AlFansome

No go ahead, say what's on your mind.

I'm not condoning any of the scouts' behavior that's been noted in this post on either side and that wasn't the point of my post.

The reality is that for the first time in quite a while, there are a great number of kids in this country that have seen the physical and emotional scars of war close up and they are forever changed by it. How they react and process what they experience varies from case to case.

In my daughter's case, she's really been caught up in the election (as I recall being back in '76 when I was 8) since she understands that's how we pick our new leader. She's watched all 4 debates from start to end and has formed opinions based on what she's hearing. Alot of it admittedly goes over her head, but hearing the McCain voted for the Iraq War and Obama opposed it was pretty much a deal-sealer in her mind. She also keeps wondering why McCain says "My friends..." over and over... :-)

Her twin brother on the other hand could pretty much care less.

Or maybe because the scout has a family member who's just come back from Iraq a changed man. That's my 9-year old daughter's reason.

There's a very good synopsis of the current do's and don'ts in the 100 foot zone in California at:

http://www.co.solano.ca.us/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=4091

It's straight from the Secretary of State and references a few court cases that are relevant, including the Supreme Court case that allows the 100 foot zone in the first place.

In short, anything you wear in California is OK as long as it's not specifically for or against a candidate or issue on the current ballot. For instance, a T-shirt that says "Down with liberals" would be OK since it's not specifically for or against a particular candidate or ballot issue.

Of course, how Joe the (sort-of) Plumber who mans that polling booth would deal with it may be another story entirely.

Usually known as "Liquid _ss", it's a foul-smelling liquid that can be squirted on unsuspecting victims (or tents!) as a prank. Non-toxic, non-staining according to the web site and the smell is gone in somewhere from 12 to 18 hours. A quick google search will come up with many places to buy it online.

Quick fact check...

Bill Ayers has never been convicted (or charged) with killing anyone.

A police officer died in a bombing in San Francisco that was suspected of being either the work of the Black Panthers or the Weather Underground but was never proven or prosecuted in any way.

In fact, the Weather Underground typically sent evacuation warnings in advance to the government buildings targeted with bombings.

...end fact check

You may now all get back to your regularly scheduled rants.

My Kiwanis Club puts on a 4th of July parade for 40,000+ people every year. A couple of things:

- either you're on the float or you're not...no jumping back and forth.

- no thowing things out into the crowd. If you throw short, folks (i.e. kids) will run out onto the parade route to pick things up.

- If you insist on handing out candy or whatever, the folks walking the parade route need to go to the crowd and hand things out, not vice versa.

- If horses are involved, no poppers or things that go "bang"

Most of the rest of the things should pretty much be common sense.

The next time this leader comes up with a "rule", simply say to him, "Oh really, I hadn't heard of that. Please show me where this rule is written in the Leader Book/online/etc..etc...".

When he can't find it (but it must be there somewhere!), then his "rule" is officially "myth".

Of course, Obama was on the payroll of the CAC since he was on the Board.

However, your original post implies that he was somehow an employee of the Annenberg Foundation. This is not the case at all.

The Annenberg Foundation makes grants just like the United Way, the Gates Foundation or any of a number of other philanthropic foundations do. The organizations to which it makes grants are not in any way employees of the Annenberg Foundation...they are recipients of the grants that in many cases use the name "Annenberg" in their names (perhaps as a condition of the grant).

FactCheck.org is run by the University of Pennsylvania, not the Annenberg Foundation, although (again) the name Annenberg is associated with the organization because of the original (and maybe ongoing) grants that established the program at the U. of Penn.

Doing a quick look to whom the Annenberg Foundation gives money turns up some real liberal names:

Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation -- http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=539921

Gerald and Betty Ford Scholarship Endowment --

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=620299

Eisenhower Medical Center --

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=621335

Maybe the Ronald Reagan Presidential Founation also supports Obama!!

If you feel that FactCheck.org (because of it's association with Annenberg) is biased toward Obama, please let me know where you feel that someone can get unbiased information and analysis about the charges and counter-charges being made in the current presidential campaign. Cutting through the mud that gets slung by both sides to get to the real truth is probably one of the hardest things that we voters need to do lately, it seems.

