Yesterday, Dr. Liane Leedom wrote that “false beliefs about sociopaths are very dangerous.” She quoted a judge who said:
“Well I tell you, the world is full of productive sociopaths. Some of them hold high public office. Some of them are lawyers. It could be that a couple of them are judges, and sociopathy by itself is not necessarily a dangerous condition. It can be productive. I think it was Clarence Darrow who commented on that”¦”
Today I’d like to present a case to prove her point.
Over the last 10 days, the Philadelphia Inquirer has been reporting about Carl Greene, the executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA).
The agency Green heads is the city’s biggest landlord, providing housing to 81,000 low-income residents. The PHA has a budget of $345 million per year, funded by the federal government, and 1,150 employees.
Greene, who was hired in 1998, currently earns $306,000 per year. But 10 days ago, it was revealed that his $615,000 townhouse was in foreclosure, and he owed the IRS $52,000 in back taxes.
And, one of his former employees has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. The woman says Greene promised her a promotion, if she submitted to his sexual advances.
Greene’s tenure
Here’s where the “productive sociopath” comes in.
Before Greene was hired, the PHA had a history of waste, fraud and abuse. Greene turned the agency around, and it’s now considered to be a major success. Public housing high rises—magnets for drugs and crime—have been demolished and replaced by townhouses. Complaints about Section 8 housing have disappeared.
But here’s what else has been going on during Greene’s tenure:
• Since 2004, six women have filed complaints against Greene with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging sexual harassment, verbal abuse, retaliation, and sex discrimination. (Greene denies them.)
• Greene spent $1 million over the last two years for outside public relations experts, even though the agency has an in-house spokesperson.
• Four times a year, for the last several years, the PHA staff, outside lawyers and consultants were expected to pay up to $150 each for dinners at expensive restaurants in honor of Greene. According to the Inquirer,
There was an annual party to celebrate Greene’s birthday, one to mark his anniversary with the agency, another to laud his accomplishments, and, at Christmas, a breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel.
Those gatherings were small compared with the bash PHA put together for Greene’s 10th anniversary on April 11, 2008. Hundreds of vendors, attorneys and “friend[s] of PHA” received letters asking them to donate $1,000 to $5,000 to Tenant Support Services Inc., a PHA nonprofit on which Greene has been a board member.
• In 2002, an audit by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development described Greene as a “demanding supervisor” who drove “a number of executive personnel” to quit.
• Employees say he’s created a culture of “fear and intimidation” at the PHA.
Transformation
What’s really strange about this case is how, back in 1998, Ed Rendell, then mayor of Philadelphia and now governor of Pennsylvania, worked so hard to hire Carl Greene. At the time, Greene was head of the Detroit Housing Commission, and one of his employees had accused him of sexual harassment. At first Greene turned down the Philadelphia job, but then accepted it. According to the Inquirer, he signed a three-year contract with an amazing stipulation:
If he were found liable of sexual harassment in Detroit, PHA could fire him – but would still have to pay the balance of his contract, then worth $160,000 a year.
“One simple reason,” Rendell said last week, when asked about that clause. “When I took over as chair of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, it was perhaps the worst public-housing authority in the nation. . . . I don’t think it’s an understatement to say now that PHA is the best in the nation.”
The transformation is due to Greene, whose work “has been stunning,” Rendell said. “He has done more to improve the lives of poor Philadelphians than anyone I know.”
Bloody daggers
Money problems, sexual harassment, self-promotion, and a management style based on bullying—Carl Greene sounds like a classic sociopath. Here’s what an Inquirer columnist wrote about him:
The rap on Greene was, and is, that he’s an effective egomaniac. A vicious visionary, a determined developer, a brutal boss ”¦ Politicians and advocates learned to accommodate the two Carls because he controlled zillions in federal money and the fate of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
In other words, according to his supporters, Carl Greene was getting the job done. If a few folks got steamrolled in the process, well, that was just collateral damage that they really didn’t want to know about.
When all these troubles came to light, what did Greene do? First, he disappeared—for several days, no one knew where he was. When he did talk to the media, he apologized for his personal failings.
He also said, “People with bloody daggers are doing whatever they can to finish me off.”
UPDATE:
Cost to settle sex-harassment cases against Philadelphia Housing chief near $900,000 on Philly.com.
In 2003, PHA planned to solicit big contractors on Philly.com.
