Conservation Rangers

I notice that this site is running an advertisement for one of the law firms seeking clients to sue BSA.    It begins,  "The Boys Scouts of America didn't uphold their promise, but we will."

The express promise of some of these lawyers is to destroy BSA.

"Scoutmaster" from "headmaster."  The real mistake is "leader" if you believe in the Patrol method as defined by Bill Hillcourt. where youth leads and adults advise.  

It is not a black and white issue. 

Briefly, the more control that a franchisor  exerts over a franchisee and the more that the franchisee can legally bind the franchisor, the more the franchisee looks like a division of the franchisor instead of a separate entity.  Conversely, the more independence a franchisee demonstrates, the more it looks independent, rather than being a division of the franchisor.

In Golden Spread Council, Inc. # 562 of the Boy Scouts of America v. Akins, 926 S.W.2d 287 (Tex.1996),  the Texas Supreme Court considered whether the National Boy Scouts of America (BSA) could be held vicariously liable for the tortious acts of a Scouter (child molestation during Scout activities) who was, at the time employed by a local troop chartering organization as Scoutmaster.  The court applied the standard master-servant relationship test [which comes down to control of the work], but ultimately concluded that BSA had insufficient control to warrant vicarious liability. (The Council was held subject to trial for its own actions in recommending the molester to the chartering organization despite prior reports of child molestation by the molester.)

Interesting document filed on behalf of BSA in bankruptcy.

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/805684_21.pdf

 "Volunteer Learning Management Services "

" When you get a mob in front of you shrieking and pulling at sticks and shield, people become an enemy."

They became the enemy when they began attacking.   Mobs are neither reasonable, peaceful, or constructive.

Whether the State can loose and bind
   In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
  Before or after the birth--
These are matters of high concern
   Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
    Endeth in Holy War.

Whether The People be led by The Lord,
    Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
  Or cheaper to die by vote--
These are things we have dealt with once,
  (And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
  Endeth in wholly Slave.

Whatsoever, for any cause,
    Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
    Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King--
   Or Holy People's Will--
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
   Order the guns and kill!
        Saying --after--me:--

Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, 0 ye slain!
Once there was The People--it shall never be again!

11 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

Any government employee who is proven to have violated civil rights should be removed from his or her government position and prosecuted. So cops should be fired and prosecuted if they violate someone's civil rights - when it is legally established that they are guilty of such actions = due process.

 The civil rights protected include the right to peacefully protest AND the right to be protected from criminal acts when the police have knowledge of those acts.

 When government, for reasons of hope for political gain, sloth, or incompetence allows mobs to riot, loot, injure and kill, it is time to change the government leaders by any means necessary and to invoke the natural right of self-defense.

  [emphasis added]

"But"?

Any government employee who is proven to have violated civil rights should be removed from his or her government position and prosecuted. So cops should be fired and prosecuted if they violate someone's civil rights - when it is legally established that they are guilty of such actions = due process.

 The civil rights protected include the right to peacefully protest AND the right to be protected from criminal acts when the police have knowledge of those acts.

 When government, for reasons of hope for political gain, sloth, or incompetence allows mobs to riot, loot, injure and kill, it is time to change the government leaders by any means necessary and to invoke the natural right of self-defense.

 106 shot, including slain 3-year-old boy, in violent Chicago Father’s Day weekend.

Wisconsin officials condemn violence after chaos grips Capitol, state senator shares video of alleged attack on him by rioters.

State Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, was walking to the Capitol building late Tuesday when he encountered the protesters and began recording them. Carpenter said that he was “assaulted and beat up” by eight to 10 people as he took the video. He shared the 11-second footage on Twitter: "I took this pic- it got me assaulted & beat up. Punched/kicked in the head, neck, ribs. Maybe concussion, socked in left eye is little blurry, sore neck & ribs. 8-10 people attacked me. Innocent people are going to get killed. Capitol locked- stuck in office.Stop violence nowPlz!"

Wisconsin [Democtatic] Gov. Tony Evers activated the National Guard on Wednesday after protesters toppled two statues, vandalized buildings and a state senator was attacked outside the Capitol during a night of violence that erupted following daylong protests.

"106 shot, including slain 3-year-old boy, in violent Chicago Father’s Day weekend"

"Teen boy suspected of shooting 8-year-old girl in East Cleveland in 'drive-by.'"

Baltimore Police: Seven people shot, two fatally in 24-hour span.

