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The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 Rest, Recharge, Find Joy in Our PSARA Community and Resist Facism! In-Person Concert Featuring Janet Stecher, Mark Aalfs, and Peter Costantini Saturday, October 25th We are delighted to welcome back by popular demand PSARA members Janet, Mark, and Peter on October 25th from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. The concert will be held in the Beaumont Room of the Bay Vista Residential Tower on the sixth floor, 2821 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121. Appetizers and sparkling waters will be provided. Bring a dish to share if you would like. Janet, Mark, and Peter have played for us over the years and will once again lead us in song with some of our favorite tunes from the labor, peace, civil rights, and climate justice movements. Janet Stecher has been a figure in topical music in Seattle through her participation in the singing group Shays’ Rebellion, and in the duo Rebel Voices, with Susan Lewis. She conduct- ed the Seattle Labor Chorus since its founding in 1997 to 2019. She was also a longtime Board Member of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association. Janet was a member of Musicians Local 76-493, and a recipient of the Joe Hill Award, granted by the Labor Heritage Foundation of Washington, DC. The award, named after labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill, is a lifetime achievement award for persons who have contributed to the successful integration of arts and culture in the labor movement. It is granted to persons based on their dedication, participation, and promotion of labor, labor arts, culture, organizing, and/or history. Previous recipients include artists Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Anne Feeney, and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Mark was active in the late 1970s, volunteering to support the United Farmworkers. He spent four decades working in the energy industry, managing green power and green building programs. His greatest satisfaction has been working with the large community of energy efficiency and renewable energy workers and citizens of the Pacific Northwest to achieve historic levels of energy efficiency and renewable energy acquisition. For Mark, music has been a part of his life, always inspiring, energizing, and encouraging others to stand together for our social fabric and democracy. Peter arrived in Seattle from the East Coast in 1973. He Joined Mark and other bright lights of the Seattle protest music scene. He spent 20 years working construction and was active in two locals of the Laborers International Union. He was a founding member of the Seattle Tenants Union and sat on the executive board of the National Tenants Union. Peter spent most of his life involved with the immigrant justice movement, spent 20 years in the software industry, and at the same time was a journalist producing several specials on Mexico and Nicaragua for MSNBC News and later for Inter Press Service, a Roma-based non-profit newswire. We are joyful our PSARA family can be together again to sing along with Janet, Peter, and Mark and recharge ourselves to continue our fight against fascism. For more information, watch for PSARA email updates. If you don't get regular emails from PSARA, please email organizer@psara.org to get on our email list. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents October 2025 Sanders and Wyden Introduce “Keep Billionaires Out of Social Security Act” Steve Kofahl Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senate Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy Ranking Member Bernie Sanders introduced this legislation on September 10. A bill number is not yet assigned. They were joined by 28 original Senate co-sponsors, including Senator Murray, none of them Republicans. Senator Cantwell (Finance Committee) has not yet signed-on, so please give her office a call. The legislation is endorsed by Social Security Works; American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; Alliance for Retired Americans; National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare; and 7 other organizations. The 40-page bill is designed to reverse staff and service cuts at the Social Security Administration (SSA), and respond to Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) activity at the SSA, thereby making it much easier for the public to receive their earned benefits, and protecting sensitive personal information. It consists of 12 sections. Section 1 states that the bill would amend the Social Security Act to permanently appropriate funding for the administrative expenses of the SSA, and for other purposes. Section 2 exempts the SSA from the jurisdiction of DOGE and certain Trump executive orders. Section 3 prohibits access to beneficiary data systems by political appointees and special government employees, except for those appointed to or employed by the SSA. Violators can be subject to criminal and civil penalties. The Comptroller of the U.S. is tasked with reporting to the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means Committees. Section 4 requires consent of SSA employees for transfers from the competitive civil service to excepted (at-will) employment. It requires the Director of the Office of Personnel Management to consent to such transfers, and to report to Congress. Section 5 prohibits living individuals from being added to SSA’s Death Master File. Section 6 prohibits SSA from reducing the numbers of field offices and hearing offices below the January 1, 2025 numbers. SSA must maintain meaningful and efficient access to live toll-free number agents. Staff- ing reductions below 2024 levels are prohibited. Section 7 re-establishes SSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity; the Office of Transformation; and the Office of Analytics, Review, and Oversight. Section 8 permanently funds SSA administration of Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and parts of Medicare at the level of 1.2% of Social Security benefits payable per year. It excludes benefit and administrative costs from discretionary spending caps and the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. Section 9 provides for up to $2 billion in Treasury funds not otherwise appropriated to be devoted to increasing awareness of SSI eligibility for disabled children, reducing disability claims and appeals backlogs, improving SSA technology and infrastructure, and offering an online SSI application. Section 10 reduces overpayment withholding to 10% of a monthly benefit for overpayment decisions made after March 25, 2024. Section 11 provides that states may receive payments from the SSA Commissioner to protect the legal rights of disabled applicants and recipients. Section 12 establishes at least 10 annual Social Security Assistance and Representation Grants over the next 5 years to assist applicants and benefit recipients. Steve Kofahl is a retired President of AFGE 3937, representing Social Security workers, and a member of PSARA's Ecutive Board < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2026 Why Responsible Investing Matters for Retirees—and Our Future Laila Salib For retirees, few things matter more than stability: secure pensions, reliable Social Security and Medicare, and an economy healthy enough to support future generations. These goals are directly connected