BadenP

From my own firsthand personal experiences the main question you need to ask is "Can you manage the council's money and property responsibly, and please give some specific detailed examples." If he can't answer that one question fully to the satisifaction of the board the rest of his background is meaningless. An SE who has ever put another council in any type of financial bind needs to be dismissed as a candidate, no matter what he knows about program.

The difference is that you are not military officers you are boy scout volunteers, you guys really need to get a grip on reality for petes sake, lol. Minnature badges on formal wear omg what's next to stroke your egos?

I have to agree with Hilo there has been this idea of scouting being a bunch of "mommas boys" not because of the program as much as the uniform. Kids in uniform are always razed by kids not part of that group, private school uniforms, scouts, Jewish kids in yamicas, Catholic kids in parochial school plaid uniforms, and even sports uniforms. The reason why IMHO is that kids not part of these groups look on those kids who are as thinking they are better than them. Look at schools today if your kid doesn't wear the right designer clothes then they get picked on as being lame or poor, etc. Any item of clothing that sets apart one group of kids from the majority will put them in line to be harassed by their peers, and if those kids are embarrassed to be seen wearing that clothing it only makes the matter worse. Pride in being who and what you are seems to be seriously lacking in most of todays youth. Maybe because of the example we adults set, and what they see in the mass media of today.

CNY Wow I wished you had mentioned those things earlier, something seems to be fishy and maybe it would be a good idea to have the DE talk to the advisor about mandatory training,etc, that way he's the bad guy not you. So the DE can use the council authority to investigate to see if there are YPT and GSS violations taking place and force them to straighten up or pull their charter, when all the smoke clears then you can come in like the crews best friend and help them get back on the straight and narrow.

CNY I am willing to bet that in your council, like many others, venturing is kind of shoved off in the corner and are excluded by the pros and volunteers. Is there an active Venturing presence or place for them at your RT's, district or council events, I bet not, so why would you expect to see them at Scouting U? This is why in many councils many venturing crews die out quickly, exclusion requires them to be independent and self sufficent or they fold up from lack of support. Don't feel bad you just need to develop better PR between the council, RT's, and the crew leadership. Why aren't you using local Venturing Crew leadership to teach these courses? That alone would help you get more participation.

CNY I can tell you with over 7 years as a coed crew Advisor that your situation is a little unusual, but it is not a requirement. In my own crew the ladies love to be more the movers and shakers than the guys and we have always had at least two or more female associate advisors in our crew. As long as you meet Venturing YPT standards on your outings it is not a problem, but as UC I would encourage you to have a friendly talk to the crew leadership about the advantages of having a female associate advisor. I doubt the DE would be much help and the crew leaders might get the impression you are telling tales about them to council, if this crew is 4 years old it must be doing something right. Good luck.

SO KC you take on your fathers hatred and pass down to your son to continue the hatred for generations to come, very short sighted on your part. My father was wounded shot down in WWII behind German lines and had to flee the Nazis for 6 months on foot until he made it to Switzerland, he received the purple heart and air medal. Yet after the war was over he moved on with his life and did not carry a hatred for the Germans for the rest of his days. Hatred is like a cancer that festers and grows unless you completely remove it from your life, otherwise you stagnate stuck forever in the past.

I don't know where you are coming from Eagle, I have British , Australian And NZ friends who dont mind at all being called Brits, Aussies and Kiwis,these were meant as terms of friendship and comraderie, and I am not at all offended when they say u yanks referring to Americans. Terms like nip and jap were coined during WWII to help demonize the Japanese people since we were at war with them, just like some today call all Muslims towelheads and worse to demean them. Eagle you need to brush up on your history, your professor was very correct. Calling a Japanese person a nip is like calling an Italian a dago or a Polish person a pollock or a German a kraut, all of these are considered very offensive terms. I am really surprised by your lack of understanding of what is so blantantly obvious.

Mafaking Let the PLC boys use their imaginations to come up with some fun ideas for the meetings, with the PLC lead by example show them how to do it right, give them resources and then turn them loose, ASAP. If your meetings continue to be boring the boys will stop coming and your troop will die. Meetings should be mostly fun if you want interaction from the whole troop, many things can be learned in a fun setting as opposed to having them sit there for an hour with someone droning on and on lecture style. Hands on and fun activities are the key.

