BS-87

What the... Is it just me, or has July just been a very unfortunate month for Scouts in Utah?

From: http://scouting.org/filestore/mission/JTE_FAQs-Unit.pdf 18. Should the silver award be higher than gold to match other hierarchy in the Boy Scout program? This was discussed by the task force, which decided that Journey to Excellence would be better understood by the majority of volunteersespecially new volunteersif the program followed the bronze, silver, gold sequence. Kind of a simple answer. The FAQ's on J2E are actually pretty helpful if you plan to take full advantage of the program. http://scouting.org/scoutsource/Awards/JourneyToExcellence.aspx

Looks like even Harvard agrees that loving America makes you a Republican. The more accurate study would probably lump Patriotic folk into the TEA Party. This doesn't mean they like voting Republican, it just means they feel compelled to vote against liberals. Liberals have been slowly killing us with socialism from interstates to mandates and welfare to bailouts. If you love America, you probably just don't like the idea of its most vital document being subverted and perversely interpreted by an ever-growing government.

Maybe even preschool and toddler sisters *GASP*

I think clemlaw just hit the nail on the head on how and why we should be using a "Lion" program or something like it. If you have boys with younger siblings (Kindergarten, Pre-School, Toddlers), they need a program too at Pack Meetings. If there are some simple activities for them to do at Pack meetings, they can earn some simple awards or at least have their pictures they colored held up for the crowd to see. What this also provides is a program for families of kindergarteners to bring their son to and watch everything that goes on in Cub Scouts before "taking the plunge" so to s

Is a reasonable compromise to use the little noodle things with a plunger type device inside where you suck up the water by drawing it back and then shoot it out by pushing the plunger back in? That seems nothing like a gun and would be much more fun probably. You may even be able to use it to talk about air pressure or water pressure for a belt loop or pin.

Please break it up into paragraphs Hawkrod... A block of text is impossible to read...

A good committee that meets regularly makes sure that the troop is never in crisis mode. (except for the rare and unavoidable instances) Yes, the troop should be boy-run in order to ensure that everything that the troop does is interesting to the boys, but the adult leadership of the troop, including the committee, needs to act like bumpers in bowling.

Your district advancement committee is not asking for too much. The guideline I know our district goes by is that if the scout fell violently ill on the day of his project, it should be laid out and planned so thoroughly that any shmuck could pick up the project book and lead the project. The object here isn't to discourage the Scout, the object is to give them a real and applied understanding of what's required to undertake a project in the community. It's a valuable skill that can only be learned by doing, and we want to know every single Eagle Scout is both able and willing to see thi

"There's a couple new internet ones out there now I understand, tryin' to become iCash. That can work OK for a bit among people of goodwill, though typically such things are wildly susceptible to speculation or fraud by less commune-oriented business types. Essentially, they're a great way for smart people to fleece fools." Like BitCoins. It sounds like the biggest argument you have against the gold standard is it makes running a society that revolves around debt (like ours) impossible. What's so awful about forcing people to live within their means and not be able to borrow?

You've succeeded in convincing me of one thing. Punishment through taxation can be useful, because a capital gains tax deters speculation and derivatives investments and actually offers the incentive to reinvest FCF into infrastructure instead of simple monetary gains. This encourages investment in other businesses with real employees instead of becoming just another bunch of zeros a broker has to play with. That's an example of nonexistent wealth becoming real wealth and that's something that we should be making incentives for. I still don't feel something like energy should b

"Da modern world uses a token, a chit, to represent value in order to make commerce work. The token is really just a piece of paper. It's a crazy system in a way, but it sure beats the heck out of bartering chickens for medicine and labor for electricity." You're completely underselling the success many communities are finding in localized currency. Some communities are even going so far as to barter their goods and services within "almost" completely self-sustained communities. The doctor eats for free where he wants and gets new shoes when he needs them. The waitress gets a check up as

Beavah - The problem you fail to point out is that the Central Bank should not be purchasing the bonds. When people and businesses and banks in the community buy bonds, they are putting money up front for the project which will be paid back to them in taxes. This prevents the community from having to save up money for an immediate need and instead commit to pay back over time the bond to its purchasers. It's not a commitment to raise taxes, it's a commitment to mandatory spending to pay off the loan to creditors when the government doesn't have the lump sum available. It's wh