to how our public funds are invested—and they can be undermined by investments in harmful industries. The Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) currently invests in dozens of companies whose practices pose risks to environmental health, workers’ rights, human rights, and long-term public well-being. Investments in the “war economy” also strengthen corporations that lobby Congress for ever-larger Pentagon budgets. The result is a vicious cycle: war spending grows, social programs shrink, and retirees pay the price. Large weapons manufacturers illustrate the problem clearly. Beyond producing instruments of war, these companies have caused significant environmental harm. In the early 2000s, Northrop Grumman alone was linked to more than 20 EPA Superfund sites. Weapons production is resource-intensive, carbon-heavy, and often exempt from environmental standards applied to other industries. The resulting toxic waste, groundwater contamination, and long-term health risks raise public healthcare costs and strain Medicare and other social supports. Labor practices are another concern. Despite receiving billions in public contracts, major weapons manufacturers have histories of union-busting, outsourcing, and wage suppression. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that more than 700 defense contractors were cited for willful or repeated safety, health, or fair-labor violations between 2015 and 2019. Weak labor standards erode the economic foundation that Social Security and Medicare depend upon. These corporations also wield enormous political influence. Weapons manufacturers rank among the most powerful lobbying forces in Congress, helping sustain rising military budgets even as lawmakers claim there is “not enough money” for Social Security, Medicare, affordable housing, or elder care. Every dollar unnecessarily spent on weapons is a dollar not invested in the well-being of seniors, families, and communities at home. International conflicts may feel distant, but investment decisions connect us directly to their consequences. For more than two years, Palestinians have endured devastating civilian harm and displacement. Over the past two years alone, more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 169,000 injured in Gaza. The human costs of investments in companies tied to serious human-rights violations and complicit in genocide are real—and these reverberate here at home. Technologies developed and tested in military contexts abroad, such as mass surveillance and predictive policing tools, are increasingly used by US agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For example, ICE contracts with Palantir, a company whose software is used with impunity by the Israeli military against civilians. What is deployed overseas does not stay overseas. The effects on our communities are devastating. Washington for Peace and Justice (WA4PJ), alongside Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), is asking pension holders to join the “Cut Ties with Genocide” coalition. Advocates can learn more or sign on at cut-ties.org . WA4PJ and JVP are also supporting anticipated legislation by Representative Farivar that would require WSIB to adopt a responsible investment frame-work—one that weighs environmental damage, labor practices, and social risk alongside financial returns. This approach does not sacrifice performance; research consistently shows that responsible investing can reduce long-term risk and improve stability in funds. As Jeff Johnson noted in last month’s PSARA newsletter, “when a respected fund like WSIB shifts away from harmful investments, it sends a powerful signal to other institutional investors." You can learn more and organizations can sign on at futures-wa.org . Retirees understand better than most that long-term thinking matters. Supporting responsible investment standards is a practical, fiscally sound step toward protecting pensions, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, and leaving a healthier, more stable world for generations to come. For these reasons, supporting this future bill is not only an ethical choice—it is a smart investment in our collective future. Laila Saliba is Treasurer of the PSARA Education Fund and an activist with Washington for Peace and Justice, in coalition with Jewish Voice for Peace. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 Inside CMS’s Troubling WISeR Vendor List and the Power It Hands to Private Contractors By Seth Glickman, MD, and Rachel Madley, PhD CMS’s chosen WISeR vendors include firms tied to insurer-backed venture funds, former Big Insurance executives and private equity. (Reprinted from HEALTH CARE un-covered) Earlier this year, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced plans to begin the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model in 2026. The model will retain private companies currently using AI to process prior authorizations in the private Medicare Advantage (MA) program to use those processes in the traditional Medicare (TM) program on services that will newly require prior authorization or pre-payment review. As we previously published in HEALTH CARE un-covered , the WISeR model is more than just some small administrative update. The new model dramatically shifts how traditional Medicare patients will access care. Under this demonstration program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will let private, for-profit contractors and their AI tools decide whether seniors get treatments their doctors recommend – and those contractors will be paid based on how much care they deny. After months of speculation and anticipation, CMS this week announced the private companies selected to participate in the model beginning January 1, 2026. The six companies selected are Cohere Health, Inc., Genzeon Corporation, Humata Health, Inc., Innovaccer Inc., Virtix Health LLC, and Zyter Inc.. Those six companies now have the ability to decide if seniors or people with disabilities in traditional Medicare get the care recommended by their doctors for 17 medical procedures that previously did not require prior authorization. This is a lot of trust to put in private companies, so we dug more into the ones chosen by CMMI to participate in the model. We previously described how insurers and affiliated venture capital firms use their influence and leverage to “self- deal," in effect creating opportunities to boost their profits. The WISeR program and the participants selected appear to follow the same playbook. Most of the companies CMS selected are backed by insurer-linked venture funds or staffed by former insurance industry executives, including from Elevance, Optum, Kaiser, Highmark, and HCSC. For example, Humata Health lists four venture capital firms backed by insurance companies as key investors: Blue Venture Fund (backed by Blue Cross Blue Shield), Optum Ventures (backed by UnitedHealth Group), LRV Health (backed by over 30 health systems and insurers), and Highmark Ventures (backed by Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer Highmark Health). These concerning ties are replicated in other model participants including Cohere Health, which is funded through venture capital and contract ties to Humana, and Innovaccer, which is funded by Kaiser Permanente and Banner. Several already operate in Medicare Advantage, in which private insurers routinely use prior authorization to delay or deny coverage for needed