"Homicides in the city [Baltimore] continue to outpace last year’s record per-capita homicide rate. Prior to the fatal shooting Thursday morning, police reported a total of 142 homicides so far this year compared with 135 at the same time last year.

Non-fatal shootings are down in 2020. As of Thursday morning, there had been 256 in the city this year compared with 303 at the same point in 2019.

2019 ended with a total of 348 homicides, the fifth consecutive year with more than 300 murders."

Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome joined "The Story" Wednesday to discuss the direction of the movement in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody and the subsequent demonstrations across the country, many of which have sparked destruction and violence.

"You ... have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations," host Martha MacCallum told Newsome. "What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?"

..,.

"I said," Newsome told the host, "if this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking ... figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It's a matter of interpretation."

It "means" that when there is a reversion on cessation of a stated required use, the property immediately belongs to the grantor or the grantors estate, not the bankrupt grantee, and the property is not subject to being used to satisfy creditors of the bankrupt grantee   This outcome is quite predictable on general property law principles.

Ah, yes.  "Reversions"  Under such arrangements, BSA does not have title, only a possessory  interest for the stated purpose. 

"Transferring Property on Condition

A reversionary interest is created when a deed provides that the property transfer is “on condition that” or “only for so long as” the property described in the deed is used, or not used, for certain purposes. The reservation of a reversionary interest in a deed gives the original owner (and the owner’s heirs, successors and assigns) a powerful tool to take the land back if promises about future land use are broken.

See, In re Sojourner Douglas College, Inc. ex rel. Trustee v. Charles R. Goldstein, Trustee, et al., Adversary No. 18-00226, United States Bankruptcy Court for the Dist. of Maryland (2019)

it's been years.

Is a "Trek Leader" an adult who advised the youth leaders of a crew? FKA "Crew Adviser)?""

"Youth Positions

THE IRS HAS BEEN SYSTEMICALLY DEFUNDED OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS.  ITS "LEGACY" COMPUTERS AND SOFTWARE CANNOT KEEP TRACK OF NUMBERS, CANNOT APPLY THE LAW, AND CANNOT DO THE ARITHMETIC.

Since November, 2018, we have received a series of bizarre and internally contradictory  communications from IRS automated systems.  For the most part, those systems act autonomously.  One series of three bills entitled  "CP2000" made an error of 2x our total income in favor of the Government, made an error of $3,600 in our favor, made rounding errors on every single number ending in $.50 or above, sent us an additional refund, and proposed an additional refund while accusing us of underreporting income by over $2,000.  The IRS employees were uniformly polite, except the punk IRS  lawyer who assumes anyone questioning IRS  claims is a "tax protester" - the aluminum foil hat crowd.  IRS was running over a year behind on much of its work before the G dumped this "stimulus" check wealth transfer on them.

My point?  Tax enforcement will continue to deteriorate both in volume, timeliness, and accuracy.

The only IRS "center" left that processes paper returns is due to close in 2022, even as private tax-preparation software gets less and less reliable.  As it is, the scanners make many errors.

A Scout is thrifty.  He pays his own way.  

"Scouting does not accept charity - except when we do."

5 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

I've seen this comment repeated by many (especially on Facebook).  You may be talking about the Antifa protestors, which could be true, but this does not apply to the Black lives protestors.  Who is ignoring the other homicides? 

The media.  Oh there may be one headline, but thereafter crickets.  No political hay to be made out of hundreds of kids shooting hundreds of kids.  Civilian shootings in NYC up 400% over same period last year.   On May 25th in neighboring Claveland, the murder capital of our state, a 17 year old refugee from the Cngo was shot to death whenn stopped at a light (on the way from soccer practice)  and dumped in the road by a guy fleeing form murdering a 31-year-old Black male.  No coverage in the last 26 days.  Just not "news."

Many of the protestors are from inner city churches who also march after murders.  Others run or work with non profits who are working with youth in the inner city (from Boys & Girls clubs to many others).    I question people who think that few in the community are not attempting to help.  I have personally donated time and money to organizations in the inner city near me and see that people are not ignoring the problem.  

OK.  Sounds right.  The relatives morn, but not as important politically  as one multiple felon shot in Atlanta after he turns and fires a device at  the cop which the same prosecutor called a "deadly weapon" when cops used it on "students."  See, it all depends.  Cops use it= "deadly".  Fleeing felon uses it on cop after already feloniously  attacking cops = not deadly.  That's what we called "selective enforcement" when representing Blacks similarly prosecuted in the day. 

