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The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents May 2025 Somtimes it's Not Sweet in Life, but Other Times There's Good News Dina Burstein Many of you have read in this newsletter about my beloved friend Mohamed, who is incarcerated at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. Now I have amazing news to share with you about Mohamed’s legal case. Background: Mohamed is an immigrant from Somalia, now 38 years old. He was convicted in 2014 of charges related to an altercation on the street in which one personsustained minor injuries to his hand. For this, Mohamed was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He has been in prison at Walla Walla since 2015. To get a sense of what Mohamed is like, and what his life is like, you can read the columns Mohamed and I wrote for the Retiree Advocate here: www.psara.org/newsletter-archive News since our last column: Mohamed completed his AA degree! His college teacher asked permission for Mohamed to become a TA in his classes, but the prison did not allow He has fasted and prayed his way through another Ramadan in prison. And best news of all: The Seattle Clemency Project spent months investigating Mohamed’s case and has agreed to help represent him in a clemency case. Three attorneys at a Seattle private law firm, in cooperation with the Seattle Clemency Project, are now putting together a clemency case to submit to Governor Ferguson. There are other legal hurdles ahead for Mohamed, but this is a great start. Mohamed’s legal team has asked for letters of support from people in the community who know Mohamed or who have come to know him from his writings. If you have been moved by reading Mohamed’s columns, and might be interested in writing a letter of support for Mohamed, please email me at dinaburstein@gmail.com This is how Mohamed explained his perspective on living a 40-year sentence in prison: Sometimes it's not sweet in life. This is one of those things. The way I was going, drinking, life on the street, I was heading to get killed. Thank God I got a chance to re-live my life in prison. The ones still out there can’t. They’re stuck. As soon as I was in jail, I started praying again. I needed that break (the arrest) to get my life back. I was able to get my life back! Opened my eyes. Once I was pulled out of life on the street, I knew what I needed to do to live the life I wanted to live. Dina Burstein is a member of PSARA and an activist with the Jewish Coalition < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2025 Throw It Away! But Where Is “Away”? Bobby Righi As we shop this season, we need to be awakened to the fact that we are drowning in refuse – plastic, clothes, electronics, shoes, etc. These are things that “go away” to landfills and incinerators and are shipped around the world to poorer countries. They eventually end up in rivers and flow whole or in their chemical parts to litter beaches and then flow into the oceans. Garbage is all around us. Watch the film “Buy Now” on Netflix or in theaters to get a graphic view of this process and an explanation of why we are in this fix. Plastic, in nearly all manufactured goods, is everywhere – mountain-sized heaps in landfills, jamming up rivers, and continent-sized islands in the oceans. It breaks into tiny particles that are in the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. So it is inside us as well, even in mothers’ breast milk and the placentas of new born babies. What is it doing to our DNA and all the planets’ organisms? That’s under investigation. People who live near garbage land- fills and those near refineries that make the chemicals for plastic have shortened lives from the toxic pollution. People who try to make a living from polluted waters and lands are struggling to feed their families. Meanwhile, the plastic is piling up higher. We produce about 400 million tons of plastic waste each year, and global production of primary plastic is forecasted to reach 1,100 million tons by 2050. Most gets sent “away” to poor countries in Africa or Asia. Alarms about plastic are being raised around the world, and people are trying to address the problems. In Washington State the Rewrap Bill was introduced last year and will come up again during this legislative session. Packaging manufacturers will be responsible for paying for the full lifecycle of their products, including disposal and recycling. At the federal level, the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act has been around for several years and will, hopefully, come up again this year. The bill will shift the burden of cleanup and waste management to where it be- longs: on the corporations that produce this waste. It establishes source reduction targets for single-use plastic products, creates a nationwide beverage container refund program, and bans certain single-use plastic products that are not recyclable. It will pause plastic manufacturing facilities until critical environmental justice and health issues are addressed. The fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, “The High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution,” just ended their meeting in Busan, Korea. It had one job – to come up with a treaty to curb plastic pollution. Since 2022 there have been five of these meetings, but the attendees reached no agreement. They will reconvene in 2025. At every level, oil producing countries and oil companies block any agreement that cuts down on the amount of plastic produced or phases out certain problematic chemicals and products. At this meeting, it was Saudi Arabia and Russia who blocked progress. The Biden administration joined them in refusing to ask for a cap on plastic production. The US reversed their position from August 2024, when Biden administration representatives raised hopes that the US would join countries like Norway, Peru, and the United Kingdom in supporting limits on plastic production. But United States delegates supported a “flexible” approach in which countries set their own voluntary targets for reducing plastic production. We are very aware that “voluntary” targets get us nowhere. The plastic producers work hard to convince us that things would be clean and pristine if we just recycled our plastic refuse. Less than 10 percent is being recycled, so they say it is the consumer’s fault. This is a big lie. Most plastic cannot be recycled. It cannot be broken down and safely reused. PET, the type in most beverage containers, can be reformed into clothing and bottles, but