rjohn76

I feel like a lot of people missed the "Telehealth" part of things. Obviously there are times where an in-person visit is going to be the best course of action, but quite a few basic issues can be addressed through virtual/telehealth services. This list isn't complete, but it's covers many of the common issues that can be addressed through a virtual/telehealth visit: Allergies Bites & stings COVID-19 concerns Cold symptoms Diarrhea Fever Headache Pink eye Skin infection or rash Urinary symptoms Yeast infection

I'm not sure the ambulance chasing, truck crash attorney is going to be as eager/willing to pursue additional cases if they come to the realization that they're trying to squeeze blood from a turnip and ultimately losing money in the process. That's not a reflection on the plaintiff or any other victims that might come forward in the future. It's more a reflection of the method of operation for many law offices around the country. They'll flock to cases that have the potential for big payouts, and scatter like roaches when the light comes on and they realize there's no big bucks to be had. My interpretation of the court's ruling was that CA&E was determined to be liable as a successor because they entered into a charitable distribution agreement with YEA and subsequently received assets, management and other control of the "Garfield Cadets" from YEA. They acted as the same organization, just under a different legal name. There was too much of a connection to the past for them to be completely shielded from liability.

Since last night I've seen a couple people familiar with Chapter 7 bankruptcy suggest that any remaining assets of CAE could be sold or auctioned by the bankruptcy trustee to satisfy debts. While most physical assets have already been liquidated, there's other assets & intellectual property that could still carry some value (ex. the "cadets.org" domain is appraised at $2,500). If the bankruptcy trustee determines that those assets are worthwhile enough to sell/auction, the purchaser/successor could be shielded from liability under the right circumstances. The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey (which supersedes any civil court rulings) has already ruled that liability doesn't automatically transfer to the successor unless the plaintiff can “establish that there is continuity in management, shareholders, personnel, physical location, assets, and general business operation between selling and purchasing corporations following the asset acquisition.” Given all of that, there is a chance the "Cadets" name resurfaces in some capacity down the road as a result of a sale/auction. It wouldn't necessarily be as a drum corps or even in the marching arts. The purchaser could be from a completely different line of business and envision using the Cadets name/domain/IP for something completely unrelated. I'm not at all familiar with bankruptcy proceedings, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of the above. Just regurgitating some of what I've seen posted in other places from people that seemed knowledgeable. If anyone else has anymore insight, feel free to clarify or enlighten me.

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One of the things to keep in mind is that everything in this case is based on the standard of care or best practices as they were at the time of incident. While there are more protective measures in place today within DCI, the individual corps, and pretty much every other youth organization... that wasn't necessarily the case 40 years ago. That's the basis they have to argue upon, and not necessarily what's going to provide the best optics in the current "me too" era.

Did a little digging and this is the sixth time that the "LACK OF PROSECUTION DISMISSAL WARNING" has been recorded under case actions. The previous occasions were on 2/13/21, 4/17/21, 10/02/21, 12/10/22, & 2/11/23. Given that, and briefly reading the rules cited in the notice, this would seem to be more of an automatic formality that occurs when certain actions/proceedings don't occur over a specific period of time. Perhaps nothing to really read much into at this point?

Not a lawyer or attorney in real life, but have been involved with civil suits before as part of my career job. Cases being dismissed for "lack of prosecution" tend to tie back to the plaintiff not wanting to move forward with the case, or missing required court dates/filings. In my case, it's because the evidence presented by our company's legal team during the discovery phase makes it highly unlikely that the plaintiff will win (think fraudulent slip/fall cases in a retail environment that are clearly captured on CCTV). Once the plaintiff and/or their legal team sees the trajectory of the case, they abandon the case and subsequently miss court dates or filing requirements.

The best part was it was resurrected for a commentary on Pioneer (RIP).

I was finding nonprofits that were last current in 2018 and still classified as delinquent, so I'm not sure exactly what is "too long" at this point. It does seem like the DOJ significantly stepped up their efforts to bring organizations into compliance over the past year. Similar to SCV, most of the delinquent orgs I looked at have received multiple mailings/notices this year. Prior to this year, most hadn't received any communication regarding their delinquency.

There's no way to really verify those numbers/progress through the search tools on the DOJ website, unless someone was physically tracking the number of organizations with each status from the start. I recall seeing an article online last year about increased staffing levels at the Registry of Charitable Trusts, with the goal of bringing thousands of organizations into compliance by the end of the year. Trying to find the article again to see if there were exact numbers listed, but the significant drop in delinquent organizations would seem to align with that goal. I do recall from the article that the emphasis was on bringing organizations into compliance vs. suspension/revocation. It seemed at the time that they were willing to give a lot of latitude and leeway to organizations in an effort to gain compliance. As long as the organization was operating in good faith to cure the delinquency, more time was being granted to accomplish that goal.

