Speakeasy forum: So, the Fat Boy shot himself in the Leg. A Toronto Story

CAD= Computer Aided Design

How is that not a proper program for govt use such as in Department of Transportation and Department of Public Works and maybe other areas that deal with road, overpass, and bridge designs? I can see a lot of places in govt offices it would apply. I'll have to ask my daughter who is a civil engineer for Maryland at DOT what sort of design program they use, but I'd not be surprised if it's not some CAD program. I know that's what she used in college when studying to become an engineer.

because that's not a program someone would even want to bog their computer down with unless someone who had access to the computer had some conceivable use for it. It's like a lot of people will put Adobe Reader on their computer to read PDF documents. They may even add a PDF Creator print program to make PDF documents for sending out. How many of those however even want the full Adobe Acrobat program loaded to their computer unless they have some use for it? I suspect there was some idea the program was needed by someone in the office where it was installed. It's an unusual program for someone to just decide they'd like to put it on their computer, even with no use for it.

other City employees for City work. A secretary does not need a computer built to run CAD programs. As I recall the unit cost of these computers was in the $7000 range, and they ordered roughly a thousand or more of them.

Regular computers in the $500 range then, less now, were what were needed. Any department like Engineering or City Planning which requiring AutoCAD or any other High End heavy processing type programs had already been taken care of through prior special purchases.

The Councillor was getting a kick-back, and the sales guy was getting a painfully large commission all for computers that could have been bought for 1/14th of the cost. Plus, the cases were so large that they were cluttering up the walkways in between work stations because they were too big to fit under the desk and to big to fit on the desk.

But I thought you could have figured that out. I didn't say that the computers were for special use, I said that they were for general use, for navigating the City database and the City's intranet.

Rob

seeing it, is that there are things appropriate for official stationery, like official letters, and there are things for which using official stationery is not appropriate bordering on illegal, as in conducting personal business like the kids hockey team solicitation on City stationery. A hockey team not associated with the City, but with Rob Ford as an individual, and his business.

But the bigger issue is his not withdrawing from the discussion about this usage, because he was clearly in conflict of interest when discussing an issue directly touching on himself and his use of the City to back his appeal for funds to the hockey team, and additionally in his choice of contributors, putting the bite on lobbyists and people doing business with the City for his private charity.

Ford got the standard information package of what you can and can't do, and apparently dumped it in the garbage without reading it. His mayoralty has been like this since day one, acting like a bull in a china shop, and then cursing people out who say, "But you can't do that Mr. Mayor, it's not legal."

This distaste for compliance with rules and regulations is not a "liberal" characteristic, it is a conservative one, and a Randian one at that. It's an assertion that he's above the rules and regulations, that he doesn't have to pay attention to the procedures put in place to prevent things like that computer purchase which did not benefit the City, but only benefitted the two principals, the Councillor in charge of the Committee on Purchasing, who was acting against their advice, and the salesman for the Computer Company.

Rob

Rob

use of "official" stationery. Still, that's pretty tame compared to what happens around this state at times. It's not just confined to any one political group.