Federal Government Sinks Another $527K Into Recovery.gov Website Redesign

    In 2009, the Obama administration made news with an $18 million, five year contract to redesign Recovery.gov, the website the government set up to allow taxpayers to track the stimulus spending enacted by the president and Congress soon after President Obama took office.  On Wednesday, notice of a contract awarded to Smartronix, a Hollywood, MD company was posted for "Modification to exercise the Option to Extend Clause" for a total of $527,216.00:

    The stimulus is now into its fifth year.  The contract notice does not indicate what modifications are needed to the website to keep the public informed of the ongoing operation of the legislation.
    According to the Recovery.gov website, $803.1 billion of the $840 billion authorized by the stimulus has been disbursed.


Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Thirteen Months Between Council of Economic Advisors "Quarterly" Reports on Recovery Act

    A few weeks ago, I noted that the Government Accountability Office had taken some liberties with the term "bi-monthly" with the reviews and reports that were required by Congress in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Instead of 23 reports, the GAO had issued only 16 or 17 instead, but still used the term "bi-monthly." When I contacted the GAO for comment, I received a response that claimed that the "Recovery Act requires bi-monthly reviews but does not require bi-monthly reporting."

    Now it's President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors' turn to engage in some creative redefinition.  Just today, the Council issued a report on the 2009 Recovery Act.  Here's the title page noting it's the ninth such quarterly report:

    The obvious implication is that if one were interested in the eighth quarterly report, November 1, 2012 would be about the time such a report might have been issued.  However, one actually has to go back almost a full year before that to locate the eighth "quarterly" report, all the way to December 9, 2011:

    Given the magnitude of the misstatement on the cover of the report, it seems fair to question the reliability of the information on the following 22 pages.  The Executive Summary at the beginning of the report doesn't bode well:

As part of the unprecedented accountability and transparency provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the Council of Economic Advisers(CEA) is  charged with providing to Congress quarterly reports on the effects of  the Recovery Act on overall economic activity, and on employment in particular.  This is the ninth report and it provides an assessment of the effects of the Act through the third quarter of 2012.  

    If another thirteen months pass before the next "quarterly" report, the CEA might want to rethink using the "unprecedented accountability and transparency" line again.

Watching the Watchdog: Gov't Accountability Office Issued Only Two of Six Bimonthly Reports Required By 2009 Recovery Act in 2012 [Updated]

    When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, one of the provisions to ensure transparency instructed the Government Accountability Office to issue bimonthly reports on the use of funds authorized in the Recovery Act and to make those reports available on the internet.  However, after fairly consistent reports in the first year, the regularity of the reports began to wane, and in 2012, only two such reports were posted on the Recovery.gov website.  Rather than bimonthly review reports at 60-day intervals, the average report interval has been more than 90 days, more than 50% longer than the statutory requirement.

    One section of the Recovery website is titled GAO Findings.  A note at the top of the page says:

 The Recovery Act requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the use of Recovery funds by states and localities every two months. Its reports are below[.]

    Indeed, all the reports issued since the inception of the program are available on the site.  The summaries of the first three reports in 2009 each make reference to a "bimonthly report."  After that, the term is dropped and only makes one more appearance in the December 2010 report which refers to "previous bimonthly and recipient reporting reviews."  However, in both the highlights and full version of even the most recent report (October 2012,) the bimonthly requirement is mentioned.

    With that in mind, here are the issue dates of the reports listed on Recovery.gov:

1. April 28, 2009
2. July 8, 2009
3. September 23, 2009
4. November 19, 2009
5. December 10, 2009
6. March 3, 2010
7. May 26, 2010
8. September 20, 2010
9. December 15, 2010
10. April 7, 2011
11. June 29, 2011 
12. June 29, 2011 (two reports issued on same day)
13. September 22, 2011
14. December 16, 2011
15. June 18, 2012
16. October 15, 2012

    If bimonthly reports had been issued on a strict schedule, there would have been 23 reports at about 61 day intervals as opposed to 15 reports at an average interval of 92 days (not counting the two reports issued on the same day).  Days between reports for the last two (2012) were 185 days and 119 days.  As of January 20, 2013, another 97 days have passed since the most recent report.

