| Chess One 2006-02-26, 7:33 pm |
|
<parrthenon@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1140617682.159956.187750@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
quote:
> DEAFENING SILENCE
>
> <If the writing is on a web site, it's website
> content. Yawn.> -- Paul Rubin
>
> Paul Rubin is yawning.
>
> Yawn.
>
> I see good reason to learn the precise
> employment status of Jennifer Shahade: what is her
> place in the hierarchy?
>
> There is indeed no policy to advertise all jobs
> at the Federation, and no one I've read has said that
> such is the case. However, there is an understanding
> and a practice that major jobs are advertised to the
> general chess community so as to enlarge the pool of
> applicants and -- heh, heh, heh -- to complicate the
> practice of friends rewarding friends.
Used to be.
quote:
> How, for example, does her salary compare with
> that of the Chess Life editor? Surely that is a relevant
> question when considering whether a plum in chess
> terms was dishonestly given to a friend rather than
> putting the job up for public competition.
Joel Channing has stopped by to comment that 'soon' the procedure will be
posted, but nor here. Shall we assume this will be a similar to his previous
offer to post his own analysis of the ChessCafe deal [last month's scandal].
As a friend of J. Shahade no glass wall will work for me in this issue, and
I can't quite say things I otherwise might, and I must content myself with
observing that the obsessive New Secrecy of this board has indeed /created/
this scandal.
quote:
> The silence is once again deafening, just as it
> was over the ChessCafe deal.
Yes - it is exactly the same problem. But to whom are we addressing such a
problem? There is a pretence that board members do not read here in public,
or even care about public opinion of what they do. Yet the very basis of
their existance is to expand chess into a greater public arena. It is
remarkable that the current official stance is that they don't care for
anything other than the shrinking pool of US members, fully 10,500 active
adult players.
The major point below has to do not with what has been claimed as
'personnel' matters, which should rightly be private, but with the position
itself - what is its salary? If it is a managerial one, then the by-laws
required her brother to resign, if not and the job comprises a technical
postion of editing and content supply, why the fuss? Why should any board
level activity be even in potential question about a technical activity?
Of course, we do not have the current story aright. If Hall as executiove
director simply hired competent and experience labour, what would be the
issue? But did he - or did someone else in his name?
But I begin to smell several rats - what are all the salaries at USCF and
what do people perform for them? Why any salary in a public non profit
should be secret is unknown.
The last thing Phil Innes is going to criticise [I admit my friendship
above] is cheering up the USCF website. I read about 50 chess sites around
the world every week, and guess which is the most politically larded and
just plain and overwhlemingly borrrrrrrrrrrrrring..... ?
quote:
> NO NONE HAS EXPLAINED WHY THIS JOB COULD NOT
> HAVE BEEN ADVERTISED PUBLICLY. The excuse-makers have
> merely argued that the Executive Board could do what
> it did legally.
As Larry Parr well knows when we were writing with Tim Hanke, he was in very
great agreement with this issue - then, on election, he was quashed. The
issue is not new, and although strongly indicated in my opinion, not exactly
'urgent' in this sense either.
I do not blame Jennifer Shahade for taking it, nor would I blame any chess
player for taking a paying job in chess.
What sucks is the continuous secrecy surrounding all issues of USCF
governance. If it were some successful policy it would be one thing, but it
openly supports its own failed relationships as 'better' than other options
in the case of the forgiven debt to Chesscafe, and never established any
real reason for moving anywhere at all, especially to rural Tennessee,
where, I here, USCF doesn't even return calls to the governor of the state,
and its scholastic people don't keep appointments with the sate either,
'being too busy' no doubt.
The issue of USCF performance must always be, not what it does for USCF,
since that reduces it to a complete sham of a non-profit, but what its
action do for chess in the USA.
After reading the farsical record of the recent board meeting, what is there
to say other than that they entertain us?
Phil Innes
quote:
> Let us keep in mind, once again, what the
> ChessCafe deal involved:
>
> 1. Hanon Russell submitted a very high bid that
> destroyed the competition.
>
> 2. After winning the book and equipment
> concession, Mr. Russell failed to fulfill the terms of
> the bid.
>
> 3. The terms are then changed in Mr. Russell's
> favor without any open bidding.
>
> 4. Mr. Russell gets, in effect, permanent
> possession of the book and equipment business without
> having to face open competition after submitting an
> initial bid that he did not come close to fulfilling.
>
> Gentlemen: dip my sugarcane into the molasses.
> It don't get no sweeter than that!
>
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