"Kingsley was not relieved of command. He was voted out of office by a majority."

I didn't have an opportunity to vote, did you?

As for the vote of the MEC, they had a slight majority vote but not the required 2/3 majority. Only through an underhanded roll call vote, was the coup successful.

My reps voted all of their votes in favor of a recall, but their votes did not reflect the wishes of their constituents.

No. That's not the issue here. We don't elect the President of the United States either. We elect electors.

In this situation, we elect reps who work frequently with the Chairman. You and I work infrequently with the Chairman, so there's a good chance we don't know how well he's doing his job. Like it or not, the MEC Chairman is accountable to the MEC only.

But the issue was whether Bartels' comment was germane. Since Kingsley was recalled by a majority vote, and not relieved a la military-type action, I believe it was not germane.

Wow. Your position is that a majority vote shouldn't matter?

It's "underhanded" to follow the rules published well before Kingsley ever decided to run for the office?

Small world. Mine voted against, and that was contrary to my wishes. I'm ok with that, though. It's democracy - not the military. And don't take this the wrong way, but you have no clue how all of your reps' constituents feel about the recall, nor are you accountable for determining that view.

But it brings up an interesting follow-up. If it turned out a majority (but not 2/3) in your council felt the Chairman should be recalled...should he?

Not really. Typical update from Bill. We will never know the truth as he has a looong history of voting against things that were likely to pass and then say he had nothing to do with it passing regardless of the reason having anything to do with the actual vote. Anyone from before the merger knows this. Drama? Yes. Predictable? Yes. Eye opening? Only if you read the tabloids for content...

Can we nominate Kingsley as the new MEC Chairman?

What a fantastic example for everyone to see of how Karnak (one of Lee Moak's top lieutenants) attempts to completely destroy the meaning of sentences through an appalling level of spin. Notice what Karnak chose to quote from my post. He purposely omitted the first part of the paragraph in order to destroy its context. Here is the entire paragraph from my post (I've underlined the portion Karnak omitted):

Notice that Bartells was not talking about whether Roberts was relieved of duty or voted out democratically, as is stated by Karnak above. At the point Bartells made this statement, the vote hadn't taken place yet! Karnak knows this, but he spins and distorts anyway. As anyone can see, Bartells was speaking about that comment stated by the ATL rep that in the Navy, if a ship runs aground, we fire the captain...not the crew. That's what Bartells was criticizing as undemocratic. That's what Bartells was reminding everyone was different from the military because we're not the military...we're a democracy.

But again, the important part is not that Karnak said it. The important part is that he knows better and purposely truncated the first part of the paragraph in the hopes of fooling people. It's the essence of ALPA national communication. Way too much spin and distortion in the hopes of making their case. Keep it up Karnak. You're the best salesman that DPA could ever hope for.

Carl

You sound like you have sour grapes going back to the NWA MEC before DS

+1 What would be nice is reps who have a history of building something, not tearing things apart. Divisiveness is not what we need. This was an exercise in it, we need to turn things around and build, not destroy. How about channeling the energy spent on BS politics into building and executing a plan to protect us from the greatest threat to our collective careers--the gulf state carriers and the absence of level playing field. If not, we'll still be complaining about the same things while commuting to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha to go to work. Focus.

+++++1

It's a whole lot easier to say NO NO NO then to actually have to explain why you said "yes".

Mm-okay.

The duties of the Chairman are no different than those of the rest of his administration. Got it. The Secretary appoints the EA's, and the Treasurer appoints all committee chairman. The Vice Chairman is an ex officio member of the Negotiating committee. That must be the way it works!

What if the Chairman wasn't doing his job well, and Bartels' opinion about it was out of touch with the majority of the MEC? Is that possible?

And thanks for the promotion! According to you I've gone from "lackey" to "cheerleader" to "top lieutenant".

Hmmm. So think this through. Every four years people go to vote for President but none, zip, zero of those ballots list the names of the Presidential candidates (Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, George Bush, John McCain, etc). Instead every ballot just has a list of mysterious electors, with no designation of who they are, what party they're from or anything. You just select a random elector and all these no name electors get together at some sort of "electoral college" campus and chose the President some other day based on who they believe is best.

Or, the ballot looks like this


and I think you know how this works. In November the voters select their candidates (and thanks to the short ballot we only select those candidates and not the candidate plus electors). The votes are tallied. Except for NE and ME the winner of the popular vote gets all of the electoral votes for that state which is derived from the number of Representatives and Senators per state (DC YMMV).

In December after each election the electoral votes are counted in a ceremony at the state Capitols. The electoral votes are made by electors who are generally preselected months in advance (May in Georgia) by each candidates campaign and/or the candidates political party. These state electors are pledged to the candidate such that if Obama wins the state his people vote, if Romney wins his people vote for that state even if Romney lost the election at large. In most states electors are obligated by law to vote as pledged and they cannot switch. Some states allow an elector to switch and vote or not vote, but out of 12,000+ electoral votes since George Washington there has only been 157 faithless electors (1.2% of the total) and none of it ever mattered to the outcome.

So electors are selected in advance either by the party of however the state has it set up, the voter selects a candidate, the candidate who wins the state gets to have his/her electors vote for him during the electoral college process. So yes it creates a bit of confusion for those who don't understand the history or pros and cons of it but people are indeed electing their President on election day but doing so state by state by state and so on; and the electoral college vote is barely ever news because it is considered a fait accompli even in a close election like 2000.

So to say "we don't elect the President of the United States either" and therefore you pilots should stop demanding to have direct elections of who de facto runs your union is lame. We don't get to vote in any way shape or form for our chairman while we do get to vote for our President. With ALPA we basically (or most of the time) vote for people we've never heard of and they select an insider to serve as chairman. It's an old style electoral college for sure and nothing like the one we know and use in the United States.

I say let the pilots vote on their Chairman. If you need to balance it out so it's not an Atlanta centric system then figure out a balance, otherwise just let it be a straight up popular vote and let my people go...


^^^717 beard for sure

and just remember Karnak, if you've done a good job I'm sure people will vote for you! What's not to love about a system like that?! After all, you are an advocate of a majority vote, right?