Former Housing and Urban Development director ‘not surprised’ by Carl Greene’s troubles on Philly.com.
hens – not offended in the least.
i am very ill. i have had cfs and fibro for 20 years. it has been debilitating at times, but was well under control (by grace and damn hard work on my part) until the last year. in this time came the spath and toxic chemical exposures. nothing hypocondriac about me in the least. i live with a great deal of pain and reactivity to to things in the environment. the thing is – i can be great one day and debilitated the next. i have all kinds of weird stuff cropping up in the last year. things i don’t understand and things an MD doesn’t get either. I AM working on my paperwork for the environmental health clinic at a major hospital a few hours away. THEY get it.
i know it might all sound weird…it IS weird. in the same way that people who haven’t been spathed find us weird. I am constantly on edge, can’t plan a damn thing ’cause i never know how i will be. i have been affected mentally, emotionally and cognitively and i am not sure how much and that also scares me. i am worried about me too. i have very real illnesses, and they scare the hell out of me.
Oxy,
I don’t think I have posted yet. I am not sure. I have been on and off stopping in to read when I get the emails. I may have been stopped by the fact that I feel like it would take about 1000 pages (is page even a valid concept now that we have the internet and it’s pages).
So in a nut shell. I have a spath brother. Growing up, he was fun and even protective, but looking back, it is possible he tried to kill me at least twice, but I think he was afraid of our spath father, and decided it would be safer for him and maybe even fun to keep me around. I don’t really remember really bad times growing up. As a young adult I went through some rough times and he let me live with him and my sister in law. There were signs then of the true nature, but I was able to move on and really did not have to deal with him much. My wife even said he was fun to be around. Then my father past away and we jointly inherited a business. heLLo psYCho! Seven years before this, we had a bizarre argument about how awful it was to get jet lag flying out to the west coast from the east. I said from some of my reading it can be minimized if you don’t dwell on it. He got angry, refused to even let me call agree to disagree (first time I ever felt it necessary). At that point I decided we probably needed to start working on our ability to come to a consensus. You would have thought I killed his first born child. I was demonizing him. He never has let up for 10 years. I got pulled in and out of pleasant/barbaric conversations with him. It took me 10 years to solve the mystery (I thought there might be something wrong with me). I tried researching bullies, but they mostly talk about kids bullying other kids. Then my wife who finally started seeing his disorder found an article about difficult people. After that my research picked up and stumbled on sociopaths, histrionics, narcissistics, etc. LoveFraud hooked me up with Psychopath next door and lead to many books of varying quality. The finally, the to fifth Youtube segment of I, PsychoPath. Sam Vaknin’s demonstration, then descriptive breakdown of how a bully raises your adrenaline, backs off, allows your system to go into mayhem, then start bouncing your adrenaline to make you feel sick and give in to them or just to play with you because they can. That describe hundreds of conversations my brother and I had had in trying to revive a failing business. Well, I was trying to revive it, he was trying to use it to beat me with regardless of whether it succeeded or failed. He has so many of the psychopath traits. He lacks the promiscuity and if he lies (which I think he does in the slyest manner) he is really good at it. I think he is not promiscuous because of a fear of my father (and mother). I think that is what saved me from being killed when I was young, that he feared the consequences of my parents (especially my father, also a spath).
Not much a nutshell. My brother is one of the smoothest. It took me 52 years to identify this in him.
i almost walked away from the business, but with these economic times, I may need to hang onto it. He is lazy. Refuses to do any mundane work for the business. He is across country, so he cannot handle any of the little emergencies that come up, but refuse compensation to me for doing it even though my father said that anyone doing should be compensated. He uses controlling techniques to guilt me out of taking compensation. He had me layoff the bookkeeper, which just about put us out of business, because she was the only one who knew what was going on and what needed to be done, so that he could get his wife, who is a CPA to do if for free. Now it has been 6 months since I have had access to the books. He uses the martyr technique when he is loosing arguments. I have to stop describing this for right now.
15. Keep your target(s) off-balance. Seem interested one day, then distant another. Online, create multiple profiles with different pictures, so you are harder to track.
As for your health my heart goes out to you and I can not relate, I wish I had answers for you..again my deepest apologies if I offended you..
