Public invited to luncheon forum on Social Security and Medicare Jan. 19 in Myrtle Beach

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In politics, if you aren’t sitting at the table, you’re probably on the menu. Today, seniors are on the menu. They need a seat at the table.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and state health programs are on the chopping block. Come learn the facts at a public forum Jan. 19, 12:30-2pm at the Myrtle Beach Recreation Center, 800 Gabreski Lane, Myrtle Beach.

The program will lay out what’s happening in both Washington and Columbia that impacts the health and welfare of SC’s seniors.

“This is a great opportunity for retirees to find out more about policy decisions that stand to affect them and their families,” said SC Alliance for Retired Americans President Julie Harbin. “We want to inform and empower seniors to be their own best advocates.”

Brett Bursey, SC Alliance for Retired Americans Vice-President, will talk about pending cuts to Medicaid and a South Carolina grassroots campaign to stop them.

Robert Kearney and Bill Cea of the national Alliance for Retired Americans will discuss threats to Social Security and health care reform, and what the Alliance is doing to protect them.

The public is invited to enjoy free East of Chicago Pizza and tea.

For details, call 803-957-8740 or email scalliance@mindspring.com.

Galas usher in new administration

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Peasants and corporate fat cats mingled at the 2011 Inhogural Ball Jan. 12 at The Big Apple in downtown Columbia, enjoying cake, Kool-Aid and tunes by The Trickle Downs, while across town celebrants paid $250 to rub elbows at Nikki Haley’s $600,000 Inaugural Ball.

“The Inhogural,” snorted host Col. Hamton Pigney, “was a big, fat success! The highlight, of course, was the surprise appearance of Sarah Palin, who had a little something to do with getting our new governor elected. We were thrilled.”

The galas usher in a new administration for the Palmetto State. If the governor stays true to her campaign promises, the coming years will be very, very good for big business. What they hold for the rest of us remains to be seen.

For more photos, click here.

Listen to Col. Hampton Pigney on the radio.

Don’t miss the largest gala of the year!

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A Celebration of the Rich Getting Richer

“This is a great day for the wealthy citizens of this state,” said Col. Hambone Pigney, a sponsor of the Jan. 12 Inhogural Ball. “We have a governor who understands how poor people are dragging down our economy.”

“The Inhogural Ball offers those of us at the top an opportunity to show our appreciation to the workers for voting against their own interests,” snorted Pigney, CEO of the I Got Mine Company.

Pigney, who made 821 times more than the workers in his factory, laughed all the way to the bank when asked about slashing his workers’ benefits. “It’s grand being in the 1 percent of Americans that holds nearly half of the country’s wealth.”

Chairwoman of the Race To The Bottom Committee Ms. Ima Ripoff said, “We’ve managed to keep wages flat for the last 30 years. With Gov.-elect Haley declaring war on unions, we expect to drive wages down to Third World levels.”

Pigney and Ripoff chortled with unbridled glee at the new administration’s plans to cut government services as well as taxes. Ripoff noted, “South Carolina’s 44 percent discount on capital gains kept nearly a quarter-billion dollars in the pockets of my rich friends. The more we have, the more we can trickle down on the peasants.”

The Inhogural Ball will be held 7-9pm, Jan. 12, at the Big Apple in Columbia. The gala is $10 for those making less than $200,000 a year; free to those making more.

The evening’s entertainment includes sketches by Members of The Idle Rich (a Trustus improv troupe) and speechifying by special guests. Dance to live music by The Trickle Downs, and have your tea (party) leaves read by the beguiling Lady Christine.

Dress is Black-tie or peasant-casual. (For costume needs, see Hip-Wa-Zee in Columbia’s 5 Points.) Cake, Kool-Aid and other beverages provided by generous corporate donations.

For more information, call the SC Progressive Network at 803-808-3384 or email network@scpronet.com.

See story in Columbia’s Free Times.

SC Progressive Network part of emerging coalition preparing for looming budget crisis

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Jan. 8, 10am-1pm

SCEA Building, 421 Zimalcrest Dr, Columbia

A coalition of  labor, faith and community organizations – including the SC Progressive Network – are holding the second annual ‘Ties that Bind’ conference, a chance to build a shared agenda of policies that can make a difference in the lives of everyday South Carolinians.

