Search Results
Please enter search terms in the box below.   This search is site wide including Retiree Advocate issues from January 2025 forward for pre 2025 issues of the Advocate please go to the Advocate Archives

widgetid Loading...

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents June 2025 Protecting Our Assets, Protecting Our Asses – Part 3 Jeff Johnson "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10 thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” E.O. Wilson Naturalist Edward Wilson recognizes a fundamental truth. Humankind’s pen- chant for hubris, our seemingly eternal quest to one up the natural world, has created the conditions for our own demise. As we continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere, we create climate chaos and species decline. To put a point on it, this is not good. And of course, while all of us will be impacted, not all of us will be impacted equally. Those countries, communities, and individuals that did the least to cause climate disaster will be disproportionately impacted by the climate chaos as well as by the inability to recover from its effects. I remember listening to a college lecture in 1971 from an analyst from either the Pentagon or the Department of State. She laid out a scenario of future climatic shifts that would reduce the amount of arable land and potable water, causing massive human migration, species decline, and geo-political unrest. It is no longer hyperbole to recognize that we have crossed over the climate chaos threshold. While the ignorance of climate deniers and their disastrous policies make those pushing for carbon neutrality by 2050 seem reasonable, our hubris prevents us from recognizing the urgency of the moment, even as insects and birds vanish exponentially. We can’t wait for 2050 to act. We need to dramatically reduce carbon pollution and rapidly increase renew- able clean energy now. Our planet is seriously out of balance, egregiously out of equilibrium. I was struck by something I read from the Dalai Lama, that while humans “have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect it.” I believe that we can help the earth rebalance itself. But to do so we must act thoughtfully, equitably, and with a great sense of urgency and purpose. Financial Rebalancing There is an analogous concept of rebalancing in the financial world. Diversified financial portfolios are made up of a variety of assets in different risk classes, i.e., equities, bonds, real estate, hedge funds, government securities, etc. The overall goal for the long-term health of your portfolio is to establish a range of asset allocations that provide the best return for the least risk. You develop a target asset allocation range for different asset classifications and then track how your portfolio values match up to your asset allocations. If you can keep your portfolio in this preferred range over time, your portfolio will be in balance, providing the best returns for the least risk. Of course, as economic activity goes up and down and investment decisions change, asset values rise and fall on a daily, weekly, and quarterly basis. As a consequence, the values of your asset classes change from the targeted allocation you chose. Some will have grown higher than the target range and others fallen below the preferred range. So now what do you do? Well, it’s not rocket science. To rebalance your port- folio, to bring it back into equilibrium, you make strategic decisions to sell off certain assets from one classification and buy assets from another classification. [Note: It doesn’t work quite the same way for private-equity type investments. Often it is more prudent to hold the private-equity type investments until their normal wind-down, but importantly to not invest more]. Financial rebalancing of portfolios is a usual and customary practice. It hap- pens all the time. Washington State Investment and Pension Funds The Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) manages nearly $200 billion of state funds and public employee pension dollars. The WSIB has been a good care-taker of these funds for decades and has earned a positive national reputation as one of the best- managed state funds. The WSIB has approximately $5.5 billion invested in fossil fuel assets. This represents about 2.5 percent of its total portfolio. Given that fossil fuel assets have been significantly underperforming the broad stock market for quite some time; that the concept of financial prudence defined narrowly or more broadly, as laid out in article two of this series, war- rants selling off fossil fuel assets; that financial rebalancing is standard practice in the financial industry; and given the continued decline in the value of fossil fuel assets, there is no good reason not to rebalance our state’s Investment portfolio by selling off fossil fuel assets over the next several years and replacing them with assets that provide a better return for a lower risk. So Now Where Are We? In the first three articles of this series, “Protecting Our Assets, Protecting Our Asses,” we laid out the moral, economic, fiscal, employment, and social needs bases for rebalancing our state funds out of fossil fuels. We made the argument that it is important for our state and our public employee unions to lead the way in countering the financial industry’s $7 trillion investment in fossil fuels since the signing of the Paris Climate Accords. Rebalancing of fossil fuel assets will send a strong message to institutional investors to do likewise. We have also shown that by any measure of financial prudence our state funds and pension funds are not being well served by fossil fuel investments. Finally, we have shown that financial rebalancing is done as a matter of course in the financial industry. And that rebalancing our Washington State funds out of fossil fuels is not only a smart and financially prudent thing to do, it is a step towards rebalancing our earth – protecting both our assets and our asses. Jeff Johnson is a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and Co-President of PSARA. