PacificaWatch

. . . “Seeking a Director position”, the start of Mr Reimers’ LInkedIn webpage – all five screenshots taken Tu23Aug2022, https://www.linkedin.com/in/bertholdreimers . . .

Berthold ‘I’ve got more coats of Teflon than Donald Trump’ Reimers has been WBAI’s station manager since July2010 (sic). He’s hoping to be gone by Xmas.

Berthold is one of life’s survivors. Forget pussy: his performance should have been evaluated annually, in writing, 12 times by the WBAI Local Station Board, carrying out its duty “[t]o prepare an annual written evaluation of the station’s General Manager” – by-law Article 7, Section 3(C), https://pacifica.org/indexed_bylaws/art7sec3.html. This hasn’t happened. The LSB members, year after year, failed to carry out one of the few mandatory duties they have.

Why has this been tolerated? Not least by the directors sleepwalkers of the Pacifica National Board because it has its own mandated duty in this matter – an unconditional duty, a duty without discretion – to make sure that the LSB members (which includes themselves!) do their job: “[s]ubject to the provisions of the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation law, and any limitations in the Articles of Incorporation and these Bylaws relating to action required or permitted to be taken or approved by the Members or Delegates of the Foundation, the activities and affairs of the Foundation shall be conducted and all corporate powers shall be exercised by or under the direction of the Board.” (the whole of by-law Article 5, Section 1(D), “General Power and Authority”, all emphases added – https://pacifica.org/indexed_bylaws/art5sec1.html).

Despite this lack of scrutiny, how much have the members & other listeners been giving Mr B? The only publicly available info pertains to fiscal-year 2016, thru 30Sep2016, when he was paid $117 127 ($85 000 “[r]eportable compensation from the organization” + $32 127 “[e]stimated amount of other compensation from the organization and related organizations”) – https://pacifica.org/finance/990_2016.pdf (page 8), accessed from https://pacifica.org/finance_reports.php. For some it will be regrettable that this is his only pecuniary appearance in a Pacifica Internal Revenue Service Form 990.

. . . Pacifica Foundation, Inc. 2015 IRS Form 990, mostly using FY2016 data, page 8 – https://pacifica.org/finance/990_2016.pdf . . .

Meanwhile, Pacifica will be transformed in the coming weeks & months. Bigtime. This, the product of an opaque process, all helped by the directors sleepwalkers not being pressed by any LSB to disclose (1) not just the criteria but the ranked criteria the directors sleepwalkers are using for decision-making, & (2) the scenarios they’ve specified, thoroughly analysed/discussed, & then evaluated using said criteria – but, to do them justice, they’re probably just proceeding ad hoc, like a Trump. Fat chance decisions are being made in the context of implementing a network development plan – let alone one designed to allow every one of the five stations, plus the Pacifica Radio Archives & Pacifica Affiliate Network, to not just grow but to develop, to flourish.

This PNB opacity & LSB collusion has been reinforced for the last 12mths or so by a Pacifica withdrawal from the public: choosing more often to refuse to publish the joining details of meetings; reducing the number of streamed meetings; & putting far fewer audio recordings in the Pacifica meetings archive – every lil bit helps in the war against transparency & member/listener/staff involvement. After all, curiosity is dangerous. Whereas secrecy precludes accountability, & also makes it more difficult to know what’s going on, even discouraging an initial interest from a newbie to PacificaWorld. Yes, alienating the plebs makes it easier to rule as one wants.

That aside, never let a crisis go to waste, as the wit has it. Crisis? Seize the opportunity! And quote some Chinese sage – even if it’s made up. Can even talk of Mao & ‘there is great chaos under Heaven – the situation is excellent’, adding Chinese characters for authenticity, an authority prop.

Despite these travails, Berthold’s imminent departure opens up a golden double opportunity: Comrade Volunteer Alex Steinberg, Chair of The Board until January this year, may be on holiday in Greece at the moment but he can be made both WBAI station manager & Pacifica executive director. Steph can be made redundant, paid off, maybe with cowrie shells. And with Alex doing the two jobs on an expenses-only basis, the savings will be Himalayan. Not to be clichéd, but what could go wrong?

And why stop there? Who knows, maybe Alex can be the CFO as well, just like ED Tom Livingston was in 2018 – it may break a by-law, but what’s new: “neither the Secretary nor the Chief Financial Officer shall serve concurrently as the Chairperson of the Board or the Executive Director” – https://pacifica.org/indexed_bylaws/art9sec1.html. Never forget the first rule of PacificaWorld: rules are for RealWorld, not PacificaWorld. (Yes, a universe of paradoxes, of contradictions.) Instead, PacificaWorld is run by decisions – which is why it’s important to keep out troublemakers, those asking awkward questions, & instead just recycle, decade after decade, the Pacifica grandparents & great-grandparents, tempered in the Vietnam period, then steeled in the Pacifica politics spanning the millennia. Year after year, those are the ones ‘we thank for their service’, those exalted in Amerikan culture as ‘our leaders’ (without a flicker of recognition that this lauds the Führer principle). And keeping things cosy gives the decision-makers the peace & quiet they need to get on with the difficult job of deciding decisions, even if on occasion caution requires this to be deciding decisions about how to decide decisions – all achieved without the restraint of rules. The creativity & imagination of the directors sleepwalkers simply can’t be held back. After all, the very survival of ‘The Foundation’ is at stake.

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But to return to Berthold. Here, courtesy of LinkedIn, is ‘Berthold’s public profile badge’, which can be pinned all over the internet, posted on all sorts of websites, as he does his damnedest to get away from Pacifica, from WBAI:

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And his LinkedIn declaration is a wonder to behold. (Sad attempt at wordplay? Of course.) Some peeps get ribbed for hiding their light under a bushel. Berthold is dynamo incarnate: he cloaks his light within his behaviour. Listening to his performances, month after month, year after year, at the WBAI Finance Cttee & the WBAI LSB, & an annual appearance at the PNB Finance Cttee (if a station budget existed), who had the slightest suspicion that he not only has an MBA but came to WBAI with over 13 years’ experience of financial administration? Who knew? Who could tell? The wonder! The wonder!

Dynamo incarnate. Always on the move. Deflecting attention by bringing up new issues. Saying the opposite of what he said the week before. Even twisting time by producing the report after the meeting, tying up tens of minutes of the next meeting. Yes, Mr B is an irrepressible moving target. And when you think you’re finally within range he’s gone, poof!, just like that, as if he was never there. And in a sense he wasn’t, for Berthold is he who operates in another dimension. PacificaWorld, truly a unique universe!

The over-13yrs as a financial administrator, per his LinkedIn:

• Manager of Financial Operation

• Director of SSP & Medicaid Dual Products R&A – Government Assisted Programs

Two screenshots showing Mr B’s work declaration – plus his two degrees (please, no music ‘jokes’):

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For completeness, here’s the other relevant section of his LinkedIn testimony/self-promotion/advert, his ‘About’, stressing ‘why Berthold? Berthold is CaptainFantastic, your one-and-only Mr StrategyGuy!’:

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. . . Someone like Berthold, no need to ‘wish him luck’, ‘wish him all the best’: Berthold is one of life’s survivors. He’ll always land on his feet.

Speaking of which, if WBAI had a newsletter, would his farewell be drenched with as many tears as washed over Quincy’s feet?

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