**If any single incident could illustrate as many issues gone wrong, it is
contained in this post, which is a response to a Sam Sloan message.

Well, at least she hasn't sued us. And, by the way, I believe our
legal bills from defending ourselves against you exceed the $13,000 in
payments you have recently continued to question, even after they were
explained.


**Vision statement: a personal obsessionalism, and introverted attention to
the past.

Joel Channing[/quote]
The move to Crossville has proven to be a financial disaster. On just
one item alone, employee salaries and benefits, the USCF is spending
around $200,000 more per year on employee costs than it spent in New
Windsor.

**Remakble how 15 /less/ staff can cost more, moving from urban New York, to
rural Tennessee!

Perhaps more importantly, the new employees are more likely
to make mistakes, such as all the problems and errors in the TLAs
which have caused our local tournament directors, the life blood of
the USCF, to lose a lot of money and in some cases to go out of business.

**Plus of course competition, since in my own case more people read at the
site I write at than the entire USCF membership every month, and its cheap -
or even free! Its always on-time, and its easy for everyone to do, by
design. USCF's design, $50,000 later, is ... well, lacking any benchmarks of
performance saving a napkin schematic, and no bidding. In short, an 'award'.
Money didn't fix that problem.

The former experienced employees who on average had worked for the
USCF for seven years were working better and cheaper than the new staff.


**I think its clear that this board member is exculpating himself from any
responsibility for the projected loss of $314,000. No other board member
seems interested in owning the issue either. If the delegate in question had
not raised the issue after some substantial amount of work we would have
another Tom Dorsch situation, where the board were amazed to learn they were
operating deeply in the red - and in fact, in denial of it. Dorsch proved to
be right, but it cost him a shoo-in vote for President of USCF.

Worse yet, we are stuck in Crossville. We can never leave. It is like
the Hotel California where, "You can come any time you want, but you
can never leave."


**While Crossville is known as the methamphetamine capital of the South, I
do not tire of pointing out the rejected options - none of which are
superior to the unconsidered options! My little town has 4 Nobel prize
winners living here, 1 international college, 1 liberal-ivy college, 2 best
prep schools in USA, several nation-wide specialty colleagues [Austin for
the deaf, and also Landmark for dsylexics &c], PhD programs in medicine, 2
international music festivals, and now a national literary festival. On an
interstate, and reasonably near 2 large airports [1 Int'l], it regularly
features in the 'best cities' in USA list. [BTW, Kipling did some of his
best writing here too - loved the place.]

**The kicker is that for the cache of a Vermont address, where people really
want to live for almost every category reason there is, could be had in this
town for the INTEREST on the sale of the NY building.

Had I won the suit, which I lost only because the defendants were
evading service of process and refused to address the merits, I would
have saved the USCF from the financial disaster it is now experiencing.


**My idea would have worked the same way. Unfortunately neither of us can
fix the past. While it is pertinent for me as a chess journalist to rub the
noses of chess-politicians in the results of their secret processes for what
is purported to be a public charity to benefit the chess public, it is
'perspective' [as my Russian friend likes to say] for current politicians to
deal with the world as they find it. Or get out.

**Phil Innes

Sam Sloan