scoutingagain

"the might democrats will slay the wolf and lower the principle or forgive what is overdue."

Funny because this is exactly what John McCain said he would do if he was President in last night's debate. I have no doubt that an Obama administration would do something similar as ultimately the loans will have to be renegotiated by someone to allow people to pay what they can pay, not necessarily what they agreed to pay which they can't pay anyway. Lenders will get something at least, but not what they expected. Kind of like what we'll get out of Social Security.

Some banks are beginning to do this on their own recognizing they may be able to get a better deal from individual homeowners than signing up with the government regardless of who wins the election. I just read where home sales were up in August over the same period last year in several of the most depressed markets. This is good because it will begin to put a floor on the value of those homes subject to renegotiation. Banks and lenders are more likely to renegotiate loans once they have a better idea of what the value really is of the underlying asset. Bank of America has already started this. They're option is to otherwise wait until the government makes them an offer.

Any guesses on how much of our money the Bush administration will be paying for these distressed loans to they're buddies in the banking industry? I have no doubt whatsoever that executives at the most distressed banks that will need to go to the government are sitting around with their lawyers and accountants trying to figure out how to game the system and figuring out how to put our money into their pockets. All you have to do is look at the testimony of the last few days from Lehman Bros. and AIG. Someone who really is a pitbull towards the banking industry needs to oversee this or it could end up being the biggest government give away of public funds of all time.

Given the increase in home sales in August and the decline in oil prices, I think the bottom is closer than we think and recovery will begin sooner than most expect. The collective media hype is probably blowing this up more than it otherwise would and the negativity ends up feeding on itself. Keep thinking Little Orphan Annie. "The sun will come out tomorrow...." I could be wrong though.

Me I'm reallocating a portion of my 401k into high quality dividend stocks. I'll either actually get to retire or end up working at scout camps until I'm 85. I may do that anyway.

SA

"Did the elimination of being able to deduct interest other than mortgage interest reduce people's debt? Nope! "

It didn't eliminate debt, but it encourged folks to transfer that debt to their homes.

The government should encourage people to buy and own a home, not leverage it.

Lisa,

Those folks have already taken their hit. They are not being effected as much by this "crisis". They're in the group that probably didn't have a 401K and probably didn't own their own home. In that sense they havn't lost much. I suspect many of the folks our congressman are hearing from about the so called "bailout" may fall into this category or are close enough to it they don't see much of a downside risk. They may be right.

This is a "crisis" because the "haves" are losing what they have. Not because the "have nots" are losing something they didn't have. As I said before, the loss of over 200,000 manufacturing jobs, over the last 8 years was not a crisis. The foreclosure of thousands of homes was not a crisis. Maybe to the individuals involved, but not to this government.

The loss of several thousand investment banking and mortgage broker jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of stockholder equity apparently is.

SA

"My husband has a pension and we will have social security"

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but your husband's pension was probably invested in the stock market. And hopefully the pension fund manager was not too heavily invested in financial stocks or any of the exotic mortgage instruments largely responsible for this mess. And as far as social security goes...if anyone believes those statements they get...well there's a bridge in brooklyn for sale. At the same time there will be something in social security, it won't be nothing. Worst case scenario is it returns to a pay as you go system where 14% of the national payroll is distributed to everyone recieving social security, but that will not likely be enough to meet the pie in the sky projections the system is promising.

Those folks in their 30's are probably in better shape than those of us approaching retirement in 10 years or so. They will have time for the markets to recover and will likely see a healthy return on their investments over the next 30-35 years. Over the next 10 years, those of use in our 50's and 60's will be fortunate to have our 401Ks earn back what they've lost in the last 12 months.

At the same time ScoutMom, you probably are in better shape than many folks.

Due to this mess, we will all likely have less over the next 10-15 years than we expected. Our investments will not meet the projections all those financial advisors showed us. Social Security payments will likely be less than what we've been lead to believe. Many of us may be out or work for a period of time in the near term and if we return to the workforce will likely end up with a salary reduction. That's the good news.

Many of us had no 401k or if we did it was woefully under funded. Most of us don't have a pension to look forward to and those that do may not get all the benefits they were promised. Many people who currently have jobs and are making their mortgage payments may lose their homes if they do lose their job. This whole thing will get worse before it get's better.

Some slivers of hope that I see are. Housing and energy prices are falling quickly. This will allow the housing market to recover quicker than if prices stayed high. We need to turn over the backlog of houses so new home buyers return to the Home Depots, Walmarts and furniture stores. The lower cost of energy, particulary gas, will provide those that do have jobs some extra cash to spend or at least pay down debt. Gas is down to nearly $3.25/gal here and headed lower. One wildcard in interest rates. If all the government borrowing that will need to be done competes with others in a tighter lending market, interest rates could rise signigicantly, impeding any kind of economic recovery.

