As a writer, I’m constantly at odds with how certain words are misused in the media, by politicians, organizations and individuals. One of those words that give me pause each time I hear it is ‘stakeholder.’

Recently I read a posting from a friend and sheriff: “I attended a meeting where the stakeholders from Southern Oregon and Northern California met and discussed the upcoming Marijuana growing season.”

In this case he was trying to say, ‘other law enforcement officials,’ instead of ‘stakeholders.’

Over and over I hear or see the word being used by people who, I’m certain have no idea what it means. In fact, the term has made a rebounding resurgence in the last six or seven years and this leaves me even more concerned.

A stakeholder is a person that has an interest in an enterprise or project. The primary stakeholders in a typical corporation are its investors, employees, customers and suppliers. However, modern theory goes beyond this conventional notion to embrace additional stakeholders such as the community, government and trade associations.

A common problem that arises with having many stakeholders in any enterprise is that their various self-interests may not all be aligned. In fact, they may be in conflict with each other.

The primary goal of a corporate enterprise from the viewpoint of its shareholders is to maximize profits and enhance shareholder value. Since labor costs are a critical input cost for most companies, an enterprise may seek to keep these costs under tight control.

This may have the effect of making another important group — stakeholders, or rather its employees, unhappy. The most efficient companies’ successfully manage the self-interests and expectations of its stakeholders.

The term “stakeholder”, as traditionally used in the English language in law and notably gambling, is a third-party who temporarily holds money or property while its owner is still being determined.

More recently though a very different meaning of the term is being widely used. In a business context, a “stakeholder” is a person or organization that has a legitimate interest in a project or entity.

A stakeholder was originally a person who temporarily holds money or other property while its owner is being determined. This is, for example, the situation when two persons bet on the outcome of a future event and ask a third, disinterested, neutral person to hold the money or “stakes” that they have wagered or “staked”.

After the event occurs, the stakeholder distributes the stakes to one or both of the original (or other) parties according to the outcome of the event and according to the previously decided conditions. Courts sometimes act as stakeholders, holding property while litigation between the possible owners resolves the issue in which one is entitled to the property.

Trustees also often act as stakeholders, holding property until beneficiaries come of age. An “escrow agent” is another kind of trustee who is a stakeholder, usually in a situation where part of the purchase price of property is being held until some condition is satisfied. In legal documents, the escrow agent is often referred to as a “mere stakeholder.”

The new use of the term arose together from the spread of corporate social responsibility ideals, but there are also dystopian views being served by the new meaning of the term. Now ‘stakeholder’ means putting a ‘stake through private property rights,’ by creating organizations like the United Nations, able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your property.

This is part of a Cold War technique, known as a Delphi, used to channel people into accepting a point of view that is imposed on them, while convincing them that it was their idea in the first place. In essence, a Delphi is used in places where the organizers want to the appearance that they have listened to community opinion and incorporated it into their plan.

It’s time to turn away from words like ‘stakeholder,’ and return to terminology like ‘owner,’ ‘employee,’ ‘parent,’ or ‘law enforcement officials.’ If we don’t, this nation will continue to tumble further into the abyss of its’ civil ignorance.

People describe Jon Meis is a quiet gentle, outdoorsy young man of deep Christian faith. He’s a dedicated student on the cusp of a promising life beyond college.

He is also the “22 year old student who tackled a gunman earlier this week at Seattle Pacific University. His quick and incredibly brave choice to try and subdue the gunman likely saved many lives!” writes one blogger.

Amazing that while we find this young man courageous in the face of danger, we neglect to remember servicemen and women his age are facing the same terror daily as they fight in Afghanistan. While Meis is courageous, he’s no more so than a soldier, sailor, Marine or airman.

Pray they all remain safe.

Last Thursday, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill making her state the third to drop the Common Core standards.

