HealthCare.gov: Team Obama and Its Dysfunctional 500 Million Lines of Code

Big government projects fail because real world business dynamics are absent

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 24, 2013

HealthCare.gov used ten times the amount of code used in Windows Vista.

The Obamaites are scrambling to cover their political posteriors in the wake of the crash and burn of their multi-million dollar fiasco known as HealthCare.gov.

It’s not their fault, Politico insists. Building a complicated website is a difficult thing to do. We are told the site contains 500 million lines of code and it will take time to ferret through it all and patch it up.

500 million lines of code? Really. Windows Vista, the notoriously bloated and slow computer operating system, only had 50 million lines of code.

“If you contract something out and get 500 million lines of code back, there’s no way it’s going to work correctly,” noted Slate’s vice president for technology, Dan Check.

But then we’re talking about government and over-budget contractors here. It’s only natural that big government projects fail because real world business dynamics are absent. Crash and burn is a routine feature of the state when it takes on projects better suited for business.

In government, if something fails bureaucrats simply throw more expropriated money around until they get the results they want. And even if they don’t get the results they want or expect – as in the case of Obamacare – they just force it down our throats at gunpoint.

Here’s an idea. Instead of bitching and moaning about how difficult it is to get a website up and running, Team Obama should head out to Utah and round up a few of the geeks who worked on the super-secret software the NSA is using to suck up all our email, text messages and phone calls.

Or Facebook. The social media network runs on around 20 million lines of code. It has over a billion users. Maybe they can spare a couple programmers.

Obamacare and its malfunctioning website constitute a magnificent train wreck. But when we assume government can do what the private sector and for-profit business can do more efficiently, we can expect not only to be disappointed but also taken to the cleaners.

This article was posted: Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 10:06 am

Tags: business, domestic news, healthcare, technology

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Infowars

HealthCare.gov: Team Obama and Its Dysfunctional 500 Million Lines of Code

HealthCare.gov: Team Obama and Its Dysfunctional 500 Million Lines of Code

Big government projects fail because real world business dynamics are absent

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 24, 2013

HealthCare.gov used ten times the amount of code used in Windows Vista.

The Obamaites are scrambling to cover their political posteriors in the wake of the crash and burn of their multi-million dollar fiasco known as HealthCare.gov.

It’s not their fault, Politico insists. Building a complicated website is a difficult thing to do. We are told the site contains 500 million lines of code and it will take time to ferret through it all and patch it up.

500 million lines of code? Really. Windows Vista, the notoriously bloated and slow computer operating system, only had 50 million lines of code.

“If you contract something out and get 500 million lines of code back, there’s no way it’s going to work correctly,” noted Slate’s vice president for technology, Dan Check.

But then we’re talking about government and over-budget contractors here. It’s only natural that big government projects fail because real world business dynamics are absent. Crash and burn is a routine feature of the state when it takes on projects better suited for business.

In government, if something fails bureaucrats simply throw more expropriated money around until they get the results they want. And even if they don’t get the results they want or expect – as in the case of Obamacare – they just force it down our throats at gunpoint.

Here’s an idea. Instead of bitching and moaning about how difficult it is to get a website up and running, Team Obama should head out to Utah and round up a few of the geeks who worked on the super-secret software the NSA is using to suck up all our email, text messages and phone calls.

Or Facebook. The social media network runs on around 20 million lines of code. It has over a billion users. Maybe they can spare a couple programmers.

Obamacare and its malfunctioning website constitute a magnificent train wreck. But when we assume government can do what the private sector and for-profit business can do more efficiently, we can expect not only to be disappointed but also taken to the cleaners.

This article was posted: Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 10:06 am

Tags: business, domestic news, healthcare, technology

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---

  Print this page.

---

---

Infowars

HealthCare.gov: Team Obama and Its Dysfunctional 500 Million Lines of Code

How the IRS"s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

The controversy that erupted in the past week, leading to the ousting of the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, an investigation by the FBI, and congressional hearings that kicked off Friday, comes against a backdrop of dysfunction brewing for years.

More MoJo coverage of the IRS tea party scandal

• The IRS Tea Party Scandal, Explained



• IG Report Says IRS Has No Idea What Its Own Rules Mean



• 5 Things You Need to Know in the Inspector General’s IRS Tea Party Scandal Report



• Did the Acting IRS Commissioner Mislead Congress?



• Word of the Month for May: BOLO



• Ex-IRS Director: Tea Party Groups Deserved Scrutiny, But IRS Bungled the Job

Moves launched in the 1990s were designed to streamline the tax agency and make it more efficient. But they had unintended consequences for the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division. 

Checks and balances once in place were taken away. Guidance frequently published by the IRS and closely read by tax lawyers and nonprofits disappeared. Even as political activity by social welfare nonprofits exploded in recent election cycles, repeated requests for the IRS to clarify exactly what was permitted for the secretly funded groups were met, at least publicly, with silence.

All this combined to create an isolated office in Cincinnati, plagued by what an inspector general this week described as “insufficient oversight,” of fewer than 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing more than 60,000 nonprofit applications a year.

In the end, this contributed to what everyone from Republican lawmakers to the president says was a major mistake: The decision by the Ohio unit to flag for further review applications from groups with “Tea Party” and similar labels. This started around March 2010, with little pushback from Washington until the end of June 2011.

Continue Reading »

Politics | Mother Jones

How the IRS"s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

How the IRS"s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

The controversy that erupted in the past week, leading to the ousting of the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, an investigation by the FBI, and congressional hearings that kicked off Friday, comes against a backdrop of dysfunction brewing for years.

More MoJo coverage of the IRS tea party scandal

• The IRS Tea Party Scandal, Explained



• IG Report Says IRS Has No Idea What Its Own Rules Mean



• 5 Things You Need to Know in the Inspector General’s IRS Tea Party Scandal Report



• Did the Acting IRS Commissioner Mislead Congress?



• Word of the Month for May: BOLO



• Ex-IRS Director: Tea Party Groups Deserved Scrutiny, But IRS Bungled the Job

Moves launched in the 1990s were designed to streamline the tax agency and make it more efficient. But they had unintended consequences for the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division. 

Checks and balances once in place were taken away. Guidance frequently published by the IRS and closely read by tax lawyers and nonprofits disappeared. Even as political activity by social welfare nonprofits exploded in recent election cycles, repeated requests for the IRS to clarify exactly what was permitted for the secretly funded groups were met, at least publicly, with silence.

All this combined to create an isolated office in Cincinnati, plagued by what an inspector general this week described as “insufficient oversight,” of fewer than 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing more than 60,000 nonprofit applications a year.

In the end, this contributed to what everyone from Republican lawmakers to the president says was a major mistake: The decision by the Ohio unit to flag for further review applications from groups with “Tea Party” and similar labels. This started around March 2010, with little pushback from Washington until the end of June 2011.

Continue Reading »

Politics | Mother Jones

How the IRS"s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional