Rumor has it at $40 million dollars and totally worthless! CMS: Computerized, mismanaged, system failure

Boy oh boy: the first reports coming out of the recent CMS training are of horror! This beast of a system is going to consume everything in its path and leave a wake of destruction like no other. If that $40 million dollar price tag is true, then someone send this to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., the Bureau of State Audits, and your locally-elected representatives. Rule #1:

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Poor 'ol Victor Jurado (the CMS trainer/explainer) tried to dodge every single relevant question with some yuk-yuk joke and smile. The truth is, they could not a find Wage Claim Release (known as the DLSE Form 51), and it took them almost all day to complete an Entertainment Work Permit...something that should only take 5 minutes.

The People of California are going to get SCREWED on December 4th, the day the machines take over. It's going to be like Terminater 3's ending...but worse. Lines are going to be out the door, people are going to be pissed and complaining, and why? Because idiots don't have a clue as to how to service the People of California, and they just made the Number One mistake in computerization: DLSE staff will be working for the computer, and the computer will not be working for DLSE statf.

The DLSE is great at making problems, but it sucks at fixing them...usually at taxpayer expense

This is the printed DLC III exam eligibility list in .jpg format (left click to enlarge & right click mouse on picture to save to your computer). It's gonna be so hard for wanna-be Labor Commissioner Robert Jones to explain this mathmatical improbability, which is why we're gonna call this list Exhibit A. I'm sure that Robert Jones is extremely proud of this achievement, as the DLSE can pick whoever they want...merit-based promotions at DLSE can go pound sand.

Listen up, wanna-be Labor Commissioner Robert Jones: maybe your underlings Rupp, McGinty, and Munoz didn't clue you in, but Judge Kleinman said "fresh start" and "preserve the career of appellant," so why are you still investigating the blog? You are the one, through the actions of your Senior Special Investigator Lee Pearson, that is now disrupting the operational efficiency of the DLSE staff. Looks like this investigation is also bad faith and retaliatory, not to mention that it has your fingerprints all over it. You go ahead and make your move...there are many more documents to post.

Results of DLSE supervisor exam: 4 people scored 73 and 21 people scored 70: what's that smell?

How is it that there is only one set of scores, a 73 and a 70? How is that possible with 25 different people taking the test?

Q. What do you call it when 21 people receive the same score on a DLSE supervisor test?

A. You tell me: a Sham? a Joke? The test was Fixed? Those 21 test takers cheated off each other with a C- answer key?

This bullsh*t, joke of an exam happened on wanna-be Labor Commissioner Robert Jones' watch, but you'll never see him get in front of it: that would take integrity, accountability, and honor. We all know that wanna-be Labor Commissioner Robert Jones checked his honor and integrity at the door when Jose and Vicky pimped him out for that termination job he did on Miles Locker.What he'll do is lay back and wait for people to fight it, then he'll deny it, then he'll try to settle it. How much money is going to be spent trying to unscrew this cluster? He can deny it all he wants, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with the official wanna-be Labor Commissioner Robert Jones: he also moonlights for the DLSE as their Chief Counsel. Maybe he'll need a lawyer.

To put it another way: your child comes home from a very important test, and you find out they scored a 70. Afterwards, you also discover that 20 other students received the same score of 70. You think a parent-teacher conference might be in order? The other 4 students scored a 73, so what the hell happened? Is this a failure of the system, the teacher who scored the test, the test questions, or to hear the (possible) excuse of the DLSE...the problem is with the students who scored so low.

21 people receiving the same score without so much as a 71 or a 72 sandwiched in between those 4 smarties who scored a 73. These 25 people are the only ones who considered the promotion: a promotion that will suck anyway because one of the vacancies is replacing David Dorame on that pretarded EEEC task force that Jose Millan renamed from TIPP. Jose Millan slithers his way back into the halls of DLSE and then-all of the sudden-they create this new bullsh*t position of "Director" of this pretarded task force. He needs a DLC III to micromanage; hopefully the winner of this DLC III position will love alcohol as much as Dave. Once again, Labor Standards has no Labor Standards.

"In order to save the village, we had to burn the village," or, DLSE's recent scoring of their own DLC III exam

This one is really special! It turns out that everyone who passed the recent Deputy Labor Commissioner III (DLC III) exam in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana all received the same score of 70! Holy sh*t, Batman-we got ourselves a conspiracy!

Out of all the vindictive, petty, and often insane antics those whacky executives play within the DLSE, I never thought that they would be dumb enough to collude to "fix" the test results! If you believe their side of the story, then not only did everyone give the same answer to every question, but they also gave the same sh*tty answer to every question to receive such a low passing score of 70. Everyone who received a score of 70 was placed in Rank 2, meaning that the DLSE desk donkeys can pick whoever they want...and sadly for the public, they usually do.

The DLSE screws up (yet another) opportunity to do the right & honorable thing. This division can't (even) conduct a DLC III examination without screwing the pooch. A good investigator doesn't believe in "coincidences," and a great investigator can 'connect' those 'dots.' Everyone receiving the same, crappy score: what was the real reason for the collusion and premeditation? The state exam process was specifically designed to eliminate cronyism, nepotism, favortism, and the "good 'ol boys club;" with all the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana candidates receiving the same score, it seems to be a far cry from fair and impartial. Something went wrong; it went very wrong and it wasn't by accident. FRAUD, WASTE & ABUSE: which category does this fall under?

What Lupe Almaraz and Robert Jones will not be able to explain is how these scores mathmatically defy "statistical probability" and the "bell curve," but then again, they won't explain anything unless they are compelled to testify under penalty of perjury & even that is no guarantee. Jones and Almaraz will never clean up this house so long as they allow people like Nakagama, Rupp, and Calva to achieve their self-serving objectives, and if they cannot clean up this house, then they need to be replaced post haste.

Robert Jones' directive on performance evaluations

Issues to be discussed:
1. Why now, and why isn't Greg Rupp held accountable for the last 8 years of no evaluations.
2. Why can't the DLC IIIs complete their own evaluations without having the DLC IVs review and revise? Is this term called, "Professional Castration?" or merely "Micromanagement?" In all honesty, what the hell do the DLC IVs know about the day-to-day performance of the rank and file?
(more items later)

David Dorame, new Director of Vickygate's EEEC

Issues to be discussed:
1. Which alcohol-related police stops involved state vehicles.
2. How many drunk driving arrests resulted in convictions.
3. How many traffic accidents involved state vehicles.
4. Was Greg Rupp his Field Training Officer during his stint at ABC.
5. Did Greg Rupp recommend him to be a peace officer for the ABC.
6. Is Jose Millan a God-Father to his kid.
7. Did Jose overturn the recommendations to not make him a peace officer at DLSE.
(more issues to be added later)

Current Los Angeles DLSE news

Susanna rec'd some really good news, and so did Karen. For those that knew Rena, she was a good person with a big heart and a deeply giving personality. She recently died of cancer and worked for the Legal Unit with Dave, Edna, and Anne. She was one of those people that inspired people to do good things with their lives.

As far as that retaliation/Lee Pearson (4 people interviewed, no tape recorder used investigation) stuff goes; it will go nowhere. Even if they prove up that Maria retaliated against Marivel; she's protected by Abby, so nothing will happen to her. If Abby is protected, then Maria is protected. The only thing I heard about that was that once Maria found out that Alex was leaving her control...Alex got a little taste of what Marivel experienced.

DLSE Deputy Chief Lupe Almaraz makes a complicated medical records policy and still can't enact an easy-to-use complaint policy

Deputy Chief Lupe Almaraz took the time to initiate and enact a DLSE Medical Records Policy using the words "recently" and "several cases" in justifying his new course of action.

For years, the DLSE has received hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints against DLSE personnel from the public that we serve. Plaintiffs complain, Defendants complain, attorneys complain: every segment of the public complains. To date, there is no DLSE policy in handling such public complaints (unless the complaint is about a DLSE Peace Officer and there are only 8 out of the 400+ DLSE employees). There is no priority level assigned to these complaints, and certainly no Professional Standards (i.e., Internal Affairs) personnel assigned to investigate such complaints. Even if Lupe had the brain power to solve this puzzle (Assistant Chief bureaucrat Greg Rupp couldn't solve this with his 2 decades of steering the ship---no wonder he didn't get the promotion), then there would be no specialized training for such perseonnel. No matter what spin Lupe can doctor up, there is certainly no process where similar complaints are treated in a similar fashion.