A side note; Our perverted tax system encourages us to borrow against our homes by giving a deduction on mortgage interest. Elimination of this perversion would have the effect of lowering housing prices and encouraging people to pay off their homes. The way things are now the government encourages home owners to leverage their home equity. How sick is that.

And it probably doesn't matter a heck of a lot as to who wins the election. The markets will do what they do, and there really is not much the government can do to influence them, short of nationalizing the economy in the old Soviet model, and we all know how that worked out. Scarily this $700 billion bailout is a step in that direction.

Good thing we scouters, know how to live in a tent.

SA

I'll go with the consensus here. Palin exceeded the minimal expectations and probably saved her polital future. I doubt she did much for the current campaign though. Biden did a little better I thought. But I continue to find it annoying when candidates don't answer the question and then ramble on about a different topic. All of them do it and I find I want to hear the answer to the question not, "That's an interesting question but let's talk about energy, taxes, the war, or any other topic other than the question because I don't have an answer the public wants to hear."

I will give Palin credit, at least she flat out told us she would talk about what she wanted to talk about and didn't care about the questions.

The one policy issue I had with Palin and I wish the moderator had followed up, was when she said she didn't believe mankind was responsible for global warming. (Which is not consistent with McCain's position.) But she would support controls on carbon emmisions. That just doesn't seem to make much sense.

SA

Like it or not the solution is to live within our means, as individuals and as a country. Those that continue to live beyond their means will suffer more and make it tougher on the rest of us as they line up for more and more government bailouts and entitlements. Unfortunately there is no other answer. The pain can be delayed through more borrowing, but somewhere, someplace at sometime we will need to pay up. And real people will suffer lost jobs and a lower standard of living.

Yes things are different but, the fundamentals of the free market have not changed.

BUT here are the differences:

housing as a percent of wages was much lower then.

True, but housing prices are dropping dramatically. Bad if you bought a home a few years ago. But as I noted earlier, a relative just bought a house she never could have afforded 2 years ago. Falling home prices will make homes more affordable.

credit was not as prevalent and easily available.

And it shouldn't be. Tightening credit will help prevent a relapse of the current mess. Credit should not be as available as it was or is(Heck I still get probably a dozen credit card offers a month.) Savy lenders should only lend to those that have reasonable propects of paying off the loan. When I bought my house you had to have 20% to put in as a down payment. No, interest only, ARM, balloon payment nonsense.

People didn't lease cars and later if they did it was for tax reasons, not because they couldnt really afford the car they drove.

90% of the people I know drive more car than they need. T

Monthly expenses did not include cable tv, cell phones, internet service, etc.

cable-v is certainly not a necessity, same with cell phones. Intenet, possibly. In today's world to not be connected makes it nearly impossible to even search for a job.

Utility bills were not approaching $500/month.

True. But this is a fact of life. As John McCain said, " Life isn't fair." Energy costs will be higher, period.

Property taxes/home fees did not include Mello Roos fees, HOA fees, etc.

True, but government provided far fewer services and doesn't need to do as much as it does at all levels. No matter who is elected, for President, Governor or Mayor, they will have to figure out how to manage government with less $$$. Massachusetts had a $200 million shortfall in August alone. Governor has cut agency budgets by 7% across the board. The last time they did this, I didn't notice anything was missing. The line at the DMV was a bit longer.

School sports were a part of SCHOOL, not extra. If you have your kids in 2 sports per year, you are probably spending another $300/year minimum that used to be included in school costs.

True and this is unfortunate. But teams didn't have pro-athlete like facilities either like I've seen at some public high schools.

Unfortunately there is no other answer other than to live within our means. The pain can be delayed through more borrowing, but somewhere, someplace at sometime we will need to pay up. And real people will suffer lost jobs and a lower standard of living. This is not punishing folks, this is just the way it is. We lived a higher standard of living than we can afford for the last 20-30 years.

SA

Thanks for the explanations folks. As I suspected they are more insightful than what I've been able to find in the media, expecially the electronic media.

I'm still skeptical though. Listened to NPR yesterday and several economists interviewed said the worst case scenario is bad, but not end of the world as we know it bad, but a recession, bad enough where we would feel it. Others interviewed seemed to think worst case would be a long deep recession. Worse than anything we've seen since the depression.

It seems as if congress will pass this bailout/rescue though. Why I don't know. If it was a bad plan to begin with, I don't see how adding a few hundred billion in tax breaks makes it better or increasing the government's liability through the FDIC. If anything it makes the bill even worse.

