Prairie_Scouter

I had a thought yesterday that I'd like to posit. The elimination of Harriett Miers as a candidate for the Supreme Court didn't have as much to do with her qualifications or lack thereof, as much as the fact that Bush's conservative base couldn't count on her as a known conservative on the court. The nomination of Samuel Alito was more an effort to consolidate the conservative base for the upcoming midterms elections than it was an effort to get the best qualified candidate on the Supreme Court. The President, I think, picked this candidate knowing that it would result in the upcoming firestorm. It will in all probability consolidate the conservative base while further dividing the country along ideological lines. What a way to run a country I would think you'd want justices at all levels that are brilliant, yet unbiased when they enter the courtroom. What's so bad about that?

Unfortunately, the extreme ends of both spectrums, being the most vocal, are the ones who end up defining the debate many times, leaving the middle pretty much disinterested. The middle is looking for realistic solutions, not the nonsense that both extreme ends of the political spectrum throw around as their solutions. Politicians know, tho, that they have to play to their political base, and although I'm sure they know that the extreme elements in their ranks are offering unrealistic solutions, they aren't about to tell them to shut up. Instead, we end up with a lot of political posturing that accomplishes nothing.

Our troop does some church homeless shelter work a couple of times a month, and they instruct us to not wear our uniforms. For safety sake, they prefer the workers to be more or less "anonymous". So, as Eagle and nldscout said, the clothes should match the activity. And, ok, I'll throw this out there because I know it'll get said...there really isn't a Class A or Class B uniform, but we all know what they mean, right?

Brent, All I can tell you is that, in regards to home protection, I asked a local police officer about this a couple of years ago. He said that the vast majority of people who have guns in their homes would have almost no chance of using it to defend themselves in case of a home invasion. A small chance, maybe, if they really knew what they were doing, ie, ex-military, but most folks wouldn't qualify. The downside he saw was the chance of a kid getting ahold of the gun, or having it stolen in a burglary. His feeling was that most people were deluding themselves in thinking that having a gun is going to help in an emergency situation; not everyone, but most. Does the average family need an uzi to protect their house? Sounds like the NRA thinks so. On the other hand, Brent, if you happen to live in a high crime area and your emergency response is that bad, ie, 20 minutes, I suppose I'd be desperate enough to take other measures. In my own mind, tho, I don't think you solve the violence problem by just giving everybody bigger and bigger guns. All that does is promote even more violence, I think. I also don't think the problem is solved by getting everyone together to sing Kumbaya; enforcement of existing laws and extreme penalties would help, as well as getting the most extreme weapons off the street. Nobody needs those. Regards the forests. The "fuel" problem in the great forests was caused by many years of over-protection, to be sure. That policy has long since been changed, and controlled burns and cullings do the job well, but the government won't allocate enough funds to do the work that needs to be done. Brent, you're not "making stuff up" but you are using arguments of extremists to make your points. Earth First! doesn't represent the mainstream view of environmentalists. Most are in favor of planned forest thinnings and sensible forest management, but are wary of forest companies coming in, with their history of clear cutting and non-management in some cases. The Forest Service sells off the forest lands, and loses money are nearly every deal; that just doesn't make sense. Yes, houses do burn during the fire season, and no one wants to see anyone get hurt. But just the same as people building in flood plains, they have their reasons for building so close to the fuel sources, and they take their chances. Simply thinning the forest isn't going to help that. Lastly, environmentalists do want to completely protect small amounts of prime forest for a variety of reasons, but this represents a very small portion of the available forestland, almost all of which is managed as mixed use.

