More on the Scout Story

In case you think I am making this up, the following story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779729194

Scouts' sales tactic outside ACLU becomes pop smashAfter radio celebrity plugs Chesterfield troop's booth, popcorn orders top $28,000

BY MARK BOWESTIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Dec 17, 2004

A friendly jab at the American Civil Liberties Union has turned into a financial bonanza for a tiny nine-member Boy Scout troop from Chesterfield County.
Troop 828, with an unexpected boost on Wednesday from nationally syndicated talk show host Glenn Beck, watched its struggling popcorn sales explode.
Scouts at a downtown booth had to call for fresh supplies. A Web site was flooded with orders from buyers in 39 states.
At last count, sales had topped $28,000. That set a record for the Boy Scouts' Heart of Virginia Council.
Last year the troop sold less than $300 worth of popcorn.
The windfall came after Beck got wind of the Scouts' decision to set up a booth near the ACLU's Virginia headquarters in downtown Richmond.
For years the ACLU has raised legal questions as to how closely the government should be aligned with the Boy Scouts of America.
"We're kind of a conservative troop," said Scoutmaster Jim Carpenter, whose two-year-old unit meets at St. Joseph Catholic Church. "They're a very devout group of young men, and God and country are extremely important to them."
"And at one of our Monday night meetings, they decided that it would be real cool to sell popcorn in front of the ACLU. This was their idea. We're a boy-run troop."
Sales were initially poor Wednesday morning.
"We had two customers between 10 and 10:30, and the guys were just about ready to call it quits," he said.
But after an unsolicited plug from Beck, a well-known conservative talk show host who airs on WRVA (1140 AM), hundreds of people from across the country began ordering popcorn from the Chesterfield Scouts.
As of yesterday afternoon, the troop had topped $22,700 in sales from 586 people ordering online from the Boy Scouts' national popcorn distributor, local scout officials said. Beck put a link to the company on his Web site.
But that wasn't all. Richmonders flocked to the Scouts' booth at Seventh and Main, buying about $4,200 more, Carpenter said.
"We supplied them with everything we could," said Robert "Alf" Tuggle, Scout executive for the Heart of Virginia Council.
Said Carpenter: "Things just went nuts. It didn't slow down until about 3:30, 4 o'clock. We had cars pulling off and lots of people honking the horn, we had a couple of police officers stop by and buy popcorn. We had fire trucks going by and tooting their horns. It was incredible."
The downtown sales trip, Carpenter said, was "kind of a last-ditch effort" to sell about $1,250 worth of popcorn they had left from a consignment order.
In addition to plugging the troop's efforts on national radio, Beck personally bought about $380 worth of popcorn during his sold-out appearance Wednesday night at the Science Museum of Virginia, Carpenter said. Some of Beck's fans purchased popcorn, too.
Beck invited the Scouts to his show, where he signed and took pictures with the boys, who gave him the troop's American flag. "He mentioned during the show that he collected flags," Carpenter said.
Tuggle, the local Scout Executive, applauded the troop's "ingenious strategy."
"They weren't out there trying to get in the face of the ACLU," he said. "They conducted themselves in a Scout-like manner and took advantage of an opportunity to get a lot of customers."
The troop will get to keep 30 percent of the total, the standard commission. Carpenter said some of that will go toward a troop ski trip to West Virginia in March.
Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, said he doesn't begrudge the Scouts for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech or using the ACLU name to generate sales.
"That's par for the course these days," said Willis, who said a group of youths identified as the United Conservatives of Virginia delivered a tin of Boy Scout popcorn and a Christmas greeting to his office yesterday. "We raise funds with our membership by pointing out what the organizations that oppose us are doing, and they raise money with their membership by pointing out what we are doing."
The ACLU, Willis added, isn't opposed to the Boy Scouts or their right to exist. "The ACLU's concern here is with the government funding of the Boy Scouts so long as there is a religious test to be a member of the Boy Scouts."
But Carpenter believes there's much more at stake.
"The youth of today really need the Scouts, [and] they need the support of government," he said. "And to have somebody telling them that what you believe in is bad because other people don't believe in it, it just doesn't sit well with a lot of my guys."

America As It Should Be

As promised, here is my statement of values with respect to the issues pressing upon America:

First, let's start with a quote:
"It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it." --Ronald Reagan


National Security and Homeland Defense:

First and foremost, continue to allocate all resources necessary to advance the campaign against Jihadi terrorists. It cannot be said too often: We choose to fight the war abroad so we don't have to fight it here at home.