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents April 2025 A Letter to Congress on Social Security The Social Security Administration (SSA), which administers our Social Security system at an extraordinarily low cost of under one percent of expenditures, is undergoing major, destabilizing changes. These changes threaten agency viability and the benefits of over seventy million current beneficiaries. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which appears to be engineering these major changes, has access to the most sensitive personal and confidential information – including Social Security numbers, lifetime earnings records, benefit computations, and even medical records– of hundreds of millions of U.S. workers and current beneficiaries. Former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley believes that DOGE’s actions pose a significant and imminent risk to the benefits paid by SSA. The National Academy of Social Insurance, founded in 1986, annually awards a prize named in honor of Robert Ball, who served as Social Security Commissioner for eleven years under three Presidents (Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and Republican Richard Nixon), to people whose work has significantly contributed to the U.S. social insurance system. We recipients of the Ball Award join in expressing our alarm at current ac- tions of DOGE that threaten the viability of Social Security benefits for current beneficiaries and workers. We write to warn of the risk that this interference with SSA’s vital operations poses to all who have a stake in our nation’s Social Security program. Social Security this year commemorates the 90th anniversary of its enactment in 1935 under the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Throughout its extraordinary existence, SSA has provided retirement, survivor, and disability benefits to the right people in the right amount at the right time, while carefully preserving the privacy of the personal data of workers and beneficiaries alike. Congress needs to monitor vigilantly the changes being undertaken to ensure that accurate benefit payments will in fact be made on time. Economic security for millions of Americans is at stake. An Acting Commissioner is currently leading the agency, until the U.S. Sen- ate confirms a new Commissioner. The previous Acting Commissioner, a civil servant with decades of executive-level experience, was replaced after refusing to provide a DOGE team member with access to such sensitive information. The unprecedented actions by SSA, presumably instigated by DOGE, have included, and reportedly will include, the following: Personnel reductions: Approximately 7,000 out of around 57,000 SSA employ- ees will be either fired “for cause” or let go as “redundant.” It should be noted that being fired for cause or given an artificial “choice” to be reassigned to a significantly lower-paying position in another geographical location without moving expenses deprives the affected staff of severance pay and health insurance coverage, and blocks them from qualifying for unemployment insurance. These cuts, if effectuated, will reduce over twelve percent of the staff of an agency that is already laboring under a severe shortage of employees and a hiring freeze – this at a time when nearly 12,000 Boomers turn 65 each day. In addition to new terminations, many senior SSA staff have already been fired, announced their resignations, or taken early retirement. More departures loom in response to emails that advise them to take an “early out” or to accept a voluntary separation incentive payment, as they may lose their jobs through reorganization and elimination of their positions. Removal of these seasoned SSA professionals means a loss of vital institutional leadership and knowledge, which will degrade service to the public. Field office closings: In just its first six weeks in office, the current Administration has closed ten field offices. The General Services Administration has been directed to terminate all federal leases. Closing leased Social Security offices will further obstruct access to benefits, especially by disability claimants but also by others, who need or want in person assistance with their benefits. Headquarters restructuring : SSA’s leadership structure is being reorganized and reduced to only five Deputy Commissioners, plus a Chief Actuary and a Chief Information Officer. Every Deputy Com- missioner will be a political appointee – a major shift from the norm. Elimination of divisions : The Administration is closing the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity and the Office of Transformation, which has led efforts to improve efficiency, cut costs, and enhance customer service. The staff of these offices were fired “for cause.” The Administration also fired the SSA Inspector General, an odd move if the goal is truly to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. Research terminations: Among the programs being abolished is SSA’s Retirement and Disability Research Consortium, a group of six university based research groups, whose elimination will deprive the public of important research on how to improve Social Security legislatively and administratively. These actions come against the back- ground of existing staff shortages that have already caused growing delays in processing benefits, especially claims for new disability benefits. Two million Disability Insurance applicants are now awaiting decisions—and the number is growing. Approximately 10,000 disability benefits applicants have died in recent years while awaiting the processing of their claims. Staff reductions will cause further delays and more deaths. DOGE has also made false claims that SSA is paying benefits to many deceased individuals. In fact, SSA diligently identifies beneficiaries who die and immediately cuts off benefits. An Inspector General study found that of the 88,000 people aged 100 or older in December 2020, only 44,000 were receiving benefits. (Starting in 1937, SSA has been issuing Social Security numbers.) While nearly 19 million individuals with Social Security numbers had birthdays one hundred or more years ago, fewer than one-half of one percent – just 44,000-- were receiving benefits in 2020. While