British commanders in those days were ruthless, heartless, and really did not care about the indigenous folk of the countries they had conquered. One reason for this the Empire expected them to act this way as the British army were vastly outnumbered and force and fear was the only way to keep the conquered in line. This strategy however led to the eventual downfall of their Empire and Britian becoming the most hated country in the third world countries for many years after. BP was nothing more than a product of his time following the orders of a country who wanted to build the largest Empire in the world and using any means in accomplishing that goal, usually at the expense of the people already inhabiting those countries.

GHB "Nature is not God in any religion", "Ignorant urbanites, environmentalists, and liberals have deified nature" Neither of these comments are true and are evidence of your own ignorance of religion as a whole and of who God or the Divine Creator really is. There are several other similiar ludicrous statements in your posts. God or the Creator created the world we live in according to many different religions from early tribal societies, through the ancient hebrews, ancient eastern religions, and early Christianity right up to their modern counterparts today. The one common bond that ties many religions together is the belief that a God, Creator or a Higher Power created all of the universe, this includes Christianity, so that higher power is part of that natural world as are we intertwined together. Your own shortsighted view of what you think religion is or is not is not based on anything logical, factual or even intellectual.

After reading all these bogus definitions of what a religion is it any wonder why almost all the wars fought throughout human history have had a religious conflict at its roots. GalHill- why don't you get an education in theology before pontificating the nonsense you have been preaching in this thread, your lack of understanding of even your own simplistic idea of Christianity is so blatantly obvious that you make yourself look backward and foolish.

Hey Abel Good post, I think you have broken the record for the longest single post which has long held by Eamonn, lol. It just goes to prove what I have been saying about the quality of most National personnel, half of them have their heads buried in the sand and the rest just make up the answers as they go along. Then they wonder why there is so much confusion in the field with their poorly thought out and poorly written publications. National is not the wealth of information or knowledge volunteers think it is, want proof go to Texas and talk to some of these primadonnas, you will leave shaking your head in disbelief. Just as long as you remember "Active=Registered", sad, sad, sad.

Narriticong No one said the SE was omnipotent only that the system currently in place with BSA SE's and higher make it very hard if not impossible to remove them, short of criminal behavior, if he is bringing the council to financial ruin. This is especially true because by the time the "lowly scoutmaster" finds out it is usually too late for any corrective action. As far as complaining to his boss, in case you haven't noticed the world of scouting professionals SE or higher is a good old boys network who protect each other to the hilt, except in the case of criminal behavior, when a SE really screws up badly they usually just transfer him/her to another council where they can screw up again. It is a nice idea indeed to "take back the organization" however the top dogs have themselves pretty well fortified against such a move. I agree with you about being vocal even though most of the time it just falls upon deaf ears. Could KMSR have been saved, maybe if the problems had been brought to the attention of the entire council much earlier and the SE was more open to possible solutions from the membership at large. Instead the letter is too little too late and is little more than an obituary for KMSR.

Its too bad that the rest of scouting doesn't follow the sea scouts definition of active, it would make the SM job a lot easier.

emb 021 According to Bill Evans what you Sea Scouts are doing is adding to the requirement which he says you are specifically not allowed to do. How many scout leaders among us have told a scout that since he has not been active in the troop he couldn't be promoted in rank at this time, who knew we were all in violation of National policy. Really makes you wonder just what if any scouting expertise there really is at National anymore, lol.

"the boys and the scouters own the camp not the professionals." Narraticong I find it hard to believe that you really think your statement has an ounce of truth in it. Who is it that puts the camp up for sale or uses it as collateral for a council loan, hint: it ain't the volunteers. The SE has the authority, if endorsed by the executive board, to take such action. I don't know about your council but in the ones I worked for as a DE or volunteered in the board has been hand selected by the SE and who usually rubberstamp any action the SE wants to take. On top of that most of these special board meetings that decide these matters are not usually well publicized or are even restricted by the SE, I have witnessed this firsthand. After one such meeting in my former council the SE announced in a letter to all scouters that the bank had foreclosed on the council loan and that the camp and council office were now bank property. None of the volunteers or us DE's had a clue that the SE had taken out another loan with a huge balloon payment that the council was unable to make. It was a shock to all of us and that SE was quickly reassigned to another even bigger council and the executive board all rapidly resigned as well. No matter what is said or written in any publication about who works for who,it is the professional scouters who control all the marbles.

