Under Watch: a CEO, a despot, a prison guard, a law enforcer and a politician–all exhibiting behaviors indicative of alcoholism
Under watch:
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, backing out of his $115 million pledge to the Harvard University School of Public Health over a year after it was first promised. According to Christopher Murray, director of Harvard’s Global Health Initiative, Ellison reiterated his commitment in November but Harvard had been unable to communicate directly with him since then. Mr. Ellison claimed “the deal was never signed because Larry Summers [president of Harvard] abruptly announced that he was leaving the University.”He resigned in February, not abruptly, but after months of contention amid differences with faculty members. Summers had offered to stay involved with what was to become the Ellison Institute for World Health. Based on the pledge Ellison was named the seventh most generous donor in the U.S. in 2005. The planned Institute has been put on hold and three senior managerial staffers, hired on the basis of the promised gift, were discharged. According to Forbes Magazine, Ellison, married and divorced three times in what have been called “turbulent”relationships and described by various biographers as a charming egotistical capricious ruthless lying back-stabbing megalomaniac, is the 15th richest person in the world.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who revoked the concealed weapons permit of retired sheriff’s Captain Ken Masse two days after Masse’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat Baca in the June 6 election. Baca accused Masse of “inappropriately using department data to contact deputies at home during the campaign.”Police agencies, according to The Los Angeles Times’ citing of Masse’s attorney Dieter Dammeier, “usually take such action only after retired officers are accused of criminal wrongdoing or other evidence indicates they could pose a danger with a gun.”Similarly, Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona suspended his rival in the election, Lt. Bill Hunt, and demoted two employees who supported Hunt during the campaign.
San Jose, California Mayor Ron Gonzales, indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges. He is accused of illegally helping waste contractor Norcal obtain an $11 million contract increase, of misusing public funds and destroying or falsifying government documents. One of the Mayor’s former allies, Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez, suggested that Gonzales step down and recommended that the 10-member City Council, four of whom have called for his resignation, strip the office of “all vestiges of power and authority”if he refuses. The indictments threaten to wreak havoc in the government of California’s third largest city.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, entering prison near The Hague, Netherlands, where he will await trial on United Nations charges of war crimes in which hundreds of thousands were killed, raped or mutilated. The charges stem from his alleged backing of rebels in Sierra Leone, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips during the country’s 1991-2002 civil war. This is the country where rebels gave children as young as seven cocaine, amphetamines and fear-reducing tranquilizers. These children would then go on murderous binges for days without stopping. Unfortunately, journalists rarely understand the importance of identifying alcoholism in their subjects. Several readers with some insight into the Dark Continent agree with my comment that alcoholism could explain its modern history (Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse). Unfortunately, the idea that Africa’s despots are and have been alcoholics will likely remain unconfirmed for the foreseeable future.
Prison guard Ralph Hill, 43, dead after an exchange of bullets at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida with a team that was serving arrest warrants on Hill and five other guards. The remaining five guards were subsequently indicted in a contraband-for-sex-with-inmates scandal. According to my research, the lowest off-the-cuff estimate of the percent of prison guards who are alcoholics in any prison is 50%, with many interviewees claiming 80%. This is the sort of thing that happens when alcoholism in law enforcers is allowed to continue unchecked.
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts”which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and proactively intervene.