it is possible that one or more of those benefits may be going out in error, DOGE has presented no evidence of this. But DOGE advocates spending millions of dollars to find and prune from SSA records the names of the remaining ninety nine-plus percent who are not receiving benefits. Such a step would be pure waste, some- thing that one might suppose an entity pledged to eliminate waste would shun. DOGE meddling to date has hindered efficiency, not enhanced it. Multiple staff have spent thousands of hours in emergency meetings called to correct erroneous and unsupported allegations that people 150 years old or more are getting paid benefits. DOGE has fostered waste, the very problem it purports to want to solve. The current Administration and some in Congress have issued statements claiming that SSA downsizing will not affect the payment of Social Security benefits. Payments come from the U.S. Treasury upon transmission of data by SSA. Getting benefits to the currently and newly eligible, and accurately determining how much those benefits should be, requires the work of current SSA staff and more. Congress is duty-bound to monitor the changes currently being implemented to ensure that they do not reduce the access of current and new beneficiaries to the benefits promised under current law. The economic security of millions of Ameri- cans is at stake. Signed by: Henry Aaron, Senior Fellow Emeritus, The Brookings Institution Nancy Altman, President, Social Security Works Stuart Altman, Professor, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University William Arnone, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus, National Academy of Social Insurance David Blumenthal, former President, The Commonwealth Fund Peter Diamond, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Marian Wright Edelman, former President, Children’s Defense Fund Peter Edelman, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center Martha Ford, Senior Advisor, The Arc of the United States Stephen Goss, former Chief Actuary, SSA Robert Greenstein, President Emeritus, Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, and Visiting Fellow, The Brookings Institution Jacob S. Hacker, Professor, Yale University Kilolo Kijakazi, former Acting Commissioner, SSA, and Social Security and Medicare Trustee Jacob Lew, former Secretary of the Treasury and Social Security and Medicare Trustee Theodore Marmor, Professor Emeritus, Yale University School of Management Marilyn Moon, former Fellow, American Institutes for Research Alicia Munnell, Senior Advisor, Boston College Center for Retirement Research Robert Reischauer, President Emeritus, The Urban Institute, and former Social Security and Medicare Public Trustee Virginia Reno, former SSA Deputy Com- missioner for Retirement and Disability Policy John Rother, former President, National Coalition on Health Care Bruce Vladeck, former Administrator, Health Care Finance Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) < Back to Table of Contents

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 September 2025 Deceit, Resistance, on Social Security’s 90th Birthday Steve Kofahl Thursday, August 14, marked the 90th anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act. At his Oval Office event, President Trump asserted that the Administration had eliminated the federal taxation of Social Security benefits and improved customer ser- vice at the Social Security Administration (SSA). Both claims are false. His “One Big Beautiful Bill” provides a tax deduction of as much as $6000 for some beneficiaries, but about half of them will still pay taxes on their benefits when the tax deduction offset is considered. The SSA Chief Actuary finds that the loss of Trust Fundincome resulting from this legislation advances the date when the Trust Funds will be depleted by six months, from early 2034 to late 2033. The deportation of undocumented workers may advance the date by another six months, according to some analysts. Trumplied when he previously asserted that undocumented workers receive benefits, and that 235,000 of them had been removedfrom the beneficiary rolls this year. Undocumented workers pay Social Security taxes on their earnings, but are ineligible to receive benefits under the Social Security Act. More deportations mean less income to the Trust Funds. The alleged service improvements are a ruse, a product of changes in both SSA field office procedures and the Agency’s displayof service data. Workers have been repeatedly redirected to address high-profile workloads and backlogs, at the expense oftheir regular assigned duties. Field Offices no longer take benefit applications on a walk- in basis. Instead, visitors are scheduled for a future telephone interview that will likely be several months later. The delay is not measured or reflected in public-facingperformance reports, nor is the public harm acknowledged. To make matters worse, SSA launched a flawed 800# chat-box in April. It too-often responds to a different question than the one asked by the caller, fails to route the call to a live agent when requested, and/or terminates the call. Absent a caller’s intent to file and date of contact being documented by SSA, there can be a permanent loss of benefits because there are strict limits on retroactivity. The National Academy of Social Insurance has released an initial report documenting the inherent problems in utilizing artificialintelligence (AI) at the SSA, and continues to study the subject, but SSA Commissioner Bisagnano is committed to expanding its use, no doubt to justify steeper future staff cuts. Increasing the use of AI in making disability determinations at the SSA is aparticular concern, because of accuracy and equity issues. A trained human, who is not pressured to deny an application or appeal, must always be the final disability decision-maker. The American Federation of Government Employees, National Council of Social Security Field Operations Employees (AFGE Council 220) led over 50 actions on August 14. It revealed that benefit applications increased 18% between January and May, that in 46 states over 10% of SSA staff was lost in the 12 months