    Interestingly, the GAO does not dispute this finding, although a slight discrepancy exists. In a speech on November 16, 2012, in Beijing, China, Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, made the following statement concerning the reviews and reporting by the GAO:

Since 2009, GAO has issued 17 bimonthly review reports and one more is underway.  And we have issued more than 100 other reports and testimonies on Recovery Act funding.  These proactive efforts continue to yield very positive results. GAO’s Recovery Act efforts have helped ensure accountability, counter fraud, and promote transparency over where the money went and the results it achieved.  

    Although Dodaro stated "17 bimonthly review reports" have been issued, only 16 are listed on the GOA website as was stated above. In either case, despite the "bimonthly" claim, the reports have averaged around 90 days, or quarterly, not bimonthly, and the total is six or seven short of the 23 called for by the legislation.  Here is the relative text from the legislation spelling out the reporting responsibilities of the GAO.  There do not appear to be any caveats or exceptions to the bimonthly requirement:

TITLE IX--LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
......
GENERAL PROVISIONS--THIS TITLE
Sec. 901. Government Accountability Office Reviews and Reports. (a) Reviews and Reports-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Comptroller General shall conduct bimonthly reviews and prepare reports on such reviews on the use by selected States and localities of funds made available in this Act. Such reports, along with any audits conducted by the Comptroller General of such funds, shall be posted on the Internet and linked to the website established under this Act by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

    In a year when the agency has only issued two of six required reports, it is curious to say the least that the head of the GAO continued to refer to the Recovery Act reports as "bimonthly." This misstatement alone is cause for concern about the level of transparency at the government's largest watchdog agency.

    Although the GAO works for Congress, the Obama administration is widely recognized as having ownership of the Recovery Act. Though Congress bears some responsibility for being asleep at the switch, with the GAO's reporting in 2012 occurring at only one-third of the level Congress mandated for the trillion-dollar Recovery Act, the Obama administration's pledge to run the "most open and transparent administration in history" could certainly be called into question as well.

UPDATE: I received a response from Chuck Young, Managing Director of Public Affairs for the GAO in which he stated that the "Recovery Act requires bi-monthly reviews but does not require bi-monthly reporting."

The Obama Campaign Blog: Is This "Story of Recovery" Fact or Fiction? - Part 3

Note: This is Part 3 of a post that was published on Wednesday, July 25th.

    Much of my coverage of the BarackObama.com blog's Story of Recovery of Joseph Nicolas's business has focused on the subject of the posting, Joseph Nicolas.  However, I did report some background of the writer of the post as well, the recent high school graduate Austin Wright-Pettibone.  As it turns out, the day before I published my first story on Nicolas, Wright-Pettibone (left, in photo) was among those greeting President Obama as he arrived in Seattle, WA, on July 24, 2012, for a couple of fund raising events (via AP photos at Daylife.com.)

Wright-Pettibone has a similar image on his Facebook account:

Wright-Pettibone's participation in the greeting event was noted by a friend of his on the Facebook page of Washington United for Marriage:

My friend, Austin Wright-Pettibone, is set to greet President Obama when he arrives in Air Force One today! LUCKY him!! sweet....       July 24 at 12:54pm 

    Although I still have no evidence to suggest Wright-Pettibone knew of Joseph Nicolas's background or the inconsistencies in his story when the blog post was written, his apparently increasing profile in the Obama campaign, at least on a local level in Seattle, will only serve to magnify the impact if Nicolas's tale turns out to be false.  And while I say there's no evidence Wright-Pettibone knew Nicolas's background, Nicolas, as Ariel Anatole, is one of only 37 followers of Wright-Pettibone's Twitter account, so it seems unlikely Wright-Pettibone is entirely unaware of Nicolas's alias.  [Note: For full disclosure, as you might notice if you clicked on the link,  I am following Wright-Pettibone on Twitter as part of my effort to get additional information about this story.]  If Wright-Pettibone or anyone from the Obama campaign responds to my emails or these blog posts, I will follow up and post the additional information.

