GBO NEWS: Boomer v. Millennial Ageism; Intergenerational Rosa Parks; Book Publishing on Aging; ‘Bingocize’; Racial, LGBT End-of-Life Care Disparities; Pentagon Waste Report; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations– Celebrating 25 Years.
December 18, 2018 — Volume 18, Number 12
EDITOR’S NOTE:GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), 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. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Happy Wassailing to One and All, this Winter Solstice.
1. BOOMERS v. MILLENNIALS—GENERATIONS MEDIA LOVE TO HATE: Generation Priced Out author blames “white boomer homeowners” for the U.S. Housing Crisis—and pollution, too. (Really!)
2. VOICES FROM THE SAGE: *** The Intergenerational Rosa Parks at 80; ***Author, Conscious-Aging Leader Bob Atchley, 79, Dies.
3. THE STORYBOARD: *** “Getting Published in the Longevity Market,” by Kevyn Burger, Stria;
*** “Racial Disparities in End-of-Life Care—How Mistrust Keeps Many African Americans Away from Hospice”and “The Challenges and Cultural Barriers Faced by Asians and Latinos at the End of Life” by JoAnn Mar, KALW Crosscurrents;
*** “The Loneliest Generation: Americans, More Than Ever, Are Aging Alone,” by Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg, Wall Street Journal.
PLUS these headlines from the 2018-19 Journalists in Aging Fellows:
*** “’Bingocize’ Created by WKU Professor Approved to Help Address Major Problem of Aging,”by Rhonda Miller, WKU Bowling Green Public Radio; *** “Wisconsin Training Health Providers to Care for Aging Population,” by David Wahlberg, Wisconsin State Journal; *** “LGBT Seniors Grapple With End-of-Life Issues”by Matthew S. Bajko, Bay Area Reporter; *** “Aging with animals: Pets can help older adults, but they come with challenges,” by Elizabeth Fite, Chattanooga Times Free Press; *** “The Burgeoning Trend of Age-Friendly States,” by Richard Eisenberg, PBS Next Avenue; *** “The Spirit of the Gray Panthers Stirs to Life,” by Barbara Peters Smith, Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
AND *** Louisiana Weekly Series on the marked effects of eczema, dehydration,” diabetes on African American and Latino elders.
*** “Incoming Dem Chairman Open to Hearing on Medicare for All,” by Peter Sullivan, The Hill;
*** “Cicilline to Reintroduce Resolution to Reestablish House Aging Committee,” by Herb Weiss, Rhode Island’s Woonsocket Call/Pawtucket Times;
*** “The Pentagon Doesn’t Know Where Its Money Goes,” New York Times Editorial.
1. BOOMERS v. MILLENNIALS—GENERATIONS MEDIA LOVE TO HATE
The boomers are at it again. One author making the media rounds declares that “greedy boomer homeowners” have driven up astronomical rents across urban America with dire consequences. Don’t blame real estate developers, he says, but boomers, who relegated millennial teachers steeped in college debt to face $3,500 rents and can’t live less than an hour from their school.
This author tells us, further, that boomer profligacy is causing millennial commuters to clog freeways, worsening air pollution, thus intensifying climate change. But for the selfishness of boomers–not criminally negligent building managers and lacks city inspectors–the 36 creative millennials who died in Oakland’s 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire might be alive today in safe, affordable housing. What’s more, the “elite, primarily white boomer homeowning communities that keeps renters and people of color out.”
I kid you not: All of that and more is what liberal housing advocate and author Randy Shaw said during his Nov. 27, 2018, guest spot on KQED public radio’s Forum,unchallenged by the usually astute host Michael Krasny.
Shaw is the author of Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. As the book’s blurb states on UC Press website, “Shaw exposes how boomer homeowners restrict access to housing in big cities.”
What’s Age Got to Do With It?
