Friday, January 31, 2014

Foundation for Defense of Democracies launches new website

Greater Middle East
Greater Middle East (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Presents data on relative military strengths, plus current events, in the Middle East.
http://militaryedge.org/


Enhanced by Zemanta

Obama has offended the art historians

Bricklayer Masons, Frankford EL Construction, 1913
Bricklayer Masons, Frankford EL Construction, 1913 (Photo credit: rich701)
http://chronicle.com/article/No-Laughing-Matter-/144327/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

My opinion: plumbers and bricklayers deserve more pay than art historians.  My dad was a bricklayer and left more art behind than any art historian ever will. And he worked a whole lot harder.

Here's a song called "The Bricklayer's Tale."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV_J0p8vZ0k

To my knowledge there are no tunes about art historians.



Enhanced by Zemanta

Are we only an accident?

Modification of Image:Huxley - Mans Place in N...
Modification of Image:Huxley - Mans Place in Nature.jpg Gibbon now shown at natural size. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If so should we "deny our programming, stop reproducing and walk hand in hand into extinction"?
Matthew McConaughy in TRUE DETECTIVE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8x73UW8Hjk


Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, January 30, 2014

My 2005 comments apply to 2013's Boston Marathon bomber, who will now be on trial for his life


loading...

When nobodies are the enemy

Posted: July 20, 2005
We all now know that at least three of the four suicide bombers, who killed more than 50 Londoners and wounded scores more, were born in Britain and lived in the English Midlands. They are described as "British nationals of Pakistani origin." One was only 19, another was 30 with an 8-month-old baby. The third, 22, loved cricket.
These facts inject new urgency into the debate about whether we are fighting an organization or an idea. Last year, Jessica Stern observed in a USA Today op-ed piece that "we are continuing to swat at yesterday's threats with yesterday's tools and, in the process, aiding the terrorists' cause. If the United States continues to prosecute a war on terrorism without thinking about what motivates new recruits, we, as a country, will lose."
Many Americans find the concept of suicide bombing not only repulsive but baffling. That's because few of us can conceive of any idea or ideal so dear that we would wake up one morning, strap on explosives and walk out of the house to our self-inflicted deaths, as the four London bombers did. Our revulsion and confusion are functions of our time and place in human history. Anonymous nobodies, leading lives of quiet desperation until moved by the power of a radical idea to act, fill the pages of modern Western history.
In The Proud Tower, a 1966 history of the West just before World War I, Barbara Tuchman wrote of Anarchism (with a capital A) during the late 19th century and early 20th century. "So enchanting was the vision of a stateless society . . . that six heads of state were assassinated for its sake in the 20 years before 1914." Her list included President William McKinley, shot by a lone assassin. After the murder of the Spanish premier in 1897, a British magazine opined, "The mad dog is the closest parallel in nature to the Anarchist," while another writer wondered how you could protect civilized society from "a combination of crazy people and criminals."
Whether you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald also was a lone assassin or the patsy of a broader conspiracy, read Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale. In it you'll meet a lonely young man who yearned to make his mark, and who was drawn first to Soviet-style communism and then to Castro's Cuba as sources for his half-baked ideas. That he first took a potshot at a right-wing general before being caught up in the Kennedy assassination suggests that his choice of victims was as much a matter of opportunity as it was the selection of specific targets.
Just as 19th-century lone killers were motivated by the writings of Anarchist intellectuals they had never met, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is said to have been heavily influenced by Leaderless Resistance, a 1962 doctrine by Ulius Louis Amoss. A former U.S. intelligence officer and Cold Warrior, Amoss founded the Baltimore-based International Service of Information Inc. When McVeigh and Terry Nichols did their dirty deed in 1995, Amoss had been in his grave for decades. His ideas had been kept alive primarily by an apostle named Louis Beam. McVeigh and Nichols never knew Beam either.
The Amoss/Beam idea is chillingly simple. In the words of one scholar, Simson Garfinkel, "Leaderless Resistance is a strategy in which small groups (cells) and individuals fight an entrenched power through independent acts of violence and mayhem."
This sounds a lot like what happened in London two weeks ago. In the words of one Fox News commentator, recalling the Madrid train bombing of a year ago, "both point to an al-Qaeda evolving into a movement whose isolated leaders offer video or Internet inspiration - but little more - to local 'jihadists' who carry out the strikes."
If this is how it is, then all of America's expenditures of lives and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq are so many wasted soldiers and dollars. In some sense we actually are repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, even though our modern armed forces were designed never to repeat our errors in Southeast Asia. As we tried for a decade to fight a conventional war against what was essentially a guerrilla force in Asia, now we once again are deploying our military might against far-flung nations.
Meanwhile, the real terrorist threat turns out to be an anonymous nobody lurking right next door.
James Ottavio Castagnera is a Philadelphia lawyer, writer and university administrator.
Contact James Ottavio Castagnera at castagnerac@aol.com.
http://articles.philly.com/2005-07-20/news/25432921_1_suicide-bombers-assassin-radical-idea
Enhanced by Zemanta

