Take Soc. Sec. off table

Social Security should be taken off the table

Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times.

Social Security turned 75 last week. It should have been a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate a program that has brought dignity and decency to the lives of older Americans.

But the program   is under attack, with some Democrats as well as nearly all Republicans joining the assault. Rumor has it that President Barack Obama’s deficit commission may call for deep benefit cuts, in particular a sharp rise in the retirement age.      Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.

About that math: Legally, Social Security has its own, dedicated funding, via the payroll tax (“FICA” on your pay statement). But it’s also part of the broader federal budget.   This dual accounting means that there are two ways Social Security could face financial problems. First, that dedicated funding could prove inadequate, forcing the program either to cut benefits or to turn to Congress for aid. Second, Social Security costs could prove unsupportable for the federal budget as a whole.    But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger.

Social Security has been running surpluses for the past quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come. Meanwhile, an aging population will eventually (over the course of the next 20 years) cause the cost of paying Social Security benefits to rise from its current 4.8 percent of gross domestic product to about 6 percent of GDP. To give you some perspective, that’s a significantly smaller increase than the rise in defense spending since 2001, which Washington certainly didn’t consider a crisis, or even a reason to rethink some of the Bush tax cuts.

So where do claims of crisis come from?

To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count — because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget — while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable — because hey, the program has to stand on its own. And having invented a crisis, what do Social Security’s attackers want to do? They don’t propose cutting benefits to current retirees; invariably the plan is, instead, to cut benefits many years in the future. So think about it this way: In order to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. OK.

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.    And neither wing of the anti-Social-Security coalition seems to know or care about the hardship its favorite proposals would cause.    The currently fashionable idea of raising the retirement age even more than it will rise under existing law — it has already gone from 65 to 66, it’s scheduled to rise to 67, but now some are proposing that it go to 70 — is usually justified with assertions that life expectancy has risen, so people can easily work later into life. But that’s true only for affluent, white-collar workers — the people who need Social Security least.      I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s a lot easier to imagine working until you’re 70 if you have a comfortable office job than if you’re engaged in manual labor.

America is becoming an increasingly unequal society — and the growing disparities extend to matters of life and death. Life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot at the top of the income distribution, but much less for lower-income workers. And remember, the retirement age is already scheduled to rise under current law.    So let’s beat back this unnecessary, unfair and — let’s not mince words — cruel attack on working Americans. Big cuts in Social Security should not be on the table.

(Comment: Bless Paul Krugman for laying out the truth of the matter – - that Social Security is not out of money, is not in dire jeopardy of running out of money any time soon.  .  .  .  and in fact, should never face this prospect with just a modicum of intelligent planning and supervision.  (so many people under age 50 believe they will never have these benefits when they in turn need them and this kind of thinking reduces confidence in government and even hope for themselves.)

I have heard this idle chatter for many years and it always finds its origins in the “starve the beast” crowd.   Anything goes in order to shrink government so that our taxes can then shrink as well so that those who have can have “more”.  Frankly, its been working pretty well (beginning with President Reagan). . . until hearing the hopeful message of Barack Obama on the campaign trail.  For the first time in decades, here was a man who understood the ordinary struggle of our masses who are not by and large playing on a level field  in that effort to achieve their dreams and goals.  Just look at the sorry state we are in now.    With unemployment rising,  jobs picture bleak;   income down or stagnant;  costs of everything rising including food, especially – healthy food.  .  .  .  How on earth does this fit in with the corporate picture of rising incomes (net)?  Just one way folks – - cheap, overseas labor of $0.20 an hour is hard to beat!. . . . .   .   .   being a debtor nation to CHINA who has all this cheap labor puts us in an untenable situation.  And yet, we keep borrowing.

They say we have this war thing going on. I say “let’s get real, and grow up.  Just stop it!”. . . we can’t afford it.   Sure would solve this borrowing thing.

As to our SOLVENT Social Security, let’s keep it that way – straighten out our way of doing the accounting thing – its  not so hard to do.  I happen to know a few accountants who could help you.  There are a few places in the scheme of things which could go a long way toward ensuring that Social Security remains that and not a romanticized “wish list”.