As always with ageism, the underlying question is: What’s age got to do with it, that is, besides boosting book sales with a bogus controversy? Shaw’s pitting of boomers against millennials is nothing new in the annals of trumped-up intergenerational friction. For an archive of examples, simply click on to author Ashton’s Applewhite’s blog, thischairrocks.com. And ageism doesn’t only smear older people.
For instance, LinkedIn just posted a blog, “50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead,” (Dec. 11). Much of the blog is quite interesting. But item No. 1 is headed, “Move over, Millennials; it’s Gen Z’s time.” The list begins, “In 2019, Generation Z will outnumber Millennials, that generation you’ve loved to hate for the past decade.”
Hold on, now, wasn’t Gen X (remember them) America’s resident pack of “slackers”? You know, Xers like my hard-driven daughter, a lean-in, high-tech working, mother. And don’t forget the “me-generation” boomers and, before them—the “Greatest Generation?” Greatest? Not so fast. Before Tom Brokaw rebranded them, the World War II generation was infamously vilified as “Greedy Geezers” in a 1988 cover story in the New Republic.
LinkedIn continues, quoting best-selling author Brené Brown: “About half of her staff is Gen Z. ‘They are all very different people, but as a group I experience them as curious, hopeful, always learning, painfully attuned to the suffering in the world, and anxious to do something about it.’” Gee, what might Z youth and their disdained older millennial siblings say about that? Of course, there’s no way for anyone to know, which is the point of larding a deadline piece with snappy generalities and snide edginess skated on thin stereotypes.
To be clear, yes, demographic groups—”cohorts,” our academic friends like to say, do emerge in times and social conditions that may broadly affect certain behaviors in ways social scientists recognize as often helping better to understanding historical trends. Notable in the last century, for example, we the widely acknowledged frugality of people who grew up during the Great Depression. The all-too-human tendency to shade observation into opprobrium—oh, denizens of the Twitter-verse–instead of greater mutual empathy and understanding—ought not give cover to someone like Shaw.
In Shaw’s case, even respected publishers, editors and media interviewers, such as Krasny, are unquestioningly accepting gratuitous stereotyping based on age. Shaw repeated his generational opposition in Seattle later that week, and will likely continue doing so in others of the 12 cities he profiles in Generation Priced Out. The San Francisco Book Review, blindly piled on by stating, “Randy Shaw exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials’ access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics.”
I’ll stipulate that, yes, homeownership, which has declined in recent decades, has long been highest among older people, a majority of them white. But, of course, a majority of older Americans are white, as are older voters, who also have been readily blamed for the election of Donald J. Trump. That is, except when other factors are figured in, such as ethnic seniors who didn’t or others not living in red Southern, Western or Rust Belt states–plus additional political complexities that tend to get ignored in narrow and facile “analyses.”
Perhaps, in the weeds of Shaw’s book, he includes more qualified analysis than his blurted statements in print and during his hour on “Forum.” (I have not read it and comment here only based on his public remarks and quoted statements from the book and publisher.) Maybe, after deriding “boomers,” the book acknowledges that San Francisco is a city of two-thirds renters, half of whom, like this editor, are over 50. Perhaps, somewhere the book mentions that older, long-time renters are prime targets of evictions.
As GBONews.org reported in our November issue, UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research published a recent fact sheet titled, “More Than Three-Quarters of Low-Income Older Californian Tenants Are Rent Burdened.” The study found that 78.4 percent of the Golden State’s more than half-million older, low-income renters are under a moderate-to-severe rent burden.
Careful observers shouldn’t have to look far to see that although gentrification has affected everyone, those most impacted have been the older and younger generations. Communities like San Francisco, caught in the web of real estate values and outmoded tax systems, are burning their heritage at both ends, with their future blocked out on the one hand, and their institutional memory evicted in large numbers, on the other.
Boomers: The Ultimate Home Wreckers
Mind you, Shaw, a boomer himself, has much to worth hearing. He identifies several critical factors leading to the skyrocketing rents in the 12 cities his book spotlights where vocal locals have blocked the development of even modest apartments that might add to the housing stock for millennials just starting out—and maybe quite a few aging boomers, Xers and Z-ebras, as well.