GI Bill online complaint system

Colleagues and Fellow Veterans,

Today VA, along with agency partners Defense, Education, Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Trade Commission launched an online complaint system designed to collect feedback from veterans, service members and their families who experience problems with schools when using Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits and the Military Tuition Assistance Program. Military and veteran students and their family members can now submit feedback at www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/feedback.asp.

The initiative is part VA’s roll-out of the President’s Executive Order for Principles of Excellence and is designed to empower students and their families, ensuring they have the best information needed to make the most informed educational choices; while holding institutions of higher learning to the highest standards. By reporting schools who are failing to follow the President’s Principles of Excellence, students can help improve the school experience for themselves and other beneficiaries of military and veteran education benefit programs.

A variety of partners helped to spread the word about this new initiative, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). VFW called the new online system a ‘Game Changer.’ Agency amplification included a blog written by CFPB’s Holly Petraeus, Department of Education website announcement and FTC press release. News coverage of the announcement included articles from Stars and Stripes’ Leo Shane and on the AP Wire.

The new feedback system is just one in a series of new tools launched recently to help veteran and military education beneficiaries learn more about their vocational aptitudes, select an educational institution and best use their education benefits. Additional resources include:


You can help us spread the word by forwarding this email and sharing the following tweet from VA:

@DeptVetAffairs VA News Releases: Federal Agencies Partner to Protect Veterans, Service Members and their Families Using GI Bill... http://1.usa.gov/MlzWfP


V/R


Curtis L. Coy
Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity
Veterans Benefits Administration
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 

Obama follows up State of the Union with remarks on job opportunities

Official photographic portrait of US President...
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