ending in March (9% in Washington State), and that more than 30% of offices lost more than 10% of their staff. SSA has shed 7,000 employees, with staffing at a 50-year low. Senators Cassidy (R-LA) and Kaine (D-VA) have proposed creation of a $1.5 Trillion private investment fund over five years that would be placed in escrow for 70 years to “save” Social Security. Treasury Secretary Scott Bes- sent (like Bisagnano, a Social Security Trustee by virtue of office, charged with protecting the Trust Funds), called Trump’s $1,000 tax-deferred accounts for newborns a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.” We need to make it crystal clear to our elected representatives that we will not tolerate any privatization of our earned Social Security benefits, that Congress should “scrap the cap” on earnings subject to the payroll tax, and that SSA staffing and personalized service must be fully restored ASAP! Steve Kofahl is a former President of AFGE 3937, representing Social Security Administration workers, a member of PSARA's Executive Board, and a Co-Chair of PSARA's Social Security Task Force. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents August 2025 How To Make America Sick The Trump administration’s plan to “Make America Healthy Again” will make Americans’ health worse. Donald M. Berwick, MD. Reprinted from the Center for American Progress website. It might seem obvious that the United States, the wealthiest country on earth, would have the best health and health care. But we do not. Not even close. So when President Donald Trump, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and their allies in Congress propose to “Make America Healthy Again,” it’s easy to get on board. The trouble is that their plan won’t work. In fact, it will make Americans’ health worse. They are currently proposing to cut Medicaid and Medicare, decimate public health structures, withdraw support for food security and other basic needs, and harm the environment all of which is dead wrong from a scientific viewpoint. There is no disputing that America’s health care system needs a dramatic overhaul. U.S. life expectancy ranks 49th globally at more than four years lower than that of the world’s healthiest countries. Our children’s health ranks 36th among the 38 richest nations. Not a single U.S. state has an average life expectancy longer than that of comparably wealthy nations. If the goal is to make America as healthy as other wealthy nations, it would be hard to do worse than we are doing right now. And for that terrible performance, the United States spends twice as much per capita on health care as the average wealthy country—with more than 110 million Americans struggling with medical debt. So, yes, by all means, let’s “make America healthy.” However, unlike how the Trump administration and RFK Jr. are going about it, doing so requires following the science. In 2015, the revered British epidemiologist Michael Marmot wrote “The Health Gap,” arguably the best playbook for making any country healthier. The book summarizes decades of research on why health varies enormously among places with ostensibly similar conditions. The gap in health outcomes can be between nations, between sub- groups within nations, and even across the tracks in a single city. For example, Black Americans had a lifespan six years shorter than that of white Americans in 2021; residents of west Chicago live 14 years less than residents of the Chicago Loop; and across the city of Boston, lifespan varies by more than two decades. Marmot sorts known causes of health gaps into buckets including early childhood experiences, education, workplace conditions, supports to the elderly, and community “resilience”; he also looks at the impact of attributes such as food security, housing security, transportation systems, clean air, compassionate criminal justice systems, and recreational opportunities. Through that lens, a scientifically guided plan for “making America healthy” is simple to devise: Invest in what drives health. This is why what RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are doing makes no sense. Watch the administration, and it would be hard to find a better way to “make America sick.” It’s like “opposite day”: Every single component of the Marmot playbook is being not only neglected but controverted through the administration’s actions. Let’s run the list. Kids Healthy societies tend to place their bets on safe perinatal care, strong supports for the early years—say, from birth to age 3—and school readiness, which means not only helping children but also their parents. Contrast that with the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that instead cuts food stamps by nearly $300 billion and enacts a historic $793 billion cut to Medic- aid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which cover 50 percent of the children in America. Education People in countries and regions with strong educational systems, especially those that include girls and women, tend to live longer. Overall, the U.S. education system ranks 31st in the world, and it varies widely, with many schools performing poorly and many students underachieving. This is neither the teachers’ fault nor the students’. It boils down to ensuring that all children and youth, regardless of where they live or how wealthy their families are, have access to the highest quality education. The proper response would be to pour resources into delivering on that promise. On the contrary, the Trump administration’s plan calls for slashing funding for the Department of Education, cutting support to K-12 programs, and eliminating federal subsidies for student loans. Workers Job security is also foundational to national health. Unionization, which has been backwatered in the United States, is one straight shot to improving worker power. So is raising the federal minimum wage far above its embarrassingly low level of $7.25 per hour, instituting stronger legal protections for workers’ rights, and establishing more equity in tax and compensation policies. The Trump administration, meanwhile, seeks to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, hamstring the Department