... achieve better taxonomy browsing?

I could really use some advice on how to achieve this, if at all possible:

I have a taxonomy. I want my taxonomy accurately represented in the menu without having to manually add everything. For example, when a new term is added to a vocabulary, I want it to show up in the menu without manually adding it using menu_otf. When clicking on a vocabulary, I want it to display the vocabulary description and a list of all children terms as links. When clicking on a link to a term, I want it to display a description (if applicable) and any nodes associated with that term (without teasers).

I am using taxonomy_menu now but by default Drupal sets everything up in a blog fashion where the most recent node (regardless of whether it is marked to be posted to the front page) shows up when clicking on the associated term/vocabulary. This is a horribly clumsy way to organize a site and I don't understand why it is the default. I want to circumvent this.

If it is not possible, could someone direct me to another CMS with granular user management and common-sense site organization?

So far this taxonomy model really doesn't seem to make that much sense for anyone but corporate/blog site developers. The people who plan to use the site I'm developing are just as confused by this default site organization as I am.