At least on this forum, it seems like their is an awful lot of labeling and misinformation being thrown around in regards to what so-called "liberals" believe. Guns? I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of liberals don't hate guns; they hate the violence that some people commit using firearms. Only someone trolling for a reaction would offer as simple a comment as "liberals hate guns". You don't have to be a believer in the some might say extreme agenda of the NRA to know that firearms have a legitimate place in society, when used responsibly by properly trained and licensed users. BSA offers the safety training that a responsible firearms user would need to get started. Personally I don't own any guns. Don't see the need. We have these "police department" things here that do pretty well in protecting us, not perfect, of course, but pretty well. I don't hunt. I figure we stopped needing to do that about a 100 years ago or so. I've thought about getting into target shooting, seems like fun, but I've got this Scouting things that takes up too much of my time Anyone who doesn't think that both the Democrats and Republicans play to the middle during election cycles isn't really paying attention. The fact of the matter is, the Democrats "own" the Left, and the Republicans "own" the Right. They can't win elections with just those constituents, tho, so they have to play to what's left in the middle. They both play to that group by making themselves appear to be more aligned with middle's agenda when they appear before them. That's how the game is played unfortunately. And Bush did that as well, ie, "compassionate conservatism". And Clinton before him, ie, "the New Democrats", and Bush before that, the Reagan before him, etc, etc. Oh, BTW, regards "compassionate conservatism". Most creative bumper sticker I saw last week.."Compassionate Colonialism". What a hoot! The current President Bush, a "fiscal moderate"? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha BSA a conservative organization? Not really, if you look broadly at the organization. They've managed to get themselves caught up in the middle of one or two political battles, but I wonder if that's really BSA or special interest groups using BSA as the latest pawn in their battles. BSA's teachings to their Scouts are anything but conservative. Their teachings on ecology, etc, are anything but conservative. Lastly, that comment about forests re liberals and conservatives? Once again, stereotyping. Only the most extreme would see forests as something to be protected to the exclusion of all other uses. Only the most extreme would see forests as something to be clearcut for short term profit. Most true environmentalists and conservationists see forest land as a renewable resource if properly managed, and only try to exclude some limited areas that are vital to the protection of some species that might otherwise be lost.

Well, our current president managed to convince enough people that he was moderate in his views to get himself placed into office. And, if you ever watch a conservative trying to get votes in front of more liberal groups, you never, ever, see them use the word "conservative", so that game is played by both sides. In the last election, Bush played to the extreme right, but his message in more liberal areas was that he was more moderate. Kerry played to the extreme left, but his message in more conservative areas was that he was more moderate. Label the president whatever you want; I'd be more interested in seeing the record of how many of the campaign promises he made in more moderate states he's kept. Conservative? You certainly can't label his administration fiscally conservative. Labels don't matter. I believe in something that an old PoliSci professor told me a long time ago, and that is, the job of any politician is to get elected. What they do to get elected is immaterial. If they get elected, their job is to get re-elected. In between, they do as little as possible to anger their base. Everything else is window dressing.

Not to put the cart before the horse, but if you have paid for the equipment being used by the troop with your own money and never formally donated it to the troop, you could make a very good case that that equipment belongs to you, and you can take it with you if you decide to move. You want to try and get along with your chartering organization as much as you can, but to be honest, if you think that things are going to get worse and you can't count on your chartering organization for support, then you may very well be better off leaving and chartering with another organization. Or self-charter, as I've seen some groups do.

I doubt a lot of this. 4500 students in a study is basically a statistically insignificant number relative to the total number of students in high school. If 75% of students in high school were cheating, the educational system would be collapsing. And, the teachers would have to be totally inept to not see the situation. My guess is that the questions asked in the study led to these kinds of numbers. Second, although there are those who would like to blame the ills of the world on the perceived morally bankrupt lifestyle of politicians and celebrities, this is largely a fiction created by media, and exaserbated by those who would like to take advantage of such a fiction. The vast majority of politicians are hard-working, well-meaning public servants, with the best interests of their consituents in mind. We only hear about the very, very small number of those people, and they are invariably in the very small number who have managed to so something less than wise. The same is true of celebrities (and I assume by this they mean show business people). The celebrities who make the media are the ones that everyone sees. But, for every whatshername Hilton doing whatever silly thing she's doing, there are a greater number of people like Richard Dean Anderson, and others, who are doing good works protecting the environment or getting involved in other political causes in a more or less quiet way.

