Let's talk corruption

[Admin]

Re-distribution of wealth...

 

[Patriot]

Just to play devil's advocate here...

How much would you want to stand in a little booth for 8 hours, breathe exhaust fumes and make change for the great unwashed?

Just wondering.

None of them stand.

Their booths are positively ventilated.

The smart ones wear plastic gloves.

They make good money for one of the most menial jobs in the world.

The bennies, for those positions, are way beyond anything available in the
dreaded private sector.

The only qualification for these jobs is purely nepotism.

These positions are on a par with Massachusetts sanctioned police details
(show me another state that forces $35-$40/hr details for a $10/hour effort,
and then only to the police state employees!)

TBP

 

[dwarven1]

I never thought of them being all that great.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

"honest" graft

M1911 about Chicago. I grew up there as well. The difference I would draw between Chicago and Boston is that in Chicago things work. It's all greased, but the streets get plowed, tunnels don't collapse, etc.

In 1946, Robert A Heinlein wrote a non-fiction book titled TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT. It was republished, in paperback, in 1992. It's a fascinating read.

Written in an era when machine politics and bosses were much more blatant, it explains succinctly WHY they are so succesful and why the public is often quite happy with them.

The smarter bosses understood the difference between "honest" graft and "dishonest" graft:

Dishonest graft was stealing from the public; making work that didn't need to be done in order to be paid for it; overcharging for services to the public; that sort of thing. Honest graft was patronage: channeling money that had to be spent to one's friends or associates, or where it would do the most political good, always insisting that the work or services bought be honestly delivered.

Regards
John

 

[dwarven1]

In 1946, Robert A Heinlein wrote a non-fiction book titled TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT. It was republished, in paperback, in 1992. It's a fascinating read.

Yes, it is. A copy of it sits on my bookshelf. Every so often I get it down, reread it, and consider if I've had enough of our current legistraitors to try and run for some kind of office myself. Hell, I can't do any worse a job than the idiots we already have!

 

[Jeremiah]

I can't really speak about corruption elsewhere; I think it's endemic to any big one-party gov't. Rep/Dem/Conservative/Liberal doesn't figure in that much. Any gov't with tons of money and no real oversight is going to start spending it on patronage jobs to secure their own political future. The best systemic solution is to keep gov't small and underfunded. That idea USED to be a Republican idea, but I haven't seen much evidence recently.

Two things that I find absurd beyond belief about the MA system.
1) At the state senate level, the existence of non-roll-call votes. How is this even legal in a representative democracy? If you don't even know how your guy voted, the most basic level of accountability is gone.

2) For the city of Boston--the fact that the employees in places like the police and fire dept. have to be city residents. My friend from Chicago pointed out the problem with this: their bosses are Mayor Menino and Co.. The Mayor's interested in overpaying the city workers because they are voters. The city workers are interested in voting in the Mayor because he's overpaying them. The people who get screwed are: every private sector worker in the city, whose money is being used to make the payouts. By requiring city workers to be city residents, the political establishment secures a huge block of votes.

 

[Garys]

2) For the city of Boston--the fact that the employees in places like the police and fire dept. have to be city residents. My friend from Chicago pointed out the problem with this:

Chicago has (or had) the same thing.

Residency was established in Boston in the mid 1970s. The intent at the time was to help bolster the economy of the city by keeping city employees living in the city. It was poor idea then and it's still a poor idea. It's also inconsistenly applied. Different unions have negotiated different implementation dates. The School Department didn't have it until about 2000. Other agencies have had it since the 1970s. Others from dates in the mid 1990s. Unfortunately, it has withstood every court challenge.

From my observation, residency rules make it very hard to hire qualified people in some departments. Residence preference is one thing, this is another.

I should also point out that Lynn, New Bedford, and some other cities in MA have the same type of rule. Brockton had it until a couple of years ago. The unions in the city took a 0% raise in order to get rid of it. Well, the story's a bit more complex than that. The contract was for 1 year only. The then Mayor wanted to get rid of the residency rule, but the city council wanted to keep it. Since they City Council has control over any contract that has raises in it, they could block the contract. However, they don't have control over contracts that don't include raises, so the police and fire took a 0% raise for one year.

 

[KMaurer]

In addition to honest vs dishonest graft, there's also the difference between true corruption and simple institutionalized incompetence and indifference. I lived in Chicago for a while when Richard J was running things, and they did indeed run. Except, of course, for the weeks leading up to any election, when you couldn't find a public employee anywhere to handle anything. Why? They were all out doing precinct work for the campaign. Otherwise, they'd spend the weeks after the election looking for new jobs.

Ken