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."

Re:Picked the Wrong Name for the Job

[Slumdog]

They should have gone with someone with a cooler name. Like Padmasree Warrior [businessweek.com] her name kick's Wolf Blitzer's name any day of the week and she's better looking too.

In Sanskrit-derived hindi, Vivek means "wisdom". Obviously you're proposing we discard brains for brawn.

Re:Confused

[jlarocco]

If it were, we wouldn't be finding out about this corruption until two years into their term, just like any other democrat.

Actually, I think you're wrong. He's appointing people *SO* corrupt they can't even hide it until two years into their term. And that's with a majority in congress and a "cheerleading media". I cringe to think of what's actually getting through while everyone focus on these blatant cases.

Re:Richardson

[Toonol]

This may be modded redundant, because it gets said in nearly every political thread at Slashdot... but it is a very important point:

Democrats and Republicans ARE BOTH TERRIBLE.

Not based on ideology, really. You may find more to agree with in one party platform or another. But rest assured, the politician does NOT adhere to the party platform because of any actual conviction. When it is politically more profitable to betray it, they will. I'm 90% conservative, but would prefer an honest Democrat over a corrupt Republican. It's a moot point, though, because they're both rotten to the core.

There may be some exceptions. It would have been interesting to see if Ron Paul would have stuck to his guns. Those exceptions are few and far between, though, and tend to get weeded out long before they run for president.

Re:Oh well

[Hurricane78]

Au contraire, my friend. I think we should add a Yoda day. Like the "talk like a pirate day". But better. :D

And let it be this day, where the idea was born, and where from now on, we shall talk like Yoda.

Elimination by paying political debts

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Richardson

[sinai]

Regarding your statement that Ron Paul's views are uninformed, can you provide any examples? He was just on CNN last night utterly refuting [youtube.com] high-school graduate turned C-list actor Stephen Baldwin's spewing of the same tired and weak apologies for the (failed) War on Drugs and flawed logic behind the Fed's continuing criminalization of the use of marijuana, sometimes in bold defiance of State law already in place. Uninformed you say? Please inform us then! For those of you who are actually sick enough of TFA's example of yet another D.C. clusterfuckery, why not direct your sights on one of the biggest shenanigans in history by auditing [campaignforliberty.com] the federal reserve?