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Federal CIO Kundra Takes Leave of Absence After Woes
CWmike writes "The fallout from Thursday's arrests of a District of Columbia IT security official and contractor quickly raised questions about the fate of Vivek Kundra, the new federal CIO who until recently ran the office now mired in bribery allegations. Appointed by President Barack Obama as CIO less than two weeks ago, Kundra was CTO for the District of Columbia. But yesterday, Kundra's former office in a downtown government building was a crime scene. A White House official, speaking on background, confirmed today that Kundra took a leave of absence from his new CIO job shortly after federal investigators arrested two men in the DC government office on bribery charges. The official would not elaborate on the reasons for the leave; there were no indications yesterday that Kundra was involved in any wrongdoing. Kundra's decision could slow his plan to create a 'revolution' in the federal government's use of technology."
I submitted a story on this earlier....may the force be with you VK!
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Is this Change or Hope ?
They should have gone with someone with a cooler name. Like Padmasree Warrior her name kick's Wolf Blitzer's name any day of the week and she's better looking too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Looks like Obama's plan for catching all the crooks is by appointing them to political office and let the approval process catch them.
I'm confused. I thought the government under Obama was going to be made of rainbows and kittens glued together with hope. Are you telling me Obama's administration is as corrupt as any other but also has a one-party supermajority Congress and a cheerleading media backing it? Sweet...what a change!
I expect a presentation "On the Optimal Distribution of Assets in a PMITA Facility"
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Sure, one of his direct reports ran ghost employees and kickback schemes for five years. But there is no evidence Kundra knew about it. Surely nobody expects the a state CIO to get involved in every petty detail.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I wonder if it has anything to do with Kundra's big push to turn over everything to Google.
Yes his office asked and received money for loads of Microsoft products that were never purchased. That is part of the problem.
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Hmmmm. I voted against the neo-cons because of their total corruption and incompetence, as well as a very visible desire to destroy America. At this time, the dems appear to be heading in the same way with corruption.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I thought the government under Obama was going to be made of rainbows and kittens glued together with hope. Are you telling me Obama's administration is as corrupt as any other but also has a one-party supermajority Congress and a cheerleading media backing it?
He's a successful politician from the Chicago machine, which makes Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall look like minor pranks on a boy scout campout. What did you expect?
*I* expect ongoing machine corruption scaled up to the national level, culminating in something to dwarf the Teapot Dome scandal and any corruption in any other administration since than (including the Clinton and both Bush administrations).
But then I've dealt with Chicago politics a little bit... (Thank Murphy I've never had to live there.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
More like Optimal Distribution of Ass to all the bull queers in a...
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
isn't exactly a petty detail. Granted I don't hold a lofty title like CIO but I damn well know what all my directs are doing. If I didn't I would not hold down the job I do. I even have to keep tabs on what the other guys outside of my direct control are up to. Plus some of what his directs are accused of isn't exactly something that just goes by without some questions arising somewhere down the line.
You also don't take leaves of absence. Just what in the hell is wrong with Obama's vetting process?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Let me try again...
But these offenses were in the distant past! He hadn't worked there for weeks! How does this have anything to do with him?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
To moderate this "insightful" would be to agree with the absurd statement that he's not responsible and convey approval of the bald statement. Because it's subtle sarcasm that skewers the point without being sophomoric, because the stakes are so high, and because the trauma is future tense, "funny" and its associated neutral karma isn't warranted. What's left is "interesting". There is no "sad" moderation option.
You're new here. Don't give up. Moderation works.
And if you carefully examine what I said, this post is not off topic.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That was the Democrats circa LBJ's "Great Society" in the 60s. By the 1990s, the pro-business faction was solidly in charge, culminating in 1992 when the head of the Democratic Leadership Council (the pro-business / anti-lefty caucus) won the Democratic nomination. Sort of analogous to New Labour displacing Old Labour in the UK.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Here's a fact: ALL politicians are corrupt.
Now, here's a theory of mine: Some are more corrupt that others, and there's never been an effective way to weed them out. Everyone was corrupt, that much was understood, but how badly was never clear. And it was too dangerous to try and figure it out. Just ask Paul Wellstone. about how much luck he had with that.
Even worse, some of those more-corrupt bastards are in your OWN party. Nominating them to any position puts you in jeopardy, and once again, your plane could end up suddenly taking a nosedive during a "routine" landing.
How to eliminate them without slitting your own throat?
Theory: establish a culture of rigorous honesty and total accountability. Make it clear that anyone selected is going to be examined with a fine-toothed comb. Show the people exactly how you're doing it, and more importantly, demand the same from the average citizens your campaign and administration is using for volunteers.
