Re: Open Questions to the President

Butch:

>It is not the person it is the power, take away the power and the 
>offices must respond to democratic rule. Your enemy is power not the 
>person, power has always been abused.

I couldn't agree more with you that the problem is the power and not 
necessarily the person.  However, you have to understand that there 
are at least two major personality types that have a problem with 
power.  The first is the person who seeks out power because they are 
attracted to power and it is the power that interests them.  These are 
the really dangerous types who often times won't stop at anything.  
They often don't have a very high moral and ethics value system.  The 
second is the person who is put into a position of power who then 
gradually becomes abusive.

The big shot who got me kicked off the daylily robin is clearly of the 
first type.  He had absolutely no hesitation to abuse his position 
because he had the power and he had the person grudge against me.  
This is a real hideous abuse of power.  On the other hand we have a 
robin Big Brother who really isn't a bad person, but he was put into a 
position of power and then he became abusive of that power.  When you 
look at particular problems associated with abuse of power you have to 
figure out where the particular person fits in.  In the first case 
where the person is abusive because they like/want the power, the only 
thing you can do is remove that person from the position of power.  
With the person who is basically nice, but lets the power take control 
of them, you can sometimes reason with them to get them to understand 
the problem.

The problems with the hosta society are basically misconceived policy 
decisions followed by poor communication and then a reluctance to 
admit to having made an error.  In the daylily society, on the other 
hand, the problem is gross unethical abuse of power of a personal 
nature by a board member and the past president and criminal behavior 
on part of the entire board to engage in a cover up of that abuse of 
power and a cover up of the criminal behavior.

I think the problems in the hosta society will clear up becasue there 
are enough people who want it cleaned up and the current president and 
his supporters won't be in office forever.  This is assuming that the 
hosta society doesn't fall apart before that happens.  Policy can 
always be changed.  Unfortunately, you can't change the fact that 
board members may have engaged in highly unethical behavior for their 
own personal gain, nor can you change the fact that criminal acts took 
place.  The next president of the hosta society can just toss the 
misguidded policy into the trash can.  I don't know what the next 
daylily society president is going to do.  So far all I know is that 
she is young and good looking, which means that she probably doesn't 
have much experience with dealing with the evil side of power.  I 
seriously doubt that she has what it takes to stand up to Mr. Big Wig. 
If she goes along with the cover up then she becomes part of the 
problem and she then lowers her own ethical and moral values to 
justify not doing anything.  Some peoplem can live with that.  But 
then, if she isn't willing to take the steps to clean house the day 
she first takes office, then Mr. Big Wig and the others who are 
abusing their board positions will end up controling her and she will 
end up doing what they want, not what should be done to solve the many 
problems that exists within the society.  

Joe Halinar

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