PBA Circus Show

NotAwarded · #1 02-03-2007, 04:15 PM

The PBA Slogan:

The only circus in town where the animals don't get

fed and all the clowns have to pay to get in.

Sincerely,

Fred Schreyer and PBA Staff

NotAwarded · #2 02-03-2007, 04:18 PM

Just another fact of the PBA Circus Show:

Jim Rome: Mention this on your radio show.

Release response - The Fans Speak Out - Letter to the Editor
Bowling Digest, June, 2002 by Joe MoroThis letter is in response to Bill Spigner's "Bowling Clinic" in the April 2002 issue. First of all, we wish to thank Bill Spigner for using the reader's question that asks, "What do you think of the Pro Release wrist device?" To Bill Spigner's credit, he does say things like, "The Pro Release is an excellent wrist device." He explains how a bowler can get positive results by achieving different ball roll characteristics from the multi-positioning capabilities of the Pro Release. He also gives a complementary example of a Senior PBA member who uses the Pro Release to improve his release versatility. After that, it appears that the answer to the reader's question was used to insert an advertisement for our competitor.
Since the question was about the Pro Release (the reader used the brand name Pro Release in his question), a Pro Release should have been used in the adjoining descriptive photos. Instead, a competitor's product was used for illustration. Consequently, our competitor has now received free advertising using our reputation and good name. Our Pro Release was easily and readily available for the photos and should have been used.
More importantly, Bill Spigner is misleading in his statements about the Senior PBA Tour. He states that our competitor's product is "one of the most popular devices on the Senior Tour" and that it is currently being used by former Senior Bowler of the Year Pete Couture. That may be true, but Couture and all other PBA members have no choice in which multi-positioning wrist support they can use since Pro Release and Cobra Products have not paid the PBA product registration fee this year. If we don't pay this fee, a PBA member cannot use our Pro Release or a Cobra product in a PBA tournament. Why didn't we pay this fee? The PBA has effectively doubled the fee for this year! We are a small company, and the PBA has made it too expensive for us to "register" our product.
Regarding Pete Couture: The fact is, several years ago Pete phoned us shortly before he was about to become eligible for the Senior Tour to ask if we would be paying the PBA product registration fee so that he could use the Pro Release. He said about the Pro Release, and I quote, "I am about to become eligible for the PBA Senior Tour, and if I have this wrist device, I will win." And win he did! Pete bowled great. He became a regular on Senior PBA telecasts, and he won Senior PBA Player of the Year honors while winning more tournaments and money in that year than any Senior Tour player had before. He was also the high average Senior PBA player that year. During all of this, whether it helped his success or not, Pete Couture was wearing a Pro Release. We have the PBA product registration records and the video tapes to prove it! According to the same records, columnist Bill Spigner was a regular user of the Pro Release while competing on the Senior Tour.
What is the most popular wrist device on the PBA Senior Tour? A few years ago, when we could afford the then more reasonable PBA registration fee, we visited Senior PBA Tour stops and always felt that there were so many senior players using the Pro Release that maybe it should have been called the "Pro Release Senior Tour." There were Senior PBA tournaments where over 50% of the top 24 finalists were wearing, yes, the Pro Release, not our competitor's product. We have the PBA product registration records to prove it.
We are a small American company, selling a high-quality product that is totally made in America, using American-made materials. We are helping to create jobs in America. The Robby's Revs, which is used in the descriptive photos and hailed as the wrist device Pete Couture uses now, is actually made in Korea. While imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, we are not happy that there have been several Asian rip-offs of our pioneering design. We are saddened by the fact that large American corporations would choose to distribute such copies.
In conclusion, statements made in Bill Spigner's answer to the reader may be accurate, but at the same time, they are misleading. We wanted to set the record straight with a few facts of our own. A special thank you to BOWLING DIGEST for printing our response.
Joe Moro Designer of the Pro Release
COPYRIGHT 2002 Century Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

NotAwarded · #3 02-03-2007, 04:24 PM

In my opinion

Fred Schreyer reminds me of Boss Tweed

NotAwarded · #4 02-03-2007, 04:24 PM

Boss Tweed" and the Tammany Hall Machine
David Wiles, Eaps 760

From the Wilson readings, it is natural to think of big city "political machines" and negative connotation like "sewers." The ward based, patronage driven form of local government is commonly thought of in criminal terms and, in that sense, so are Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall in New York City.

