Sunday, August 20, 2017

A step forward


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The following letter was sent to the pnb@Pacifica.org site as well as to the Pacifica Radiowaves forum. It was picked up by this blog unofficially and unashamedly.


Dear Mr Brown, Ms Casenave, Mr Diaz, Ms Roberts, and Mr Tshibanda et al of the PNB




This is a polite and quite sincere request for information from the five of you as well as a request for further information from the PNB as a whole.  



It relates to votes cast at the August 17 2017 PNB Executive Session.  


The report out from the PNB executive session held on August 17 states that three motions related to the Pacifica audits were passed at that executive session.

I am one of many concerned Pacifica listener members, including several attorneys, who have been actively tracking and documenting the board behavior of PNB members for over a year--as individuals and as voting blocks.  

Our goal is to examine the accusation, frequently made, that a subset of PNB members are working from within to sabotage Pacifica in hopes of walking away from the destroyed organization with valuable pieces of it and/or control over those pieces, or for some as yet identified self serving purpose. 

Should evidence of this sabotage be apparent, legal action against such PNB members could commence. This action could include civil AND CRIMINAL prosecution under a host of state and federal fraud statutes, including breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy to breach fiduciary duty, and conspiracy charges under the RICO statutes.  

As I understand it, a group of board members, acting in a coordinated fashion, and in collusion with each other can qualify as a corrupt organization or enterprise under the RICO statutes.  

Those found guilty under the RICO statutes can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for EACH RACKETEERING COUNT of which they are convicted. RICO includes 27 federal counts and 8 state counts under which legal charges can be brought. 

Collusion to commit fraud would be easy to prove, given the lock step voting pattern of the group of you, usually joined by Ms Washington, Ms Turner, and Ms Sorden.

This quote is from Wikipedia information on the RICO statutes: 

"Despite its harsh provisions, a RICO-related charge is considered easy to prove in court, as it focuses on patterns of behavior as opposed to criminal acts."

Nothing would be easier to prove than "patterns of behavior" on the part of each of you as individuals and as a group. 

As you well know, a cornucopia of open source audio exists that would easily establish a coordinated voting pattern on the part of this group.  

In addition, evidence of coordination among you is not limited to voting patterns of your group, but also to the intense and unremitting and often successful vocal disruptions, designed to create delay and chaos, that your group engages in. Your behavior occurs every meeting along very well established, highly predictable guidelines and methods and absolutely suggests a coordinated or conspiratorial quality to your group.  

The report out from the August 17 2017 PNB Executive Session states that three audit related motions were approved. A vote count was given for the first motion only:

"The PNB accepts and approves the Audit Report, Management Letter, and Amended Tax Return prepared by Regalia & Associates for FY2015."

Failure to produce timely audits has afflicted Pacifica for some time now, without any clear explanation given as to why. This is but one piece of suggestive evidence of a "plan from within" to sabotage Pacifica.

The lack of timely audits is an existential threat to the Pacifica Foundation by at least two, and possibly more, mechanisms--denial of CPB funding and the revocation of Pacifica's tax exempt status by the Attorney General of the State of California. Other vendors, lenders, etc often demand to see audited financials before deciding whether or not to do business with Pacifica. Absence of the audits obviously seriously jeopardizes Pacifica's basic ability to function day to day. 

Therefore, I would respectfully ask that you clarify your vote on this motion to "clear your name" before the public. For starters, I would suggest responses to the following:

1) Published statements by each of the 5 PNB members referenced above who voted "No" on this motion to clarify the reasons and rationale led to your "No" vote.

2) So many of your votes, if not all, are in lock step with one another, whether on something as weighty as a Pacifica audit or as minor as extending time. This vote absolutely bears that stamp. Why would a reasonable person not conclude that your No vote was not part of a coordinated attempt to block approval of the audit, hurting Pacifica, potentially fatally if your side had prevailed? Please elaborate.

3) That the report from Executive Session for the August 17 meeting be amended to include the roll call results on the other two motions approved during this Executive Session.  

4). That explanation be given as to why these Audit Committee motions were made, discussed and voted under a cloak of secrecy in Executive Session. Under which of the limited "reasons for consideration in Executive Session" do these Audit related motions fall?

I would suggest that responses to the above be placed on the Pacifica Radio Waves Yahoo Group website, along with any other places you choose. 

Once your statements and the voting results outlined above are published, that you make yourselves available for written questions and answers to the public you serve on the Radio Waves group site. Or, in the case of Mr Tshibanda, responses to "The People" you purport to represent.

