The Fort Worth Way Runs Deep With Corrupt Cronyism

A few days ago on the Mary Kelleher blog I read a blogging titled You Make the Call...Cronyism or Not! where Mary Kelleher described an instance of wanton cronyism to which she objected at the most recent TRWD Board Meeting.

Mary Kelleher's questions about the cronyism were pooh poohed by the TRWD Dictator, I mean, Manager, who Mary Kelleher refers to as Mis-Manager, Jim Oliver.

Apparently Oliver does not understand what cronyism is, because he tried to claim that Mary Kelleher's relationship with campaign contributor, Monty Bennett, was cronyism.

Clearly Jim Oliver does not understand what cronyism is.

As you can see, via the definition above, cronyism is the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.

You know, like how without consulting the TRWD Board, Dictator Oliver hired an unqualified Assistant Tarrant County District Attorney named J.D. Granger to be the Executive Director of what has become America's Biggest Boondoggle.

That is a case of classic, corrupt cronyism.

And why cronyism is frowned upon due to the bad results which frequently follow.

Results like a boondoggle.

The thing with corruption of the TRWD sort is those involved in the corruption don't think they are doing anything corrupt, because they do not get called on it by anyone with the clout to make it stop. Yet one more example of how Fort Worth suffers due to not having a real newspaper doing real investigative journalism.

In other words, the TRWD, as it operates in Texas, could not get away with its corrupt shenanigans in my old home state with its multiple real newspapers. And a well educated progressive population of voters.

If an election took place in, let's say, Seattle, where a ridiculously out of proportion number of absentee ballots showed up, with the result of the election giving two controversial characters a landslide win to a level never seen in previous elections for that position, well, there would be a clarion call for an investigation.

In Fort Worth, nary a peep. Not from the Star-Telegram, not from the Fort Worth Business Press, not from Fort Worth Weekly.

Maybe the FBI is on the case. We can only hope.

Did the Star-Telegram ever share with its readers the notoriously corrupt act of cronyism in which a TRWD Board Director finagled a sweetheart deal to use TRWD public funds to rescue a bankrupt friend by paying double market value for said friend's contaminated land on which the first drive-in movie theater of the 21st century was built?

Corruption and Cronyism runs deep in Fort Worth.

Real deep.

It is part and parcel of that which is known as The Fort Worth Way.

This will not change until Fort Worth gets a real newspaper and the people of Fort Worth cease being sheep.

The South has a long history of the type corruption that is considered perfectly normal by way too many in Fort Worth and its environs.

Back in the last century, next door neighbor to Texas, Louisiana, had a politician named Huey Long who operated in the Fort Worth Way.

A book and movie sort of based on the Huey Long story, named All the King's Men, is instructive regarding corrupt cronyism. The King in All the King's Men is Jim Lane, I mean, Willie Stark, played by Broderick Crawford.

Willie Stark was quite popular with the voters, for awhile, bringing all sorts of vision to his bleak state, running roughshod over those who did not share his vision. Eventually meeting an untimely end, an end more dire than the criminal investigations I suspect may be in the future for Fort Worth's Willie Starks....