Word: graft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...egregious in New York City that the state refused to release $600 million dollars earmarked for building new municipal schools unless the city created a separate agency charged with overseeing the construction. Ironically, many large cities originally delegated more power to local school boards in order to fight graft. In so many instances, they merely replaced corrupt professionals with corrupt amateurs...
...many cases, perhaps the majority of cases, school board posts fall in the hands of people with no plans for graft and corruption, and no policy agenda to speak of. These elected officials are simply self-important loudmouths who lack the foggiest idea of how to run a school. Attend a meeting of a board full of these types-chances are you won't have to go far to find one-and you'll see new irony in the phrase "collective intelligence...
...just look at the fines as the price of doing business. It's like paying graft."--Bill Laimbeer...
Investigators are now zeroing in on the state monopolies for highway construction, petrochemicals, television broadcasting, public transit, water and electricity, where large budgets are tempting targets for graft. Though no one has precise numbers, one study puts the rip-off at $11 billion a year over the past dozen years, a figure coincidentally comparable to Italy's annual public deficit...
...first, party bigwigs tried to brazen it out. But as the evidence of graft among the major parties multiplied, so did public outrage. Shortly before resigning, Craxi was accosted by an angry mob outside his party headquarters. Damning testimony from several key figures, and the likelihood that members of Parliament will be stripped of their immunity from criminal prosecution, sent party higher-ups into a frenzy. Says sociologist Franco Ferrarotti of the University of Rome: "These people always operated on the concept that public funds belong to the person who grabs them first. Whatever they steal is theirs. There...