RadioBanter - View Single Post - ARRL Now Only Wants No Code Hams

Carter-k8vt

Carter-k8vt wrote:
wrote:
On Feb 13, 7:49�pm, Carter-k8vt wrote:
wrote:
� �The ARRL never reveals its budget plans to the public,
� �despite all its Believers' claims that it is handled in a
� �"democratic fashion" AS IF it were an arm of the guvmint.
� �The best one can hope for is someone else getting copies
� �of its IRS Returns and publicizes those. �Otherwise we
� �"common folk" would never know its a multi-million dollar
� �"non-profit" organization.
� �LA
OK, no problem, assume everything you say is true.

There WAS a website (webmaster is a ham) that DID
post ARRL IRS returns. I footnoted that in one of my
Comments to the FCC. Have to look it up on the CD
holding those documents but anyone can access it if
it is still up and running.

1) Is that bad? Is it any different than the NRA or any other hobby
organization?

The National Recovery Act is still going on?!? :-)

2) What alternative to the ARRL do you suggest?

"Alternative?" You want an instant alternative?

The ARRL was incorporated in 1914. That's 83 years
ago. The league was able to squash its competition
in the ancient days by good PR work. I admire them
for their chutzpah in that.

From my observation the ARRL just got to believing
its own "sins of omissions of the truth" that it lost
sight of its original aims (other than being a local
telegraph service hacker)...then got the inner circle
of its staff to think they were all there through some
odd "divine right." It is only a fraternal order and a
publisher.

Ain't no equivalent national organization in the USA
now that could compete on equal terms with them.
However, that is NO reason (logically) for them to
think they are Top Dog just because they don't have
the competition. Its Believers do, but then they have
drifted off the mainstream into an emotional attachment
to fraternalistic orders.

Lee, thanks for the explanation...although as a pragmatist, the ARRL,
for better or worse, IS the only game in town. They are certainly not
perfect, but then, who of us are?

As to their "non-profit" status, whatever that means, I am not sure what
problem you see with that (if any).

I did some research and, as you say, their IRS returns are on the web.
Additionally, their *AUDITED* Annual Report is on the ARRL web site for
the world to see. Granted, since Enron, audits aren't all they were
cracked up to be, but that is a national issue, nothing unique to the ARRL.
Oooops, pardon the fumble fingers. That should be "Len"...