This year, our focus is on the state budget. With record-breaking shortfalls, the debate is sure to be contentious. But budgets are moral documents. They reflect our shared values and our commitment to each other and to our communities.

Learn more or register online. It’s free.

Protest the celebration of the Lost Cause

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The Sons of Confederate Veterans are celebrating the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union and the start of the Civil War by holding a $100-a-ticket “Secession Ball” on Dec. 20 in Charleston.

The NAACP and allies will protest the event by holding a candlelight vigil followed by a meeting and viewing of part of film Birth of a Nation. Park at the Emanuel AME Church at 110 Calhoun St.; please arrive by 4:15pm. The vigil will take place at 4:30pm at the Gaillard Auditorium. For details, call 843-813-3363.

A preview of the ball? SC Sen. Glenn McConnell with re-enactors at the National Federation of Republican Women’s Conference in September.

Haley assembles a team to stop unions

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by Harvey Elwood
Orangeburg, SC

One of the areas that most concerns people today is the economy and where we are headed. With unemployment high and more and more Americans having to work later in life to earn a living, perhaps it’s time to re-examine why some Americans are still able to retire early and make way for the next generation to step into the positions they leave behind.

It’s not unusual today to find people still working well into their late 60s and early 70s, even after they are eligible for Social Security.

On the other side, many other Americans don’t have to wait on Social Security, they aren’t too worried about it, and they are able to retire and enjoy life long before they need to rely on it. Some have parttime jobs, even though they still enjoy a full pension at age 40. These folks work just to stay active.

Meanwhile, some people aren’t even looking for work. They are simply enjoying life on their own terms.

These factors, of course, depend on where they worked, for whom they worked, and whether they had a pension plan that allowed them the pleasure of early retirement. In some cases, whether or not they belonged to a union played a role in their ability to leave the workforce before 65.

Last week, I read in the papers that Gov.-elect Nikki Haley is already putting up a fight against working people and the unions that represent them. Haley has asked a lawyer, Catherine Templeton, to head the state’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. Haley did so not to help the working men and women of South Carolina but to better represent the business interests of our state.

“I couldn’t be more excited to have Catherine Templeton on our team,” Haley said. “Catherine understands that LLR’s mission should be to serve the businesses and taxpayers of our state. She’s taken on unions and knows our state’s right-to-work status makes us more competitive.”

Haley apparently wants Templeton to keep the employees at Boeing from unionizing. Prior to Boeing’s announcement that it was moving its Dreamliner plant to North Charleston, its employees here voted to disband their union. Haley apparently believes Boeing’s employees hope to reunionize.

It’s also interesting to note that Haley has tapped former BMW spokesman and government liaison Bobby Hitt to be commerce secretary. Hitt, a former editor with The State newspaper, is undoubtedly capable of spinning a story to convince the public that unions are bad for the people. And when his job in the Haley administration is over, he will most likely return to a very lucrative business salary and package deal, but I could be wrong.

Hopefully, newspapers across the state will open up a fair-and-balanced dialogue about unions so that the people will be better informed about the issue in its entirety.

Life is not about lawyers, government, or businesses. It’s about the working men and women of America. Without business, where would any of us be — but if it was not for the people, where would business be?

It’s about time the people knew and fully understood both sides of this important debate. After all, public opinion is often shaped by ideas from the public at-large, and sometimes government is persuaded to follow that opinion, especially when the number of people supporting it is large enough.

We should ask ourselves these questions: Are unions still good for America? Should the employees of Boeing be allowed to unionize?

When it comes to these matters, we the people should have the final say, not Haley and her team.

Harvey Elwood Jr. of Orangeburg is a retired educator of government. Educated in South Carolina and New York, he served in local and state government and taught in South Carolina and New York at the secondary and collegiate levels. He may be reached by e-mail at helwood38@hotmail.com.

New study debunks research suggesting abortion causes mental health problems

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Studies claiming to find a relationship between abortion and subsequent mental health problems often suffer from serious methodological limitations that invalidate their conclusions. In a new analysis, Julia Steinberg, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Lawrence Finer, of the Guttmacher Institute show that the findings of a 2009 study by Priscilla Coleman et al—which claimed that women who had reported an abortion were at an increased risk of several anxiety, mood and substance use disorders, compared with women who had never had an abortion—are not replicable.

