Cal Vet Education
The following press release has been received from NASA Education. It gives details of the Stand Down on Marcy 8th and 9th.
NASA Education Corporation Semi-Annual Stand Down for Veterans to take place March 8-9, 2010
CRYSTAL LAKE – Calling all veterans this event is for you. There is no cost to attend this function. Veterans who are newly discharged, displaced, disabled or homeless and are otherwise in transition are the focus of the Stand Down for Veterans, which will take place beginning at 8:00 a.m. on March 8th through 3:00 p.m., March 9th at YMCA Camp Algonquin, 1889 Cary Road, Algonquin.
“The individuals attending our stand down, coming for assistance are truly heroes. Each and every one of us owes them our gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy, worldwide.“The reasons that they have reached the point in need of assistance, varies as widely as your own individuality.
“The people coming to the stand down for assistance are not only recent veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, but are also veterans that reach as far back as the Vietnam War, the Korean War and the code talkers of WWII,”
said John Blanchard, executive director of National Association of Systems Administrators Education Corporation (NASA Education), the sponsor of the event.
Senators Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jim Webb, D-Va., have sponsored legislation that would increase veterans’ benefits to cover the cost of public university tuition, books and housing.
It has the endorsement of several veterans organizations, and the national advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has taken it up as one of its leading causes.
Locally, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, also supports increasing education benefits.
“This is something we owe,” Kohlberg said. Taking care of returning veterans is part of the cost of war as Kohlberg sees it, just like after World War II.
Back then, Kohlberg had just finished three years in the Navy, a lieutenant in charge of the stores the U.S. military shopped at in Panama. When he returned, the U.S. government sent nearly 8 million veterans, including him, to school.
Kohlberg the veteran makes the moral argument that Congress needs to restore the compact between the warriors and their government. Kohlberg the capitalist makes an economic argument. The original GI Bill’s massive swords-to-plowshares effort converted the world’s mightiest military into a nation’s middle class.
With the aid of the U.S. government, Kohlberg got a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, a master’s degree from Harvard Business School and a law degree from Columbia University School of Law. In part because of the help they got from the government, Kohlberg said, his peers got better jobs and spent more money, paid more taxes and assumed more leadership roles in civilian life.
A new GI bill that covers all educational expenses of veterans is a good investment, one he estimates will pay five to 10 times its upfront amount.
Kohlberg knows something about investments. As a pioneer of the leveraged buyout, he has amassed a $1.5 billion fortune that according to a Forbes list published this month makes him the world’s 785th richest person.
Until Congress agrees to make that investment, Kohlberg will invest on his own.
There is another difference between now and then, Kohlberg said. The current wars have been financed largely by debt, while seemingly everyone in the nation sacrificed for the World War II effort, he said.
Kohlberg said he believes that even those who oppose the Iraq war as he does would agree that the nation must do more to support veterans of that war.
“We’re lucky we’ve been just sitting here on our duffs, all of us doing nothing for the war,” Kohlberg said. “We haven’t even been asked.”
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