What's next a Bronze Award for playing World of Warcraft, look math and science are important for any youth to excel in but some of these bronze awards have nothing to do with the essence of what Venturing was created to do and should be eliminated, case in point this one and the Art Bronze Award, neither of these should be the emphasis of any venturing crew IMHO. If National really wants Venturing to succeed they need to refocus the intent and direction of the program.

It could also mean that National, via Evans, feels it just is not an important enough requirement to worry about since just being registered meets the "active" requirement in their eyes. So IMHO give that requirement the same importance as National does, ZERO.

shortridge If the camp program stinks then step in with the other scout leaders put the council camping committee on notice, and offer to help change it. A camp as a piece of land where you can bring your troop camping is a valuable resource just in itself, and once its gone its gone forever. This loss of council camps is becoming a nationwide epidemic which is very disturbing. Council boards look at selling camps as an easy way to get out of debt without ever considering the blood sweat and tears scouters and scouts have put in over the years to maintain it. IMHO a council camp is like a sacred trust to protect and nurture for future generations of scouts, not a disposable asset to use as collateral for a debt caused by fiscal mismanagement of council executives.

I agree with Oak Tree and I doubt this came as any surprise to scouters in the council. When you don't support your council camp this is what you can expect will happen, and it sounds like it is way too late to try and save it now with all the problems the property has, the time for pointing fingers is long gone. This kind of thing is happening all over the USA in other councils, sometimes its due to poor council management, but in this case it looks like pure apathy on the part of the scout leaders was mostly responsible.

Beavah you are beginning to remind me of good ole Bob White. Look believe whatever you want cuz I'm through with trying to get through that thick head of yours full of self rightgeous nonsense. I no longer work for the IRS so I have nothing to prove to you or try to convince you of anything. I have seen first hand how not understanding tax law properly has cost people everything they had and after some years of that carnage I left the IRS. I hope you never get audited because I am sure you would lose big time. As far as this topic is concerned I am done posting rebuttals to you and your nonsense.

Oak I see the problem in the semantics, A unit must first be given permission to use a sponsors EIN, it is not automatic and can cause problems for the sponsor if they are taking contributions, stating they are a tax exempt organization, because then the sponsor is responsible for reporting those contributions. Thats why most sponsors do not let scout units use their EIN because of the confusion as to who the contributor is giving their money to. "a scout unit is not considered a subordinate to the BSA", thats because a subordinate would be entitled to solicit donations in the name of the BSA, it is just a semantic legality to prevent this from happening. It does not mean a scout unit is not part of the BSA for example units are offered insurance under the BSA corporate umbrella. A scout unit is not legally allowed to use a sponsors EIN, that is true since that number identifies only the sponsor, if they do give permission than they become legally responsible for reporting those donations solicited by the scouts. I hope that helps clarify things a bit.

Oak it has been a while but the defining book would be a copy of the Internal Revenue Code books which IRS auditors use like a Bible during an audit. I no longer have access to it those books, but the Western Los Angeles Area Council on their website has put a statement, under council news, from the IRS and written in plain english the tax status of a scout unit and its relationship to its sponsor, as well as can a scout unit be a tax exempt entity that would answer almost all of the questions being asked here, definitely worth the read. Beavah, laws are always subject to different interpretations, that is why we have the judicial branch to settle those arguments, but you should know that with your alleged legal background. As you should know that these tax laws are not clearly written in plain English but in legalize, so it is very possible that the IRS could interpret them differently from yourself. The average person doesn't have the expertise to challenge an audit decision nor the funds to challenge the IRS in court. Every year Congress creates new tax laws and changes exsisting ones to the point where even the experts, attorneys, accountants and IRS employees have trouble keeping current. So you can continue to be a blowhard and throw your insults but it doesn't change the fact that our tax laws are a mess and your interpretation is just that and nothing more. By the way you never did answer my question as to what your legal expertise/background is, if any.

Oak Tree scoutldr hit the nail on the head, it does not matter what anyone here says, it is how the IRS auditor interprets the law during an audit that counts. I agree with you about camp fees by the way, but if you read the wording in your own post from the IRS pub there are a couple of inconsistencies or loopholes that could result in an audit going either way. I also agree that the tax laws in this country all of which have been written and passed in Congress have become so complicated and convoluted that it is time for a total redo and simplification of those laws but also how they are enforced by the IRS.