Should the United States' New CTO Really Be a CIO? 243
CurtMonash writes "Barack Obama promised to appoint the United States' first Chief Technology Officer. Naturally, the blogosphere is full of discussion as to who that should be. I favor American Management Systems founder and former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Richard Koman thinks it should be one of the better state CTOs. John Doerr, going in a different direction, thinks it should be his partner Bill Joy. We can bandy names back and forth all month, but first a more fundamental question needs to be answered: What do we need most — a get-things-done CIO (Chief Information Officer), or a more visionary true CTO? I think it's a CIO, and based on his campaign statements it appears Obama agrees. Management of government IT is a huge, generally unsolved problem, and we need somebody deeply experienced to have a fighting chance. Of course, that doesn't preclude recruiting a visionary CTO in addition, but the highest priority is a CIO. What do you think?"
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linus Torvaldes (Score:3, Informative)
Although it'd be nice to believe that a socialist poltician got his money from the masses, it's not true. Obama's pockets were lined by George Soros's MoveOn.org, . Do some searches like 'obama campaign finance fraud' and 'obama foreign donations'.
It turns out that half of Obama's haul in 2008 has come in contributions of $200 dollars or less. These small donations do not require public disclosure under FEC guidelines, and the Obama campaign refuses to make public its list of contributors. Obama earlier announced he'd accept public financing if the GOP nominee did the same (and then, of course, broke his pledge in June after realizing he'd far surpass previous fundraising records). So there's a pattern. By keeping his donor list secret now, the Illinois senator has heightened speculation of financial impropriety. Not only can Obama's inside operatives organize massive bundling operations outside the law, there are no safeguards against the new "fat cat" contributors who bundle their own cash. Hillary Clinton's Norman Hsu scandal from late-2007 points to the kind of abuses possible under the current regime. A more serious breach of faith may be taking place right now in the Obama camp.
As Scott Mirengoff at Powerline reported on Thursday, the Obama campaign refuses to screen credit card contributions for potential fraudulent transactions, and thus any individual could make unlimited contributions using infinite aliases.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-fundraising-fraud [pajamasmedia.com]
Re:Linus Torvaldes (Score:5, Informative)
I did a little research, and figured out the real reason for not doing fraud-checking on donations. It seems that, when criminals steal a credit card, they first test it by making a small donation to a charity, to find out whether or not the card works, before they start using it to buy stuff. This has been going on since long before the presidential race started, affects all charities, and is well known. If the credit card company rejects the test transaction, then the thief throws out that card and tries again with a different one. On the other hand, if the test transaction goes through but the next one gets flagged, then the bank finds out what address the thief tried to have stuff mailed to. What probably happened is that someone at the bank noticed that people were testing stolen cards by donating to the Obama campaign, and decided that it was best to always let the donation go through, but then apply extra scrutiny to the next transaction on that card. The Obama campaign doesn't care (they get a chargeback and no money either way), but the bank saves a lot of money that way.