Part 4 is now posted here.

The Obama Campaign Blog: Is This "Story of Recovery" Fact or Fiction? - Part 2

Note: This is Part 2 of a post that was published on Wednesday, July 25th.

    Several days ago, I reported on the remarkable and increasingly strange and incredible Story of Recovery of the business of Joseph Nicolas that was first told by the Barack Obama campaign blog on March 28, 2012.  I have found several other resources that link Ariel Anatole with Joseph Nicolas, including this OK Cupid profile and this Shelfari profile.  The photos match other Ariel Anatole profiles to which I linked in my original posting on Nicolas and also the photo on the BarackObama.com blog post.  In addition, I located a YouTube profile for Ariel Anatole.  One of the "favorited" videos on this profile is an MPower video of outakes from a 1997 interview with "Joseph."   I found this same "Joseph" in another 1997 MPower video identified as being from Albuquerque, NM.  Here is a screenshot from this video (around the 9:07 mark):

The Ariel Anatole Live Journal profile places him in Albuquerque in the mid-1990s.  [Update: I found a reference to the video on his Live Journal account. In 2009, Ariel wrote: "An interview I did 12 years ago with an HIV prevention youth group."]  Although the picture is from 15 years ago, there is certainly a close resemblance not only to the more recent pictures of Ariel Anatole (Shelfari):

but also to the photo of Joseph Nicolas used on the BarackObama.com blog:

And now, via the MPower video, the name "Joseph" is linked as well.

    In addition to this further evidence that Ariel Anatole and Joseph Nicolas are one and the same person, I have found more evidence that casts doubt on the Story of Recovery as well.  The following entries are from the Live Journal account of Ariel Anatole (alias Joseph Nicolas) that I have mentioned several times before.  The entries are not listed in any particular order:

10/1/2011: 

As a former small business owner I am well aware of how banks use debit and credit cards to reap huge profits. [emphasis mine]

2/28/2011:

I am self employed because there isn't an employer including myself I did not cheat, or downright steal from...I lie.  There is not a person alive or dead that I have not lied to. Yes my disease has a lot to do with this, but again it is not the end all excuse.  I have, and do realize after the fact that I have lied.  Every time this happens I make a choice to not correct the lie, out of shame, and fear I either continue the lie, or simply hide in my own Delusions, or worse I run.  These are not the actions of a basically decent, good person.  Those actions can not be explained away by my disease, I own those actions.

2/13/2011:

In my younger days I was a telemarketer.  I was the person calling you during dinner to get you to change your long distance carrier.  I worked for MCI (pre Worldcom) at a call center in Albuquerque.  My stint at Dessert Hills was finally over and I found myself in the real world.  The pay was great and I genuinely liked the people I worked with.  Of course some of the time a caller would go off on me and I would laugh it off and move on.  Telemarketing suited my illness well, each new call allowed me to become a completely different person.  During high cycles I made a killing, more than enough to buffer me when low cycles hit.  I would work for a a couple of months take a leave of absence due to my disease and was always welcomed back when I was well again.  The great thing about sales jobs is if your a good seller the bosses let you get away with a lot.  I was an amazing seller.  I went on to work for AOL and a few other small telemarketing companies, I was planning on making it my career.

3/1/2011:

I had a great telemarketing job at an AOL call center that paid insanely well but knew I couldn't maintain that for much longer.  So a weekend getaway turned into a permanent stop.  I stayed at the hotel for a month, found an apartment, and managed to hang on for a little over a year.  In that time I managed to live in a three bedroom penthouse near Seattle University, and a host job at a downtown restaurant; then a rented room on Capitol Hill, and a waiting job in Bellevue, then a rented room in Bellevue and telemarketing job in Bellevue.  The whole company was a scam, a pyramid scheme and I again found myself making really good money, moved back to Capitol Hill another rented  room, in a huge house.  I told people I owned the house.  My employers pyramid scheme started to topple and I bailed out before the demise to another telemarketing job, that lasted less than a month before I burned out and found myself back in Albuquerque, NM.