it is expensive. Coca-Cola, a top plastics polluter, has completely dropped its 2022 goal of achieving 25 percent reusable packaging by 2030. Instead, Coca-Cola continues to focus on failed recycling goals that will do little to address the plastic crisis. The high costs of recycling, coupled with low oil prices, means that recycling plastic now costs more than manufacturing virgin plastic. So the producers want to keep on filling our lives, lungs, and gut with polyethylene terephthalate (PET – what Coke bottles are made of) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE – the material for milk cartons and toys). Then there is polyvinyl chloride (PVC – used in medical applications and construction and known to leach dangerous toxins like lead, dioxin, and vinyl chloride throughout its entire lifecycle). These are the most common types but there are others, like the plastic of shopping bags and cling wrap, which are almost impossible to recycle. We can fight this by getting the WA Legislature to pass the Rewrap Bill and also pressuring Congress to pass the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act. We should not be stopped by a House and Senate controlled by Republicans. Those reps and senators have families who are ingesting and breathing plastic, and their babies and grandchildren are being affected even before they are born. There really is nowhere to hide from this plague of plastic, and they should be open to correcting the situation by lowering the amount of plastic produced. Let’s demand that they do! Bobby Righi is Co-Chair of PSARA's Climate and Environmental Justice Committee. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents August 2025 PSARA Letter to the Washington State Congressional Delegation PSARA Board July 12, 2025 TO: Washington US Representatives and Washington Senators in the US Congress RE: The US National Climate Assessment Report The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is the US government’s preeminent report on climate change in the United States. It was set into law by the US Congress in 1990 and there have been five reports since then, released every four years. Although the National Climate Assessment is required by Congress, in April, the Trump administration announced it was canceling funding for the US Global Change Research Program, which coordinates the report. All the authors working on the upcoming Sixth National Climate Assessment, set for release in 2028, were also dismissed. The US Global Change Research Program's website was taken offline, along with all five editions of the National Climate Assessment and a wide range of information detailing how human- amplified climate change is impacting the United States. The most recent assessment, NCA5, was released in 2023. The report lays out the basic science of climate change, examines how climate change will affect 17 national-level topics, and includes 10 regional chapters covering the entire United States. The national reports are not only peer reviewed by other scientists, but examined for accuracy by the National Academy of Sciences, federal agencies, the staff and the public. The NCA gives close attention to current and future risks, how those risks can be reduced, and implications for society under different future scenarios. The most recent report, issued in 2023, included an interactive atlas that zoomed down to the county level. This lets Americans explore the impacts of climate change in their own back yards. Counties, cities, and states find it useful in planning future needs and in devel- oping budgets. Local officials say the report has helped them decide about upcoming needs - whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs. Climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk. All of these reports have been taken offline by the Trump administration as of July 1. This is part of the cutback and cancellation of any work on climate change. The effect of this foolish ac- tion was brutally clear when over 100 people were swept away in the flash flood on Guadalupe River in Central Texas on July 4. Climate change will continue to make storms stronger and fires larger and faster moving. Thousands more will die from these catastrophic events. We need more resources focused on prevention and mitigation and we need them now! What specific actions are you taking to protect people and infra- structure from extreme weather events caused by climate change? We want to see public meetings and congressional hearings on this subject. It impacts the entire country. The hearings should include scientists and experts who provided the analysis for past NCA reports and those who used this critical data for planning and public health and safety at the state level. We are calling on you, our Washington State Representatives and Senators to the US Congress, to restore the National Climate Assessment as directed by congress in 1990. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2025 Warning: Trump's Nominees May Be Hazardous to Your Health Mike Andrew Most of Donald Trump’s high-level nominees will be confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. That’s not good news. For PSARA members – and anyone else who is concerned about protecting our rights to affordable, science-based health care – two are especially problematic: Dr. Mehmet Oz and Robert Kennedy, Jr. Mehmet Oz: From Respected Doctor to Snake Oil Salesman Oz has been picked to head CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), the agency that manages Medicare and works with state government to oversee Medicaid. Oz was once a respected heart surgeon and a professor at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He then became a TV celebrity, appearing regularly on the Oprah Winfrey Show from 2004 through 2009. Winfrey then began producing Oz’s own TV show, on which he promoted so-called “alternative medicine” schemes. In 2012, Oz entered into an arrangement with Usana Health Sciences, a multi-level marketing company selling “nutrition” supplements. Oz was paid over $50 million over a five-year period to promote Usana products on his show. During the COVID epidemic, Oz falsely claimed the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19. What Oz did not reveal at the time was that he owns at least $630,000 of stock in two companies that manufacture or distribute hydroxychloroquine, Thermo Fisher and McKesson Corporation. Not only is the drug ineffective against the COVID virus, but it can also actively harm patients who take it to combat COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization. Along with internet entrepreneur Jeff Arnold, Oz is also a an owner of Sharec- are, Inc., an online medical “information” venue that accepts paid advertisers and promotes the use of their products. Among their advertisers: Colgate-Pal- molive; Pfizer; Unilever (Dove skin-care products); health insurer UnitedHealth- care; and Walgreens drug stores. All this naked profiteering and all these potential conflicts of interest should be disqualifying in and of themselves. But wait! There’s more. We haven’t even gotten to Oz’s views on Medicare, the public health service he’ll be overseeing in the Trump administration. You remember the old saying about the fox guarding the henhouse? Oz thinks of health care as just another commodity. If you’re rich enough to pay for good care, fine. If you’re not… Well, Oz has already told us what he foresees for low-income Americans. I In a 2012 speech to the National Governors Association, Oz declared that "(low-income people) don’t have the right to health, but they have a right to access – a chance to get that health." How do they “get that health?” Oz proposed that lawmakers host cheap 15-minute health screenings “in a festival-like setting" to help those who are uninsured. During his 2020 campaign for the US Senate, Oz announced a health care plan, which he called "Medicare Ad- vantage for All.” That’s right, Oz wants to turn all health care in the US over to private insurance companies and all the overpayments, outright fraud, de- lays, and denial of claims that go along with private Medicare Advantage plans. Oz will be a disaster in his role as head of CMS. RFK Jr.: The Worm Ate More Than We Thought Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been nominated to be the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and therefore Dr. Oz’s boss. True, RFK Jr. has some interesting ideas about eating healthy foods and restricting artificial additives, but his views overall align with the contrarian anti-science ideology of right-wing populism. Kennedy chairs the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group he joined in 2015. The group claims that exposure to vaccines, certain chemicals, and radiation has caused a wide range of conditions in many American children, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), food allergies, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Children's Health Defense has actively campaigned against vaccines, fluoridation of drinking water, acetaminophen, aluminum, and wireless communication, among other things. The group has been identified as one of two major buyers of anti- vaccine Facebook advertising in late 2018 and early 2019. Kennedy and Children's Health Defense have falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy promoted multiple conspiracy theories related to COVID, including false claims that Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to profit off a vaccine, and suggesting that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, allowing them to starve. In August 2020, Kennedy appeared in an hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram and touted a number of incorrect and misleading claims about vac- cines and public health measures related to the pandemic. Public health officials and scientists criticized Baldwin for letting Kennedy's claims go unchallenged. In addition, Kennedy has spread the false HIV/AIDS denialist claim that no one has isolated the HIV virion and "No one has been able to point to a study that demonstrates their hypothesis using accepted scientific proofs." He has also asserted that anti-HIV drugs, which have saved millions of HIV-positive patients, are toxic and should be banned. The Kennedy-Oz team managing HHS and CMS would be a one-two punch to the gut for affordable, science-based health care in the US. 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 August 2025 Social Security: A detailed behind-the-curtain look at what's going on, posted by a Social Security Administration worker Anonymous I have not posted about my federal agency in a while. Here is why: we lost 94% of the staff in my regional office in the last two and half months. An office of 550 is now less than 2 dozen. One group of folks retired or quit. Another group were given directed reassignments to headquarters components (but did not have to physically move). A third (largest) group was bullied and pressured into “volunteering” to take front-line, public-facing jobs. Many of these folks had never worked in direct service before, and others took significant downgrades to positions from which they were promoted years or even decades before. So basically we’ve been in an inadvertent devolution exercise for the past 3 months. It’s exhausting and traumatic. I’m simultaneously enraged and grieving all of the time. All of my energy is spent on – I don’t even know what. Survival? Putting out fires? Offloading work? Responding to emails that 550 staff used to respond to? Here is a long catch-up post. The Trump administration continues to assert that Social Security is not being touched and that there have been no field office closures. While it is true that there have not been field office closures recently, there are closures and these are completely destroying the infrastructure of the agency. In order to be invisible to the public, the cuts are happening at regional and national offices that provide support to our front line staff. The destruction at SSA is designed to be off the public radar. What is happening at SSA is happening to other agencies as well – like NPS, HUD, EPA, etc. Here is some granular info: SSA used to have 10 regional offices. We are now down to 4. The 4 remaining are in hospice care. We no longer have enough staff to even triage. In my newly consolidated region, we had 550 employees in March. We now have less than 24. The remaining two dozen staff are trying to support the operations of 10,000 employees in 20 states. The other three remaining regional offices are similarly gutted. What do employees in regional offices do? These mission critical employees support the front lines; we provide computer hardware and software support, provide policy advice and guidance, train new employees, train journey level employees on new or changing policies and regulations, work with landlords and GSA, contract with guards, hire new staff, oversee labor and employee relations, allocate budget, overtime, and staffing, monitor spending, monitor for fraud, etc. We will not properly function without