The Senior Scene

If you’re around the Key Center branch of Pierce County Library System on Jan. 9 at 2 p.m. and want to learn about eating insects, you can get a presentation on that unique food source from David George Gordon, author “Eat-a-Bug Cookbook.”

Gordon calls eating bugs the next big revolution in food production. He specializes in ants and grasshoppers and claims raising grasshoppers instead of cattle could reduce greenhouse emissions by 60 percent.

The library is located at 8905 KPN Highway in Lakebay.

“What do you think? Who will win the White House?” asks every caring American. And from the curious and the cynical comes that other question: “And exactly how will he or she win?”
Whether you are a reformer, a skeptic or a concerned citizen, the University of Puget Sound is inviting one and all to a free six-lecture series it will host Jan. 21 to April 28 on the race for president.
Political scientist Michael Artime and presidential historian Mike Purdy will provide analysis of the 2016 campaign and some historical insights to put today’s news into perspective. They will lay out the hot-button issues in the current contest and share some of the colorful stories behind two centuries of presidential elections—ever since George Washington was unanimously elected in 1789.
The lectures will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays in McIntyre Hall, Room 103, situated on Jones Circle on the university campus. The one-hour presentations will be followed by half-hour Q&A sessions, allowing attendees to learn more and share their own views.
“We could see a brokered Republican convention in 2016, and that’s something we’ve not had since 1952,” says Purdy, a presidential historian, consultant, author and UPS alum. “Normally the convention is just pageantry, with the candidate already selected, but this time delegates could be free to vote as they wish on the second round, which will mean some real horse-brokering going on. At this point it’s really a very fluid situation.”
This possibility will be discussed in the first lecture, “The Long Road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” on Jan. 21 at 7 p.m.
Artime, adjunct professor at Puget Sound and Tacoma Community College, and Purdy will also discuss the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court case that led to the creation of super PACs, which allow corporations and individuals to put unlimited funds behind their favorite candidates.
Other dates for lectures and their topics are Feb. 18 (“Who Wants to be President?”), March 10 (“What do the Candidates Believe?”), March 24 (“What Voters and States Will Elect the Next President?”), April 14 (“How Accurate are the Polls?)”, and April 28 (“Media Marketing and the Making of the President”).
“Initially we hope to get students and the public interested in the political process, and if they are, then voting is the natural outcome,” said Artime. “Ultimately we hope that this understanding will help motivate students and citizens to be politically active and do more about the issues they care about.”
The election series is sponsored by the University of Puget Sound Forensics Program, which trains the student debate team, and the Department of Politics and Government. Members of the debate team will help with the event, and many will be present to keep the speakers on their toes, a university spokeswoman said.

Legislation affecting Social Security has been reintroduced by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who calls her proposals a “common sense” way to “modernize and protect our Social Security system in a fiscally responsible way.”
The Retirement and Income Security Enhancements (RAISE) Act would strengthen benefits for struggling seniors – women in most cases -and disabled persons and young adults who face serious hardships, and also would “shore up” the trust fund for future generations by asking those who can most afford it to pay their “fair share,” Murray said.
According toWashington’s senior senator, highlights of the legislation she reintroduced in November include:
• Enhances benefits for divorced spouses. Under current law, the divorced spouse is only entitled to receive benefits under the former spouse’s earnings if she or he was married for ten years. Beginning in 2016, the RAISE Act would allow those with less than ten years of marriage to be eligible for benefits under the former spouse’s earnings. Eligibility would be phased in, so that those married less than ten years would receive less than 100 percent of the spousal benefit. These partial benefits would gradually decrease in increments of 10 percent and phase out for those with less than five years of marriage. For example, those with nine years of marriage would receive 90 percent. The same formula will apply to survivors’ benefits for divorced spouses.
• Enhances benefits for widows and widowers. The RAISE Act would establish an alternative benefit for a surviving spouse of couples in which both husband and wife established insured status as retired workers. For the surviving spouse, the alternative benefit would equal 75 percent of the sum of the survivor’s own worker benefit and the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) of the deceased spouse. The alternative benefit would be paid only if more than the current law benefit. This benefit would be available to surviving spouses on the rolls at the beginning of 2016 and those becoming eligible after 2016.
• Extends benefit eligibility for children of retired, disabled or deceased workers. This provision of the RAISE Act applies if the child is in high school, college, or vocational school. Under current law, minor children under the age of 18, and high school students under age 19 are entitled to benefits if they are the child of a retired, disabled, or deceased worker. Beginning in 2016, this provision extends benefits for full-time students until the age of 23 if they are a child of a retired, disabled or deceased worker.
* Asks those who can most afford it to pay their fair share towards strengthening and shoring up the Social Security Trust Fund. Beginning in 2016, the RAISE Act would apply a two percent payroll tax rate on earnings over $400,000, with the threshold wage-indexed after 2016. The bill provides a corresponding credit for earnings in a secondary average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) formula for benefit computation.
Murray, citing a 2014 estimate from actuaries, said RAISE would extend the life of the Social Security trust fund by one year,.
Social Security benefits were originally designed to meet the basic needs of single-income families in which only one spouse worked outside the home, and at time when American companies often offered generous pension plans in retirement, Murray said. Today, she noted, such pensions “are a relic of the past.” In addition, women comprise nearly 50 percent of the workforce, and middle-class workers have seen their wages stagnate relative to inflation, making saving for retirement even more challenging, the senator said.
When a spouse dies, the surviving spouse is often faced with a sudden and significant loss of household income. Under current law, a widow or widower from a dual-income couple receives a significantly smaller Social Security survivor benefit than the survivor of a single-earner couple with the same lifetime earnings, Murray said.
“It is time to modernize the system to account for a changing society in which both men and women spend their working years paying into the Social Security system. This is an especially critical issue for women,” Murray said.
Women represent approximately 68 percent of Social Security beneficiaries over the age of 85. Many of them are widows, and many are struggling with costly healthcare needs, Murray said.
Under current Social Security regulations, women who are married for less than 10 years are ineligible for any spousal or survivors benefits.