New York Attorney General has forced Uber to modify its price gouging during emergencies - for now

Ohttp://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/07/8548558/uber-promises-not-price-gouge-during-disasters

Travis Kalanick, head honcho at Uber is out to conquer the world. Inspired by Ayn Rand and Things German, (all Uber New York  bases have German names)he"s often found pushing an envelope to see where he will be stopped. He slightly over reached in New York with his natural disaster price gouging. He just agreed (for now) to modify the price gouging that"s charmingly called surge pricing. It seems he was breaking New York"s price gouging statute. Attorney General Schneiderman probably got all that he could get considering he was up againsg an $18,000,000,000 behemoth and not some welfare mother caught stealing hamburger meat.

Kalanick is out to dominate urban surface transportation worldwide. He recently bought a New York Taxi and Limousine Deputy Commisskoner and no doubt is browsing Attorney Generals and their staffs nationwide.

His New York purchase seems to have paid off well. Policies  that  hobble the taxi business are in place as is spelled out in this blog.

Prospective taxi licensees are being thwarted,  Draconian license suspension and revocation rules are going into effect.  License renewals are being delayed.

Hobbled with a fifty cent per ride MTA tax, a thirty cents a ride wheelchair accessible fee, the possible reinvoking of the six cent a ride Bhairavi Desai tax drivers are looking at goin with comletitive UberX.

Uber's Travis Kalanick and taxi driving blogger Eugene Weixel and the driverless taxi of tomorrow and (would you believe it) the reptilian negatve population growth agenda.

Nothing is goIng to stop the driverless taxi of tommorow. The days of the penniless passenger with overdrawn credit card in hand are numbered along with the days of the driving proffession.  I want to share my thoughts with you about these facts as a long time New York taxi driver.

Google, Tesla and Uber are working in tandem towards the day that automobile driving will be as much a lost art as stonemasonry. They've got billions of dollars behind this project. In fact the driverless car is already a reality. No doubt it's not yet ready for prime time and  l do not doubt there will be an effort to make it a normal means of urban transportation within a very few years whether it be really ready or not. Travis Kalanick is in my opinion a Godless amoral Ayn Rand fascist who will lie, cheat, bribe, murder and steal to gain dominance over urban surface transportation worldwide. 

"Money talks bullshit walks" will be the order of the day. The era of the taxi fare beater will be over as only a fully loaded smart device already debited a deposit on the fare will get you into tommorow's dudeless taxi.While it is acceptable that a taxi driving dude like me be stiffed or played with counterfeit money the likes of Travis Kalanick do not and shall not accept pauper bullshit in  lieu of real bankable money.

Shirley Liu was a six year old girl who was mowed down by an app distracted pauper  Uber driver dude  in San Francisco this past New Year's Eve. Shirley Liu is dead and Kalanick says "not my problem." With $17,000,000,000 in hand and the adoration of our cold blooded media liars and dissimulators probably Kalanick will evade earthly responsibility for Shirley's life cut short. Shirley's family should seek restitution and redress from the underinsured pauper dude  who was making money for Kalanick, not from Kalanick or his corporate limited liability backers that include Google. So says Kalanick's lizard souled mouthpiece.

There will be other Shirly Liu type deaths (and I have  little doubt there already are some that never surfaced. ) With a seventeen billion dollar warchest and the alleigiance of mainstream media and opinion shapers on his side, Kalanick seems to be unstopable.

The Uberpeople of the world firmly believe that there are too many Untermenschen, untermenschen who exhale too much "poisonous" carbon ddioxide and often spoil an almost perfect view with their obesity, asymetries, bad teeth and ten dollar haircuts.

Not only taxi drivers and truckers and lawyers and maids need wonder where they and their children are going to fit into Google's robotized artificially intelligent workerless dystopia. Even traders are becoming redundant for the cold blooded (reptilian?) .01 % that looks to be sucking up all the wealth, writing all the rules and turning the rest of us into so much excess baggage.

