Today, the 2006 Executive Board election is officially over. Randy Hough and Sam Sloan have been elected to the Executive Board.
Immediately following the announcement of the official results, one of the current board members wrote:
The United States Chess Federation is reaching the lowest point in its political history.
For many years, Sam Sloan used to attack board members and his credibility has been enhanced by “chess people’ who linked information to him for their own purpose. The results of this election it makes us wonder about the wisdom of the one member/one vote, as well as our effectiveness to attract good people to run for the EB.
The USCF “Rome” is burning!
Sam Sloan is the same man who posted repeated lies about me and people who are associated with me earlier this year on the USCF forum and refused to retract his statements after he was corrected. He defended his actions with more lies. I let it go because he had no official position with the USCF and it is not worth my time.
A few days ago, he publicly stated that he was the business manager of my sisters and I. This is absolutely incorrect. He was at no time the business manager of my sisters and I. Many years ago when we were very young, he did help us on a few occasions. I appreciate what he did but that does not give him the right to publicly state lies. In addition, he did not behave this way at that time.
Now that he is officially representing the USCF, I certainly expect a different behavior. I certainly will not sit back and allow a board member to knowingly post lies about me or people who are associated with me. I officially ask for an apology and retraction.
I also have a very serious concern about this election and the state of the USCF. More than 50% of the USCF members are young players. Mr. Sloan has a long history of actions and behavior that should be kept away from all young members.
How can this Executive Board close their eyes and continue to represent the USCF, an organization with approximately 50,000 young members? How can this Executive Board justify having a person like this on the board representing 80,000+ members? He certainly does NOT represent me and he never will. I rather give up my USCF membership than having someone like this represent me and the game that I spent my whole life fighting for. Are other board members prepared to ask Mr. Sloan to shut down his website and publicly apologize for his past statements and actions?
Scholastic Chess and Women’s Chess are two very important issues for me and Mr. Sloan is not suitable to even discuss either issue.
The ball is on their court. I will certainly update you with this situation.
more evidence that USCF should simply be abolished.
Considering it seems like this is the fulfillment of his lifelong dream it’s interesting that he (so far) hasn’t posted anything about it on his website.
Susan,
I certainly agree with the piece you wrote about sam sloan. I have heard a lot about him in IL and none of it is good. Certainly it is not good for young players to be exposed to such a person. I feel as do many that the uscf is a useless system. Why isnt everything fide as in russia and then we wouldnt have any problem about who is and isnt elected to our countries federation….
USCF is horrible organzation. I might soon move to turkey now!
I can’t believe Sam Sloan won… did he get the 3 year or 1 year spot? Perhaps his luck in getting the first placement in the magazine helped him. I never liked how his comments are so negative.
He got the 1 year term but how many kids will we lose as members in this 1 year?
Oy vey! Electing Sloan was a disaster. Didn’t anyone do any research on this clown? After just 20 minutes, I found enough to tell me he needs to be in a nuthouse, not on the Executive Board.
This really makes me wonder why I bothered to rejoin USCF.
Why is the USCF stupid enough to elect a convicted felon that would scare children away?
Sam’s victory is the kind of risk the USCF takes by having an election designed to place on its Executive Board multiple candidates from the same many-candidate election. FIDE’s political structure/design is its unfixable downfall. The overly-simple design of the USCF EB election is partly to blame this time.
The election should never elect more than one person at a time. And a run-off of the top two vote getters should be required until one candidate wins a majority. Else this kind of problem could reoccur.
The USCF needs to use its web site, and each member’s ID & PIN, to make these elections affordable.
[1] Only 3.5% of USCF members voted in this election ((5460/2)/78001). This despite the huge publicity of five Chess Life pages.
[1b] The USCF spent tens of thousands of dollars postal mailing printed paper ballots to the 96% of its membership that did not even care to vote. The printing and mailing cost $0.40 per ballot, I think. (My membership numbers may be wrong due to the special rules about scholastic members?)
[2] 56% of those who voted cast neither of their two votes for Sam Sloan. That means about only 1201 of 78001 USCF members voted for Sloan. This is not exactly a mandate, but then the whole concept of mandate is probably bogus.
[3] I believe less than 10% of USCF chess players ever browse web sites like uschess.org/forums/ for even Susan P’s chess blog here. Until 20 months ago I had no idea about the negative aspects that make many people recoil from Sam. So I doubt most USCF members realize the implications of what has happened.
