Gavin Newsom spent more than $450 million on a regional emergency call system that flopped and was canceled—meantime, the old system risks “catastrophic failure.”
Great reporting of yet another colossal failure of leadership by Gov Gavin Newsom. There should be ppl running these projects who have project management experience. Who can quickly unearth not just how the tech should/will work once it’s in place but also all the tasks and obstacles across the region that must be addressed and overcome. This means more than just technology. This also means hard infrastructure, real estate issues associated with fiber or other physical aspects of the project. What community outreach and buy in will be needed. What do the permits allow when impasses occur or contractors dispute scope or budget? How to treat overruns? Pulling contractors when they overrun consistently or show signs of experience deficiencies on the project team doing the actual work. This is a massively complex job. It can’t be entered into with multiple contractors doing the same or even different parts without a strong project leadership representing the state and the taxpayers. Newsom has a history of letting activists run his cities. Homelessness and drug addiction is running rampant and getting worse. If he has left a project this important in the hands of the contractors, he will keep paying out cash that hasn’t been earned with no one in charge. Pay attention everybody: this is a small version of Newsom’s America if he runs for the Oval. He is utterly incompetent and actually not that bright. Sadly, those CA residents needing 911 responders will be the clear losers for a long time to come. It will take someone like Steve Hilton to fix it.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that living in the Los Angeles or SF area proper is not the same as living in many other spots in California. It is NOT the same California, and usually carries so much less of the baggage in a palpable way. But the news and media rarely make that distinction. However with a large dispatch system that covers the state, that changes things. The sad thing is, interviewers and media, and the average blue voter is propping up Newsom. They are willing to crawl over broken glass to win the next presidential election. Crawling over broken glass means treating him with kid gloves, and taking his first rebuttal as Gospel truth, and believing him despite the risk of what his leadership may bring. What this means is the ugly truth of his mismanagement (or fraud) never really gets the air time needed to spread the truth. In almost EVERY interview he has, he offers a clever well-spoken response, and the interviewer rarely EVER knows how to take that to the next level of rebuttal, because they usually cannot prove or disprove what he just said. Most of California’s problems under Newsom can be summed up as a systemic lack of responsibility, which results in fraud or these union totally robbing the tax payers. And he’s at the top, but always manages to give the impression he’s the good ol’ guy of the world’s 4th largest economy.
People here in Cali would rather suffer than have a competent conservative in office. So many things that are wrong here that’s why people are fleeing.
Yep, I believe they’d rather have the status quo, which at this point is frankly criminal. It’s like a cult. You’d think people could step outside of their bias and vote on common sense policy. Not sure what it is ultimately for a lot of them. Abortion maybe.. or “reproductive rights”, LGBTQ possibly, and now more and more socialism. What a hill to die on.
I saw a comic recently that kind of sums up the hysteria. The citizens in this state are essentially relying on an older Democrat party identity that no longer lines up with what the party now is. California problems are now purely ideological in many ways, as Steve Hilton puts it. And there’s a lot of Stockholm syndrome going on around.
I live in southern CA. At the height of COVID (2021-2022), on my way home, on the off-ramp from the freeway there was a tree on fire, probably set by one of the homeless people living in the bushes nearby or under the underpass, which had become a homeless shelter (10-15 people with tents, belognings, etc). I called 911 and got nothing.
I'm a little unclear why the 911 system requires this level of complexity. It's just a phone call, isn't it? Commercial call centers use caller ID to reverse lookup customer data all the time. Retrieving the address from a phone number is no different. So what's hard about this? What am I missing?
Or maybe I'm not missing anything. Maybe the goal isn't construction but corruption -- funneling state money to your consultant friends.
Why not turn the whole thing over to the cellular providers? Any system has the cellular piece as a major interaction interface. Verizon and others run customer service operations so can route calls to available personnel, call up customer info instantly and route calls to escalations as needed. Looks and sounds pretty similar to a 911 system.