It was designed to keep retired people from having to scrounge on the streets once their”productive” lives of earning an income was over. Never meant to be a fountain of youth or guaranteeing octogenarian sexual satisfaction, or living in the lap of  luxury.    Since the majority of financial abuses and the greatest outlay of resources occurs in that final chapter in the last year or two of life – -  this is where the focus must rest if sanity is to be ruling the way we do things.  With this in mind:

• How about mandatory training for physicians in ethical and compassionate care.  There are guidelines now but not being addressed in counseling terminally ill people.   Help them die with dignity amid pleasant surroundings.  There should never be one possible treatment after another – it is so wrong!  It is costly, futile and cruel.
• Retirement age should not be raised.  I brought my mom to live with me 18 years before she died.  Most people will not do that, especially, sons because of the responsibility which they already shoulder.  Independence is highly prized and should be encouraged where-ever possible as “nursing home” life is so lacking.  Care in one’s home is preferable and much cheaper.
  
• There should be some form of “means testing” with regard to WHO receives “Medicare”  The wealthiest individuals do not NEED to accept this service from government – - they are well positioned to do this for themselves. This would save a bundle, I’m sure.
• Finally,  health-care treatment should not be dictated by the Federal government or the FDA or the AMA, but chosen at will by the individual.  Whatever works for him/her is permitted.  Integrated and Alternative medicine is far more preferred by so many of us.  Pharmaceuticals and/or surgery is definitely “last resort.”    We are now living in an age when “Energy Healing” of every description is moving in, big time and people are getting dramatic results without drugs and surgery and for so little c0st.  It’s time to use OPEN EYES to really look at this picture.  And let people have CHOICE.
  
• President Obama was on the right track when he was speaking of results- oriented rather than procedure oriented.  Don’t know what all he had in mind, but I like it.

Sorry my friends,  you know by now how long winded I can be. .   .    .    .  Jan)

Fem hygiene (products) options

E/TheEnvironmentalMagazine

March/April 2001
Vol. XII, no. 2

The Hidden Price of Feminine Hygiene Products

The feminine hygiene industry has made revolutionary innovations since the original maxi-pad–which was nearly three feet long. And no doubt we have come a long way from surreptitiously paying for purchases in a box on the counter of drug stores. Discussion of the products’ impact, however, is still very much under wraps.  Deceptively Pure

GAP-white jeans in full-page ads and televised commercials of confident strolls down the beach don’t tell the whole story. In fact, the sterile whiteness of the products themselves can be deceptively reassuring. Although the original cost of chlorine bleaching–the release of some 250 different organochlorines and a product laden with dioxin–was traded in during the mid-1990s for “elemental chlorine-free bleaching,” is it really now risk-free?

Even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledges that chlorine dioxide, though elementally chlorine free, can still “theoretically generate dioxins at extremely low levels,” and, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), no safe level for dioxin exposure exists. The compound is 10 times more likely to cause cancer than was believed in 1994, says the agency, and even average background levels may lead to non-cancer health effects, including developmental delays, birth defects, hormone disruption and immune cell suppression. The toxin accumulates in humans, particularly women’s body fat and breast milk, with repeated exposures, and 16,800 tampons over the course of a lifetime certainly qualifies.

Nor is the environment off the hook. The Worldwatch Institute calls elemental chlorine free bleaching a “‘low-tar cigarette’ approach to the problem of organochlorine pollution,” reducing (not eliminating) pollution, but not addressing the fundamental problem–the continued use of chlorine. Hydrogen peroxide, oxygen or ozone work just as well, though any bleaching, the organization points out, still uses energy, water and materials unnecessarily.

Shock to the System

Another improvement that falls short came with the phase-out of all synthetic fibers but one from tampons, says Dr. Philip Tierno, director of microbiology and diagnostic immunology at New York University Medical Center. Independent studies he conducted revealed that synthetic fibers, incorporated in the 1970s to increase absorbency, amplified toxins of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which cause Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). By 1980, the potentially life-threatening bacterial illness had reached its peak, and carboxymethylcellulose, polyacrylate rayon and polyester were pulled from the market. The fourth fiber, viscous rayon, remains in use today.

“Viscous rayon does amplify toxins less than the others,” says Tierno. “But manufacturers are still saying nothing’s wrong with it, and that’s not the case. The lowest risk [for TSS] would be had by using all cotton.”

• The FDA, which regulates feminine hygiene products as medical devices, disagrees, maintaining that rayon tampons are as safe as cotton ones, and that the exact link between tampons and TSS remains unclear.

Such government reassurance is little comfort to many women’s health advocates:

• “FDA doesn’t do independent testing, it relies on testing by manufacturers,” says Amy Allina, program and policy director for the National Women’s Health Network. “People may legitimately raise questions about reliability.”