I tend to agree with Beav and Pack. This is a short term fix that delays the inevitable. There are long term consequences to borrowing all that money, better to take a near term hit now than delay something worse in 10 years or so. To believe we can somehow work our way out of this without some major economic pain one way or the other seems naive.

SA

Yea, a credit "freeze". The thing is I don't see a freeze. At least not yet. An aquaintence I know bought a car yesterday. Got approval for a loan to buy a car. A relative bought a house last week. Got approved for a mortgage. Not some way out interest only no downpayment mortgage though, a 20% down, straight fixed rate mortgage on a house they never could have afforded a year ago.

As the saying goes if you don't need a loan someone will still loan you money. From what I've read many of the small local banks are doing fine, because they didn't get sucked into the wirlwind of the exotic trades and instruments being bought and sold by the big guys.

I'm open to an explanation as to why this fix is needed and I'll probably get a better one here than "This sucker could go down."

SA

SA

As I said earlier the longer this goes the more I'm convinced the government should stay out of it. Other than telling us "This sucker could go down." and we need to avert a financial "crisis." No one in our so called leadership has explained to the American people why this money is needed other than to prevent a "financial meltdown." Whatever that is.

If they can't explain it in terms people can understand, they don't deserve it.

As far as I can tell we're into this mess because too many people borrowed money they can't pay back from people who apparrently didn't have enough money or sense to be lending it to them in the first place. Now the answer our leaders come up with is to have the government borrow more money to allocate to these fools and spread the risk to the rest of us. Let the stockholders & CEOs take their licks first.

Then we can talk about government intervention and if it's needed.

SA

"Citigroup just bought Wachovia banking operations for $1 per share." ...

And will get to shed the bogus loans that got them into trouble to us the taxpayers or have us insure insure the bad loans. Either way we have volunteered through our elected officials to offer massive risk mitigation to the private financial sector.

As has been said. "What a country!"

SA

The more I read, hear, see about this fiasco the more I become convinced we're better off with the government staying out of it and letting the chips fall where they may. I'm convinced anything the government would do as run by the current bunch of yahoos from either party would mess things up even more than what the natural market reactions will be.

The Dow was up over 1% today. No one can tell me the markets up because they have confidence in any government plan. It's up because collectively investors are seeing the entire sky won't fall, the sun will come up tomorrow, while many have lost money, many others wake up and go to work, pay their bills and life goes on.

I'm growing convinced this is a "crisis" because rich people with access to the powers that be in Washington from either party are losing their jobs and money and want someone to bail them out. It wasn't a crisis when people were losing their homes. In the last 8 years we've lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in this country representing billions maybe trillions of dollars in payrolls. That wasn't a crisis. Those people were told, tough luck. Suck it up. Find something else to do. Flip burgers or something. They didn't have the option of calling their congressman, senator, president and saying can you help me out here.

I have no problem admitting I'm more cynical now than I think I've ever been.

SA

BW has it correct I think. As usual. The point of having a single, nationally recognized name is so the course is just that, recognized for what it is throughout the country both inside and outside scouting.

Do you think the Eagle Scout Rank would have the cache' that it does if some councils awarded Eagle, others Falcon, others Lion or whatever? My son listed National Youth Leadership Training on his college applications. The school he chose to go to specifically complimented him on that training and his Eagle scout in his acceptance letter. If he had listed Beaver training or other name, they would not have known what he was talking about.

SA

"CIT's only got room and board. "

LOL . Our CIT's known as Lead Scouts, PAY THE CAMP $300 for privilege of being a staff member in training and essentially doing all the same things as paid staff do.

BTW, there are usually more boys who sign up and are willing to PAY to be trained and spend the summer at camp working without pay than there are slots available.

SA

I had to read MSchwartz's profile. I was certain he/she was with the unit I serve. We did the exact same excercise 20mi. to the south. Dummy from the fire station and all with the identical results.

SA

I suppose it all depends on the criteria used. I find it a bit disconserting that the criteria seem to be closely aligned with what I suspect are incentive goals for DEs. Membership, advancement, popcorn sales, etc.

I'd rather see criteria like, miles hiked/scout, miles backpacked/scout, camping nights/scout, backpacking camp nights/scout, Miles paddled/scout. High Adventure trips per patrol, etc. For Kudu, maybe a criteria for Patrol nights camped > 300ft from an adult .

SA

BW,

Do you really believe no SE or a Council Board has ever made a business decision that has not been influenced by his or their personal feelings regarding those involved in the decision?

I would agree this is not the norm and don't mean to suggest it is, but I'm sure it happens with some degree of frequency. I believe SE's on the whole are a decent respectable bunch, but no more so than executives in other organizations.