regional offices. We are being dismantled, physically and organizationally. Employees are psychologically gutted. Deep grief, anger, distrust. Russel Vought's plan to traumatize the workforce is working. Everyday there is an employee on the other end of the phone or video call that is crying, or telling me about their sky-rocketing blood pressure, about new anti-depressants and anti-anxiety prescriptions or increasing dosages, about their family begging them to quit or retire because it is not worth their health. It is frustrating that both the media and congressional staff keep asking only about how cuts are impacting the public. They are missing the bigger picture. It’s hard to explain what Social Security regional offices do as a lot of it is behind the scenes. We don’t interview the public or process claims, but here are some things we (used to) do that directly impacted payments and prevented fraud. As a result they are not getting done at all. Troubleshoot W2s and FICA tax issues with employers – these are both mom & pop small businesses as well as large employers like Boeing and Amazon. Interface with the state governments on Food Stamps, SNAP, WASHCAP, etc. Coordinate with state child support enforcement on garnishments. Field inquiries from state L&I on worker’s comp issues. Manage Section 218 agreements that state and local entities use to with- hold Social Security taxes from wages. Work with fisheries, farmers, and advocate groups on special Social Security number applications and non-work number cases. Liaison with state vocational rehabilitation. Work with states on Medicaid pass- along agreements. Interface with CMS and state healthcare entities on Medicare. Work with jails to support pre-release agreements as well as to obtain info when individuals are incarcerated and not entitled to benefits. Negotiate with state and local governments to obtain safe and protected data exchange agreements. Resolve attorney fee issues with disability attorneys. Ensure that Social Security over- payments are not discharged and are recouped in bankruptcy cases. Respond to FOIA requests. Headquarters components are also being hollowed out. Not only have they also lost employees to DRP, VSIP, and reassignments, they have been massively reorganized to the extent that there is no longer structural integrity. Staff have been scattered. Workloads are likewise scattered but have not always followed the staff that were scattered. We no longer know who “owns” what. Workload X used to be Department A’s responsibility but Department A is now Department Omega and the group who used to run it in Department A are no longer there. The work may still be in Department Omega or it could have moved to Department B except Department B is now gone too and maybe it’s in Department Beta? The regional offices are trying to move work to headquarters since there is no one left in regional offices but we don’t know who is left and where anything remains in headquarters either. All of this is invisible to the public because field offices continue to function at the moment. It is insidious. We are still in a freefall and haven’t hit bottom yet. There is no talk of rebuilding. We are not there. Elon may have left, but DOGE has not. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents November 2025 Aaron Leonard's Menace of Our Time: The Long War Against American Communism Mike Andrew Aaron Leonard has made a career documenting the US government’s war against domestic radicals. His first two books – Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists and A Threat of the First Magnitude, FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration – focus on the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCPUSA), of which Leonard was a member. His next two – The Folk Singers and the Bureau and Whole World in an Uproar: Music, Rebellion & Repression – tell the story of FBI surveillance of American musicians and cultural figures. Leonard’s latest book – Menace of Our Time: The Long War Against American Communism – documents US government attacks on the oldest US communist organization, CPUSA. Although no American communist organization today has anywhere near the numbers or influence that CPUSA gained in the 1940s, while the US was aligned with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, recent political developments suggest that we could learn some lessons about the danger of government surveillance from the past. Leonard’s books, then, should be required reading for members of any progressive organization that seeks to challenge the Trump regime. Basing his revelations on public information requests from the US government, Leonard offers an inside look at the tactics used by the government to attack – not just the CPUSA – but many anti-fascist and anti-war organizations. In his newest book, Leonard outlines the practical means used to attack communists and progressives: Federal laws – the Hatch Act, the Smith Act, the McCarran Act – that defined “anti-American” actions in very broad terms that gave the government free rein to prosecute anyone they wanted; Use of federal agents to infiltrate the CPUSA and other organizations. Entrapment of US civilians so as to force them into becoming informers; Incitement of mob violence against communists and their progressive allies. The spies and informers employed by the US government often reported only the vaguest charges against the subjects of their investigations. And without revealing their own identities so their reports could never be questioned. For example, Leonard reproduces this section from an FBI document: “Edward G. Robinson has been identified as a Communist by Informant REDACTED. Charles Chaplin, according to REDACTED, may or may not be a member of the Communist Party. However REDACTED has stated that Chaplin has financed the West Coast Communist newspaper People’s World…John Garfield, according to the informant REDACTED has been affiliated with the Actors Laboratory, the Young Communist League, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Hollywood Democratic Committee, and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions.” Sound familiar? Is Antifa a terrorist organization? Is Zohran Mamdani a communist? On the basis of allegations like these, public figures were pressured to renounce their affiliations with communist or communist-adjacent groups, and to inform on their former colleagues. Hollywood director Elia Kazan is perhaps the most notorious example, but there were many others. Leonard shows how the FBI also manipulated