FOP Reply

Before we begin this rebuttal, a few facts and points:

• We deleted about 90 comments in the "Question for the FOP" thread. We won't be posting any there either, mostly to spare everyone the rash of vitriol. We tallied them up before flushing and we seemed to be on the losing end by a narrow margin. However, the comments seemed to come in waves. Thirty-plus comments posted between 1100 and 1230, all using the same style of capitalization, grammar, style and naughty words. Another twenty or so went up between 1700 and 1800. The other forty were questioning the whole website deal, which was exactly the purpose of the post.
  

Our comments will be in the bold:

• I am well aware that many FOP members read the Second City blog. I, for one, do not.

Bullshit Rich. But if true, you're missing a good time, good info and some of what truly concerns the members.

• Today, I was made aware that the FOP website was the subject of a posting on the blog. There was much innuendo associated with this posting.

Again, bullshit. There was a listing of facts and a question posed, all in just over 200 words. If there was any innuendo, it was all in your head. Or are you claiming you don't get E-5 pay, you don't get stipend for Committee service, you don't get reimbursed dues and you don't receive another stipend for visiting Roll Calls?

• These are the facts.

Oh goody. We like facts.

• Prior to 2004 the Lodge was paying an outside vendor to host the website. A webmaster was paid for the maintenance and email fees. The website expenses for the Lodge totaled approximately $3600 a year which was not unreasonable considering the size of the site, the hours required for updates, and the hosting and email fees.
  
  I redesigned the FOP website, took over maintenance of the site, and moved the site to a different hosting company in 2004. Blueline Webs was listed as the creator of the site at that time. I am Blueline Webs. I have maintained the site since that time. The yearly expenses for the website have dropped to $259 per year. This includes all hosting, maintenance, and email fees for the FOP main site, the Gift Shop website, and the FOP Stars Hockey Team website.

Well, if you had read our question, which you couldn't since you allege that you don't read the blog, you cover all of the points quite nicely. You saved the organization around $3341 per year. Bravo!

• Since 2004 I have never accepted or been offered any remuneration for my services either personally or through Blueline Webs. It was always my intent to draw on my services to the FOP purely as a referral at the time of my retirement from the Department.

And again, if you read the last paragraph we published, which, again, you couldn't as you claim not to read the blog, you'd see this - "If he's doing this for free, three cheers for him. If he's doing it for publicity, well, no one is blaming him for planning ahead, but should he be advertising on our site?"

Three cheers for your free work Rich - hip hip hooray! (x3).

• Rather than publish an article on the Second City blog that is based merely on innuendo, the webmaster of that entity could have made one simple phone call to satisfy his curiosity.

Here's where we're going to have to take issue with you. We've been around 5 years the other day, not that you would have seen the post. We save just about everything and we happen to have around 5,000 e-mails in various forms, and among those e-mails is an entire series of letters sent to you and the FOP a few years ago. Guess how many replies we got?

Zero.

And again, since you don't read the blog, you wouldn't know that we don't do phones. Phones are traceable. People answering phones like to have names. Names manage to leak out, even if it's the wrong name that your operator keeps giving to callers, opening up the FOP to a real possibility of a slander suit, especially when it's the wrong name. There's a former IAD lieutenant who ran an illegal First Amendment investigation into a few of those names without proper notifications involving some improper surveillance. Things like that reek of Red Squad and C-5 days and happen when names are bandied around.

In any event, however inadvertently, you answered the question we posed. A small suggestion - instead of linking to what might someday be a for-profit enterprise of web design, how about a little post at the bottom along the lines of "Site Design Provided Free-of-Charge by Blueline Webs." It would make you seem altruistic and eliminate any questions of the nature that we posed.

As for those demanding apologies, many of which seem to have originated from the same IP address within the span of 37 minutes, we didn't realize that we weren't allowed to pose questions to our betters who run an organization that we happen to pay dues to. We suppose it's like anyone questioning Shortshanks - just shut up, submit your taxes and pay no attention to the odd things that catch our eye and just seem to require further explanation.

Shame on us.