Trouble in the USJA the J...Mafia has really gone off the deep end.

Appears the selected J... Mafia of the USJA has really gone off the deep end. I had not resigned as a BOD member but was removed for questioning the boards unethical behavior, hidden agenda and the President wanting to become the ED therefore (at a 200% increase in pay) he and others on the board have trumped up serious facilities against the office and Goltz went to Florida, fired Michael, wanted him to tell Katrina she was fired, and Robin quit.
Oh people the USJA has serious issues. Many ethics charges were brought against Goltz and not acted on. Other charges were brought to the Ethics board on others with no action taken.
I have read back in history and we are in serious doo doo. Take a stand and find out how the USJA is not working for you but for the benefit of a few.
I will share much more when we are all on board.
Please share and take a stand to find out the real deal.

Not sure what a 'J..... Mafia' is, but since I'm not Italian, I won't take it as a racist slur, even if it is.

But, hey, look on the bright side! They're offering life memberships at half - price.

..... hmmmm..... maybe they're planning on a shorter life in someone's or something's life line.

I don't visit or post here very often because there are too many anonymous posters who have exhibited bad behavior. However, this merits a comment:

I resigned as Vice-President during my tenure on the BoD because I could not support some of the things that were going on.  That was ~2 years ago.
Anyone who has been any paying attention at all should not be surprised by the developments since then.

First, only 7 people even chose to run for 9 positions in the last election (Fall 2013).

Last summer (2014), a member of the USJA BoD resigned and was replaced by an appointee. No announcement or acknowledgement was made about the change. I can only conclude that the "leadership" didn't want members to notice!

Also over the last year, names of chairs & members of committees (including the Chair of the Standards & Ethics committee) have disappeared or been changed on the website--people have clearly quit. The Executive Director and Corporate Counsel had always been listed on the Board of Directors page of the website, and they were deleted before the holidays.

Another thing people should look are the trends in total membership numbers.

AND OH--there is yet another discounted Life Membership offer right now . . . .

J. Love

Sadly, all of this is true. Perhaps the fatal flaw of the USJA is that the bylaws can be and are tweaked at every Board meeting. All power is given to a few with no member recourse. Even the chair of a do-called standing committee can be changed at any time. The office debacle basically has been created by a long-running character assasination of the ED. Perhaps there are folks in the organization who think the staff was over-compensated. My daughter, with the same years on the job as Katrina and with less responsibility, earns the same. Thank you, Katrina and staff, for your decades of competent service! Jesse Jones came to my Sensei in a dream last night. Who can save us this time?

The sad thing is no one seems to care. Aside from a few comments, I don’t hear anyone else coming out on this issue. If there are ethics violations, people should know about it. From what I can tell, the USJA are doing some good PR to brush all this under the rug.

Those asking questions were "unfriended" from the USJA Facebook page, and their comments all were deleted. Perhaps posts are blocked here, too, or maybe people don't think others are reading this forum for judo matters. Also, disturbed members seem to have waited patiently for answers that the Board has promised but still will not or cannot give us.

Judoman wrote:The sad thing is no one seems to care. Aside from a few comments, I don’t hear anyone else coming out on this issue. If there are ethics violations, people should know about it. From what I can tell, the USJA are doing some good PR to brush all this under the rug.

The request to answer a good number of pertinent questions has gone unanswered, for whatever reason. Blocking people from posting their opinions on the JA Facebook serves little purpose. One would think that the light of day would legitimize their actions or prove them inappropriate, at best. Repeating the mantra that they will consider all questions....when nothing comes of it is insulting to the membership. Discounting life memberships to make up for a regular cash shortage is just not a good thing to do.


The supposed transparency is just that "supposed."

Bill M

The USJA's background with cheap Life Memberships has not been good!  Back in the early '90s, I was party to a conversation between Ronald Charles and then-ED Larry Lee about the long-term results of selling $100 life memberships that they foresaw.  Among the things promised for life, though perhaps not in writing, were a monthly magazine and a vote in USJA elections.  Now, as I understand it, life members must pay for yearly insurance with the USJA in order to vote, which does not seem ethical.  The "magazine" became an online-only publication, then was reduced to six per year, and we have seen none since January.  Maybe there will be some news when we finally see the February-March issue.  Once again, cheap life memberships might be the prelude to revelations that we are in financial trouble.  Our ED no longer is there to be blamed for everything.  Concerned members' questions are unanswered with the excuse that they have to be careful what they say (in writing), but that is no reason not to put forth at least a simple "We regret the slow and irregular services..." or some such acknowledgment that our Directors still are serving the Club Leaders and Members.

Hum, becasue my Judo practice slowly came to and end around 25 years ago, so membership is less important.  When I paid the $100 for life membership it was not a small amount back then in1968.  Haven't seen a newsletter or magazine in so long I forgot how to spell USJA.      

The USJA officially stated that they got rid of the old office staff because of the backlog. Hmm, were they really that inefficient? I recently emailed the office for a simple change, and I received an automated response that the office is busy and then I was assigned a ticket and the response time would be within 24 hours. It's been a week, no correction has been made and no response what so ever. I had a student signed up for the USJA membership 3 weeks ago so that I could promote him. There is no reply to his membership, and I can't promote him because I do not have a membership # for him. The old staff normally would have taken care of both issues within a week. Granted, the new staff needs time to learn the process of running the office. However, it does not take 3 weeks or longer to register a new member to the organization. How come the USJA has not introduced the new staff on its website? Why aren't the USJA officials updating information regarding the new office staff or procedures or letting its members know the progress or lack thereof within the office?

