Saturday’s meeting of the NRA Board of Directors was much more contentious than the rah-rah affair it usually is. A motion expressing no confidence in Executive Director Wayne LaPierre was defeated and the question was left to be decided by the Board.
The meeting of the full Board is this morning.
I think that the NRA Board of Directors’ Meeting (today) has a chance to be an organic and genuine event for the first time in quite awhile.
Whatever script existed for the meeting has been rendered null and void by the events of the last few days. Naturally, the same pro-establishment Directors will try to control the meeting, avoid difficult conversations and push things they must confront to committees…just like they and their cronies did…at the Meeting of Members.
Interestingly, it is apparently not normal for Directors to take time on the microphones during the Member’s Meeting…yet Marion Hammer, “Sheriff” Printz and James Porter felt compelled to do so.
They were visibly shaken and annoyed that Voting Members had the audacity to assert our Rights (according to Membership Bylaws and meeting procedures) to be heard and attempt to change the agenda of the meeting from the typical pep-rally format to a real discussion of important issues.
I hope the true leaders and agents of change on the BoD take advantage of the situation to #changethenra.
– Rob Pincus at Instagram
YOU get a HiPoint! And YOU get a HiPoint! EVERYBODY gets a HIPoint! Look under your seats!
FOFLMFAO
Well played!
Genuine question here: How much power does the board actually have in determining whether LaPierre stays or goes?
It’s always been my understanding that the NRA board has little actual power relative to LaPierre and Chris Cox who hold the reins for the most part. I may have that dead wrong, though. (wouldn’t be the first time – ha!)
Absolute…just like any corporation…
I know that the NRA is really in trouble, over the last month the calls from them for money has gone from once or twice a month to once or twice daily. I guess they think the way to get your sympathy (and money) is to piss you off and hound you until you just give in.
I have gotten that impression from just about every possible corner, from these gun orgs to the people who insist I need a lower interest rate (when I haven’t paid a nickel in interest in the past 25 years), to those who insist I pay for extended warrantees on my cars, every scam under the sun. Irritates the hell out of me, even though I don’t use a smartphone, don’t give out a phone number except the one which we never plug in, and check emails once or twice a month to delete a thousand emails without reading. I call it “modern marketing”, I am certain graduates have been taught in school that continuous and unrelenting assault will result in your victims obeying your commands, giving you whatever you want, or some such.
I heard the NRA isn’t running that fund raising. It’s other people and the money doesn’t go where you think it does.
I came back to NRA when it looked to me like they were going to clean up their act. Clearly they aren’t, at least until membership cuts off the money train. LaPierre has to go along with the rest of top management, since there has been a history of corruption that must be cleared away. Finally the size of the board needs to be cut more than in half, since having so many waters down the ability for the membership to know who is doing their job.
Half the current number is still too many. Ten who do their jobs is plenty.
Every organization is an empty shell without its members. We must stay up-to-date on what’s happening and who did what to whom.
It won’t be in the magazine.
How do we stay informed? Management tries to hide ongoing issues and justifies it by saying they are keeping our enemies in the dark. The Board sweeps important problems under the rug, or simply ignores them. Lacking information, members cast ballots in ignorance, which gives us our current mess.
When LaPierre steps down or gets fired. Maybe and thats a small maybe on my part. Id rejoin the NRA. After 40 +years. Now Id really wish they would stop wasting money asking me for money they arent getting anymore of from me.
So now it begins, Bloomberg’s money is starting to pay off for him again,,, so sad…
The most anyone’s money can do is present a position. If you have no answer, we’ll have to thank Bloomberg for advising us.
“The most anyone’s money can do is present a position.”
This isn’t strictly speaking true. Money can also buy the appearance that a position has support that it does not and convince people that a specific outcome is certain or that there is a “right side of history” that they should want to be on.
This is exactly how money distorts things in politics to some degree. Generally a company pays a lobbyist to present a position to a politician but a union sometimes uses money to bus people in to protest while otherwise inflating the appearance of their numbers which pressures politicians to do something by creating the illusion that a lot of voters support that something when in reality it’s a position held by the union bosses and the people “protesting” or “supporting” the proposal are really getting paid to walk around with a sign.