of Labor, reduce bargaining rights for federal workers, weaken worker protections, and cut the essential food assistance and health care programs that the working class relies on, all to give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Seniors How a nation supports its aging and elderly population affects not only how long and well its older citizens live, but also the health and well-being of a country’s entire population. The Trump administration claims to want to protect Medicare—a mainstay of security for those age 65 and older in the country—but study the details of what the president and his congressional allies are doing so far, and you will find steadily weakening protections for coverage, reduced access to care, and thousands of dollars more in out-of-pocket costs. For example, Medicaid, which has been torpedoed by the Trump-signed reconciliation bill, is the primary payer for 63 percent of people in nursing homes. Where are the elderly Americans who rely on that care supposed to go? Communities Healthy communities help ensure access to nutrition, housing, safety, mobility, and opportunity for everyone. The Trump administration is already weakening every one of those things and is poised to damage them further. The administration is hurting public transportation systems and rolling back environmental controls for particulate air pollution. It is also publicly in favor of coal and against wind power, against public housing expansion, against mental health supports to help reduce violence, and has backpedaled on criminal justice reform. Conclusion President Trump and Secretary Kennedy can preach all they want about making us healthy again, but their rhetoric is no substitute for facts. The right way to “Make America Healthy Again” is to invest in the infrastructure, programs, and priorities that we know, based on scientific evidence, will actually improve health—the very same ones that the Trump administration seems intent on destroying. Donald M. Berwick, MD, is President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents November 2025 Meet Jean Ross, the Real Sally Bowles Mike Andrew If you’re a fan of musicals, you probably remember Liza Minelli’s Oscar-winning performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret . Liza Minelli's Cabaret ’s screenplay is based on Christopher Isherwood’s novella Sally Bowles , now usually published with other Isherwood stories in Goodbye to Berlin . Isherwood was one of several young writers who fled the stodgy, conservative atmosphere of post-World War I Britain to seek adventures in Weimar Republic Germany. Others included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and an American, Paul Bowles. The Sally Bowles character is supposed to be one of these British expats. But there was a real Sally Bowles. Her name was Jean Ross, and she was nothing like the Sally Bowles in Cabaret . Jean Ross In Isherwood’s 1937 novella, Sally is a flapper who moonlights as a singer in a Berlin cabaret during the twilight of the Weimar Republic, which was also the waning years of the Jazz Age. As Isherwood portrays her, she’s ditzy, promiscuous, and looking for a sugar daddy to support her. Although Nazis prowl through Isherwood’s storyline, Sally remains apolitical, scarcely aware that the high times of the permissive Weimar Republic are coming to an end. Christopher Isherwood After a series of failed romances, Sally becomes pregnant, has a botched abortion, and then flees Berlin, only to disappear for good in Rome. Jean Ross, on the other hand, was an intellectual – a journalist, film critic, and committed communist. During a youthful sojourn in the Weimar Republic, Ross did work as a cabaret singer in Berlin, just like Sally. In 1931, she briefly shared a flat with Isherwood, but the two did not get along. Isherwood subsequently elaborated on some of the incidents of Ross’s life in Berlin to create the Sally Bowles character. Although Isherwood never publicly claimed that Ross inspired Sally Bowles until after her death, Ross’s former partner Claud Cockburn – who previously abandoned Ross and their daughter, Sarah Caudwell – leaked to the press that she had inspired the character. Consequently, when the Broadway production of Cabaret won critical acclaim in the 1960s, journalists hounded Ross with intrusive questions. Ross came to resent the Sally Bowles character – and Christopher Isherwood as well – because she believed the public association of herself with that naïve and apolitical character cheapened her lifelong work as a professional writer and political activist. And Ross had a distinguished career. As a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Ross worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker . During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she served as a war correspondent for the Daily Express and allegedly as a press agent for the Comintern. Throughout her lifetime, Ross wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for various progressive cultural organizations like the British Workers' Film and Photo League. As her daughter, Sarah Caudwell, wrote in a 1986 article “Reply to Berlin,” “[Ross] may well, at 19, have been less informed about politics than Isherwood, five or six years older; but, when the Spanish war came and the fascists were bombing Madrid, it was she, not Isherwood, who was there to report on it.” In fact, Caudwell says, Ross believed that Sally's political indifference more closely resembled Isherwood and some of his gay friends, who "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms.” Even the poet W. H. Auden, who was a friend and occasional boyfriend of Isherwood, confessed that the young Isherwood "held no opinions whatever about anything.” According to Caudwell, "in the transformations of the novel for stage and cinema, the characterization of Sally has become progressively cruder and less subtle and the stories about 'the original' correspondingly more high-colored.” What was most galling to Ross was some antisemitic remarks Isherwood wrote for his Sally character. According to Caudwell, racial bigotry "would have been as alien to my mother's vocabulary as a sentence in Swahili; she had no more deeply rooted passion than a loathing of racialism and so, from the outset, of fascism." As a committed anti-fascist, Ross was incensed Isherwood had depicted her as thoughtlessly allied in her beliefs "with the attitudes which led to Dachau and Auschwitz". To the end of her life in 1961, Ross refused to discuss her sexual adventures in Berlin with reporters. "They asked if I was a feminist. Well, of course I am, darling. But they don't think feminism is about sex, do they? It's about economics," she said. 