Most of the USJA Board members, apparently forgetting that member services is the organization's big selling point, have become enchanted with their new "virtual" office. It might be state of the art as a program design, but only they have yet seen it. What members have seen is that many features are being eliminated, that members are just a profile of numbers to their organization, and that the who, what, and where of our operations is not for us to know. On the bright side, if our services are no better than the other organizations, this debacle might contribute to reducing the number of judo organizations in the United States. Hopefully the Board can focus on restoring services quickly and retaining the membership rather than changing more things and placing blame.

When was the USJA going to let us know that it is down to only four of the Board members from the most recent election? When will they tell us who our new officers are? When will we again have the minimum of seven Board members required in our Articles of Incorporation? Aren't members entitled to know who is in charge of the organization? Everything continues to deteriorate. Almost every day we hear from another club leader who has decided to affiliate with another organization because of total frustration with trying to communicate and get things processed. "Have him call me," our officers say. Nobody wants to have to ask for special consideration. Members want the system to operate effectively again for all of us. Are our remaining Board members deliberately attempting to close down the USJA? Please redefine yourselves/our organization for us in some public forum! You say our new virtual "office" is going to be a glorious thing one day. Please give us a date. Thank you.

Comeswithterritory wrote:Most of the USJA Board members, apparently forgetting that member services is the organization's big selling point, have become enchanted with their new "virtual" office. It might be state of the art as a program design, but only they have yet seen it. What members have seen is that many features are being eliminated, that members are just a profile of numbers to their organization, and that the who, what, and where of our operations is not for us to know. On the bright side, if our services are no better than the other organizations, this debacle might contribute to reducing the number of judo organizations in the United States. Hopefully the Board can focus on restoring services quickly and retaining the membership rather than changing more things and placing blame.

And it gets thicker, Goltz has been removed as President of the JA. No reason, no explanation just the list of the new officers on the website. Platitudes about the virtual office and its greatness, are fine but they do not seem to be ringing true. And after 2+ months no answer to Mr. Bregman's questions.

Wow. Down to five board members and a three person executive committee.

Can't get much leaner than that!!

Though I hate to say this, it may just be time to really contemplate combining the JA and JF. The issues that split them, have for the most part gone away. Their functional activities are much the same. This current debacle within the JA is just one more sign that the JA a may have out lived its usefulness. There would certainly be problems, but they certainly cannot be more than is now going on. USA Judo is under its own cloud; but combining the JF and the JA may just provide a real asset for those of us who are not going to be on an Olympic Team.

Why do you hate to say it? Clearly it's not functioning well (if at all!) now, so consolidation is appropriate.

NBK wrote:Why do you hate to say it?  Clearly it's not functioning well (if at all!) now, so consolidation is appropriate.  

No more membership cards feels pretty much like already dead.

Still no word on what happened to Goltz. Over on the USJA facebook page, there are a lot of disgruntled people. As for me, I have decided to fully quit the USJA and don't plan on looking back. Not wasting another cent on an association that clearly doesn't give a damn about members. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

This thread has been dormant a year and there are little in the way of new developments.

Marc Cohen was in charge for about a year and moved the executive office to a store front post office box in New York. He has since resigned for "health reasons", and John Paccione (6d) of Kodokan Judo of Cape Coral South Florida has taken over as interim president. This happened a couple weeks after the recent public meeting at a hotel in South Florida where elections were to take place. Another Kodokan Cape Coral member is Treasurer. Board and committee memberships are listed here https://www.usja.net/#committees

The website "virtual office" run by a company called Ashlex is pretty slick, and has some nice features, but many of us liked interacting with humans that could problem solve. We no longer receive paper promotion certificates or member cards, but we get neat PDF's emailed to us instead; and the "Growing Judo" magazine seems to be gone completely.

John Paccione is apparently a retired NYC cop who moved to FL.

For the sake of the organization let's see if he has the organizational skills and personality to pull it back together.

I would think that consolidation would serve everyone well except for the egos on the boards and their access to un-monitored funds.

Is there any functional differences between all these US judo organizations? In Japan there are virtually no dojo unaffiliated with the All Japan Judo Federation or one of its affiliated federations (student, businessman, school, police). I probably run the one exception, inside a US government facility in Tokyo, and even we're affiliated, will have 8 competitors in a local tourney Sun.

Yes, NBK, I believe you're correct. John Paccione is a Cape Coral police officer, (maybe detective?), and I believe he came from NYPD when he retired there a few years ago. I don't know of anyone with any personal issues with him. He's got two daughters that have done really well in the junior competitive circuit, and his club is well known in the area for hosting tournaments. I've run into him at a few tournaments and clinics in this area. I am hopeful that he will make a positive impact on the way things are run.

That said, it was a strange turn of events (another in the course of many) that USJA held an election (and presumably confirmed Cohen?) then within a couple of weeks he stepped aside and handed the job over. Minutes from the meeting have never been posted so there's no clue as to how things went.

What? The Board had an election? was anything contested?