Thank you so very much,

S D Cohen



15 comments:

  1. S D Cohen uses Wikipedia for facts about the law? Wikipedia is not a recognized source for legal statutes or summaries of legal statutes. Leftists are ineffectual losers who constantly blame each other for their failures and insist their opponents are criminals who deserve decades of imprisonment. And RICO, while "easy to prove in court," as Wikipedia assures us, generally involves some actual crimes. RICO is applied to convict all members of an organization of these crimes, not by proving direct participation in the commission of the crimes, but by virtue of their membership in the organization. Ask any DA if RICO is "easy to prove in court." DA's seem to work pretty hard on these cases.

    When are the clowns behind Pacifica going to stop focusing on sending each other to the Gulag and start trying to run a set of viable radio stations?

    Cohen's complaint here seems to be that there are voting blocks on the board of a not-fro-profit and that this alone constitutes evidence of RICO felonies. Voting blocks on the Pacifica board? Pass me my smelling salts before I collapse on my fainting couch.

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    Replies
    1. Amen Brother. I would only add that for all the rhetoric in the end its about control of the station/Pacifica. Its 'their' station. If they're not in charge then they will do anything and everything to get it back. Meanwhile the GM replays the same five or six premiums to pay the bills.

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  2. Funny how Democracy Now and Amy Goodman are rich and WBAI is starving - Samori would not be pleased. Someone should sue Amy Goodman for theft - she stole Democracy Now from Pacifica and WBAI

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    1. She may well have appropriated DN! in such a regrettable manner, but you canot blame Amy for all the damage done to WBAI by a lineup of fools/opportunists, from Samori to the present gang.

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  3. Disney V and Stone v. Ritter set forth examples of bad faith conduct based on conscious wrongdoing: intentional acts taken with a purpose other than advancing the best interests of the corporation; intentional violations of positive law; and intentional failures to act in the face of a known duty to act.

    In short, provide support to the concept that a board (the triad of care, loyalty, and good faith) had violated its duty to monitor corporate activities and allow legal action against the board.

    Disclaimer: Not legal advise - I'm not an attorney, simply a former NPO board member.

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  4. For clarity - I should mention that Prior to Stone, a series of Delaware Supreme Court cases had described a “triad” of fiduciary duties, comprised of care, loyalty, and good faith. Stone made clear that there is no triad — good faith is a subsidiary
    element of loyalty, despite it still being referred to as a triad (as I did above)

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  5. Chris,

    Conspiring to illegally manufacture and distribute DVDs is one violation.

    Mailing the illegally manufactured DVDs is another violation.

    Those two charges are sufficient requirements for. RICO prosecution.

    Thank you.

    Ed Manfredonia

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  6. Chris,

    At a meeting of the WBAI Finance Committee at 120 Wall Street R Paul Martin showed the members the room where the DVDs were illegally duplicated and the DVD duplicator. He refused to provide the name of the individual, who duplicated the DVDs.

    But here is the problem: The volunteers, who mailed the DVDs, could probably be indicted under RICO. I believe that Mitchel Cohen named individuals, who donated money for the mailing and mailed the DVDs via the USPS. Cohen did this after he was named in Gary Null's lawsuit. Note: Null's law was null and void because he did not file for Request for Judicial Intervention.

    Cohen was pooping in his pants when he was named.

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    Replies
    1. Dred Scott Keyes was the individual who duplicated the DVD's, according to R. Paul. He released the name in closed session

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  7. RICO is for serious criminal conspiracies, not for something as unknown as Pacifica, who are still so lucky to be so far under the radar no one even knows they exist.

    SDL

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  8. Chris,

    Every county in the State of New York is mandated to have a public legal library, which is open to the public. These libraries have access to the lexis legal database. There are hundreds of pages referencing legal precedent.

    Thank you.

    Edward Manfredonia

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  9. Chris,

    Every county in the State of New York is mandated to have a public legal library, which is open to the public. These libraries have access to the lexis legal database. There are hundreds of pages referencing legal precedent.

    Thank you.

    Edward Manfredonia

    ReplyDelete
  10. WBAI off air again this morning.

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  11. Too quiet here, so I thought I'd just say "Hello."

    SDL

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    Replies
    1. It may well be the calm before the storm—a blizzard of lies is still rocking the house the Hill build.

      Waiting for a roar from atop the ESB.

      In the meantime, I'll post a letter that Steve Brown threw to the wind today.

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