Shaw bases his generational attack on “entrenched” homeowner associations having militated for decades at local zoning board meetings against even building even a fourplex on the same corner lot that might well get approval for a mansion of the same size. It’s certainly a point deserving local review. Yet, his critical targeting of “greedy” boomers for having the temerity to show up to testify at planning commission hearings seems about as ill-considered as the scorn heaped on older people for voting in larger percentages than younger generations.
People exercising the democratic rights at the pools or in public hearings is not the problem, but improving access to decision-making through modernized forms of public comment (and voting) should be. Nah! Easier just to blame whichever generation seems handy and too diffused to be able to respond. But why does fake generational warfare continue to get media traction from publishers and media producers, who ought to know better?
The strongest Forum response to Shaw was a Tweet from “Ann,” who wrote, “It isn’t about greed. There are no retirement plans anymore, no companies covering pensions or health care. Educations costs are through the roof. Our house is our retirement, our health care, our kids’ education. We aren’t greedy.”
So, there’s the harm. For all of the short-gain damage ageism inflicts on those intended and unintended, in essence bias reduces the accuser by diverting attention away from a more meaningful and, perhaps, truer understanding of the remedies at hand. Such is the bane of politics.
Those, especially, who would seem to agree with one’s viewpoint, shouldn’t be let off the factual, fair and logical hook. It’s disappointingly necessary still today to remind people that a sharp, game-show “wrong” buzz should go off at the sound of any attack based on a group’s demographic identity.
2. VOICES FROM THE SAGE
*** The Intergenerational Rosa Parks at 80: Historian Douglas Brinkley, appearing on CSpan, recalled a moment with Rosa Parks, about whom he’d written a biography. He said, “Right before she died, I went up with Mrs. Parks in Detroit. She was taking assisted living homes, people living in their 80s-plus, and connecting them with a buddy in elementary school, who could teach . . . the seniors how to use their telephone, to look for stories, or communicate, learning how to e-mail.” Parks was 92.
Brinkley added, “We don’t do cross-generational as well as we should. Too many times old people are considered old and in the way instead of fountainheads of knowledge.” He went, “I really encourage is high school teachers to do oral history projects where you interview somebody from another generation and capture their story and do an oral history report.”
The program, a Dec. 2, 2018 rebroadcast of a September panel of historians, includes this comment a42 minutes into the 58-minute discussion.
*** Author, Conscious-Aging Leader Bob Atchley, 79, Dies: Much as GBONews tries to minimize the number of death notices, given our topical focus, some tributes are required by the grace of good souls passing from us. Robert C. “Bob” Atchley, author of a dozen books, died Nov. 13, in his adopted community of Boulder, Colo. His book, Social Forces in Aging was issued in 10 revised editions and became one of the leading college texts in gerontology. He taught for decades at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he would head the Scripps Gerontology Center before retiring and moving to Boulder in 1998, to chair the gerontology department at Naropa University.
In Atchley’s years as president and board member of the American Society on Aging, where he also chaired the editorial board of ASA’s newspaper, Aging Today, which I edited, I developed a lasting friendship with him.
During the past few years, this widely respected authority on retirement and author of Spirituality and Aging (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) set down the manuscripts and picked up his acoustic guitar. In recent years, singer-songwriter Bob Atchley sang at area coffeehouses and even cut some CD’s. Fellow gerontologist Harry “Rick” Moody, who also escaped the hubbub of the East to Boulder, shared his last conversation with Atchley in his excellent Human Values in Aging Newsletter.
Moody wrote, “On Bob’s CDs you can hear songs like Time Goes Too Fast and Pay Close Attention, and the titles give us a message from his passing. The day before he died Bob spoke about his current medical crisis and said it ‘makes me more aware of the blessing that is life. As I say in my song, The Source, ‘an amazing wonder, this life that burns within me, it is the Source, the Source of what’s to come.’ The sudden shock of losing him reminds us all of a message from the Psalms: ‘Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’”
Atchley, who was a Quaker, was an essential member of the far-flung group who led the “conscious aging” movement in gerontology. He and others, such as Moody, Aging & Sage-ing author/founder Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi and Carter Catlett Williams pushed the spiritual envelope beyond the confines of institutional religious membership.