I believe I kicked Michael Bloomberg's butt (and a few others too). Why the Taxi and Limousine Commission stiffed Hailo and Uber and what should come next.

A few days ago , Thursday to be exact, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission abandoned its plan to make rule changes that would have made Hailo and Uber permanent fixtures in New York City. Were the incoming de Blasio administration disinclined towards these apps they would have had a fight on their hands to undo what would have been done.

David Yassky had made it clear that these apps were a " go" and that the TLC was going to jam through the Bloomberg taxi agenda leaving de Blasio with as many "facts on the ground" as could be done.

But one factor was not considered: An eccentric sextagenarian taxi driving pauper and his oddly named blog that gets around 140 page views on an average day. - That's me.

I have been ballistic over these killer apps since June when for four days I was a Hailo driver. I realized that Hailo was a threat to public safety.  It was my good fortune that Heather Long at the Guardian online saw me and my presentation of the issue as being credible. Read this article

http://gu.com/p/3hytp

Hailo and Uber enable racist drivers to down rate passengrrs at will. Zab Kab does not.

I later interviewed some Uber passengers and drivers and concluded that Uber presents the very same public safety threat as does Hailo - overworked distracted  multitasking drivers- people (or driver apps) that might kill you.

So Google stands to take a beating and so do venture capitalists like Union Square's Fred Wilson. They plunged into the fad, maybe without looking, investigating and asking little people questions. In stead of fighting for that which is evil and wrong they ought to loom at Zab Kab.  That is not a taxi dispatch app, something that freaks out the livery industry. It is a taxi hail app that could make a lot of people who live on side streets as well as taxi drivers pretty well pleased without the distracted multi tasking of Hailo and Uber.

Zab Kab's Henry Ferlauto is well aware that his app, made here in New York, btw , needs fixes. The concept is sterling. Give Zab Kab a try powers that be!

Uber ethics Uber price gouging and some lessons

It wasn't just the extremely high prices, it was how they did it.

Last weekend during a rather moderate snowstorm Uber jacked up their prices to incredible levels, and the warning to prospective customers was so obscure that many felt blindsided and indeed Uber did blindside them. Uber has a history of disregarding regulations. Now they add deceptive price gouging to their resume.

Many New Yorkers are  used to getting jacked up by limo hustlers. Suspected  price gouging by yellowcab drivers resulted in front page headlines and reams of editorial rage.

But what Uber actually did pull off was something on a whole other scale

These people have no morals.

They will lie straight faced to the T&LC  on Thursday morning's hearing  and deny that  their app causes distracted driving.

Whether the Commission chooses to believe rather than investigate we shall have to wait and see. Your life may depend on the answer. Hailo and Uber might kill you..

Veteran New York Taxi Driver To Testify at Taxi and Limousine Commission December 14th To Urge Safety Considerations Be Primary in Ongoing Pilot Program. Says Hailo and Uber Driver Apps Foster Distracted Driving, Place Public at Risk.

Today Eugene Weixel a veteran of 23 years driving cab cited cyber security expert Joseph Steinberg's article in last December 14th's  Forbes  Magazine where he made the point regarding e hail apps that public safety ought to trump  any perceived convenience.

Weixel cited his own article in last August first's Guardian on line
http:/gu.com/p/3hytp

and several posts at

http://pleasedontvomitinthetaxi.blogspot.com

Weixel urges that the commissioners cease authorization of e hail app operations until they can honestly and confidently tell the public they have nothing to fear from these apps in the hands of characteristically tired taxi drivers who typically  spend 72 hours per week driving not to mention unpaid hours in garages and in long commutes.

For details contact ecsredeye@gmail.com or by calling. 646-673-9372

Driverless taxi of tomorrow Google just put a big chunk of money into Uber, basically a limo service that has a bad reputation. And Google is talking with Tesla.

http://m.slashdot.org/story/191569

Slashdot speculates that Google bought Uber for their app and it fits into Google's plans to have their driverless  car on the market within 4 years.