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 January 2025 Wrapping It Up: Final 2024 Election Results Pam Crone The final tally wasn’t in when we summarized the 2024 Washington State election results in the December Advocate. Some races were too close to call, and seats of retirees were yet to be filled. We can now report on the final results and the composition of the 2025 Legislature. New faces and big Democratic majorities highlight the new session. Washington State Senate The Democrats flipped a seat in the 18th Legislative District. Senator-elect Adrian Cortes replaces Ann Rivers and gives the Senate Democrats a 30-19 majority. Cortes beat Brad Benton, son of former Senator Don Benton. As noted in December, Sen. Jamie Peder- sen, 43rd Leg. District, is the Senate’s new majority leader. Additional new senators are Deb Krishnadasan succeeding Emily Randall in the 26th Legislative District, and former Rep. Tina Orwall appointed to fill the seat formerly held by Karen Keiser in the 33rd. Washington State House Democrats in the House also picked up a seat giving them a 59-39 majority. Adison Richards beat former Representative Jesse Young to take one of the House seats in the 26th Leg. District. Richards replaces Republican Spencer Hutchins, who did not run for re-election. 2025 Session Calendar Session begins Jan. 13 and runs for 105 days. Policy Committee Cut-off in the first house is February 21 Bills must be out of their house of origin March 12 Policy Committee Cut-off in the second house is April 2 Bills must be out of the second house April 16 Session ends April 27 PSARA Dates of Note Legislators began pre-filing their bills Dec. 1. These bills will be formally introduced in the House and Senate on January 13. See our website at psara.org for the link to pre-filed bills. The Government Relations Committee is finalizing PSARA’s 2025 legislative agenda, to be unveiled at the Legislative Conference on January 7. Featured speakers will be former House Speaker Frank Chopp and Senator Bob Hasegawa. Thanks to all our members who have completed and submitted the legislative survey. Please mark your calendars for our in-person Lobby Day in Olympia on March 18. Stay tuned for action. Pam Crone is a retired lobbyist and Chair of PSARA's Government Relations Committee (GRC). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2025 Pierce County PSARA Committee on the Move Richard Burton Our Pierce County PSARA chapter has gotten underway! We have with tremendous support from PSARA leaders Tim Burns, Karen Richter, Pam Crone, Jessica Bonebright, and Robby Stern. PSARA Executive Board member Lynne Dodson has been chairing the group and was elected to be our delegate to the Pierce County Central Labor Council (PCCLC). Anita Latch and Kit Burns are our alternates to the PCCLC. At our meetings, we’ve had prominent participation from activists in Tacoma Indivisible, UFCW local 367, League of Women Voters of Tacoma- Pierce County, and Retired Public Employees Council (RPEC) of Washing- ton. We are excited about building and adding to these alliances. At our most recent meeting, we made decisions about programs we can put on and campaigns we can help support. These include: Leveling the Playing Field Work- shop. We plan to put on a workshop on this vital topic on March 8. Stay tuned for details. March 18 Lobby Day. We have begun making legislative appointments for Pierce County–area lawmakers for the March 18 PSARA lob- by day and will be turning out as many PSARA activist members as possible. Meetings with Congressmembers. We will be meeting with Congress- members Randall, Strickland, and Schrier – or their office staff – over the next months. We will be pressing them on PSARA’s federal concerns around Social Security and Medicare. As mentioned above, we also plan to articulate our concerns with the contract between ICE and the GEO Group, pertaining to the Northwest Immigrant Detention Center. Social Security Works. A number of members from our new chapter have participated in the strategy meetings about efforts to defend and strengthen both Medicare and Social Security. Tacoma Bill of Rights. UFCW local 367 is likely going to be pushing a municipal initiative in Tacoma, calling for a Workers' Bill of Rights in Tacoma. We hope to help support this effort, which will of course start with signature-gathering. Fighting Senior Center Closures. The City of Tacoma has announced plans to close two senior centers. A campaign to stop the closures at Lighthouse Senior Center and Beacon Activity Center has been launched and PSARA activists will be supporting their efforts. Sadly, Lighthouse, though still open, has no programming. Northwest Immigrant Detention Center. La Resistencia is a wonderful group that has been fighting the ongoing human rights abuses at the Northwest Immigrant Detention Center in Tacoma. The group put on a powerful event in early December– “Melting ICE” – featuring a spectacular and thought-provoking exhibit. The contract between ICE and the GEO group (the private corpo- ration that runs the detention center)is going to expire this September. We will be urging that it not be renewed in meetings with Pierce County Congress- members. Our meetings are held on the second Thursday of the month. New members are always welcome. Richard Burton is PSARA's Co-VP for Outreach < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents June 2025 Final Legislative Budget Overview Pam Crone The 2025 Washington legislative session ended on April 27. The information below reflects the final legislative budget. The Governor has until May 20 to sign the budget and exercise his