You can see that anti-gun orgs did this in Florida following the MDSH shooting.
So the BoD approved WLP’s expense accounts and pay raises. Otherwise they wouldn’t have paid him. Therefore, I see no corruption there. However, sticking with AM for PR can certainly be fixed by putting it out for bids like all good organizations do. Having AM do this job for 40 years was a mistake that needs fixing. Hiring Ollie was a conflict of interest. For this, the whole BoD is at fault. Wayne has done an amazing job, so has Chris Cox. They may have made a few compromises we wish they hadn’t, but I’m sure they weighed that (FIX-NICS). First: drop NRATV. It does nothing productive. Second: sue AM for failure to achieve their contract goals with backpay. No punitive charges. Third: Get a new PR company. Fourth: Get Wayne to retire with a guaranteed BoD vote immeritus. Put in a temporary President and an Executive Director, folks good with finance skills, until official elections can be done mid term with the membership. (For example, Sarah Palin as President, and Frank Brownell as Executive.) Fifth: Ask those BoD members who demanded Wayne resign be retired, including (reluctantly) Marian Hammer. There now, all fixed.
Wayne came out in favor of the bump stock ban and ‘Red Flag’ laws without putting up a fight That not compromise, that is surrender. This was the final straw for me. Is one thing to fight and lose another to run away.
“However, sticking with AM for PR can certainly be fixed by putting it out for bids like all good organizations do.”
*Highly* problematic.
What if a bid comes in for what appears to be a quality PR firm, ends up being a PR firm controlled or influenced by Leftists? And they whisper in their ears the inner workings of the NRA leadership? (And how do we know if that’s exactly what’s happening with AM right *now*?)
We need to seriously consider bring PR completely in-house, with people thoroughly vetted for 2A reliability…
“…with people thoroughly vetted for 2A reliability…”
Marketing people tend to be whores. As such your approach presents problems.
However, this also means that you can buy quality and pay to retain it. Hire the individual people you want, pay them well, have them sign an NDA and keep an eye on them. It’s the NRA, not the NSA, we don’t need “extreme vetting”.
A quality marketing person with a vested interest in a paycheck and not violating an NDA is worth ten ardent 2A supporters who are so-so at marketing. Where you can find ardent 2A supporters, by all means, where you cannot, it’s business, treat it as such.
Term limits.
good idea.
Independently audited BoD elections is far more important, as well as counting votes the normal way.
Yeah they try to bug me for $…not a penny until they clean up their act.Despite what you spew NORDNEG…
WHY BROTHER???
We all know the NRA is controlled by a cabal of dictator’s and FUDDS. Not much will change, except for more money to flow into Wayne’s pocket. WAKE UP FOLKS.
Euthanize the Negotiating Rights Away Judas goat. It has done enough damage to liberty. It cannot be redeemed because it has functioned to trade the exercise of your unalienable individual right to keep and bear arms for government privileges since the first federal gun control law.
What is an Executive Vice President? Why does Mr. LaPierre have more power than the president himself? How can Mr. LaPierre refuse to step down when the board of directors asked him to? Does Mr. LaPierre actually run the NRA? How does he end up staying in an organization with so much turnover over the years? I’ve been a member for over 25 years.. if I’m not mistaken he has been there most of those years.. through good times and not-so-good times for the organization.. as I can recall some of those bad times the NRA needed a wholesale change..
The Board did not ask him to step down. A few members of the board, including the President, asked him to. If there is a vote of the board, it wll be today.
I personally don’t care about the executives salaries – if they do a good job, they deserve good pay. The problem is though that they don’t do a good job, they actually hurt our gun rights more than they protect them. The whole executive team needs to be replaced by young people that still feel the fire to fight for our rights and don’t give in to ridiculously idiotic band like the bumpfire nonsense. Salaries need to be voted on by the members and terms need to be limited. 40 years on top of an organization like here is not healthy for ANY organization – without even blaming that person. There is just no new idea coming up, no fire burning inside after such a long time.
