There are times I want to set aside any sense of decorum and have at it with some of the slugs I see. For example, the likes of former CIA director, General Michael Hayden ,who defended torture recently on Fox News (a network renowned for having anything but news) and actually criticized President Obama for making the specific forms of torture public (they already were public, asshole) because now enemy combatants can train for it if we decided to use it again.
Use it again? Somebody slap that man. Better yet, kick his ass and be done with it. And while you're at it, do the same to the Bush-Cheney Slime Cartel for two reasons: they deserve it and they've done more to damage what my country was founded and designed to stand for than any American administration in history. In fact, if there was one thing the Bush-Cheney Slime Cartel made sure to exclude in their efforts, it was anything truly American.
The Bush-Cheney Slime Cartel claim torture and secret prisons were and are needed to fight the horror of terrorism. Did they forget WWII and the Nazis? Were there any group of people more vicious than the Nazis? The world united against them (which, by the way, had begun to happen right after 9/11e before the Bush-Cheney Slime Cartel tried to develop a dictatorship (something I believe, historians will confirm if allowed to research and report honestly and unimpeded) and defeated them and the Nuremberg Trials to this day stand as an extraordinary example of justice right-sizing injustice.
Okay, enough for now. Peace out. ___________________________________________________________________
As a man who was held up and shot in the head at point blank range in 1984, as a man who lives with a brain injury and the bullet still lodged in his brain, I do not think it is too much to ask that those whose job it is to help us are who they say they are. In other words, be honest. We, our loved ones, our many elected officials who truly do give a damn, along with all members of the American Family deserve honesty from those who provide health care.
In all likelihood I will soon issue a press release and publicly calling on all groups involved with brain injury as well as out elected officials and other appropriate state and federal agencies to investigate the matter I am about to discuss with you here because at this point, I am beginning to wonder if the Feeney Saga is, rather than a standalone issue, a systemic issue.
For some background, the blog essay breaking this story on February 10 will be republished here after the conclusion of this essay.
I think it was Dante who said something along the lines of, and I paraphrase, The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who stay silent in times of crisis. So I would urge all the aforementioned parties to step up to the plate and take or demand action.
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In looking into the matter of Timothy J. Feeney, a contract employee with the New York State Department of Health who continues to tell the world he has a PhD and a Masters Degree when he has neither, I find myself thinking of the Richard Pryor line, “You gonna believe me or your lying eyes?”
Here’s the situation as it stands now. Feeney is still a contract employee with New York State and I would imagine is still being paid by taxpayer dollars. Feeney still laying claim to college degrees that are not accepted as valid anywhere in these United States. Feeney admits that both his masters and doctorate were issued by Greenwich University, a diploma mill that was in Hawaii and California in the 1990s before moving to Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia in 1998 before finally closing its doors in 2003. Greenwich, not to be confused with the prestigious University of Greenwich in London, England, is on numerous diploma mill lists.
New York State itself is now dragging its feet in honoring a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request I filed back in January seeking copies of any and all contracts and other documents Feeney has been a party to with the State. As a former journalist, I've filed FOIL requests before but never have I encountered so many delays with amorphous excuses for them at best.
However, there is always humor to be found in life. I have offered to sit down with Feeney to hear his side of things and interview him. Awhile back he left me a voice mail saying he might be willing to meet but wanted to know what the agenda for the meeting might be. Aclose friend of mine quipped, “Maybe if he’d gone to an real college he’d know what the agenda was.”
By the way, I did send Feeney an agenda including some questions that I wanted to ask and told him I would record the conversation so neither of us would inadvertently have our words misprespresented. Feeney backed away from the idea of meeting with a speed that would make Olympic sprinters proud.
Some sources tell me that the contracts Feeney has with the state do not require him to have either a masters or a doctorate. If this is true, it is pretty unsettling for a few reasons.
First, why would New York State, in this case the Department of Health, give a contract which affords Feeney enormous say and power over survivors of brain injury on the Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver, not to mention enormous power over the companies who provide services to survivors on the waiver? I know he has put blocks on admissions for some companies, been the driving force behind sending some survivors out of the state into long term facilities and stopped other survivors from returning to the state.
This is not to say his judgment is always wrong, though there are times it is; but just imagine how the survivor, the family member or the providers who had their admissions closed down would feel when they found out Feeney was willfully misrepresenting himself and that, according to Feeney himself, the DOH knew he was doing this. Feeney says the Department of Health was aware all along that his degrees were not recognized anywhere in this country as being valid, but they hired him anyway.
