Category: Senior Issues

Three and a half years to go!

President Theodore Roosevelt said “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

In merely four months Donald Trump has turned the United States from a functioning democracy into a country on the edge of a fascist dictatorship.

The following reports I found on the internet from reliable news sources confirm what my beliefs.                    

The courts including the Supreme Court have given the power for Donald Trump to do as he wishes. The Supreme Court has ruled that President Trump is at least presumptively immune from criminal liability for his official acts, and is absolutely immune for some “core” of them — including his attempts to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of an election.

Since late February, President Trump has used the power of the presidency to punish law firms that he accuses of weaponizing the justice system and undermining the national interest, part of his promised campaign of vengeance against his perceived political enemies.

Donald Trump expanded on his threats to the media suggesting actions of the press should be deemed illegal and subject to investigation.

“I believe that CNN and MS-DNC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat [sic] party and in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what do they do is illegal,” the president said during a contentious speech at the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration is seeking to exert extraordinary influence over American universities by withholding the kind of federal financial support that has flowed to campuses for decades. His claim it’s all about anti-semitism. His initial attack is on Harvard, a private university. But it has been expanded.

So far, seven universities have been singled out for punitive funding cuts or have been explicitly notified that their funding is in serious jeopardy. They are:

Now Trump is planning attacks on California universities who chose not to follow his directions.

Now Trump is planning to stop California’s environmental regulations.

What will Trump do next? I do not know. With more than 3 1/2 (three and a half years of his term to go it will be a bumpy ride.

Lower Medicare Pharmacy Prices

President Joe Biden posting on Facebook. Think about this when you are voting!

For years there’s been no check on how high or how fast Big Pharma can raise drug prices.

Let’s call this for what it is: a rip-off.

That’s why Kamala and I finally beat Big Pharma with the first 10 drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation – and we’ll continue fighting back.

Time to Retire with Dignity

Joe Biden is a frail old man who means well but is in need of help doing his job and communicating to the public.

This report from the New York Post enforces my opinion.

President Biden was handed a private note during a recent call with Democratic House lawmakers telling him to “stay positive” – and he read it out loud. 

A staffer gave the 81-year-old president a note card with tips as he attempted to persuade members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday that he was fit to serve and able to defeat former President Donald Trump on Election Day, the New York Times reported.

“Stay positive, you are sounding defensive,” Biden said on the call, seemingly reading directly from his staffer’s short missive.

One lawmaker told the New York Times that the moment represented how “stage-managed” calls between the president and lawmakers concerned about his re-election chances have seemed. 

Biden has long been known to rely on note cards for press conferences, summits and private fundraisers, instructing him where to sit, what to do and who people are. 

Still, the lawmaker also interpreted the moment as the president “poking fun at his aides” rather than accidentally reading the private memo. 

The president has a history of blurting out instructions meant for his eyes only, including when he read “pause” off a teleprompter during a campaign speech in April.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said the call with Biden was “productive and engaging.” 

“We spoke frankly to the President about our concerns and asked tough questions about the path forward. We appreciate his willingness to thoughtfully answer and address our Members,” she wrote on X. 

Biden’s call with the CPC came on the same day he reportedly held a “tense” Zoom call with moderate Democrats that was “even worse than the debate,” losing credibility with those on the video chat, according to people in the meeting. 

“He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say ‘whatever.’ He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,” one person on the call told Puck.

“The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,” added a second person, who is a member of Congress.

Biden has faced mounting calls from Democrats imploring him to end his re-election campaign in the aftermath of his disastrous June 27 debate against Donald Trump, with several polls showing the incumbent trailing the 78-year-old former president.

There Should be an Age Limit for our Government Leaders

If you are an old news reporter (Andrea Mitchell is 76, Wolf Blitzer is 75), an old entertainer (Mick Jagger is 80) or an old plumber some might say things like “Why don’t you call it a day and retire?”   Of course there is no harm if you continue to work.

But there are jobs that you are not allowed to have due to age. Commercial airlines cannot employ pilots after they reach the age of 65. Firefighters, law enforcement, and air traffic controllers have maximum age limits due to the stress in those jobs.  What about those elected to office in government?

