Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blogger Award

Well, it seems Little Ole Lady has presented me with a Thinking Blogger Award… and I don’t know what to say! On one hand, I don’t feel worthy, but on the other hand, I feel very honored. Since she took the time to give me this award, I feel obligated to participate in this meme…

Here’s the drill people: I pass this award on to 5 more thinking bloggers and they do the following:

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.
Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!

OK, the link above (with the origins of the meme) was missing when I got the text, so don’t blame me

Here’s my list:

Carol at Alabama Improper

Sniper One at 7.62mm Justice

Jane at SeeJaneMom

Gunny John at Jarhead’s Firing Range
Stacy at Still Stacy

Note: there are at least 10 more bloggers who I thought deserved to be nominated. 1-2 of them already have been nominated, so they’re not on my list. 3-4 more are associated in some ways, so I felt it wouldn’t be right to nominate some and not the others, and 3-4 are just great bloggers who I love to read, but who I don’t read as often as these 5 folks. Enjoy!
ProphetJoe

Originally post March 14, 2007 — see important update below:

Some of you have heard about the decision (Tuesday 3/13/2007) to remove Chief Illiniwek as the honored symbol of the University of Illinois (my alma mater, by the way). If not, you can read all about the latest wave of political correctness and the Chicago Democratic Machine-style of politics here.

But that is not what this article is about. Chief Illiniwek is a state-wide issue and will be addressed by the good people of the State of Illinois. What I am disgusted about is the University of Illinois’ treatment of our veterans. In this Associated Press story by David Mercer, the details come out about the University deciding to award 110 full scholarships to veterans and military personnel in the Executive MBA program in Chicago — a highly sought degree and one that costs about $74,000 to obtain. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

After touting the program and getting national praise from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the University says it was misunderstood and that it never meant it was going to give all 110 scholarships in 1 year and that they weren’t all meant to be for the Executive MBA program in Chicago. I might buy the miscommunication theory except for 2 little facts in the article:

1) The creator of the program, Robert Van Der Hooning, was promoted to Assistant Dean and given a raise by the Board of Trustees (generally a routine motion), then fired when he complained of the changes.

2) According to the story, one veteran “was told by letter last June that he wouldn’t be accepted after all”. That seems to indicate that they had previously been accepted. In all, 34 veterans received these letters.

To make matter worse, the Dean of the College of Business has been accused of wanting to down-size the veteran involvement because “students with military backgrounds might hurt the quality of the executive MBA class”. He reportedly referred to such students as “jar heads”.

So what do you think? Let me hear your feedback, or better yet, you can read the University’s account on the College of Business’ web site. Be sure to let them know how you feel by using the CONTACT link at the top of that page.

ProphetJoe

Update: This post was picked-up by Bushwack at AmericanandProud.net and the gentleman in the article (Robert van der Hooning) left this comment on that blog:

Joe,

I’m the guy in the David Mercer story you wrote about - the one who put the veterans program together at the University of Illinois. It’s a bit late at night so I hope this makes sense. Thanks for your bringing attention to this issue.

I have two comments.

First, the scholarships were planned for one year all along. I have an email from the Dean approving the scholarship program. It’s also something I worked on for the better part of a year and the issue went up the chain of command to the Provost, Chancellor and Board of Trustees. Before we launched the program, I spoke to several groups at the University – with my boss present – and explained the program in detail. Furthermore, I have an internal document crafted by an Associate Dean in Champaign, who reported to the Dean, titled “University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business/IVG Benefit Partnership Program Guidelines for Implementation for Academic Year 2006-2007″. The document was posted on various web sites and provided the rules and processes for managing the scholarship program. It didn’t say 2006-2008 or 2006-2009. It was for one year. Our Lt. Governor spoke about the scholarship program twice in front of hundreds of U of I staff and alumni. Our University PR department even helped him and a US Congressman craft their press releases in support of the scholarship program. Bottom line, it was always a 1-year program… until people at the University decided to cut it back. I never heard about anything other than a 1-year program until several weeks after they “reassigned” me.

While the PR department spins that the University intended the scholarships to be spread over 3-4 years – let’s assume that’s true for sake of argument – then why have all references to the scholarship program have been removed from University web sites and promotional literature? If it was even a 2-year program, there would be information about it on a web site or in a program brochure. Nope - all gone.