[4] I doubt Sam’s election victory will hurt the USCF. It is only for one year. The other four EB members can out vote him, if necessary. Sam has some extraordinary skills, but it seems unlikely he will allow those skills to be channeled in any useful way while on the EB.
Gene Milener
http://CastleLong.com/
Frankly, I think we deserve what we get. I firmly believe that Sam Sloan would not have received the votes he got if it hadn’t been for all of the infighting on the EB over the previous few years. I returned to USCF membership last year after being away since 1978 and couldn’t believe how different the tone was at the national level. It’s a wonder we have any members remaining when all you see are bitter disagreements, childish fights, and airing of dirty laundry. You reap what you sow.
With that news, I have decided to NOT renew my membership, which expired on June 30th. I am absolutely flabbergasted that the USCF membership elected someone of his reputation and character to the executive board. Just completely floored.
I have decided to quit while I’m ahead. Stay above the coming fray and catch the show from the mezzanine. And the fray is coming, my friends. If you thought there was backstabbing and mud-slinging going on in USCF politics before, rest assured that with Sloan onboard it’s only going to get worse.
Y’all have fun with this.
Well…whatever happens, good or bad…let no one claim that Sam didn’t ever get his big chance. Perhaps Sammy’s election is a chance for the Blues Brothers crowd.
Recall that even Winston Churchill was a considered a failed heavy drinker before WWII, whence he rose far above himself.
“In the autumn of 1922 the insurgent Turks appeared to be moving toward a forcible reoccupation of the Dardanelles neutral zone, which was protected by a small British force at Chanak (now Çanakkale). Churchill was foremost in urging a firm stand against them, but the handling of the issue by the Cabinet gave the public impression that a major war was being risked for an inadequate cause and on insufficient consideration. A political debacle ensued that brought the shaky coalition government down in ruins, with Churchill as one of the worst casualties. Gripped by a sudden attack of appendicitis, he was not able to appear in public until two days before the election, and then only in a wheelchair. He was defeated humiliatingly by more than 10,000 votes. He thus found himself, as he said, all at once ‘without an office, without a seat, without a party, and even without an appendix.’”
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Bill Gates and Steve Balmer of Microsoft are Harvard dropouts.
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1969: The Miracle Mets
The Mets began the 1969 season with a mediocre start, going 21-23 through the end of May. By mid-August, the favored Chicago Cubs seemed safely on their way to winning the pennant in the newly-formed National League East Division while the Mets sat in third place, ten games behind. But the Cubs began to collapse and the Mets, with outstanding pitching from their young staff, piled up victory after victory, winning 38 of their last 49 games and finishing in first place with a 100-62 record for the season, their first winning year ever.
The “Amazin’ Mets” or “Miracle Mets”, as they became known by the press, went on to win a three-game sweep of the strong Atlanta Braves, led by legend Henry Aaron, in the divisional playoffs.
The Mets were given very little chance in the 1969 World Series, facing a powerful Baltimore Orioles team that had gone 109-53 in the regular season and included future Hall of Famers Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer. Before the series began, pundits predicted Tom Seaver might win the opening game, but that the Mets would have trouble winning again in the World Series. As it turned out, just the opposite occurred; Seaver was roughed up in the opener, which he lost — but the Mets rallied superbly to take the next four games, winning the World Series of 1969 4 games to 1.
This rags-to-riches story is regarded as one of baseball history’s great turnarounds, giving hope to underdogs, also-rans and lost causes everywhere. Soon after the season ended, Tom Seaver lent his name to a commercial saying “If the Mets can win the World Series, America can get out of Vietnam.”
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Loretta Lynn’s Story
Loretta Lynn’s life story reads more like fiction than fact. It’s the story of a poorly educated woman from the coal mining hills of Kentucky, married at age thirteen and a mother at fourteen, who rose to become one of the most popular singers in country music of all time.
Loretta Webb was born in a one-room log cabin and was the second of eight children. At thirteen she attended a pie social, bringing a pie she had baked using salt instead of sugar. The highest bidder not only won the pie but also got to meet the girl who had baked the pie. Mooney Lynn had just returned home after having served in the army. A month after they had first met, still three months short of her fourteenth birthday, Loretta and Mooney married.