2024 Republican presidential candidate, former Governor Nikki Haley, weighed in on Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent health scare on Thursday, saying “It’s sad. No one should feel good about seeing that.” Haley went on to say that the Senate was the most privileged nursing home in the country, and she reiterated her support for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.

Senator Mitch McConnell is 81. Senator Dianne Feinstein is 90. Senator Charles Grassley is 89. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is 83. There are three members of the House of Representatives over 80 years old.  President Joe Biden is 80.

While all of these people have the perspective of many years of experience they also live sheltered lives today. Photo Ops do not make them knowledgeable about the impact of natural disasters.  Nor do visits to factories and schools make them knowledgeable.

This report about Biden is concerning

“I have no home to go to,” said Biden, who lives at the White House on weekdays and spends most weekends in Delaware, where he has two homes.

Asked Sunday if he was saying that he’s homeless, Biden said that was not the case.

“No, I’m not homeless,” he said. “I just have one home. I have a beautiful home. I’m down here for the day because I can’t go home home.”

Donald Trump is 77.  He will be 78 if elected in 2024. That is too old for the job of leader of the free world!

Just as we amended the constitution to limit presidents to two terms we now need to limit the number of terms someone can serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate.  We also need an age limit for members of the Supreme Court, congress and the presidency. 75 seems like a reasonable limit.

This can only be done when congress rises above its own self interest.  

Scammer Caught

A 73-year-old New York grandmother outsmarted scammers who pretended to be her grandson and said he needed $8,000 to be bailed out of jail. I personally had this very same scam done on me. I simply hung up the phone. The grandmother played along.

  • A Long Island grandmother outsmarted a group of scammers who wanted $8,000 from her.
  • The woman said a man called her and pretended to be her grandson, claiming he needed $8,000 in bail money.
  • The woman said she had money at her house and told him to come get it. Then, she called the police.

A Long Island grandmother outsmarted scammers who tried to steal thousands from her. 

The woman from Seaford, who asked to be identified as Jean, told CBS2 that she received a call from someone claiming to be her grandson. The man said he was arrested for drunk driving and needed to be bailed out of jail. 

“I knew he was a real scammer. I just knew he wasn’t going to scam me,” Jean, 73, told CBS2. “He starts calling me ‘grandma,’ and then I’m like, I don’t have a grandson that drives, so I knew it was a scam.”

The scam took several phone calls to play out and involved multiple unidentified males, police said in a press release. One person claiming to be a lawyer for Jean’s grandson told her that he needed $8,000 to get out of jail. A third person called claiming to be a bail bondsman coming to collect the money. 

“I told him I had the money in the house, and I figured, he’s not going to fall for that,” Jean said, adding that she called the police. “Well, he fell for that hook, line, and sinker.”

A man impersonating a bail bondsman arrived at Jean’s home to collect the money, and she handed him an envelope filled with paper towels. As he turned to leave, police officers tackled him, according to CBS2. 

Officers of the Nassau County Police Department arrested Joshua Estrella Gomez, 28, and charged him with attempted grand larceny in the third degree. He was released on an appearance ticket and is due to appear in court on February 3. 

“I feel like gotcha, and I feel like, like you say, so many people fall for this and you only hear about it on the other end after they’ve lost $8,000,” Jean said.

Why do we sustain life of those who have no chance of recovery?

2003 and no Alzheimer’s disease at my home. She passed away in 2011

My mother had Alzheimer’s disease.  Her last three years was spent in a nursing home.  For most of that time she was unaware of her surroundings.  She did not speak at all.  When I visited her she was unaware of my presence.  When awake she simply stared into space.  Sadly she was a vegetable.  She died two months before he 96th birthday.  She was a smart woman who graduated cum laude from college at 20 years old. She taught school for almost 20 years and traveled in her retired years to many parts of the world.

The question is why do we sustain the life of someone who will never recover from a disease?

This topic was brought up again by this article in the February 1, 2021 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek.  The article is titled “how I helped my dad die”

The article is engrossing.  You might cry.  It starts with these words:

I was finishing up breakfast in New York when my dad sent me a text message. He was ready to die, and he needed me to help.

The request left me shaken, but that’s different than saying it came as a shock. I’d begun to grasp that something was really wrong 10 months before, in May 2019, when he’d come to California from Maine. He was there to meet his first granddaughter, Fern, to whom I’d recently given birth. But he couldn’t bend down to pick her up. He was having trouble walking, and he spoke of the future in uncharacteristically dark terms. We’d traveled to see him in Maine four times since then, and each time he’d looked older: his face more gaunt, his frame more frail.

