scoutingagain

HUD's 2011 budget is aroung $48 billion or 1.2% of the Federal budget. Get rid of it. Get rid of earmarks, another 1%. Get rid of NPR another 0.0004%. Total so far ... 2.2004% of the budget. The 2011 Federal budget is $3,800,000,000,000. The projected deficit is $1,200,000,000,000. Do the math. We need to cut spending by over 30% to balance the budget...or increase revenues(taxes). Discretionary spending? That's everything execept interest on the debt. SA

Earmarks represent less than 1% of the national budget. Eliminating them I think is a good thing because the practice has become so corrupt over the last 10 years it has eroded faith in the government, rightfully so. Already were seeing some whining and rationalization from some of our elected officials on why eliminating them is a bad idea from both sides of the aisle. Balony. Get rid of them but it won't do much to balance the budget. NPR gets $16.4 million from federal grants. Or approximately 0.0004% of the national budget. Ok get rid of it. Illegal immigrants do not get

Here's an article with more details of the proposed plan from the bi-partisan deficit commission: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805004575607691377554472.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond Yes, it's set up under Obama's watch so for the sake of argument call it the Obama plan. Does mean the loyal opposition has it's usual plan of No? If so I'll give the President credit for at least putting a plan on the table. More than the opposition has done. It's easy to pick away at a plan, but much tougher to come up with an alternative. Some basic provision

"Otherwise, you're out of the gene pool. The private health insurance industry just makes the selection process clearer to those who have coverage." Now if they would only get terminally ill before they procreate you might have something. Perhaps the Death panels could also do genetic screening and sterilize those folks who will become terminally ill and can't pay for their own helath care so we can break that cylcle. SA

That's because gun control laws have been so successful in keeping weapons out of the big cities in the East and West. To be read with a health note of sarcasm. SA

"Anybody betting that they decide to tackle social security and medicare, da biggest "socialist" deficit programs ." The first thing on the agenda when they come back will be how much to extend the Bush tax cuts that John McCain decribed as irresponsible. The debate will be to how much to increase the debt, either by $3.2 billion, by only extending cuts up to those making >$250K/yr or by $4 billion by extending to everyone. No one is talking about cutting government spending, providing real leadership on the deficit, or making the tough choices that need to be made to bring fiscal sa

"What's more, there's nothing to insure that a ruling won't be overbroad or muddled enough to effectively limit or prevent "local option," at least not without many years of expensive litigation. There's no reason at all to believe things will simply and smoothly revert to local option. " I agree 100% which is why the BSA should strongly consider voluntarily implementing the local option without being forced by the courts. I believe there would be a sufficient number of COs that would not exclude openly gay leaders that if one wanted to join there would be a unit available to them. Just

I agree local option would kick in as it did for women. It would have no effect on those units that did not want to have "avowed" homosexuals as a part of their adult leadership, just as those units that do not want women as adults leaders are free to do so. For those units that really wanted to stay with the BSA and not have gay leaders there would be no changes to their program, if that's what they wanted. However, there would be some COs and units that would be sufficiently upset that they would drop their charters. And I suspect that there would also be an effort to start a new, pr

On my son's college application there was a place for "other awards and recognition" where he listed his Eagle. He also included his experiences working at the council camp in his essay. He used the generic online application accepted by many large institutions. His acceptance letter from an out of state, state university where several thousand applications are processed each year, included a hand written acknowledgement of his leadership experience. I'm certain the Eagle was noticed. My nephew, also an Eagle in another state, applied for a college internship at one of the state a

"is there an appropriate time for a registered member or leader to NOT wear the uniform at an ECOH?" At my son's ECOH I did not wear my uniform, I wore a jacket and tie. Why? Because I wanted to be there as a parent, not a scouter. I did not wear my Eagle medal either, because I wanted the focus to be on my son's accomplishment. My son did invite, his HS Science teacher to the COH. He work a jacket and tie, and his Eagle Medal. In his case, I was very happy to see him wear it. Among other things, it suprised and impressed many of the scouts and other HS students that were there

To get back to the original question: I suppose if Barney Frank were to do the kind of about face that Ken Mehlman pulled I'd have to reconsider my opinion. I mean if Barney were to stand up in front of the national media and say, "Yep, I'm ashamed. I've chosen to live an immoral lifestyle all my life and now I change my mind. I'm going desire women from now on and will support the revocation of gay marriage laws." If he did that, I'd reconsider. (Note some sarcasm and probably poor attempt at humor.) SA

