[TheForge] ABANA

[Dave Brown]

(I have added the emphasis to Georges text quoted ... comments 
follow.  Dave Brown)

At 13:16 07/06/02 -0400, you wrote:
>"Couple that with a potential for savings and pretty you have a good 
>reason for pursuing competition.  Besides, good job or not, the Board 
>would be remiss if it didn't periodically investigate other publishers.
>After all, competition is a good thing.  This is a normal and healthy 
>business practice."
>
>True....only if there was a good faith intent on the solicitation of the 
>bids.  A forgone conclusion (for apparently "wrong" reasons), subsiquently 
>misrepresented to the dues paying membership is neither "competition" nor 
>a "good thing".
>If the $25,000 "savings" was a false justification, as in there never was 
>any potential for savings with a known $6k higher alternative, then it's a 
>moot point.  The true point then would be the apparent duplicity by those 
>who seem to have have mislead the membership  as well as those who try to 
>'smoke screen' for them.  The first cracks in the stone wall of the ABANA 
>Board came with Mr Fiorini's 'mea culpa'.  He has now passed it off to 
>ABANA President Doug Learn, in whose court the ball truly is now.
>
>The board of ABANA needs to settle this openly and honestly.
>
>The next step should be to continue to ask the Board, in writing, to set 
>the record straight.
>Only then will this go away.
>
>George Dixon


The single greatest problem I have with this whole exercise is the amount 
of conjecture (i.e the if's, apparently's, seem's. etc) that permeate the 
whole argument (not just the quoted text).  For example:  "...if there was 
a good faith intent..."  The implication is that there wasn't a good faith 
intent, but the "if" part says that there is no evidence that there wasn't 
a good faith intent and that it's a guess or deliberate misrepresentation 
on the part of the writer.  And "...apparently... misrepresented..." again 
says that the comments are just speculation and unsupported.

There are charges being made here both explicitly and implicitly but they 
are loaded with conjecture and speculation.  This is what troubles me about 
George's posts.  He makes some good points.  But, to use his style of 
presentation:  Only if his speculations and guesses are right, and if there 
a good faith intent on his part in his goals and objectives.  It seems that 
from my reading of his posts his goals are not as seemingly altruistic as 
he would like us to believe and are apparently far more personal than he'd 
like us to know.  Now if he could remove the "if" and state categorically 
that there wasn't a "good faith intent on the solicitation of bids" <sic>, 
and back them up without the use of speculative language, then maybe I 
wouldn't have such a problem with his side of the argument.

There is one thing I will agree with so far, but it too includes an 
"if":  ...  If George's statements are in fact true on the matter that 
Claire Yellin is conducting reviews of ads that he has submitted to the 
Ring, then she is clearly in the wrong.  She has no right, board and 
committee membership not withstanding, in reviewing the wording in George's 
advertisements in the Ring.  If she has a problem with George referencing 
his past association with the Yellin shop (which seems to be the case), 
then that's personal and she should pursue this personal problem in a 
personal legal manner.  But to do so in her capacity as a board member is 
clearly out of order and an abuse of position and authority.  The President 
of the Board should inform her forthwith to cease and desist such an abuse 
of her position as a member of the Board. and the editor and the ABANA 
secretary should be advised not to submit these to Claire for approval.

Dave "ever the skeptic" Brown
Green Bay, WI

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment. Attachments are not allowed.
Please post in Plain-Text only.---