I think that the Miers thing was basically a mis-guided, tho well-meaning attempt by Bush to reward someone who has been loyal to him in his administration. Sometimes this works, sometimes, like in the appointment of the FEMA head, it can cause real problems. I think there's a certain irony in the conservatives blasting Miers out of consideration without even allowing her the courtesy of a fair hearing. They've accused the liberals of the same kind of actions. When the liberals tried to find out the agenda of conservative candidates, that was "out of bounds" according to the conservatives, but the conservatives seemed to think it was just fine when they went after Miers. I think that this shows something about the more vocal conservatives. It seems that they really don't want the best possible candidate (whatever that is), they are after a candidate that will provide a swing vote in their favor in things like a readdressing of Roe v Wade. Regards the grand jury, we should find out today if there's anything to the allegations. You can be sure the Administration will distance themselves from anyone indicted. That only makes political sense. And honestly, if anyone really did "out" that CIA agent in a political payback, that person deserves to go to prison, as well as anyone who would have approved it. Not saying that the VP or P had anything to do with it; I could easily see Rove and/or Libby doing it on their own. Besides, Chaney has been in the this game much too long to let anything stick to him, if he did anything questionable. And nobody is going to go after the Pres unless they have ironclad evidence. In such a case, Rove would probably take the hit in an effort to protect the Pres. That's how the game is played.

Welcome, lala. Yes, as Trevorum noted, "chick" might be considered discurteous in some circles, so please use the more universally accepted term, "babe" That aside, yeah, I'm finding this whole situation with Miers pretty interesting. It's been pretty quiet here on the topic. In a previous discussion where there was the threat of a Democratic filibuster over a court appointment, many here commented that the Presiden't choice should be allowed the courtesy of a full Senate vote. While things have yet to really get underway with her appointment hearings, it'll be pretty interesting to see her get attacked by members of her own party, who are desparately scurrying to cover their butts with the midterm elections coming up. Funny, when known conservatives are placed in this position, the conservatives in Congress are content to say that the appointees personal views are out of bounds, but with this one, suddenly, they have a lot of interest. She seems to be ticking off people on both sides of the aisle, so that in itself would tend to have me vote "yes".

The wording from the Rules and Regulations is meant to cover a wide variety of situations, and as such, ends up being unintelligible to people looking for a simple explanation. TheScout had the basic correct answer. Unless you've set up some legal entity to protect the unit assets (as Kahuna discussed in another thread), the property of the unit belongs to the CO. I would expect many COs would have no idea what to do with it, and you could probably work with the CO to find a suitable home for your unit's belongings. For instance, another unit that is well run and would make good use of the resources. It's a shame that your unit has closed its doors. Sounds like it was a very healthy size in Scouts but woefully weak in adult support outside of you and your husband. Unfortunately, not an unusual situation.