Remarks by the President on Opportunity for All and Skills for America's Workers

GE Energy Waukesha Gas Engines Facility
Waukesha, Wisconsin
11:27 A.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you!  (Applause.)  Hello, hello, hello!  (Applause.)  Well, it's good to be in Wisconsin!  (Applause.)  It’s good to be in Waukesha.  (Applause.)  Now, I’ve always appreciated the hospitality that Packer Country gives a Bears fan.  (Laughter.)  I remember when I was up here campaigning the first time and there were some “Cheeseheads for Obama” -- (laughter) -- and I felt pretty good about that.  Neither of us feel that good about our seasons, but that's okay. There's always next year.  
We have three of your outstanding elected officials with us here today.  We've got Congresswoman Gwen Moore.  (Applause.)  We've got the Mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett.  (Applause.)  And we have Milwaukee County Executive, Chris Abele.  (Applause.)  And we've got your former Governor, Jim Doyle.  (Applause.)  And it's also good to see -- I had a chance to see backstage somebody who was a huge part of my economic team before she became Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison -- Dr. Becky Blank is here.  And we just want to give Becky a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  She said she missed Washington, but she doesn't really.  (Laughter.)  She was just saying that to be nice.
I'm so proud of Reggie, and I'm grateful for the terrific introduction.  I want to thank Jim for showing me around the plant.
I have come here to talk with you about something that I spent a lot of time on in my State of the Union address on Tuesday -- the idea that no matter who you are, if you are willing to work hard, if you're willing to take on responsibility you can get ahead -- the idea of opportunity here in America.
Now, we’re at a moment where businesses like GE have created 8 million new jobs over the past four years.  (Applause.)  And that's good news.  Our unemployment rate is the lowest that it’s been in more than five years.  Our deficits have been cut in half.  Housing is rebounding.  Manufacturing is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.  We sell more of what we make here in America to other countries than we ever have before.
Today, we learned that in the second half of last year our economy grew by 3.7 percent.  We still have more work to do, but that's pretty strong.  And our businesses led the way.  Over the past year, the private sector grew faster than at any time in over a decade.
And that’s why I believe this can be a breakthrough year for America.  After five years of hard work, digging ourselves out of the worst recession of our lifetimes, we are now better positioned in the 21st century than any other country on Earth.  We've got all the ingredients we need to make sure that America thrives.  And the question for folks in Washington is whether they're going to help or they're going to hinder that progress; whether they're going to waste time creating new crises that slow things down, or they're going to spend time creating new jobs and opportunity.
Because the truth is -- and you know this in your own lives, and you see it in your neighborhoods among your friends and family -- even though the economy has been growing for four years, even though corporate profits have been doing very well, stock prices have soared, most folks’ wages haven’t gone up in over a decade.  The middle class has been taking it on the chin even before the financial crisis -- too many Americans working harder than ever just to get by, let alone get ahead.  And then, there are too many Americans who still are out of work here in Wisconsin and around the country.  So we've got to reverse those trends if we're going to be serious about giving opportunity to everybody.
And that’s why, on Tuesday, I laid out some new steps that we can take right now to speed up economic growth and strengthen the middle class, and build ladders of opportunity into the middle class.
Some of the ideas I presented I'm going to need Congress for.  But America cannot stand still, and neither will I.  So wherever I can take steps to expand opportunity, to help working families, that's what I’m going to do with or without Congress.  (Applause.)  I want to work with them, but I can't wait for them. We've got too much work to do out there, because the defining project of our generation -- what he have to tackle right now, what has driven me throughout my presidency and what will drive me until I wave goodbye is making sure that we're restoring opportunity to every single person in America.
Now, this opportunity agenda that I put forward has four parts.  The first part is creating more new jobs -- jobs in American manufacturing, American exports, American energy, American innovation.  And, by the way, this plant represents all those things.  You've seen new jobs being built in part because we've had this amazing energy boom in this country.  And the engines that are built here, a lot of them are being utilized in that new energy production.  We're exporting a whole bunch of these engines overseas.
The manufacturing that's taking place here isn't just good for this plant.  It has spillover effects throughout the economy. And what's also true is, is that manufacturing jobs typically pay well.  We want to encourage more of them.  And there's also innovation going on at this plant.  So the engines that were built 25 years ago aren't the same as the engines we're building today.
So the first thing is let's create more new jobs.  Number two, we've got to train Americans with the skills to fill those jobs.  (Applause.)  Americans like Reggie, we've got to get them ready to take those jobs.  (Applause.)
Number three, we've got to guarantee every child access to a world-class education, because that's where the foundation starts for them to be able to get a good job.  (Applause.)