Second, if the contracts do not require him to have the degrees he says he has and doesn’t have, did those designing the contracts with him know this? Were they in it together? Given Feeney's own statements, I suspect they were.
Third, and also deeply troubling and wounding, is this observation: where on earth is the respect for the survivors of brain injuries and their loved ones? Where is the respect for the providers of services themselves.
Feeney’s colleague, Mark Ylvisaker, who apparently does have the PhD he says he has, appears to be another rather despicable character in all this. It is fairly clear, based on past conversations and e-mail I received from Ylvisaker, that he has known all along that Feeney’s degrees were and are bogus, and yet he continues to work with him, support him and defend him.
Anyway, the investigation moves on
Following is the blog piece that broke this story.
* To his credit, Timothy J. Feeney, a contract employee with the New York State Department of Health for nearly 15 years, recently acknowledged that his PhD was issued by a college that is not accredited in the United States.
In an unsolicited February 8 e-mail to readers of this blog, Mr. Feeney said he received his PhD from Greenwich University which, he writes, “functioned as an unaccredited institution in the US, moved it’s physical location to Australia, received legal accreditation in Australia for a two year period – period of time that my doctorate was conferred - and then lost that accreditation and closed) and no longer exists.”
Mr. Feeney appears to be partly correct. The Greenwich University Act of 1998 allowed Greenwich to function on Norfolk Island as a recognized university. However, according to a web-alert issued by the Australian Government, degrees issued by Greenwich were never recognized as valid on the Australian mainland and they have never been accredited anywhere in the United States.
According to an e-mail from Douglass Capogrossi, past president of Greenwich University and current president of Hawaii-based Akamai University (also non-accredited), Mr. Feeney is correct that his doctorate was issued when the Greenwich University Act of 1998 was in effect.
According to Mr. Capogrossi, Mr. Feeney's doctorate was issued on June 14, 1999 and his masters degree, also from Greenwich, was issued on August 27, 1993, before Greenwich moved to Australia and five years before the Greenwich University Act when, according to Mr. Feeney's e-mail, Greenwich was operating as a non-accredited school in the United States.
Greenwich University was located in California and Hawaii in the 1990s before relocating to Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia. It closed in 2003.
In his e-mail Mr. Feeney expressed concern that this writer was or is about to call him a fraud or accuse him of fraud. As I said to him in a subsequent e-mail, I have no intention of doing either.
In his e-mail Mr. Feeney further says I have drawn a conclusion about the academic integrity of degrees issued by Greenwich and “based (my) opinion on the fact that (his) Masters and Doctorate have been conferred by Greenwich University, which he has, in separate emails to myself and others, characterized as a Diploma Mill.”
Rightly or wrongly, Greenwich University is on numerous diploma mill/non-accredited schools lists on the web. The State of Oregon has compiled a comprehensive list of non-accredited schools and Greenwich is listed. It is also present on a non-accredited school lists that can be located by visiting the website for the U.S. Department of Education.
As one who lives with a brain injury and one who advocates for all people with disabilities, it is true that I wrote Mr. Feeney e-mails asking him to clarify his education. He never responded to any of my requests. In fact, his e-mail to the readers of this blog represents the first time I have heard him acknowledge his doctorate was issued by Greenwich University.
Moreover, in his unsolicited e-mail to readers of this blog, Mr. Feeney says he is "very careful never to refer to myself as a psychologist." However, his profile in his company website says (italics are mine) "Tim has worked in a variety of capacities in human services including: special education teacher, program director of a state program for individuals with autism, coordinator of educational services, coordinator of behavioral services, staff psychologist, consulting behavior specialist, and an Assistant Professor of Special Education."
The issue for me is whether or not someone who has worked in the field of brain injury in New York State and a wide array of other localities has degrees that are recognize as valid by accrediting and regulating agencies.
However, according to Mr. Feeney, the New York State Department of Health is satisfied with his degrees and the NYDOH is fully aware that they were issued by a school that is not accredited in the United States.
In his February 8 e-mail he writes (italics are mine), “I have been the Project Director for the NY State Neurobehavioral Resource Project for nearly 15 years, representing 3 distinct 5 year award periods. I have this job as the result of responding to a Request for Applications on three separate occasions. Each application required that I present my credentials for review. In each project award period I have been identified as the “key person” as a result of the DOH’s recognition of my experience and success as a clinician supporting individuals with brain injury and challenging behaviors. The Department of Health, the state office responsible for the Neurobehavioral Resource Project, is well aware of my educational history, the source of my degrees, and knew that I was undertaking graduate studies while working as the Project Director.”