3/14/2011:

Father did 'own' a mortgage company; however if he did earn anything from this venture we never saw it.  Nor can I find any clients, just an office and business licence ( I suspect that his 'company' was a lot like my Venture Capitalist Delusion).

3/5/2011:

I still have failed to tell the man who thinks I'm a Venture Capitalist that everything he knows about me is a lie.  I've kept up the base facade created during a DD episode.  I've told him that our investors have backed out.  If that was all then just maybe I could have some self respect, but it doesn't stop there.  I actually told him, I am looking or new investors.  Not only do I lack the spine to fess up to my delusion, I perpetrate it further by holding the door open.

2/13/2011:

On Friday my doorbell rang and I answered it without looking through the keyhole.  There in front of me was someone I had lied to.  He believes I am a Venture Capitalist and that I want to invest in his business idea.  Standing there I should of just revealed what I really am.  A very sick, extremely troubled person.  Instead I lied my way out of.  I used to think this was not a bad thing.  In the end he's gone and no one is really hurt.  The truth is, every single time I lie and know about it, I cause harm to myself and those around me.  I know this now, and still have this persons phone number, all it would take is a call.  A call unfortunately that will not be placed because I am still a coward.

    In his own words, Ariel/Joseph appears to be a very "troubled person."  I still have no response from the Obama campaign or the blog post author Austin Wright-Pettibone, but the evidence is casting more and more doubt on the purported Story of Recovery of the business of Joseph Nicolas.  What remains to be seen is how this story came to be included on the blog of President Obama and how long it will take the campaign to respond by defending and backing up the story, or retracting it and taking it down.  I have received some feedback recently from my original posting on July 25th that has shed further light on the background and credibility of Joseph Nicolas.  If anyone else has information about Joseph Nicolas or his business, email me by clicking here.  I will continue to follow up and post Part 3 of this series as soon as further developments warrant such an update.


Part 3 is now posted here.

The Obama Campaign Blog: Is This "Story of Recovery" Fact or Fiction?

    President Obama could use Joseph Nicolas's help after the controversy stirred up by his "If you own a business, you didn't build that" speech.  As a March 2012 blog post at BarackObama.com tells it, Nicolas's company could be the poster child for the president's portrayal of the public-private partnership that he believes is the key to building and preserving America's economic success.
    Joseph Nicolas was struggling to keep his small business afloat.  The telemarketing job about which Nicolas was passionate had been outsourced to India and he was faced with two choices: "follow the job and run an India-based call center or start his own business here in the United States."  He chose the latter.  But as it was the end of the Bush administration and money was scarce, he was forced to hire a third-party company to help.  Things were looking bleak.  Failure loomed.
    But then, in rode the federal government.  As Nicolas puts it, "If it wasn’t for the Obama administration and his small business programs, I would not be in business today." He was able to get help from the Recovery Act as well as a Social Security Administration initiative targeting the hiring of the disabled.  He soon added 15 jobs, and plans on adding 10 more with a year, and can even offer his employees health insurance, thanks to ObamaCare.  Nicolas says, "There’s no way I could do that without [a government subsidy]."  To top it all off he's even been able to open a new office in the prestigious Columbia Tower in Seattle where he rubs elbows with major corporations such as Amazon.  All in all, Nicolas's is a remarkable Obama administration "Story of Recovery."

