The SacBee is reporting today Johnson wants Sac voters to decide on a new budget analyst position. Can you hear the crowd booing? Evidently this is a first in Sac politics. Course the mayor could have just asked the council for support, but ever since they swatted his free budget audit offer into the cheap seats a ways back, he’s been a little gun shy. Weird. He was never shy about pulling the trigger in his NBA days.

Anyway, it’s safe to say something has gone terribly wrong when the boss is suddenly deferring everything to the people for vote. This  “let the people decide” position iMayor has suddenly taken on everything is wonky. After all, this is the iMayor unit who said in response to the recent strong arm mayor initiative fail: “accountability has been asked to wait in line.” Weird because when he was stumping for votes back in October of 2008 he promised a vote for him would usher accountability to the front of the line. A vote for iMayor Johnson denoted a vote for accountability, right? Well that’s we THOUGHT.

Folks are perplexed. At this point they’re beginning to ask:  does this bot want to be mayor or not? Isn’t iMayor Johnson the one who told voters he was in a unique position to shake things up at city hall because he was NOT a politician? I remember him saying at his Natomas “town hall” (actually it was mostly a sales presentation)  “If I’m elected it won’t be politics as usual” in Sac town.. or something like that. He went on about how he didn’t have any lobbyist bread to butter or political ties. Fourth generation Sacramentan set to return decorum, accountability, and transparency to city hall.

Someone needs to tell iMayor that simply deferring decisions to voters does not an effective leader model make. That’s a populist approach to governance any donkey could perpetrate.  Why even have a mayor if he doesn’t want to facilitate key decisions ?  Where’s the accountable city government? Where’s the transparency? Where’s that stab into the heart of “politics as usual” iMayor  promised? We’re not seeing it. All we’re seeing is indifference and deference. Time for iMayor’s contingent to fix the bugs and restart the application pool.

But then maybe people are asking  too much from the mayor who recently referred to Willie Brown as his “idol.”  All due respect to Willie Brown, but he isn’t exactly “idol” material…. unless your idol bar is dangerously low … or your operating system is on the fritz…

After months of delays, cryptic press releases, teaser ads and endless speculation, CH7 Inc.’s wildly anticipated iMayor product launched in November of 2008 in the city of Omastenarc (pronounced: Oh-mass-ten-ark). Since that time the robotics community and investors have monitored its progress with great skepticism in the face of several setbacks, OS updates, and even a few reboots that took it out of commission for weeks at a time. Now the tide might finally be turning.

Back in the first quarter of this year, the robotics and science community perked up when iMayor launched its first self-initiated proposal to constituents in Omastenarc. A fews days ago CH7’s stock skyrocketed after iMayor passionately declared his commitment  to saving the city’s local pro sports franchise.  Could iMayor be everything CH7 promised its investors he was going to be, or another fruitless technological pursuit?

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year and have no idea what we are talking about,  it’s time to crawl out!  The brain child of a local consortium of investors and students, the iMayor robot was invented to replace traditional mayors and carry out ALL the day to day operations of local city government without ever needing human intervention or collaboration to carry out its tasks. In fact, iMayor is the first known 100%-self-sufficient robot that doesn’t even need a human-assisted control device to help it navigate and make complex decisions. It can even see in the dark!

Still not impressed? Not only can iRobot iMayor function exactly like a human being, it can also THINK like one, and even request more power when it detects it needs more freedom to perform its tasks!

Say what?  Up until the advent of iMayor, robots could only perform  tasks that didn’t require more degrees of freedom than the robot’s inventors originally granted them (a robotic joint is generally equal to one degree of freedom). But not iMayor.  iMayor has the groundbreaking ability to think ahead, measure the requirements of a task (no matter how far in the future), compare the requirements of the task to its current degrees of freedom, unilaterally compose a written  proposal with exacting specifications for the additional degrees of freedom it needs,  and then transmit the proposal to city residents for a vote.

CH7’s investors celebrated enthusiastically earlier this year when iMayor submitted its first self-initiated proposal requesting  exponentially more degrees of freedom to perform its daily tasks as mayor. The proposal titled “Strong Mayor Reform” was  iMayor’s first major accomplishment congruent with the promises CH7 began making when the cutting edge android was still an infant in development.

Enthusiasm turned into excitement this past week when iMayor took another giant step forward and held an interview with a reporter about  the potential demise of the city’s beloved pro basketball team, the Omastenarc Ginks. When a reporter asked iMayor what ideas he had about building a new arena for the team, he took full ownership of the problem and spurted out an answer that surely must have tickled CH7’s investors.

“I don’t have all the answers right now, but I will tell you this: When you look at Cal Epox as an option, the clock is ticking.,” said iMayor in his alarmingly authentic and charismatic tone. iMayor even hinted he may be already working on a contingent-rich proposal when he declared, “I’ve got to be more aggressive, and I’ve got to move the timeline up in terms of the arena…  and the timeline has to include an Option B, an Option C, and I haven’t quite determined what we’re going to do.”

But not so fast, warn iMayor critics. When we asked well known iMayor critic and Omastenarc robotics guru Bill Bronson if he was impressed my iMayor’s interview he said, “Not really. On one hand it’s admirable iMayor is showing his unilateral prowess with his heavy use of the word ‘I,’, but notice at the end  of the statement he slips up and says ‘we’re.’ Was that a bug, or is iRobot rebelling against his programmatic nature? As long as he’s still saying  things like ‘we’ or ‘we’re’.. you know… showing signs of collaborative co-dependency on human life form.. he’s still  a couple bytes short of a one dimensional operating system. ”

We then reminded Mr. Bronson that iMayor seemed to correct himself  at the end of his statement when he said he would “discuss his ideas for the arena in the coming days and weeks…”

Mr. Bronson chuckled. “Look, I still have hope iMayor can be the one-man-band CH7 promised he would be. But I’m not one to jump on the bandwagon the moment it passes in front of me. I’m usually the guy who waits for it to circle a few times. As far as I’m concerned we should curb our enthusiasm until we see 100% independence from any external human influence whatsoever.”

Check back frequently for updates on iMayor’s progress as well as exclusive previews of CH7’s iPresident prototype.

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