ordinary people into becoming informers. Take for example the case of John Lautner, a Hungarian-born American communist who was suspected by Hungarian communists of being a US spy. The FBI threatened to deport him to Hungary – where he assumed he’d be shot – unless he gave them the names of all the communists he knew. “Among those he identified were the writers Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Mark Blitzstein, and Howard Fast,” Leonard writes. “He also named the folk singer Woody Guthrie as well as actors James Cagney, John Garfield, Will Geer, and Jose Ferrer; and the scholar W.E.B. DuBois.” Leonard also reveals that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were fingered by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass’ wife, Ruth, recruited him to steal information from his job at the Los Alamos nuclear lab, and give it to the USSR. To protect his wife from federal prosecution, Greenglass offered the FBI his sister and brother-in-law, the Rosenbergs. Leonard continues his narrative through the collapse of the USSR in 1991, carefully documenting the COINTELPRO offensive against radical and anti-war groups in the 1960s. Leonard's book stands as a timely warning of the lengths the govern- ment will go to to maintain "the social order." Anyone who organizes for social change should read it. 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 February 2025 The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and Mass Deportation Anne Watanabe What comes to mind when you hear “alien enemies?” Hostile green creatures, Klingons threatening the Starship Enterprise, or – French people? Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act in 1798 during a US “quasi war” with France (naval hostilities that were never officially declared as war). Enacted during a time of fierce anti-French sentiment and fear of espionage and sabotage, the Act granted sweeping power to the president to detain and deport non-natives. This law, together with three other acts, formed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Even amidst 18th Century anti- French hysteria, the laws were controversial. Three of the four acts were quickly repealed or allowed to sunset. But the Alien Enemies Act remains in effect to this day. Why should we care? Because today anti-immigrant sentiment runs high, and incoming Presi- dent Trump campaigned on promises to use the Act to detain undocumented immigrants and carry out mass deportations. The Act states: “Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, re- strained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.” The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times. During the War of 1812, President Madison used it to require British nationals to report extensive information about themselves to the government. During World War I, President Wilson used the Act (newly amended to include women as well as men as “alien enemies”) to register hundreds of thousands of German nationals, and to place several thousand in internment camps – in some cases up to two years after fighting had ended. During WWII, President Roosevelt used the Act to detain and/or deport thou- sands of German, Italian, and Japanese nationals (Executive Order 9066 and military orders were used to incarcerate Japanese American US citizens). Despite lacking connection or loyalty to a former homeland (even German Jews who had fled Germany were included) noncitizens were treated as “alien enemies” based on national origin. If President Trump attempts to use the Alien Enemies Act to achieve mass deportations, he will of course face vigorous challenges. The Act refers to a “declared war” and has only been invoked during wartime. With its lack of procedural safeguards concerning detention or deportation, the 1798 Act runs counter to established principles of due process and equal protection, and it conflicts with modern immigration law. And yet… The Act also refers to an attempted or threatened “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign nation or government. The President has described undocumented immigration as an “invasion,” perhaps laying the ground- work to use the Act during peacetime. The state of Texas did this in its clash with the Biden Administration, arguing that unlawful immigration constitutes an “invasion” allowing the state to use extraordinary measures. Several judges declined to decide whether an “invasion” had occurred, viewing this as a “political question” for the executive branch, not the judicial branch, under the doctrine established by the US Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962). The potential thus exists for the judiciary to stand down when a president creates a pretext for using the Alien Enemies Act. For a deeper dive into this issue, the Brennan Center for Justice has an excellent legal analysis on its website: The Alien Enemies Act | Bren- nan Center for Justice. The sweeping powers granted by the Act may appeal to politicians who wish to detain and remove immigrants while bypassing hearings or other legal protections. If people can be treated as foreign enemies based on national origin, then due process, habeas corpus and other protections under domestic and international laws may be denied in the name of national security. In 2023, Senator Mazie Hirano and Rep. Ilhan Omar reintroduced their “Neighbors Not Enemies” Act (SB 1747/ HR 3610) to repeal the Alien Enemies Act (as of this writing, three Washington representatives have signed on). Politicians will still have other deportation tools at their disposal, but repeal of the Alien Enemies Act will protect immigrants from the abusive power of an 18th Century law -- so that we remain a nation of neighbors, not enemies. Anne Watanabe is Chair of PSARA's Race and Gender Equity (RaGE) Commit- tee and a member of PSARA's Executive Board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents July 2025 Tim Wheeler Reads From His Latest Book No Power Greater: The Life & Times of George A. Meyers Saturday, July 26, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. WSLC Offices, 321 16th Avenue S, Seattle Please join PSARA and our own Tim Wheeler for the Washington state debut of Tim’s latest book, No Power Greater: The Life &Times of George A. Meyers. Tim will read from the book, take questions and comments, and also lead us in song with his trusty autoharp. Copies of No Power Greater will be available for purchase. Tim has generously offered to donate all proceeds from book sales at this event to PSARA. The Retiree Advocate published