Atchley’s longitudinal study of aging in Ohio, for instance, showed that even self-identified non-believers who also expressed a strong spiritual sense benefitted from the same level of mental and physical wellness as devoted church-goers. That finding much annoyed some gerontologists, especially from more traditional communities. The efforts of Atchley and other led to the establishment in 1997 of the important but vaguely named Pioneer Network, which continues to have a well-regarded annual conference each year.
Meanwhile, those interested in Moody’s monthly Human Values in Aging Newsletter can request the latest issue from him at rmoody@fielding.edu. For writers interested in issues involving elders’ emotional challenges and philosophical conundrums around the meaning of their lives, this newsletter is a great source of information across many spiritual, literary and philosophical dimensions, with information on organizations and upcoming conferences, along with a few nuggets of elder wisdom.
3. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Getting Published in the Longevity Market,” by Kevyn Burger, Stria(Oct. 15, 2018): Getting a book on aging published has long been tough, but there have been recent breakthroughs. Burger interviewed several authors who have found success. New York-based Ashton Applewhite (This Chair Rocks and thischairrocks.com) was shocked, Burger writes, when she began marketing the manuscript.
Burger quotes Applewhite, “The publisher that had an option on it said to my face, no one will buy it because readers don’t want to think about getting old. I got an agent and 20 publishers she took it to passed. I saw first-hand the harm ageism does. This discrimination keeps ideas that could change things from getting out there.”
Applewhite, who had been a book editor in Manhattan earlier in her career, self-published, setting up her own media campaign and speaking tour to promote her book. She sold 18,000 copies, a number that demonstrated its potential to a traditional big house. This Chair Rocks was picked up by Celadon Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing, and will get a wide release next spring.
She told Burger, “My big vision is that we’re up against a huge problem, and it’s going to take all hands on deck to get rid of the self-fulfilling stereotypes. Aging is not a problem or a disease, it’s a natural, universal human process that we should be less afraid and more informed about.”
The story also quotes Porter Anderson, editor-in-chief of the international site Publishing Perspectives and editor of The Hot Sheet, a publishing industry newsletter: “Publishing once thought of itself as society’s agenda-setter, but the [profit] margins are so narrow they have to be sales-driven now.”
Burger adds, “There are an ever-growing number of books on aging that do break through. But Anderson agreed with Applewhite that cultural discomfort with the subject prevents mainstream publishers from tackling the topic. The full variety of literary options that reflect the scope and demographic reality of the population are not getting published.”
*** “Racial Disparities in End-of-Life Care—How Mistrust Keeps Many African Americans Away from Hospice,” and “The Challenges and Cultural Barriers Faced by Asians and Latinos at the End of Life,” by JoAnn Mar, KALW Crosscurrents (November 2018): Mar’s two-part report concludes her exhaustive End-of-Life Radio project, which includes eight segments produced from 2016-18. She produced them supported by a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2018 California Fellowship.
Although KALW’s site includes links to the new programs’ audio, Mar’s project website also posts her adapted transcripts. The new segments explain, “The end of life is not easy for most Americans nearing death. The good news is that up to ninety percent of pain and suffering can be controlled. But the bad news is that over half of all dying Americans experience unwanted pain and suffering during their final days. And the numbers are even greater for people of color. African Americans, Asians, and Latinos have less access to the pain medication and comfort care that hospice can provide at the end of life compared to whites. Asians, Latinos, and other ethnic minorities whose second language is English face additional challenges. Language barriers and cultural traditions can inhibit awareness of and discussions about end-of-life options, and are often compounded by poverty and lack of education.”
Also on the project’s site links to Mar’s hourlong documentary, “Palliative Care: The Search for Comfort and Healing in the Face of Death,” which had support of a Journalists in Aging Fellows Program.