The entire article is worth your time. Here is the link. “how I helped my dad die”

America’s Vanishing Social Security Trust Fund

This is a serious topic that neither Joe Biden not Donald Trump is interested in talking about. No wonder. It’s complicated and most people expect their elected representatives to solve the problem.

The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability, and survivor benefits.  But you wouldn’t know it. Politicians try to use it to their advantage.

The Social Security trust fund will run out of its funds in a dozen years or so if nothing is done. Some experts say the government should tap general revenue to pay beneficiaries.

A monthly check from Social Security is the only thing keeping millions of older Americans out of poverty. Half of married senior citizens and 70% of unmarried seniors get at least half of their income from it, according to the Social Security Administration. It is the indispensable retirement solution. But the trust fund that pays old age and survivor benefits is going to run out of money sometime in the 2030s.

Those hard facts have raised a question:
Should Social Security stop depending just on payroll taxes and the trust fund to pay benefits and start supplementing those sources with general tax revenue? The debate came to a boil in August, when President Trump floated the idea of a permanent cut in payroll taxes, which would presumably necessitate a big infusion of general tax revenue to keep benefits whole.

A lot of advocates for Social Security worry that tapping general revenue will make people perceive the program as welfare rather than a mutual insurance compact among workers.

On the other hand, drawing on general funds would make it easier to pay scheduled benefits to the Baby Boom generation without big hikes in payroll taxes.

Faced with this scenario, the usual response is to choose from an unpalatable menu for fixing Social Security’s finances, such as raising the retirement age, choosing a stingier cost-of-living adjustment, or increasing the payroll tax rate. Democratic Representative John Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the Social Security subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, is sponsoring the Social Security 2100 Act, which raises benefits slightly while gradually lifting the payroll tax rate for workers and employers from 6.2% to 7.4% and subjecting wages over $400,000 a year to payroll taxation.

But none of the choices on the menu undo the core problem, which is that American society has aged. The number of beneficiaries per 100 covered workers has risen from 25 in 1965 to 29 in 2000 to 36 this year, and it’s expected to reach 45 by 2040.

Here’s what a Biden presidential win may mean for your Social Security benefits as reported on CNBC. Biden would increase the special minimum benefit, which was created to provide low-earners with adequate benefits. Biden calls for setting that figure at 125% of the federal poverty line. That would bring it to $1,301 from $886 a month as of 2019, according to an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump would like to cut payroll taxes to put more money in every family’s hands now to boost the economy but offers no plan on keeping the program afloat.

Electing a Senior Citizen President of the United States

Bernie Sanders is too old to be president of the United States!

Joe Biden is too old to be president of the United States!

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack, his campaign confirmed on Friday, October 4, 2019 after he departed Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas.

Two weeks ago former President Jimmy Carter took a shot at presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders when he said on that he couldn’t have handled the presidency at the age of 80. Speaking at the Carter Center, the former President said he hopes “there’s an age limit” to the job.

Most of us consider older people wiser than the rest of us. We think that their life experiences will help them to make better decisions. Many cultures treat their elderly with great respect. Perhaps that is the reason we have selected so many senior citizens to lead this country.

The reality is that many of our greatest presidents were not senior citizens.

The youngest person to assume the office was Theodore Roosevelt, who became president at the age of 42 years, 322 days, following William McKinley’s assassination; the oldest was Donald Trump, who was 70 years, 220 days old at his inauguration. JFK was 43 years old, Barack Obama was 47 years old. Bill Clinton was 46 years old.

We should be concerned about the health of our presidents. The current president is over 73 years old. The Democratic Party leading candidate is Joe Biden who is currently 76 years old. His leading contenders are Bernie Sanders who is 78 years old and Elizabeth Warren is 70 years old.

Do we really want to put someone in office that could die while serving? Just today Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign ‘until further notice’ after being treated for artery blockage.

The stress of being president is best shown by looking at pictures of Barack Obama at his inauguration and when he left office.

I suggest we watch the Democratic Party candidates to see if they have the stamina for what is a 24 hour a day job.