Fairfield Republicans

I am maintaining this blog page in an effort to provide information on activities and events to conservatives in Fairfield, Ohio and surrounding areas. This page will feature items of interest and links to information from the Butler County Republican Party and from the City of Fairfield. It is my hope that by utilizing this forum, we will be able to share ideas and information that will make our Party, our City, and our Neighborhoods better than ever!

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

US braces for baby boom retirement wave

Politicians and presidential hopefuls continue to promise increased benefits and new programs while ignoring the Social Security crisis that will be realized in a few short years.

While they continue to promise the moon and the stars, I'll keep watching for a fiscally conservative candidate with enough backbone to tackle this, and other tough issues!

from breitbart.com

The first of the vast US baby boom generation goes into retirement in January, setting off a demographic tidal wave with wide-ranging economic, political and social implications.

Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born on January 1, 1946, is acknowledged as the nation's first baby boomer and the first to apply for social security benefits, for which she will be eligible in 2008.

The New Jersey grandmother is the first of an estimated 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, a generation that led a social revolution in the 1960s and changed the fabric of most facets of society.

The cost for government-funded social security and medical care for the boomers leaves a funding gap of between 40 and 76 trillion dollars for next 75 years, according to various estimates.

"America is facing a demographic juggernaut," says Brent Green, a marketing consultant and author, in his "Boomers" blog.

"An unprecedented number will soon be entering the retirement stage of life. One-third of the population will be over 50 by 2010. One in five will be over 65 by 2010."

Leonard Steinhorn, an American University professor and author of "The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy," says the generation often wrongly maligned as latte-sipping Yuppies has transformed most of American society.

He wrote that boomers have led or sustained most of "the great citizen movements that have advanced American values and freedoms -- the environmental movement, the consumer movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the diversity movement, the human rights movement, the openness in government movement."

He told AFP he expects this transformation to continue as boomers age. "It's not going to be a generation that's going to go off to the golf courses and do nothing."

He said boomers will push politics to a more progressive bent even though that has not yet happened because the more conservative over-60 generation still carries much weight in the electorate.

"Once younger voters begin to replace them, the socially conservative vote will dwindle," he said.

The generation is a ripe target for marketing of everything from travel to real estate to computer games for keeping minds fit.

"In the whole way we think about aging and the way companies develop products, we have traditionally been a country of the young," said David Baxter, senior vice president at Age Wave, a California-based research and consulting company focused on the over-50 population.

"If you look at the hottest products, companies think the youth market is the most important."
Baxter said marketers are still using "the myth that older consumers are stuck in their brands and not very interesting consumers. But it's the mature consumer who has all the money."

Americans aged 50 and over have a collective one trillion dollars in disposable income and control 67 percent of the US wealth, according to the over-50 social networking website Eons.

Members of the baby boom generation are big users of technology and the Internet. A Pew Internet Life Project report showed two-thirds of those between 50 and 58 had Internet access as of 2004, similar to the number of 28- to 39-year-olds.

Many are gravitating to social networking sites, especially those geared to their generation with names like TeeBeeDee and BoomerCafe.

About half of Americans will buy new homes after retirement, and many will continue to work in some capacity or become involved in social activism.

Michael Falcon, head of the retirement group at Merrill Lynch, says the nation must prepare for a "new model" for retirement.

"Multiple generations report cycling in and out of work and pursuing a new career in later life as the retirement ideal," he said in a 2006 report. "Companies need to be aware of this new concept of retirement."

A Merrill Lynch survey found 71 percent of adults surveyed plan to work in some capacity after their formal "retirement."

Carol Orsborn, a public relations executive who writes a "Boomer Blog," said the generation appears to be pursuing its dreams rather than dropping out to a quiet retirement.

"If we were hippies in the 1960s and 1970s and yuppies in the 1980s and 1990s, what are we now?" she wrote.

"At an age where expectations that our generation pull back, instead of 're-tiring' we are 're-upping' for another tour of duty in life. We are changing careers, finally getting around to taking risks with our dreams, advancing into new psychological and spiritual terrain, not only new to us as individuals, but for society as a whole. We are, in fact, Re-uppies."

On the economic side, some fear the "silver tsunami" will drain the country of its wealth, but Baxter says the United States has some advantages.

"It's true that everything in our society is built on the idea of continued growth, it's kind of a giant Ponzi scheme with every generation prior to this one having given birth to a larger generation," he said.

The problems are even more acute in some European countries and Japan which face a similar demographic time bomb. But Baxter said "the US is cushioned to some extent by a more liberal immigration policy" and because "there is more flexibility in our workforce. It's illegal to have mandatory reitirement and that's not the case in most countries."

Legislators get tax break for sessions they miss

I found this in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Thought you might find it of interest with tax season approaching.
- Scott

COLUMBUS - State legislators who live far from the Statehouse can claim tax deductions for meals and lodgings on session days even when they don't attend.

And their colleagues who live closer to the capital help them earn the relief by holding "skeleton" sessions that last a few minutes and are attended by only two lawmakers.

Just days before Christmas, Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, presided over a near-empty chamber for a session that lasted 75 seconds before Joy Padgett, R-Coshocton, motioned to adjourn. The clerk read a few housecleaning items and Padgett was appointed to the state Controlling Board, which approves certain expenditures.

The session, held on a Friday more than a week after the legislature's last full voting session of 2007, means that all eligible senators received credit for federal tax purposes for working that day and the following weekend.

Federal law allows a tax deduction for meals and lodging for legislators who live 50 or more miles from the Statehouse on all session days.

In 2006, the tax deduction rate averaged $138 per day, and eligible members of the House - which had 38 full voting sessions - received a $44,773 federal income tax deduction. Eligible senators received a $49,775 deduction.

For 2007, the daily deduction rate increased to $144.

Lawmakers defending the deductions have said they come to Columbus for various reasons, not just legislative sessions.

Harris said many legislators - particularly those with income above their state salaries - do not apply for the exemptions - and that tax breaks are not the reason for the nonvoting sessions.
"I think it's important that we have nonvoting sessions to make sure we can continue the business of the Senate," he said. "It's important to get that journalized."

State Rep. Larry Wolpert, a Republican from Hilliard in suburban Columbus, cannot qualify for the deduction because he lives within 50 miles of the Statehouse.

He said he used to attend skeleton sessions when he was a rookie.

"They would call me in because I was close," he said. "I stopped doing them, because we were doing this skeleton session for the tax credit. So I'm saying, 'You can get someone to come in who's 50 miles away to do it.' "