 

The felon was arrested in Ohio after fleeing Georgia to avoid prosecution for a violent felony.  He has convictions for battery against children. In Georgia, being intexicated while in control of an operable motor vehicle is "drunk driving."  He preferred to attack two cops, giving one a concussion, and threaten the other with - lets just call it a "weapin" - to an arrest that had implications for his parolee status .  The heroic prosecutor is facing multiple counts of theft in office.  

I think anyone in this thread who are against the police reform  and would rather help community organizations helping to reduce civilian-on-civilian homicides could donate their time/money to many worthy causes.  You could also help a Troop or Cub Scout pack start up (or Trail Life unit).   For example, here is a list of organizations out of Chicago.  Most cities have many different organizations working on violence prevention.

I am all for police reform.  I am also in favor of reforming something so thousands of civilians are not murdered annually by other civilians.  I regard you as just as dead when mowed down in a random drive-by as when shot by a cop.   Meanwhile in Minneapolis:   11 people shot, 1 person dead in overnight shooting spree."  What was that slogan about lives?

5 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

https://abc7chicago.com/stop-the-violence-resources-chicago-in/3894299/

I would ask … when you look at this list, how could you claim that they are "... ignoring the several orders of magnitude greater rates of civilian-on-civilian homicides...".  Most if not all of those organizations' primary focus has nothing to do with police violence.  When I see this type of comment, it is as ignorant as saying all NASCAR fans are racist since a noose was found in Bubba Wallace's garage.

If you think the "focus" regarding violence is on civilians shooting civilians, I emphatically disagree.  Shall we review the top headlines on shootings?  I'm game.

"Ignorant"?  Swell,  Eagle.  Did you march with Doctor King.  I did.   It was an adrenaline moment.  In 1971,  I had my only suit torn apart and my nose bloodied keeping the Young American's For Freedom - real right wing nut jobs - from riding William Kunstler out of town on a rail when he spoke in Columbus at the Ohio State Law school raising money so the Black Panthers could buy firearms.  They also had tar and feathers for Kunsler.    I didn't like him much, but I liked freedom of speech.

2013 Annual Financial Report, Note 9

The National Council has been named as a defendant in several lawsuits alleging inappropriate conduct by local council employees or Scouting unit volunteers, including allegations of conduct that did not occur within Scouting and allegations of incidents dating back as far as the early 1960s. The National Council is also aware of threatened and expanding litigation of a similar nature. Most of the cases claim specific amounts of compensatory damages and, in a few cases, unspecified amounts of punitive damages.

There continue to be additional lawsuits filed alleging sexual abuse, including claims for punitive damages. The National Council could be required to pay damages beyond those amounts out of its own funds to the extent the claims are not covered by insurance or if the insurance carriers are unable or unwilling to honor the claims.

Based upon the nature of and management’s understanding of the facts and circumstances that give rise to such actions and claims, management believes the reserves established by the General Liability Insurance Program of the National Council are sufficient to provide for the resolution of these lawsuits and, where not covered by the General Liability Insurance Program or its reserves, it is the opinion of the National Council that the total amount of payments in resolution of those lawsuits will not have a significant impact on the financial position or results of operations of the National Council.

POPULAR WBGV BUMPER STICKER: ""Earth First! We'll Strip Mine the Other Planets Later."

Part of SBR is "repurposed" coal strip mine.  "The Scouts bought the land from Meadow Creek Coal Co. for several million dollars, Hartley said. " 

The acreage thus being repurposed from a surface coal strip mine has been variously described, from the Reservation being "located on" a former strip mine  (BSA: "strip-mine-turned-Scout-camp")  to only 1500 acres (about 14%)  being former strip mine.

Such sites  routinely create acidic water pollution as runoff leaches sulfur from coal-bearing strata exposed by strip mining , creating sulfuric acid.  In West Virginia, coal strip mining consists of tearing the tops off mountains and hills ("overburden") to expose the coal strata to surface mining.  Remediation consists of covering the exposed strata with sufficient soil and rock of the right sort to actually prevent water from reaching the coal-bearing strata exposed by the strip-mining.