I agree with the idea the the President is a sincere, down-to-earth, unpretentious, God-fearing man who loves his country. I just don't think that those attributes, on their own, qualify him to be the President. His actions, and some of his appointments, seem to confirm this. When he was Candidate Bush, didn't the President make some sort of campaign promise to grant a general amnesty to illegal aliens already in the country? I seem to remember something about that, although I might not be remembering that correctly. Regards criticism. It is the right and responsibility of every citizen to keep a watchful eye on their leaders and take them to task when those citizens feel that their government is acting improperly. There seems to be no end of suggestions as to how to correct current situations, but I'd have to say that this Administration is singularly disinterested in any ideas not coming from their own inner circle. Regards terrorism specifically, I'm not sure how Rooster can say that the Bush Administration and the Republicans recognized the terrorism threat earlier than those "across the aisle". Intelligence reports detailing the possibility of an attack very similar to 911 have existed since the mid-90's, and while the Clinton administration can be faulted for not taking further steps on this, the information was passed on to the Bush Administration at the time of the change of administration. In point of fact, the Bush administration was cutting funds for anti-terrorism prior to the attacks on 9/11. There is plenty of blame to go around, and neither party took the threat seriously enough. Air safety experts had recommended to Congress that secure, bulletproof doors to the cockpit be installed in all airliners in about 1995. Airline industry lobbyists lobbied against this and the effort was derailed. After the attacks on 911, the Bush Administration did an effective job of tracking the terrorists to Afghanistan and taking the battle to them. Invading Iraq without solid evidence of their participation was ill-advised. The Administration has been deceptive in funding the war, first saying it would pay for itself in oil revenues, and then hiding the costs in emergency funding actions that leave the numbers out of the national budget. You could say that the Democrats are clueless if you wish, and I won't really argue the point, but to assert that the Republicans have had the matter well in hand and are acting in a wise and thoughtful manner is, well, wishful thinking. Correction: The actual date of the report detailing a 911 attack for the Intelligence committee was 1999, which was passed on to the incoming Bush Adminstration, who commented in early 2001 that the Clinton administration had placed too much emphasis on efforts to counter Osama bin Laden.(This message has been edited by Prairie_Scouter)

Fundraising and funding the troop is always a challenge. We made a change to our funding model a couple of years ago that we think takes care of the troops needs and give the Scouts a bit more incentive to participate as well. We used to charge a fee of about $50 per year, and then used the fundraisers to fill in any unfunded financial needs, while allocating a portion to the Scout summer camp and high adventure accounts. We now charge $100 per year in annual dues, but all fundraisers go directly to the Scout's accounts. Different events are allocated to different accounts. We do summer camp every year, and high adventure (larger trips, such as Seabase) every other year. We doubt that the parents could afford to have their Scouts do a High Adventure every year. None of the fundraisers have mandatory participation, but since the proceeds go 100% to the Scout's accounts, they (or more likely, their parents ) have more incentive to participate. For the record, we have about 20 Scouts in our troop at present, andh have about $3K in the bank across the general, capital, and Scout accounts.

I'll bet you get the really good tee off times, too.

I would also like a reference to the "double dipping" rule. In the example given, that of taking a family hike to a wildlife refuge not getting credit for 2 achievements, I don't see why not, really. They are different activities, and the fact that someone was able to merge them into one event shouldn't count against them, I don't think. I'll happily stand corrected, tho, if someone could reference the rule.

I'd have to agree with nldscout on this. I'm certainly no expert on property law, but I have to think it's not that simple. The BSA charter agreement may say one thing, but I really don't think it takes into account the variety of state law on such matters. It's a fuzzy enough situation that I think Kahuna probably has the right idea by taking some action to clarify things. I'd bet it just doesn't come up that often, ie, a unit fails, and the BSA charter conflicts with some aspect of state law in the state where the unit resides. Nothing that has anything to do with attorneys is ever simple

I think that there's a thread of truth to what both Cubmaster Jerry and FScouter are saying. Unit leaders, by and large, want to do the right thing. Sometimes, tho, they're not sure what the right thing is. In the example of someone stealing unit funds, for example. Is it really up to the unit leaders to call the police? Those funds actually belong to the CO, and the unit leaders are managing those funds on behalf of the CO. Maybe the CO has its own thoughts on how the situation should be dealt with. The district and council professionals may very well advise the unit to call the police, and as the professionals, it is their job to advise the volunteers in such matters. The district and council professionals are dealing with running an organization with very limited resources. Sometimes reality dictates what they can do. Do they have the resources to try and revitalize an ailing unit? They have to make a judgement as to whether the unit has the "energy" to accomplish this, or whether it's time to start over fresh. The same is true of any other unit-related task they might take on, ie, what can they do with the resources that they have? Rather than thinking a lot about "who does what", I'd prefer that we think about the job of running a unit successfully as a team effort among the unit leaders, the CO, and the district and council. The unit leaders bear the brunt of this responsibility, but they should also view the CO, district and council as resources to provide assistance when that assistance is needed. Volunteer leaders can't be expected to know how to handle every situation that might come up, from negative things like poor leaders and funding problems, to more positive things like "my pack is getting too big. how do I manage something so large?". That's where the districts and councils can, and should, provide guidance. The question of whether BSA should have more direct involvement in the monitoring of units is an interesting one. BSA pretty obviously doesn't think that they should be. It's clear that they consider the unit to be the property of the CO, and not BSA. The leader app pushes liability issues with leader selection to the CO. All in all, I think BSA's approach is one of wanting to have things done a certain way, and providing as many resources as they can for helping units do things that certain way, while at the same time doing as much as they can to limit BSA liability in case things go awry for whatever reason.