Now start nominating people you want to eliminate.
You know they're all corrupt? Now you can find out just how bad without slitting your own throat.
Theory: your not-so-bad enemies and just plain neutral associates see the writing on the wall and become very loyal to your policies, lest they "get nominated" and destroyed. /Tin Foil Hat
[End Of Line]
Ah, so 'your' team must be the Democrats.
I would take you up on that bet, and win; because you're guessing at my beliefs, and I'm (obviously) not. I've been saying the Republicans suck for a long time, even though I agree with their stated but rarely adhered to platform much more closely than the Democrats.
Step one: Dispense with the assumption that Democrats are better. Some Dems are; Some Dems aren't. We're electing people, not an abstract 'Democrat' or Republican'.
Step two: Stop caring about party affiliation. Both yours, and your candidates'. Vote purely on their record and your judgment of them as individuals, not because of the side they are on.
That second step is the hard one. You can look at how insanely popular sports teams are, to gain an idea how ingrained the idea is in human nature that we should pick 'a side'. Once a side is picked, we tend to justify and rationalize their behavior, and demonize the other side.
To be fair, he was only CIO of DC for 3 of the 5 years that the misfeasance was going on. Despite this I have to go with the "buck stops" rule. He's responsible by inheritance. If it were not so, delegation of responsibility would no longer work.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Obama wouldn't have gotten elected if he hadn't successfully been able to garner the support of power bases of all sorts. Those power bases expect a payback after the victory. So Obama nominates them and let's the system weed out the corrupt leaders.
Obama gets a minor blemish to his reputation but he gains two valuable things. First, the corrupted power players are weakened by the public humiliation and lose much of their lobbying power. Secondly, those weeded-out entities do not hold a grudge against Obama who, after all, held his end of the bargain by appointing them.
Seriously? I hope you're kidding about asking this. This isn't the Republicans doing. EVERYONE in DC is looking to find dirt on everyone else. The problem here is that Obama is appointing the WORST of the bunch. He is incompetent himself and so cannot find anyone other than more incompetents to work for him.
This administration is a joke and will be known as the most corrupt in history.
Pax Vobiscum
The person who alerted the authorities was a DC electrical engineer that these two tried to include in their scam, and who went to the FBI fairly shortly after their proposal (more info from the washington post's article). Kundra was not the one who alerted the FBI.
Two things are very common for slashdot last two months - too much "ohhh how good Windows 7 will be" articles (clearly a organized propaganda using clueless Slashdot editors, but hey, it brings ads money in) and clearly too much "look, look, another *suspicious* persona appointed by eeeeeeeeevil Obama. He is eeeeevil. He is just like rest of politicians. They all are evil manipulative bastards".
Yes, Obama is not Jesus or not perfect president either. Gosh. But he is best what we can have now. So far I have heard only speculative things about him. All his cabinet is gone trough something like fiveteen times, looking for everyone's smallest mistake. Wow, why you didn't give such hard ticket to Bush? Ohh, because he didn't care. Now we found someone who does and let's make him hard time.
Isn't that funny when people hype something too much and then lay their anger and confusion when something doesn't go according to their plan? And for paranoia that everything is controled by coorporations and power peole, see "Syriana". We would like to thing that there is some huge in control, because then we could better justify why we are powerless. Because "other people are simply stupid or I am just too paranoid and no one listens to me" doesn't fly anymore.
Grow up.
And about Microsoft - already said, Microsoft is geeks 'female fatale' - no matter how it has screwed them over, they keep crawling back.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Typical politicians......CORRUPT. Time for another revolution in this country to take back the government, which has grown out of control. Between politicians, who think they are above the law, and lobbyist who think they can tell politicians what to do by flashing $$$$, we need TERM LIMITS on ALL government politicians. If term limits are good enough for the president, they should be good enough for legislators. The founding fathers NEVER wanted politicians to be a "lifetime" job. When you have these idiots, who "make" the laws, write themselves out of the laws they want the rest of us to live by, then it is time to blow the whole place up, and start from scratch!
Nothing to see here, move along.
I suspect Kundra is a GRIMA
Credible
Kundra was appointed CTO because he is not white and so was a shoe in for the Obama administration There can be no other reason why creating a web site and email distribution for the Obama election campaign qualifies a person for being CTO of the nation.
You clearly haven't looked at how white is Obama's cabinet.
But lets pick up in one of the secondary posts assigned by Obama and then bring the dead horse of "political correctness" into the arena.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.