DCP Problems... Again

What will it take to pull me out of my Toastmasters doldrums? It will take a rant against the Distinguished Club Program. I keep Bill Bishop's "A Toastmaster's Journey" on the Google Reader list. I enjoy reading blogs about the Toastmasters experience, especially those that take a deeper look beyond the club speaking experience.
This morning I found this entry and I felt a strong connection to the issues Bill raised. What it all boils down to is the way club and districts manipulate the program to ensure their success. Bill mentions things like "shelving points" (his words, but I like it), giving our awards to clubs with a need rather than the clubs we did our work with, and phantom memberships for example. This argument struck a cord with me and I want to respond in his comments, but I am not sure what I want to say.
You see, I am prone to some of these things. I am prone to shelving my awards. My justification is that I am trying to ensure my club will be able to focus on membership and allow them new members to focus on their goals without the pressure of turning in an award. I gave my DTM to a club that could use the point towards DCP even though I did most of the work at another club. I justify that I did do some of the DTM work with said club, in fact the critical element to finishing my DTM happened at that club.
I realized that, I may not be doing all of these little cheats, but I was guilty of cheating the system. I tried to make myself feel better about my guilt by reminding myself that I encouraged a club to not accept phantom members when they needed the membership to earn DCP status. I have never forced members off an agenda either. After all this justification, I didn't feel any better about the cheating I did do.
How can I criticize the people who cheat when I am a cheater myself. Should I allow my club(s) to suffer, my district to suffer, to be honest? The right answer is yes, obviously. If I make this change, how many others will follow?
Another point that hit home was the 'holy grail' status of the DCP, especially at the district level. I think all of us have been to district events where DCP is shoved in our faces repeatedly. There are incentives to reach DCP by a certain date, speaking marathons to allow people to earn their CC awards in time, constant instruction on what it takes for a club to earn these awards. If you enter into district leadership you are constantly being told about how close they are to the district's distinguished goals. I have even heard someone try to describe the math to explain how WHQ determines the numbers.
I have tried to combat this, to help clubs focus on the membership's goals. I have written here about how to talk about the DCP program to people who don't really care to know what it is. I tried doing president's training after I saw through sessions where the only thing we talked about was the DCP program. Instead of talking about DCP, I talked about know what the club wants to work for and setting goals based on that. I suggested considering the DCP as a goal since it was so easy to use. I do a fraction of what I can to remind people that the club is there to serve the members and therefore service to the members may not be the DCP plan.
The thing is, when you aren't cheating, the DCP is a good plan. If you do it right, it does demonstrate a strong club versus a weak club. There may be a few reforms that can be made to the program (maybe one would be giving extra credit or recognition to clubs that go beyond the program), but the core of DCP is good. It's us, we are the problem with it. We are the cheaters, we are the ones who find a way around it.
If we really want to improve the DCP plan, we have to start by being honest and demanding our district, regional and international leaders encourage honesty down the line. We have to return to a focus of really training leaders and not teaching us the DCP program. If we can at least curb the cheating and teaching honesty in the program, then we can make the DCP what it was intended to be.