GBO NEWS: Colbert on Ben Carson’s “Geezer” Surgery; Journalism Fellowships; Repeal-Replace This!; Healthy Soul Food; Rigged on Roots of Inequality
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Now in Our 24th Year.
March 10, 2017 — Volume 17, Number 3
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
In This Issue: Gen-Beat Writers Win the Popular Vote.
1. GEEZER WATCH: *** Kudos to Stephen Colbert on HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s Diagnosis Brain Surgery for “Geezers” Is Wasted “Investment”; *** Crapo to Trevor Noah for His Ageist “King Over the Hill” Hit on Trump as Old
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE: ***Applications Open Soon for Year 8of Journalists in Aging Fellows Program by New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.
3. REPEAL AND REPLACE THIS: *** “Republicans’ Obamacare Replacement Just Got A Powerful Enemy,” by Daniel Marans & Laura Barron-Lopez, Huffington Post (March 7); *** “Proposed GOP Cuts Would Sharply Increase Elder Poverty,” New America Media, Op-ed, Justice in Aging Head Kevin Prindiville (March 3). *** “The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Health Coverage for Direct Care Workers” is a new issue brief from PHI; “The House Republicans’ health-care bill is a thicket of bad incentives,” by former acting administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Andy Slavitt, Washington Post op-ed (March 7).
4. THE STORYBOARD: *** The EDIBLE SOUTH: Part 1 — “Soul Food─Cultural Lifestyle or Disease Trap?” Florida Courier/New America Media , by Penny Dickerson (Feb 21). Part 2 — “A New—Healthier–Era for Soul Food”; *** “Latino Grandparents as Parents—on Diaper Duty Again,” La Opinión/New America Media , Francisco Castro (March 2). (In Spanish: “Abuelos se convierten en padres… Otra vez”; *** “Cicilline: Let’s Bring Back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging,” by Herb Weiss, Woonsocket (R.I.) Call (March 5)
5. THE BOOKMOBILE: ***Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer, by Dean Baker.
6. CALENDAR: ***Aging in America Conference in Chicago, March 20-24; ***“What’s Next Boomer Business Summit, March 23.
1. GEEZER WATCH
*** Kudos to Stephen Colbert, Late Show, (March 7, 2017) for low-lighting Ben Carson’s first address as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on March 6, Colbert called it “unfair” that most media coverage centered only on Carson’s bizarre remarks equating slaves with immigrants, to which the comedian quipped that the surgeon must also think the “Jews in Egypt were pyramid interns.” Colbert then ran a clip of Carson explaining what the comedian called “the ethical challenges of being a brain surgeon.”
In the clip, Carson states, “With a kid you can operate for 10, 12, 18, 20 hours. And if you’re successful, your reward may be 50-60-70-80 years of life. Whereas with an old geezer, you spend all that time operating and they die in five years or something. So, I like to get a big return on my investment.” At that, the odd doctor laughed heartily. Colbert jabbed, “It finally explains Caron’s campaign slogan, ‘Let the Geezers Die.’”
** Crapo to Trevor Noah for His Ageist “King Over the Hill” segment of The Daily Show (Feb. 15). Illustrated with Trump’s head plopped on the body of a grouchy looking senior in an unfashionably rumpled outfit (cardigan sweater, and ill-fitting jeans, the segment graphic was headed, “President Trump: America’s Xenophobic Old Grandpa.”
What a shame to hear blatant ageism coming from such a fine and brilliant new and humanistic thinker. (Hear his recent Terry Gross interview regarding his new memoir.) Maybe Stephen Colbert can clue him in on ageism. As I noted in my post-election piece on the multiple media attacks against 45, “Let Trump Be Held Accountable, Not Just ‘Too Old to Change.’”
As per Colbert’s retort to Trump’s insistence that “I inherited a mess,” the talk-show host said, “No, Mr. Trump, you inherited a fortune; we elected a mess.” Meanwhile, Gen Beatles, drop me a note if you see or hear any ageist slights, whether against Trump or anyone else. Ageism is crossing the political spectrum. Sad!
