About Jim Scott of Eagle, Alaska:
“When he had risen in the world, up out of the fun and into the shuffling paper – when he had become district manager [in federal service], based in Anchorage, and in charge of half Alaska – he dealt regularly with, among others, people of the petroleum industry. They invited him for cocktails. ‘I never darkened their door. I avoided them like the bubonic plague. It made it so much easier to deal with the sons of bitches.’” – from Coming Into the Country by the eminent literary journalist John McPhee
We salute the honest bureaucrat, wherever s/he might be. Were there more like that.
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