Oxy, the real reason I am in this topic, I was drawn to this topic because I am trying to sift through this whole concept. Are the psychopaths the real movers and shakers of our existence? Look at the pyramids. Who would go out of their way to construct such narcissistic monstrosities if it weren’t for some highly motivated spath. The are the upwardly mobile in the business community, politics. As much as it brings me nightmareish pains to say, they can be incredibly productive, especially when the top four percent of narcissists corral the next twelve percent of four percent wannabes to do their bidding. That totals a whopping sixteen percent of the population working against the conscience bearing of which we comprise.
What are these people? Robots? If they have no emotions, why? A large population of psychopath on the planet makes me a non-believer. The developmentally challenged are one thing, but the Psychopath serves no purpose on this earth than to live these soulless lives while they make it a living hell for any conscience bearing individual. They have a free pass to do what ever they can get away with with out the potential for being judged when it is all over, because they have no way of being held accountable for their antisocial behavior since they have no conscience.
So….what if this whole thing (life on Earth) is an experiment or breeding tank for the purpose of breeding stronger and stronger psychopaths. They are the ones that are able to use the inferior narcissistic supply (see the last segment of the youtube Narcissist, Narcissist where Sam Vaknin describes a psychopath [narcissist] marveling in the fact that 120,000 new victims are born every day for their amusement and profit.)
What purpose to make us all conscience bearing beings, but that we are destined to be their next meal and next meal and next meal.
I am a little negative tonight.
I completely relate to the blogger complaining that people don’t want to see it. And we become over the top evangelists who are likely at the very least look at with suspect, if only for the magnitude of our stance. They don’t understand.
I would like to do everything I can to bring this to general populous light. I believe the numbers are higher than the 4/12 percentages I have read (Sociopath next door), but I would, because I am probably suffering from PPD (paranoid personality disorder) from being the youngest and possibly only conscience bearing member of my immediate family.
tap out for tonight. thank you everyone for bringing your stories to this blog
I’m not so sure this guy Carl Greene really IS the stellar job performer he’s cracked up to be. If he isn’t, that’s a bigger issue than any of the complaints we’ve heard so far. It affects a heck of a lot more people, that’s for sure.
What’s Greene supposed to have done that’s so spectacular? We’re told that before Greene was hired, the Philadelphia Housing Authority had a history of waste, fraud and abuse. Greene turned the agency around, and it’s now considered to be a major success. But WHO is it who “considers” it a “major success”? The public at large, or Greene’s cronies? Where’s the EVIDENCE that it’s a “major success”? Have “waste, fraud, and abuse” in fact been eliminated?
The financial shenanigans now being revealed suggest this is not the case. In a Philadelphia Inquirer article titled Fawning followers abet Greene’s rotten reign at the PHA, Karen Heller calls Greene “an autocrat ruling through fear and intimidation. He routinely fired officials who questioned his actions while exhibiting a preference for expensive spending practices that were self-serving and didn’t aid the community he serves.” So this was not about “ruthless efficiency,” about trimming employees who weren’t productive enough. It was about muzzling employees who objected to Greene’s wasteful business practices.
As Heller notes, the PHA is mostly funded by massive amounts of money from Federal taxpayers. That means it’s paid for by your money and mine, if you live in the United States. Another writer has claimed that Greene was successful in wangling more of our money out of the Federal government. That’s fine for him but it doesn’t give me any special reason to like the guy.
However, what’s more important is how this money is being used, which is subject to Federal oversight. If Greene was running the PHA so efficiently, he ought to welcome a Federal audit as an opportunity to show them what a wonderful job he’s doing. Instead, as Karen Heller pointed out, “A 2002 federal audit concluded that PHA had lavished $616,000 on lawyers and consultants in an attempt to thwart that probe, including private investigators perceived to have ‘shadowed’ public auditors.” Instead of eliminating waste and corruption, it looks as if Greene has just worked harder at covering it up by obstructing those who tried to investigate him.
Meanwhile, what has Greene being doing for the 81,000 low-income Philly residents that his agency is supposed to serve, at your expense and mine? I haven’t seen anyone contradict the claim that he has pulled down some rotten old high-rise housing and replaced it with the kinds of townhouses some people actually want to live in. Perhaps he has renovated certain neighborhoods.