Instead of using Common Core for the short-term while forming new standards, the state will immediately revert back to older tests and standards. And when new standards are written two years from now, they will be required to undergo a review to assure they are sufficiently different from Common Core.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill May 30th, requiring her state to end the Common Core standards initiative and requires new educational standards be adopted. Actual replacement of Common Core with “new” standards won’t take place until the 2015-16 year. The common core will stay in place in South Carolina for the 2014-15 school year.

Indiana lawmakers passed legislation pausing Common Core’s implementation and requiring a statewide review to find a replacement. Governor Mike Pence in March signed legislation making Indiana the first state to drop the national standards, which are not federally required but have become the de facto guidelines.

However, the replacement standards, which include requiring second-graders to “add and subtract fluently up to 100,” have also drawn criticism from national education experts and the grassroots group ‘Hoosiers Against Common Core,’ who say they too closely resemble the tossed-aside benchmarks.

Prior to dropping the standards, the Obama administration issued a warning to Indiana about opting out of Common Core.

The U. S. Department of Education said in a letter to Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz that the state must prove its own standards are just as challenging, or else risk of losing its waiver from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law and have its federal funding in jeopardy.

“Because the [Indiana Department of Education] will no longer implement those standards, IDOE must amend its [Elementary and Secondary Education Act] flexibility request and provide evidence that its new standards are certified by a state network of [Institutions of Higher Education] that students who meet the standards will not need remedial coursework at the postsecondary level,” the letter says.

Farther south, the Louisiana Legislature signed off on a bill June 1st that many see as a Common Core endorsement of the standards. Governor Bobby Jindal is now considering a veto of the bill.

Finally, a judge has struck down tenure and other job protections for California’s public school teachers as unconstitutional. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu cited the case of Brown v. Board of Education in ruling that students have a fundamental right to equal education.

Treu ruled California’s laws on hiring and firing in schools have resulted in “a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms.” The judge also took issue with laws that say the last-hired teacher must be the first fired when layoffs occur, even if the new teacher is gifted and the veteran is inept.

The case was brought by nine students who said they were stuck with teachers who let classrooms get out of control, came to school unprepared and in some cases told them they’d never make anything of themselves. They also charged that schools in poor neighborhoods are used as dumping grounds for bad teachers.

Teachers have long argued that tenure prevents administrators from firing teachers on a whim. They also contend the system preserves academic freedom and helps attract talented teachers to a profession that doesn’t pay well.

The California Attorney General’s office said it is considering its legal options, while the California Teachers Association, the state’s biggest teachers union with 325,000 members, vowed an appeal. Meanwhile, other states are paying attention to how the case plays out.

Despite of President Obama being ‘madder than hell,’ the resignation of Eric Shinseki and congressional probes, the Veterans Affairs Department says more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial medical appointments at VA hospitals and clinics 90 days or more after requesting them.

An additional 64,000 who enrolled in the VA health care system over the past 10 years have never had appointments. In total, more than 100,000 veterans are “experiencing long wait times” for health-care, an audit found.

The department says the audit of 731 VA hospitals and large outpatient clinics found that the agency’s complicated appointment process created confusion among scheduling clerks and supervisors. The audit says a 14-day goal for seeing first-time patients was unattainable given the growing demand among veterans for health care and poor planning.

The audit released Monday says 13 percent of VA schedulers reported supervisors telling them to falsify appointment dates to make waiting times seem shorter. About eight percent of schedulers said they used alternatives to an official electronic waiting list, often under pressure to make waiting times look more favorable.

The report comes less than two weeks after the VA inspector general’s office confirmed recent allegations that VA hospitals have falsified appointment records to hide treatment delays.

Last week, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders and Senator John McCain reached agreement on the terms of a bill to help address some of the underlying problems that led to the treatment delays. More hearings are planned by both the U.S. House and Senate committees on veteran’s affairs in the coming days.