care. Between the lines: WISeR effectively imports the same harmful machinery into traditional Medicare for the first time in the program’s history. Amplifying this concern is that several are pure technology companies without any medical oversight or leadership. This raises serious questions about how they will comply with state and federal regulations requiring licensed clinical personnel to oversee utilization decisions (for good reason). Precious little is known about other participants. The website of one of the participants, Virtix Health, doesn’t disclose any executives or board members. It doesn’t even list a physical address or phone number, and the last time the company uploaded a news story was in 2021. These are hardly things that inspire the public’s confidence about its legitimacy, let alone entrusting it to oversee the care of Medicare beneficiaries. What is known about Virtix Health is that it offers risk adjustment coding services, such as chart reviews, to MA plans. These chart reviews are used by MA insurers to add medical codes to an enrollee’s chart, making them appear sicker than they are in order to receive a higher payment from the government. Overpayments, driven largely by coding intensity, means MA plans will be paid $84 billion more than traditional Medicare in 2025; cumulative overpayments between 2025-2034 could reach $1.2 trillion. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz pledged in his confirmation hearing to go after excessive coding by insurers, which is at odds with his agency giving a contract for the WISeR model to a company that enables this practice as its main line of business. All this begs the question: How were these companies chosen? It’s an important one, especially given the strong ties between current and past leadership at CMMI and the health insurance and venture capital industries that will profit from this program. We have previously called for the disclosure of financial conflicts of interest in the selection of vendors by health insurers (and in this case CMS, which controls billions of our tax dollars), including any underlying financial relationships with the vendor and/or related investors. CMMI has not disclosed whether or how they managed these potential conflicts of interest in the selection process. The American public deserves to know. A coalition of lawmakers have introduced the Seniors Deserve SMARTER Care Act to stop WISeR before it launches. The lawmakers warn that the model “creates a dangerous incentive to put profits ahead of patients’ health” — and they’re right. At the same time, public confidence in insurers’ use of AI has cratered amid lawsuits and reports of algorithms overriding physicians’ judgment. Even President Trump has blasted insurers as “BIG,”“BAD,” and “money-sucking.” Yet WISeR hands many of these same corporate players a new federal revenue stream — and unprecedented authority over seniors’ care in traditional Medicare, which has historically been a safe haven from Big Insurance meddling in coverage. But now, with CMS barreling toward a January 2026 launch, we know, for the first time, exactly which companies will have that power. Editor's Note: Virtix Health is the company selected by CMS to determine prior authorization In Washington State. Rachel Madley, PhD, is Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Health & Democracy. She previously worked for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. She received her PhD from Columbia University and has written for publications including The New York Times. Seth Glickman, MD, is a former insurance and health system senior executive. He now is a researcher and advocate for reform in the health care finance space. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents August 2025 The One Big Beautiful Billionaire Act: Tax Breaks for the Wealthy Paid for by the Rest of Us Rick Timmins The recently passed Republican budget plan is touted as a reduction in government spending and in taxes, and indeed it succeeds. It drastically reduces spending on social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Education and sets the stage for major cuts in Social Security. The tax reductions significantly benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. The bill is said to be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy in American history. So how exactly are we paying to increase the wealth of the American kakistocracy? The bill has hundreds of provisions, stretching over approximately 900 pages, but this article will focus on the most malevolent aspects that will have the greatest impact on healthcare, the environment, and the economy. Healthcare takes a big hit. Sixteen million people will lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There will be an increase of 51,000 preventable deaths due to loss of insurance and other aspects of the legislation. Those with the lowest incomes and the greatest needs will suffer the most. Medicaid spending will be reduced by $793 billion over 10 years, and there will be 10.3 million fewer enrollees. A total of 2.3 million Medicaid enrollees, including 1.3 million dual-eligible individuals (those with limited resources who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare), will lose benefits due to delayed implementation of two Biden-era rules designed to reduce administrative barriers. The loss of coverage cascades into the loss of access to the Medical Savings Program and the Low Income Subsidy, which help pay for copays and drugs. Preventable deaths occur when healthcare and medication are inaccessible. Five and a half million people will suffer increased food insecurity by losing SNAP benefits due to reduction in spending for food aid by $300 billion, more stringent rules regarding work requirements, citizenship, and shifting program costs to states. Medicaid cuts of $465 million in 2026 will result in average yearly losses of 56 percent of hospitals’ net income which, in addition to the loss of Medicaid coverage by rural residents, will put 300-500 rural hospitals at risk of closure. The American Hospital Association (AHA) and state-level hospital groups have warned that the act could destabilize access to care in dozens of states, especially in regions already struggling with physician shortages. Medicare does not escape the Republican wrath. Legislative rules mandate that if a bill increases the budget deficit, it must be made up through automatic “sequestration” cuts. The budget increases the deficit by over $3.3 trillion. There is a limitation on Medicare cuts of four percent, amounting to $45 billion in 2026. The CBO estimates the total 10-year cuts would equal $490 billion, which will shorten the viability of the Trust Fund. Our health, of course, is interconnected with the environment, and this bill is dedicated to making it unhealthy. It repeals or phases out most clean energy tax credits introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act, including those for electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind farms, and battery storage. It also introduces new taxes on renewable energy infrastructure, while expanding fossil fuel incentives, including credits for domestic coal and oil production. This undermines grid reliability and will increase electricity prices by 19% by 2030 and more than 60% by 2035. This disproportionately affects lower- income Americans. The Billionaire Bill will also result in more forest