"Now, philosophically I actually agree with yeh. But all things in balance, eh? It's important to understand this stuff is complex and there's a fair chance any of us are wrong. And even though I'm a free market, small government fellow, I reckon it's OK that sometimes we pay taxes for things we don't use just because it strengthens the country. Yah, I suppose we could expect rural folks to pay 100 times as much for phone service or electricity or to do without. There just aren't enough customers in rural areas to make it profitable to build out that infrastructure. But I really don't mind da

Then the question is ideological then Beavah. Will we improve our situation by giving incentives folks who save, give to charity, and volunteer; Or will we learn best by giving incentives to those who are stuck in less than perfect situations yet make no real effort to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Surely taxes are seen as a punishment so if we go for punishment should we punish those who save, give to charity, and volunteer; or should we punish those who show no real propensity or will to exist as much more than a ward of the state? We definitely need safety nets

KC9DDI - June 11, 2004 I won't mention names or the location. But when you're either a witness or victim, you do not question that these things happen.

I think Social Security could be a great thing! That is if it was run as private accounts instead of a Ponzi scheme. It's really the role of churches and families and communities to pick up the disabled and downtrodden. What I mean is that ever since the New Deal worked for some short term successes and made some great and needed additions to infrastructure, we've had this mentality that the government can always just throw money at any problem and that will solve the problem. You're right though. Americans are perfectly happy to sit back and let their eyes glaze over. The debates o

"Let constituents feel the real pain of what partisan inaction entails." How very compassionate of you... In the interest of keeping this short to avoid making anyone else's eyes glaze over. I'll put it simply. The policies undertaken by our government to recover the economy ever since the 1930's have led us to our current point. It is a wound, a big one. The FED has been acting like a bandaid with no disinfectant applied first. The wound is beginning to fester because the bandaid we applied was corrupt and infected because this type of bandaid will always be corrupt and in

Beavah - The problem here is that we put value in two different things. The FED does a great job of maintaining the status quo and propping up our government. However, I do not value the bloated system of government we currently have. I'm a little more federalist and would much rather see the kind of spending and taxing going on at the federal level be pushed down to the individual states. I understand that social responsibility and compulsory taxation are what make our current society possible and that we would not be the nation we are today without the infrastructure a strong

@Chug - Yes... Unfortunately, the answer is definitely yes... It doesn't matter if the tent (or cold concrete floor of a basement) is crowded. It happens...

"Yah, yeh would think that under ordinary circumstances these fed tricks and TARP would be preposterous, and they sure make all of us angry. But then, under ordinary circumstances da events of 2008 would have led to cascading bank failures and a worldwide Great Depression 2. It still amazes me that didn't happen. Remember, we were on da gold standard and non-Keynsians in da 1930s. How'd that work out by comparison?" Between TARP and quantitative easing, it's become quite evident Bernanke is determined not to be the Fed Chairman who presided over the second Great Depression. The cost is th

Beavah - You'd be right if economics was like religion. It turns out theoretical institutions like the Keynesians are perpetuating the problems we have and that leads me to believe anyone who aspires to that school of thought would only continue feeding the problem. As it so happens, part of the problem with the FED is they have the audacity to think their short term fixes make for sustainable policy. They are just plain wrong in thinking they can create a healthy economy by artificially creating jobs or printing money by creating debt and devaluing the dollar (which is an apathy tax on e

"Sounds like they wanted to limit the number of switch hitters on each team." *badum tish*

I say we don't need any more Keynesians on the FED board. We could probably use some appointments with folks more philosophically aligned with Austrian Economics. If we'd have had folks in there who recognized how quantitative easing is only exacerbating the difficulties in our economy and building us up for the biggest bubble burst yet (the dollar bubble...) we could have avoided the past bubble bursts like the housing bubble which led to banking bailouts (over 80% of which went to foreign banks) and the very soon up and coming education bubble. Let's get some Hayek thinking folks

Commissioner service is not a lost art! Our district is experiencing a lot of success with younger commissioners using the UVTS system faithfully. It makes our monthly meetings VERY easy!