veto authority. The budget does not be- come final until he acts. This overview was prepared before the Governor has taken action. As a reminder, the Governor has line-item veto power, meaning he can eliminate funding but cannot add new spending or shift dollars around. Over the final weeks of the session, the Legislature returned to the drawing board multiple times to draft a budget that included new revenue to navigate a $16 billion deficit projected over the next four years. Why did the Legislature have to return multiple times to the drawing board? The Governor repeatedly and consistently expressed opposition to a wealth tax, as well as concerns about relying too heavily on new revenue to balance the budget. As a result, the final budget includes more, and deeper, cuts. Another major concern is the potential impact of looming federal Medicaid reductions. Although these cuts are largely unpopular – effectively reducing healthcare access for many Americans while further lining the pockets of the wealthy – the Repub- lican-controlled House continues to move closer to a budget proposal that includes them. If these cuts are en- acted, the Governor is expected to call a special legislative session to address the resulting healthcare crisis. Current Budget Snapshot: Final operating budget: $77.8 billion Four-year outlook: $7 billion in total reductions New revenue (2025–2027): $4.3 billion New revenue (2027–2029): $4.4 billion Rainy Day Fund: $2 billion remaining Cash reserves: $225 million Investments in K–12 Education: $750 million for special education services $213 million for materials, supplies, and operating costs $200 million in local effort assistance for low-income school districts Investments in State Workers: Approximately $1 billion to fund and approve collective bargaining agreements for state employees Housing Investments: $605 million to the Housing Trust Fund $117 million in grants to local governments to offset lost document recording fee revenues Maintaining Core Services: $93 million for emergency food assistance organizations $27.9 million for senior nutrition programs $20 million to expand resources for crime victims Pam Crone is a retired lobbyist and Chair of PSARA's Government Relations Committee (GRC). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents July 2025 The “Big, Ugly, Cruel Bill” Michael Righi The actual name for Trump’s domestic policy bill is One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It is hard to imagine the sycophancy of Republicans, who named it that in order to please our Dear Leader. The bill is not finalized yet, and there are still some differences between the House and Senate versions, but Republicans have crafted it with a variety of gimmicks so that it can be passed on a majority vote with narrow Republican majorities in both houses. A War on the Public Good It is a tax cut bill for the rich, but it’s much more than that. Buried within its more than a thousand pages is the right-wing plan for the future, a war on the public good. Public institutions, collective care for the planet and each other – all of that is to be flattened. There are too many examples. What follows are just a few. Start with the militarization of immigration policy, which we are seeing in the news and on our streets daily. It started with ICE performative cruelty; the bill would add $150 billion to Stephen Miller’s mass deportation campaign. That’s 10,000 more masked and armed ICE goons and a massive increase in detention facilities. That is a police state intruding into our communities. Funding tax credits for clean energy or tax cuts for the wealthy? It’s clear what has to go. Not only will OBBBA cut clean energy programs, it would grant a tax break to oil and gas companies, essentially exempting them from a corporate minimum tax. The bill establishes as a goal to have school voucher programs in every state, despite the fact that these have been voted down several times, even in deep red states. Despite being pushed and funded by institutions like the Gates Foundation, studies of voucher schools prove they underperform public schools. Is that the point, to punish poor and working class families? There’s more, but let’s get to the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. OBBBA mainly extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, plus some “lipstick on a pig” additional cuts for overtime pay and tips. The bill slashes Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, cuts that fall overwhelmingly on working class families. This is unprecedentedly ugly. Past Republican-sponsored tax cuts favored the wealthy and increased inequality. But they didn’t actually take from the poor. The OBBBA benefit cuts reduce the income of the poorest by about $2,000 per year while raising the income of the richest 10% by $12,000. The decline in well-being likely for the lower half of the income distribution would then be similar to a severe recession. Low-income folks are even worse off when tariffs, which are also regressive, are factored in. This is how Republicans are becoming the “party of the working class”. They will piss on you, and explain that it’s raining. And it’s your fault. The Yale School of Public Health estimates that OBBBA will lead to 51,000 additional deaths annually. Debts and Deficits Republican claims that tax cuts will unleash economic growth and so raise tax revenue are complete hogwash; no study, not one, has found any validity in trickle-down economics. That’s just more rain. Reliable analysis of OBBBA predicts it will raise the national debt by somewhere between $3 and $6 tril- lion over the next decade. That’s a wide range, but of course there is a lot of uncertainty. Let’s review some principles. Having the government spend more than it gets in revenue (run a budget deficit) was crucial in 2008, to prevent the financial crisis from becoming a depression. It was crucial in 2020 when COVID shut down the economy. It would also be great if it funded investments in clean energy, schooling, housing or infrastructure. But running deficits to fund tax cuts for the already wealthy? That is what has been happening for the last 45 years, driven