An afterthought: the endless challenges to cellular equipment siting could be mitigated by an understanding that good cellular coverage - the emergency network backbone - is more important than locals who dislike the look of radio towers,
I worked on something like this around twenty years ago, or rather the aftermath. Any Sailors or Marines in the late 2000 aughts might remember this thing called NMCI. Navy Marine Corps Internet.
The contracting involved was so complicated, a large number of subs had to be small minority owned businesses (nothing wrong with them per se - but the scale resulted in way too many cooks in the kitchen), then the failure to push software through the system such that individually updating systems became necessary, some many hated it, others couldn’t use it, many other preferred legacy systems, etc.
Or as I've said before, the state will have to go bankrupt...without any bailout by the feds for California to change. Or the democrat party needs to be abolished.
Keep the exposeés coming about Newsom. He is a disaster both as a leader and as a manager. Let's not even talk about his failures as a person. As astonishing as it is, he will likely be the person the Marxicrats (Demoncrats?) rally around. Please keep reporting on his malfeasance...
Doesn't hearing these types of stories ever get old to Californians? The ineptness across the state is truly incredible.
It isn’t just ineptness, it’s fraud. I bet some of that money is ending up in the pockets of politicians.
No doubt….
How would they signal their virtue if anything actually worked?
Maybe you should ask conservatism's "Warrior Prince of Peace" just to see what Jesus thinks.
Most of the democrat voters in California are, quite simply, mentally disabled.
Californian here. We who are inclined to center right localism sigh, and go surfing. Locals rule! (Says Alexis de Tocqueville). Though not in CA.
Great reporting of yet another colossal failure of leadership by Gov Gavin Newsom. There should be ppl running these projects who have project management experience. Who can quickly unearth not just how the tech should/will work once it’s in place but also all the tasks and obstacles across the region that must be addressed and overcome. This means more than just technology. This also means hard infrastructure, real estate issues associated with fiber or other physical aspects of the project. What community outreach and buy in will be needed. What do the permits allow when impasses occur or contractors dispute scope or budget? How to treat overruns? Pulling contractors when they overrun consistently or show signs of experience deficiencies on the project team doing the actual work. This is a massively complex job. It can’t be entered into with multiple contractors doing the same or even different parts without a strong project leadership representing the state and the taxpayers. Newsom has a history of letting activists run his cities. Homelessness and drug addiction is running rampant and getting worse. If he has left a project this important in the hands of the contractors, he will keep paying out cash that hasn’t been earned with no one in charge. Pay attention everybody: this is a small version of Newsom’s America if he runs for the Oval. He is utterly incompetent and actually not that bright. Sadly, those CA residents needing 911 responders will be the clear losers for a long time to come. It will take someone like Steve Hilton to fix it.
Tax and spend. This is what politicians do!
And spend irresponsibly is primarily a credo of the Democrats. don’t have a problem when it’s not their money being used.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that living in the Los Angeles or SF area proper is not the same as living in many other spots in California. It is NOT the same California, and usually carries so much less of the baggage in a palpable way. But the news and media rarely make that distinction. However with a large dispatch system that covers the state, that changes things. The sad thing is, interviewers and media, and the average blue voter is propping up Newsom. They are willing to crawl over broken glass to win the next presidential election. Crawling over broken glass means treating him with kid gloves, and taking his first rebuttal as Gospel truth, and believing him despite the risk of what his leadership may bring. What this means is the ugly truth of his mismanagement (or fraud) never really gets the air time needed to spread the truth. In almost EVERY interview he has, he offers a clever well-spoken response, and the interviewer rarely EVER knows how to take that to the next level of rebuttal, because they usually cannot prove or disprove what he just said. Most of California’s problems under Newsom can be summed up as a systemic lack of responsibility, which results in fraud or these union totally robbing the tax payers. And he’s at the top, but always manages to give the impression he’s the good ol’ guy of the world’s 4th largest economy.
People here in Cali would rather suffer than have a competent conservative in office. So many things that are wrong here that’s why people are fleeing.