And then, number four, we've got to make sure hard work pays off.  If you work hard, you should be able to support a family.  You may not end up being wildly rich, but you should be able to pay your mortgage, your car note, look after your family, maybe take a vacation once in a while -- especially when it's kind of cold.  (Laughter.)  At the State of the Union, I was going to start out by saying the state of the union is cold.  (Laughter.) But I decided that was not entirely appropriate.  (Laughter.) 
So on Tuesday, I talked about what it will take to attract more good-paying jobs to America -- everything from changing our tax code so we're rewarding companies that invest here in the United States instead of folks who are parking profits overseas to boosting more natural gas production.  But in this rapidly changing economy, we also have to make sure that folks can fill those jobs.  And that’s why I'm here today.
I know some folks in Wisconsin can remember a time, a few decades ago, when finding a job in manufacturing wasn’t hard at all.  If you basically wanted a job, you showed up at a factory, you got hired.  If you worked hard, you could stay on the job.  But our economy is changing.  Not all of today’s good jobs need a four-year degree, but the ones that don’t need a college degree do need some specialized training.  We were looking at some of the equipment here -- it's $5 million worth of equipment.  GE is going to be a little nervous if they just kind of put you there on the first day and say, here, run this thing -- (laughter) -- because if you mess up, you mess up.  (Laughter.)
So that’s a challenge for workers, and it’s a challenge for companies who want to build things here and want to bring jobs back from overseas.  As one of the top executives here put it, Brian White, “If we’re going to have a manufacturing base in this country, we’ve got to find a way to have manufacturing employees.”
Now, the good news is that folks across Wisconsin have set out to do just that.  This plant is a great example of that.  That's why we're here -- in addition to just you seem like very nice people.  (Laughter.)  But we're here because you're doing some really good stuff that everybody else needs to pay attention to.  Together with a local high school, you started a youth apprenticeship program.  So students spend four hours a day in the classroom, four hours on the shop floor; after two years they leave with both a high-school diploma and a technical certificate.
Then, you set up an adult apprenticeship program, so that folks can earn while they learn.  You’re working with partners from the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, to Mayor Barrett’s manufacturing partnership, to more than 50 other employers big and small across the region in order to spot job openings months in advance and then design training programs specifically for the openings.  You even helped set up a “schools to skills” program with a local business alliance to bring kids to factories and help inspire them to pursue careers in manufacturing.
And I just want to make a quick comment on that.  A lot of parents, unfortunately, maybe when they saw a lot of manufacturing being offshored, told their kids you don't want to go into the trades, you don't want to go into manufacturing because you'll lose your job.  Well, the problem is that what happened -- a lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career.  But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.  Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree -- I love art history.  (Laughter.)  So I don't want to get a bunch of emails from everybody.  (Laughter.)  I'm just saying you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need.  (Applause.)
So back to what you guys are doing.  All this work has paid off.  It’s one of the reasons why, over the past four years, you’ve grown your manufacturing workforce by nearly half.  So what you’re doing at this plant, and across this region, can be a model for the country -- which is why I've asked Congress to fund more reliably proven programs that connect more ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs.  (Applause.)  That's what we'd like to see from Congress. 
Of course, there are a lot of folks who do not have time to wait for Congress.  They need to learn new skills right now to get a new job right now.  (Applause.)  So that's why here today at GE, I'm making it official:  Vice President Biden, a man who was raised on the value of hard work and is tenacious, is going to lead an across-the-board review of America’s training programs.  (Applause.)  We’ve got a lot of programs, but not all of them are doing what they should be doing to get people filled for jobs that exist right now.  And we've got to move away from what my Labor Secretary, Tom Perez, calls “train and pray” -- you train workers first and then you hope they get a job.  We can't do that, partly because it costs money to train folks, and a lot of times young people they take out loans, so they're getting into debt, thinking they’ve been training for a job, and then, suddenly, there's no job there.
What we need to do is look at where are the jobs and take a job-driven approach to training.  And that's what you're doing here in Wisconsin.  So we've got to start by figuring out which skills employers are looking for.  Then we've got to engage the entire community.  We've got to help workers earn the skills they need to do the job that exists.  And then we've got to make sure that we're continually following up and upgrading things, because companies are constantly shifting their needs.
So what we're going to do is we're going to review all of federal job training programs, soup to nuts.  And then we're also going to be supporting local ones.  I've asked Vice President Biden and top officials in the federal government to reach out to governors, mayors, business leaders, labor leaders, Democratic and Republican members of Congress -- let's find what programs are working best and let's duplicate them and expand them.
And later this year, I'm going to ask Tom Perez, my Secretary of Labor, to apply those lessons as we conduct the next round of a national competition we're going to set up, challenging community colleges to partner with local employers and national industries to design job-driven training programs.  And we're going to have at least one winner from every state.  And we’re going to invest nearly $500 million in the partnerships that show the most potential.  So we're putting some real money behind this.  (Applause.)
Now, we know that we’ve got to start training our younger workers better and that a worker’s first job can set them on an upward trajectory for life.  So we should do something as a country that you’re doing right here, and that is create more apprenticeship opportunities that put workers on a path to the middle class.  Part of the problem for a lot of young people is they just don't know what's out there.  If you've never worked on a plant floor, you don't know what's involved, you don't know what it is.  If you don't have a dad or a mom or an uncle or somebody who gives you some sense of that, you may not know how interesting the work is and how much you can advance. 