Just so all can stay up with current events. SA http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100826/pl_yblog_upshot/former-bush-campaign-manager-flips-on-gay-marriage

Seems like most folks regard entitlements are something someone else gets. If it's a government program they take advantage of it's a needed service or tax incentive. The middle class see TARP, and corporate bailouts as socialist entitlements. The young see Social Security and Medicare that way. Since most people take advantage of public education or thier facilities at some point, most don't seen that as an entitlement. If one really examined government socialist like programs one would really need to include: Social Security Medicare Mortgage interest deductions Uninsur

Yes, I read the comments. Really liked the article and thought it was very positive for scouting overall. The comments though demonstrate the amount of misinformation out there that is probably hurting the image of the BSA. We need more articles like this one, and more importantly more adult leaders willing to serve youth like described in the article. SA

Congratulations Pack. I'm jealous. If I win the lottery keep an eye on the horizon for a Sabre 362. That will be me and the Admiral coming for a visit. SA

Just curious. How many who took calculus in college can solve even a simple problem two years after graduation? I can still tie all the required scout knots, nearly 40 years after initially learning them. But don't ask me to solve even the most simple calculus problem. As a sailor I use the knots regularly. Calculus not so much. SA

"To be honest I can't think of any teachers who ever volunteered on their own time to help a scout unit, even when da school itself was the CO. " Then you never met my son's HS Science teacher, Eagle scout and drama coach who my son chose to give his mentor pin to and showed up at his ECOH proudly wearing his Eagle medal in front of dozens of my son's HS friends who showed up for the ceremony and helped on his Eagle project. Nor have you met my son's wrestling coach or my Jr. HS Band leader also Eagle scouts that would occaisonally help out, or the several teachers and public school empl

Bet they do a background check to find out one of these guys is a member of BSA to prove he's not Gay. SA

If one reads and understands Merlyn's posts, you'll see he has no objection to BSA units having the same access to public school facilities, parks etc. as any other private group does. SA

"Now IF the files should happen to contain information about incidents that were not reported to local law enforcement or were not otherwise legally settled, THEN you'd be looking at a cover up, and the BSA would deserve everything that came its way as a result, and I would expect some major internal reforms to come from that." Not reporting to law enforcement is not necesarrily a cover up IMO. Transferring a camp staffer to a different camp after a reported incident is a cover up, but I dont' see the BSA doing that. The BSA is not a public school. It is a private organization. It may

I agree that the invitee does not have to show up to a meeting or scout function to be considered invited and the mere invitation would be sufficient. That being said, in absence of the invitee showing up, I don't think it's unreasonable for an SM or other person authorized to approve of advancement to ask for a copy of an e-mail, letter or invitation documenting that a scout has invited a friend to join or rejoin. SA

Agree with the above. Scope of this project would have been approved in my council as well...unless as others have noted, this is a private camp that occaisionally lends it facilities out to others. If that is the case it would be a no go. A private summer camp that occaisionally does good deeds is no more eligible for an Eagle project than Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. Both do good deeds but are fundamentally private, for profit concerns. SA

"JoeBob, are you seriously suggesting that many people intentionally opt not to buy insurance (when they could otherwise afford to buy it), just because they can get emergency care in public hospitals even without insurance? " Actually I do know folks in this category, or I did until MA required that they buy insurance. Most were single, self-employed or employed with an employer that did not provide health insurance. In this category, purchasing an individual policy was prohibitively expensive. Particularly when the option of free or near free care was available at several municipal h

Well the Republican Health Care Plan put into place here in Massachusetts by Republican Governor Mitt Romney and supported by Republican State Rep. now Republican Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, requires all adults to purchase Health insurance, and show evidence thereof annually, or pay a fine. To be fair, this plan could not have been put in place without state Democratic legislature support, but the concept of forced purchase of health insurance was initially in Mitt Romney's plan when it was proposed to the legislature. It's been in place now for several years, and I'm sure if a

" I wonder if James Dale might have initially simply accepted the decision as part of life, and gone on without a challenge?" And as scouters would we really expect that from someone who has earned scouting's highest honor as a youth? If your challenged, meekly accept the result and move on? Give up? SA