*** “The Loneliest Generation: [https://tinyurl.com/y6wo9eas]Americans, More Than Ever, Are Aging Alone,”byJanet Adamyand Paul Overberg, Wall Street Journal(Dec. 12): “Loneliness undermines health and is linked to early mortality—and baby boomers are especially feeling the effects.” (Access may be blocked by paywall.)
Stories by this year’s class of Journalists in Aging Fellows are starting to drop in print, on the airwaves and the web. The 36 reporters gathered in Boston before Thanksgiving for the Gerontological Society of America’s Annual Scientific Meeting celebrating GSA’s 70thyear. GSA sponsored the fellowship program, now in its ninth year, along with the Journalists Network on Generations, publisher of GBONews.org. Following are links to some of the initial pieces.
*** “ ‘Bingocize’ Created by WKU Professor Approved to Help Address Major Problem of Aging,” by Rhonda Miller, WKU Bowling Green Public Radio (Dec. 11, 2018): “A program called ‘Bingocize’ created by Western Kentucky University Associate Professor of Exercise Science Jason Crandall has received approval from the National Council on Aging for use in helping older adults prevent falls. Bingocize takes advantage of bingo’s popularity with older adults to integrate exercise and health education into the game.
“Approved for inclusion in the Evidence-Based Falls Prevention Program of the U.S. Administration for Community Living, which supports healthy lifestyles and behaviors for adults 60-plus, Bingocize is currently being used in more than 70 senior centers and other organizations across the U.S.”
*** “Wisconsin Training Health Providers to Care for Aging Population,” by David Wahlberg, Wisconsin State Journal (Dec. 10, 2018): “Wisconsin’s share of people 65 and older, estimated at 895,000 in 2015, is expected to grow to 1.5 million by 2040. . . . A state report this year projects a shortage of 745 primary doctors by 2035. Last year, a national report predicted a shortage of 27,000 geriatricians — doctors who specialize in treating the elderly . . . Given the forecasts, it has become clear that all doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other providers need at least some geriatrics training, said Dr. Steven Barczi, . . . the University of Wisconsin’s clinical director of geriatrics.‘There’s never going to be enough geriatricians to care for the large cohort of older Americans,’ he said. ‘We need to be more intentional about making sure everybody has had some basic exposure to the nuanced care of older persons.’” Wahlberg’s story describes the university’s program to give basic geriatric graining to a wide range of medical students there.
*** “LGBT Seniors Grapple With End-of-Life Issues,” by Matthew S. Bajko, Bay Area Reporter (Dec. 5, 2018): “There are an estimated 2.7 million Americans who are LGBT and 50 years of age or older. Of that age group, 1.1 million are 65 and older. By 2060 LGBT elders in the U.S. are expected to number more than 5 million.This generation of LGBT seniors differs from its heterosexual counterpart in significant ways, according to aging experts.
“Most of the LGBT seniors experienced discrimination not only in their day-to-day lives but also in medical settings due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. . . . Talking about the end of one’s life can be exceedingly difficult for LGBT seniors, according to aging experts, because of their lack of trust in their health care providers or not having close familial or social connections, leaving them without a family member or friend they can turn to and discuss how they want to be cared for as they age.” Part 2 will appear Dec. 20.
*** “Aging with Animals: Pets can help older adults, but they come with challenges,” by Elizabeth Fite, Chattanooga Times Free Press (Nov. 23, 2018): “A growing body of research suggests companion animals play an important role in the health and well-being of many older adults. But seniors who seek the possible benefits of pet ownership, such as increased physical activity, lower blood pressure and improved mental health, can also face unexpected challenges.”
Fite goes on, “‘Over and over again, I’ve heard pets described as a lifeline,’ said Ann Toohey, who studies human-animal interactions at the University of Calgary. . . . But economic hardship, physical or cognitive decline and changing living situations that become more likely with age can make pet ownership a ‘mixed blessing’ for seniors, said Elizabeth Strand, director of veterinary social work at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Pets can become particularly problematic if a senior must give up an animal to move to assisted living or a nursing home.”
