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troopers1

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Everything posted by troopers1

  1. 1989 PR should win this. And I don't say that because I was a member. It's only with the most careful, dispassionate consideration.
  2. Glassmen are a great story. From a small corps getting ovations for playing off of retreat to "Just a Gigolo" in 89 to a finals regular...
  3. Dave Richards sent me Royal Aires mp3s from this era. I wish i could have seen them
  4. Scouts at finals, 1988. Had to visit grandma and missed it, but loved watching them all season. PR at finals, 2008. Rocked the house at Atlanta. But you can't take toddlers to finals.
  5. HBCU bands are famous. They have their own fans, YouTube channels, and on and on. What does DCI really offer their members?
  6. True Story: Blue Knights were holding a drill camp at the University of Wyoming, and George was writing their drill for the first time. There were several of us drum corps guys from Troopers, Phantom, SCV and Railmen at UW, so we all went over there to check it out. A really energetic BK staffer came over to talk to us, and toward the end of the conversation (trading of stories, actually), there was this exchange: My Good Friend Pete: Hey, is THE George Zingali here? Energetic BK Staffer: Yes, THE George Zingali is here. (big smile) Because... the BK guy was George Zingali..... Good times.
  7. That's actually splitting hairs. DCI may have officially suspended the corps for not providing their tax returns to DCI, but they couldn't provide them because they didn't exist. If they had been filed, DCI could have just gotten them from the IRS or charitynavigator. Fair disclosure, I joined the board in 2006. The road back was due to a lot of work by the people already in the organization, as well as through the influx / return of people from outside, and by outstanding support from the people of Casper. Some of the 'outside' people who joined in were originally proponents of ending the organization altogether. It was a great team effort. The corps did not eat their own.
  8. I don't know if I'm allowed to disclose this or not, but it's too shocking to keep quiet. No one is hiring me to be on their staff. There, I said it.
  9. Is the entire top 12 going to break 90 this year?
  10. Fond memories of performing in Eau Claire...including a really nice sausage and potatoes lunch served by a local church that wrecked afternoon rehearsals due to food comas.
  11. I was on Troopers brass staff in '93, and got to see Cadets several times that summer. They were incredible. The drum corps politics of the time played heavily into the criticism of the show and performance. But there is no way to deny what was accomplished. At the time I was most impressed by the masterful use of silence and pianissimo.
  12. I think they're bringing in this group's staff. https://ntucac.com/harmonica-band/
  13. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but the uniform costume has some kickin' serapes and the DM has a metal plate under his. Contrabasses have cigarillos.
  14. Susie and Mick were tremendous supporters of many Wyoming and Natrona County organizations, including the Troopers, the University of Wyoming, Wyoming Health Center, Boys and Girls Clubs, museums, and many youth organizations....among many others.
  15. I was looking further into this AB5 thing. I think the crippling additional cost he mentioned may not have come primarily from converting part-time contractors to part-time W-2 employees. It may have come from being fined after the state decided they weren't compliant. Presumably we're talking about lower level, day-to-day instructional staff, who don't make a lot anyway. But the fines can be thousands of dollars per "employee". I have no idea if this is the case, but I'm just trying figure out how the switch would have blown up costs so much that it put the entire organization at risk.
  16. If you're going to work in a location for a week or two, you shouldn't have to pay local taxes, because it's clearly temporary. Large employers are able to manage that. A drum corps tootling through NY will not have to do it, and no employee of the drum corps will be at risk. The original legal decisions supporting withholding local taxes came from a case involving my first employer, Arthur Andersen. The NY State AG noticed they had employees travelling into NYC on the regular over long periods of time, and told them to pay up. That became precedent for all other locations. The musicians / athletes tax was a different one, to get around the fact that showing up in town to play 60 minutes of football wouldn't normally require anyone to pay taxes in the state where the game is played. That game time was worth hundreds of thousands to the players, so the state wanted a piece of that.
  17. Those athlete / performer laws are so they can collect from Lebron James and Luke Bryan. Not from drum corps instructors. The cost of monitoring and enforcing it for the little guys would be more than they could ever collect.
  18. The IRS will force you to consider a contract a regular W-2 employee based on the following types of considerations. There are probably others, and more detailed, but this is the idea. How specific their job duties are. The more specific the better. Focus on a project, or specific deliverable How long they are continuously contracted. They should be under contract only for the part of the year they perform the work. How long they perform the same duties. They should have separate contracts for separate job roles, to be safe. Rule of thumb is that each contract should not be as long as a year If they act under the direction of the corporation, as if they were an actual W-2 employee. They need to be independent Most corps staff are contractors, and most corps admin are W-2 employees for this reason. If you're paying your corps director, or full-time office people, or bingo workers as contractors you're going to run into trouble.
  19. Posts on the Troopers facebook page: July 7th, 2023 - "We're off to Indy!" August 12th, 2023 - "We just reached Indiana! Are we too late?"
  20. I find it interesting that the net of Line 1, 2 and 26 are about the same as Line 11. That may suggest they didn't want to dip into the corpus of their investments. I wonder if it was actually too generous to assume the Bingo net at $1,000,000. It may have been $0. As a corporation, their net income was negative over $1.6 M over 2019 and 2020 combined, and their current ratios were declining fast. It could easily have continued that downward trend. Also, to be clear, I'm not trying to be argumentative at all. I find this a very interesting question to get answered, for the good of all of us. And I am also amazed that they went from the strongest position in DCI to inactive so quickly.
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