    There's just one catch.  Very little of the story can be verified, and some is demonstrably untrue.  Just for starters, the blog post says that Nicolas "is now able to secure larger contracts after having opened an office in the Columbia Tower with [major corporations such as] Amazon and the Virginia Mason Hospital."*  However, according to the Seattle Times, Amazon vacated their offices in Columbia Tower (now the Columbia Center) for newer quarters in 2011 - the blog post about Nicolas's company was published on March 27, 2012.  Virginia Mason Hospital is located several blocks away from the Columbia Center.  There is no evidence they have or ever had offices in the Columbia Center.  I contacted the Communications and Public Relations Department of Virginia Mason Medical Center who confirmed this finding.  Two of the most easily verifiable facts in the story are wrong.
    What then of Nicolas's business?  The story implies Nicolas started a telemarketing business to pursue his passion.  However, several online resources identify Nicolas as a Licensed Massage Practitioner, among them AskYP and Hot Frog.  Both of these sites list Nicolas's business address as 1301 1st Avenue in Seattle, which is in a building complex called Harbor Steps (AskYP lists Suite 815), not the Columbia Center.  The phone number (206-354-5722) is the same phone number listed for Joseph Nicolas seven times on BarackObama.com (here and here) as the contact phone number for Nicolas as the host of Obama campaign events.  And it is also the same number listed for Anatole Massage on multiple online directories.  So where does "Anatole" fit in?

   As it happens, Joseph Louis Nicolas himself is apparently better known online as Ariel Anatole.  There is a Facebook account under that name, a Live Journal account, and a Twitter account, as well.  The photos of Joseph/Ariel on those accounts are somewhat ambiguous, but the photos on Ariel's Real Jock account (left) are unmistakably the same individual pictured (see above photo) at BarackObama.com.  Several other online resources also link Joseph Nicolas and Ariel Anatole: Peek You, Merchant Circle, and My Life.  Taken separately, the reliability of these online records might appear dubious, but in the aggregate, along with the shared phone number for Joseph Nicolas and Anatole Massage, they establish a clear link between the Joseph Nicolas of the blog post and Ariel Anatole.
    So what of the funds reportedly received via the Recovery Act and the SSA program?  I contacted Recovery.gov and asked them about a loan or grant to a Joseph Nicolas.  Their reply was as follows:

All information on recipients displayed on Recovery.gov comes directly from the reports the recipients submit.  In most instances, the recipients are not required to name officers of the company.  We have searched for “Joseph Nicolas” but there are no results which is probably an indication that information about the award the company received was submitted under the company’s name.   However, if you’re willing to do some digging you might be able to find the information using the Recovery Explorer.  Choose the State of Washington, and Seattle. You will then be able to see all the recipients of awards in the city of Seattle.

    I searched the aforementioned database in various ways, for "Nicolas", "Joseph Nicolas", "Ariel Anatole", "Anatole", and other combinations and could not turn up anything.  I also searched for physical therapy businesses, massage businesses, and telemarketing businesses in the Seattle area and came up with no matches for anything like Nicolas's business.
    Next, I contacted the Social Security Administration and asked them first about Joseph Nicolas and a possible grant.  The reply I received was a terse, "The Administration does not have any information concerning this."  I made the same request about "Anatole Massage" and received another terse but rather oddly worded reply, "Social Security Administration  doesn't have to know about this ,yet [sic]." These replies were so non-specific and cryptic that I am hesitant to assume they are the definitive answer, but on the face they seem to mirror the results from Recovery.gov.  Absolutely nothing.
    My last attempt to find Nicolas's company was to search for a telemarketing firm located in the Columbia Center, which is located in Seattle at 701 5th Avenue.  The search brought up two results:  One is called Outsource to India and the other Call Centers India.  Needless to say, it seems unlikely the Obama campaign could be interested in broadcasting either of these companies as Stories of Recovery after having spent months blasting Mitt Romney for outsourcing jobs overseas at Bain Capital.
    Obviously, since none of the preceding information could be verified, other details such as the "third-party company", the fifteen new employees, and the plug for ObamaCare are also called into question.  How is it possible that a growing and apparently prosperous business located in an iconic building in one of the largest cities in the Northwest could be so difficult to track down?

