Obamacare Site Designer CGI Federal Executive Spent ‘Christmas with the Obamas’

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Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton, facebook.com/tonitwhitley
Michelle Obama’s relationship with Princeton classmate Toni McCall Townes-Whitley, whose company earned the no-bid contract to design the disastrous Healthcare.Gov Obamacare website, continued after the Obamas moved into the White House.

Townes-Whitley and her husband even enjoyed “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House in December 2010, according to a Facebook album created by Townes-Whitley.

Although neither Michelle Obama nor Townes-Whitley has discussed their relationship, the Christmas event took place just seven months after Townes-Whitley joined CGI Federal as a senior vice president.

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‘Extortion’: Holder Abuses Law to Enrich Former Employer, Target Republicans

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Photo Credit: AP

We are going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us. –President Barack Obama, October 2010.

The Obama Justice Department has increased Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement actions over 65% compared to the prior administration, a dramatic shift that stands to benefit Attorney General Eric Holder’s former law firm Covington & Burling—the firm that helped write the law and describes itself as “a leading voice” on FCPA enforcement and compliance. Several FCPA investigations by the Obama Justice Department have included companies headed by top Republican donors including Koch Industries, Las Vegas Sands, Inc., Walmart, News Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard.

Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-At-Large Peter Schweizer makes the stunning charges and lays out the evidence in his new book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. Schweizer appeared last week on 60 Minutes and Hannity after the New York Times published two articles on the book’s investigative findings.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was created in 1977 to ban American companies doing business overseas from bribing foreign officials. Executives found guilty of violating the law can face up to 20 years in prison. The law was written with the help of lawyers at Covington & Burling, the former law firm of Attorney General Eric Holder and former DOJ Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer.

On its website, the firm boasts, “Covington lawyers have a unique command of anti-corruption laws, in part due to our role in helping draft the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977.” The firm describes itself as “a leading voice in the private bar on US legislation and policy guidance relating to FCPA enforcement and compliance.” Breuer has since left DOJ and gone back through the revolving door to Covington where he makes nearly $4 million as vice chair of the firm. His duties, of course, include helping clients navigate “anti-corruption matters.”

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Reid: Rich Want to Pay More in Taxes (+video)

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Photo Credit: Townhall The rich don’t mind high taxes, in fact, they want to pay more, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) claimed during a radio interview with KNPR radio Thursday.

The host asked Reid if he would be willing to make concessions on Medicare and Social Security in a long-term budget deal. Not only did Reid instruct to “stop talking about that” and “get something else in your brain,” he also had these words of wisdom:

“…the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The rich know that. The rich are willing to pay more. They’re not the ones out here saying, ‘please don’t tax me.’ The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from rich people are the Republicans in the Congress. Everybody else, including rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more. So, yeah, but we’re going to have to have mainstream Republicans step up again.”

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Middle Class Get ObamaCare Sticker Shock

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Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don’t like what they see. These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama’s signature legislation.

“This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act.” Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

“It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.”

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Right Flanks Join to Push Conservative Goals

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Photo Credit: APThe once private club of House and Senate conservatives is now public — and powerful.

Conservatives have always been vocal about their priorities but have rarely coordinated their efforts across both sides of the Capitol in public. But led by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, whose attacks on Obamacare sparked a 16-day government shutdown, a bicameral GOP caucus has emerged as a congressional power bloc increasingly comfortable with trying to seize the driver’s seat of the Republican agenda.

Building on the foundation laid by tea party godfather Jim DeMint, the right flanks of the House and Senate have been getting together for months — or in some cases years — to design an agenda around trimming food stamp benefits, impairing Obamacare, hacking away at spending and other reliable red meat. The informal group is viewed suspiciously by establishment Republicans and those in leadership, but conservatives say there’s nothing to hide.

“If they were secret, we wouldn’t have done it at Tortilla Coast,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), referring to a meeting at the Capitol Hill eatery with Cruz and other conservatives two days before a crucial debt ceiling deadline this month. “We were very transparent that we were talking to one another.”

First elected to Congress in the mid-1990s and elected for a second stint in 2012, Salmon remembers the days when the bicameral conservative caucus could have been crammed into a minivan. Now there are sufficient numbers in the House majority to tank House leadership’s best-laid plans if deemed necessary — as they demonstrated repeatedly during the fall fiscal debates when they forced leadership to shelve several plans that were derided for not being conservative enough.

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Cheney: Mideast Allies No Longer Trust The US, Enemies ‘Don’t Fear Us’

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Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesDick Cheney said Sunday that Republicans need to look to a new generation of leaders as the party deals with poor approval ratings following the government shutdown.

The former vice president said Republicans have faced challenges before and it’s healthy for the party to work to rebuild.

The GOP “got whipped” in the 2012 presidential campaign, when President Barack Obama won re-election over Mitt Romney, and the party needs to build its base of supporters and find “first-class” candidates and turn to a new generation of leaders, Cheney told ABC’s “This Week.”

“It’s not the first time we have had to go down this road and it’s basically, I think, healthy for the party to be brought up short, say, OK, now it’s time to go to work,” Cheney said.

He predicted that his daughter, Liz Cheney, would win her Senate primary challenge against Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming next year. The former vice president said it was “simply not true” that he and Enzi were “fishing buddies,” and asserted that Enzi has received the vast majority of his campaign funds from Washington-based political action committees.

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Reagan’s Daughter: Why Am I Losing My Health Insurance?

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Photo Credit: New England SecessionFormer President Ronald Reagan’s liberal activist daughter Patti Davis is asking just what many other people across the United States want to know — why she’s losing her insurance.

“Could the president please explain why I and others are losing our health ins. plans? Wasn’t supposed to happen!” Davis posted on Twitter Friday afternoon.

Davis, of course, isn’t the first to want to know what’s happening to her insurance in the wake of Obamacare. Others have been dropped as large employers such as IBM and others opt to have their employees get their coverage through state marketplaces rather than to keep up their coverage.

Davis also has been speaking about her disappointment with Obama in recent weeks, particularly when it comes to the government shutdown.

“We all remember your campaign tag of “no drama Obama,” she wrote in an open letter to the president on her website on Oct. 13. “Interesting that there has been one drama after another in your presidency, this last one really tipping the scales.”

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A Black Box in Your Car? Some See a Source of Tax Revenue

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Photo Credit: Mark Boster/LA Times As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can’t agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

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House Intelligence Panel Chair — Europe Probably Spying on Obama Too

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Photo Credit: APThe top lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday defended the secret data collection tactics of the United States, including the phone tapping of foreign allies, suggesting Europeans are probably doing the same type of monitoring of President Obama.

“They don’t have necessarily the same type of oversight of their intelligence services that we do and their compartmentalization is much smaller than ours,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Rogers pointed out that Obama’s BlackBerry is encrypted, suggesting it’s a defense against other countries that may be trying to monitoring his communications.

“I think they need to have a better oversight structure in Europe,” Rogers said. “I think they would be enlightened to find out what their intelligence services may or may not be doing in the interests of their own national security.”

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Rep. Darrell Issa: Kathleen Sebelius Should Be Fired

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Photo Credit: Examiner File/Graeme JenningsAdding his voice to the growing chorus of lawmakers calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down in the wake of Obamacare’s clunky rollout, Rep. Darrell Issa on Sunday questioned why she continues to stay on.

“The president has been poorly served in the implementation of his own legislation,” Issa, R-Calif., said in an interview on CBS. “If somebody doesn’t leave … then he’s missing the point of Management 101, which is these people are there to serve him well, and they haven’t.”

Issa called on Sebelius to step down voluntarily.

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