The VA scandal came to light late last year after Sam Foote, then a physician at the Phoenix VA Health Care System, filed a complaint with Office of Inspector General alleging that hospital administrators were falsifying patient access records to secure bonus pay and promotions. Investigators found that Phoenix VA leaders, who received cash awards for meeting goals, understated the delays faced by first-time patients.

Since then Shinseki and a top aide, Under Secretary Robert Petzel, resigned. Also Susan Bowers, the Southwest regional VA health care director, retired early, while Sharon Helman, director of the Phoenix VA medical center, was placed on administrative leave along with two top aides.

Newly crowned Miss USA Nia Sanchez is a fourth-degree black belt in taekwondo and says women should be able to defend themselves as a way to battle the problem of campus rape. The 24-year-old Las Vegas native said bringing awareness to the issue is very important.

Sanchez said women need to take it upon themselves to learn how to defend themselves. Sanchez lived for a time in a women’s shelter at a young age with her mother and at age eight took up taekwondo to learn self-defense and build her confidence.

As an adult, she has volunteered at women’s shelters, teaching residents how to defend themselves and teaching kids about “stranger danger.” Sanchez also said she was “so proud to bring the title of Miss USA back to Nevada.”

Sanchez beat out 50 other contestants from all the states and the District of Columbia Sunday night for the title of 63rd Miss USA. Sanchez will go on to represent the U.S. at the Miss Universe competition later this year.

Amazing! I can find all sorts of photos in the media of the two a-holes who killed two police officers and a bystander, yesterday in Las Vegas — but not one picture of Joseph Wilcox, the armed man killed by the female in this crime as he tried to stop the pairs rampage.

What an effing joke.

The battle over Nevada’s public land continues. Senator Dean Heller is warning the Obama administration against designating the Gold Butte region of Clark County as a national monument.

Gold Butte is the same area where Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management came face to face in a stand-off over grazing rights. The 400,000-acre region sits north and east of Lake Mead and across the border from Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Heller wrote that another ‘land grab,’ “would not serve the area well.” He said it would escalate an already tense situation, “in a region of our state where tensions are already presently high.”

In February, Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to grant the Gold Butte area monument status as a way to protect wildlife habitat, mining artifacts and Indian petroglyphs. In her letter, Titus called Gold Butte “a national treasure in Southern Nevada.”

“I believe that the Gold Butte area of Southern Nevada merits consideration for National Monument designation,” Titus wrote.

That same month, a report by the Center for American Progress listed Gold Butte among “high-profile land conservation bills languishing in Congress,” along with the Pine Forest Range in Humboldt County. Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid and Congressman Steven Horsford introduced bills last year to name Gold Butte and the surrounding area for upgraded wilderness and conservation protections, though not national monument status.

Because of this, environmentalists believe presidential action is justified to protect natural wonders as Congress becomes gridlocked on natural resource bills. On May 21st, Obama designated 500,000 acres in the Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks region of southern New Mexico as a national monument.

Heller said it should be the Nevada delegation that works with local residents on a “grass-roots driven, public and transparent congressionally approved process for public lands designations.”

“Unlike my colleague who placed this request,” Heller wrote, “I am extremely concerned about the impact a unilateral designation will have on my state.”

Two Las Vegas police officers and a civilian were shot and killed by a pair of suspects armed with rifles before one of the shooters shot her partner dead before taking her own life.

The male and female shooters stormed a North Las Vegas Cici’s Pizza location Sunday morning, killing the two patrolmen as they ate lunch, before stealing their weapons and running to the Walmart across the street. Witnesses say the pair also shouted ‘tell the police the revolution has begun.’

The two suspects then shot a bystander to death who is believed to have been carrying a concealed firearm and had opened fire on them as they ran into the Walmart. The bystander’s body was found just inside the front door to the store.

The suspects then shouted at everyone to leave the store and continued to claim a revolution had begun. The two suspects then exchanged about 20 shots with SWAT officers.

The two officers killed are identified as Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo.