The NRA lost me after supporting the bumpfire stock ban. Not because I need/want/have one, but because agreeing to that total nonsense just shows how little common sense is left in that organization and how little concern about our constitution they really have. Just flat out disgusting and the reason I send my money to a different organization now.
Wayne has done a fair job most of the time! However the tactical blunders like bump stocks, red flag laws and a few others should never have happened. I believe it is time for a change. And members should really have a say in how they want the Board to proceed with preserving and protecting this organization. There has not been enough publicity on the NRA’s role in training and certifying all LEA and LEO agents as the backbone of their forces. There has not been enough publicity on the grants and gun safety programs for schools that are offered. And there is virtually no kickback on the numerous anti gun media attacks by politicians and other groups.
Wayne’s rape of NRA funds for his own personal use is outrageous. 250,000 spent on clothing should have put him in the slammer. Although I am no fan of Olly North I think that some of what he said is probably all too true. When long time members of the NRA see how much money was pilfered how can the NRA expect anyone to go on donating money , some of which will be pilfered and even squandered. That is why Slick Wayne the Weasel must go now and the sooner the better.
Before Neal Knox passed away he wrote a column on how the big wigs at the NRA quietly obliterated all of the Cincinnati Revolt Reforms and put all the power back in their own hands with the elections being nothing more than a sham democracy, its even more corrupt than our U.S. fake Democratic Presidential Elections.
For the survival of the NRA its best that their most predominate crook slick Weasel Wayne should go now and its best all this stink and corruption came out now because in the next Presidential elections all gun owners will be fighting for their very lives. It seems almost certain we will have a Democratic Controlled House and a Democratic President and if we lose control of the Senate its goodbye to the Second Amendment and goodbye to your gun collection as you will only get scrap metal value for your firearms when they come to to take them and gleefully melt them down and you might not even get any compensation for them just like the Bump Stock Owners and Merchants and this was under a Republican Administration! Of course no compensation for bump stocks was precisely normal for a Republican Administration as if it had been the Democrats outlawing them they would have at least paid you something for them.
The NRA is low on funds because of the false sense of security with the Trump Presidency and most gun owners will wait until the last minute to spend a few dollars to once again rejoin the NRA hoping they will perform a miracle at the last moment and save them from a major gun Armageddon. Without NRA payola see how fast Republicans jump ship and suck in millions in cash from anti-gun Bloomberg instead.
Bitch about the NRA all you want but without them its certain that you will be wishing for the good old days when you could legally buy a Pellet gun without a 1 year waiting period and with a velocity not over 300 fps and a firearms security card that will cost you $2,000 and mandatory firearms insurance another 5,000 with an additional tax of $1.00 a pellet and a $500 arsenal tax stamp for a maximum amount of 50 pellets per year. If you think this is far fetched I overheard a Congressmen say “If we passed a 1 bullet a year law or even 1 bullet per lifetime law we then would not be violating the Second Amendment” and he was a Republican! And the Supreme Court will say, “why not as 2A does not mention how much ammo you can legally own”. Clinton realized this when she was running for President and said “Don’t fight with them and try to take their guns, just cut off their access to ammo”.
There is a dark storm brewing ahead for all gun owners and if the NRA is finished we as gun owners will become extinct faster than the latest large flock of Penguins in the Arctic that today was just reported to have perished on a large Ice Berg that suddenly disintegrated under their very feet before summer even started. We gun owner penguins are now also at great risk and the 2020 elections are just barely getting under way and if we have no NRA the ice is already starting to disintegrate under our very feet.
Just remember the old East European proverb : When you have only 1 infected rotting tree do not cut down your entire Forrest.
An overview without all the cock-strutting.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-nras-board-of-directors-faces-big-high-stakes-decisions/
Somebody had better get their butts in the right gear!! Now is a really crappy time for descension and stupidy.