, Weinstein soon came to appreciate, was much more candid than his client in the White House would have liked. Weinstein traces the day of discovery to November 2, 2014, his wedding anniversary. The video recorded an October 2013 panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania.
Said Gruber of the Affordable Care Act, “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”
After some explanatory remarks, Gruber sawed the rest of the limb out from under himself. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he told his audience. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
Weinstein sent the video link to activist Phil Kerpen, who posted it on his American Commitment website on November 7. While the video slowly gained traction, Weinstein reached out on the morning of November 9 to his “first real reporter,” veteran New York Times health correspondent Robert Pear. Weinstein was hopeful. He met Pear a few weeks earlier at a Cato Institute conference in Washington, and Pear had written about Gruber’s health care exchange comments just a few days prior.
“Thought you’d be interested in this,” Weinstein wrote in his email to Pear. “If this isn’t a complete slap in the face of the American voter, nothing is. He calls the American voter ‘stupid’ and explains how lack of transparency get [sic] the ACA passed. This video should be seen by EVERY AMERICAN.” Weinstein included a link to the video.
“Would you happen to know the time and place of the panel discussion?” Pear responded. Weinstein filled in the details, and Pear signed off with a simple, “Thank you.” And that was the last he heard from Pear. “Every American” may have needed to see this video, but the Times would not help them find it. The samizdat assumed that burden. Indeed, by November 12, “Gruber” had become a household word.
Forced to address the growing controversy, the White House gave Gruber the Bill Ayers “guy-in-the-neighborhood” brush-off. “The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” said Obama when asked. Gruber’s title was irrelevant.
The Obama administration paid Gruber, the acknowledged designer of the individual mandate, nearly $400,000 for a year’s work. As even the Washington Post acknowledged, Gruber met at least once with Obama in the Oval Office. The reason for the meeting was simple: “His advice was important at critical moments when the bill’s survival was in jeopardy.”
The Times finally weighed in on November 12. In a patronizing column on its “Upshot” site, economic correspondent Neil Irwin insisted Gruber’s comments were “completely commonplace.”
Wrote Irwin, “Legislators frequently game policy to fit the sometimes arbitrary conventions by which the Congressional Budget Office evaluates laws and the public debates them.” To put Times readers further at ease, Irwin assured them, “This kind of gamesmanship is very much a bipartisan affair.”
Working off Irwin’s interpretation, the firemen at Media Matters for America helped douse the flames with an article a day later headlined, “The Fraudulent Media Campaign To Scandalize Obamacare’s Passage.”
Scandal? What scandal? The Obama administration deceived the American public at every turn to create a monstrously confusing program, rife with fraud, that did not work and whose rollout was an admitted fiasco. None of this moved the Times to utter the S-word.
To put Obamacare in its proper perspective, three of Obama’s more prominent speechwriters – David Litt, Jon Favreau, and Jon Lovett – shared their feelings in May 2016 with the not yet disgraced Charlie Rose.
Although something of a comedy writer, Lovett told Rose he was “most proud” of his more serious speeches, particularly those on health care and economics. At this point, Favreau interjected, “Lovett wrote the line about, ‘If you like your insurance, you can keep it.’”
Lovett shot back in faux outrage, “How dare you!” They all laughed, Rose included. Lovett, by the way, was twenty-six years old when he conceived the “if you like your doctor” flimflam. In 2016, he and his pals were still young enough to see the hilarity in Politifact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year.”
Perhaps if they had to dig into their kids’ college funds to pay doubled health care premiums as Weinstein did, they might not have found Obamacare all that amusing.
Jack Cashill’s “Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of Failed Presidency” is available in hardcover and e-book form.