Things like this happen in both Cubs and Boy Scouts. It seemed to me that the parents in Cub Scouts, at least in my experience, were more likely to give you some notice of what was happening, perhaps because, as a den leader, you see the parents much more often. In Boy Scouts, I've seen boys just "disappear", as others have noted, and sometimes you never do figure out what happened to them. I had one very interesting experience recently with a Scout who dropped out. He hadn't been attending meetings, and I contacted the family to see if the Scout was ok (as I always do if they miss a meeting or two), and the parents were unaware that their son wasn't attending the meetings. Turns out he wanted to quit, but was afraid to tell anyone, so his brother (who drove him to and from the meetings), was just driving around with him when he was supposed to be at the troop activities. While I'd love for all of the Scouts to stay, some don't, and it's important, as best we can, to understand why they're leaving, in order to see if there's some fault in the program we're offering.

Doesn't matter whether they're burning a flag to retire one or as a form of protest. It's protected activity under the 1st Amendment. Now, I wouldn't let a flag burning protest occur at a troop activity, but Scouts, on their own, are free to express themselves as they wish within the confines of the law. Or, for that matter, with actions of peaceful civil disobedience, if the situation requires that. In some countries, you could get jailed, or worse, for similar activities. We should applaud the freedoms we have to take such actions, whether we agree with the activity or not. Will some be "disturbed" by such actions? Sure. But, it doesn't matter.

I can't imagine anyone making a movie from such a ridiculous idea that some parents get carried away with their son's Pinewood Derby racing. You know, I'd have more to say on this, but I have to get back to work on my windtunnel.....oh, I mean, helping my 1st grade son build the wind tunnel HE wants to build.

We all do what we have to do. I've only had a sibling along on a Boy Scout campout a couple of times, but it wasn't a problem. In each case, we were short on leaders. The leader knew that his child wouldn't be covered by BSA insurance in case of an accident. We told the Scouts up front that this trip is only happening because little Joey said he'd come along to help out the Scouts. With that said, we worked him into the activities where we could, and the Scouts seemed to genuinely enjoy having the little guy along. Would you want to do it all the time? No, but when it happens occasionally, it gives an outing a slightly different twist, and can actually be a better learning experience for all concerned. So, yeah, if a troop turned every outing into a family campout, that would indeed be doing a disservice to the Scouts. But every once in a while? Nah.

As a couple of folks have said, it is largely a matter of presentation. Our pack charges about 30 bucks per year. 20 of that we do not keep, in that it covers registration and Boy's Life. The remainder pays for their PWD car and their Scout book for the next year. The popcorn sale pays for everything else, ie, segments, activity patches, etc., etc. Some years, when sales are good, we use part of the proceeds to, say, offset part of the cost of some Pack activity, like baseball night, or something like that. Varies from year to year. We spend a good deal of time explaining this to the parents. Cub Scouts is really a good deal compared to a lot of other activities. We have a bigger jump in fees when it comes to Boy Scouts, but that another thread for another time