*** “The Burgeoning Trend of Age-Friendly States,” by Richard Eisenberg, PBS Next Avenue(Nov. 20, 2018): Eisenberg, the website’s managing editor, writes, “You’ve probably heard about age-friendly communities; maybe you even live in one of the 305 cities and towns with the AARP Age-Friendly Community designation. But what you might not know . . . is that a few states are now designated as age-friendly, too. So far, New York, Massachusetts and Colorado have been granted the age-friendly state designation by AARP, joining AARP’s new Network of Age-Friendly States.”This story also appeared MarketWatch (Dec. 3).
*** “The Spirit of the Gray Panthers Stirs to Life,” by Barbara Peters Smith, Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Nov. 19, 2018): At a symposium, she wrote, “notable political economist Carroll Estes recalled the message of the late activist and Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn: ‘We are elders of the tribe. We can take stands. We can go to jail. We can picket. We can do things in ways that might be unfeasible for younger people.’ Estes said, . . . “Everything is connected; youth and age are one. It’s as if our times have brought us full circle, to where we are seeing the social movements that are burgeoning or budding now.”’
“Sociologist Christopher Phillipson, of the UK’s University of Manchester, said the longstanding social contract that called for a secure and dignified old age has eroded as ‘the challenges posed by the aftershocks of the recession … pushed gerontologists and others into retreat.’ Steven P. Wallace, a public health professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, spoke out against the current tendency to hold patients responsible for their own health and welfare as a way to trim public spending on medical care and housing.”
*** “Caregivers Find Solace, Relief in Creative Escapes,” by Kevyn Burger, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Nov. 9, 2018): “Acclaimed Minnesota picture book author Nancy Carlson found herself caregiving for her husband, Barry McCool, one of the 50,000 Americans living with FTD, according to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration.”
Burger quotes Dawn Simonson, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging: “The literature confirms family caregivers have greater potential to develop a chronic disease or see existing ones worsen. . . . It’s essential the caregiver focus on their own needs for health and wellness. Meaningful activities are stress relievers, whether it’s the arts, exercise or a mindfulness practice.”
*** By special arrangement with the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, The Louisiana Weekly published a series of stories on three health issues particularly affecting older African Americans: eczema, dehydration and diabetes. They include:
Part 1 —“Eczema symptoms Found to Be Worse for African Americans,” by Ryan Whirty (Oct. 1, 2018): Whirty explains that scientists have discovered differences in the “molecular profile of the skin of people with eczema compared to those without it.” Furthermore, African Americans with the disorder show more skin inflammation than European Americans. Also, blacks with the condition “have a harder time fighting eczema than their white counterparts because their molecular immune profile – the skin’s natural defense against eczema – is more unbalanced than the profile of European Americans.” Thus, for instance, they may need higher doses of medication.
Part 2 – “Black, Hispanic Elders Especially Susceptible to Dehydration,” by Susan Buchanan (Oct. 8, 2018): “Elders are among those most vulnerable to dehydration, and African American and Hispanic adults are more likely to become dehydrated than whites, researchers have found.” Among research sources, Buchanan cited, “A 2017 study by Carolyn Brooks at Harvard and other researchers found that only 29.5 percent of American adults surveyed were inadequately hydrated.The study revealed that African Americans and Latinos were at greater risk than whites because their tap water was more likely to be unsafe.”
Part 3 – “Black seniors struggle with diabetes and weight management,” by Susan Buchanan (Nov. 19, 2018): “In the United States, diabetes is most prevalent among Southerners and residents of Appalachian regions. Blacks are afflicted more than whites. Over a third of African American seniors are diagnosed as diabetic. The prevalence of diabetes increases with age, Kelly Zimmerman, spokeswoman for Louisiana’s Department of Health, said last week. Adults ages 65 and older had the highest rate in the state last year at 26.1 percent. Diabetes among all of Louisiana’s adults 18 years and above was 13.6 percent. For the state’s African American adults of all ages, the rate was 16.7 percent last year versus 11.8 percent for whites, she said.”
