4 ms·

> This one is extra bad. Not even a communication plan? They did manage to spend $13 MILLION on Oracle shit though. The best part is the solution they sold, whi

> This one is extra bad. Not even a communication plan? They did manage to spend $13 MILLION on Oracle shit though. The best part is the solution they sold, which is not even working in New Hampshire, and was built on DynamicsCRM (not portable to oracle)... That person needs to be fired immediately and probably arrested. To be honest, as someone who lives in New York, that doesn't even sound that bad, as far as corruption in government contract goes. To give you an idea, the MTA was recently caught paying $200,000 per day to people who literally did not have any jobs to do[0]. They were able to cover this up for years, and when it was finally made public, nobody batted an eyelid because, well, this level of corruption and wasteful spending is so commonplace that nobody was surprised in the least. Hopefully Nevada has a functioning democratic government (unlike New York) and the state government decides to hold these people accountable. It's been over a month since that NYTimes piece came out, and Governor Cuomo hasn't even felt the need to respond to it - that's how little accountability our elected officials here have. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

cookiecaper 9y ago
From your link: > The labor deals negotiated between the unions and construction companies also ensure that workers are well paid. The agreement for Local 147, the union for the famed “sandhogs” who dig the tunnels, includes a pay rate for most members of $111 per hour in salary and benefits. The pay doubles for overtime or Sunday work, which is common in transit construction. Weekend overtime pays quadruple — more than $400 per hour. Wow. Seems like programming isn't a good field if you're in it for the money. The base pay may not be far off if you're a big shot superstar in a small market or normal in SV, but which of us gets 4x salary for weekend hours?
- ofcrpls 9y ago
  I am sure the workers wouldn't see much of this overtime pay as the TM would have just billed NV DMV at that rate.
acct1771 9y ago
That's because we've outsourced enforcing government's accountability to The People...to government. See the problem?
- mulmen 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I don't follow.
  - ramses0 9y ago
    Go back to High School Civics. Oh. Your High School dropped Civics (and Citizenship) from curriculae? How unfortunate that you didn't learn of the 3 branches of government, the 4th estate (media) and the Power of the People(tm). That's very unfortunate it was skipped in your High School Civics class. It's a wonder that any High Schools still even _have_ civics classes (or U.S. Government), as that would certainly be detrimental to the involvement of the general populace in their own self-government. I wonder why The Government decided it was better to not have the Public Education System teach Civics to Potentially Concerned Citizens. Certainly much easier to get people excited about attacks on Net Neutrality (if they care) or just slowly accept that the voice of any one person of literally millions thinking the same thing is just another tweet-stream to drown out with internal or external propaganda. Let me know if it's not clear, or if you'd like further unsourced opinions on the topic. Click LIKE and SHARE if you AGREE!
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 9y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. It's what in the UK would be called a "safe seat". Politicians in safe seats are theoretically accountable but due to the partisan nature of the electorate can in reality do whatever they like. Regardless of how badly they perform, they or their allies will always get re-elected. In the UK there are some seats like that and they're usually associated with the most hilariously incompetent politicians. Diane Abbott became famous in the last couple of years for all sorts of useless and bad behaviour, like this famous exchange in which she went on the radio to explain a new policy of hiring more police, but repeatedly gave nonsensical and inconsistent numbers for how many and how much it'd cost: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abbotts-agonising-interview-over-policy-cost/ http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abb... e.g. she claimed hiring 10,000 police would cost only 300,000 pounds and when it was pointed out that'd mean paying them 30 pounds a year, she just invented another number on the spot that was also an order of magnitude away from anything that could possibly be correct. She also routinely posts racist and sexist stuff on Twitter, skips important votes and generally fails at basic politics but her share of the vote went up in the election - because she's Labour. No competition? No accountability!

cookiecaper 9y ago

From your link: > The labor deals negotiated between the unions and construction companies also ensure that workers are well paid. The agreement for Local 147, the union for the famed “sandhogs” who dig the tunnels, includes a pay rate for most members of $111 per hour in salary and benefits. The pay doubles for overtime or Sunday work, which is common in transit construction. Weekend overtime pays quadruple — more than $400 per hour. Wow. Seems like programming isn't a good field if you're in it for the money. The base pay may not be far off if you're a big shot superstar in a small market or normal in SV, but which of us gets 4x salary for weekend hours?

ofcrpls 9y ago
I am sure the workers wouldn't see much of this overtime pay as the TM would have just billed NV DMV at that rate.

acct1771 9y ago

That's because we've outsourced enforcing government's accountability to The People...to government. See the problem?

mulmen 9y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I don't follow.
- ramses0 9y ago
  Go back to High School Civics. Oh. Your High School dropped Civics (and Citizenship) from curriculae? How unfortunate that you didn't learn of the 3 branches of government, the 4th estate (media) and the Power of the People(tm). That's very unfortunate it was skipped in your High School Civics class. It's a wonder that any High Schools still even _have_ civics classes (or U.S. Government), as that would certainly be detrimental to the involvement of the general populace in their own self-government. I wonder why The Government decided it was better to not have the Public Education System teach Civics to Potentially Concerned Citizens. Certainly much easier to get people excited about attacks on Net Neutrality (if they care) or just slowly accept that the voice of any one person of literally millions thinking the same thing is just another tweet-stream to drown out with internal or external propaganda. Let me know if it's not clear, or if you'd like further unsourced opinions on the topic. Click LIKE and SHARE if you AGREE!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. It's what in the UK would be called a "safe seat". Politicians in safe seats are theoretically accountable but due to the partisan nature of the electorate can in reality do whatever they like. Regardless of how badly they perform, they or their allies will always get re-elected. In the UK there are some seats like that and they're usually associated with the most hilariously incompetent politicians. Diane Abbott became famous in the last couple of years for all sorts of useless and bad behaviour, like this famous exchange in which she went on the radio to explain a new policy of hiring more police, but repeatedly gave nonsensical and inconsistent numbers for how many and how much it'd cost: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abbotts-agonising-interview-over-policy-cost/ http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abb... e.g. she claimed hiring 10,000 police would cost only 300,000 pounds and when it was pointed out that'd mean paying them 30 pounds a year, she just invented another number on the spot that was also an order of magnitude away from anything that could possibly be correct. She also routinely posts racist and sexist stuff on Twitter, skips important votes and generally fails at basic politics but her share of the vote went up in the election - because she's Labour. No competition? No accountability!