A lot of Indian-American Democrats were stumping hard for Jindal. And, as weird as it seems, some Indian-American Democrats still stump for, and give money to, Jindal. Ah… the politics of race… but that is a side issue.

Vivek is back on the job:

Chief Information Officer Is Quietly Reinstated

Vivek Kundra, who was on leave from his new appointment by President Obama as the federal government’s chief information officer, has been reinstated, the White House said today.

White House officials confirmed to The New York Times that Mr. Kundra had been reinstated today; it was first reported this afternoon by Techpresident.com without confirmation.

The reinstatement comes a few days after F.B.I. agents had raided his former office at the District of Columbia’s technology department. Mr. Kundra was not a target of the raid. A former employee of his, Yusuf Acar, has been charged with bribery. The F.B.I. said that Mr. Kundra was not implicated in the bribery case, but he took a leave from his new federal job anyway.

The reinstatement comes as word was swirling around the Internet about a youthful arrest of Mr. Kundra for a theft involving something of less than $300 in value. Asked if Mr. Kundra had revealed the arrest during the White House vetting process, officials said they would not discuss the process but pointed out that the reinstatement should speak for itself.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/16/kundras-record/

Transparent government at its best…

Salil, what do you mean by “he’s part of the scandal”? Anyone who knows anything about DC knows that it is a corrupt place. Vivek came into the CTO position with the goal of making DC’s bidding and vendor contracting processes more transparent. Those calling for his immediate resignation must remember that Vivek’s initiatives helped catch these people. Vivek Kundra’s promotion of common sense and cheap tools for transparency foiled Acar’s and Bansal’s continued bilking of city taxpayers. In other words, if it had not been for Vivek’s transparency initiatives, these guys may not have been caught.

Labeling DC as a “corrupt place” is a form of dismissive generalization that I simply can’t abide. Is San Francisco a “corrupt place?” How about L.A? New York?

I also disagree with the notions that Kundra must be presumed guilty OR innocent, simply because this happened on his watch, under his roof. He has not been charged (though FBI probes tend to start lower down and work their way up by exerting pressure and working out plea bargains, so there might be a qualified “yet” at the end of this sentence). The jury isn’t even out on this one; all anyone outside the FBI can do is assume and imagine.

I will only say that politically, he seems to have flip-flopped rather severely, since several years ago he was stumping very hard for Bobby Jindal (hence my presumption that he was a Republican). Were I an Obama senior staffer, I’d have tried to vet for that sort of thing.

And DizzyDesi, you sure do smear with a broad brush. Sanjay Gupta AND Caroline Atkinson? Boy, the corruption must run deep! How can these people live with themselves, having withdrawn from a nomination? Maybe we should offer every political appointee nominee a wakazashi to fall on in case they decide not to go through with it, huh?

It’s funny how much this sounds like the scandal involving the current same thing about corruption regrading the former governor and former abd current senator of Illinois. (Once you remove Kundra’s name.) Kundra should not resign — he seems to fit right in with the adminitration of Change.*1

From Slashdot

List of Obama appointees who’ve had to withdraw For future reference, the list so far: Bill Richardson: grand jury investigation for influence peddling Tom Daschle: tax evasion Nancy Killefer: tax lien on home for failing to pay unemployment tax for household workers Judd Gregg: political differences over stimulus plan Annette Nazareth: reason unspecified Caroline Atkinson: reason for withdrawal not specified Sanjay Gupta: reason unspecified People who haven’t withdrawn, but have had major issues: Hilda Solis: husband has 16 years of tax liens against his business Tim Geithner: tax problems Gary Locke: potentially-suspicious fund-raising history [michellemalkin.com] Ron Kirk: failed to pay $10,000 in back taxes Will Vivek Kundra be next on the list?

*1 for the sarcasm impaired, that was just a snark. This comment also from slashdot is how I feel

The guy was/is the head of that office. He either didn’t know about the corruption (as the frigging FEDERAL CIO for the country, that might be a think he’d be expected to know about corruption in his own office) or he was in on it. Either way, for me, this is 100% a bad sign and should raise a huge red flag.

That’s the lamest thing I’ve heard. The sting wasn’t because of Kundra, he wasn’t aware of it even. He was busy giving a speech about transperancy at the time.

The whole shameful affair was brought to light only after an OCTO employee informed the FBI about what was happening.

If Kundra has any decency left in him, he should resign right away.

That’s logically flawed. Acar was Kundra’s direct report. In fact, Acar was supposedly Kundra’s interim replacement after Kundra’s departure to OMB. Acar and Bansal fleeced the District of millions of dollars right under Kundra’s nose. Where was Kundra’s oversight? In his two years on the job how was he not able to detect what as going on? The corruption was uncovered because of the FBI and a DC OCTO confidential witness working together in a year-long undercover sting operation. To attribute the success of the operation to Kundra’s “transparency initiatives” is a joke. Acar was caught red-handed and is a criminal. Kundra has been caught with his pants down and this episode clearly demonstrates that he is unfit to manage basic government IT operations, let alone to preach about the need for transparency and accountability in government.

Do we really want to push people who are helping uncover corruption out of the upper levels of government? What sort of message is this sending?

To say the corruption was happening under Vivek Kundra’s nose is unfair. The corruption was uncovered and brought to light BECAUSE of the initiatives that Vivek Kundra was working on.

The final report is: The new CTO is HISTORY because all this happended on his WATCH if he was involved or not. He is RESPONSIBLE and ACCOUNTABLE for ALL of the staff and ALL of the budget and he failed at governance and management core competacies of a high visability CIO/CTO position. Failure is failure politics aside! This is not HOPE and TRANSPARANCY policy as a model the White House wants to represent. This is exactly the opposite!

What a waste for the IT we were in the White House!