Michelle Obama Went to School With Woman That Works at Company That Built ObamaCare Website
The faux scandal of today comes to us courtesy of The Daily Caller: "Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website."
The faux scandal of today comes to us courtesy of The Daily Caller: “Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website.”
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
Absent evidence that Mrs. Obama and Townes-Whitley are very close, I’m not sure why this is supposed to be scandalous. Princeton has a current undergraduate enrollment of 5336, roughly half of whom are female. Even if we assume high attrition, that means roughly 1000 people graduate Princeton every year, roughly 500 of whom are female. Given that it’s one of the most prestigious universities in the country, any large company will likely have Princeton grads among its executive ranks—particularly graduates from over a quarter century ago.
Oddly, the Caller buried a more interesting factoid:
George Schindler, the president for U.S. and Canada of the Canadian-based CGI Group, CGI Federal’s parent company, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after his company gained the Obamacare website contract.
As reported by the Washington Examiner in early October, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified this week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered.
Schindler donating money as a quid pro quo for receiving a lucrative no-bid contract would be interesting. Alas, clicking through the link we see it was a mere $1000.
Oh. My. Gawdz.
Run with it Breitbart.com
:))
BEGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!
(also, my my stepddaughter’s husband’s third cousin twice removed wrote code for the website. I gave Obama $250 in ’08 and $225 in ’12. Definitely corruption)
Not only is this a “scandal,” but it also explains why the healthcare.gov website sucks.
Doesn’t it?
In other news, John Malkovich –a notorious right-winger* — alleges that Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 94 because he was college roommates with then-Vice President Al Gore.
* True story!
Has anyone explained why, of the 16 companies qualified to bid on the job, it was awarded to this company with no other offers being considered? Especially since this company 1) was Canadian, and 2) had been fired by the Canadian government for screwing up a similar job?
Obviously Michelle Obama directed the contract, Jenos. Didn’t you read the article?
Let’s think this through.
Even if he had donated a lot of money, since the quoted text says he donated AFTER CGI got the contract, wouldn’t it more likely be protecting an asset, than quid pro quo?
I mean, one of the major themes of the election was repealing ‘Obamacare’. If your company was just awarded a multimillion dollar contract to build the healthcare website, wouldn’t you want to support the guy who actually wanted it built? (as opposed to the guy who promised to kill the whole program).
I can’t wait until The Daily Caller finds out that Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all worked and met together at a secure place in Washington DC to advance their agenda.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
No, but I doubt this company will enjoy the next no-bid contract.
Here’s a lesson about the no-bid contract complaint: It doesn’t work. Didn’t work with Dick Cheney and it won’t work with Obama.
Problem is, a “no-bid contract” by itself isn’t exactly a bad thing. Some companies have decades long relationships with the government. Lockheed Martin would be none-too-pleased if they had to bid on every contract they sign. Not only that, but the bidding process is time-consuming and costly, and doesn’t always result in “good work.”
Besides, in this case, it’s not the bidding process (or lack thereof) that’s scandalous. It’s that the contractor didn’t do the job they were contracted to do. Bid or no bid, that’s the problem.
Pretty good contract for a $1000 donation.
Of course the people who care about this never cared about Cheney and Halliburton and Iraq.
This is getting tiring.
@James Pearce: Interesting observation, but these guys ain’t Lockheed-Martin. In fact, they’re kind of an anti L-M, because they have a track record of Epic Fail in this field.
Which raises the question: if they don’t have a lengthy record of success and a long-standing successful relationship with the government, why were they given the deal?
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Has anyone explained why, of the 16 companies qualified to bid on the job, it was awarded to this company with no other offers being considered? Especially since this company 1) was Canadian, and 2) had been fired by the Canadian government for screwing up a similar job? ”
Shorter Jenos: “I really want to pretend there’s a scandal here, but I’ve seen nothing on Newsmax or Breitbart, and I’m way too lazy to try to make up anything on my own, so help me out here!”
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Which raises the question: if they don’t have a lengthy record of success and a long-standing successful relationship with the government, why were they given the deal? ”
And of course, part two — when even Googling is far too much effort, simply “raise the question.”
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Well…you’re assuming they don’t have a lengthy record of success or a long-standing successful relationship with the government.
From their website:
All this company does is federal contracts and they’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve been alive.
