News confirming that many major vendors will not be exhibiting or attending the annual meeting. The reason being given is covid, although that is (in part or in whole) likely an excuse; as we noted in a prior post a month ago, major vendors were already bailing out, at a time when covid numbers were half or a third what they are today. The article links to a floor plan of the exhibitors, showing how few there will be, but as of today, the floor plan has been taken offline. That the Association has to hide its floorplan is something without precedent, we think.
And in related news, there won’t be an election for the 76th director. Candidates for that position consist of people on the ballot who didn’t get elected. There are none of those: the election (again, without precedent) elected just enough to fill out the available slots after all the resignations, refusals to run, and nominating committee purges. Everyone else who got votes were write-ins, and ineligible for the 76th director. So NRA will be back to a 75 member board, for the first time in forty years or so.
Unprecedented things, yet the board still sleeps — through a nightmare, muttering “it can’t be happening.”
An update: a reader just pointed out a detail we’d missed, in the NY Attorney General’s amended complaint. Paragraph 578(i) and (j).
“The NRA has taken loans in excess of $5 million from the separately maintained funds of the NRA-ILA, in violation of its bylaws.”
“The NRA has permitted the use of NRA-ILA funds for payment of travel expenses of LaPierre, outside the NRA expense reimbursement system.”
This is completely separate from the two loans totaling $10 million, from the NRA Foundation (those are listed in 578(k). NRA-ILA was set up from the start to be economically separate from NRA. NRA is financed by members’ dues and other means, NRA-ILA is supported only by donations, members donating to ILA specifically, for its political purposes. NRA-ILA gets no dues income. So LaPierre’s “expense account” spending was taken from NRA-ILA’s political activism funds all these years.
NRA in Danger 