mds3d

But that isn't the situation that Eagle1993 is talking about. Once the bankruptcy proceedings are done, new assets can't be targeted. National won't be looking for more money to pay lawsuits. This is all about if the lawyers are able to convince a judge that the Councils assets should be included in the proceedings. If they aren't then the lawyers will have to go after councils individually.

@Eagle1993 Unless the bankruptcy court brings the councils into the process (which no one has ever provided precedent for). Council properties will only be in danger from lawsuits/judgement against individual councils, not against national. So if no one sues my council, it doesn't matter how much the payouts are against national or another council, our council property is not at risk. I am still doubtful that the lawyers will be able to target the unaffected councils. Certainly CO's are safe unless they are named in a lawsuit.

I think it is entirely possible that the bankruptcy proceedings will take more than a year. I doubt that the 80 days the BSA has requested for victims to come forward will be granted. As long as we are waiting for lawsuits to be filed, there is the chance that they will go after councils. Merging councils puts assets at risk. I am not saying we shouldn't do it but I think we have to be careful about the timing.

I really don't know how I feel about this. We have more than 15 districts in our council as it is. There are no small bordering councils. I think this just doesn't apply here. I don't live that far from the central office and it already seems far away. I can't imagine what the farther districts think. Seems like a thing to tackle after everything settles down so that no new problems arise. Maybe we should just merge all the councils up to the area.

I think that TLS has explained how they were different. His explanation is consistent with my limited experience with LDS Crews. One of the things that is often explained is that we do not punish boys for the mistakes of adults. Just because he is an adult now, that doesn't change. He was involved and registered as a venturer from 16-18 so he is entitled to those years of service. If he really wants to represent those years correctly, I don't think anyone would fault him for including his years in his Boy Scout star. I think this situation is perfect for combining everything under light blue, but that is my preference anyway.

I think everyone was aware that LDS Crews weren't the same thing as a traditional crew. It's not quite the same thing as a paper crew that didn't really exist.

I think if you are going to wear stars, they should actually add up to your years of service. I am a combined under the scouter blue man myself, but that's mostly laziness.

That quote is news to me. The bylaws state that council property is transferred to national on dissolution of the council but there isn't anything about national having any direct control over the assets of the council (only that they be used for furthering scouting).

I think there is a big question on if the BSA national organization was involved in any "intentional wrong-doing" or was simply not doing enough.

Even if the insurance doesn't have to pay out for that specific incident, more lawsuits mean that the BSA is a greater liability for continuing litigation.

This doesn't really address the reason that it is important that councils and national are separate. Yes, the lawyers can add the council and even the unit (CO) to the lawsuit. However, my council cannot be added to a lawsuit that happened in your council. This means a couple of things. First, the property owned by my council should not be included in the bankruptcy settlement. I believe the BSA that enough has been done to keep these two entities separate. If you believe otherwise then find precedent where a bankruptcy court included the assets of a legally separate organization. I haven't been able too. It also means that unless a suit is filed against my council the lawyers can't go after this council's assets. That doesn't mean we are safe from suits that include us, but that we can't be hurt by those other suits. I think this will help many councils' assets stay safe. Since summer camp locations are owned by councils it means we aren't about to loose all those. The problem with insurance isn't the increasing premiums. It is that they have limits. They are great as long as you stay under the limits but don't help much if the lawsuits start to add up past them. I think the limits on insurance payments is probably more of the problem than are the increasing premiums. They might be. I imagine that they haven't been targeted as much because of the larger pockets of national. It may be that the affected councils insurance has covered their suits so far. Remember that councils are only dealing with a small number instead of everyone nationally. I think CO's could definitely be held liable. It will depend a lot on the situation and whether you are worth going after or not.

There is a lot of US History on the Citizenship test. I am not sure that is the aim of Citizenship in the Nation. I would be interested in the non-history questions. I also wonder about the methodology of this survey as there doesn't seem to be any information on how the questions were selected. The actual test randomly selects 10 questions from a bank of 100. For example, the actual test only asks you to name 3 of the original 13 colonies. There is also is a significant difference between someone who studies for that test and one who doesn't. I wonder what the pass rate would be if you allowed people to review the 100 questions for only 1 hr then asked them the same questions. If you are interested, here is the current list of 100 questions the test comes from - https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Office of Citizenship/Citizenship Resource Center Site/Publications/100q.pdf The questions do not change without notice though the answers might (who is president for example).

Predictions are often wrong. They are also often predicated on nothing changing from current environment (not the case over the last 30 years). The news does all these things a disservice by always reporting on the extreme of whatever was said by the scientific community. Academia is rarely in agreement so well as it is on climate change, and that should tell you something. Richard Mueller might not be disingenuous but I think he is at least taking his stance in the way that will make him the most notable.

@DuctTape I didn't really mean to defend it. I was trying to give my thoughts after some others had responded without putting them all at the beginning. I help my units through JTE every year and don't get a lot of pushback so I don't have personal experience with the problems with it. @walk in the woodsI do wish that it was easier to track these things without a separate worksheet. Most of this stuff should be automatic. I like your idea for tracking camping and service hours. @ParkManTheoretically, Unit Commissioners are supposed to be the people working collaboratively with units to set goals and help them meet them. The Commissioner Corps is struggling at best in many districts however. The truth is that I should have the opportunity to talk with someone influential over JTE after the first of the year. I doubt my voice will mean much in that context but I wanted to see what issues people were having and realized I could ask here.

