pip install fails with “connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)”

I am very new to Python and trying to > pip install linkchecker on Windows 7. Some notes:

• pip install is failing no matter the package. For example, > pip install scrapy also results in the SSL error.
• Vanilla install of Python 3.4.1 included pip 1.5.6. The first thing I tried to do was install linkchecker. Python 2.7 was already installed, it came with ArcGIS. python and pip were not available from the command line until I installed 3.4.1.
• > pip search linkchecker works. Perhaps that is because pip search does not verify the site"s SSL certificate.
• I am in a company network but we do not go through a proxy to reach the Internet.
• Each company computer (including mine) has a Trusted Root Certificate Authority that is used for various reasons including enabling monitoring TLS traffic to https://google.com. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Here are the contents of my pip.log after running pip install linkchecker:

Downloading/unpacking linkchecker
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/: connection error: HTTPSConnectionPool(host="pypi.python.org", port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/ (Caused by <class "http.client.CannotSendRequest">: Request-sent)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  URLs to search for versions for linkchecker:
  * https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement linkchecker
Cleaning up...
  Removing temporary dir C:UsersjcookAppDataLocalTemppip_build_jcook...
No distributions at all found for linkchecker
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:Python34libsite-packagespipasecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:Python34libsite-packagespipcommandsinstall.py", line 278, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
  File "C:Python34libsite-packagespip
eq.py", line 1177, in prepare_files
    url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
  File "C:Python34libsite-packagespipindex.py", line 277, in find_requirement
    raise DistributionNotFound("No distributions at all found for %s" % req)
pip.exceptions.DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for linkchecker