Government
Retirement Issues and WI Candidates: U.S. Senate and WI Treasurer
For Immediate Release:
June 13, 2022
POWRS Steering Committee, Philip Anderson, powerswi@gmail.com
Retirement Issues and WI Candidates: U.S. Senate and WI Treasurer
To better inform Wisconsin voters, Protect Our Wisconsin Retirement Security (POWRS) surveyed the U.S. Senate candidates on retirement, Social Security and Medicare issues. We sent the survey to all the declared Democratic candidates and to the Republican incumbent.
We only received replies from four Democratic candidates: Mandela Barnes, Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry, and Tom Nelson.
POWRS ...
Comparing the U.S. Senate Candidates on Retirement Issues
Wisconsin – and the nation – is facing a retirement security crisis. Many people will have inadequate income for a secure retirement. Many will only have Social Security to live on. Many will not be able to “retire” at all. Over 400,000 seniors in Wisconsin will be living in poverty by 2030. As a result, Wisconsin will need to spend an additional $3.5 billion on public assistance programs.
These problems are not self-correcting and won't be fixed by free market “solutions.” Government must act to address the retirement crisis. This includes consolidating and ...
Poor People’s Campaign rallies to Washington D.C.
We will have a full story in our next edition of Middle Wisconsin.
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. organized low-income Americans of different backgrounds in a march on Washington known as the "Poor People's Campaign."
Over fifty-years later, thousands of protesters gathered Saturday to deliver that same message at the Poor People's and Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.
The rally urged low-income voters to participate in the upcoming midterm elections and featured religious organizations, pro-democracy groups, labor ...
Down Ballot Wisconsin Elections
Voters also need to pay attention to the “down ballot” statewide offices. In Wisconsin, the Attorney General, State Treasurer and Secretary or State are independently elected offices. The Attorney General is obviously an important office and gets some voter attention. But most people know nothing about the other two. This year ignoring these obscure offices could have serious ramifications. Republicans have spent years weakening and underfunding all three of the these elected offices. This has included trying to abolish both the Treasurer and Secretary of State ...
New Thinking Needed – Not More Pentagon Spending
In our country the endless increases in military spending are only matched by an equally endless propensity for wars and military conflicts.
Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposes $813 billion for the Pentagon. This is a 4% increase over the bloated $782 billion approved by Congress for 2022 – which was a 5.6% increase from 2021. Every year “defense” spending increases. It makes no difference which party is in control. It doesn't matter what the the real threats are to the country. It makes no difference how much of this money is unaccounted for, lost to ...
The Fruits of Faulty Judgment
“I'm just a miner in the mother lode of misery, where the fruits of faulty judgment meet the spoils of bad luck.” From the song “King of Junk” by Eddy Lawrence
This humorous song is about a junk yard owner who's good fortune is the result of others' faulty judgment and bad luck. He finds a “hidden trove of riches mid the mangled and the maimed” wreckage of cars.
I like the poetry of the song. To me it speaks (out of context) to much of the current craziness in our society. Politics has always been ugly and partisan. But the angry divisions are getting ...
Mother’s Day for Peace
War kills. Mostly it kills innocent people – women, children, the elderly and other non-combatants. War destroys. War destroys nations, economies, and the environment.
War does not resolve conflicts. It exacerbates social and political problems. War is a choice and it is always a bad choice,
War is failure. Wars result from the failure of national leaders to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.
The war in Ukraine is a senseless tragedy. This war could have been prevented. If the politicians had been willing to compromise, the diplomats more aggressive in ...
True Patriots
My DNA tracks through generations of true PATRIOTS that have proven the test of time.
It is their “rally call” that is deeply felt within my being that I write about the current state
of our democratic government and the immediate need to save our democracy for all.
Since I was “knee high to a grasshopper” I recall my elders’ wisdom that was shared at family reunions, special achievement events and religious gatherings. Frequently saying to me that I should remember where I came from and why we were here. One of their reminders was, “Always ...
Oaths Of Office & The Common Good
Ben Franklin once said, “The good we do together surpasses the good we can do alone.” The meaning of that statement has stayed with me throughout all my endeavors to work for the common good, especially throughout my teaching career. It should be internalized by all those who seek an office in our government, at every level, in our democracy.
So, it is astounding to me how many elected officials don’t know or care what their oaths of office to The People and the Constitution really mean. A conversation that I had with the Lt. Governor a few years ago offered ...
CON-FUSION
There is an ongoing fusion of Neoliberalism, Fascism, Religion, Big Tech, Racism, Climate Collapse and diseases into an immense “confusion.” This obliterates clarity and understanding of today’s issues. There is a confidence trick causing this confusion. It is by design.
First is Neoliberalism. The earliest notion of this came from the Mont Pelerin Society, founded in 1947, named after its first meeting location in Switzerland. (https://www.desmog.com/mont-pelerin-society/) The concept of neoliberalism is, in brief, big business and little ...