"ex-employee"? Sounds like you need a fact check.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annenberg_Foundation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge

http://www.factcheck.org/about/

Except that here's the whole gist of his argument (from http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/21/obama-baipa-unnecessarily-burdens-doctors-with-babies/):

"[T]he only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made the assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, lets say for the purposes of the mothers health, is being that that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, and in fact this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that the physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical procedures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

Now, if if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects that doctors feel that they would already be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding a an additional doctor who the has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

Now, if thats the case and and I know some of us feel very strongly one way or the other on that issue thats fine, but I think its important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure theyre looked after."

Doesn't sound inhuman to me, especially when put in the context that there already was an Illinois law that already prohibits the type of behavior that was the subject of the bill, and that this vote by Obama would not significantly change what the law prescribes.

Info and analysis of the issue at:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html

Couple of points from the analysis:

- There already is a law on the books in Illinois that requires medical care for born-alive babies who survive an abortion procedure. Read the first 4 or 5 paragraphs of http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/documents/072005100K6.htm.

If this law indeed provides the same or similar protections to born-alive infants as the proposed bills would have, then Obama's vote on the issue would seem to be less about the babies and more about politics and the abortion issue in general, since passing the new law wouldn't afford more protections to the infants.

National Right to Life says that current law has too many loopholes.

- Obama supports the Federal version of a similar Born Alive law.

- His stated reasons for opposition to the Illinois bill was that it was more about abortions and possible challenges to their legality that about live births.

- Obama has certainly "massaged" has explanation for his votes against the 2003 bill as described in the factcheck.org posting.

My comment:

If indeed there is a law already on the books that makes it a felony to do the things that the proposed bill forbids, then I don't see how Obama's vote in any way would affect the care of these children.

In addition, if Obama has repeatedly stated his support of the federal version of a similar bill, then I don't see a big issue here.

The requirement for the Webelos badge is to earn Citizen, Fitness and one other. But, the boys can of course earn and be awarded whatever other activity pins that they've earned at any time. Go ahead and give them what they've accomplished!

Nope, not according to BSA.

In fact, if you look at the Adult Application, you'll see that it is explicitly allowed to register as both CC and COR for the same unit.

While surfing the web checking out area troops for kicks (slow day at work!), I found a troop that takes quite a few liberties with the BSA program as written.

In particular, it's documented that:

- Before working on his Eagle Project, a boy must:

Be a Life Scout;

Be a Patrol Leader or a member of Staff;

Be at least 15 years old;

Have completed all merit badges required for Eagle; and

Receive the Scoutmaster's approval to proceed.

- Merit badges must be earned as follows:

earn 1 while Tenderfoot (and must be non-Eagle required)

earn 2 while 2nd class (First Aid + one non-Eagle required)

earn 5 while First class (Cooking, Camping, 2 required, 1 elective)

earn 6 while Star (Pioneering, Cit.in Comm, 2 required, 2 elective)

earn 7 while Life (4 required, 3 elective)

- Leadership requirements: (for example)

While a Star Scout:

Give at least 2 skill instructions; or

Give at least 1 skill instruction and serve as a Patrol Leader on a campout; or

Serve as a Den Chief for at least 6 months.

- Tenure between ranks is 6 months for T-1-2, 12 months for S-L and 18+ for Eagle

- Attendance requirements: can't miss >3 meetings or more than 2 of the required campouts in 6 months or else no advancement. For PL, SPL, ASPL...all campouts are required.

- COH held twice per year, June/December along with 1 ECOH for all Eagles per year (since most Eagles on same schedule anyway)

From all accounts, the troop is "successful" with 60+ scouts, has been around forever, has had the same SM for 34 years, is very connected to the chartered org, and has produced 250+ Eagles in 40 years. Their attendance and participation is obviously high, and uniforms are ubiquitous (as are some interesting temporary insignia locations). Hard to tell exactly, but the Patrol Method to some extent is being used and by the length of the list of MB counselors, it seems that most parents are an MBC for something (sometimes 5+ badges).