From my modest experience dealing with CERCLA litigation, a site becomes a "Superfund site" under CERCLA with unlimited liability for owners and contributors when the EPA decides it is one.  Politics is involved to a considerable degree.  Often the persons and entities who created the environmental problems are decades gone, leaving the owner(s)  or minor contributors with total liability to the extent of their asssets  

A land owner can attempt to escape liability for remediation by  qualifying as an "Innocent Landowner" ("ILO") under amendments to CIRCLA   https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-08/documents/common-elements-guide-mem-2019.pdf  One requirement for ILO status is that the landowner has disposed of NO hazardous materials on the site since become the owner.  A client was denied ILO status because it was proved that an employee buried five "empty" aerosol spray paint cans on the 500 acre property property. - a former sand quarry used for decades for disposal of millions of cubic feet of hazardous industrial waste, such as paint sludge, dry cleaning sludge, and metal acid etching bath sludge.  The client, with no political clout,  entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy (liquidation).

An innocent prospective purchaser unaffiliated with the current owner may receive a waiver of potential liability.  (The prospective purchaser, thus encouraged, can, thus, provide funds to be taken from the owner.)

None of the above is legal advice or may be taken as legal advice.

"Virtue signaling" is a vendor of luxury vacations which I have never heard of  sending me an ad in which he asserts "We are all in this together."  Or decrying the mind-rending but statistically minor killing of civilians by Police while ignoring the several orders of magnitude greater rates of civilian-on-civilian homicides, typically of like-on-like.  

1 hour ago, ALongWalk said:

Hate to think negative but I think this means the BSA is going to have less than 4 high adventure bases sooner rather than later.

However buys Summit "buys" with it the potential Super Fund liability to "put the tops back on the mountains" - untold hundreds of $millions.

The nature of "virtue signaling" is hypocrisy.   

Throwing a rock through the window of some small business is about wealth and power?

Drive-by murders of fellow inhabitants of the "inner city"?  Children murdering children they do not know?

Hitting a 92-year-old woman in the face at random as you pass her on the sidewalk ?  The woman hit her head on a fire hydrant as she crashed to the sidewalk.   (Under New York's new "bail reform," the attacker was released OOR with an invitation to return to court in a few weeks.  He has 103 previous convictions, several for random violence against the elderly - like punching them in the face.  He may have mental problems.)

I do not propose a simple analysis or solution.  There is none.

Indian tribes waged wars of annihilation against other tribes.

in turn, Europeans were quite happy to kill Indians.

In the U.S., especially in California, the myth of the "Yellow Peril" led labor, farmers, conservatives and some  "progressives" to public office and resulted in laws barring immigration, naturalization of immigrants, or ownership of land by immigrants.   This atmosphere of hate and fear led to concentration camps for most anyone with as much as a single Japanese-born  great grandparent with the onset of WW II.  E

The Aztecs routinely cut the living hearts from prisoners from other ethnic groups.

The Han peoples crossing to what we think of as "Japan" attempted to exterminate the aboriginal Ainu.

The Tartars enslaved or murdered millions of ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, and Moldavian, mostly Christian, in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

Genghis Khan - the destroyer of civilizations.

HItler/Nazis, Russia, Poland, Muslims and the Jews.

Albania and the gjakmarrja

Serbians and Muslims.

Turks and Armenians

Our single race seems to have a built-in fear and hatred of the "other.," defined by skin pigmentation, religion, class, distance, or ???

And then we have the problem of violence with no rationalization whatsoever - in the U.S., civilians murder fellow civilians by the thousands.  "85 shot, 24 fatally, over Chicago’s most violent weekend of 2020."  Of course, these dead are just background noise to the political narrative.  Some count in the public discourse, and some do not.  

eBay?  It would be expensive to ship.

Note on Scout Service Center bulletin board?

Email fellow volunteers?

I have seen perhaps two Bakers in the last thirty years - both at a show-n-do.  

Ah, the old wind sock!   

https://www.walltentshop.com/products/baker-tent

https://theredtentcompany.com/baker-tents/family-baker-campfire-tent

3 hours ago, Sentinel947 said:

The Lakota had a significant period of time in Ohio, before they were forced to migrate by other hostile tribes. Not going to speak for @TAHAWK, but that might be why. 

On 6/15/2020 at 9:18 PM, InquisitiveScouter said:

 

Sorry about the look.  Site software problem.  Whatever I do, it takes me back to my first post today.

I was born in California and stayed there until I was twenty-two, except for 18 months in Canada and a Summer in Seattle.  

The Lakota told us their tribal tradition is that they once lived near the "Big River."

The Navajo, when we visited them,  told us their tradition was that, after they came up to this world from below, they crossed the White Lands, where there were white bears.