Here are some of the other agencies they work with:
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Department of Energy
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
o Air Force Materiel Command
o Army Forces Command
o Army Materiel Command
o Army Reserve Command
o Defense Information Systems Agency
o Joint Strike Fighter Program Office
o Naval Air Systems Command
o Naval Sea Systems Command
o Office of the Secretary of Defense
o Space & Naval Warfare Systems
Command
o U.S. Marine Corps
o U.S. Transportation Command
Department of Health & Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Housing & Urban
Development
Department of the Interior
Department of Justice
Department of Labor
Department of State
Department of Treasury
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
General Services Administration
NASA
Office of Personnel Management
U.S. Agency for International
Development
U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Federal Judiciary System
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
Asking why this company got the contract is the wrong question. Ask why they didn’t fulfill it.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Ask yourself why Boeing once got the contract to manage the US strategic petroleum reserve.
Because the giant aircraft manufacturer with a history of procuring government contracts has extensive experience in East Texas salt dome management?
Normally, I quip that no one could be that ignorant. In this case, not so much…
Wow… all these responses, and not a single explanation of why the Obamacare web site has been such a total clusterfark. In fact, to date, Obamacare has cost more people their coverage than people it’s provided coverage for.
My god, who could have predicted that it would be such a fiasco?
Oh, yeah… a whole bunch of us, that’s who.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Oh, yeah… a whole bunch of us, that’s who. ”
Please go ahead and point to any place in which you predicted that the website would be a problem. We’ll wait.
@wr: “It would be irresponsible *not* to speculate!”
@wr:
Question is, is there anything that he didn’t predict would be a fiasco?
“The faux scandal of today comes to us courtesy of The Daily Caller: “Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website.”
LOL, I agree – Much ado about nothing. Even though this sounds like one of those faux scandals you used to hive up when Gov Palin was the subject. I guess in your mind, whether it is a faux scandal depends on whether a GOP politician is the target.
To be sure, pesudo scandals & unworkable web sites are the least of Obama’s problems. His big problem is that the ecosystem supporting ObamaCare is not supportable or workable. Regrettably, Obama was able to skate past 2 elections as a sham wow sheister, hiving up soothing babble for the masses – egged on by far left platforms like this site. Now, even die hard liberals such as Ezra Klein, Margaret Carlson, The CBS Morning Show crew including Jan Crawford & Norah Odonell, etc etc etc are revealing this ObamaCare scam for what it is and are jumping ship.
Just wait until we get to early Jan and they find out that premium paying enrollees is still barely a relative trickle (non counting tge Medicaid free lunch signups); There’s going to be a LOT from Senators that the reported 10 jumping ship. With many states showing ZERO ENROLLMENTS to date, they better pick up the pace: http://www.enrollmaven.com/
You & the far left cranks that hang out here and jump on people for having another POV will be facing your commupance soon enough for helping to foist this slick talking on the rest of the country. Get the poporn ready. This ObamaCare implosion will be one for the ages.
@Smooth Jazz:
I do hope you at least got paid to write that.
@James Pearce: “Asking why this company got the contract is the wrong question. Ask why they didn’t fulfill it.”
No, I don’t think that question is adequately answered. CGI had received only “fair” ratings on past work when the government rejected their offer, and from one of the links above:
That the process for getting a contract without competitive bidding is normal does not answer the question of how DHS or CMS exercised the discretion to award the contract.
Cruz is Canadian – what’s the problem?
“I do hope you at least got paid to write that.”
Nobody paid me to write anything. I’m just VERY upset that this used car salesman with the slick tongue bamboozled so many Americans who bought all the sweet talk. Now millions of our citizens, leaving normal & happy lives with their health insurance they’ve come to know and love, are about to be throw into a maelstrom of policy cancellations and navigating a web site whose user experience is like going to the dentist for a root canal for a replacement policy that is double/triple their prior policy – assuming they are even able to get that far on the portal.
I would like to know what would have happened to the 2012 Presidential election results if millions of perfectly fine insurance policies were cancelled in September 2012 due to Obama’s train wreck and his “You can keep your plan” lie was revealed as a resounding fraud as we now know. All that gobblegook about unskewed polls, and Romney’s houses would have run up against the reality of an incumbent President who bamboozled us by ramming an unworkable health care train wreck down our throats.
I do really feel bad reading & seeing on the news about all those people who have been hung out to dry by a cancelled health care plan and who can’t afford the ObamaCare replacement. This could really turn into a human tragedy of epic proportions. Meanwhile, Obama & Michelle can waltz back to Chicago when their time is up with their gold plated plan, while the landscape is littered with the carcasses of the masses who lost their insurance and are at risk of financial ruin if they are hit with a catastrphic medical emergency because of him.
A human tragedy indeed!!