A year later, Mooney decided they should move to Washington state, where he had heard job opportunities were better. The couple’s trip west was the first time Loretta had ever been away from home. Mooney found work while Loretta, still a child herself, became pregnant with their first child. By the time she was eighteen, she had four children.
Loretta had grown up listening to country music and often sang around the house. Mooney encouraged her and bought her a guitar so she could play as she sang. Later he helped arrange a singing engagement at the local Grange Hall by bragging that his wife could sing better than anyone other than Kitty Wells. Soon Loretta was singing with a local band and a few months later formed a band of her own.
Lynn’s singing came to the attention of Zero Records, a small record company in nearby Vancouver, Canada. The label signed her to a contract in February 1960 and sent her to Los Angeles to record four songs. After the session she and Mooney stayed until the records were pressed and then mailed them out to country music radio stations. Loretta and Mooney then drove cross-country, stopping at stations along the way to promote her recording of “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” The record began getting airplay and managed to reach #14 on the country music charts in 1960. It was through the strength of this hit that Lynn earned a first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, on September 17, 1960.
Loretta’s storied Country Western Singing career is admired by all and equaled by none. What a great turnaround.
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The Republican Party
To stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda, anti-slavery activists founded the Republican Party, starting with a few dozen men and women in Ripon, Wisconsin on March 20, 1854. The party spread across the northern and western United States like a prairie fire of freedom. The first Republican state convention was held in Jackson, Michigan in July 1854. The Republican National Committee met for the first time in 1856, followed four months later by the first Republican National Convention.
In the election of 1860, Republicans swept to victory in the White House and won majorities in both houses of Congress. Just six years after the party’s founding, the Governor of every northern state in America was a Republican. That phenomenal progress was possible only because the Republican Party was based on the powerful idea that our nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, must live up to its founding principles.
Despite fierce Democrat opposition, Republicans passed constitutional amendments banning slavery, extending the Bill of Rights to the states, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws and due process to all citizens, and extending the right to vote to persons of all races and backgrounds.
Republicans in Congress also enacted the nation’s first-ever Civil Rights Act, which extended citizenship and equal rights to people of all races, all colors, and all creeds.In 1875, the Republicans expanded these protections to give all citizens the right of equal access to all public accommodations. Struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, this landmark legislation would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Republicans led the fight for women’s rights, and most suffragists were Republicans. In fact, Susan B. Anthony bragged about how, after voting (illegally) in 1872, she had voted a straight Republican ticket. The suffragists included two African-American women who were also co-founders of the NAACP: Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, great Republicans, both of them.
Republican Senator Aaron Sargent wrote the women’s suffrage amendment in 1878,though it would not be passed by Congress until Republicans again won control of both houses 40 years later. It was in 1916 that the first woman was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Jeannette Rankin. The first woman mayor was elected in 1926, the Honorable Bertha Landes of Seattle, another great Republican.
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We shall see………….
Americans lasted not only throughout Reconstruction, but well into the 20th century. In the South, those Democrats who most bitterly opposed equality for blacks founded the Ku Klux Klan, which operated as the party’s terrorist wing.
To We are the World: I go to Susan’s blog for chess news, not revisionist history for the racist republican party. Did you ever hear about Nixon’s southern strategy or Willie Horton? What conservative think tank do you work for? Or are you that stupid you are re-writing American History? Moron.
aaron,
I know this is the wrong forum for such things, but I can’t let your comment go unanswered.
Both modern major political parties have had their ugly racist history, but the Dems especially. Hit the library and read “Lies my Teacher Told Me”, an excellent non-partisan source for such matters. Then call people morons if you must.
Now, back to chess.
Susan:
I just googled Sam Sloan. Judging from his web site, he is not someone that I would want as a role model for my chess-playing kids. I haven’t been very impressed with the other USCF board members behavior. (The infighting over the recent FIDE elections was very unprofessional.)
Between this and the cheating scandals at the recent World Open and the results of the recent FIDE elections, it is not looking good for chess.
As the parent of two young chess players, I think you are a great role model for both boys and girls. Keep up all your great work.
Thanks,
nycchessmom
This is a sad day for chess and the children who play chess in america.
Susan
We need you now more than ever. and Susan needs us now more than ever. We must join together as a family. Together we can change things for the better.
I never thought anyone would vote for Sam. People like Sam should not even be allowed to run for office. The uscf has definitely hit a new low bottom.
that is a huge expense sending out that many votes. using the internet is only common sense. the uscf can not afford to waste such a huge amount of money.
