Free Republic

Carol Fisher thought she did everything right to prepare for retirement--and to live her dream of seeing the country from a recreational vehicle. She and her husband, Larry, worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren. They planned to sell their log home in King George County after they retired and live off the interest, along with their pensions. But when Larry Fisher died two years after the couple began traveling, Carol Fisher's dreams ended, too. ------------------------------------------------------ She also had a decade-long spending spree, buying souvenirs from New York to Nova Scotia. When gas and grocery prices soared, she...

Here is how our baby-boom generation solves problems: -- Recently, George Bush went to Saudi Arabia to ask the ruling House of Saud to pump more oil. That request had about as much chance of success as the Democratic-led congressional effort to “sue” the Saudis in American courts for their selfish “price-gouging.” The current debate about energy in the United States has devolved into doing the same old thing—consume, don’t produce and complain—while somehow expecting different results. Congress talks endlessly about the bright future of wind, solar and new fuels, while it stops us from getting through the messy present...

Recently, I reviewed a new American history anthology. I was amused to find included in the book a generous selection of 1960s protest songs. Apparently, lyrics by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Country Joe MacDonald are making their way into the academic canon, and at least some professors seem to think these are “must-read” documents for our students. Well, maybe so. But if one really wants song lyrics that reflect the 1960s, I'd point my students instead to some of the songs from math professor and musical satirist Tom Lehrer. In terms of insight into America, Lehrer's “National...

NEW YORK - The economic downturn is hitting roughly one in 10 middle-aged and older Americans especially hard, compelling them to borrow money for everyday living expenses and to seek help from family, friends or charities, according to a survey released Tuesday by the AARP. In the telephone survey of 1,002 adults 45 and older, nearly four in 10 said they had helped a child pay bills or expenses. Among retirees, one-third said they’d helped their children pay bills. Eight percent said they’d helped a parent pay bills or expenses. The survey’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus...

AS Bill Clinton was the first baby boomer president, Barack Obama could be the first Generation X president. Or, depending on how you figure it, Mr. Obama, born in 1961, could be the third boomer in chief, following Presidents Clinton and Bush. In theory, the candidate Obama belongs in the boom, defined by the Census Bureau as births during the years 1946 to 1964… The generation-spotter Jonathan Pontell, on the other hand, argues the boom began in 1942 and ended in 1953. He places Mr. Obama in “Generation Jones,” a term Mr. Pontell coined to characterize those born during the...

Back in 1963, when I was a junior in high school, summer jobs were not so easy to come by -- the negative aspect of Baby Boomer demographics. Finally, a friend managed to line me up with a job busing tables at a local Catholic retreat house. I served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, washed dishes, and did my best to keep a low profile. It wasn't much, but the start of my career of gainful employment. A strict rule of silence was enforced then on Catholic retreats. The participants, entirely male, did not speak to each other, and particularly at...

O ne of the most fascinating notions raised by the current presidential campaign is the idea that the United States can and must finally overcome the divisions of the 1960s. It's most often associated with the ascendancy of Sen. Barack Obama, who has been known to entertain it himself. Its most gauzy champion is pundit Andrew Sullivan, who argued in a cover article in the December Atlantic Monthly that, "If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today's actual problems, Obama may be your man." No offense to...

The Baby Boomers’ retirement will change the texture of society in ways we’ve scarcely begun to contemplate. A dispatch from America’s coming silver age It is cliché to speak of sleepy little country towns, but my mother’s hometown goes beyond sleepy into Rip van Winkle territory. Newark, New York, has more churches than bars. Neat clapboards and stately Victorians line quiet streets wrapped tight around the Erie Canal. Drive through Newark quickly, and it looks like America’s past. Stay a little longer, and you begin to recognize it as our future. Walk into one of those churches on a typical...

In 2008, the first wave of a generation 78 million strong will hit the Social Security system Greg Witt was born in January 1946, raised on Elvis, served two years in the U.S. Army and retired after 38 years of working for Allen-Bradley in Milwaukee. Now, he is on the cusp of turning 62 and reaching another milestone - receiving Social Security. "It's kind of like another step in your life," he says. "It feels kind of good, all these years of working and contributing and I get something back." Witt is among the first of 78 million baby boomers...

