Nearly Half of Older Americans Can’t Afford Basic Needs

Trump plans to make it worse

By Sherlea Dony 

I worked hard my whole career and retired feeling secure. Then I lost every last dime in a scam. I was left with $1,300 a month in Social Security benefits to live on in an area where monthly expenses run about $3,700.

I’m a smart woman, but scams against older Americans are increasing in number and sophistication. Whether through scams, strained savings, or costs of living going up, half of older Americans — that’s 27 million households — can’t afford their basic needs.

And suddenly I became one of them. The experience has taught me a lot about the value of a strong social safety net — and why we’ll need to protect it from the coming administration.

I was ashamed and frightened after what happened, but I scraped myself up off the floor and tried to make the best of it.

I’d worked with aging people earlier in my career, so I was familiar with at least some of the groups who could help. I reached out to a local nonprofit and they came through with flying colors, connecting me to life-saving federal assistance programs.

I was assigned a caseworker, who guided me through applying for public programs like the Medical Savings Plan (MSP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), subsidized housing, Medicare Part D, and Medicaid.

It’s hard to describe my relief at getting this help.

Suckers!

If your Amazon package is late...

Teamsters Launch Largest Strike Against Amazon in American History

Kara Deniz 

The Teamsters launched the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history beginning at 6 a.m. EST on Thurs., Dec. 19. The nationwide action follows Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. 

“These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they’ve pushed workers to the limit and now they’re paying the price. This strike is on them.” 

Workers will join the picket line from DBK4 in New York City; DGT8 in Atlanta; DFX4, DAX5, and DAX8 in Southern California; DCK6 in San Francisco; and DIL7 in Skokie, Ill. Amazon Teamsters at other facilities are prepared to join them.

Teamsters local unions are also putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers without collective bargaining agreements have the legal right to honor these picket lines by withholding their labor.

“What we’re doing is historic,” said Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at DCK6 in San Francisco. “We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win.”

Amazon is the second-largest corporation on the Fortune 500 list. Despite being worth more than $2 trillion, the company fails to pay its workers enough to make ends meet.

Will Charlestown get its first snow of the year?

Maybe. Maybe not

By Will Collette

Earlier this year, NOAA's winter forecast for us predicted higher temps meaning less snow was likely. This follows a continuing pattern, driving by climate change, of milder winters.

While Trump's transition team has its sights on abolishing NOAA and perhaps the National Weather Service, too, we have the benefit of some pretty good weather diagnostic tools at our exposure. They just have to work out how to focus Donald Trump enough so he can make weather predictions with his Sharpie®.

One of my favorites is the NOAA/NWS Winter Weather Forecast tool which gives you site-specific odds of snowfall. 

At 7 AM this morning, the best odds (59%) are for a Charlestown snow accumulation of less than an inch. It is possible for up to 2 inches to fall, but the odds are only 7%. I don't know if there are weather bookies who take action using this tool, but let's face it, there are people who will bet on anything.

The official National Weather Service forecast at 11 AM calls for rain just after sundown and then some snow showers and a possible accumulation of about half an inch of snow before ending tomorrow night. With a forecast of temperatures in the 20's, whatever does fall is likely to be very slick, so be careful on the roads. 

Here's the NOAA/NWS odds sheet for South County snowfall:

DOJ suit claims CVS ignored red flags, dispensed opioids from ‘dangerously understaffed’ pharmacies

"War on drugs" targets CVS

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

The U.S. Department of Justice has targeted CVS in a nationwide lawsuit, alleging the retail pharmacy giant worsened the opioid crisis by filling — and using government money to pay for — phony prescriptions for powerful drugs. 

The civil complaint filed on Friday and unsealed Wednesday names CVS and its numerous subsidiaries in all 50 states as defendants. The 97-page suit accuses the pharmacy chain, which numbers more than 9,000 branches, of ignoring clear patterns of prescription fraud for opioids and other tightly regulated depressants. 

The national pharmacy giant’s filling of questionable prescriptions ultimately contributed to “the epidemic of opioid death” over the 10-year period investigated in the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island Zachary A. Cunha told reporters in a press event Wednesday.

“It is our allegation that CVS as a corporation ignored repeated red flags that large numbers of opioid prescriptions were not legitimate and should not have been filled,” Cunha said.

