This is a screenshot of the top of Gunbloggers.com this morning. Gunbloggers is a great, useful site and I’m pleased to steal from it often. 🙂 But the reason this is remarkable is that it’s normally only a rolling aggregation of blog posts. I’ve never, ever seen crucial news bannered like that on Gunbloggers before.
I don’t know who owns or operates Gunbloggers (and a whois search was unrevealing) and that’s embarrassing just now. But thank you! Bannering that link was a fantastic thing for you to do.
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What’s developing here — unsurprisingly, I suppose, but still revealingly — is that while not a huge number of people care whether JPFO lives, dies, or is converted into JPFO “Lite” under Gottlieb management, those who do care care passionately.
And furiously.
And determinedly.
And on principle.
And with all the power of their intelligence.
Several life members have begun putting their minds, money, and experience into the effort to save JPFO.
Time is short. Every step of the perfidious “merger” is still being conducted in secrecy and haste. Gottlieb told David Codrea that he and the JPFO board intend to announce a done deal either this coming week or next Monday, yet no one knows what paperwork has been signed, what terms have been agreed to, what the actual timeline is. No information is being given to anyone outside the secret circle. All offers of alternatives and all requests to the JPFO board for information have simply been ignored.
Even queries to the board from life members and corporate donors have been ignored, deleted, and dismissed as mere “vitriol.” The work of “malcontents.” This alone is a scandal and a disgrace.
JPFO does not exist for the benefit of the handful of tired old men who have spent the last three and a half years mismanaging it! It exists for the benefit of all who care about rights — but surely its paying members and donors deserve a say!
All I can tell you is that good people are mobilizing and working as fast and smart as they can to stop this dirty business. Is there time? It’s impossible to know. But I’ve heard from several people who committed to JPFO for life that they will do all they can to prevent this travesty.
Thank you, Gunbloggers. Thank you, life members. Thank you, everybody who cares. Your numbers aren’t huge. But your determination sure is.
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Sign the petition to stop the destruction of JPFO. So far, we have 211 signatures out of the 500 we’re looking for, and those names include both life members and corporate sponsors.
Will the board even see this petition? Don’t know. They’re doing a fine job of shutting out all input. But once we get the 500, I’ll do my darnedest to make sure they can’t miss it. And by all means feel free to call their attention to it yourself!
That would be me 🙂 You’re welcome. When I started GB I made the decision to make it just a feed, no ads or commentary, but the JPFO takeover is important enough to stick it to the top. And no, that’s not going to happen very often.
This whole mess reveals what can happen when power is concentrated in a small space. People like to believe that the organizations they are involved in listen to them, but unless you actually have real power to overthrow those in charge you are just along for the ride.
WOW, LibertyNews! YOU. What a great thing you’ve done. I love Gunbloggers.com and visit it everyday. Absolutely invaluable site. There’ve been a few times I wanted to suggest new blogs to add but had no idea where to make the suggestion. Now I know. (But I promise not to bug you.)
That banner really should really make every JPFO devotee’s day.
I have a feeling that smart life members will soon take this whole thing and run with it on their own. I’m looking forward to going back to being a hermit writer. But getting the word out has been big and the response, enormous.
Hmm…..I tried accessing the site but was not able to. I tried other ways to access it but what Ii got when using “bing” was a listing of gun blog sites but nowhere was there a gunbloogers.com site. Any info?
There’s a link in the post above, Curt. But the URL is http://www.gunbloggers.com
Curt, possibly a silly idea, but I see you typo’d that as “gunbloogers.com”, not gunbloggers . Maybe you entered the URL that way when trying to get there. For some reason I make exactly that same blooger/blogger typo all the freakin’ time (and it’s gotten worse with the keyboard I’ve been using recently).
Had never seen gunbloggers.com myself, but it is now bookmarked in the list I visit daily. Thanks, LibertyNews… I probably won’t get the dishes washed until 4 PM from now on. LOL
Is it possible to remove the board members who are pushing the merger?
I am assuming JPFO is a non-profit corporation with Articles of Incorporation, bylaws, etc. In such an organization, the trustees have a fiduciary duty to operate in the best interests of the organization, and in accordance with its Articles of Incorporation, bylaws, etc.
Are there any provisions to remove the trustees for malfeasance if they don’t abide by the organization’s founding documents?
I realize there may be a timing issue here, that they are on a fast track and can get the merger done before the good folks can kick them out.
And I wonder, too, if Aaron Zelman’s family has any input in this?
Felinenation — The timing is definitely a HUGE issue, but members of the rescue team are absolutely looking into everything you mention. It’s been less than a week since we realized we’d have to act. At first (naively, it seems in retrospect) we hoped the board would agree to give us a hearing and supply that “paperwork” to us. Since they’ve stonewalled, it’s a matter of getting as much as we can from the state of Wisconsin.
It seems shocking now that even such basic matters as what the bylaws are and how board members are elected have been hidden from JPFO’s members and supporters. But only since 8/14/14 has it seemed important and only since 8/18 has it slowly begun to seem more urgent.
Pat — Good question. Nancy Zelman is no longer involved with JPFO in any way that I’m aware of and I don’t know what her relationship might be to the present board members, especially Bob and Bruce. Wish I knew someone who knew her, but that’s definitely worth looking into.
FWIW……I just clicked on the site in Claire’s reply. Nope…nada….oh well…..thanks to those who responded! 🙂
An important point to know about nonprofit board duties:
http://grantspace.org/Tools/Knowledge-Base/Nonprofit-Management/Accountability/legal-duties-of-the-nonprofit-board
A NP board has legal duties. I’m not a lawyer, but I think maybe that’s the missing part to everyone’s efforts. We can yell from the edges, but we’re just noise. Maybe noise works, but maybe not.
Legally though, if you can argue the JPFO is negligent in their duties to the org you’ll have a real lever. It seems to me you’ve done a good job of differentiating the missions of the JPFO and the other one. If it’s enough of a difference you have a shot at stopping it and forcing a different board direction or outcome..
I’m up for helping. cb
That’s an excellent link, Charles. Short, succinct, and highly damning to at least two members of JPFO’s present board. The “Duty of Care” section, particularly, given that those two board members have mostly been AWOL (until one of them suddenly decided he knew better than everyone else about JPFO’s future). But all of it, really.
FWIW, breach of a Board’s “Duty of Care” is a very difficult case to make, and in any event if you were successful at best you might get some monetary damages out of the individuals involved. It wouldn’t set aside the merger, though. The existence of such a breach would only be of use in this case if it were so egregious that you could convince a judge to issue an injunction stopping the merger. For that you’d have to demonstrate both a strong likelihood of prevailing on the merits as well as irreparable injury. That’s a pretty high standard to meet, and it would have to be done very quickly (like, this week).
If there is a legal approach to take here I think it would turn on whether the Board has failed to follow the organization’s bylaws and/or state corporate law. I posted a longer discussion of this in a later thread. (Incidentally, I used to be a lawyer, although I haven’t practiced in about 20 years and never in Wisconsin.)