fires by eliminating $50 million for the management and protection of old-growth forests on National Forest System land. The intent is to cut the funding protecting the forests, open the areas for logging and development, and eliminate the environmental reviews. It is well-established that uncontrolled logging increases fire risk. This bill will reverse recent environmental progress, increase US carbon emissions by up to 574 million metric tons by 2035, potentially lead to the extensive destruction of carbon-sequestering forests, increase pollution from smoke and gas-powered vehicles, and contribute to atmospheric warming, all of which are devastating to health. The Billionaire Bill will also bring us an unhealthy economy. These provisions deliver substantial tax savings for high-income earners and corporations. Analyses show that 70% of the tax benefits flow to the top 20% of earners, with the top 1% alone receiving nearly 20% of the overall relief. Meanwhile, middle-class families see modest gains, and many lower-income households actually lose net benefits due to cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Increasing medical expenses due to loss of insurance or access to medicalcare will further decrease the economic resilience of the majority of Americans. The financial inequity in the country will expand. Because Trump’s budget will add between $3.3 trillion and $4.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, debt-to-GDP is now projected to reach 126% by 2034, raising concerns among fiscal conservatives and global investors. Job losses are expected in both the healthcare and clean energy sectors, with estimates suggesting up to one million jobs lost by 2030 due to program cuts and reduced investment. Only the greediest of the top 20% of earners (and the Trump cultists) will consider this bill “Beautiful.” Keep in mind that the crumbs tossed to the rest of us, like eliminating tax on tips or overtime pay, car loan interest deduction, “Trump accounts for kids,” the “bonus deduction” of $6,000 for those over 65 years, are all restricted and phase out in 2028. In conclusion, the Big Billionaire Bill increases the wealth of the richest Americans, takes away healthcare and other essential services from the rest of us, destroys the environment, increases pollution and global warming, and raises the national debt, thereby putting the national economy at risk of inflation and/or recession. Rick Timmins is a member of PSARA's Level the Playing Field Task Force. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 Philippines Remains Trump’s Ally Cindy Domingo While Donald Trump and his foreign policy team continue to strain relations with countries around the world, US-Philippine relations were further strengthened in the recent state visit to Washington DC by Philippine President Bong Bong Marcos in late July. The visit comes at a very important political time, as Trump’s war against China continues to escalate and the US vies for political power in the Asia Pacific region. Marcos is the first Southeast nation president to visit the US during Trump’s second term. Marcos’ close relationship is a 180-degree turn from the previous Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte strengthened bilateral Philippine-China relations that resulted in concrete China support during the Covid-19 pandemic, increased economic trade and investments, and Chinese- funded infrastructure projects. It remains to be seen if Marcos’ friendly relations with the US will help bolster his popularity amongst the Philippine population. Midway into a six year term, Marcos’ popularity, according to the well-respected Pulse Asia March/April survey, has plummeted to 25% approval rating, 53% disapproval, and 22% no opinion/undecided. In the same survey, Marcos’ arch enemy and embattled Vice President, Sarah Duterte, received a 59% approval rating – an increased rating many believe is related to online and in-person organizing related to the opposition of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest of Rodrigo Duterte. The elder Duterte is currently being held in the ICC’s jail awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and torture, as related during the period of November, 2011 through March 2019 as pertaining to Duterte’s “war on drugs.” The fallout between the Marcos and Duterte camps are important for US strategic interests in the Asia Pacific region. Since the beginning of US intervention in the Philippines in 1898, the Philippines became important because of its military positioning to that entire region. Under BB Marcos and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the US has established more US military facilities in the Philippines, including the deployment of missile systems, even though there are no more military bases there. Marcos’ pro-US stance is important for Trump’s aggressive position against China. The recent May Philippine elections reflect a divided country with a newly elected Philippine Congress mainly divided into those two camps. However, a new progressive camp has begun to emerge, breathing hope for democratic economic and political reforms in the Philippines. Led by the only opposition leader in the Senate, Senator Risa Hontiveros from the social democratic Akbayan Party, has succeeded in building a big tent that resulted in the election of three members of the Akbayan Party to the House of Representatives as well as a handful of well positioned members from the liberal and independent parties. These include former Senator Leila De Lima who was imprisoned for seven years by Rodrigo Duterte after she led a Congressional investigation around murders carried out during his war against drugs. This progressive camp has already introduced many democratic reform Congressional bills, but their footing is fragile in light of the dominance of family dynasties as represented by the Marcos and Duterte families. In the previous 19th Philippine Congress, 12 of 24 Senators, 162 of 316 Representatives and 60 of 81 governors were members of political dynasties. It is common to see in one region Congressional members, governors, and mayors from one family representing different generations and jockeying from office to office if there are term limits. The current 20th Congress is almost no different. Therefore, in such a political environment, advancing a progressive agenda still remains a serious challenge. The political dynasties may differ in region and ideology, but they are united by a common interest in pre- serving the status quo. Previous bills to dismantle the family dynasties have met with great resistance, but there is an increasing interest by a new generation of voters. Currently, Millennials and Generation Z compose 63% of the voting population in the Philippines, with the median age of the general population at 26 years of age. According to Josua Mata, Secretary General of SENTRO, a labor center that represents over 100,000 public, private, and informal sector workers, who was in Seattle recently for LELO’s Annual Dinner in June to receive an award for SENTRO workers organizing in a fac- tory making Lululemon wear, stated that the continued growth and revitalization of the Philippine labor movement is crucial to taking advantage of this current opening for progressive forces and deepening democracy in the Philippines. While Trump can continue to rely on the Marcos dynasty to carry out US interests, the next three years