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Oracle Investigation Grows
VValdo writes "Department heads resigning, millions of dollars wasted, documents shredded, the government investigating. No, it's not Enron-- as previously reported, the $95 million contract with Oracle is blowing into a full-fledged scandal in California, according to today's LA Times, The article begins, "California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department, and Gov. Gray Davis suspended the agency's chief amid a widening investigation of the state's multimillion-dollar computer contract with Oracle Corp.""
More details on the emerging Oracle scandal, including a chronology of events for those just hearing about the story, can be found in George Skelton's Capitol Journal column, which ran in today's LA Times under the title "No Defense Tactic Can Hide This Ugly Scandal."
Skelton's column is definitely worth the read--this is more than just a colossal sales job, and more than just a $25,000 campaign contribution to the governor oh-so-coincidentally two weeks after the deal. There are state legislators with family ties to this, and a startling lack of California employees (or departments) with any interest in using it.
Given the jitters many people have about the securities business today, the most ominous comment might well be a brief mention at the bottom of Skelton's column:
CA was famous for years for doing all sorts of stuff to "make the numbers" at the end of each quarter. You can only do it for so long--once everybody figures out that Sears is always running sales, nobody is willing to buy at anything other than the sale price. Writ large, the same thing happens to companies that are motivated by this quarter's presentation to the securities analysts: eventually customers learn to wait for the last week of the quarter, when you can name your price.
Oracle, in the go-go 90s, made money by the barrel--at one point a colleague observed that their margins were probably higher than the Medellin Cartel. If they have to resort to this kind of shenanigans to make the quarter's numbers, Oracle has bigger problems than a $25,000 payoff to the governor of California.
It's called a gubernatorial election. If you're in CA and eligible to vote, you might want to participate.
Despite what you may have heard (and despite his best efforts :-), Gov. Davis isn't the only candidate running.
I'm not expert either.. This is simply an observation.
Different groups of law enforcement report to or get thier funding from different agencies. He who provides funding can direct the troups. I'm sure there our times when you would not want to step on others toes by flexing your muscles but it happens. They are lucky the SWAT team was not sent in.
In my county in VA, the county sheriffs office and the county police are always nitpicking with each other over who is responsible for what, they have even sued each other in the past for various things. This does not seem to be a very productive way of spending my tax dollars. Of course neither is over spending on a contract.
Moderators, yes this is off-topic, but it is a reply to another comment that you may not see because you are browsing at >=1.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Stated this in a previous thread but worth stating again. Having worked for the bucket-head-known-as Eli Cortez who was appointed the State CIO and got them in this mess, the governor and California are getting what they deserve. This man has a history of screwing everything up on a grand and global scale like some sort of nuclear picnic. Just shows how powerful the unqualified and criminially negligient can be if you place them in key positions. Having destroyed a county and now a state, I'm sure Eli Cortez is being recruited to run the federal government as we speak. Call it "destiny."
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
The issue with postgresql is the lack of "good" replication. There are currently a couple of patches for master-slave replication, although they seem to be fairly primitive. There is nothing for multi-master. I have seen indications that stuff is in the works but it will be a year or more. This kind of limits postgresql's scalability, particularly with its one-process-per-connection backend.
maru
This is actually a good question since CHiP is a misleading acronym.
A recent example of what they do in times of need is the not-too-distant rioting that occured in Cincinnati. The governor sent in about 60+/- units to set things back in order. They also served as a signal that the nation was taking notice of Cincinnati's problems between local police and populace.
Their legal powers are also somewhat broader than those of local police (this may be different now with the USA Patriot act...). So if the governor orders them to stop the tampering of evidence they can do it as long as it is within the state and they are following an executive order.
They are police somewhat analogous to the relationship of the Army to the State National Guard.
Iran/Contra was not a crime. And once again, the Democrat brings up something from a quarter of a century ago.
If it wasn't a crime, then why did President Bush have to pardon a slew of white house officials facing(or about to face) criminal charges just before he left office?
It was on Christmas Day, 1992 so you may have not noticed it. And unlike the heavily criticized Clinton pardons, these were done primarily to protect Bush himself from criminal charges. Pardon all the witnesses and they can't turn state's evidence on you, as Casper Weinberger, IIRC, was preparing to do.
BTW, the Iran Contra hearings were 15 years ago, not 25.