[blml] 2007 laws

[Tony Musgrove]

At 02:00 PM 16/10/2007, you wrote:
>On Oct 16, 2007, at 3:14 PM, Jerry Fusselman wrote:
>
> > On 10/16/07, Eric Landau <ehaa at starpower.net> wrote:
> >>> By design we have extended
> >>> considerably the RA's power to determine what matters of system
> >>> it will regulate.
> >>
> >> ISTM that "extended considerably" is a rather misleading
> >> understatement.  I believe the phrase Grattan is looking for is more
> >> along the lines of "absolute total power with no constraint,
> >> restriction or oversight".
> >
> > I agree with Eric, and I worry about this change.  What is to keep the
> > majority in an RA from making everyone bid more like them?
>
>Nothing, obviously.  "Making everyone bid more like them" is
>precisely the point.  The ACBL has been trying to get all
>restrictions on their power to control how people bid removed at
>least since Don Oakie was President in the early 1970s.  At first the
>WBF resisted (calling them out on a few flagrant illegalities), but
>soon threw up its hands and de facto permitted the ACBL do whatever
>it wanted, more recently adopting this as policy in those convoluted
>leopard-loo minutes (in which we learned that the power to regulate
>conventions permitted an RA, for example, to bar left-handed players
>from using conventions), and now fully legitimatizing it by making it
>explicit law.  Of course, the majority will have no power to
>determine how they are required to bid henceforth; that will be
>entirely in the hands of the ACBL Board of Directors, who are elected
>by people (District Boards) who are elected by people (Unit Boards)
>who are elected in small-group meetings of "active members" (read
>local in-group) purportedly open to all but typically held behind
>closed doors without any publicity.
>
>Had the ACBL not participated in the formulation of the new laws, I
>very much doubt that we would have seen this sort of change.
>
>The very last obstacle between the ACBL BoD and the complete
>fulfillment of Don Oakie's everyone-must-bid-as-we-say agenda is the
>word "artificial" in the new L40B2(d).  I imagine the lobbying
>campaign to have it removed from the 2017 laws has already begun.

I am also intrigued by the fact that the RA may restrict the use of psychic
calls.  I presume that this just means something similar to what is
already done in ACBL land..psyching 2NT after a weak 2 etc.

Tony (Sydney)