leading up to the Philippine Presidential elections will be crucial for US military and economic interests both in the Philippines and in the region. However, if the progressive forces led by Senator Hontiveros can gain momentum, the traditional family dynasties might be facing Hontiveros as a Presidential candidate. Cindy Domingo is one of PSARA's Co-VPs for Outreach, a member of the Retiree Advocate editorial board, and a veteran activist in LELO (Legacy of Equality, Leadership & Organizing) and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents May 2025 No Power Greater: The Life and Times of George Meyers Mike Andrew Those of us who know Tim Wheeler know how much he loves a good story. And with No Power Greater, he’s offered us a whole book full of good stories. The main narrative follows the life of George Aloysius Meyers from his birth into a mine worker’s family in 1912 to his death in 1999. Other stories inter- sect with and branch off of Meyers’ story, so by the time we’ve finished the book we realize we’ve read a history of the 20th Century American labor movement. As a boy, Meyers met Mother Jones, the legendary mine worker organizer. As a young man, he worked as a CIO organizer under John L. Lewis. On his travels for the CIO, he met and befriended Florence Reese, the author of the classic labor song “Which Side Are You On?” and her husband, Sam. Later, as Labor Secretary of the Communist Party (CPUSA), he met often with William Winpisinger, the militant president of the Machinists Union (IAM). Tim Wheeler himself is part of Meyers’ story. Along with his wife, Joyce Provost Wheeler, a teacher and AFT activist, Tim lived just down the street from Meyers in Baltimore. Tim was then the Washington, DC, Bureau Chief of CPUSA’s Daily World newspaper. Our own Will Parry, his wife, Louise, and Irene Hull are part of Meyers’ story too. Hundreds of rank-and-file labor leaders filled Meyers’ life and they come to life again in the pages of Tim’s book. George Meyers had a gift for friendship, but not every labor leader was his friend. George Meany, the AFL-CIO president who liked to brag that he’d never walked a picket line, is a looming, hostile presence throughout the later chapters of the book. So is Al Shanker, the divisive president of the AFT. Did I mention that George Meyers was a Communist? Had he been anything else, a Republican maybe, his life would have been much different. Meyers joined the CPUSA in 1939. Although he was still young, only 27, he was by then an experienced labor organizer and the first president of the Maryland CIO. Looking back at Meyers’ early life, it seems natural he would join the CPUSA. His father was a miner who would die of black lung disease. Meyers himself started out working in a textile mill and developed brown lung from breathing in cotton fibers and toxic chemicals. Labor organizing was a dangerous business when Meyers was young. Mine owners used both Baldwin-Felts “detectives” and the Ku Klux Klan as strike breakers. Meyers remembered that the Klan paraded through their neighborhood every Saturday night, while his family sat on their front porch and taunted them. Young labor organizers like Meyers faced down those threats to build the CIO, fight for social legislation like the Social Security Act, and against grow- ing fascism. In 1942, Meyers volunteered to fight fascism in World War II. After the war, with fascism defeated – only temporarily, as we now see – and the USA emerging as the world’s leading capitalist power, the US government abandoned its wartime alliance with the USSR and turned on American communists. Leftist-led unions were expelled from the CIO and activists were hunted by the FBI and HUAC (the House Un- American Activities Committee). Meyers served 38 months in federal prison after a conviction under the Smith Act, allegedly for advocating the overthrow of the US government. Nevertheless, No Power Greater is a book full of optimism. After leaving federal prison, Meyers immediately set about rebuilding communist organizations throughout the South. New union leaders stepped forward. For every George Meany, there’s a hundred George Meyers. For every Al Shanker, there’s a hundred Joyce Provost Wheelers. According to Tim, we owe this remarkable book to an impulse to “put his affairs in order” after his 82nd birthday. While looking for old sneakers to toss out, Tim discovered a half-forgotten box of Meyers’ papers, all typed by Tim’s wife, Joyce. “I decided then and there that putting my personal affairs in order can wait,” Tim writes. “I am still of sound mind and body. Before I die, I must write this book.” And so he did. The book’s title comes from the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever.” When the union’s inspiration Through the workers’ blood shall run There can be no power greater Anywhere beneath the sun… Mike Andrew is the Editor of the Advocate and Executive Director of PSARA < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents May 2025 A Letter to the Editor Kris Melroe I have been lucky enough to be part of a groundbreaking study on diabetes since 1996. But on March 10th, without warning or reason, this research was abruptIly stopped. The so-called reasonable audits and cuts by DOGE are in fact harmful and are just one more lie among many. This arbitrary cut didn’t consider the long- term implications. The Diabetes Prevention Project Outcome Study (DPPOS) has been funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a grant that was to continue until 2027, at a minimum. The termination had nothing to do with safety issues, procedures, or personnel. In fact, Dr. Kahn, the lead investigator, just received a national award from the American Diabetes Association. This is the longest continuous study in the US, with seven different sites, including one right here in Seattle, at the VA hospital on Beacon Hill. The study has already had major impacts on the diagnosis, medications (i.e., Metformin), and care of diabetes. Long-term studies are valuable because they allow researchers to examine cause-and-effect relationships more effectively than a study that only collects data at one point in time. They provide insights into the long-term consequences of disease and its treatment. Evaluating the long- term effects and characteristics leads to breakthroughs in prevention for people all over the world. I question if this is an extension of cuts related to DEI. Why? Studies indicate that Black adults are nearly twice as likely as white adults to develop type 2 diabetes. When I worked as an educational trainer on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, 60 percent of the staff had diabetes. For 30 years, all of the participants in the study have spent hundreds of volunteer hours undergoing various tests. Why? Because we were dedicated to creating a healthier world. Does DOGE think our time and efforts were not valuable? It will be another 30-plus years before this information can be replicated. Please call your representative and senators and demand that the staff at least be given the time and money to do a summary wrap-up of the results. THIS STUDY NEEDS TO BE CONTINUED. Sincerely, Kris Melroe Kris Melroe is a longtime member of PSARA and a veteran activist. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2025 History: “Neutralize Elderly Voters” Nancy Altman Social Security is the most popular and effective program in America, and Wall Street has spent decades on a campaign to undermine the people’s faith in the system. Think we’re exaggerating? A right- wing think tank called for a “Leninist Strategy on Social Security” back in 1983. Reading it today, much of that strategy looks just like reality. In 1983, Social Security was in a real crisis. But the system’s popularity protected it from destruction, much to Wall Street’s disappointment. Wall Street sees our Social Security system as a cash cow that they can’t access. They want to get their hands on Social Security’s $2.8 trillion trust fund, which is instead invested in US Treasury Bonds. So Wall Street–funded conservative think tanks got to work, outlining a long-term strategy to chip away at the public’s confidence in Social Security. And it was extraordinarily successful. The right-wing Cato Institute published a plan in 1983 called a Leninist Strategy1, designed to “neutralize” elderly voters while continuing to undermine confidence in Social Security among the young. The strategy had two main prongs: Make younger Americans lose faith that Social Security will keep its promise to them, and create an alternative in the form of private accounts that could be gambled on the stock market, similar to 401(k)s. The strategy took a decade to be mainstreamed by the Republicans. In 1988, a presidential candidate sharing his views about Social Security appeared on the scene. Former Delaware governor Pierre S. “Pete” du Pont IV, an heir to those who had thrown money at any FDR-hater they could find, sought the Republican nomination for president and ran on a platform of privatizing Social Security. But George H. W. Bush won the Republican nomination and the election that year. As president, he showed his understanding of the program when he said, “In my budget plan, I say we’ve got to control the growth of . . . mandatory programs but set Social Security aside. It’s not a welfare program. It’s sacrosanct.” In 1994, the House of Representatives returned to Republican control for the first time in over 40 years, the first time since Eisenhower was president. The Republicans had run in support of the “Contract with America,” drafted and promoted by Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Unfortunately for those opposing Social Security, the Contract with America expressed implicit support for the program by proposing only minor modifications. However, in 1994, as the law had required since 1956, the Secretary of Health and Human Services appointed 14 members to serve on Social Security’s quadrennial advisory council. The trustees had begun to project a long term deficit in Social Security’s financing occurring somewhere more than 35 years in the future. Included in the report was an appendix, entitled “Developments Since 1983,” which addressed the causes of the projected shortfall. The appendix began by debunking the myth that the inexorable tide of aging baby boomers had anything to do with the projected deficit. The report clarified: “the fundamental ratio of beneficiaries to workers was fully taken into account in the 1983 financing provisions and, as a matter of fact, was known and taken into account well before that.” The report then explained that the shortfall resulted from a variety of factors. By the time the advisory council reported, almost 31 million workers participated in 401(k) plans, which contained assets of over $1 trillion. As the stock market went up and up in the 1990s, these arrangements became more and more popular. This was the opportunity the Leninist Strategy envisioned. More and more Americans were becoming used to private accounts for retirement income. The Cato Institute formed the Project on Social Security Privatization on August 14, 1995. A co-chairman of the project was José Pinero, the Pinochet Minister of Labor who had designed the Chilean system of private accounts. Just as supporters of private accounts had been doing since almost the moment Chile had privatized its Social Security program, Cato touted the Chilean system as a model for the United States, despite its decidedly mixed results. The new right-wing project fueled privatization talk with publications and conferences. In less than a decade, the project could proudly boast that it had “published more than forty books, articles, and reports” criticizing Social Security and advocating private accounts. During these years, Social Security produced large surpluses, as it had been projected to do when the 1977 and 1983 amendments had been enacted—but the federal deficit grew to record deficits. On March 7, 1999, the wealthy governor of Texas announced that he was forming a committee to explore a run for the presidency. Despite his limited political experience and his weaknesses as a speaker, he had one huge asset. He happened to be the son of a former president, and the two men shared the same first and last names, George Bush. Well before Bush formed his exploratory committee, he had been thinking about the presidency and had been thinking about Social Security as well. He had a long history of hostility to the program. As a student at the Harvard Business School in the early 1970s, he had railed against Social Security and other New Deal programs. In his losing bid for a congressional seat in 1978, he had ventured that “people [should] be given the chance to invest [Social Security] the way they feel.” The patience of the anti-Social Security forces seemed to have paid off. They finally had a president who seemed to see the world their way. Despite Social Security’s absence from the campaign, President Bush established a presidential commission, on May 2, 2001, to study and make recommendations about Social Security. The members consisted only of people who were dedicated to destroying Social Security’s universal promise, and it resulted in Bush’s privatization scheme. Unlike most presidential commissions, which are given broad guidelines within which to work, this commission was to be tightly constrained. Among the stipulations dictated by Bush was that the commission’s recommendations “must include individually controlled voluntary personal accounts.” It was not a commission to consider what should be done; rather, it was a commission to advise the president how to do what he had already made up his mind to do. At the same time, Bush used the ad- ministration of government to sow distrust in Social Security. Though Trustees Reports between 2001 and 2004 grew slightly more optimistic, with the projected year of exhaustion of the trust funds slightly further into the future, Social Security Administration publications became more alarmist. No longer confirming that Social Security faced “no immediate crisis,” the publications now warned that the program was “unsustainable,” and “under financed.” Most disturbing was the change in the annual statement sent to all of the 125 million workers aged 25 and over who pay into the trust funds. This statement, completely unsolicited, simply arrives in each worker’s mailbox. The 2001 statement proclaimed, “Will Social Security be there when you retire? Of course it will.” This reassurance was gone by 2002. And in 2005, the unsettling remark “Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time” was now in the mailing, just in case workers were feeling too secure. The same tactics are being used today. Republicans in Congress are systematically underfunding the Social Security Administration, forcing office closings and longer wait times