HHS Brings in Verizon to Help HealthCare.gov

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak, APThe international telecommunications company Verizon has been tasked with helping the government fix the federal health exchange, USA TODAY has learned.

An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.

HHS office said Sunday the department would reach outside its government contractors to civilian companies that might be able to solve HealthCare.gov’s problems more quickly.

“Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov,” an HHS blog post said on Sunday.

HHS did not respond to a request for confirmation about Verizon. The company also declined to comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Homeland Security Spends $80 Million On Armed Guards for “Civil Disturbances”

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsThe Department of Homeland Security is set to spend $80 million dollars on hiring a raft of armed guards to protect IRS and other government buildings in upstate New York during “public demonstrations” and “civil disturbances,” once again prompting concerns that the federal agency is preparing for food stamp riots, anti-tax demonstrations or some other form of domestic unrest.

According to a solicitation posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Federal Protective Service (a unit of the DHS), is looking for a contractor to supply armed Protective Security Officers (PSOs) to guard a variety of government buildings in the region, including “IRS buildings(s) during tax season.”

“PSOs will be required to be armed and some posts may require screening of visitors using x-rays/magnetometers,” states the solicitation.

The armed guards will be used during “public demonstration(s),” as well as “civil disturbances, or other unanticipated events on an as-needed basis.”

“This acquisition is for approximately 380,000 hours of Basic Service, 20,000 hours of Temporary Additional Services and 3,500 hours of Emergency Security Services per year. Currently, there are an estimated 205 guards protecting approximately 95 posts at over 55 buildings. The estimated value of this Contract is between $75M and $80M,” states the solicitation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawmakers Making Thousands, Funding Lavish Trips from ‘Slush Funds’

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERSMembers of Congress are routinely using campaign committees as a personal “slush fund,” according to a detailed report by “60 Minutes.”

The report found that lawmakers are using what’s known as “Leadership PACs” to fund trips to high-ranking golf courses, NFL games and other destinations – and are even personally making money off the PACs by lending to them and charging steep interest.

In the most egregious examples, CBS’ “60 Minutes” found that Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., loaned her PAC $150,000 – and made $228,000 over a 12-year period by charging 18 percent interest.

Napolitano admitted to doing it, and an ethics watchdog said the practice is technically legal. In fact, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found at least 15 cases where politicians were making loans to their campaign funds.

Napolitano, though, conceded she wasn’t giving campaign donors the details of her personal loan. “Well, you don’t go out and publicize that, but they know that I had a campaign debt,” she said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Shock Claim: HealthCare.Gov Needs 5,000,000 Lines of Code Rewritten to Work Properly

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Liberty News This is getting uglier by the day. Not only did Government waste more money than necessary to develop the first iPhone in creating the goliath lemon website HealthCare.Gov, it appears they’re about to spend yet another round of massive money trying to fix it. In fact, according to the New York Times, up to 5,000,000 lines of code need to be rewritten.

In interviews, experts said the technological problems of the site went far beyond the roadblocks to creating accounts that continue to prevent legions of users from even registering. Indeed, several said, the login problems, though vexing to consumers, may be the easiest to solve. One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.

“The account creation and registration problems are masking the problems that will happen later,” said one person involved in the repair effort…

Government at work.

Read more from this story HERE.

Zombie Republicans

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The American Spectator Staggering, without direction, not quite dead and in search of brains, the Republican Party is giving a really good performance as the Zombie Party. According to the media’s current narrative, it has to rid itself of the Tea Party’s influence or die.

That narrative tells us the state of the Party is entirely the fault of conservatives, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in particular. They — with Cruz’s filibuster — led Republicans into a battle they couldn’t win. If only the House Republicans had gone along with the strategy of the Republican Establishment, they’d have come out of the latest round of crises stronger than they’ve been since, well, we’re not sure when.

If conservatives had obeyed their betters, there would be a chicken in every driveway and a piece of Ted Cruz in every pot. Or at least that’s what the media narrative — propelled by the Republican establishment and the Dems — would have us believe.

There are a few problems with that narrative. To dissect it, we need to be energetic in a way we can only feel if we’re really angry. Anger and frustration are permitted here. Whining is not. And context is important.

