Saturday, November 23, 2013

Michael Pollan Knows Nothing About Mayor Bloomberg


Apparently Michael Pollan missed not only the news about CityTime scandal - the worst fraud ever perpetrated against NYC - but also the 911 system overhaul mess that has seen Bloomberg spend over $2 billion dollars in tech upgrades that cause the system to freeze repeatedly and just may have led to the death of a four year old.

Or the EMT records modernization project Bloomberg instituted that the NY Post called a "technical nightmare" that causes the new wifi devices to freeze up and lose information - again putting lives at risk.

Or the NYCHA computer system upgrade that Bloomberg spent $36 million on that Juan Gonzlaez described this way in the Daily News:

Bureaucrats at the New York City Housing Authority gave their new $36 million computerized rent-collection system the bizarre acronym NICE (NYCHA Improving Customer Experience).
But for landlords and public housing tenants, the system — designed by firm Siebel-Oracle — is a cyber-monster run amok.

Since NICE was launched in February, the annual certification process for 100,000 tenants who receive Section 8 rent subsidies has turned into a hellhole of disappeared documents, erroneous payments and baseless eviction notices.

Many of the 30,000 private landlords who get paid by the Housing Authority are up fed up.
“It’s total chaos beyond belief,” said one Brooklyn building owner. “Landlords are being mixed up and getting wrong checks. Sometimes the computer automatically sends termination notices to every tenant in a building. Transfers get held up for months. The whole thing gets worse every day.”

Or how about the GPS systems Bloomberg bought for the FDNY that the NY Times described this way:

The Bloomberg administration spent millions of dollars to put custom-made GPS tracking units in fire and garbage trucks, only to have vehicles inexplicably show up on computer screens as if they had sunk to the bottom of Long Island Sound or New York Harbor, the city comptroller has found.

Faulty devices, inaccurate locations, needless features and prices to make a vendor blush — as much as $56,000 for a single unit in a sanitation truck — characterized the two projects, according to two audits released on Wednesday.

The comptroller, John C. Liu, said the findings were more evidence of the administration’s troubled record with computer projects.

“Once again, millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on technology that falls short of what’s promised, raising questions about the oversight of expensive outside consultants,” he said in a statement. Mr. Liu, a likely mayoral candidate, has crusaded against city technology spending on projects like CityTime, the scandal-plagued payroll system.

Last week, the Bloomberg administration acknowledged that it had mismanaged its major information-technology projects and vowed to improve oversight.

And let's not forget the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2011 that saw Bloomberg telling people to relax and take in a Broadway show as New Yorkers died in this city because Bloomberg was too incompetent to get the streets plowed in a timely fashion.

Or his downplaying of the storm threat pre-Sandy that caused some New Yorkers to take the storm less seriously than they should have.

I'm sick of these "experts" like Pollan pontificating about stuff they know NOTHING about, showing their ignorance in the bargain, and no one calling them on it.

Not that he's going to care, but I'M going to call him on it.

Pollan is an ignoramus if he thinks Bloomberg is some uber-competent techno-genius who should be tapped to fix the Obamacare mess.

This is the kind of statement that calls into question whatever else this guy writes or talks about.

4 comments:

  1. Add to the mix that Bloomberg would decide that some people really shouldn't have "health insurance".

    Nah, let's get rid of Obamacare. It is a handout to the insurance industrial complex.
    Bring in SINGLE PAYER.

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  2. Ahh, but watch the tsunami of fawning media coverage on what a genius of a mayor was, with "he was great with health issues such as the smoking ban and he was great with green issues such as his bike lanes."

    This article was a good correcting angle against such nonsense.

    John Liu could compile "The Worst of Michael Bloomberg", reflection on his digging up the crimes of Bloomie. Plenty of leftie publishers would jump at the chance to publish it. It would sell like hotcakes.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, this Pollan tweet set me off because it's just so clueless. It really does call into question this guy as an "expert." This is so off base and clueless a comment.

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