Yes, they called the veterans “jarheads.” They used it in a way to refer to military people in general – not just marines. My boss didn’t think I could find 110 qualified veterans. I kept telling them that the veterans tended to be better qualified for our MBA program than non-military candidates. What do you want in a business leader? Someone who knows how to define a plan, sets a target, organizes a team, motivates the team members, executes the plan, beats competitors, overcomes obstacles, deals with uncertainties and risks, and quantifies the success or failure of the plan from design through implementation. This might not be consistent with a Harvard case study or textbook on leadership written by a professor, but it sure sounds like the leadership skills the business community says it wants. Also sounds like the veterans I met.

However, the real issue – and the key to my lawsuit – is what the Dean and his senior staff did to try and get these men and women out of the program once we gave them the OK for admission. Here’s how they did it. They took a copy of the admissions database and reverse-engineered new time deadlines for submission of application materials in order to x-out about 35 veterans (and 1 civilian for appearance sake) that we already admitted. Basically, they looked at the data and figured out how to move the goalpost after the football was in the air. Then they wrote the veterans and said they violated the new time deadlines, but assured them they could still apply for a seat. Here’s the rub –
we already had about 85-90 people admitted for a class size they cut back to 60 – and that number included vets and civilians. A bit on the disingenuous side, to say the least. Worse yet, I was ordered to recruit non-military civilians to the program while we had 100 veterans standing in line. Most other academics I know at other schools just shake their head and roll their eyes… this is a big no-no in the academic world. You can’t mess around with issues of academic integrity and you can’t discriminate.

The Lt. Governor and a US Congressman found out about it, complained, and the University made me the fall guy. They thought I was a good guy until they got busted and needed someone to blame with a coverup. Most of the senior administrators – all the way up to the Board of Trustees – knew about this situation since last summer. Even the new President knew about it. Nobody acted. It’s a bit ironic that my former boss, the Dean of the College of Business, served on the Presidential Search Committee that nominated the new President, Joe White.

I have 3 daughters. Their word for what the University did is “creepy.” For once, I think my teenagers’ vocabulary is spot on.

If it wasn’t a group of veterans that got shafted, but let’s say it was a group of high school seniors from a wealthy Chicago suburb, I wonder what those parents would say? Imagine parents getting a letter saying they did something wrong - their kid applied too late - but the application deadline was changed without notice after their kid was told they could attend. That’s what happened here.

Second, and this is the most important point, we have to figure out a better way to provide educational products/services to our veterans when they return from active duty. Our current approach, supported by the GI Bill, isn’t working very well. I’ve been working on a non-profit business plan - since I got the boot - to solve this problem. I’m doing this on my own right now. Previously, I taught at Northwestern, University of Chicago, ran a couple companies and worked in manufacturing before working for U of I, so I’ve got some ideas how to do this. The key is looking at veterans in a “customer lifecyle” way - sort of like how Proctor and Gamble manage a brand or Citibank manages a credit card customer. Veterans aren’t the typical 18-year old from suburbia. They are BETTER, MORE DISCIPLINED, MORE MOTIVATED and have TECHNICAL SKILLS. There are companies out there that realize this – like EDS and USAA. But veterans represent different market segments… about 60% are married and/or have kids, and most of them have to work. Most can’t afford to take 4 years and get an undergrad degree or spend 2 years for a grad degree. Besides, $37K from the GI Bill doesn’t buy much these days.

It takes a combination of academia, industry and government to make this work. I’ve given my proposal to a couple congressmen in the Chicago area and hope to make this my life’s work. The model I’ve got in mind is based on my experience with General Motors Institute – basically a coop/internship model where students went to school for 3 months, then worked for 3, went to school for 4 months, worked for 6 months, etc. Similar models at Northeastern University and University of Cinci have had success, too. More importantly, however, we need to provide a different delivery model than the polar opposites of in-residence vs. online. A model similar to part-time MBA programs – classes 6-9 PM or 7-9 AM during the week or Saturday classes – seems to resonate with vets I’ve talked with in focus groups. Technologies like match.com or monster.com can find “fit” between veterans’ skills/capabilities and match them up with employers. The key is finding the right fit and making sure we keep veterans employed, successfully, while pursuing their education. This is necessary for effective transition, health care, family stability and a host of other reasons. I talked with over 1000 veterans and over 100 companies when I ran this scholarship program at Illinois. There is no shortage of businesses willing to step up to the plate and help, but they want the education part done smarter. I think the real bottleneck is going to be our educational institutions. Their business models are relatively inflexible.