SA

BW,

My point was that business decisions are made based on many different parameters, not just profit/loss or efficiency. Personal relationships often are included in the evaluation

process.

SA

BW is most likely correct. The number of councils, sizes, locations, staffing etc. are simple business decisions.

"A business decision based on a combination of population density, geographic boundaries, and financial feasability."

True, but business decisions are often based on many more parameters than just the above. Things like, a national exec's daughter might be married to the council executive, his nephews say are employed by the council summer camp, the council exec is a really good golf player, etc. all come into play as well. I'm sure GM has automobile factories they keep open for what seems like no logical reason to some.

SA

"I accept BobWhite's premise, but I can't convince anyone on the Disitrct Advancement Committee, where I have been since 2001, that an Eagle Project is not a scouting activity."

I agree and could say the same thing about my District and the fact that it does cause so much consternation among many on the forum, who for the most part are probably more than casual volunteers indicates to me that what we have here is a failure to communicate, in spite of all the readily available, easily understood program documents and training.

So to reiterate OGE's question, why is that? what needs to change or are we volunteers just too dumb & ingnorant to understand the simple and easily understood requirements of the BSA?

In my mind, having all the documents related to program delivery posted on the BSA website, keyword and topic searchable would be a start. Consolodating documents related to program delivery would be another. What is in the "Advancement Committee Policies and Procedures Manual" that couldn't be included in the SM Handbook or other documents intended for unit level volunteers?

Don't tell me the current system is fine. I think we've shown it doesn't work.

The national website is slowly posting more information and that's a plus. The Advancement Requirements are a good example.

SA

Pack212,

Yes the Government may limit access to certain services but the point is to modify your statement at bit, " The list goes on and on, but the jist is that the GOVERNMENT is ALWAYS making a decision on which part of the population a program is aimed at. " It's the government's money and they get to make the call, not the enterprise that administers the program. If the BSA wants to accept government funding, expect to be told, who should be allowed to participate in BSA programs.

SA

"To my way of thinking, Mr Obama said a sound bite that needs close interpretation."

I wouldn't worry too much about parsing the words of a candidate for national office. They are more than likely to be different either tomorrow or next month.

SA

Gunny I appreciate the response. My point was that this issue, like many BSA policy and procedures issues is not fully documented in any one easily accessible source. Different documents use different phrases to describe the same intent.

Bob White does a good job of explaining these many documents and what their intent is. I can rephrase my statement earlier regarding confusion and apply it to the average adult volunteer. Even those that take basic training.

Even after a decent explanation, there still seems to be confusion as to when it is or isn't appropriate for a scout to wear his uniform when working on his Eagle Scout service project. While I accept and understand BW's explanation, I also know what my District Advancement Chair likes to see, and that's scouts wearing uniforms, or activity shirts when either working on a project or when an Eagle candidate is presenting the project to those "outside the sphere of scouting."

So I'm not saying I'm confused. I'm saying like many other aspects of BSA policies and procedures I see plenty of different interpretations, even by those one would expect to have a full understanding.

SA

One person's "common sense" is another's special interest.

As one with a generally Libertarian outlook I don't see why the Government should be funding the BSA, GSUSA, Country Clubs, the Knights of Columbus, or any other private organization. If your going to be private, be private. Don't expect to accept government funding without strings attached. Ask the Catholic Charities that accept Federal funding. Ask any contractor that works for the government. Ask anyone who recieves government grants.

The public means all of the public. Not just the part of it an organization chooses to serve.

SA

Thank you for the clarification BW. Very clearly put.

In this thread however, no fewer than 5 different references have been provided by at least three different involved and experienced scouters, all relating to this one description of what an Eagle Scout Project is or isn't.

Is it any wonder a 15-17 year old youth might get confused about the process.

SA

While I concurr with many of the sentiments expressed, I must admit to a selfish reason for signing on as an adult. The primary reason was to assist to the best of my ability to help the unit provide the best possible scouting experience for my son. As one of the few adults who were involved in the unit that had had previous scouting experience I saw where I could help a unit that was struggling a bit.

Since signing up, my son has Eagled/Aged out and is off to college in the fall. I continue to be involved with the unit for many of the reasons expressed, not the least of which is the adult association expressed by John-in-KC. Over the years of camping, hiking and dealing with challenges I have grown close to a number of other men & women who I find share similar outdoor interests and values, expecially their commitment to youth and their children.

SA

When you remember when engine size was measured in cubic inches.

When you thought gas at $0.50/gal seemed outragous.

When you remember when there were no Mets, the baseball team in Philly was the Athletics and in Milwaulkee the Braves, and Pittsburgh was a baseball town.

SA