Gee, Mark Forbes is still on the U$HPA board a year after losing his "election".
Mark Forbes does USHPA's "dirty work" and that's one of the reasons he's become indispensable to them. Here's what he recently posted to hanggliding.org about Joe Faust's USHGRS:
Mark Forbes wrote:I haven't bothered to look into Joe's "organization"....but WTF? I gave no permission to use videos posted by me in the promotion of Joe's fake group. I presume there are links to some YouTube videos I posted, or something of that sort. And I'm certainly not a member, supporter or anything else of his group.
Joe may have been one of the pioneers of the sport, and he's certainly a colorful character. "Colorful" is a term that can have many meanings, and in his case it reminds me of a chameleon placed on a plaid tartan. As for the allegations that He Who Must Not Be Named was kicked out of USHPA for personal hatred reasons, that is simply false. I am not at liberty to discuss all of the reasons behind his expulsion, but let it suffice that his intentional, deliberate actions caused significant harm to our association and its members, and directly caused significant expense which we all pay for through increased dues. He was disruptive, defiant and unapologetic about his actions. He was given every opportunity to change his behavior. He chose instead to become even more belligerent. And after due consideration, the USHPA board decided that his actions had made him an unacceptable liability to our association, and revoked his membership.
USHPA is a voluntary membership association. You don't have to join if you don't want to, so long as you're willing to forego the benefits of membership. USHPA isn't obliged to accept you as a member if your actions and behavior are not supportive of the organization and its goals. If you're already a member and you take actions which harm the association, we have a disciplinary process (ratings reductions, revocations, and ultimately expulsion) to deal with such transgressions.
MGF
This is a particularly good quote for demonstrating USHPA's retaliation for non-flight-related issues. Remember that it was Mark Forbes (one of only 4 "Executive Committee" members) who shut down Tiki who was trying to bring some common sense to the 2015 USHPA lynching. Thanks for this quote Mark.