Continue reorganizing the Department of Defense into a leaner, more agile and lethal military machine, maximally capable of addressing the asymmetric threats of the post-Cold War world.
This includes Congress actually voting to appropriate sufficient funds to do this, so that our soldiers won't resort to "hillbilly armor" and then blame it all on a Secretary of Defense who wasn't around when the Defense budget was being cut (by Congress).

Continue to develop and strengthen alliances to fight the war on terrorism and address other issues vital to our national security: Nuclear proliferation, stability in the Middle East, and viable solutions to illegal immigration and border control, particularly in the Southwestern U.S.

More aggressively pursue a greater degree of national energy independence. This should include responsibly drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, increasing our oil-refining capacity to better absorb instability in the international market, and -- perhaps most important -- encouraging the forces of the free market to develop alternative energy sources.


Legislative Agenda:
Reform the national tax system by eliminating the current U.S. tax code and replacing it with a flat tax (as proposed by Dick Armey and Dennis Hastert) or a national sales tax. The first priority must be to dispose of a tax system that has stifled competitiveness and growth since its advent, and commence earnest debate of the alternatives.

Reform Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs; more than all discretionary spending combined, these programs contribute to the national deficit, place a drag on economic growth, and loom as potential fiscal crises over our nation's economy.

Reverse the exponential growth of the federal bureaucracy and return government to the role envisioned by our nation's federalist Founders.


Secure a line-item veto for budgetary legislation, thereby allowing the President to combat Congress's irrepressible urge to waste your hard-earned tax dollars on its pork-barrel pet projects.

Aggressively defend the traditional values of our Republic:

• Reaffirming the right to life and fostering a reverence for it in every area of our society; and reaffirming the institution of marriage, while supporting the traditional family as the fundamental unit of American life.
• the President and Senate Republicans should press with all possible force for up-or-down floor votes on all his judicial nominees
• The President should relentlessly continue nominating conservative constructionists for the now back-logged federal courts.
• In the regretful event of ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist's departure from the Supreme Court, we urge the President to nominate one of that court's two most reliably constructionist members, Justice Antonin Scalia or Justice Clarence Thomas, as its new Chief

Perhaps Ann Coulter said it best:

"Liberals cannot win when Americans are allowed to vote, so they jam their insane ideas down our throats through the courts. In Bush's second term, there is no more important committee than the one charged with overseeing his judicial nominations. If Republicans blow this once-a-century opportunity to end the tyranny of the judiciary, they deserve to lose."

And finally, disband the ACLU.

The Anti-Christian Losers Union (as I like to call them) have been allowed (with YOUR tax money) to systematically tear down the core values that America was founded on.

To wit:

The Pentagon has agreed to "end direct sponsorship of hundreds of Boy Scout units which require members to swear religious oaths, on military facilities across the United States and overseas," thanks to the ACLU. The Pentagon permits service members to lead Boy Scout troops unofficially on their own time, using facilities at military bases, but has also allowed military bases to sponsor officially as many as 400 Boy Scout troops. The settlement does not resolve the ACLU's complaint that federal money is used to benefit the Boy Scouts -- for example, to prepare a base in Virginia for the quadrennial Jamboree (a gathering of 40,000 Boy Scouts and leaders on 3,000 acres of the 76,000-acre Army base). The Jamboree will go on as scheduled.

However, one Scout Troop took the fight to the enemy, so to speak. Read the story at the following link:

http://news.crossmap.com/read/1944

The news of this reached the Glenn Beck radio program, and by the end of the day, the Troop had raised several thousand dollars.

SWEEEEEEET!!!

I'll close this post with a rousing call to action from writer Stephen Moore:

"Liberals of America, unite! Leave this horrid and wicked and irredeemable backwater! Why not create a workers' paradise off the shores of France?

You can all speak French, allow Janet Jackson to show both her breasts, create a cradle-to-grave welfare state, drink Starbucks lattes, read The New York Times every day, scramble the satellite signal for Fox News, and worship your new leader, Michael Moore!

[Heck], we'll throw in Harvard and the whole faculty! It's a gift. Here's an added incentive: You will never have to take the war on terrorism to the terrorists; they will almost certainly bring it right to your doorstep.

Now, there's the catch in all this. It turns out that a lot of the liberals can't afford the trip, or the entry fee into places like Canada.

So here's my idea: a new project called the Export a Liberal Fund. From this pool we will donate $100 to every liberal who agrees to give up his U.S. citizenship and flee the country permanently.

Warning #1: There's no coming back for health care when you get sick.

Warning #2: There will be no amnesty program. These are one-way tickets. ...

I, for one, stand ready and willing to do my patriotic part and contribute to the Export a Liberal Fund. I hope you will join me in this worthy charitable endeavor. Let's really go out and paint the country red!"