    Next I turned to the author of the blog post.  Austin Wright-Pettibone's profile at Linked-In lists him as the "Digital Lead - King County at Obama for America."  A Google search of BarackObama.com reveals that Wright-Pettibone has been quite a prolific writer for the site.  Although he often writes about LBGT-related issues, his posts cover broader topics as well, often appearing on the local Washington state blog of the campaign's website.  But on a number of occasions, his work appears on the national blog as well.  The Joseph Nicolas post is one such story.
    Wright-Pettibone wrote the Joseph Nicolas story in March 2012 when he was a senior at Inglemore High School in Kenmore, Washington, where he wrote for the school newspaper, the Nordic News.  He also writes for the Bothell Reporter, a Seattle-area publication, which in fact published an article by Wright-Pettibone only a few weeks after the Nicolas blog post was published at BarackObama.com. 
    My attempts to contact Wright-Pettibone about his story have gone unanswered.  I attempted to reach him through Facebook, his Flickr account, and finally Twitter to no avail.  I also emailed the Washington office of Obama for America on June 25th as follows:

I am trying to reach Austin Wright-Pettibone.
----------------------------------
Dear Austin:
I read your blog post on BarackObama.com dated March 27th about Joseph Nicolas.  I am interested in finding out more about his business and his story, but the post does not mention the name.  Can you tell me what his company is called?
Thanks,
Jerry Bier 

I received this reply on July 4th, though it was unsigned:

Hi Jeryl,
Thanks for your email! We have forwarded it to Joseph and asked him to get in touch with you. 

However, I heard nothing and sent a follow-up email on July 10th, but still received no reply from Nicolas or Wright-Pettibone.  More recently, on July 19th, I sent yet another follow-up:

It’s been nearly four weeks since I sent my first email, and I am still waiting to find out the name of Joseph Nicolas’s business that was the subject of the March 27th “Stories of Recovery” blog post.  Does anyone at OFA know the answer?

I have not received a reply to this email either.  I made one final attempt at emailing on Tuesday, July 25th:

I am close to publishing an article concerning the blog post on BarackObama.com dated March 27th about Joseph Nicolas by Austin Wright-Pettibone.  I have not been able to confirm any of the facts in the blog post, and have found at least two statements to be wrong.  Additionally, I can only find one business associated with Joseph Nicolas, that being Anatole Massage.  Is this the business that is the subject of the blog post?  Neither Austin Wright-Pettibone or Joseph Nicolas have responded to my attempts to reach them about this story.  I would appreciate any documentation that they or the Obama for America organization can provide to back up the claims in the blog post, or to provide clarifications or retractions.

As of the time I published this post, I still had no response.

    Why the silence?  The campaign's initial response on July 4th demonstrates they know that the Nicolas blog post is provoking some interest.  Wright-Pettibone must be under enormous pressure as a recent high school graduate with a fairly high profile position in an incumbent president's reelection campaign.  And in Joseph Nicolas/Ariel Anatole's last entry on his LiveJournal account on May 28th, he expressed some anxiety about his increasing level of involvement in the Obama campaign.  Why not head off a misunderstanding if there is some reasonable explanation for what appears to be a poorly researched story?  Why not jump at the chance to clarify and draw more attention to a story that would help their candidate and possibly give Nicolas's business yet another boost?

    If this Story of Recovery turns out to be untrue or substantially embellished, the results could be personally and professionally damaging for both Nicolas and Wright-Pettibone and a black-eye for the Obama campaign to boot.  Certainly the interests of all would be best served with open communication, either confirming the story with documentation, or retracting it.  My attempts to contact to Obama campaign will continue as I try to determine if the remarkable story of Joseph Nicolas is reality or simply an extreme case of fan fiction.

Click to go to Part 2.
-----

*It has occurred to me that an entirely ungrammatical but alternate reading of this quote might be that the larger contracts were with Amazon and Virginia Mason Hospital and the phrase "after having opened an office in the Columbia Tower" is in the wrong place.  But until the Obama campaign responds, I am assuming the statement is intended to be read as it appears.