My point here isn't to bash the troop since they're in another district and I don't know anything more about them other than what's on their web site.

However, what I'd like to throw out to the forum is the following:

If you were dropped into the middle of a troop with this culture as a leader (SM, CC, or Adv. Chair), what would you change first (if anything)? What things would you continue to do? What are the worst and best things that are going on?

Has anyone had experience with a troop such as this? What was your experience like?

If you'd like to debate the wording of rules, procedures or the "right" way to do something, please take it to another thread. I think that it's pretty clear that the BSA advancement program (as written by BSA) isn't being followed, and I think that it's also clear that there are already enough arguments on this board about whether that's OK, not OK or in between.

Personally, I'd like to get insight into how folks deal with units that they feel need to be re-oriented and what things would be more important to deal with first.

Yeah, in CA using the kids' plate, there are a ton of options. Not only can you put in a single heart, hand, star, or plus sign (+), but you also get 7 characters (including the symbol) plus an optional 1/2 space.

Stuff like I(heart)BSA or (star)SCOUT or I(heart)MY(1/2-space)CUB are all good.

Lots of options.

You can even check for availability online.

What about the Venturing Silver or Sea Scout Quartermaster award knots? If a boy is dual-registered in a troop and a crew/ship, can he wear these knots on his Boy Scout uniform if he's earned them before he's 18 in his crew/ship?

Beavah-

I can appreciate your viewpoint on CO's and their desire to run a program to support their goals.

According to the original poster, though, it seems that this really isn't a top-down CO-driven issue:

"Actually, our CO is not very involved. In our troop any registered leader gets to vote in the troop committee and be on a BOR kinda like the troop Stosh was talking about. When I first came into the troop they tried to tell me that ASM's were supposed to do the BOR, not committee members, which totally contradicted my training. As Gold Winger says, they interpret the rules instead of just following them."

Would your viewpoint on CO's being able to tailor the program for their purposes also apply to unit leaders, as it seems in this case? I think that, if anything, I'd be inclined to give less leeway to the Unit Leaders than I would to CO's, since at least CO's do indeed "own" the unit. I guess you can make the argument that the Unit Leaders are appointed by the CO, so therefore they have room to adapt the program. That seems like a pretty big stretch to me (particularly if the CO is not engaged with the unit), and rather just a way of justifying unit leaders being able to disregard what is presented in training and documented procedures.

Clearly, there is a spectrum upon which we all fall with regard to the "rules" but at some point (as I said in a previous post), there are things that for each of us moves from the realm of "small" to "big" in the grand scheme of things. In this particular case, this is "small" for me, yet still obviously in conflict with the procedures set forth by the BSA.

Just as clearly, following the rules 100% of the time may not be desirable for a variety of reasons that we can all come up with, but I would hope that as unit leaders we would strive to do just that whenever possible. In this case, it would seem from the limited information available, that the unit leaders have their reasons for why they do what they do...it would be interesting to know what they are.

Beavah-

I agree with just about every thing you said in your last post. Indeed, one of the strengths of the BSA is the diversity in the character and flavor of the different units, whether it be LDS, church-sponsored, or whatever.

However, it still doesn't address the issue of COs making it up as they go along. There is plenty of room to make unique, distinct, CO-pleasing, scout-pleasing, parent-pleasing units within the BSA program (as written) without the need to re-write procedures and rules that seem to work fine for all the other units out there.

That is (after all) exactly what the CO agreed to do when they signed the charter agreement.

Beavah says:

"Yeh have to remember, it's the CO's program, eh? They really can do whatever they want, because they're the owner, not the BSA. BSA is just a resource provider. "

This is not true. Through the annual recharter agreement, the CO is allowed to use the BSA program. If they stray too far from the program, then I'd assume a Council wouldn't sign on the dotted line next year unless the CO gets back closer to the program.

In addition, there are District/Council-level mechanisms in place to ensure that a CO doesn't just "do whatever they want". An EBOR is a good example. UC's are another.

