Issa Demands Answers from Verizon, Google, Microsoft on Healthcare.gov

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent letters Tuesday to five tech companies asking if they are involved with the efforts to fix the faulty Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov.

Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) asked Verizon Enterprise Inc., Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Expedia if they were assisting the government in attempts to fix of the site.

According to reports, President Barack Obama has already called upon Verizon to help fix the online marketplace Healthcare.gov, a website that cost over $600 million to produce that has been plagued with glitches and technical problems since its launch on Oct. 1.

The administration announced a “tech surge,” a group of government and private sector computer experts, to assist with the website.  The team will include “veterans of top Silicon Valley companies,” said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

“The Obama Administration has announced it is ‘bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government’ to fix the seemingly endless problems with the healthcare exchange website, but has not provided details about what the problems are, who is being enlisted to solve them and how long the process is expected to take,” the committee said in a statement Wednesday.

Issa’s letters ask the tech giants to disclose any communication they have had with the administration regarding Healthcare.gov since Oct. 1.

Via: WFB

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Memo for Chairman Upton: Next Week's Hearings On The "It's Really Good" Obamacare Launch

The president's remarkable speech in the Rose Garden yesterday, the high point of which was his claim regarding Obamacare --"It's really good!"-- sets the stage for another MSM fail, because the president made several specific, verifiable claims that ought to be the subject of real, deep and sustained reporting over the next few days.

I had a lot of fun with the "It's really good!" exclamation by the president on yesterday show, mixing his remarks into a 1974 Pinto ad, and calling forth memories of New Coke, Rosanne Barr singing the Star Spangled banner, the launch of Microsoft's Zune, the premier of "Heaven's Gate," and other "It's really good" moments from the past thirty years and seeing #ItsReallyGood take off on Twitter as a result.

Mockery is easy, but second-order exploration of the president's claims is now the key job of all media, especially by those Manhattan-Beltway media elites who share responsibility for the president's election, for the catastrophe that is Obamacare, and for his re-election: Could you at least do your basic jobs now that your favorite president ever is re-installed and your favorite law ever is crushing the little folk?

Yesterday the president announced that a massive "tech surge" was underway, with volunteers from the private sector pouring forth in a sort of virtual Dunkirk to save the collapsing Healthcare.gov. From the White House transcript of yesterday's remarks:

We’ve got people working overtime, 24/7, to boost capacity and address the problems. Experts from some of America’s top private-sector tech companies who, by the way, have seen things like this happen before, they want it to work. They're reaching out. They're offering to send help. We’ve had some of the best IT talent in the entire country join the team. And we’re well into a “tech surge” to fix the problem. And we are confident that we will get all the problems fixed.

Via: Townhall

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Inaugural Sponsors Spent $160 Million Lobbying Government

It's a fool's game to take anything Obama says at face value. There is always a catch. For his second inaugural, he publicly congratulates himself for banning lobbyists from sponsoring the events. Of course, no such prohibition exists on the companies who hire the lobbyists. The companies who are trying to influence the government are welcome to participate, even if their hired guns are not. The corporations who are the biggest donors to the inauguration have spent $160 million lobbying government since Obama first took office. 

From a report by The Center for Public Integrity:

Chief among corporate inaugural donors: AT&T Inc., Microsoft Corp., energy giant Southern Co., biotechnology firm Genentech and health plan manager Centene Corp. Together, more than 300 registered lobbyists worked on the five companies’ behalf to influence legislation and government policy, according to their latest federal filings covering January through September.

Corporations hire lobbyists to get access to officials so they can advocate for their positions. It is the access that is the main reason to hire a lobbyist. To a large extent, lobbyists are simply the middlemen. Obama's ban on lobbyist donations simply cuts out the middleman, allows corporations better, more direct, access to officials and allows him to reap dollars from those most trying to influence his Administration.

For his first inauguration, in 2009, Obama banned contributions from corporations and limited individual donations to less than $50,000. Those limits have been wiped away for this year's event.  

Always a catch.

Via: Breitbart

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