There is little question that the Tweed Ring were outright thieves and that Tammany Hall did have a series of reoccurring scandals. An estimated 75 to 200 million dollars were swindled from the City between 1865 and 1871. Yet, there is more to the story than a confrontation of the machine form of city government and the ideology of reformer exhortations. Tammany represented a form of organization that wedded the Democratic Party and the Society of St. Tammany ( started in 1789 for patriotic and fraternal purposes) into an interchangeable exchange. The weave of city politics was the triangulation of the Mayor's office, the Democratic Party and the social club organization. During the Civil War era, the Society of St. Tammany became the Democratic Party equivalent to the Union League Club and the Republicans. The difference is that the Democrats won control of New York City and "The Big Apple" was, perhaps, the most important government structure in the United States for more than seventy years.

In 1854 Fernando Wood became the first Tammany Democrat mayor of the City. 1860 William March Tweed became chairman of the New York county Democratic Party and the leader (called the Grand Sachem) of the Tammany club. For the next seventy years ( until the 1934 mayoral victory of Fiorello La Guardia) the anti machine reformers only held the mayor's office and control of the City for a total of ten years. Given the present day infamy of the "Tweed" identity to disgrace it is curious that the "rascals took so long to be thrown out."

The success of Tammany Hall to control City politics and persist in power until the years of the Great Depression is better appreciated by understanding Samuel Tilden George Washington Plunkett.

Samuel Tilden was the Chairperson of the New York State Democratic Party during the Tweed era and ran for President against Rutherford Hayes in 1876. He, more than any other politician, is given credit for bringing down the Tweed Ring in New York City. The problem was that he worked on the task of identifying and bring down the Tweed ring for more than a decade. Republicans charged that length of time amounted to a cover-up; Democratic argued that length of time was necessary for state power to isolate and weaken local government control. In short, Samuel Tilden was a reformer who found himself (in the early l870's) caught between the reformer desires to clean up the criminal excess of the political machine and the practical implications of gauging probable success. As he gathered information to prove Tweed criminality beyond a shadow of a doubt Tilden also wanted the state Democratic Party to not be accused of corruption or covering up. He knew the general movement for municipal reform was growing but he also knew the underlying strength of the political machine form of local government would remain regardless of the reformer success with the Tweed phenomenon.

George Plunkett was made famous by writer William Riordan who described Tammany Hall as "a series of very plain talk on very practical politics delivered by Tammany philosopher from his rostrum-the New York County Courthouse bootblack stand."

The book, Plunkett of Tammany Hall was first published in 1963 and contains chapters like, "honest and dishonest graft," "the curse of civil service reform," "reciprocity in patronage," " Tammany leaders not bookworms," "dangers of the dress suit in politics," "on the uses of money in politics," " bosses preserve the nation," and "Tammany the only lasting democracy." Plunkett's formula for staying on top for seven decades of New York City rule was; " Tammany is the ocean, reform the waves, and there is a lot of unofficial patronage to ride out the storms if you know the ropes. Why don't reformers last in politics? Because they are amateurs and you must be a pro. Politicians do not have to steal to make a living because a crook is a fool and a politician can become a millionaire through 'honest graft."

When we remember Ellis Island was in New York harbor (with the Statue of Liberty) and it is estimated that two fifths of the American population have relatives that were processed through that in migration site, the Plunkett "plain talk" starts to make sense. "Think what the people of New York are. On half, more than one half, are of foreign birth. They do not speak our language, they do not know our laws, they are the raw material with which we have to build up the state....there is no denying the service that Tammany has rendered the Republic. There is no other organization for taking hold of untrained, friendless men and converting them into citizens. Who else in the city would do it? There is not a mugwump who would shake their hand."

For that city context Plunkett advises those concerned with local governing; " Don't go to college and stuff your head with rubbish; get out with your neighbors and relatives and round up a few votes you can call your own. Study human nature and make government warm and personal." For the way the political machine routinely operates, Plunkett states, "What reformers call 'machine' we call organization. In New York City the smallest unit is the election district committee, headed by a captain. The election districts overlap with the assembly districts headed by leaders who, in turn, constitute the county executive committee. Assembly leaders are elected in primaries and elect their own party chairmen." Author Riordan points out that the New York City Democratic organization in the l920's numbered 32,000 committee men spread over five counties. The amount of patronage in l888 (when Woodrow Wilson was publishing his famous piece) for just the city county containing Manhattan and a slice of the Bronx was 12,000 municipal jobs and a payroll of twelve million dollars. At the time this was a bigger resource distribution than the Andrew Carnegie iron and steel works.

When George Plunkett dies in 1924 he was eulogized this way;" He understood that in politics honesty doesn't matter, efficiency doesn't matter, progressive vision doesn't matter. What does matter is the chance for a better job, a better price of wheat, better business conditions. Plunkett's legacy is to that practicality."