The Journalists in Aging Fellows program is supported by grants from AARP, the Silver Century Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Retirement Research Foundation and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
4. FISCAL REFORM SCHOOL
*** “Incoming Dem Chairman Open to Hearing on Medicare for All,” by Peter Sullivan, The Hill(Dec, 11): “The incoming chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said Tuesday that he is open to holding hearings on Medicare for all next year. … The comments, while not a firm commitment, are some of the most encouraging toward Medicare-for-all supporters from a top House Democrat to date. Democratic leaders and key committee chairmen have so far not given support to Medicare for all, despite a push from the progressive wing of the party.”
*** “Cicilline to Reintroduce Resolution to Reestablish House Aging Committee,” by Herb Weiss, Rhode Island’s Woonsocket Call and Pawtucket Times (Dec. 18/19): “In October 1992, the House eliminated the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging charged with investigating and putting a spotlight on aging policy. The Committee was instrumental in conducting research and publishing a number of reports on elder abuse, leading to the passage of reform legislation intended to improve nursing home operations and reduce abuse against patients. The Committee’s work also led to increased home care benefits for the aging, establishing research and care centers for Alzheimer’s Disease, and many other accomplishments on a broad array of aging issues. (Go to https://herbweiss.wordpress.com – scroll down to the Nov. 18 entry.)
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., introduced his House resolution No. 160 to reestablish the Committee two years ago and now plans to reintroduce it.”
Weiss writes further, “A Washington insider tells me that some Democratic House lawmakers and aging groups are now pushing to reestablish the House Select Committee on Aging through new rules enacted by the incoming House Democratic leadership. . . . As the House takes up in the new Congress its debates on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Older Americans Act, and other issues of importance to older adults, it will be important to have a House Select Committee that once again puts the spotlight and attention on America’s aging issues.”
*** “The Pentagon Doesn’t Know Where Its Money Goes,” New York Times Editorial (Dec. 1): For every self-fulfilling defeat by those who insist that having universal health care with long-term care, or quality education for all–or bridges and buildings not crumbling around us–consider the NYT’s only editorial that day: “After decades of ducking the legal requirement that it undergo a thorough financial audit, the Pentagon finally opened up its books to 1,200 outside accountants and analysts. The report was recently completed, and here’s the good news: The Army Corps of Engineers (most of it, anyway) and the Military Retirement Fund passed the audit. The bad news: The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines and most other divisions failed, which means they were unable to show that they were properly keeping track of their finances and assets.”
The Times notes, “The audit wasn’t looking for fraud — which generally refers to malicious illegal activities — and Defense Department officials said it found none. (Different audits examine different aspects of an organization.) Its purpose was to determine whether accounts could be reconciled. . . The inability to accurately track how money is spent makes it impossible to know whether precious resources are going to the right places, undermining the Pentagon’s ability to be successful in its far-flung missions around the globe. But it would be misleading to imply that such an immense bureaucracy is not also experiencing actual fraud, abuse or waste.”
In addition, “The unfavorable audit results come at an awkward time. A recent congressionally mandated study reached the alarming conclusion that despite all the money spent on defense, the United States today is so weakened that it “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia.” The study also found that America’s military superiority and technological edge over those two major adversaries has eroded.” Add to that the massive and unhealthy waste in American healthcare, and pretty soon, as Sen. Everett Dirksen famously said, those trillions add up to real money.
The NYT editorial concludes, “Before rushing to push Pentagon spending even higher, however, Congress, which has shirked its vital oversight role, would be well advised to make sure that critical reforms are undertaken by a stubbornly change-resistant bureaucracy, so Americans can be certain their tax dollars are being spent effectively.”
GBONews would add, if unfashionably, that prudence and patriotism should require that our national wealth also be distributed fairly and wisely.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2018 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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