USGenWeb Bylaw Changes, Revisions and other snow jobs
My final topic on Stalkers
By the NM Bulldog
This page is [was] bile green. That's appropriate for this topic. For the past ten years, maniacs and a few sane people have been trying to change the Bylaws. The most vocal, those who should be heard the least, have bullied into the spotlight. They are the Snow Kings. Snow Kings for your information, is a term applied to a class of Supervisors who worked on the Southern Pacific RR. The term originated on the Truckee District, at Truckee, California. Officers from other parts of the RR, like from Tucson and Texas, were often sent to the 'Mountain' to learn how to fight snow in the winter. You could spot them a mile away. They were dangerous. They were ill prepared, often showing up for work in zero degree temperatures wearing little more than street clothes. In a word, they were ignorant. But after a few days, they were 'experts'. They could tell you how to fight the winter snows that could fall a foot an hour and sometimes at right angles at eighty miles an hour. You could count on the Snow Kings to fuckup. They got people hurt. They would plow through curve oilers, switches, road crossing and run into standing trains bogged down in snow drifts. You will not find these facts in a RR history book.
These Officers were often sons of, or sons-in-laws of Vice Presidents. Some were a son-of-a-bitch. And by the way, they are one reason the Southern Pacific RR went bankrupt. There was more corruption in the Southern Pacific RR than probably any company in America, including Enron. Spur tracks were build for friends of the higher ups, and private road crossings were built across the tracks to give road service to 'special' people. We were told to lose the paper work so they would not be billed for the work. We were also told to cook the books to make operating expenses look like investment items. One is a loss, the other is an asset. This allowed the stock price to rise above its value. Then, the big stockholders could cash in $$millions of stock and options.
There are fiber optic cables running across the United States from Chicago to San Francisco and down to LA and across to Tucson and Texas and on to the East on the RR right of way. You might expect the RR would own them since they were installed on the right of way. Think again. Those cables (up to ten fiber optics in one cable) produce a $$million a month in fees per optic. Most are not owned by the RR, but by a few insiders--millionaires and a few billionaires. It's no wonder that one of the greatest Railroads of all time went bankrupt.
If you were tagged a Snow King, no matter where you worked, it indicated you were full of crap.
That leads us to our topic of the Bylaw revisionists, or the Bylaw Snow Kings. Some in our midst have shouted to change the Bylaws. They want to remake the USGenWeb into their own image rather than do what is right for the members and for the Project. They want to imprint their views into the Bylaws, thus achieving some degree of immortality. Don't follow the Pied Pipers to their immortality. Enforcing the the current Bylaws is far better than changing them into someone's ideal of utopia. Treating our volunteers with respect and dignity is far more powerful than building an empire for a few Snow Kings.
But Snow Kings have the final word.
"Blaaa blaaa blaaa blaaa blaaa blaaa blaaa blaaa and baa baa baa" Well said, Snow Kings, well said. Nice snow job too.