@ Kenny
What exactly have you been smoking? Inquiring minds want to know…
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Wow, making a factual claim with a link that contains NO LINK TO VERIFIED FACTUAL DATA… Just another empty claim.
BTW, since your are too lazy to even try and find the basis of your latest talking point, here’s some help. This claim is coming from a Forbes.com blogger who is attempting to calculate numbers based on news reports, versus actual access to the figures. He even admits in the article it’s an unscientific calculation (the article is filled with phrases like “my best guess“) – http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/24/more-americans-have-had-their-insurance-canceled-under-obamacare-than-have-filed-an-exchange-account/
Unskewed polls anyone? We all remember how that turned out.
Yes, the website is hosed. It’s shocking really, nothing like this has ever happened before. Oh, wait…
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-medicare-part-d-obamacare
You know, I can’t help but wonder where all this right wing fury was when Medicare D prohibited the government from negotiating drug prices – a vast giveaway to big pharma that resulted in billions of dollars in profits for them.
It must be in the same black hole where anger over record deficits under Bush went.
It had been part of the failing CFIS firearms registry, and just last year, had failed in both Ontario and New Brunswick, this program affects everyone.
@Smooth Jazz: But Smoothie, I don’t see how you can blame Obama for anything when you told us that the country would be run first by President Palin and then by President Romney.
You mean you’ve never been right about anything? Okay, I’ll take your word on this…
Which aspect about Obama’s policies turned out to be correct.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Wow! All these responses to the actual topic at hand, and shockingly non one had taken the time to guess what false talking point you would copy and paste, and then preemptive lot answer it! Shocking!!
@ Jenos
Why not just post a link to the Daily Caller every day, and save yourself some effort?
@ Smooth
We could probably pass the hat and pay you not to write anything…
(My apologies for the previous typos. Typing on the subway is not easy.)
I always amazes me when the wealthy GOP get morons to believe lies and turn against programs which could save a life of a family member. BFD, someone who went to Michelle’s college is on the team. I guess well all forgot Cheney’s Hlliburton’s no bid contracts during the Iraq war which killed soldiers int he showers. Idiots.
@PD Shaw:
I submit that there was nothing untoward about offering CGI Federal the contract. I don’t know that for sure, of course, but I do know that the big scandal when it comes to healthcare.gov is that the website doesn’t work, not that CGI Federal got the contract.
There’s reason to question the next contract CGI Federal signs with HHS, but no reason to question this one.
This whole thing reminds me of a piece that Conor Friedersdorf wrote about the healthcare.gov privacy concerns:
Same thing here.
There is a substantive critique to be made about healthcare.gov. “CGI Federal got the contract…whut?!” is not it.
@Smooth Jazz: This:
is entirely believable after reading this:
I mean, “happy lives with their health insurance they’ve come to know and love?”
Not only does that string a Hallmark gloss over the pre-ACA status quo, it’s laughably ridiculous.
If you love your insurance plan so much, why are you going to healthcare.gov to shop for a new one? Makes no sense.
@anjin-san: I would contribute if he promised to go away (as well as post his present address so I could hunt him down if he didn’t)
I am curious as to why no other company was considered. That is an important and valid question that hasn’t been answered. Any answers that don’t involve ad hominem attacks calling the curious people conspiracy theorists? It looks like cronyism.
@anjin-san:
You keep referring to me and insisting I like Kenny, but as I’ve told you many times, the only product I like from Kenny Gorelick is his 1986 classic Album Duotones. And even that album I only like the 2 ballads on the product: “Don’t Make Me Wait” and “You Make Me Believe”, in part because they are fronted by 2 of my favorities lead singers from that era, former Tower of Power lead Lenny Williams and Claytoven Richardson.
My favorite artists include saxophonists Najee, Gerald Albright, Nelson Rangell, Andre ward and Shawn “Thunder” Wallace; Keyboardists Bobby Lyle & Alex Bugnon; Guitarists Norman Brown, Earl Klugh and the great George Benson; Bassist Wayman Tisdale, the late great NBA star; the British smooth jazz band Shakatak; 1970s balladeers Billy Paul & Major Harris; and songstresses Patti Austin,Jane Monheit, Natalie Cole and Karrin Allyson.
Tonight, I’m into nostalgia digging on 2 jazz & easy listening female giants who belong to the ages: Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan’s “The Face I Love” from her classic 1977 I Love Brazil compilation and Dinah Washington’s “I Remember April”.
@ “Smooth”
I will give you credit for pursuing good music, though I think you are for the most part listening to jazzy pop, not jazz. And admitting that you like anything by Kenny G, a charlatan who put out an album of himself playing over Louis Armstrong tunes, well, it will get you ridiculed.