This is what makes the Dept. of Industrial Retaliation so unique: no oversight, no accountability, and complete apathy to improve the Dept. Fraud, Waste, and Abuse: just any other normal day at DLSE. Here's the real kick in the grapes: Almaraz and others will read this and they will continue to sit on their lazy, bureaucratic asses and do nothing. Almaraz deliberately chooses to take an issue that merely touches "several" DLSE cases (out of the hundreds of thousands of cases in the DLSE database) to enact some policy that someone will use maybe once a year instead of drafting a policy that's literally needed almost everyday.

Was he selected as Deputy Chief because he's a submissive Yes-Man, or was he selected as Deputy Chief because he's so smart in identifying and meeting the critical needs of the DLSE? I'm not sure what to get him for Christmas: a ticket to the Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil show.

Art imitates the DLSE, or is it really true after all?

HBO has this great show called The Wire; it's in its fourth season. This season has been great, in fact, it's been so great that HBO ran a full-page ad of The Wire in the Wall Street Journal.

One of its storylines is that the Baltimore Mayor is up for re-election, and a secret state witness is murdered, then the press grabs ahold of it. So how does the Mayor spin it? He secretly tells his Deputy Chief to dely & slow down the investigation until after the election. Homicide removes their top detective off this Red Ball (slang for a politically high profile case) and directs a rookie detective to continue the investigation...a recently-transferred detective with no homicide experience.

As I watched this, all I thought about was the DLSE's investigatory patterns, practices, and procedures. How the orders and commands from the tip-top comes trickling down to day-to-day operations. How something (supposedly operationally minor in detail) as to who is assigned an investigation actually affects the BIG PICTURE.

If you get the chance, watch HBO's The Wire.

http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

"If you want to know what's wrong with the business, ask the front line." - Jim Donald, CEO/President of Starbucks (Fortune magazine, 10/16/06)

Lupe Almaraz, John Rea, Greg Rupp, Bobbie Jones, and the biggest bureaucrat of them all - Vicky Bradshaw not only cannot manage, but they also manage badly. Before Jose Millan went to become a Vice Desk Donkey at Kiddie Kollege, he carried Vicky Bradshaw's water at LWDA and DLSE for the longest time. A little birdie told me that before Vicky Bradshaw became a public servant, she worked for three businesses that went bankrupt. How is it that this cream floats to the top of Labor Standards?

The managers cannot/will not do their jobs because they are so focused on carrying the water for their bosses...Lauro Cons carries Susan Nakagama's water. Susan Nakagama definitely carried Roger Miller and Art Lujan's water. Greg Rupp carries Lupe Almaraz's water. Lupe Almaraz carries Robert Jones water. Bobbie Jones carries John Rea's water. John Rea carried Jose Millan's water, and of course, Jose Millan never missed an opportunity to carrry Vicky's water...that's why she brought him on board once Arnold appointed Pete Wilson's lukewarm leftovers.

With all of this brown-nosing going on, it's really hard to produce actual, concrete results for the People of California. It's almost like there are mainly two actions stemming from these types of public servants; they are either brown-nosing their bosses or retaliating against those that refuse to brown their noses. In any event, the State of California is not paying them to brown-nose or retaliate; the state is paying them to do their job, which is half-ass at best and non-existant at worst.

State Personnel Board hearing for terminated attorney went very well for Miles Locker

After DLSE attorneys Bobbie Jones and Tony Michelle wasted 4 days of taxpayer time, money, and resources trying to sell their manure to an Administrative Law Judge, the terminated attorney had his chance to proceed with his case. From what I hear, the Appellant blew the barn doors off of the DLSE's bullsh*t, and things really don't look well for the DLSE's rebuttal arguments.

The real beauty of this is that eventually the public record will come to this blog after the SPB decides and after a Public Records Act request is sent.

Common sense predicts that the ALJ will uphold the appeal, and then a whole sh*tload of people will be hit with a wrongful termination lawsuit. The sad part of this is that the People of California got f*cked by the top bosses because a vindictive few like Vicky Bradshaw, Jose Millan, Donna Dell, Robert Jones, and Anthony Mischel took a great public servant off the streets, runined his career, and failed to replace him. When the dust settles, who's going to discipline those that did bad things to a state attorney who was wrongfully terminated?