Surely Google wasn't in the market for a limo service that has a not good reputation and doesn't even own its limos.

Working people from taxi drivers to attorneys to maids to engineers face being replaced by technologies of differing sorts. A small and shrinking clique will own everything and everyone else can go drop dead. That is the libertaryan dream  a world belonging to a few ubermenschen and if we don't wake up soon we'll wake up dead.

If #uber is in fact scamming its investors and the #taxiandlimousinecommission is running interference for #uber then the TLC would be aiding and abetting a scam. Ditto #hailo

Check out @Caroryn's Tweet: https://twitter.com/Caroryn/status/387749945279012865

Uber and Hailo buy good press but are major failures in the real world. Investors who are not doing due diligence with these apps will have themselves to blame.

These services not only endanger the public gu.com/p/3hytp they do not work! Invewstors can be baffled by bullshit they do not understand, either technology or the taxi business and convinced to invest or lend large amounts of money. News reporters who have no ethics whatsoever are convinced if not paid outright to generate glowing reports about these dysfunctional car services. The NYC TLC goes along with other municipal agencies world wide in not looking at these services for themselves, but taking the word of the scamsters.

Customers trash Uber's overpricing, bad service, hype. It looks like not everyone at google is a genius after all.

http://m.yelp.com/biz/uber-new-york-2
Customer reviews of Uber are mixed with lots of complaints about constant phone calls from drivers on their way ,outrageous prices and lots of no shows. It looks like the people at google who decided to sink $300 million
+ into this start up didn't do their homework before they bought this lemon. Uber' s name is dreck in Manhattan.

Is the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission hiding Hailo and Uber statistics? It looks that way to me.

Back on August sixth the Taxi and Limousine Commission released the June numbers for its Hailo and Uber pilot program. Logically I would guess that the July numbers would have been releases around September sixth and the August numbers would be soon on their way. The June numbers looked pretty bad for Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and the other big money backers of these useless  app toys for bored little boys. I dont know what sort of CPR David Yassky's crew did on the numbers due last month but apparently these numbers are not yet ready for prime time. That's okay Dave you have until January when you say good bye to the TLC. How's the job search going?

Like I was saying before, hailo and uber might kill you. Now a regular person says so.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/josephsteinberg/2012/12/14/smartphone-taxi-e-hail-apps-new-convenience-or-potential-deathtrap/

If you text a driver and he has a crash this judge wants to see you. #Hailo # Uber #hailoandubermightkillyou

Http://www.com/cnn.com/2013

Hailo and Uber as well as their customers and David Yassky here is something to think about.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/29/us/new-jersey-texting-crash-sender-liable/index.html?c=homepage-t    
#hailoandubermightkillyou

From a real asshole taxi driver: I was and am very concerned about the safety disaster known as the Hailo driver app. So far only the Guardian has taken the matter seriously.Which makes sense I suppose. What could I know about taxis?

I am confident that if I keep pushing the matter eventually I will get results. This Hailo driver app is a bad accident waiting to happen. Imagine taxi drivers online chatting, taking phone calls, reading dense maps, inputting data, while they are moving two ton death machines up and down the street where you live. Welcome to the world of Hailo. I know second hand that Uber is much the same.

I am a sixty-seven year old grandfather who has driven a taxi for 23 of the past 33 years. The other ten years I was entrusted to evaluate the safety of children, execute removals when they were in danger, give testimony in court and often work with detectives of the Special Victims and sex  abuse squads of the NYPD. If I call myself asshole taxi driver it is to express my frustration at seeing that this safety question is seen to be worth considering only in a British newspaper.

Well, onward and upward.

http//gu.com/p/3hytp

Put it into your browser, please.

#Uber and me. Umm I am this old #Jew after all....

The word Uber creeps me out as I am sure it creeps out other people. It's hard for me to imagine that hwen they were brainstorming the name to be of their business someone had to say something like "Do we want to creep out old Jews and gays?" and then someone else, who carried the day said something like "well if they still want to be supersensitive in the twenty-first century then fuck 'em."