Police have not established if the incidents were a series of random acts or part of a larger movement possibly targeting police officers. The investigation is ongoing.

In September 2011, a man armed with an AK-47 opened fire in an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, killing five people, including himself and three Army National Guard soldiers, and wounding seven others.

06/09/14 UPDATE: Las Vegas police say they are looking into whether the two suspects in the shooting deaths of the two officers had been at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch during a standoff earlier this year. Assistant Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the two suspects, Jerad Miller and his wife, Amanda, had ideology that was along the lines of “militia and white supremacists.”

The couple was from Indiana. Officials say they also had plans to take over a courthouse and execute public officials.

The Clark County coroner’s office says Joseph Wilcox of Las Vegas died as he tried to stop the suspects. He was shot and killed by the female gunman.

My son and I went for a weekend dig. It was a university­ sponsored event and he found a Chinese coin dating to the late 19th century. The head of the operation said that he could keep the find since they had over a thousand of them from the site.

My little man was very proud of himself. It seemed to spark an interest in archeology for him as he jabbered all the way home about this method of digging verses that method of digging. To me I only know of one way of digging, so I was actually learning something here.

Later that night he asked if I had a chain so that he might put his coin around his neck. I gave him the chain from my old military dog tags.

The following day I to take him home to his mother. Four days later I picked him up and I noticed he wasn’t wearing his coin on his neck. I waited until he was in the car and we were out of the driveway before I asked where it was.

He told me that his mother didn’t want him wearing it any more because it didn’t ‘t represent Jesus. I instantly felt angry, but I managed to keep my mouth shut for the sake of my son.

Later that evening, he and I sat down and had a little discussion. He wanted to know if wearing the coin around his neck was the same as ‘idol worshipping?’

I told him that it was not. I explained that idol worshipping was when a person starts ‘putting’ something before Jesus, like money, work, or even worry.

This is when my son’s understanding and wisdom knocked my socks off. He looked at me and asked, “Then a golden cross full of diamonds could be an idol even though it represents Jesus, right?”

I had to sit and think about that for a moment. I answered, “Yes.”

Then he reminded me, “After all the original cross was made by man.”

There is a story finding its way around Facebook claiming President Obama and Vice-president Biden are a couple of rubes, who know nothing of the West. Though funny, it isn’t true.

“For those of you who have never traveled to the west, or southwest, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways — sometimes across highways — to prevent cattle from crossing over that area.

For some reason the cattle will not step on the “guards,” probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.

A few months ago, President Obama received and was reading a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado. The Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, so he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the “cattle” guards immediately!

Before the Secretary of the Interior could respond and presumably try to straighten President Obama out on the matter, Vice-President Joe Biden, intervened with a request that — before any “cattle” guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining. ‘Times are hard,’ said Biden, ‘It’s only fair to the cattle guards and their families be given six months of retraining!

And these two guys are running our country.”

The original “cattle guard” piece was simply a joke that more than a few credulous readers were willing to believe as a true story. Where the tale actually began is anybody’s guess, but a February 1995 article took a stab at identifying its putative origins:

The Pinedale Roundup, Pinedale, Wyoming became the latest newspaper to fall for a joke originated in the Billings Gazette.

Gary Svee, opinion editor for the Billings Gazette, said the paper ran the item in a section reserved each Friday for puns and jokes. But believes someone picked it up and ran it seriously.

Svee said he has heard the item had run in numerous papers throughout the West.

Others say it a take-up of a joke from the early 1950s. And this could very well be true.

Former Texas state senator Kent Hance, for example, has been known to tell the following story:

“I was on a ranch in Dimmitt during my high school days, and a guy drove up and asked for directions to the next ranch. I said, ‘Go north five miles, turn and go east five miles, then turn again after you pass a cattle guard.’

As the guy turned around, I noticed he had Connecticut license plates. He stopped and said, ‘Just one more question. What color uniform will that cattle guard be wearing?’”