However, the trouble seems to be that these townhouses and these neighborhoods are only a fraction of all the housing stock that the PHA is responsible for maintaining. In theory the agency gets a certain amount of taxpayers’ money per property for maintenance and repair of each property. In practice, it appears that Carl Greene has been raiding the accounts of money needed to repair the large quantity of older housing in order to build his new showpiece townhouses. That’s all fine and dandy for a minority of residents who live in those renovated neighborhoods. They may be willing to praise him to the skies. But he’s done it at the expense of vast numbers of other residents of blighted neighborhoods whose housing is allowed to fall into decay. Failure to maintain these properties also results in serious waste. I recommend looking at Stu Bykofsky’s article Pondering Greene… This is not for Bykofsky’s own remarks so much as those from readers of his article, with special attention to the ten entries from the poster named CleanupPhilly.
If anyone thinks Carl Greene has cleaned up drugs and crime in Philly by replacing a few high-rises, they’d better think again. There’s still plenty of crime and crack houses in the low-rise neighborhoods, even (so I gather) many of those that have been “renewed.” Philly continues to rank high among America’s most dangerous cities to live in.
Is it true that Carl Greene has eliminated complaints about low-income housing? Not according to the poster I just mentioned, who says SOSNA (the South of South St. Neighborhood Association) had to sue Greene’s agency to get numerous complaints resolved.
There are complaints about waste as well. While many homes don’t get the repairs they need, it’s alleged that $2 million was wasted on a new boiler room for a high-rise that was scheduled to be torn down. Why, one wonders? Did somebody get a kickback from the contractor for this needless work?
The impression I’m getting out of all this is, first, that Greene plays “divide and rule” with the community of residents he’s meant to be serving. He favors some, who in return will oblige him with the necessary publicity about what a great job he’s doing. But everyone else gets the shaft. “CleanupPhilly” claims that “Greene said he would delay selling property that was not slated for renovation to spite the community, to show us who’s boss.” Such a tyrannical attitude toward the people Greene is paid to serve sounds entirely consistent with his autocratic treatment of the employees in his agency.
These nice new townhouses he’s built sound like window dressing to make Greene look good, while the rot under the surface remains hidden from public view. If this is true, why isn’t it public knowledge? For one thing Greene spends lots of our money on PR consultants to keep his image looking spotless. For another, accusations of laziness–or worse–are leveled at the reporters who should be doing investigative journalism, but aren’t. Quote:
“For far too long the press has given full force to PHA’s version of events and spin, cribbing every press release faithfully, printing only PHA and PR firm approved photos, and never going into these communities and talking to people. Folks, that’s something, but it’s not journalism.”
Still, I guess that’s the mess we end up with when a whole city is permanently in the grip of one party’s political machine, with all the pigs lined up to stick their snouts in the public trough at our expense, all greasing each other’s palms while simultaneously covering each other’s asses.
Siblinghell,
I read your posts, finding them interesting to read. Sociopaths do make life (for others) a living hell. Once you can figure out what the (blank) is wrong with them, then you hopefully can maneuver on better in life. My childrens father is a spath, taking me 14 years to figure out that he definitely is one. They take normal people on a train ride that leads to wreckage, debris flying everywhere. So far, I don’t see signs of this disorder in my children, my prayer being that they remain free of it themselves, not inheriting it. I can be an over-the-top mom if that helps them. I think about this condition and wonder why any human being has to have it – I know that I wouldn’t want to live my whole life being a spath, exhibiting behaviors that are troublesome for myself and others. Your comment about the Pyramids is good, having possibly been built by spaths. Wini (another poster) has said that she suspects that the fallen angels (Biblical interpretation) mated with humans, possibly creating the spaths, an interesting theory on their origin. There’s a lot we don’t know about ancient times (obviously). What I do know is that these people are chaos in human form.
one_step_at_a_time, I looked beyond MDs and have been healing gradually using “Nutritional Response Testing” and “Quantum Alliance” biofeedback. I also get chiropractic, but it’s a very gentle kind called BGI. NSA is also good.
If you live in the New York area, I can suggest some really good practitioners. If not, I suggest surfing the Web.
Sure, you’re going to hear that this is all quackery and not “real” medicine. That’s because it works, and it’s going to put a lot of profitable enterprises out of business.
God helps them that help themselves. So check these out and don’t say no to your needs until you know a door has definitely been shut.
Thanks, Siblinghell, for your really intelligent posts. I’ll look into the YouTube series you mention.