packsaddle, Hmmm. You know, I'm not sure that I agree with an approach that treats BSA like any other business. But I'm not really sure why. Maybe the thought of turning BSA into a "lean, mean, competitive machine" makes me cringe a bit. But I'm not really sure why. Comparing BSA to Socialism makes me cringe a bit as well. But I'm not really sure why. I guess I like the idea of a BSA where the volunteers run a pretty laid back organization. That's not BSA today, unfortunately. BSA is an organization with millions in assets, and unfortunately a LOT of baggage comes with that. Power struggles, liability concerns, etc. Makes it sound like any other big organization. And BSA is a very large organization; some aspects of business operation have to be applied to it to have it function at all, let alone efficiently. I've looked at the backoffice operations of a typical Council a bit, and it's really a mess. Not that the staffs aren't well meaning, but I would expect the National Office to provide some sort of intergrated operational procedures, and while it appears that they have, they also appear to be antiquated. ScoutNet is a relatively new system, but looks and acts like a system from the mid-1970s. Paper records are piled up in storerooms. (what happens if there's a fire? Where's the backup?) Workflow is, of course, built around the processing of paper forms. I am sure that the local offices do everything they can to make things work, but there would seem to be quite a lot that could be done to streamline the workflows and make Scouting easier for everyone from the Council offices to the local unit leaders. I'm a systems guy, so I have a bias towards looking at things that way, but what I see at the Council offices are very good people who are hampered by not having the proper tools. Even a small number of Councils having problems with accurate membership figures points to problems with tracking systems and auditing. Taking care of these things decreases expenses and mitigates liability. That, in turn, would allow BSA to lower the fees, which to be honest, aren't that high anyway, which would allow more people to use the programs. I guess we got tired of talking about popcorn

There are a number of ways that profit sharing can be implemented. At the discretion of the company, when some metric reaches a certain level each year, a "share" can be returned back to the employees, usually defined as a percentage of salary. So, while the percentage may be the same for everyone, the actualy dollar amount, of course, varies with salary. The percentage may also vary with the amount of growth in certain metrics. In many companies, executives are placed into what is sometimes called a "discretionary bonus pool", which can be manipulated more subjectively to reward certain individuals more than others. Different than a 401K. If a comparison is being made to the popcorn sale, the best comparison would be to a profit sharing plan, not really a 401K. In this case it's a profit sharing plan where there is no threshold for sharing to begin, ie, every sales returns a share of profit, and there is no threshhold to be reached before profit sharing begins.(This message has been edited by Prairie_Scouter)

Bob, I didn't know if your question on "how we sell" was directed at me, but I'll take a shot at it anyway. BTW, you only get 1/3 of the points because I don't complain about "everything" in Scouting, only a couple of specific things Now, our sales. We have a kickoff sale where everyone gets together on a Saturday morning for a "mad rush" sale, ie, sell as much as you door to door in 3 hours, for some instantly awarded prizes. I think the Council gave away from small radio control cars this year. We do 2 weekends of site sales at local stores. We've gotten our best sales at the 2 main chain groceries in our area, Dominick's and Jewel. We've tried the discount groceries as well, but as you might expect, those customers are looking for deep discounts, and 8 bucks for a box of microwave popcorn doesn't fit in their budgets. We've tried the local libraries as well, with mixed results, and local Walgreen's and Osco's (pharmacy/small groceries). We had plans to try selling to local fire departments, the idea being that they buy their groceries once per shift and would conceivably buy a bunch to have things to snack on, plus the fact that they're more likely to support Scouts (not sure if they actually did that; my boys have both moved on to Boy Scouts, and so I'm not actually in the sale this year). And lastly, door-to-door sales, and sales where the parents take the sale sheets to their place of business. For the last year where I have figures, the 2004 sale, we had 40 Scouts participating, about $12K in total sales, with a net to the pack of about $3,500, if I remember correctly. The vast majority of the sales were of the lower priced items. We have gift tins selling for about $24, which we sell a handful of, and a $40 gift tin, which we sell zero of. We have to compete with the local schools, who also run their fundraisers in the fall (and winter, and spring ) I think I saw a mention of FOS as well. Just FYI, we do ours once a year at our winter court of honor.