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Applications for Year 8of the Journalists in Aging Fellows program will be open soon. The collaboration between New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) provides a $1,500 stipend plus expenses to attend the annual scientific meeting of the GSA in San Francisco, July 23-27. The fellowship is open to reporters, both staff and freelancers, in any medium from mainstream or ethnic media news organizations serving communities in the United States. NAM and GSA present the program in cooperation with the Journalists Network on Generations, publisher of GBONews.org.
This year, GSA will be the United States host for the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics meeting, which only comes to this country every 32 years. On hand will be about 6,000 experts and professionals in aging, including those from throughout the U.S. and around the globe.
This year’s fellowship program will bring the eight-year total of participants in the program to about 135 journalists. To date, the Fellows have posted about 450 stories in English, with many in their original Spanish, Chinese, Korean and other languages. Stories first appear in each reporter’s news medium, and then the pieces may be cross-posted on the NAM and GSA sites. Funding for the new program so far has been granted by the Silver Century Foundation, AARP, Retirement Research Foundation, and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
Interested reporters can see details about the fellowship at the fellowship program’s website. GBONews and NAM editor Paul Kleyman is available for questions at pkleyman@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170, ext. 133. Or contact GSA’s Todd Kluss can answer questions at tkluss@geron.org; (202) 587-2839.
3. REPEAL AND REPLACE THIS!
*** “Republicans’ Obamacare Replacement Just Got A Powerful Enemy,” by Daniel Marans & Laura Barron-Lopez, Huffington Post (March 7): AARP announces its opposition to the bill. The GOP’s American Health Care Act, would allow insurers to quintuple premiums for older Americans over their charges for younger workers. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) set the increase in “age rating” was triple (which was also controversial when Obamacare was negotiated).
With almost 38 million 50-plus members, AARP also opposes two Medicaid changes in the House bill, a rollback of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, “which made the program available to millions of low-income adults, many of them seniors, who had no insurance before,” according to HuffPost, and a new funding formula” that could leave states on the hook for more and more money,” says a fresh analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Many seniors rely on Medicaid for long-term care and other health services.
AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said in a statement that proposed Medicaid cuts could affect “17.4 million children and adults with disabilities and seniors by eliminating much needed services that allow individuals to live independently in their homes and communities.”
*** ALSO, “Proposed GOP Cuts Would Sharply Increase Elder Poverty” is a New America Media, op-ed by Kevin Prindiville (March 3). Republican proposals to cut safety nets from Medicare and Social Security to Obamacare would sharply increase poverty among the most vulnerable older Americans. Prindiville heads Justice in Aging (formerly the National Senior Citizens Law Center).
*** AND, “The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Health Coverage for Direct Care Workers” is a new issue brief from PHI the advocacy group for nurse aides and other direct-care health workers. Their bullet points may suggest useful questions for reporters. The brief says that “between 2010 and 2014, half a million of America’s paid caregivers gained access to health insurance because of new coverage provisions under the ACA. Prior to the ACA, about one-in-four paid caregivers lacked health coverage, but in 2014 only one in five was without coverage—a 26 percent drop in the uninsured rate for these workers.” That also translated into a 30 percent increase for care workers mostly through Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, 37 percent of care workers live below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, enabling many to sign up for subsidized ACA coverage.