That's the idea! Again, I don't think already great troops are the target for JTE. I think that the idea with the numbers is to put a measurable (because it is supposed to be consistent) score on good practices. Here is how I think these goals are supposed to be read: 1. Planning and Budget: Good troops will make a plan, involve the youth, and have an active committee to support that plan. 2. Building Scouting: Good troops will grow. 3. Retention: Scouts will stay in a good troop (and age out). 4. Webelos-to-Scout: Good troops will provide the next step for graduating cub scouts (I'll admit, I think the specific goals are off here). 5. Advancement: A good scout program provides most of its scouts the opportunity (which they will take) to advance each year. 6. Short-term camping: A Good scout program camps frequently 7. Long term camping: Long term camping provides a great opportunity for scouts and they should be encouraged to participate. 8. Service projects: A Good troop serves its community 9. Patrol Method: A good troop has patrols, leadership that is trained, and an active PLC 10: Leadership and family engagement: Good troops involve those outside the minimum required adults. (I actually don't agree with the numbers here either). 11: Trained leadership: Troop leadership should be trained and seeking higher training. I don't know how you assess "scout led" objectively. The problem with non-objective measures is who assess them. There is no way to be consistent with subjective things across the nation. How would you change JTE to help it assess the things you think it falls short on?

I am curious. I see people here complain about JTE, but it is rarely about specific things. What are your complaints about the program? Is it the targets themselves? Is gold too easy or too hard? Are you still bitter it isn't silver at the top 😉?

As one who has worn silver loops for most of the time I have been a scouter, let me say that I both understand and am saddened by your frustration. Many of us at the district level are trying to help units provide a good, safe, consistent scouting program to as many young people as possible. This means that our priorities are sometimes different but they should not be at odds. I was a Roundtable commissioner for a little while and I tried to make sure that the program was useful to the unit leaders that came. Maybe they were just nice, and maybe the ones who didn't approve just didn't come but I never got any bad feedback. If you have a problem with Roundtable, then maybe no one has expressed to the district that there is a problem. I get that JTE is frustrating to many, but like the Quality Unit award, it isn't meant to differentiate between the great and the excellent troops. It is meant to give struggling units goals to improve their program. After all, a gold award only requires 55% of the possible points. I haven't done wood badge, but I don't think it is a bad program. I think the problem with wood badge is more about the "cult of wood badge" than it is the program. In my experience, the problem woodbadgers are unit leaders not at the district or council level

This is a significant misapplication of that verse. Jesus is not telling us that social judgement cannot be applied by the sinful. The verse is in context of a situation manufactured to trap Jesus in conflict with either Jewish or Roman law (because the laws themselves conflicted). We can certainly discuss if this man should continue to be a BSA leader or how we believe the justice system should act. We are not the ones administering judgement here so no one is actually casting stones. Don't water down that analogy. Jesus didn't mean figurative stones. The men in that story were trying to get Jesus to say that the woman should be stoned to death.

The justice system assumes innocence in the absence of contrary evidence presented beyond a reasonable doubt. That does not mean that we act as if the accused was actually innocent. After all, they are accused of a crime and if we acted as if they were innocent no trial would be held. Society can make whatever judgement they feel is reasonable about this guy as we are not a jury of his peers or a judge dispensing justice.

I watched the video. If you pause it as he goes by, I don't think there is any way his hand is at the level of her lower back. She isn't that much shorter than him. Her back should be mostly within the frame of the video and his hand is clearly below it. We have no reason not to believe her. We have several reasons to believe him (he is facing a year in jail for one). We can discuss his guilt/innocence until we are blue in the face but that is for a court to decide. As for the BSA, they don't have to wait until he is proven guilty or not. They can look at the video and decide. They may also decide it doesn't matter as this guy clearly thought in the moment that there wasn't something wrong with unwanted contact with a stranger. That would be enough for me if I was in charge. Now, lets reflect on how we are discussing this topic. Would you react differently if this was your wife or your daughter? How would you react if this was one of your son's/daughter's leaders and they saw the video?

You have misinterpreted this law. Only a second "sexual battery" offense requires offender registration. Aggravated sexual battery is a different charge.

This wasn't a "lapse in judgement." This is Sexual Battery under Georgia law. Kick him out. Send him to a judge. @qwazse : I dont think this is an impertinent moment. It was a crime. I also don't think she was slow to react. She was attempting to continue to perform her job without making a scene. She understood that she wasn't in immediate danger and this doofus was on TV. If I were the IH of his church he would be fired immediately from both scouts and his job. Men who think it is appropriate to touch a woman's butt without permission don't have any business in the BSA or being youth ministers. The only break the BSA is getting here is that most of the news stories are focusing on him being a youth minister.

Your comments on Hitler seem to be colored by a desire to consider socialism wrong. https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists

This article assigns the quality of "purity" and "loyalty" to a man who betrayed his country to fight to defend the institution of slavery. This is surely not an unbiased article.

I'm sorry... Your interest is about the horses they rode? That's fine, be interested. There is still no reason for us to celebrate these men. These statues, monuments, parks, schools, buildings, etc are not legacies of these men's great horses. They are not celebrating these men's great military prowess or their leadership of people. They are monuments created by people who refuse to accept the idea that all men are created equal decades after we fought a war about it. They celebrate a time when certain people were considered property and others felt the need to kill fellow Americans to try to keep it that way. There is nothing to celebrate in that idea. There is nothing to honor in that idea. Prince Charles Stewart and Culloden represent Scottish independence and individual identity (an idea that is not gone and not foul). Napoleon, while controversial, still represents a part of history where France was great and powerful. Change every name and tear all the statues down. If the DCV or the KKK wants to pay to have the statues on their property, so be it but it shouldn't be on anything my tax dollars pay for.