by the demands of the rich unwilling to pay even modest taxes. Are deficits and debt becoming a problem? Yes. Bond investors are going to require higher interest rates to lend to the government. Interest costs are becoming a larger and larger part of the government’s budget. Higher interest rates are going to make it harder to buy a house or car, or for governments and firms to build climate investments. Usually it is Republicans who are the “debt scolds”; they use fear of debt to oppose social programs. If they were really worried about debt, they would go after tax cheats (that’s $600 billion a year) and refuse further tax cuts for the rich. But they won’t. They are hypocrites. Will the Trump clown show have serious consequences for the economy? Will ‘the bond market” get nervous about debt and restrain the orgy of tax cutting? It’s not clear yet, but it would surely be a lot better if OBBBA were trashed. That is what would happen in a democracy. 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 April 2025 GiveBIG Challenge 2025 Robby Stern Our goal for the GiveBIG campaign this year is $35,000. PSARA faces some significant new financial chal- lenges in 2025. The demands of the work we do have grown and will re- quire greater financial resources. We are organizing to resist the at- tacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs essential to the lives of seniors, people with disabilities, children, and low-income adults. We will also assist other organizations in fighting the racist, sexist, homophobic, autocratic, and cruel actions amount- ing to the fascist policies of the Musk/ Trump administration and the national Republican Party. When fighting for a decent future for our communities and future generations, education and organizing are essential. We will continue to advocate positive, progressive policies that lead to a much greater degree of economic and social justice for all people. While we oppose fascism, our policies also describe what we are fighting for. PSARA is growing. Our ability to make a significant contribution to the broader resistance battle is increasing. We now have an effective and expanding PSARA chapter in Pierce County, joining King County and Clallam County as a powerful voice in the broader struggle for economic and social justice. Most recently, for the very first time, PSARA is the lead organization for a piece of legislation in the 2025 legislative session in Washington State. At the suggestion, and with the encouragement, and support of Sen. Bob Hasegawa, PSARA decided to help draft and lead advocacy for SJM (Senate Joint Memorial) 8002. Sen. Hasegawa, a PSARA member, is the prime sponsor of the legislation. The PSARA Education Fund has provided critical educational material as SJM 8002 goes through the legislative process. Most recently, the WA State Senate, by a 30-19 vote, passed the legislation, going on record supporting leveling the playing field between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. SJM 8002 now goes to the House. We will work to educate House members to take a stand against the total privatization of Medicare. Our goal is to give Medicare beneficiaries a genuine choice of which program they want to enroll in without suffering the necessity to purchase supplemental insurance or a prescription drug policy from private insurers. Social Security is under attack by the Musk/Trump regime in a way we have not seen in our lifetimes. The former Commissioner of Social Security, Martin O’Malley, warned of a system collapse in the months ahead because of reduc- tions in work force by various means and the vicious attacks by Musk/Trump, with Musk claiming Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. They say that there is fraud in Social Security of $500 to $700 billion. Both of these assertions are lies. They are looking for ways to steal our benefits to finance their tax breaks and at the same time privatize this vital social insurance program. We must have the resources to respond to these attacks. The PSARA Education Fund donations help to cover the costs of creating and distributing The Retiree Advocate. Your contributions also support the development of new educational and advocacy materials and in-person pro- grams on why Congress should Scrap the Cap on Social Security and expand benefits; on stopping the privatization of Social Security and Medicare and making significant improvements to the public Medicare system; and on defending Medicaid, a healthcare program critical to seniors who need long term care, children, people with disabilities, and very low income adults. The Board members of the PSARA Education Fund and PSARA will be asked to generously donate to the PSARA Education Fund, and our members will be asked to collectively match the Board’s donation for the 2025 Give- BIG campaign. In the coming year the Education Fund will sponsor educational pro- grams in different parts of the region, state, and nationally that will focus on how we can best resist Musk/Trump/ Vance attacks. We will highlight how we can create a better and more humane alternative to the dangerous direction the President’s administration and the national Republican Party and their al- lies want to take our country. We need your generous financial assistance now more than ever. GiveBIG days are May 6 and 7. Early online giving for GiveBIG starts on April 22. Donations can be made from April 22 through May 7 by going to wagives.org/donate/Psara-Education-Fund . For members who prefer not to donate online or want the Education Fund to receive the full amount of your donation, send a check to the PSARA Education Fund any time between now and May 7. Write “GiveBIG” in the memo line, so we know your donation is in response to the GiveBIG campaign. Mail your check to the PSARA Education Fund, 321 16th Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98144. Choosing this option saves the PSARA Education Fund a small percentage processing fee that PSARA pays for online donations. Please contribute as generously as you can. Thank you. Robby Stern is President of the PSARA Education Fund and serves on the PSARA Executive Board. < Back to Table of Contents