Anyway, if you want Brazilian, why not go to Brazil and get some genuine MPB?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_YC_f-qbUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs8zt7XDiUo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhbA-yX2bZ8
@James Pearce: blame canadians? the scariest thing about this story is this guys teeth….can’t blame obamacare for that just yet!
a few more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS0FudINNEg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXj4UIx2SI0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmHTq39a-hA
Focusing on this is ridiculous.
There is more than enough controversy built into the fact that the company did a terrible job and the administration didn’t appear too keen on applying enough oversight to be sure the roll out would be a success verses the current clusterf*#k it’s turned out to be.
I doubt this gets fixed by the end of the year.
Obama in hindsight is probably thrilled that there was a government shutdown coinciding with the roll out-the media bends over backwards to give him kid glove treatment but this story is one they can’t and won’t ignore.
@Smooth Jazz: If this is a “far left” website you must think that Vlad Tepez was a nice man.
@Smooth Jazz: Why don’t you feel as upset about the people with “pre-existing conditions” who can’t get health insurance for love or money? Or the people who think they’re covered under health insurance but the health insurance company suddenly finds an excuse to yank their insurance because they’re actually having to use it? Or the cancer patients who have bumped up against their “lifetime limit” and have to quit halfway through their treatment?
I guess you don’t really worry if they end up dying, right? After all, Teh Free Market über alles and they should have prepared better, right?
@ Just Me
Why do you doubt it? Be specific.
Once again, intellectually-challenged right wing pundits feebly attempt to establish phantom causal relationships via a political “6 degrees of separation” rationalization — this time by associating the development of the Healthcare.gov website with a non-existent friendship between the FLOTUS and a (gasp!) fellow African-American female graduate from Princeton University.
And once again, these increasingly desperate propagandists will end up with egg on their collective faces as people recognize that there is no THERE there.
@labman57:
Explain this then:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=134031659989997&set=a.134031603323336.22440.100001494924603&type=3&theater
Never ceases to amaze how you Commies justify anything that your Master tells you to. I thank God every Day that im not a Slave like You.
Couldn’t this picture along w/ the fact of a no-bid contract at least give lip service to a possible “conflict of interest” by the Obamas.
@Jim:
I am a contracting officer in a Federal Agency (not HHS). The use of a multiple award IDIQ is considered a “competitive” procurement. If HHS did it right, the 16 “pre-cleared” vendors should have had a chance to propose on the RFP. There’s all sorts of ways to mess it up–maybe there was a poorly written statement of work, maybe they didn’t give the vendors enough time to write a proposal, or maybe vendor questions weren’t adequately answered. Or they could have done everything in the process perfectly and CGI didn’t perform.
If the project would have come to my desk, I doubt that I would have suggested the use of an IDIQ. Also, that’s a HUGE IDIQ to have $4B maximums. That makes me think these contracts were “catch alls” and were written with a very broad underlying statement of work so that they could be used for, well, anything remotely IT related. IDIQs are generally used for routine, repetitive purchasing. This project is the opposite of that. That’s probably why I wouldn’t have suggested the use of the IDIQ. But using an IDIQ isn’t necessarily wrong.
I would also suspect this project was given to the top contracting and program staff. Assuming the followed procurement rules, the blame lies with GCI. If they didn’t follow the rules to the letter, it is going to come out as I think they are going to get a heck of a lot of FOIA requests…
BTW, if you’d like to read the contracting regulations for multiple IDIQ ordering procedures they are in FAR 16.505(b) which can be found here: http://farsite.hill.af.mil/vffara.htm
@anjin-san:
Because much of what I am reading on the problems are bugs in the program.
I have it appears that they may need to start from scratch but even if they don’t they have to find the bugs and fix them. There are problems at all levels-getting registered, getting insurance, getting the correct information securely sent to the insurance etc. I am just not seeing enough time between now and the end of the year to find, fix and test.
There are only a couple of months to fix it and in order to be insured by Jan 1 you have to have completed the process by Dec.15. So there are only about 6 weeks to fix this.
The Federal exchange may want to look at some of the state exchanges that are working.
But right now it is a mess and it isn’t like the Oct 1 date was a surprise-they’ve had years to create and test these sites.
he didn’t bamboozle all Americans……speak for yourself. the jackass who is now calling himself the commander in chief never got my vote as i saw thru his phoniness, lies and basic b.s. from day 1. obama is satans minion. stear clear of the asshole and all u.s. citizens should band together and get this lying jerk out of office.