HelpfulTracks

I don't think their position is not defendable, at least not in all cases. I think we are talking about the media, complexities will get lost or ignored. Media's bias toward either position will come into play. And recent history (last 2-3 decades) has shown that bias is against BSA in main stream media. PR is more alchemy than science, so I could be wrong. But at this stage in the process, I think it better for the BSA and the councils if the councils remain silent. Pending the outcome, the PR for the councils will be targeted at current and future Scouts and Scouters, that

Fair was never an option. No amount of money can justify, erase, what happened to victims, or ease their pain. Some larger settlement amount would potentially give them an opportunity to seek help to cope with it. Once this case went to bankruptcy the settlements became closer to a class action suit in terms or payout, pennies on the dollar. That would be true if it were Ch7 or Ch11. If this were going the Ch7 route, then only those who have already won in court (and I don't imagine any of those are part of this group) would be getting anything as creditors would have tak

That about sums it up, all of which can be said by national or with a press release. The BSA has been killed in the press for years, it is unlikely to change now. Besides they are in the middle of a legal process, I am sure their lawyers told them we do not need 250 different voices giving statements. I cannot image that news coverage with have much effect on those voting, they are going to listen to their lawyers. I cannot see a victim being told this is a bad plan vote no by their lawyer, reading an article and deciding, "yeah, but the local council said this is all

Not surprising the councils have not made a statements. It just make sense, from a PR stand point, you don't want 250 voices, you want one. Not to mention, what do they gain, even taking the abuse cases out of picture, the majority of Scouting stories I receive in my news feeds have a negative stance toward BSA, particularly larger national media outlets. The few positive stories that show up in my feeds are mainly from small market or specialty outlets.

I do not see anything on the site that specifically excludes religious exemptions. I seriously doubt such a ban on religious exemptions would fly for long even if that is what BSA was trying to do.

Did a quick Google search.... 1. Apparently, that doesn't matter. I found a number of references to gag orders in bankruptcy cases for a wide variety of reasons. 2. I didn't state otherwise, in fact I said participants. 3. Id did make any statement about this at all, but all the more reason a judge might want to use a gag order. I have no doubt that every single one of them are "speculating on the case and manipulating “facts” trying to move the needle in the direction of their respective positions," including Kosnoff.

I am not a lawyer, don't play one on tv and didn't spend the night in a Holiday Inn last night, but my understanding is a judge has the right and power to issue and enforce gag orders on participants in cases. The participants do not enjoy the same protection of free speech they generally have. I'm not saying the judge has or even should, but the judge can from what I understand.

It is also a fine line on how the subject is handled. Venturing used to have a video (I think its been retired) that the youth had to watch. They hated it, it creeped them out. They felt it was inappropriate for them to be watching. The trick is teaching them without getting that reaction.

On some forums you can add "signatures" (sometimes called sigs) - they are lines of text, maybe graphics, that show up at the bottom of every post you make. THe setting looks like it is designed to hide said sigs. The thing is, I have not seen any settings that allow you to create a sig on this forum. Though, for some reason I think we might have had that option in the past. So, not sure why its showing up. A sample sig might look something like this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one can pass through life, an

Thus my "fear that being so wonky it would push us further from the outdoors and Scout skills." On the administrative and business side of the organization I certainly think we could use a good inward looking quality improvement intuitive. And if done correctly, I would think it would re-center the program side back toward the things that made it so great, like patrol method and scouting skills. My fear would be that it would be outward looking and the path would be towards doing things like other groups rather than embracing what the heart of this program used to be.

I am not sure if there are many posters that have disagreed and butted heads more than @David CO and I have over the years. Simply put, we just vehemently disagree on some fundamental issues. However heated we may have gotten it has always simmered down to being to at least an anodyne tone. We have manage to not let one disagreement carry over to other threads, and have even found ways to agree and even compliment each other on rare occasions. However, it is more than a little disappointing when I click on feed and see a string of red down vote arrows, all from one individual, all

I would add a few things. I am not exactly sure how the wording should go, but a yearly youth survey to see if grooming tactics are being used, and a survey of adults to see if they are noticing any YP violations are occurring, even minor ones, even if they have not lead to CSA. Furthermore, I really wish BSA would support self-defense training. I have had Scouters wince when I have shared what I have taught my children, but I have no intentions of letting them grow up without knowing how to defend against assault, sexual or otherwise. Predators look for the easiest prey. I thi

Indeed - my son is finishing up his Scouting career (youth phase) this year in Venturing and Sea Scouts. He has never really pursued rank in either until recently and realized he had already completed so many of the requirements by being so active, now he is trying to complete both Summit and Quartermaster. Same is true for the Outdoor Achievement medal. I am actually nudging him a bit for that one for one reason, it will force him to master lifesaving and think that is a valuable skill to have. Interesting thing. He had been so active for so long, he felt a little burned out when he wen

Yes, I am torn. I would love to see some six sigma applied to BSA. But I also fear that being so wonky it would push us further from the outdoors and Scout skills. That has been one benefit from my journey from the software side to the data side. "Get it right" is far more important than "get it out the door"

Ahhh, oldies but goodies. I liked it back in the day when you could bounce between platforms like Altavista, Webcrawler, Lycos and Ask Jeeves. You could search the same term and get different results, ranked in different ways. Now there is Google and everyone trying to duplicate Google. If you really want to go back to the stone age, Archie, Jughead and Veronica (Gopher) were fun too. Yes, those were search tools (pre WWW), not just comic book characters.

I absolutely agree. Parents too often think the troop exist to create Eagle Scouts, when I was unit leader I butted heads with adults over that more than everything else combined. I always told parents that our job is "to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law." If they leave here as an Eagle Scout with 10 palms and we have not accomplished that mission, we failed. If he leaves here as a Tenderfoot but we have accomplished the mission, it is huge success. I also tell parents that it is t

From my understanding, Section 230 gives the liability protection as they are specifically defined as not being an editorial organization. So I am not surprised they have no statement about content responsibility. I think 230 was initially designed for ISP's and companies that literally, just hosted content (and really only provided the server software/hardware to host). I am not sure if it was general "scope creep" of that definition if there were legislative changes, but once the content started becoming the product it became a slippery slope. So now that Facebook, Twitter etc.

Based on a previous post you made, I think there might be some confusion with the terms your son is using. I could be wrong though. This will be long and maybe confusing so I will apologize up front. The National BSA is Structured from the top down for all its unit organizations. National > Region > Area > Council > District The OA is organized the same but uses the terms for its parallel structure Section for Area, Lodge for Council and Chapter for District, National > Region > Section > Lodge > Chapter Each of those levels in the organiza

Come join us at NOAC!! https://oa-bsa.org/program/events/noac

The scout in my situation was part of a broken home. He was with his mother and his sister was with his father. On what ended up being his last night with the troop, the SM and CC confronted the mother because their signatures had been forge on some of the documents. others had been forged as well. As that was going on I had a discussion with the Scout, it wasn't even about what was going on, just chatting with him, my son and a few other scouts to distract him from what was happening. But he knew. He broke down in tears and said he didn't earn the MB and didn't do the work for his

I have, I seriously have. And it wasn't pretty.

Oh, I forgot the whole overuse of downvote showing a lack of maturity thing.

I am also wondering if we should restrict identification to shat, feathers and tracks. 🤔

I should have said around 2003, I believe. Not 100% sure, but I think that is correct or at least close.

I don't think I have ever used the downvote, maybe I should start and just keep my comments to myself. But generally speaking, if something bothers me enough to downvote then I will make a comment. Also, it is pretty easy to abuse the downvote system, particularly if it is programmatically tied to capping or restricting post.