I have offered more than once to sit down with Mr. Feeney and when he forwarded me the e-mail he sent to readers of this blog I again offered to sit down and talk with him. There has been no response. __________________________________________________________
The California Supreme Court seems poised to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage, even though doing so would mean bigotry trumps the constitution.
News reports say California justices appear reluctant to overturn the will of California voters who approved a ban on same-sex marriage in November. Never mind that the very same court approved same sex marriage in May as a constitutional right.
Upholding the four-month-old ban on same-sex marriage will essentially mean the court will allow bigotry to trump the constitution.
I wonder what would have happened if courts had given bigotry and prejudice that kind of sway during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and instead let their rulings be controlled by the the majority racist voting population in some southern states?
The opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in bigotry, plain and simple. Does this mean that those who oppose it are all bad and mean people? Of course not. Change is never easy, and to paraphrase an observation voiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after he’d been assaulted by a white man in his 50s, If you’d been told every day of your life for more than 50 years that people who were gay and lesbian are bad people, what would you believe?
Overcoming the wrenchingly misguided bigotry towards men and women who chose same-sex marriage will take time. But the bow of the American ship is, albeit slowly, heading in that direction.
Mark my words, the day will come when same-sex marriage will be part of our American culture. I hope I live to see it.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why, in our heart of hearts, we would do anything to impede the right of two people who truly love each other to marry. After all, isn’t loving each other what it’s all about?
The last post in this blog was about Timothy J. Feeney’s insistence on referring to himself as Timothy J. Feeney PhD or Dr. Timothy J. Feeney when he is neither, at least not in the United States.
As I stated earlier, both his masters and doctorate degrees were issued by a diploma mill called Greenwich University, a non-accredited college that floated back and forth from California and Hawaii in the 1990s before going to Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia in 1998. It closed in 2003.
In truth, Mr. Feeney has a good working knowledge of people with brain injury and, were he able to step up to the plate and shed the guise and present himself as he is, he could be a formidable and helpful presence in the world of community-based brain injury rehabilitation.
In his February 8 e-mail Mr. Feeney asserts that members of the New York State Department of Health have known all along that his degrees were issued by a diploma mill and were satisfied with this.
If Mr. Feeney’s assertion is true, it is deeply troubling and it is all a symptom of our culture’s addiction to dishonesty and penchant for greed.
Did members of the New York State Department of Health know Mr. Feeney’s degrees were, in short, bogus? Did the DOH know this and still sign Mr. Feeney and his company, School and Community Support Services of Latham, New York, to contracts for nearly 15 years?
What group of dysfunctional minds felt morally comfortable and at peace with the notion of giving so much influence to someone who has no doubt impacted the lives of hundreds of brain injury survivors, their families and community-based healthcare providers in New YorkState?
Mr. Feeney’s insistence on misrepresenting himself is, sadly, not unique. The tragedy for Mr. Feeney is that choosing to do so undermines the very real qualities and knowledge that he brings to the table because it destroys trust, and once trust goes out the window, one’s ability to be effective in their therapeutic endeavors goes out the window with it.
Here is a critical point to all of this, because it points to a larger picture. This writer and any reader of this essay would be flat out wrong to villainize Mr. Feeney or those DOH officials who, according to Mr. Feeney, knew full well the reality of his degrees. While Mr. Feeney et al are certainly responsible for their choices, we have all in one way or another contributed to the creation of a culture that promotes this kind of mindset, and thus we are all responsible for dissembling it, brick by brick, if you will.
We can and must hold people accountable, but we must do so without hatred, without cruelty. We must allow people to step up to the plate, apologize, make amends. We can dislike the choices, even hate them at time, but we are stepping into emotional quicksand if we allow ourselves to hate our brothers and sisters.
is a passionate human rights advocate. He is a survivor in every sense of the word.
He has overcome an enormous amount of trauma: a period of homelessness, the suicides of several close family members. In 1984 he was held-up and shot in the head at point blank range.
Mr. Kahrmann is a writer and powerful public speaker.
He believes all people have a right to be who they are safely in the world they live in.
The views expressed in this blog are Mr. Kahrmann's and are not meant to express or represent the views of any organization or group Mr. Kahrmann is affiliated with.