CVS Pharmacy Inc. is headquartered in Woonsocket and is the largest pharmacy chain in the country. It operates directly in six states, including Rhode Island, and owns subsidiaries in other states which are responsible for local compliance with Drug Enforcement Administration rules for controlled substances. 

The pharmacy chain’s parent company, CVS Health, has expanded into most areas of the health care industry but has experienced tough times in recent months. In September, it announced it would lay off 2,900 people, and a year ago, its stock price was $74.88 per share. Shares rose 2.82% to $45.28 Wednesday.

The suit argues that CVS ignored internal suspicions about certain problematic doctors and prescriptions, and essentially defrauded federal programs like TRICARE, a military health care program, by filling these prescriptions. The suit places the blame squarely on corporate policies, and notes that pharmacists themselves often raised alarms about prescriptions, including those from known fraudulent physicians, to no avail. 

“CVS pharmacists described working at CVS as ‘soul crushing’ because it was impossible to meet the company’s expectations while performing their jobs properly and safely,” the lawsuit reads.

Chariho MAGAs move quickly – maybe too quickly – to assert control over school district

In what appears to be a play to elect an incoming member as Chair of the Committee, Republicans held a possibly illegal vote. 

Steve Ahlquist

This is Steve's video of the meeting:

Thursday Tuesday evening, the Chariho School Committee held its first meeting under a new 7-5 Republican majority. Chariho is a regionalized school District with representatives from Charlestown, Richmond, and Hopkinton. The School Committee is made up of four persons from each town. The unexpected resignation of Richmond Republican Kathryn Colasante has complicated the current lineup of the Committee. 

Under the law, the next highest vote-getter in the most recent election is offered a spot on the Committee. That person is conservative Republican Louise Dinsmore, co-founder of the Forgotten Taxpayers PAC, former Chair of the Richmond Republican Town Committee, and a Chariho Rotary Club board member.

“Who am I really?” asked Dinsmore at a fundraiser for Chariho Forgotten Taxpayers PAC featuring South Kingstown mother and anti-trans activist Nicole Solas, “I’m a vocal taxpayer and Richmond resident concerned about how my tax dollars are being spent by the town and the school District.” Dinsmore also signed onto the Moms for Liberty Pledge while running for office. Dinsmore joins Hopkinton Republican and Moms for Liberty member Dianne Tefft, who was also elected to the Committee last election. I wrote about the pledge ahead of the election here.

A new committee chair must be elected per the State Chariho Regional School District Act, which governs the Chariho Regional School District. Instead of electing a new chair, the seven Republicans blocked the vote for reasons unknown but easily guessed. They are saving the Chair for Dinsmore, who was not sworn in as a member of the Committee as of last night’s meeting. 

As Chariho Superintendent Gina Picard noted, not electing a chair at the first meeting is breaking State law, and “if you choose to break the State law, you would no longer be indemnified as school committee members and have to get your own attorneys.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Westerly Sun reporter Jason Vallee also covered the meeting. His article HERE largely confirms Steve Ahlquist's account.   - Will Collette

Thoughts and prayers again

Only the best

99% of US streams are off the radar amid rising flash flood risks – we saw the harm in 2024

No flood gauges, no warning 

Julie Arbit, University of Michigan; Brad Bottoms, University of Michigan, and Branko Kerkez, University of Michigan

Flooding is one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in the U.S., causing billions of dollars in damage each year. In 2024 alone, floods destroyed homes in over a dozen states and claimed more than 165 lives.

Southeast Texas was hit by flash flooding repeatedly in the spring, and then hit again by Hurricane Beryl. In one heartbreaking moment, a 4-year-old boy was swept away after his family’s car was submerged during a thunderstorm near Fort Worth.

In the Upper Midwest, days of rainfall in May caused flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. A slow-moving storm in the Northeast in August caused catastrophic flooding in Connecticut.

The mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee saw some of the year’s most devastating flooding as the remnants of Hurricane Helene hit in September. Heavy rain poured down mountains, turning creeks and rivers into torrents that washed away homes and vehicles. More than 100 people died in North Carolina, and six workers drowned when their plastics factory was inundated in Tennessee.