a review of the book in our May issue. To read the review, go to PSARA.org, click “Newsletter,” then “Advocate Archives,” and search for “202505 May Advocate.” The remainder of this article is an excerpt from this fascinating book: A couple of days before Christmas, 1941, the Maryland Council of the CIO met at a convention in Baltimore. The nation was reeling from the December 7 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor two weeks earlier by Imperial Japan; the US was suddenly plunged into war. Yet even so, sharp partisan politics intruded when the industrial union leaders met in Baltimore. John T. Jones, a leader of the United Mine Workers, had quit as President of the Maryland- DC branch of the CIO. He was following the lead of UMW President, John L. Lewis… John L. Lewis was furious at FDR for rejecting his appeal that he supports the steelworkers in the 1937 “Little Steel” strike marked by the infamous massacre by Chicago police of steel union strikers. Lewis was so angry at FDR that one week before the November 1940 presidential election, Lewis urged union workers to vote for Republican Wendell Wilkie. Lewis vowed that he would resign as CIO President if Roosevelt was reelected. The overwhelming majority of union workers rejected Lewis’ appeal and Roosevelt won in a landslide. Lewis followed through, announcing his resignation as President of the CIO, pulling the UMW out of the CIO. All UMW leaders who held leadership posts in the CIO, including Jones, also resigned. George was chosen unanimously to replace Jones. George Meyers said of his election to lead the Maryland-DC CIO: To my great surprise, at the Council convention…I was unanimously proposed to succeed him. Need- less to say, I was both surprised and honored but only agreed to run if the convention elected an African American as one of our vice presidents. It did, and Joe Neal, a leader of the Steel Local at Sparrows Point near Baltimore, became the first black officer of the Maryland-DC Council. George A. Meyers gave unstinting leadership to the Maryland-DC CIO during his two-year tenure as President. His highest priority was to build labor support for the war effort. For him defeating fascism and organizing unorganized workers were two sides of the same coin... Equally high on the CIO agenda was fighting Jim Crow exclusion of African American workers at plants like Glen L. Martin, Fairchild Aircraft, Beth Steel, the shipyards, and all other jobs in Maryland. Along with fighting racist hiring practices, the CIO demanded equal hiring and equal pay for women workers < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 Washington State Labor Council Says No Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Labor Campaign for Single Payer Referred to WSLC Executive Board At its 2025 convention held in Vancouver, WA, July 22-24, the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) voted unanimously to fight cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and to oppose the WISeR pilot program to expand prior authorization in Original Medicare. The vote came on a resolution drafted by PSARA and also endorsed by RPEC, WASARA, AFGE 3937, AFSCME Council 28, AFT Washington, SIEU 775, SIEU 1199NW, MLK Labor, Pierce County Central Labor Council, APALA Seattle, and Pride At Work. By passing the resolution, WSLC pledged that the Labor Movement in Washington will participate in the fight to stop the cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security and the additional attacks on these programs, that the Labor Movement in Washington will participate in the fight to halt the privatization of Medicare by supporting leveling the playing field between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage, that the Washington State Labor Council will send a letter to the State’s Congressional delegation urging them to oppose all cuts to Medicaid, Medi- care, and Social Security, the firing of workers and attacks on the administration of the Social Security program, the proposed expansion of prior authorization, and private profiteering in the Medicare program, that the Washington State Labor Council and its affiliates will help educate their members about the dangers of these attacks to the lives of all working people, children, and seniors and what they can do with their unions and allies to resist these attacks. WSLC represents more than 650 local unions and other labor organizations and more than 600,000 workers. Their commitment to fight cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and expanded prior authorization in Original Medicare adds a powerful voice to our campaign to save our safety net programs. As the WSLC resolution noted, “these three programs are foundational to the lives of not only union members, but all working people, children, and seniors…” WSLC also recognized that “these attacks are designed to fund tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations in our country, to increase corporate profits and to undermine the functioning of these federal programs…” The WISeR pilot program to expand prior authorization in Original Medicare is particularly egregious because it would pay private companies to review the medical care of Medicare beneficiaries and pay those companies on the basis of how many procedures and services they denied. In other words, WISeR incentivizes denial of health care. In action on a second resolution supported by PSARA, the WSLC voted to “urge our federal and state legislators to enact legislation that embodies the principles of a universal single payer healthcare system…” The AFL-CIO has not endorsed the Medicare for All Act of 2025 – even though it is endorsed by 10 national and international unions – or the State Based Universal Health Care Act, and therefore the convention’s Resolutions Committee deleted explicit references to them from the resolution. PSARA does support these proposed bills, and we believe they each embody the principles of a universal single payer system. We will continue to press for their adoption. In the resolution, the WSLC also voted to refer the question of actually joining the Labor Campaign for Single Payer to its Executive Board. Labor Campaign for Single Payer is a coalition of 15 national or international unions, 8 AFL-CIO state federations, 5 central labor councils, and 8 state and local unions. Its aim is summed up on its website: “The Labor Campaign believes that we will win healthcare for all when the labor movement commits all of its re- sources and organizing capacity to the fight for healthcare