I, too, have a sibling issue, though much milder than yours. I find it interesting that you say your brother is OK in some areas of his life but is an absolute tyrant in others. Since the exploration of Joseph Newman’s ideas, I’ve been very interested in that, because it certainly rings true in my sister’s case. I think it’s the very reason spaths and psychos are so good at confusing us. Basically, they just can’t multitask emotionally, become fixated, and they settle early on into an “agenda” of narcissism.
This is consistent with my sister, and I see it all over your account of your brother. The fact that it took you 52 years to figure it out — and as far as I can see, you seem very intelligent and perceptive — is more evidence of that inconsistent personality over there.
It sounds like you have a valid lawsuit against your brother for wresting control of the business from him. And if you think he’s physically threatening to you (you keeping saying he might have killed you at one point), you could probably get an order of protection, or at least get some police reports on file.
You are definitely not imagining things, as people are always telling me about my sister. Just sibling rivalry, and why can’t you girls get along? It’s chilling, crazymaking — always being asked to explain MY behavior. My sister doesn’t have any real control over assets at this point, and I’m f’in’ ruthless and ten times as intelligent when it comes to situations like that, so I have not much to fear in that area.
Tell me, does your brother have a history of not being able to switch topics, participate in a conversation’s give-and-take, get into the timing of such things? Does he latch onto an impression and hold on, despite all evidence to the contrary?
Are there bizarre narcissistic incidents like hearing of another family member’s death and saying, “Oh, I’m having such a bad day!”?
Hi All,
Have been quiet lately but have had some insane things happening right around me and this story kind of tugged at me as we had a situation in my own neighborhood that was outrageous and very scary all at once.
I live in a 2 story townhouse. There are 6-8 townhouses to each building. The area is clean and generally, very happy. We live next to a school, so we have lots of children running around.
Last week, I went upstairs one night right around 7PM to do a few things and heard a lot of loud screaming and swearing. Sure enough, it was the ONE neighbor that shouldn’t be allowed to be in here at all. There were also three police officers trying to talk with this man who was hanging out of his bedroom window screaming and quite honestly, making no sense from what he was saying. We later learned he was on a 3 day drug high. Joy…
I went outside and talked with his next door neighbor. He had beaten up a 14 yr. old girl. He had come out on his back patio and was swearing at some teenage girls. When one of them finally told him he couldn’t do that, he grabbed her by the hair and hit her head against the fence post repeatedly and punched her in the face. Luckily, she was treated and is OK.
But. it gets worse. Suddenly, we go from 2 police cruisers to SIX. I live in a small town, so that meant ALL of our officers were here, just for this one man. He barricaded himself in the house, claimed to have a loaded gun and refused to simply walk out of the house. The police had no choice but to get a warrant and the next thing you know, we have a SWAT team here, gearing up to go in. The building this man is in is evacuated, including one sweet lady in her 80’s.
Streets were blocked off, the power was shut off, something I know the team uses as part of their tactics. The TV reporters are showing up, the newspaper reporters are all over the place and it’s a nightmare in general.
I put my son in a neighbor’s house with friends as the police had to clear a wide area and keep everyone out of the line of possible cross fire. A portion of MY building was cleared as well due to this possibly happening. What stands out about that night for me is that it was muggy and hot and all you could hear was this man’s incessant screaming at the police. He wanted to walk out the front door and just walk away. Wasnt’ going to happen.
5 HOURS later, the special force team finally goes in and takes him out. This entire “incident” started around 5:30 and didn’t end until 2AM.
Now, consider the crimes he has committed here, assault on a child, the obstruction of justice, all of it and do you know what he was charged with? 3 MISDEMEANORS!!! THAT’S IT! Most are thinking this is because his family is well known and carries a lot of political weight around here.
In the meantime, my son has had several nightmares about this has had a tough time sleeping at night. He isn’t alone. Other kids have been affected by this whole incident.
And this guy is going to walk on this? YES…and it’s all because those in certain positions of power abused that power by not acting on this situation to begin with, by not demanding he leave these premises. They were too busy using their power and “friendships” to get what they wanted and heaven forbid they insult one of their biggest contributors because that’s what this is really all about.
I am seriously considering moving because if this man is capable of this and merely gets a slap on the hand, what’s his next move? He now knows he can play with the swat team and get away with it. I only see this getting worse, not better.
Thanks for letting me vent! It’s really just another case of “you pat my back and I’ll pat yours.”
Just like Mr. Greene and HIS cohorts.