*** AND ANOTHER, “The House Republicans’ health-care bill is a thicket of bad incentives,” by Andy Slavitt, Washington Post op-ed (March 7). Slavitt, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (2015-2017), has generated much discussion among social-insurance wonks in DC. One relevant paragraph on aging: “Medicare doesn’t escape unscathed either. The bill would cut several years from the life of the Medicare trust fund, but that’s clearly no accident: The program would wind up right where “entitlement hawks” such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) want it — in crisis. If this bill became law, the speaker would finally be positioned to change Medicare to a voucher program.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Soul Food─Cultural Lifestyle or Disease Trap?” Florida Courier/New America Media , Penny Dickerson (Feb 21). NAM link: http://tinyurl.com/zd7cung. Part 1 — Slaves’ imagination and desperation changed how the South cooks and eats, but ironically there’s an unhealthy price to be paid by their African American descendants. Part 2 — “A New—Healthier–Era for Soul Food,” Florida Courier/New America Media (March 6). NAM link: http://tinyurl.com/gl5uw6y. Some African Americans have adapted new approaches to cooking, which leads to better health and living longer.
*** “Latino Grandparents as Parents—on Diaper Duty Again,” La Opinión/New America Media , Francisco Castro (March 2). NAM link: http://tinyurl.com/zxnhk9w. Latino abuelos who raise their grandchildren have to deal with retirement and diapers. In Spanish: “Abuelos se convierten en padres… Otra vez,” La Opinión/New America Media . NAM link: http://tinyurl.com/zgtxa95.
*** “Cicilline: Let’s Bring Back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging,” by Herb Weiss, Woonsocket (R.I.) Call (March 5): “Twenty-three years after the House eliminated the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging, Rep. David N. Cicilline, D-RI, introduced a House resolution days ago to reestablish the House select committee, once charged with investigating and putting a spotlight on aging policy, spurring legislation and other actions.” Cicilline also tossed the bill into the legislative hopper last year, and although it got neither action nor GOP sign-ons, the bill did attract 63 cosigners. (These days someone like SNL could do a video on how a bill doesn’t become a law.)
What’s the deal? First, Weiss, explains, a permanent committee’s work “would not be limited by narrow jurisdictional boundaries of the standing committees, but broadly at the targeted aging issue.” All standing and select committees of the House (except Appropriations) are authorized by a simple resolution, detailing the purpose, defining membership and any other factor needing to be addressed, and funding is then provided through appropriations. So far this year he has 24 Democratic cosigners.
Previously, the House committee on aging held hearings and dug into issues from 1974 to 1993, chaired in most of those years by the iconic Rep. Claude Pepper, D-Fla. When he died in 1990, the committee was mainly led by Rep. Ed Roybal, D-Calif. Cicilline told Weiss that “the select committee did not have legislative authority, but conducted investigations, held hearings, and issued reports to inform Congress on issues related to aging.” The committee’s hearings would generate federal policies, and lawmakers and staff would review relevant policy recommendations made by the President or White House Conference on Aging.
Over its 18 years, the committee produced about 1,000 hearings and reports prodding Congress to abolish forced retirement, reform nursing homes, increase home care benefits, cover breast screening for older women, and improve senior housing, as well as establish research and care centers for Alzheimer’s Disease. The Senate Special Committee on Aging, while important, does not conduct investigations of this kind.
In the mid-1980s, GBO’s editor, then senior editor of Continuing Care magazine, often relied on the committee’s cracker-jack investigator, Bill Halamandaris, for stories, such as on their groundbreaking, first-even government study of elder abuse.
So who abused the committee, or rather, let it expire on March 31, 1993, with no vote scheduled to continue it? If you guessed the GOP—wrong? Newly empowered with the election of President Bill Clinton and occupation of both branches of Congress, the centrist Dem leadership decided to make a show to cutting spending in the name of streamlining operations, usually by offing pesky committees and other bodies for only marginal budget savings. Ending the House aging committee saved $1.5 million that year. Clinton also pressured for congressional cuts to be comparable those he promised to make in the White House.
Weiss, author of Taking Charge: Collected Stories on Aging Boldly (2016), notes a brief effort by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when she became House Speaker to bring the panel back, but this attempt was not successful.
