Power tends to Corrupt


Work is done by those who understand what they do not manage and dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
-- Putt's Law



The American ethos is realistic about human corruptibility. The Constitution codifies a system of checks and balances based on the principle that unconstrained power tends to be abused. Puritan notions and the framers knowledge of history went into the separation of powers that is now considered to be integral to sound governance. Neglect of both the premises and the principle of constraint in corporate management has made business entities into hierarchies of self-serving ambition in an environment of intimidation and counterproductive, networked incompetence. Business has become the domain of an aristocracy. Nearly every working person contends with the resulting dysfunction on a daily basis. Working dangerously is to acknowledge the pervasiveness of bad management while trying to remain employed.

Turn the other cheek and read this blog for perspective. It's cheaper than a psychiatrist.


Monday, June 6, 2011

Bureaucracy as Usual with Tax Dollars

State investigates Seattle district's sale of MLK School

When an affluent private school in Madison Valley offered to pay as much as $9.7 million for an empty public school in 2009, the choice for the cash-strapped Seattle school district seemed obvious: Sign the papers.
But what could have been a straightforward real-estate deal turned into an elaborate chess game that ended with a well-connected church buying the closed Martin Luther King Elementary School with $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars.
The school district bent over backward to get the school into the hands of First African Methodist Episcopal Church:
  • The district staff changed the way it handled and evaluated offers for the building, which pushed the church's proposal to the head of the pack.
  • Then-Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson shot down The Bush School's high offer, at the same time urging voters to pass a $48 million levy.
  • One former district employee told The Seattle Times that her boss, Fred Stephens, director of the district's property division and an influential First AME congregant, was determined as early as 2007 to help the church get the school property.
  • The district did little to investigate the accuracy of the church's proposal — while closely scrutinizing and ultimately rejecting a similar, competing bid from another community group.

 
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015242396_mlk06m.html
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