justice. Our job is to build the grassroots movement within labor that will make this happen.” Just this year, the Washington State legislature passed Senate Joint Memo- rial 8004, asking the federal government to create a universal health care program or to partner with Washington State to implement a universal health system by passing legislation similar to the State Based Universal Health Care Act, or to grant Washington State waivers to remove restrictions on the state’s ability to create a universal health care system. PSARA was ably represented at the WSLC convention by our delegate Rob- by Stern, President of the PSARA Edu- cation Fund and member of PSARA's Executive Board, and our alternate, Pam Crone, also a member of PSARA's Executive Board and Chair of our Government Relations Committee < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents April 2025 Entrenching Oligarchy and Inequality: Budgets and Taxes Why are Tax Cuts to Oligarchies necessary? Michael Righi What is happening in the economy may be just background music at the moment, as the Trump administration attacks civil liberty, immigrants, and the rule of law. But it rhymes. Trump and co-president Musk are acolytes of Ayn Rand (not that Trump ever read anything). In their eyes, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individuals exercising power. The role of government is to protect these individuals, then get out the way. Drown government; privatize everything. Trump, DOGE, and Republicans are working together to cut government programs and cut taxes for the wealthy. And they lie a lot, since none of this is in the interest of non-wealthy Trump voters. They really need a tax cut? House Republicans are proposing a $4.5 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, many of which are set to expire at the end of the year. That would be a $60,000 tax break for the 1 percent and less than $500 for the bottom 60 percent. That $500 is less than the likely price increases of Trump’s tariffs. Lie #1: The 2017 tax cut (including a corporate tax cut that is not scheduled to expire) would lead to economic growth, trickle-down wage increases, and increased tax revenue. It did not happen. And now there isn’t even much trickle-down rhetoric, just naked greed. According to budget rules, Republi- cans will have to come up with spend- ing cuts to make up for revenue loss if the tax cut is extended. Enter ketamine- fueled Elon Musk and his DOGE coding goons. Lie #2: He promised $2 trillion in sav- ings by eliminating government “fraud and waste.” (There are too many lies. We’ll stop counting.) DOGE is firing government workers and eliminating agencies (e.g., USAID, Consumer Finance Protection). There are 2.3 million federal workers, a whop- ping 2 percent of the labor force. The number has remained steady since 1970. They make $106,000 on average. If Musk fired every last one, that would be about $250 billion. So, where can he get $2 trillion? Not from “defense.” We’ll need it to take over Canada, Panama, and Greenland, and to continue funding Israel. Yes, of course, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. Severe cuts in Social Security staffing are already making it difficult to get benefits that are due to folks. Republicans are threatening $80 billion cuts in Medicaid grants to the states. Is this just “austerity theater,” to rev up MAGA devotees? Maybe. It’s the “liberal” agencies that are being attacked first. Or is it that DOGE is central- izing decision-making, using chaos as a cover, to enhance Trump’s autocratic executive power. Maybe it’s both. Of course, there is indeed govern- ment waste and fraud. Overpayments to Medicare Advantage insurance companies amount to $83 billion a year. We pay way too much (twice as much as other countries) for Big Pharma drugs. There is a huge uncollected “tax gap” of $700 billion a year, wealthy tax cheats not paying what they owe. One dollar spent on hiring IRS auditors and enforcement personnel yields $12 in revenue. Now there’s efficiency! Of course, Trump is slashing the IRS. The government is going bankrupt? Republicans know that extending Trump’s tax cuts will increase the bud- get deficit. Supposedly they care about that, as the party of fiscal prudence. More lies and theater and hypocrisy: they care if it’s more spending on child- care or medical care. They don’t care if it’s a tax cut for the rich. The federal government budget defi- cit is $1.8 trillion. The national debt is $35 trillion, close to 100 percent of GDP, as high as it was during WWII. Those are big numbers, but not a crisis. US government debt, Treasury bonds, are perfectly safe investments. So far. But why is the national debt so large, and rising over past decades? For some good reasons and one bad one. When banks tank the economy, as in 2008, government spending and budget deficits are needed to revive it. The same was true for the Covid crisis, to support families. Otherwise, unemployment and misery would soar. The bad reason is tax rate cuts for the rich that began with Reagan, reducing the country’s tax base and the progres- sivity of the tax system. Thus increasing inequality. Is a high national debt a problem? No, it’s not a crisis, but it is used as a weapon by right-wingers to oppose expansion of the US’s already meager social welfare state. And tax cuts for the rich leave them with money to buy government bonds, on which they get interest paid by the rest of us. The news may look sometimes like a bunch of people in clown costumes throwing spaghetti at a wall. But there are serious consequences. Flashing little cards, as Democrats did when our oligarch-in-chief was speechifying and lying, will not cut it anymore. Michael Righi is a retired economics professor and a member of the Retiree Advocate editorial board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents March 2025 Behind the Scenes of the WA Coal Act Mary Lou Dickerson and Barbara Carey The Washington Coal Act, SB 5439, is now in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and is unlikely to progress towards passage this year. The Act re- quires our state’s public pension board, the WSIB, to divest from coal and stop making new investments in coal as well. We should not be surprised or disappointed. Significant bills very often take a few years to pass, and this bill has already gathered unexpectedly broad and enthusiastic support during this difficult session. It generated thousands of supportive emailsto senators and developed a coalition of 10 active organizations backing it. We have made huge