The story cites Fernando Torres-Gil, M.S.W., Ph.D., now director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging at UCLA and who was Clinton’s head of the Administration on Aging (1993-1996), and who had been the committee’s staff director during the l980s: “Torres-Gil remembered how important it was to have this committee ‘gerontologize’ congressional lawmakers.” Weiss quotes him recalling, “It became in its time the largest committee in the Congress with members on both sides of the aisle vying to be appointed to this committee.”
5. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Rigged is a Sobering Reality Check on recent media nostalgia for the presumed halcyon days of bipartisanship. The book, by progressive economist Dean Baker, is Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. (He jokes that he should charge Donald Trump a copyright license fee for lifting his title.)
Co-director of the progressive DC think tank, the Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR), Baker is known for his pungent “Beat the Press” blog. Rigged, issued by CEPR with endorsements by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, past Joe Biden advisor Jared Bernstein, and other impressive econo-lefties, is unsparing of both major parties in their complicity over the last four decades in enacting policies that have deepened the economic divide.
Although the book is available as a free download or can be ordered as a paperback for $9.95 plus shipping, Baker is making hard review copies available at no cost to media on request.
Baker is, for a DC economist, a clear and at times pungent writer. The wonky charts, graphs and jargon should not deter journalists from taking in his insightful analysis. (One annoying omission worth mentioning is the book’s lack of an index, making it harder than necessary for serious readers to revisit themes that thread throughout the text.)
What Baker exposes should be more disturbing than the partisan bickering and Tweeting that has passed for news in the 24/7 news cycle.
Baker describes five ways in which “the upward redistribution of the last four decades has been the result of deliberate policies, not the workings of the market and the process of globalization,” as political factions contend. For instance, he examines how making U.S. copyright and patent laws longer and stronger in recent decades has actually weakened market competition, most notably on prescription drugs and medical devices, pricing many beyond the reach of very ill people.
A key result of dialing back the current intellectual-property monopolies, he asserts, is that “breakthrough drugs for cancer, hepatitis C, and other diseases, which instead sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, would sell for a few hundred dollars. No one would have to struggle to get their insurer to pay for drugs or scrape together money from friends an family.”
Baker goes on to dissect the ugly consequences of current anti-competitive protectionism, from its spawning of a lawsuit industry that favors major corporations while discouraging smaller competitors, to its fostering an atmosphere of secretive and deceptive pharmaceutical company research. In the end, these and related laws have done little to “produce economic dividends in the form of more innovation and creative output” while driving national wealth upward and at times perpetrating widespread financial disparities and even physical harm.
Some of Baker’s alternatives seem overly convoluted and questionable. On artistic copyrights, for instance, one has to be skeptical that more than a few creative spirits would sign away their copyrights to the public domain—and their dreams with them—for a payment of $100 a pop.
But for the major issues Baker takes on in this book, the bipartisan policy decisions that have warped the U.S. economy, he refocuses the national discussion on many of the underlying concerns that have been drowned out by our political and media cacophony.
6. CALENDAR
***The Aging in America Conference of the American Society on Aging’s will be in Chicago, Match 20-24. Contact Jutka Mandoki to request a press credential: 415-974-9630; jmandoki@asaging.org.
*** The What’s Next Boomer Business Summit, also in Chicago, March 23, is always held in conjunction with the AiA meeting. This one offers a fund of stories on new business and technology developments in aging and will include a number of prominent journalists as presenters, among them PBS Next Avenue’s Rich Eisenberg, Unretirement author Chris Farrell, NY Times contributor and author Kerry Hannon, Reuters columnist Mark Miller, NYT’s Eric Taub and others. For press passes, contact Lori Bitter, 415-652-9884, lori@loribitter.com.
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The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online with in-kind support from New America Media (NAM). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. NAM is an online, nonprofit news service reaching 3,000 ethnic media outlets in the United States. GBO News readers are invited to visit the NAM website, and click on the Ethnic Elders section logo on the right side. Opinions expressed in GBO do not represent those of NAM. Copyright 2017, JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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