Get Out the Vote

Enter the proposed Tampon Safety & Research Act (H.R. 890), which would direct the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on the risks dioxin, synthetic fibers and other additives may pose for the 73 million U.S. women who regularly use tampons, and who may be at disproportionate risk for endometriosis, breast and reproductive cancers.

House representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) plans to introduce the bill for the third time in 2001, along with the Robin Danielson Act (H.R.889), which would direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish a program to collect data on TSS. (Although only three cases were reported in 1998, down from 813 in 1980, according to the CDC reporting has so far been optional and uneven.)

“We need to find out what the healthiest feminine hygiene product is,” says Susan Alderson, vice president of Organic Essentials. “And whatever that turns out to be, women will then have a choice.” Organic Essentials, by growing its own certified organic cotton through 27 farm families, ensures none of the 35 different chemicals typically applied to conventional cotton are introduced to its tampons, which are then whitened using hydrogen peroxide, a totally chlorine-free method.

Jay Gooch, a toxicologist with Procter & Gamble, insists the difference between elemental chlorine-free and totally chlorine-free bleaching is “not discernible,” however, and the difference between rayon and cotton fibers, both cellulose, “not consequential.” “The research we’ve done and others have done for us is rigorous and we stand behind it 100 percent,” says Gooch. Tampax Naturals, Procter & Gamble’s own all-cotton tampon, was pulled from the market after not proving a big seller.

Environmental Burden

To further complicate an extremely convoluted, personal and emotional subject, there is yet another aspect to feminine hygiene often overlooked. According to waste consultant Franklin Associates, 6.5 billion tampons and 13.5 billion sanitary pads, plus their packaging, ended up in landfills or sewer systems in 1998. And according to the Center for Marine Conservation, over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999.

But it’s not just a landfill issue, says Brenda Mallory, founder of Glad Rags, which produces colored and organic cotton pads with washable liners. “People forget about the production end of disposable items,” she says. “Constant production creates pollution, too.”

Ironically, lack of exposure (no magazine would accept advertising) halted the introduction of the first disposable menstrual pad in the U.S. in 1896. Today, as sales of disposables surpass $1 billion (with $700 million more from sales of tampons), reusable menstrual pads face a like challenge, with the added hurdle of educating women on why reusables are even important. Not to mention that the very concept of reusables bars repeat consumers, at least for the five- to 10-year lifespan of the product.

“We will never be a box of tampons,” admits Mallory. “We don’t have that built-in obsolescence. It has limited how we can grow as company,” she says, “but you know what? That’s not what it’s all about.”

Knowledge is Power

• As the FDA does not require companies to print ingredients or bleaching processes on the packaging of tampons or pads, here’s the information you won’t find on the box: According to company spokespeople, Johnson & Johnson (manufacturer of OB, Carefree and Stayfree) and Kimberly Clark (Kotex) use cotton/rayon blends in their products, Playtex uses only rayon and Proctor and Gamble (Tampax and Always) uses both cotton-rayon blends and rayon alone. All use elemental chlorine-free bleaching.

If those answers don’t satisfy you, here are a few more alternatives:

• Natracare carries all-cotton certified organic tampons and non-chlorine, hydrogen peroxide bleached pads (now with wings). Three more washable pads are Lunapads and Many Moons, each with prints and organic versions, and certified organic Pandora Pads. They each use only totally chlorine-free bleaching, and no bleach at all on organic items.

• “Women should have a drawerful of options,” says Lou Crawford, founder of The Keeper, which makes natural gum rubber cups inserted to catch menstrual flow. One Keeper lasts up to 10 years, breaking down to an investment of 29 cents a month. Another softcup, Instead, is made of a polyethylene and synthetic plastic blend, and like the Keeper will not breed staph toxins and is approved by both Health Canada and the FDA. (However, it is disposable.) Jade and Pearl shapes natural sea sponges, yet another option, to fit a woman’s body, absorbing flow and likewise averting the dilemma of throwaways, synthetic fibers and bleaching.

“For hundreds of decisions that women make everyday, we are balancing health, safety, convenience and efficacy,” says Allina. “And we certainly don’t always choose the risk-free option.” But we should at least be aware of the risks.

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CONTACTS:

Pandora Pads
Phone: (888) 558-PADS

Natracare
Phone: (303) 320-1510

Many Moons
Phone: (800) 916-4444

Luna Pads
Phone: (888) 590-2299

The Keeper
Phone: (877) AKEEPER

Jade and Pearl
Phone: (800) 219-9765

Glad Rags
Phone: (800) 799-4523

Organic Essentials
Route 1
Box 120
O’Donnell, TX 79351
Phone: (800) 765-6491