to receive the world class service Americans are promised. George W. Bush set the agenda for Trump and Elon Musk: Pass a massive tax cut, then try to cut Social Security in the name of fiscal discipline. Of course, Bush’s gamble failed. But privatizers learned a lesson from that. Instead of hashing it out in public, where Social Security’s overwhelm- ing popularity protects it, Wall Street learned to sharpen their axes behind closed doors – just like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are doing right now. This isn’t a new fight – it is the same thing we have been fighting for almost a century. With our voices together, we beat Bush’s privatization scheme, we beat the neo-liberal drumbeat of President Obama’s fiscal commissions, and we’re going to beat Trump and Elon Musk. The way we win is to go on the offense. We need to EXPAND Social Security and never cut it. Nancy Altman is President of Social Security Works, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center, a member of the Boards of Directors of the Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund, Latinos for a Secure Retirement, and the Institute for America’s Future. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 Book Review: The Trees are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forests, by Lynda V. Mapes Lisa Dekker Recent efforts in Clallam County, and elsewhere, to protect our remaining legacy forests from logging, led me to this recently published book. Per Stephen Kropp, founder of the Center for Responsible Forestry, coined the term, ‘legacy forest’ means a “naturally regrown, mature forest that preserves the biological, functional, and structural legacies of the forests they replaced.” Although not everyone respects this relatively new term, we know that there are other legacy forests scattered throughout the publicly-owned lands in Washington, managed by the Department of Natural Resources. In fact, these legacy forests already have great value as they cool the air, hold carbon, and harbor wildlife. Precisely why these forests matter is eloquently described in the first part of Mapes’ book as she travels to regions in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Through interviews on site and forest walks with luminaries like Dr. Jerry Franklin, often called the "father of modern forestry" through his work at the University of Washington, we learn how research has radically changed our understanding in the space of just 60 years. Likely due to their dark understories with little sun, older forests with big trees went from once being described as “biological deserts,” to currently being recognized as the complex, life-giving, carbon-capturing, watershed- preserving treasures we know them to be today. In the chapter titled “Salmon Forests,” she travels for a week among both the remaining healthy forests and the desolate clearcuts of Vancouver Island, with Teresa Ryan (traditional name Sm’hayetsk) an indigenous knowledge and natural science lecturer at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Susan Simard, an eminent forest ecologist, also at UBC. Both Ryan and Simard are part of the Mother Tree Project, a crew of researchers looking at the changes in soils, especially the decline in the amount of carbon in soils of areas that have been clearcut. Simard has also led the project’s deep dive into examining the richly complex soils of the uncut forests, bringing insight into how the trees connect via the mycorrhizal fungi network between them. Also evidence of the value of older forests are the proven, "sustainable" traditions of the Tribes, stewards of these lands and forests for centuries before colonization. Their practices and protocols recognized that care for the forests meant that the forests would care for them. New evidence for this appeared in a paper published in 2022, based on an archeologic study done in the land of the Nuun-chah-nulth peoples of British Columbia, (whose family ties and culture extend down to the Makah reservation in northwest Clallam County.) Botanists and archaeologists found that “old growth trees [still there] are witnesses” to the fact that these people were more than hunter-gatherers and that they “took care of and managed…forest gardens abundant with crab apples, berry patches, and wild rice root crops.” At the same time, because they stripped off only narrow pieces of cedar bark for shelter and clothing, these same cedar trees lived on for centuries. In the preface, Mapes declares that “The need for a paradigm shift is readily apparent.” After presenting data and real-world accounts to justify that shift, she ends with examples of successful restoration projects, new ideas for community solutions, and a belief in the potential for people to change their way of thinking. This should encourage the reader to hope, as does the author, for a “new ethos of conservation, based on reciprocity and respect in our relations with one another, and with nature.” < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents July 2025 The Long-Term War on Social Security Steve Bauck In last month’s Retiree Advocate, Steve Kofahl described the devastating impact of staffing cuts and rules changes on Social Security beneficiaries. While newly implemented, they are part of long-term attack on Social Security. In 1983 the Cato Institute produced an article titled “Achieving a Leninist Strategy”. It called for “guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it.” The long-term goal was to shift the $1.5 trillion we pay into Social Security each year out of Social Security and into IRA or similar private accounts. Their strategy has had considerable success in reducing confidence in the fiscal soundness of Social Security. An April 2025 poll by the AP and University of Chicago found that 52% of those surveyed were not confident that Social Security benefits would be available when they need them. The Social Security staffing cuts have nothing to do with reducing the federal deficit or debt. Social Security is completely self-funded. Administrative costs, including staffing, come from the contributions we make into Social Security. Currently administrative expenses for Social Security amount to a miniscule 0.9%. Were administrative expenses to be raised back to 1.26% where they have historically been, SSA could have the full staffing it needs to adequately serve the public and it wouldn’t impact the federal budget at all. But the cuts do serve the purpose of eroding confidence in Social Security’s ability to deliver benefits to those who have earned them. They are also likely to cut costs by deterring deserving beneficiaries from accessing their benefits. Similarly, the DOGE theft of Social Security personal data in the name of rooting out fraud has nothing to do with saving billions in fraudulent Social Security payments. DOGE has not been able to demonstrate that there is fraud because it is almost nonexistent in Social Security. A recent Social Security oversight report found an “improper payments” rate of 0.3%. They noted that only a sliver of that low rate is due to fraud. The focus on fraud reinforces the idea that Social Security is an entitlement program giving benefits to undeserving beneficiaries who haven’t earned them and that the federal government isn’t competent to administer the program. The data is also being used as a weapon by declaring people to be dead and thus denying them access to employment, banking