Right now I feel sort of depressed over the situation. Right now we have Marinello and Sam on the board. the situation is getting worse.
and a note to We are the world.
Please, your discussion is all off topic. Please take it somewhere else. It has nothing to do with this thread or chess.
well said dan.
the republican party recognizes people based on their ability as exemplified by condelizza rice, colin powell and clarence thomas.
the democrats just like to act like they care for the blacks without their actions backing their claims.
susan,
I think a lot of the uscf members are unaware of the situation.
How can we change this situation?
Some thoughts.
– Either you or someone better has to stand for the USCF elections.
– If you find someone you support, let every USCF member know thru email or whatever that way we can all vote for this alternative person.
I think you have an advantage in that you have a good reputation. You can use it to influence the vote or stand for the election yourself.
I hope readers have more suggestions. Because in the long run, our ability to play chess, enjoy it and see chess flourish in America is influenced by the proper functioning of USCF.
I have joined the USCF because I want to have a structure in which to play tournament chess and develop as a chess player.
I don’t know much about Sam Sloan except what I am learning here today and Googling for other informative text. He certainly does not sound like someone that belongs on the board of the USCF.
Sloan got elected because he’s a good writer and could write a convincing campaign piece in Chess Life where there was not enough space for anyone else to document his lies. Few people vote in the election at all, and those who do, often have insufficient information. Also, he has been running for many years and so has built up good name recognition.
The solution is not to abolish OMOV but rather to carry out elections on the internet, where voters can have a more informed debate and turnout can be higher.
If you found Sam Sloan’s website interesting, be aware that he saves his best for a more obscure corner of the web which you can access from here-
http://google.com/groups?as_uauthors=Sam+Sloan
I work for an organization which stands to gain each time the USCF screws up – so guess who I voted for. 😉
Most blacks vote Democrat: 9/10.
Even President Bush himself admits (at the NAACP convention which he finally decided to attend) that the Republican party has turned its back on blacks, and blacks have in turn turned their backs on the Republican party. So your comment that the Republican party has helped blacks is not even recognized by the leader of the Republican party. Of course anyone is smarter than Bush, so maybe you’re right and Bush is wrong (again).
Hey Dan. If you read my comments closely, you will notice that I did not defend the Democratic party and their dubious record on civil rights. No political party is innocent. After 36 years of right wing hatred for anything liberal or new, the Republican extremists are invading every public forum there is. They are organized by the super rich and I will respond to thier zeal every time. Now back to chess…
I suspect that there is a lot of similarity between the views of Susan Polgar and the views of the USCF Executive Board about the election of Mr. Sloan. Unfortunately, I doubt that there is anything they can do about it. They have to follow USCF rules. I am no expert on this, but I also suspect that those rules do not give other board members any authority to compel Mr. Sloan to shut down his website and/or publicly apologize for his past statements and actions.
My instinct is that many could reasonably be blamed for the recent voting results. Perhaps most of us have come to assume that no effort was needed to prevent Mr. Sloan’s election.
About a month ago, I made a trip to a chess club and tried to urge people to vote against Mr. Sloan. The typical reaction was something like this: “Okay. … Now do you want white or black?”
In the 1980s Sam Sloan made front page news in the mainstream New York Post with a lurid sex scandal involving a purchased wife and other revolting details. Does anyone have that issue?
Susan-I congratulate you on taking the high road in all that you do! Your noble and sincere efforts with regards to your endeavors in chess, mostly for the benifit of our young people is a credit to you and speaks clearly to your vision. I find myself with serious concerns over the recent developments coming out of USCF issues stemming from the recent election. When the governing organization for chess in this country has a majority membership from young people, we must see proactive and positive change to represent the scholastic membership. Currently, the scholastic membership seems not to be taken into consideration in the business at hand, such as the recent elections. I am truly amazed, distressed and shocked to think that there were members who must not have thought even for a momment as to how this election’s results will impact the majority of the members. Thanks for your leadership-we believe in your vision of chess for the future. Laura
I’ve a good mind to contact the mainstream press and point out that one of the USCF’s executive committee has proudly voiced such unpleasant prejudices all over the internet (be they racist, or providing advice on how to rape women, or obsessed with young Asian prostitutes, possibly in a paedophiliac way, or just plain perverse). In fact, I think I’ll do this right now, actually.