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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO

RUTH NADEL!

 

 

Ruth Nadel, long-time volunteer and member of OWL turned 100 years young on February 18, 2014. Ruth celebrated her birthday at an afternoon tea held at the Woman's National Democratic Club with her family, friends and former colleagues.


Ruth was a member of the first class of women admitted to the City University of New York's Baruch College where she earned a degree in business administration. She later obtained a master's degree in education. While bringing up four boys, Ruth maintained an active volunteer career. She was elected to the school board in Santa Barbara, CA where she helped establish The Santa Barbara Scholarship Foundation to support those seeking higher education. Later, in 1968, Ruth joined the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau when it recognized unpaid volunteer work as relevant work experience. In the 1980s, she worked to ensure that care for seniors was added. 


After 21 years at the Women's Bureau, Ruth retired from paid work in 1989 and rejoined the volunteer work force. For more than 15 years, Ruth produced a weekly legislative and public affairs update called Powerline for OWL. Ruth has also been active in the National Council of Women's Organization's Global Women's Task Force, the Woman's National Democratic Club, The Clearinghouse on Women's Issues, the League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women. Ruth is also an appointed Commissioner for the DC Commission on Aging and actively works to end the stigma of ageism.

  

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National Women's History Museum - Lobby Day

Join NWHM in telling Congress that Women's History deserves a home! The NWHM needs your help to ensure a successful Lobby Day this March 4th on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. While there are currently 19 Senators and 73 Representatives signed on as co-sponsors of their bill as of January 10, more are needed to move the legislation forward! Help to deliver this important message to Congress and get the legislation passed.


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 Roll Call Highlights Budget 'Gimmicks'

 

Recently, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), several pieces of legislation have been proposed that included various budget 'gimmicks', which the CRFB helped bring to light on multiple occasions. On February 21, Paul Krawzak of Roll Call published an article highlighting the attempted use of these 'gimmicks' and the agreement across the political spectrum that use of such 'gimmicks' should be avoided. Read the entire article here.
 

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Partners in Patient Help works to keep hearts pumping! 

 

Heart disease is a major and serious problem, as many of you are aware. Every year, about 715,000 Americans have a heart attack, and about 600,000 people die from heart disease in the U.S. each year.

 

Partners in Patient Help asked the advocacy community to share their work in raising awareness for heart disease and received a number of great initiatives! 

 

Click here for more information 

Progress on  bills_coins.jpg
the Social Security Front

by Joan and Mert Bernstein

For several years, OWL has worked with a coalition of organizations to defend the integrity of the Social Security system against efforts to trim benefits under the guise of deficit reduction. Possibly the most insidious effort was the so-called "chained COLA" (cost-of-living adjustment). The proposed formula would lower COLA by seemingly small annual amounts. However, these small amounts would accumulate over the years into significant reductions. Worse yet, over time, the reductions would increase just as non-Social Security income shrinks. Shrinking the COLA would especially harm women, because they tend to have less income than men from private pension plans.

Proponents of the "chained COLA" sought to justify it as a more accurate measure of inflation, because, it was claimed, as prices for goods and services increase, beneficiaries could substitute less costly items. The examples often included substituting apples for oranges, chicken for meat, ignoring the fact that all too often both would be beyond the purchasing power of beneficiaries largely dependent on modest Social Security benefits. The claimed substitutions also ignored that fact that in low-income neighborhoods, choices are more limited than they are in more affluent neighborhoods.

The "chained COLA" ignores the well-established fact that, as people grow older, their out-of-pocket expenses for health care grow, even for those with Medicare coverage.

The good news is that growing opposition to the "chaining" persuaded the White House Administration to drop the effort from its soon-to-be-unveiled proposed budget. Moreover, there is growing support for improving, not reducing Social Security benefits. But, rest not. The battle is not won just yet, because the Administration also announced that the proposal might be revived if Congress shows a willingness to increase taxes and/or reform tax breaks for corporations and upper-income taxpayers.
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Caregiving in America:

It's stressful and financially and emotionally trying! 

 

Donna Wagner, Policy Chair of OWL National, was a presenter at the "Caregiving in America Forum" convened on February 19 in Seattle, Washington, and put on by the Washington Post and AARP. 

 

Dr. Wagner was involved in the conversation about options for employers to support family caregivers. See more here, as experts offered advice and shared caregiving strategies and resources.
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About pressure and potential: 
Carpe Ma�ana 
 
By Janna Starr 
Secretary, OWL National, 
and President, The Arc Oregon
 

I've had optimism on my mind lately. I look up from my computer and see the optimistic aphorisms I have placed around my office. My all-time favorite, Carpe ma�ana - a spin on the Latin "carpe diem," or seize the day - pops out in a couple of places within easy sight. It's borrowed from Price Pritchett, a motivational leadership speaker I met a few years back. 

 

Pritchett wrote a little handbook, 10 Critical Leadership Practices for Managing Toward the Future, where he addressed the challenges of "managing tomorrow." He said that in order to manage tomorrow, we should engage it today. Seize its opportunities-now. Carpe ma�ana! Tomorrow holds our future in its hands. How well we manage its new pressures and potentials will determine the quality of all of our tomorrows. 

 

How true! Managing toward tomorrow helps us set the stage for innovation. And for organizations like OWL, it helps bring good people to our organization, people seeking a forward-thinking environment in which we all become relentless talent scouts on the lookout for the next great idea or resource to benefit our constituency.   

Thinking of tomorrow, and OWL's mission and purpose, I was intrigued by a new report released recently by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., "Attitudes About Aging: A Global Perspective." Of all things, the report found an outbreak of optimism about aging in America! Pew surveyed 21 countries last spring to find that the Americans surveyed were among the least worried, at 26 percent. In Europe and Asia, by contrast, more than half the respondents said aging was a major problem in their country.

 

This is clearly, at least partly, a function of the obvious: the U.S. is among the wealthiest nations in the world. But also, while one in five U.S. residents is expected to be 65 or older by 2050, and fertility rates are dropping as longevity increases, the country maintains a healthy presence of generations of immigrants shoring up the ranks of working age people past, present, and future.


So, we don't just have a long tomorrow in front of us, but a diverse one, as well. What could set the stage for the future better than OWL's organized midlife and older women taking tomorrow by storm? And, we're already doing it: just this week we found out that the White House Administration's 2015 budget would not include any proposals to cut cost of living increases for Social Security recipients. OWL helped make that happen by seizing the opportunity. 

 

OWL is shining a light on the realities of Long-Term Services and Supports with this year's Mother's Day campaign, intent on creating a preferred future for our peers and ourselves. And we are looking at the benefits of entrepreneurship later in life and all of the possibilities of exciting second, third, and fourth careers! 

 

With our feet planted firmly in the future and seizing the opportunities before us, OWL says, Carpe ma�ana! 

"Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations." 
 - Dr. Mae Jemison, first African-American female astronaut
OWL is the only national nonpartisan organization that focuses solely on issues affecting the economic security and quality of life for the nation's 74 million midlife and older women. 

www.owl-national.org

1625 K Street NW, Suite 1275
Washington, D.C.  20006

 202-567-2606