Retirement on Hold: American Workers $6 Trillion Short

A new study obtained by CNBC says Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire.

The study, conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, says savings have been squeezed by declines in stock and housing values.

The study was commissioned by Retirement USA, a coalition of organized labor and pension rights advocates that hopes to use the study to push for a more stable retirement system. The group plans to unveil the study at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.

Continue reading Retirement Plans Trashed by Wall St. Banks – Now they’re after Social Security →

Jobs with Justice Declares Jobs Emergency Day of Action

YOU ARE INVITED

Israel / Palestine Teaching Event

View Film:

Life in Occupied Palestine

by Jewish American Anna Baltzer

plus

Eyewitness Accounts from Visitors to the West Bank from our area

Discussion

Wednesday   September 22  @  7:00pm

Fellowship United Methodist Church

235 Merchant Street

Ambridge, PA  15003

For more information contact

Rev. Todd M. Davis  davis.6@comcast.net

724-650-3414  

Sponsored by

Beaver County Peace Links

 www.bcpeacelinks.net

This chart shows that people in lower income brackets experienced much higher income growth under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. People in all income brackets experienced higher income growth under Democrats than under Republicans.

Conversely, under Republicans, people in high income brackets experienced much higher growth of income than people in low income brackets. However, under Republican presidents, people in all income brackets experienced lower growth than under Democratic presidents.

The conclusion is that under Republican presidents, corporate and especially financial corporate income increased while personal income at all levels decreased relative to Democratic presidents.

Why we should participate in the Oct 2 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice

by Peter Deutsch, Secretary

PA 4th CD Chapter, Progressive Democrats of America

September 8, 2010

As you may already know the NAACP has called a national march for jobs and justice on Oct 2, 2010. The AFL-CIO, La Raza, SEIU, and the United Auto Workers have now joined in support with One Nation United serving as an umbrella organization.  The Progressive Democrats of America and over 190 other organizations are involved with other organizations joining in.

Why should we who focus on peace join a labor and justice march on Washington this fall? Don’t issues of peace and justice connect intimately through economics?

Peace is necessary in order to have an effective impact on the issues of jobs and justice being taken up by those organizing the October 2nd march. Competition for resources from the war machine needs to be exposed. To date the U.S. has spent cumulatively over $1 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq¹. Total annual U.S. defense spending is around $1 trillion dollars^{2 ,}. Little is left over in the annual federal funds either on or off budget to recover economic rights or safety net structures of the past, let alone to address new social needs.

Continue reading Oct 2 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice – Why We Should Participate →

With their six-figure salaries and government-paid health care, members of Congress may not feel the pinch of a 9.6 percent unemployment rate. But millions of Americans are in pain, and on Sept. 15, they will shout loud and clear that we are in an emergency and Congress must act immediately to create good jobs.

Sept. 15 is the day workers, students and community and religious groups in dozens of cities across the country will revive one of the key demands of the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” by calling for full and fair employment and demanding the government declare a national “jobs emergency.”

“It’s time for corporate apologists in the Senate, who are blocking a recovery for the rest of us, to recognize what workers already know: we are in a jobs emergency that requires a bold, emergency response,” says Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, the main organizer of the protests.

Continue reading National Jobs Emergency Day of Action Sept. 15 – Noon at Cong. Altmire’s Aliquippa Office demand jobs and hands off social security →

by Ryan Grim

ryan@huffingtonpost.com

A major veterans organization called on President Obama to remove Alan Simpson from the deficit commission for questioning why veterans are not “helping us to save the country” by foregoing health care benefits promised in return for their military service.

On Tuesday, Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming and currently the co-chair of a deficit commission looking into spending cuts, decried “the irony that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess.”

Simpson wants to cut the national debt by slashing benefits for veterans. VoteVets.org, which represents 50,000 veterans and family members, has had enough. The group’s chairman, Jon Soltz, said that veterans had been concerned by comments Simpson made disparaging Social Security, calling it “a milk cow with 310 million tits!” and suggesting that military pay be frozen.

The “final straw,” writes Soltz, was Simpson calling for veterans’ benefits to be cut.

Continue reading Vets Call On Obama To Fire Alan Simpson →