Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Did Obama Violate Federal Campaign Laws in Awarding CGI the Obamacare Website Contract?
Late last week several media sources reported that First Lady Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is a senior executive at CGI Federal, the company that built Obamacare website. The facts : 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. CGI Federal is the US arm of a Canadian company. Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. Townes-Whitley is a former policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. George Schindler, the president for the US and Canada of the Canadian-based CGI Group, CGI Federal’s parent company, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after CGI was granted the Obamacare website contract. The Washington Examiner reported in early October that 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 technical services in contracts up to $1 billion to the federal government, and that technicality was used by HHS to justify the award. A CGI senior vice president testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but would not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered. Construction of the disastrous website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of Health and Human Services, whose director testified before Congress on Tuesday, apologizing for the faulty website. CGI has not yet made any statement for the record or otherwise. ~~~~~ Those were the facts as we knew them over the weekend. But today, further disclosures surfaced concerning Townes-Whitley's visits to the White House several times for both personal and professional reasons. She visited the White House complex four times earlier this year to meet with administration officials in her role as vice president for CGI Federal, which secured the $678 million NO-BID contract to build the Obamacare exchange web portal. Townes-Whitley and her husband, John Whitley, who works as an engineer for CBS News, also attended a White House Christmas gathering together in 2010, posing for photos with the President and First Lady. White House visitors log records show that three of the afternoon meetings, held in the Old Executive Office Building, were scheduled in advance, and one, on Friday, April 26, was not. Three of the meetings were held on Friday and one on Saturday. The records show Townes-Whitley was alone in her visits. The first meeting was held on January 18, when she met with Danny Werfel, a principal deputy commissioner on the Affordable Care Act, who was named acting director of the IRS in May. White House records for that day show Townes-Whitley arrived at the White House at 1:31 p.m. and left at 3:23 p.m. She visited again on April 26, arriving at 3:43 p.m. and leaving at 4:27 p.m., meeting with Jonathan McBride, who was at the time special assistant to the President and deputy director of the presidential personnel office. McBride was promoted in July to director of the presidential personnel office. Townes-Whitley met again with McBride on June 1, a Saturday, for about five hours, leaving the White House at around 7 p.m. On Friday, June 28, Townes-Whitley met with John McNaught, an economics staff assistant. The White House logs do not indicate the reason for the visits. Townes-Whitley joined CGI in May 2010, less than two months after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. She serves as the head of the Civilian Agency Programs Business Unit for CGI Federal, according to a biography published on the CGI website. The unit serves 22 federal civilian agencies in the US and 34 other countries. A CGI executive testified before an angry congressional committee last week about the website's significant technical problems, which have caused registration delays for consumers seeking health insurance from federal exchanges. The White House has promised that the site will be fully functional by the end of November, but Congress members want a pause in the registration deadline until repairs are complete. Prior to her work at CGI, Toni Townes-Whitley worked at Unisys Corp. as a vice president for the global public sector, system integration, and consulting. She also is a former Peace Corps volunteer in central Africa, serving for three years from 1986 to 1989. According to Federal Election Commission records, Toni Townes-Whitley gave $500 in 2011 and 2012 to Obama's re-election campaign, and another $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund. A story published by the Daily Caller on Monday said that while at Princeton, Michelle Obama and Townes-Whitley were both active in two Princeton University groups - the Organization of Black Unity and the Third World Center. They both now belong to the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. Michelle Obama served on the governing board of the Third World Center and was active in the Organization of Black Unity, according to a 2008 Boston Globe article. "Although [Michelle] Obama had friends who were both black and white, her social world revolved around several of the black organizations on campus, as it did for many other black students," the Globe reported. "Obama was a member of the Organization of Black Unity, a primary resource for black students on campus, which arranged speakers and programs." ~~~~~ Despite documented CGI problems with other projects, the company has been awarded numerous government contracts from other federal departments. In April, CGI Federal received a five-year contract worth $11 billion from the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard for Technical Acquisition and Business Support Services (TABSS), according to Washington Executive magazine. CGI Federal is also assisting the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the distributing of $1.7 billion relief aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, the Daily Caller reported. In 2012, the company won contracts worth $15 million with the Environmental Protection Agency and a $900 million contract with the US Agency for International Development to design and operate its IT security operations. ~~~~~ Dear readers, no-bid contracts were condemned by President Obama in 2009 as "wasteful" and "inefficient." He suggested limiting them to small contracts of less than $250,000. But, Michelle Obama's friend received a no-bid contract for $600 million. So far, there have been no revelations firmly establishing impropriety, but the entire affair has the odor of crony-capitalism, as Obama used to call deals between banks and the US Treasury. IF there were quid-pro-quo's involved through which Barack Obama received political contributions and favors, either past or future, in return for telling Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to make the CGI award - that would be a federal campaign law violation, and it could be a criminal in nature. And that would be an inpeachable offense. Stay tuned.
