Finally the Answer to Veterans Unemployment Homelessness and Suicides

For quite some time you have heard me scream my head off about veteran unemployment, homelessness and suicides.  You have heard me say that there is more we, as a nation, needed to do and more that we, as individuals, could do.  You have also heard me advise any who would listen, that instead of just accenting the problems, if we intend to be passionate and truly care about a particular subject, we also need to provide solutions.  Well, I have taken my own advice and I believe I have discovered the perfect way to address, greatly reduce and/or completely eliminate these same issues. 

It’s human nature to believe that money is and always will be the answer to any problem and while we all soon come to learn money is but a part of the over-all grand need but never will it be the total answer to anything, we must also admit that money is required to help with these problems.  But let’s not get it twisted and think that our current status of throwing money at these problems is how it will solve them.  Money is required but not to some profit, non-profit or governmental agency.  Money is needed to go to the very people all those previously mentioned claim to help.  Money needs to go directly into the hands of those veterans suffering and with that in mind, I am announcing the creation of a new private school for veterans only, and I’ve dubbed The Military Occupational Skills Conversion Institute or MOSCI.

If you are curious about how this school will work and what it’s primary goal will be read on.  There are over 21 million veterans in the United States and many of them are veterans without a college degree.  The majority may not have been able to save for or go to traditional colleges yet they were more than able to defend this nation.  Due to that, MOSCI has determined that they too deserve an equal playing field to those who choose not to serve but to station themselves within a classroom instead.  No veteran should ever have to regret choosing serving over education.  It is also a well-known fact that practical application of any subject is often times just as good if not better than institutional education. Have you ever wondered how any military officer could walk across the hall from military life to the civilian world and land a civilian job without much fuss?  It is because they possess the one thing that keeps all of the rest of us out of those jobs we are more than qualified for.  They have documented proof of education like a degree or diploma from a school that is acceptable to any employer.

MOSCI will operate mostly as a processing department where information from student is received, verified, converted, and then re-formed into a valid degree or diploma that will be widely accepted by employers.  This single act will greatly aid in the securing of that job for which the veteran has applied and will be calculated for each 2 years of honorable service equating to 1 year of college.  This school will be a private one for former military personnel who failed to meet current VA educations guidelines and will be based solely on your primary job performed while serving.  It will not be for any degree or diploma for skills not already learned and practiced and nothing that is not clearly defined on their discharge papers or DD-214.  Our office hours will be from 8 am Central Standard Time until 9 pm Central Standard Time Monday through Friday to give those who seek to use those skills acquired while serving the opportunity to advance within their current jobs or secure a job within the industry aligned with those skill previously learned and exercised. 

America, you and I both know that It’s a travesty when a veteran enters the military with no more of a desire than to serve and protect his/her nation only to do so at the highest level ever and then be forced to beg to be able to serve, protect and provide for his/her own family.  It’s a travesty when a military member takes the time to learn a foreign language, uses that knowledge on the battlefield to make better our interactions with the locals as well as to demonstrate to the world how great our nation is only to get denied the opportunity to make a living back home because he/she cannot show any document of learning that language from an accredited institution.  It is a travesty when a Navy Corpsman/woman who survived the wars taking care of the sick, wounded and dying cannot use that knowledge to even secure a job as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) upon release from the military.  It is a travesty that any service member who has been doing the same job within the military for 3, 4, 6 or more years is forced to take an entry level position within that same industry because of a lack of documentation.  It is a travesty when America can trust us with a loaded weapon to defend the freedoms of this nation but refuses to trust that we know anything about the same job we have been entrusted to do for so long because we choose to serve instead of sit in some classroom.  It’s time for us to do better for those who carry around with them a much deeper type of patriotism than has ever been revealed.

You see, your definition of patriotism is wearing a flag pin, flying the flag on your property, speaking well about the nation you love and a willingness to serve the citizens of that nation but there is a level of patriotism that only a few has ever experienced and are aware of.  In order to be willing to sacrifice your very life for a nation takes a much higher level of patriotism than any of you have ever known.  This is where that pride of God and country comes from.  This is where that willingness to jump on a grenade to save the lives of your fellow service members originates.  This is where the back stiffens, the shoulders square and any conversation ends when the National Anthem is played.  It’s a high totally unlike any high you have ever experienced and it’s a high from which those who have obtained this level have to fall when faced with the possibility that they will not be able to serve, protect and provide for their families as well as they served and protected this nation.  It is the height from which we tumble when we learn that all we earned is being decided by a few who may have never served.  It is the Mount Everest from which we are pushed and our only hope is the nation who claims to support us will catch us or break our fall.  It is one our way down that all of these hopes rests on the shoulders of those who know nothing of this level of patriotism and the thoughts that now run through our minds as we descend and realize that our time in service means nothing to those whom has benefited from that time and now we must beg them to deploy that net before we crash.  A height only those who stood with us there know that it exists.  MOSCI knows that this epic mountain exists and it knows that to save those being crowded off its peak means only to restore to them the opportunity to rebuild that pride, that patriotism. 

MOSCI says enough and has been created to step up to the plate and issue these necessary documents based on the jobs performed by all out-going service members without continuing cost to anyone except those whom it means so much.  What we have embarked upon, we know this to be true because we at MOSCI are veterans too.