Obama’s very Own Armstrong Williams
UPDATED WITH NECESSARY EDITS:
It may be a little early to start putting up youtube clips of Dave Chapelle as Black Bush, but check out this trip down memory lane:
The Education Department paid commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to help promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law on the air, an arrangement that Williams acknowledged yesterday involved “bad judgment” on his part.
In taking the money, funneled through the Ketchum Inc. public relations firm, Williams produced and aired a commercial on his syndicated television and radio shows featuring Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, touted Bush’s education policy, and urged other programs to interview Paige. He did not disclose the contract when talking about the law during cable television appearances or writing about it in his newspaper column.
Congressional Democrats immediately accused the administration of trying to bribe journalists. Williams’s newspaper syndicate, Tribune Media Services, yesterday canceled his column. And one television network dropped his program pending an investigation.
Everyone was very upset about Armstrong Williams, because he had basically been acting like a neutral expert, when really he was a paid shill.
So today, I am wondering when those same Democrats who were angry about Armstrong Williams will have anything to say about Jonathan Gruber’s interesting undisclosed contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services:
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 health reform proposal.”
He is one source for the claim that the excise tax will result in raises for workers (though his underlying study is in-apt to the excise tax question). He is the basis for the argument that the Senate bill reduces families’ risk–even if it remains totally unaffordable. Even Politico stenographer Mike Allen points to Gruber’s research.
But none of the references to Gruber I’ve seen have revealed that Gruber has a $297,600 contract with HHS to produce “a technical memorandum on the estimated changes in health insurance coverage and associated costs and impacts to the government under alternative specifications of health system reform. The requirement includes developing estimates of various health reform proposals on health insurance coverage and cost. The alternative specifications to be considered will be derived from the President’s health reform proposal.”
Oh, did I say $297,600? I meant $392,600.
Marcy Wheeler asks rehtorically if Gruber’s defense:
“Moreover, at no time have I publicly advocated a position that I did not firmly believe – indeed, I have been completely consistent with my academic track record”
..is substantively different from Armstrong Williams’, so I looked up what Bush’s shill had to say when he got caught:
Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but “I wanted to do it because it’s something I believe in.”
.
Changey hopefulness, or new boss-old boss? You tell me.
Comment from Bill Hangley: “This is largely on Gruber, tho’, not Obama’s people – there’s nothing wrong with DHS giving people money to help develop policy, and unlike Armstrong Williams, he wasn’t being paid explicitly to promote the policy in op-eds etc. But he absolutely should have disclosed his payments in any op-eds, and O’s people should have told him to, precisely to avoid this kind of stupidity.”
Duly noted. Although as the resident expert, Gruber should have disclosed he was a paid consultant. that opens the administration up to all sorts of charges about transparency.
