Ben Smith’s latest on Jonathan Gruber’s disclosure problems makes a very salient point – while disclosure would be expected in cases of traditional media mentions of Gruber, in the case of the New England Journal of Medicine, they have a formal process for disclosure

On Monday, January 11. Bush/Gore 2000 adversaries David Boies and Ted Olson will team up for what is sure to be both a dramatic and historic challenge to California’s Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger. But it won’t be televised live. So just as we were with the Scooter Libby trial, FDL will be there.

We’re going to be sending Marcy Wheeler and David Dayen to San Francisco to cover the trial along with Teddy “San Fran” Partridge (and perhaps a few surprise guests).

Please donate $1 a day to help FDL cover the Prop 8 trial… and beyond.

TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky has launched an investigation into allegations that Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner ordered AIG to make material misstatements on their financial reports filed with the government. Barofsky’s the perfect guy for the job — will something come of this?

21% of Massachusetts residents forgo necessary medical care because it is not affordable.

For months, I have wondered why Gruber was committing what I considered economic malpractice with his untruthful statements. I previously thought that he was just a guy who enjoyed the spotlight and was prone to exaggeration. Having recently found out that he received close to $400,000 from single source contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services to study the effect of the “President’s health care proposal,” I’m no longer as curious about his behavior.

So, nine months after he first gets a contract with HHS, he starts disclosing the relationship, and only to the organization that can totally discredit him professionally, not to those that will more directly affect the health care debate? Gruber was first put under contract in March of last year–$95,000 to promote “the President’s” plan–and the received another $297,600 in June. Why no disclosure then? And why–after he decided he ought to start disclosing this stuff–did he not disclose it in a December 28 op-ed in the WaPo?

Even assuming that Gruber is the only one in the world who can run these simulations, don’t you think it’s rather, um, dubious that the guy evaluating the heath care reform–for $300,000–is also the package’s single biggest champion?

Seems like a good idea to me. To help reinvigorate the local banking sector, economist Robert Johnson, columnist Arianna Huffington and filmmaker Eugene Jarecki recently hatched a new proposal that allows anyone with a bank account to channel their anger over the Wall Street bailout. Watch this video by Jarecki, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info to [...]

Sure the economy still stinks, but American business is still capable to giving you what you never thought you needed — and you’d be right.

Bruce Springsteen — Thunder Road, Barcelona, Spain, in 2002.