So while we redouble our efforts to train today’s workforce, we've got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to expand apprenticeships.  And I'm going to call on American companies all across the country, particularly manufacturers, to set up more apprenticeship programs.
And we've got to make sure that once folks are through training, once they get a job that the hard work pays off for every single American.  I talked about this in my State of the Union.  Incomes, wages have not gone up as fast as corporate profits and the stock market have gone up.  And that's a problem for the economy as a whole, because if all the gains are just at the top, ordinary folks aren't doing better, then they're not shopping.  They're not buying new cars.  They're not buying new appliances.  They're not buying the new home.  And that depresses the entire economy.  When there's money in the pockets of ordinary folks, everybody does better, including businesses.
Now, today, women make up half our workforce.  They're making 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.
AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That’s wrong!
THE PRESIDENT:  That's wrong.  Who said that?  It's wrong. (Applause.)  It’s an embarrassment.  So I mentioned on Tuesday, women deserve equal pay for equal work.  (Applause.)  Women deserve to have a baby without sacrificing her job, and should be able to get a day off when the kid gets sick.  Dad's need that too.  (Applause.)
We've got to give women every opportunity that she deserves. As I said on Tuesday, when women succeed, America succeeds. (Applause.)  And, by the way, when women succeed, men succeed.  (Applause.)  Because -- I don't know about all the guys here, but when Michelle is doing good and happy, I'm happy, too.  (Laughter and applause.)  I'm just saying.
But also, just the economics of it, because we now live in a society where if you've got two breadwinners, that sure helps make ends meet.  So if a woman is getting cheated, that's a family issue for the whole family, not just for her.  (Applause.) 
Now, women hold a majority of lower-wage jobs.  But they're not the only ones who are getting stifled by stagnant wages.  As Americans, we all understand some folks are going to make more money than others.  And we don't actually envy their success.  When they're worked hard, they make a lot of money, that's great. Michelle and I were talking -- Michelle's dad was a blue-collar worker, worked at a water filtration plant down in Chicago.  Mom was a secretary.  My mom was a single mom.  They never made a lot of money.  They weren't worrying about what rich and famous were doing.  They weren't going around saying, I don't have a fur coat and a Ferrari.  They just wanted to make sure that if they were working hard, they could look after their family.
And that’s how I think most Americans -- that’s how we all feel.  Americans overwhelmingly agree nobody who works fulltime should ever have to raise a family in poverty.  They shouldn’t have to do it.  (Applause.)
So this is why I’ve been spending some time talking about the minimum wage.  Right now, the federal minimum wage doesn’t even go as far as it did back in 1950.  We’ve seen states and cities raising their minimum wages on their own -- and I support these efforts, including the one that’s going on right here in Wisconsin.  (Applause.)  As a chief executive, I’m going to lead by example.  I talked about this on Tuesday.  I’m going to issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay the federally funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour -- (applause) -- because if you’re a cook or washing dishes for our troops on a base, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.
Of course, to reach millions more people, Congress is going to need to catch up with the rest of the country.  There’s a bill in Congress right now to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 -- the 10.10 bill.  It’s easy to remember:  10.10.  And they should say yes to it.  Give America a raise.
Making work pay also means access to health care that’s there when you get sick.  The Affordable Care Act means nobody is going to get dropped from their insurance or denied coverage because of a preexisting condition like back pain or asthma.  (Applause.)  You can’t be charged more if you’re a woman.  Those days are over.  More Americans are signing up for private health insurance every day.  (Applause.)  So if you know somebody who isn’t covered, the great thing about this shop is because of strong union leadership and GE is a great company, most of the folks who work here, they’ve got good health insurance.  But you’ve got friends, family members, maybe kids who are older than 26 -- because if they’re younger than 26 they should be able to stay on your plan, thanks to the law that we passed.  (Applause.) But if they don’t have health insurance right now, call them up, sit them down, help them get covered at healthcare.gov by March 31st.
So these things are all going to help advance opportunity, restore some economic security:  More good jobs.  Skills that keep you employed.  Savings that are portable.  Health care that’s yours and can’t be canceled or dropped if you get sick.  A decent wage to make sure if you’re waking hard, it pays off.  These are real, practical, achievable solutions to help shift the odds back in favor of more working families.
That’s what all of you represent, just like the Americans who are on this stage.  Several of these folks graduated from one of your training program last year, including Reggie.  And as you heard Reggie say, he feels like he “won the Super Bowl of life.” (Applause.)  But just like the real Super Bowl, success requires teamwork.  So as they earned the skills that put them on the path to the middle class, Reggie and folks in the program had to look out for each other.  They had to help each other out.  Sometimes if one of them slipped, they had to come together and make sure nobody missed a beat.
And that’s the attitude it’s going to take for all of us to build the world’s best-trained workforce.  That’s the attitude it’s going to take to restore opportunity for everybody who’s willing to work hard.  And it won’t be easy.  And sometimes some folks will slip.  But if we come together and push forward, everybody as a team, I’m confident we’re going to succeed.  We’ve seen it here in Wisconsin.  We can make sure it happens all across the country.
Thank you.  God bless you.  God bless America.  (Applause.) Thank you.  (Applause.)  And now I’m going to sign this executive order to make sure we’ve got everybody trained out there.  (Applause.)
END
Enhanced by Zemanta