Steinberg and Finer’s analysis, just published online in Social Science & Medicine, examined the same dataset as Coleman et al. (the National Comorbidity Survey) and found that in every case, the proportions of women experiencing mental health problems reported by Coleman were much larger, sometimes more than five times as large, as Steinberg and Finer’s results. The Coleman findings were also inconsistent with several other published studies using the same dataset and sample.

“We were unable to reproduce the most basic tabulations of Coleman and colleagues,” says Steinberg, postdoctoral fellow at UCSF. “Moreover, their findings were logically inconsistent with other published research—for example, they found higher rates of depression in the last month than other studies found during respondents’ entire lifetimes. This suggests that their results are substantially inflated.”

“Antiabortion activists have relied on questionable science in their efforts to push inclusion of the concept of ‘post-abortion syndrome’ in both clinical practice and law,” says Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute. “Our inability to replicate the findings of the Coleman study makes it clear that research claiming to find relationships between abortion and poor mental health indicators should be subjected to close scrutiny.”

Steinberg and Finer also examined other well-established risk factors for post pregnancy mental health problems, such as preexisting mental health disorders and sexual or physical violence before the abortion, and found that women who had had multiple abortions were more likely to have experienced these risk factors prior to the abortion than women who had had one or no abortions. Once they controlled for these factors, they found no significant relationship between abortion history and subsequent mood or anxiety disorders. These findings support the view that previous mental health status, and not abortion experience per se, is the strongest predictor of post-abortion mental health.

Bumpy road ahead for America’s seniors

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By Becci Robbins
SC Alliance for Retired Americans

For advocates working to protect the health and well-being of America’s seniors, the recent failure of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to muster the votes to send its proposal to Congress was a relief, although that’s likely to be short-lived. The proposal included cuts to Medicare and Social Security, as well as raising the retirement age to 69, a move that would hit hardest those with physically demanding jobs.

Such disregard for older Americans is unbecoming of such a wealthy nation. But it’s no surprise, as the report echoes the larger problem of Congress choosing at every turn to promote the interests of Wall Street over Main Street. Sadly, US Rep. John Spratt, who served on the Commission and supported the proposal, betrayed the retirees in the 5th District who helped keep him in office 28 years.

It was a missed opportunity. As Chairman of the Budget Committee, Congressman Spratt knows better than most that Social Security has not added a dime to the deficit and shouldn’t be used to fix a problem it didn’t create. He could have opposed the proposal as a parting gift to his constituents — and to inspire his Democrat colleagues to stand for the Party’s core values of protecting the least of us. Instead, he squandered his key vote to appease the Washington establishment.

While the report was DOA, lawmakers and pundits say it provides a road map out of the deficit ditch. Seniors would do well to buckle up for what promises to be a bumpy ride. Just Friday, amid talk of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Congress rejected a one-time $250 payment to retirees who, for the second year in a row, have been denied a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA).

That’s not being fiscally responsible. It’s being morally bankrupt.

SC retirees laud defeat of Social Security cuts

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Commission Proposal Unfair to Retirees

In response to the defeat of recommendations by the leaders of the National Commission on Fiscal Reform and Responsibility today, SC Alliance for Retired Americans President Julie Harbin issued the following statement.

“South Carolina retirees temporarily dodged a bullet when Commission members today rejected their co-chairs’ proposal to drastically cut Social Security benefits and increase the retirement age. We should never try to balance the budget on the backs of current and future retirees, particularly when Social Security has not added one cent to the deficit.

“Now that the Commission has closed its doors, we hope that we can have a more honest debate on federal spending. While it was encouraging to hear panel members acknowledge there is no link between Social Security and the deficit, it was also galling that many of the Commission members pushing draconian cuts in Social Security are also the ones leading the fight to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

“Social Security is one of America’s greatest success stories, one that has kept generations of seniors out of poverty. We hope that today is the beginning of a new chapter in the debate on the future of retirement in America, one that seeks to strengthen – not weaken – the economic well-being of millions of seniors who are struggling to make ends meet.

“Social Security did not create our nation’s fiscal problems, nor should it be used to fix them.  On behalf of the members of the SC Alliance for Retired Americans, I want to thank the Commission members who had the courage to stand up for our nation’s retirees and workers.”