Storms like these are intensifying faster, weakening more slowly and producing more extreme precipitation that the land can’t absorb fast enough. While many coastal areas are becoming more prepared for hurricane and tidal flooding, inland flood risk is less understood or easily anticipated.

These disasters underscore the importance of fast, accurate flood warnings. They’re also a reminder that extensive gaps still exist in the systems that monitor U.S. stream levels.

How a Decades-Old Loophole Lets Billionaires Avoid Medicare Taxes

The rich have been attacking Medicare for decades

By Paul Kiel for ProPublica

Reporting Highlights

• Tax Dodge: Most working Americans have to pay Medicare taxes, but some of the richest figures on Wall Street have found a way to opt out, a ProPublica investigation found.
• Accidental Loophole: Nearly 50 years ago, Congress tried to fix one financial abuse but unwittingly created an obscure loophole that these billionaires exploit to avoid Medicare taxes.
• Battling Abuse: The IRS only recently got tough on people it viewed as abusing the loophole, but it is unclear if the agency will be able to end the practice.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

For most working Americans, paying their share of the taxes that fund Medicare is an unavoidable fact of life. It’s so automatic for many workers that they may not even realize it takes a bite out of every paycheck. In theory, everyone is required to contribute to the country’s health insurance program for seniors, no matter how poor or rich, from cashiers to CEOs.

Not on Wall Street. There, some of the most powerful people in finance found a way to opt out.

The trove of tax records behind ProPublica’s “Secret IRS Files” series contains plenty of examples of billionaire financiers who avoided Medicare tax despite earning huge amounts from their companies. In 2016, Steve Cohen, the owner of the New York Mets, paid $0. So did Stephen Schwarzman, head of the investment behemoth Blackstone. Bill Ackman, the headline-grabbing hedge fund manager, was able to shield almost all his income from the tax.

How do they do it? Business owners, like any self-employed person, whether they’re a freelance Uber driver or a hedge fund manager, have the responsibility to declare their self-employment earnings on their tax returns. Indeed, the vast majority of small-business owners have no choice but to do so and pay the same taxes that wage earners pay, including Medicare.

But high-priced tax advisers, wielding a once-obscure bit of the tax code, found a way to make that obligation vanish. By carefully channeling profits through a company in a way that invokes that obscure provision, even a Steve Cohen, with a tax return showing he received hundreds of millions in profits from his hedge fund, can exempt that income from Medicare tax.

Vaccine misinformation distorts science – a biochemist explains how RFK Jr. and his lawyer’s claims threaten public health

Let's make Americans sick again

Mark R. O'Brian, University at Buffalo

Kids in the 1950s had it great before the polio vaccine.
No school while hanging out with friends in
an iron lung (Boston Childrens Hospital) 

Vaccinations provide significant protection for the public against infectious diseases and substantially reduce health care costs. Therefore, it is noteworthy that President-elect Donald Trump wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading critic of childhood vaccination, to be secretary of Health and Human Services.

Doctors, scientists and public health researchers have expressed concerns that Kennedy would turn his views into policies that could undermine public health. 

As a case in point, news reports have highlighted how Kennedy’s lawyer, Aaron Siri, has in recent years petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw or suspend approval of numerous vaccines over alleged safety concerns.

I am a biochemist and molecular biologist studying the roles microbes play in health and disease. I also teach medical students and am interested in how the public understands science.

Here are some facts about vaccines that Kennedy and Siri get wrong:

Concept of a plan

Not so special kind of stupid

If you have done business with any of these Rhode Island programs, you might have been hacked

 

Knee problems tend to flare up as you age – an orthopedic specialist explains available treatment options

You and your aching knees

Angie Brown, Quinnipiac University

A healthy knee. 
Inna Kharlamova/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

Knee injuries are common in athletes, accounting for 41% of all athletic injuries. But knee injuries aren’t limited to competitive athletes. 

In our everyday lives, an accident or a quick movement in the wrong direction can injure the knee and require medical treatment. 

A quarter of the adult population worldwide experiences knee pain each year

As a physical therapist and board-certified orthopedic specialist, I help patients of all ages with knee injuries and degenerative conditions.

Your knees have a huge impact on your mobility and overall quality of life, so it’s important to prevent knee problems whenever possible and address pain in these joints with appropriate treatments.