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In politics there us an old saying ..." Follow the Money Trail" well we don't need a situated computerized system designed CGI to follow this money trail.
ReplyDeleteIt leads directly from the Upstairs at the White House to the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' s office at HHS. And from there to the waiting hands of CGI Federal
" He could have been more directly", "I think we all misunderstood what he was saying",He's not a hands on administrator", "lie us a strong word", "why should he lie about his own program", he was possibly lied to by his administrators,", etc, etc are the statements that I have heard all day long from the rats leaving the sinking Obama ship.
ReplyDeleteWhy us it so difficult to think that street smart, democratic neighborhood organizer would find it so difficult to lie to the citizens of the USA.
Is this what also brought down "Taminy Hall"???
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me that IF the Obama used false information in getting the ACA passed and IF they have been lying to the American public all along about keeping their plan or their favorite doctor, and IF the violated campaign contribution laws when the contract for the ACA web site was awarded to a "crony political contributor" and not awarded via the open bid system, and IF all or any part of this is factual which I believe it all to be) then ...
ReplyDeleteis there a possibility of going back to the SCt. (SCOUSA) and have the constitutional legality re-heard and the entire ADA overturned,.
Or do are we just expected to turn our heads to the lies and deceit of this administration one more time? After all Obama may be the first African-American president but he is still bound by the Constitution just as the preceding 42 presidents were.
If you want to play in the big leagues, you play by the rules established for everyone at the time you take office.
If and it is a mighty big if the ACA or Obamacare is overturned somehow there looms a very large problem for very many people … Florida Blue cancelled policies for 300,000 Floridians. Kaiser Permanente dropped 160,000 individual plan holders in California, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina mailed out 160,000 cancellation notices. It’s happening nearly everywhere. People were promised they could keep their health insurance plan. That was a lie. They were duped and dropped.
ReplyDeleteSo now they are without health care the exact opposite of what Obama was setting out to do – “have every citizen covered under some form of health insurance” – or was that what he was really all about.
The liar is none other than the president of the United States. On June 15, 2009, President Obama told a town hall meeting that, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise … 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.”
Let’s remember he and his administrators and supporters have done nothing but LIE to us from day one.
The fine print in his health law proves that he never intended to keep that promise.
Sec. 1251(a) (1) of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) says that no one can be required to give up a plan in effect on March 23, 2010, when the law was passed. Those plans are “grandfathered.” But following that guarantee is a list of costly requirements that made it difficult for insurers to keep offering your plan.
The rule makers knew that they were turning the president’s promise into a flimflam. According to the Federal Register, they estimated that up to 69 percent of individual plans and 89 percent of small group plans would be cancelled by the end of 2013 as a result of their rules.
Honest, believing Americans of all ages, color, creed have been lied to and “positioned’ by the President Obama into a position of needing a federal health care program they didn’t need, understand or in the end want.
IMPEACHMENT? Yes sir we should
We all do know that besides the loss of insurance coverage. The enactment of Obamacare has caused hundred of thousands of workers to have their hours seriously cut, lost jobs.
ReplyDeleteNone of this will come back to these specific workers probably. New workers maybe.
This is NO accident folks, not at all. Every step appears to orchestrated.