The context of the current round of crises — and the temporary solution to them — is that President Obama has never yet been compelled to compromise. Not on Obamacare, not on tax rates, not on individual budgetary items or overall spending. Heaven forbid that any government spending be limited. On none of those things will Obama bargain. He simply won’t negotiate any compromise, so Republicans have spent the past two years trying to find a way to force him to negotiate with them.

Read more from this story HERE.

Good News from Washington — UN Arms Trade Treaty DOA in US Senate

/3 Comments/in /by

Photo Credit: REUTERSSens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) released a bipartisan letter this week signed by 48 of their colleagues pledging to oppose the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which Secretary of State John Kerry signed on behalf of the United States in September.

This letter makes it clear that the Senate will not ratify the treaty in the foreseeable future.

Since a treaty requires a two-thirds majority to win the Senate’s advice and consent, the ATT is at least 17 votes short of the 67 votes needed to secure ratification. And if anything, the Moran-Manchin letter understates Senate opposition to the treaty.

Eleven other senators, all Democrats, supported either an amendmentopposing the ATT offered earlier this year by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a concurrent resolution led earlier this year by Moran, a 2012 letter led by Moran or a 2011 letter led by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

Put it all together, and a total of 61 senators either have pledged to oppose the ATT or have publicly expressed skepticism about it. If it ever reaches the Senate, the ATT is more likely to be opposed by 67 senators than to find a two-thirds majority willing to support it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP While most of us took a relaxing break from work over the weekend, politicians did not. In fact, they were out en masse doing what they do best. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

First up, Marco Rubio.

Florida’s junior senator has a lot of making up to do with his base after becoming the face of scamnesty in the Senate. He went quiet after the bill went to the House, then began appearing again with Ted Cruz in the defund ObamaCare fight. He helped Cruz considerably during his filibuster and he voted the right way on both cloture and on the spending bill. His name was being mentioned again by conservative websites who had all but disowned him.

And then, he went and blew it.

On Fox News Sunday (of all places), Rubio endorsed Mitch “Benedict Arnold” McConnell in his primary against Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin. Guess Rubio’s perfectly fine with that almost 3 billion dollar bribe McConnell got to sign the deal that Rubio voted against.

Stupid is as Stupid does.

Read more from this story HERE.

French President Hollande Berates US Over Spying Claims

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: BBCFrench President Francois Hollande has expressed “deep disapproval” over claims the US National Security Agency secretly tapped phone calls in France.

In a phone conversation with US President Barack Obama, he said this was “unacceptable between friends and allies”, demanding an explanation.

The White House said the claims “raise legitimate questions”, seeking to ease French concerns.

The NSA has recently spied on 70.3m phone calls in France, it is claimed.

Officials, businesses and terror suspects are believed to have been tracked in just 30 days between 10 December last year and 8 January 2013.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scientists Issue Safety Warning over GM Food as Government Pushes for Public Acceptance of Controversial Crop

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: PAEighty-five scientists have joined forces to challenge the claims of biotech giants and the UK government that GM food is safe for humans.

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who has responsibility for food and farming, and the industry have embarked on a huge public relations exercise to win over a sceptical public to genetically modified food.

The campaign is built on an assurance that the food is safe to eat and could defeat a host of ills from malnutrition in the Third World to blindness in children.

GM supporters also insist crops are safe for the environment and to be used as animal feed.

However, these assurances have been questioned by the scientists, who warn there is a serious lack of independent research into the health effects of GM food.

Read more from this story HERE.

Poor Sleep Linked to Alzheimer’s in Study of Brain Scans

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: BSIP/UIG/Getty ImagesSleeping poorly or not getting enough rest may result in a type of brain abnormality associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a study showed.

Brain images of adults with an average age of 76 found that those who said they slept less or poorly had increased build-up of beta-amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, according to research published today in JAMA Neurology. None of those in the study had been diagnosed with the disease.

Though more studies are needed to determine whether poor sleep increases plaque or the plaque causes sleep troubles, the findings suggest another way people might be able to identify early changes that foreshadow Alzheimer’s. Research released at the Alzheimer’s meeting in July suggested that memory lapses may be one of the earliest discernible signs of the disease.

“This is part of a larger message that healthy sleep is an important contributor to health in general and especially to successfully aging,” said study author Adam Spira, an assistant professor in the Department of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, in an Oct. 18 telephone interview. “It may be an important component in preventing Alzheimer’s disease, but that remains to be seen.”

Read more from this story HERE.