Clearly, a CO has alot of latitude within the guidelines/rules/suggestions/documents/etc. that BSA puts out to tailor the program to the audience, but at the end of the day, it's the BSA program that the CO has agreed to use.

My issue with "small" changes (such as the one this thread concerns) is that these "small" changes can eventually become "big" changes. If we allow one boy to be on a BOR, why not really make the program boy run and have the whole BOR be made up of boys? When the CO (and Scouters) signed up with BSA, they sign up for the BSA program (warts and all). For things that are clearly not open to interpretation, such as this case, I don't see the wiggle room that you see for the CO.

I'm sure this has been posted before somewhere in one of the forums, but for our Pack's site, we use free hosting software from DecisionDesign.com. It's specifically made for Scout units and is easy to use and set up.

Our site is at http://www.palmerpack215.com/ if you're interested.

The main things it doesn't have are e-mail fowarding and alias functionality, along with the ability to use Scripting....static HTML either written by hand or cut/paste --or-- using the WYSIWYG editor.

It's at http://www.cubroundtable.com/assets/pdf-documents/Adding-Machine-Tape-Demonstration-for-Adult-Recruiting.pdf

If you Google "adding machine tape scout" you'll find lots of variants.

The requirements for the Webelos Badge are what they are. Don't add or remove requirements or wording. If the badges earned at the time meet the requirements for Webelos, then you're good to go. So, since the requirements do not expressly prohibit the use of Readyman or Outdoorsman as the 3rd badge, then either is allowed.

Once you get to AOL, the wording doesn't say "Outdoorsman and Readyman plus 3 more...". It says "Earn 5 more activity badges in addition to the 3 you already earned for the Webelos badge" and then lists which badges and groups are required. So, there really is no confusion....since Outdoorsman or Readyman may already be done, the 5 more badges would need to satisfy the rest of the AOL requirements.

ASM59, as with everything, I think the answers to your questions are "it depends".

IMHO, there are clearly cases where one should (or must) get involved.

Let's look at the case of a campout or summer camp where I'm a unit leader...

Any imminent safety or YP issues in particular would qualify for the "rules police". (I'm thinking things like boys being completely reckless with knives, fire or weapons (as an example) or seeing clearly inappropriate behaviour between adult and scout). I'd step in personally immediately and then follow up with the appropriate unit leader, camp staff, or council staff depending on the situation.

Other things that aren't an immediate safety concern would be handled differently. If a particular unit is breaking every rule under the sun at a camp (alcohol, fire restrictions, etc. for instance), I'd either have a chat directly with the unit leaders in question, or inform the camp staff ... or maybe not. If I felt that the situation might escalate into a safety issue, I'd be more inclined to get involved.

Still other things probably wouldn't rise to a level that I'd want to step in...things that are procedural in nature or not according to the program problems could be seen as none of my business ... or maybe not. Is my unit's experience at the camp negatively impacted by the issue or concern? If so, I may say something either during the event or to the appropriate person afterwards.

Sorry I can't be more precise. I think we can usually agree on if/when a rule is being broken or a policy is being violated, but how we respond to what we see depends on how we view the "severity" of the infraction.

All my newsletters from last year can be found at

http://www.palmerpack215.com/generic.aspx?PageType=cubmaster

In general, the following get included:

- pack meeting agenda

- recognitions/awards

- upcoming Pack/District/Council Events

- tips/hints and suggestions for proper uniforms, possible awards/patches

- calls for volunteers

- thank you's to folks who worked on events

What about recruiting right before school lets out in the spring? We do this and it works great.

Right before school lets out we invite all the kindergarten boys to an ice cream social where we explain the program, have the Webelos lead some games and activities, and get the parents the info they need regarding the program and our summer activities.

For those boys who are interested, we invite them to the May pack meeting, and start collecting applications.

Once school is out and they are eligible, the new Tigers all get registered with Council and are then able to take part in summer activities. Having a great summer program is a huge draw to get them hooked.

This year we got 18 out of 22 possible 1st graders.