progress. Bills have a two-year life span. We will take that time to continue to build support and understanding of the need to divest fromthis deadly, dirty, energy source that contributes to climate change throughout the world, including right here in Washington. We will use the interim to raise important issues and question some of the WSIB's claims to legislators. We are enormously thankful to Senator Noel Frame (D-36), who sponsored the Washington Coal Act with six co-sponsors during thecurrent legislative session. The Board provided input to Senator Frame after the bill was introduced, claiming that the WSIB had only $119 million invested incoal and had reduced its exposure to coal from 0.33 percent in 2012 to 0.07percent in 2024. The chair of the Ways and Means Committee’s legislative assistant sent an email to some of the bill proponents saying Sen. Robinson would not be scheduling ahearing for the bill because the WSIB is reducing its coal investments and will probably continue to do so. Unfortunately, the method used by the WSIB to classify coal holdings only takes into account companies whose primary sourceof revenue is thermal coal, according to the MSCI Global Industry Standards Classification (GCIS). This method eliminates giantconglomerates whose huge coal operations may, nevertheless, be dwarfed by their other trading businesses. In contrast, the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL), used in the proposed WA Coal Act, is internationally recognized and used byinvestors, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and asset management companies around the world to get a clear viewof major coal operations worldwide. Investors representing almost $20 trillion in assets use the GCEL to evaluate theirinvestments. The GCEL turns up $2.6 billion in WSIB coal investments. That’s 24 times more than the WSIB counts in its coal holdings! The GCIS used by the WSIB makes it almost impossible to track substantial coal investments, while the GCEL provides a clear,annually updated status of major coal operations. The WSIB representative also posed the argument to Senator Frame, in an email opposing the WA Coal Act, that some WSIB coal investments “fall in the category of ‘brown-to-green’ investments, whereby companies are actively transitioning fromgreenhouse gas-in- tensive energy production or consumption to renewable energy sources.” WSIB’s example of such an investment, NTPC Ltd, is the largest power company in India – mainly coal-fired plants! That’s a bitshocking. NTPC’s generating capacity of 71 gigawatts is equivalent to 92 Centralia coal plants. While it claims to be adding 60 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2032, it is currently its coal production by the equivalent of 11 Centralia coal plants – not including its many subsidiaries. That certainly doesn't sound like a brown to green investment. The Washington Legislature passed the Clean Energy Transition Act in 2019, which bans the use of coal for energy inWashington after 2025. How is it that a state agency completely stonewalls against the intentions of the Legislature byrefusing to even acknowledge that there are ways it could better align with climate policies and simultaneously up theirgame in complying with their fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their beneficiaries? This is not politics, this is prudence. Pensions are tasked with acting in the long-term best interest of beneficiaries, not makingshort-term gambles. Coal is dying out in the US and is being replaced by much less expensive renewables. Coal is not a good long-term investment. The long-term outlook for US coal is a steady downward trend. According to the Institute for Energy and Economic FinancialAnalysis (IEEFA), it’s possible that all the remaining US coal capacity could be shuttered by 2040. Britain, where the first coal plant was built in 1882, has already closed its last coal plant. Coal produces more green-housegases than any other energy form – not to mention toxic emissions that researchers estimate have caused 460,000 prematuredeaths in the US between 1999 and 2020. Fiduciary duty is a hallmark of the WA Coal Act. The WSIB is good at making investments with healthy returns. California andOregon have both passed coal divestment bills. CalPERS’ returns increased nearly $600 million in 2022 according to Wilshire, CalPERS’ consultant. Moving $2.6 billion from coal over 3-5 years into other investments is not a large ask for WSIB’s $200 billion portfolio. Many thanks to all the PSARA members who wrote to their senators about this significant issue. We ask you to continue toadvocate with us as we move forward toward passage. Mary Lou Dickerson is a former Washington State Representative, PSARA member, and Third Act Washington Policy Lead. Barbara Carey is a Divest Washington co-leader, PSARA member, and Washington State PERS3 Retiree. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2025 20 Lessons from the 20th Century on How to Survive in Trump’s America Timothy Snyder Editor's Note: We distributed this article at PSARA's Winter Membership Meeting in 2016 to help our members prepare for the first Donald Trump administration. The suggestions are still good. Thanks to Bobby Righi for rediscovering it. Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today. Do not obey in advance . Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom. Defend an institution . Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning. Recall professional ethics . When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives . When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition par- ties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it. Be kind to our language . Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don't use the Internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Stand out. Someone has to . It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot and other sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports. Watch out for the paramilitaries . When the men with guns who have al- ways claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding them- selves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.) Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for free- dom, then all of us will die in unfree- dom. Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it. A history professor looks to the past to remind us to do what we can in the face of the unthinkable. (This article first appeared as a post on the author’s Facebook page) < Back to Table of Contents