In attempts to find scandal, collusion and anything else they can manufacturer against healthcare.gov, the Daily Caller has reached a new low. Here's their latest revelation, which also happens to be at the top of Drudge right now..
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.
So because two people were in the same class at Princeton, that means that they not only know each other, but that one would give the other an enormous government contract? And speaking of that contract, well let's say facts are a stubborn thing. CGI Federal's part of the healthcare pie was actually just under $94 million. They were only one of 47 contractors that worked on the massive project.
In today's fast-paced world of internet news, it's not uncommon to go with a story that really isn't. That isn't the case here though. The Daily Caller has been on a constant mission to try to tie CGI Federal to President Obama in one way or another. Last week they posted a story from another angle - one with a motivating factor that generally upsets a lot of us:
President Barack Obama received financial support for his re-election campaign from a senior executive of the firm that built Obamacare’s dysfunctional healthcare.gov website.
George Schindler — President, U.S. and Canada, of CGI Group, the Canadian parent company of U.S. subsidiary, CGI Federal — donated $1,000 to Obama’s reelection campaign in Aug. 2012, according to OpenSecrets.org.
We always hear of companies that donate to political campaigns, then end up getting some nice government contract. That has basically been going on as long as our democracy has existed. Does that make it right? Absolutely not. As matter of fact it's one of the biggest cancers that plague the "people's" government. But $1,000? That is really nothing, yet it didn't stop the right from jumping on the news.
But like the omission of the fact that CGI Federal was only 1 of 47 contractors for the health care exchanges, there is an omission in this story as well. If you go to OpenSecrets.org and search out George Schindler for the 2012 cycle (sorry, can't hotlink opensecret.org search results), then scroll to the bottom, you see another donation:
Schindler not only donated to President Obama in that cycle, but also donated the same amount to Mitt Romney earlier in the cycle. Funny how the Daily Caller omits that. And what about the rest of CGI Federal? Well, if you check out the summary page for CGI Federal on OpenSecrets.org, then you get a much different picture:
CGI Federal overall gave more than double to Mitt Romney than they did President Obama in 2012. If there is some sort of villainous scandal here of President Obama rewarding a campaign contributor, well he really got screwed. And just to prove that point, let's look at who Schindler donated to in the 2008 cycle:
He donated to only one presidential candidate in that cycle and that was John McCain. Not only that, but he also donated more than double to McCain than he did Obama in 2012.
I've heard of grasping at straws, but what The Daily Caller has done here goes beyond that. They have actually tried to create an entirely different reality, and one that their readers will certainly buy into. After all, facts are stubborn things.