Amanda Knox again found guilty

If Italy's Supreme Court affirms the verdict, Italy will seek to extradite her.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/amanda-knox-verdict_n_4689258.html?1391115455&icid=maing-grid7|maing14|dl1|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D436892


Enhanced by Zemanta

Fed to seek death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber

English: United States Department of Justice L...
English: United States Department of Justice Logo Downloaded from United States Justice Department (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
          Statement by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz Regarding Attorney General's Authorization of the Death Penalty
January 30, 2014
Today, United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. authorized the government to seek the death penalty in the case of United States v. Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. We support this decision and the trial team is prepared to move forward with the prosecution.
A short time ago, the government filed with the Court the required notice of intent to seek the death penalty. The case will now continue to proceed through the pretrial process and the next scheduled court event is a status conference set for February 12, 2014.

While I understand the public interest in this matter, we have rules that limit the release of information and the scope of public statements. The process by which this decision was made is confidential, and I will not comment further about that process other than to say that it entailed a careful and detailed consideration of the particular facts and circumstances of this case.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2014/January/TsarnaevDeathPenaltyStatement.html




Enhanced by Zemanta

SVA launches complaint hotline


Online Complaint System Launched for Students Vets
Interagency Collaboration Aims to Protect Veterans from Predatory Schools
Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Education, and Justice, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, launched a new online complaint system for veterans. Designed to identify institutions of higher education engaged in deceptive, misleading practices, the centralized system collects servicemembers', veterans', and dependents' reports of negative experiences with educational institutions. It then gives the federal government the information needed to identify and address unfair practices and ensure high quality academic and student support services.

"It is not enough to offer veterans the education benefits they have earned and deserve," said Student Veterans of America (SVA) President and CEO, D. Wayne Robinson. "We must also commit ourselves to ensuring they receive a positive education experience and that we hold institutions of higher education to the same high bar we hold our nation's servicemembers. This online complaint system is designed to do just that. It empowers student veterans and gives the 'Principles of Excellence' a significant backbone on which to rest."

"Effective consumer education and protection is critical to affording veterans a positive education experience. From supporting legislative action such as the 'Principles of Excellence,' to creating high impact programs like 1 Student Veteran in partnership with the VFW, SVA will continue to do all within its power to ensure that every veteran is successful throughout their academic career." 

For more information, read the full press release
About Student Veterans of America
SVA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit coalition of over 850 student veteran organizations on college campuses globally. SVA's mission is to provide military veterans with the resources, support, and advocacy needed to succeed in higher education and following graduation. 
View Press Release
CONNECT WITH US