Most definitely there's differences between the types of organizations, but I'm not sure that's all that critical in the grand scope of things. From a procedural standpoint, the key difference is that an audit is required for VMAPA and not for the bulk of the other nonprofits that are delinquent because they don't have gross annual revenue of $2 million or more. As long as that audited financial statement is properly prepared by an appropriately licensed/credentialed CPA and submitted at some point before the clock runs out, it's my impression that it's just one of the many boxes that the DOJ has to check in the overall review process.

What's interesting is that a couple months ago there were over 30,000 charitable organizations listed as delinquent. That number has dropped to about 20,000 as of today from what I can see. Given the significant drop in delinquent organizations, it would appear that the CA DOJ Registry of Charities and Fundraisers is successfully bringing organizations into compliance through their repetitive letters/notices. Hopefully SCV will be one of the next organizations to achieve compliance, but for the moment they remain in good company amongst the many other delinquent organizations. I didn't spend a lot of time on the registry, but clicked on maybe two dozen organizations that are listed as delinquent. The breadth of organizations varied from a local school PTA to a YWCA branch. Many have been delinquent as long as SCV, if not longer. Similar to SCV, many got 1st and 2nd delinquency letters over the past couple months... so the DOJ has been active with their mailings. Also searching for the organization name on Google revealed that many are continuing to operate status quo, with no acknowledgement of the delinquency status and no pause on fundraising. Not sure if there's a trigger that would cause the DOJ to move faster on an organization (ex. blatant criminal activity), but it doesn't seem like there's a quick move to enforcement. Looking at the list of suspended organizations, there was typically about 3 months between the 2nd Delinquency Letter and the next mailing which is an "Intent to Suspend or Revoke" letter. Once that letter is received, the organization still has another 30 calendar days to cure the delinquency or request an appeal. So while the focus has been on the mid-January date for compliance, it's quite likely the window for compliance is longer than that and truly dependent on when/if the "Intent to Suspend or Revoke" letter is sent.

I have no knowledge of what happened in SCV's case, but I have personally witnessed botched migrations between accounting software because data import/export tools didn't work as anticipated, or because data mapping was completed incorrectly by the 3rd party supplier of the new software.

I stay in touch with a former staff member from Pioneer and occasionally get some insight into current happenings. It's basically a waiting game for RB to either pass away, or reach a point where he's physically unable to run bingo and any other programming that Pioneer might be engaged with. The rest of the family has implored him to give it up sooner, but so far there hasn't been a compromise reached that would allow that to happen. In the meanwhile, they continue to maintain their property in the Milwaukee area for use by other community organizations. I know Les Stentors practiced there last summer during their tour, and I believe other corps/bands have used the facility at times. There's also supposedly some engagement with other non-profits in the community, but I can't find any evidence online to actually support that.

If I'm reading the latest court documents correctly, it appears there was a motion by the plaintiff on 11/15 to file an amended complaint that would include Drum Corps International as a named defendant in the case.

One of the shifts in the activity has been towards the staff being made up of more professional educators vs. some random people that knew somebody. Most professional educators have real life obligations that require them to spend time back home at various times throughout the spring/summer (ex. band camp, district training, community events, etc...). In the old days, if a tech had to go home... someone else on tour would fill in temporarily. As a brass player, I remember having a random percussion tech stand in front of the line one day because all of the brass staff was absent. While we made it through the practice day, it wasn't exactly what I would consider productive outside of getting reps. At the time we were more accepting of that and even joked about it. Today's members have higher expectations where they expect to have a professional educator familiar with their section standing in front of them at all times. The end result is needing more staff available to cover those expectations, even if it does come at a higher expense.

In the business world where I work, that's typically what "transition" translates to. Of course... the drum corps activity struggles to function like a legitimate business at times, so maybe that was an incorrect assumption on my part. However, business records in Ohio show an entire new board of directors as of 12/13/2022, with Drew McKenzie listed as president and no mention of Rick Bays. On paper, it appears to be a clean slate. Search: CAPITAL REGIMENT PERFORMING ARTS https://businesssearch.ohiosos.gov/

Supposedly Rick Bays and the former board stepped aside back in 2021 and transitioned the organization to a new board. That said, there's very little about the new board published. https://capitalregiment.org/about/

Taking charge when they don't have the legal authority to do so could also land DCI (or any other entity) on the receiving end of a lawsuit (ex. wrongful termination, defamation, etc.). There's a fine line between being proactive in the interest of member safety, and being reckless in the pursuit of member safety.