Yep, I believe they’d rather have the status quo, which at this point is frankly criminal. It’s like a cult. You’d think people could step outside of their bias and vote on common sense policy. Not sure what it is ultimately for a lot of them. Abortion maybe.. or “reproductive rights”, LGBTQ possibly, and now more and more socialism. What a hill to die on.
I’d like to add that the Democrats don’t mind breaking a little glass beforehand to add a little urgency to the problem.
I saw a comic recently that kind of sums up the hysteria. The citizens in this state are essentially relying on an older Democrat party identity that no longer lines up with what the party now is. California problems are now purely ideological in many ways, as Steve Hilton puts it. And there’s a lot of Stockholm syndrome going on around.
You all are absolutely correct. If you can believe it, the democrats like it this way. They are totally deranged.
I live in southern CA. At the height of COVID (2021-2022), on my way home, on the off-ramp from the freeway there was a tree on fire, probably set by one of the homeless people living in the bushes nearby or under the underpass, which had become a homeless shelter (10-15 people with tents, belognings, etc). I called 911 and got nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZDIitWz8Go
I have a relative that works for LAFD. They put out 40-50+ “bum fires” every day.
Is there -anything--that Gavin has done that was not way over budget, incomlete and/or a total failure? He's the poster boy for slick, bad decisions.
Remember the big dig in Boston? This is the way democrats operate. It is mind boggling that they still have voters.
I'm a little unclear why the 911 system requires this level of complexity. It's just a phone call, isn't it? Commercial call centers use caller ID to reverse lookup customer data all the time. Retrieving the address from a phone number is no different. So what's hard about this? What am I missing?
Or maybe I'm not missing anything. Maybe the goal isn't construction but corruption -- funneling state money to your consultant friends.
Tell me again how government is the solution?
I guess when you spend $100 billion on a high-speed train that goes no where, you don't have funds for trivial things like 911, cops and firemen.
HOW IS NEWSOM THE TOP DEMOCRATIC CONTENDER FOR 2028???
Like all authoritarians, the Democratic Party values ideological loyalty over competence.
There’s an old southern saying…..”He’s the best pick of a poor litter. “
Why not turn the whole thing over to the cellular providers? Any system has the cellular piece as a major interaction interface. Verizon and others run customer service operations so can route calls to available personnel, call up customer info instantly and route calls to escalations as needed. Looks and sounds pretty similar to a 911 system.
An afterthought: the endless challenges to cellular equipment siting could be mitigated by an understanding that good cellular coverage - the emergency network backbone - is more important than locals who dislike the look of radio towers,
I worked on something like this around twenty years ago, or rather the aftermath. Any Sailors or Marines in the late 2000 aughts might remember this thing called NMCI. Navy Marine Corps Internet.
The contracting involved was so complicated, a large number of subs had to be small minority owned businesses (nothing wrong with them per se - but the scale resulted in way too many cooks in the kitchen), then the failure to push software through the system such that individually updating systems became necessary, some many hated it, others couldn’t use it, many other preferred legacy systems, etc.
But that cost, went over $10B
Considering you said this was Navy, my first mental picture of "minority owned subs" was totally wrong. :-)
I’ll concede I thought about it, about adding “contractors” 😉
Thanks for making this post free …
The Feds must sue CA and win before any change will occur.
You’re assuming a Democratic judge wouldn’t overturn it.
6-3 at the SCOTUS
Or as I've said before, the state will have to go bankrupt...without any bailout by the feds for California to change. Or the democrat party needs to be abolished.
I can recall red Cali. I have some hope it's about to start turning away from blue destruction.
I can remember as well. Remember the Northridge earthquake in 1992? Republicans rebuilt the damaged freeway system in 4 months.
Dear Chris Rufo:
Keep the exposeés coming about Newsom. He is a disaster both as a leader and as a manager. Let's not even talk about his failures as a person. As astonishing as it is, he will likely be the person the Marxicrats (Demoncrats?) rally around. Please keep reporting on his malfeasance...
You can't make this up.