and virtually all economic activity in the country. When we first start working, we don’t know when we are going to retire, how long we will be retired or what financial resources we will have. We also do not know if we are going to become disabled and unable to work (only a third of workers have disability insurance be- side Social Security Disability) or if we will die young and leave dependents without a source of income. Social Security is not a retirement savings program, it is an insurance program. Our contributions are pooled to ensure that all covered workers have a monthly benefit in all these situations. Although by law Social Security can never go bankrupt, there is a future funding issue. In 1983 the stagflation of the 1970s caused a funding crisis for Social Security. It was solved primarily by benefit cuts. Projections indicated that the changes would take care of all future needs. What was not anticipated at the time was the theft of wages over the past 40 years. Almost none of the gains in productivity have gone to workers. Currently the Social Security Trust Fund surplus built up to provide for the surge of baby boomer retirement is projected to be depleted in 2033. This is not a new issue. It has been known for over 30 years. There will need to be either a 21% cut in benefits or an increase in revenue. Overwhelming majorities of Americans favor increasing revenue over benefit cuts. The most obvious source of additional revenue is to “Scrap the Cap” and make those who have received most of the gain in productivity pay their fare share. Currently wages above $176,100 are not taxed for Social Security. Had the cap been eliminated 30 years ago when the looming funding issue was first identified it would have solved the entire problem. It would still solve a large portion of the problem and is essential to any realistic plan to avert benefit cuts. We need to counter the assault on Social Security by exposing the lies that have eroded confidence in Social Security’s future and insist that the rich pay their fair share by scrapping the cap. Steve Bauck is Co-Chair of PSARA's Social security Task Force and a member of PSARA's Executive Board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 Fossil Fuels Have Put Us in an Existential Fix Jefl Johnson “The Oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit. Generates over $4.3 trillion dollars a year in revenue. It is the seventh largest industry in the world ranked above food production, automobile production, coal mining, and at $1.4 trillion, the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t even crack the top ten. The industries listed above oil and gas are completely dependent on oil and gas. The more they grow, the more we grow. That’s the scale, that’s the size of this thing.” This is the opening monologue by the independent oilman character, Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, in the Taylor Sheridan‘s TV production, “Landman”. Exact numbers or not, they are staggering. And the amount of climate and species damage caused by fossil fuels is even more staggering. Since the signing of the Paris Climate Accord in 2016, the world’s major banks have lent approximately $7.9 trillion dollars to the fossil fuel industry, 20 percent of which has gone toward fossil fuel exploration and expansion. These numbers are real and are also staggering. In December 2024, one month prior to Trump’s second inauguration, six major U.S. banks (JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs) withdrew from the United Nations sponsored net zero banking alliance. This gives new meaning to Trump’s expression “burn, baby burn.” As our planet gets hotter every year, the interest on our credit card payments, our checking and savings accounts, and our pension funds are financing climate disaster. Can we do something about this? Yes. Should we do something about it? Absolutely! Easy first steps are to bank on the community level. We can do our banking and get our credit cards from credit unions, financial companies that don’t loan money or buy the debt of fossil fuel companies. But if we really want to make a difference, we can organize around getting our private and public pension funds to stop investing our pension dollars in fossil fuel assets. We can organize around getting the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) to stop investing the 18 pension funds they oversee in fossil fuel assets. While the WSIB makes it difficult to precisely identify how much of their assets are invested in fossil fuels, a reasonable estimate is $6-8 billion directly invested in fossil fuels and at least as much in indexed funds that contain fossil fuel investments. All told, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7% of the WSIB portfolio. Why is it so important to divest, or to use a less pejorative financial term "rebalance," WSIB assets out of fossil fuels? Right out of the chute, fossil fuel assets continue to underperform the overall stock market. Since the end of the last bear market, October 2022, the Standard and Poor index of funds grew by 92 percent, while fossil fuels pulled up the rear at 17 percent. You don’t need to be a math major to understand that our pension assets would earn more money if they weren’t invested in fossil fuels. But given the real and palpable urgency of reducing carbon emissions and slowing down and reversing climate disaster, if a well-respected fund like the WSIB rebalanced their portfolio out of fossil fuels it would send a clear message to other institutional investors that you can earn great returns while also protecting our planet. Not too shabby of a rationale. As a species, humans are great at making excuses not to do something. Particularly when billionaires and their representatives tell us there is a better way. Engage, they say, don’t divest. A cursory reading of the history of the corporate response to asbestos and cigarettes should be fair warning. Simply engaging corporations in a discussion around lowering carbon emissions will kill us on a grander scale than anything we have known before. Climate disaster is the greatest existential crisis there is. The situation that we are in right now recalls for me two sayings I am quite fond of. The first by our dear friend Michael Righi, recently passed, who used to say “every billionaire is a policy failure.” We have to stop taking our advice from people who benefited the most from extractive industries and who will be the least impacted by climate disaster. The second is by humorist and social commentator Will Rogers. Rogers used to say, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Acknowledging that fossil fuel investments have put us in an existential fix is a first step. Now it’s time to stop making it worse, time to stop digging! Over the next several months I will continue to research and write about ending the financing of climate change. In the meantime, if you are persuaded by this article or the group of essays I wrote last year, “Protecting our Assets, Protecting Our Asses”(visit our website at psara.org and click the image on our homepage) then please write letters, emails, or postcards to our political leaders (Governor, Lt. Governor, State Treasurer, Director of Labor and Industries) and to our union leaders and tell them it is time to act. Jeff Johnson is Co-President of PSARA and a retired President of the Washington State Labor Council < Back to Table of Contents