A couple summers ago, I met a group of Marines in Chicago from the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment called the Mad Ghosts. Look them up sometime. Sometimes people have moments that change their life completely. This was my moment.

Thanks for posting the issue.

Robert vdH

He then followed-up yesterday (3/21/07) with another comment:

If anyone wants to ask me a question on this topic, please direct them to me at my daddysocool@aol.com email.

It’s a really important issue and I hope more people talk about it before veterans education becomes a Walter Reed-type problem.

Thanks.

I agree with Mr. van der Hooning — talk about it to everyone you know and then contact your legislator! Oh, and be sure to submit your opinions to the University of Illinois at the link above!

ProphetJoe

All right… what nutball thought Rodeo Of The Mind should win this award!!

It’s probably ProphetJoe nominating himself again

6pence

I shamelessly lifted this from LittleOleLady, but I needed to add my 2 cents too!

Personally, I think they’d respond more favorably with this visual aid:

You’ve all heard that Al Gore has been buying “carbon credits” to offset his consumption of natural resources — to those of you who are not up on the subject, think of it as buying “absolution of guilt” from the high priests of the green religion revolution — and to help maintain the environment.

The scam is that Al Gore and his silent partner, Maurice Strong (a Canadian socialist, and U.N. big-wig), own the company in question. Furthermore, when you investigate Maurice Strong (because few of us have heard of him before), you’ll find that he’s quite the liberal strategist. In fact, he is working toward a One World Government which will control environmental issues and create taxation and legislation over the (formerly) sovereign nations of the world. According to the Canada Free Press’ Judi McLeod, Maurice Strong is quite the mover-and-shaker in the Elitist Left movement.

In a Judi McLeod article from June 2006, she describes how Maurice Strong and George Soros have joined into a partnership to import cheap Chinese cars into the US in order to decimate the US auto manufacturers:

The marketing meister working with Strong and Soros is Malcolm Bricklin, who brought you the failed 1980 introduction of the Yugo in America.

The Strong-Soros get together makes for the business Partnership from Hell.

Both are bitter septuagenarians and running dogs for the One World Order-pushing UN.

Strong is on the public record for having stated that for humanity to survive, it may be necessary “for industrial civilization to collapse.”

After blowing $23 million to keep Bush from returning to the White House, spoiled sport Soros told reporters if Bush were to be re-elected, he planned to go away to “some kind of monastery to reflect on what is wrong with us.”

A promise he never kept, Soros went on to bankroll Moveon.org and to continue to carp at Bush and Company from the sidelines.

Strong’s forced industrial collapse remark could be written off as the public musings of a crackpot on a bad day. Problem is that crackpot, who is against single-family houses and air conditioning, went on to create the Earth Charter with sidekick Mikhail Gorbachev. At last count, The Earth Charter, which Strong and Gorbachev claim is a replacement for the Ten Commandments, was being carted from school to school in its goatskin covered gilded case by UN Staff.

Of particular interest to Americans should be this quote: Strong is on the public record for having stated that for humanity to survive, it may be necessary “for industrial civilization to collapse.”

In actuality, what Maurice Strong is quoted as saying was “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about? “ This is one of those men (and I use the term loosely) who believes a snail darter is more precious than a human being, and especially more important than a human being’s job.

Go read the articles and decide for yourself. Here’s another quote from Maurice Strong:

In an essay by Strong entitled Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation, he says:

“Strengthening the role the United Nations can play…will require serious examination of the need to extend into the international arena the rule of law and the principle of taxation to finance agreed actions which provide the basis for governance at the national level. But this will not come about easily. Resistance to such changes is deeply entrenched. They will come about not through the embrace of full blown world government, but as a careful and pragmatic response to compelling imperatives and the inadequacies of alternatives.”

“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. What is needed is recognition of the reality that in so many fields, and this is particularly true of environmental issues, it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.”

Do you want conservative Americans defending your rights and liberties, or Elitist Canadians taking control of your life? You decide, because this fight is as real as the war against Islamic Facsists!

ProphetJoe