Robby - yeah - it used to have something to do with Highland Park. It is now Auburn Hills. How would you know?

To all - right after I read the first post here, I went to the AMA site and read the info. I sent an e-mail to Dave Brown with the same stuff in it as I posted here. No flames or accusations, just some questions. To my surprise I got a response. I haven't asked for permission to post it here, so I won't do that, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised.

Dave gave some honest answers to questions I asked. I was impressed not only with his answering of them but of what Dave and the EC had done. Without going into the specifics, they made a hard business decision, took lots of grief over it, but time has proven it to be a very good one from both a financial and image perspective for AMA - and us the membership benefits. I would label what they did a success story - one that should be shared with all the membership. I am going to suggest that to Dave in further E-mail - the problem is balancing confidential information with the need to get success stories such as this out to the membership. I do the same thing in my shop - get out good and bad information to our employees - let them know what is going on - that decisions affecting them are not done in a vacuum.

Before I was very skeptical of what was going on in the inner circles of the AMA - I am now willing to assume they are a dedicated bunch trying to do the right thing - they just don't know how to let us know about all the success stories they have.

Dan