There's an entire process to becoming a recognized as a NGB, but one of the criteria is membership in one the international sports federations that governs a sport included on the program of the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Pan-American Games, or the Parapan American Games. Until we see the marching arts includes in the Olympic or Pan-American Games, the door is pretty much closed on WGI, DCI or some other entity becoming a NGB. That leaves SafeSport as solely an advisory/training resource for DCI and many other youth organizations that are not affiliated with a NGB. Even for NGB's, there continues to be quite a bit of concern about SafeSport's ability to process reports effectively and in a timely manner. Here's an excerpt from a recent article that covers some of those concerns: https://www.thesportsexaminer.com/tsx-report-accountability-money-safesport-worries-highlight-usopc-review-hearing-ioc-postpones-la28-added-sports-announcement/ Given the above concerns, I can understand why SafeSport isn't in a position to take on additional investigations for non-affiliated organizations/activities. Of course, they will sell you training materials so you can help prevent or end abuse within your organization... but their support of that mission/goal really ends once the purchase has been made. So what are the realistic alternatives? There are resources out there to help organizations craft policies intended to prevent/respond to misconduct. That's a great starting point, and we've seen many organizations (including DCI) take that step in recent years. There are many law firms out there that cater to non-profits and handle sensitive investigations and other crisis situations that involve misconduct. From an integrity standpoint, you would expect these firms to investigate reports objectively, but it always concerns me that their findings could lean in favor of whoever is paying their fees. Once the findings are in, who is responsible for assessing/enforcing penalties? Do they have teeth, or are they simply a paper tiger? I look at the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) as a somewhat comparable non-profit organization where it's members are completely independent clubs/corporations that compete locally and travel to other locations. The AAU is not affiliated with Team USA, so they don't have full access to SafeSport... similar to DCI organizations. They did develop their own policy which is linked below: https://image.aausports.org/pdf/AthleteProtectionandAbusePreventionPolicy.pdf Similar to what we're seeing now, AAU and individual clubs have faced lawsuits for misconduct. Here's one example: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2022/07/29/iowa-youth-basketball-players-settlement-coach-greg-stephen-abuse-case/10188132002/ Despite a sizable judgement in the linked case above, neither AAU or the club ceased operations. In fact, looking at the club's website... I don't see a single mention of Youth Protection Policies despite the fact that they "agreed to strictly adhere to protocols intended to protect the welfare of youth athletes". https://barnstormersbasketball.com/

I was curious what Cascades policies & procedures look like in light of this thread. They do have all of their policies & procedures available online for review (sort of): https://www.seattlecascades.org/downloads The "Youth Protection Policy" is linked to the "Physical Safety Guidelines", which is somewhat problematic. That could be a simple webmaster error, but it should have been caught before now. Beyond that, the "Member Handbook" clearly lists caption heads as a position that you could report issues to. If the caption head didn't handle that report properly, that points to a pretty clear issue with the way reporting/training was handled within the organization. Also have to add that there were other issues brought to light two months ago regarding the Cascades. They're buried in the comments on this post on reddit:

There was a post on reddit where someone dug into the staffing levels & annual budget requests for the DOJ/Registry of Trusts. Sounded like there was one group of staff that processed new registrations & renewals, and a separate group of staff that handled delinquent accounts. The projected processing time for a renewal was something like 8 minutes, where the processing time for delinquent accounts was hours. They also listed that 30,000+ charities that were delinquent, which would seem to translate to a lot of work to be handled by a relatively small staff. Granted, not all of those charities going to be submitting paperwork at the same time. If even a fraction of them did, it would seem like a backlog could quickly develop.

It looks like they define the maximum term length, but don't seem to put a limit on the number of consecutive terms. In other words, there's nothing to prevent a person from being "elected" to the board again at the end of their term.

Pioneer still owns land, buildings and other assets in Wisconsin which require some maintenance and upkeep. A post on their website earlier this year touted new LED lighting being installed on the land/buildings. Given that, it would be reasonable to believe that some of the proceeds from bingo are being used for that purpose. There's also been chatter about a potential entrance into WGI, but haven't seen any real updates on that front in quite a while. I know Roman was at DCA talking to people in loose terms about future plans. Credit to him for persistence, but I think most would be in agreement that there's not a lot of opportunities for that organization with him at the helm.

The time will tell part is big. I saw a comment on Reddit this morning that said that there's a total of 7.5 DOJ staff working on processing delinquent organizations in California. I had previously looked up and found that there were over 33,000 organizations classified as "delinquent" back in May. With that small of a staff, and that high of a number of delinquencies, I don't see how anything gets resolved quickly with SCV (or any other CA charities either). Maybe I'm wrong, but government agencies are notorious for working slow even when properly staffed. Throw in under-staffing, and I can see it being an extended wait for even the slightest update.