Baby Boomers Owe Young People an Apology   By Dennis PragerFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, December 04, 2007 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=1E5D04AE-14DA-4920-8F6A-1DCE01801277   We live in the age of group apologies. I would like to add one. The baby boomer generation needs to apologize to America, especially its young generation, for many sins. Here is a partial list: First and perhaps foremost, we apologize for robbing many of you of a childhood. We baby boomers were allowed perhaps the most innocent childhoods known to history. We grew up without material want, in one of the most decent places in world history, with media that...

Pols target tax on home heatingSavings to hard-pressed New Yorkers would amount to $300M Saturday, December 01, 2007 By TOM WROBLESKI STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The unseasonably warm weather Staten Island has seen lately doesn't mean that homeowners aren't feeling the pinch of rising energy costs. Before the cold weather settles in for good and really drives up the price of heating oil and gas, three Republican lawmakers are calling on the City Council to eliminate the 4 percent tax on home heating fuel. "Talk is cheap," said state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-South Shore). "To reduce the skyrocketing cost of...

WASHINGTON — The nation's first baby boomer applied for Social Security benefits today, signaling the start of an expected avalanche of applications from the post World War II war generation. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher from New Jersey, applied for benefits over the Internet at an event attended by Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue. Casey-Kirschling, who now lives in Maryland, was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, making her the first baby boomer — a generation of nearly 80 million born from 1946 to 1964, Astrue said. Casey-Kirschling will be eligible for benefits after she turns 62...

Earlier this year at a campaign rally, Bill Clinton said that when he was at Yale, he told Hillary: “I have met all the most gifted people in our generation and you’re the best.” Now, it’s always nice to hear a husband say he thinks his wife is tops. But I can’t get past the idea that while Bill Clinton was still in law school he believed he already knew every baby boomer worth knowing. ...Obviously, Clinton wasn’t including Barack Obama, who was only about 12 at the time. Now, Obama’s campaign is the revenge of Gen XYZ — an...

ack in the 1950s, a southern journalist named Harry Golden became famous by turning out a series of best-selling books, the first of which he called “Only in America.� The title was a reference to a popular expression that reflected the feeling of most of his countrymen that America was special, a unique place that offered millions of people unlimited freedom to express themselves and to achieve dreams that were unimaginable anywhere else on earth. In the half century since Mr. Golden wrote his book, things have undergone a sea change in this country. Partly the change has come about...

Baby boomers pay for six pack in a syringe By Philip Sherwell, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:00am BST 19/08/2007 With his six-pack stomach, bulging chest and bull-like shoulders, the muscleman in the newspaper advertisement displays the sort of rippling torso that adorns the cover of men's fitness journals. But there is one difference. From the neck up, Dr Jeffry S Life is a balding 67-year-old physician. His physique is the product not of a computer touch-up but a controversial American "ageing management" technique, that often includes a cocktail of human growth hormones and testosterone. Some 13,000 clients have so far...

MENLO PARK, Calif. —Today's New York Times has an article about people who are worth millions and are still complaining:Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think...

Ted Nugent Blames Hippies for Divorce, Abortion, Drugs and Crime 7/3/07, 2:22 pm EST It was only a matter of time before Ted Nugent decided to rain on the Summer of Love’s anniversary parade. In an article from today’s Wall Street Journal titled “The * Summer of Drugs,” the notoriously opinionated guitar god took some time off his busy hunting schedule to blame “stoned, dirty, stinky hippies” for “rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes.” * Highlights (including some choice words for Jimi...

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone. Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers--those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation--took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers' response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.  Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled...

As the children of the Greatest Generation age, they are embracing religion in greater numbers. Jerry Holland has been a religious skeptic, an atheist and a spiritual seeker. Now he has become something he never would have envisioned when he was a restless teenager who read Charles Darwin in secret because he didn't want his Southern Baptist parents to know he was learning about evolution. Holland is now a Bible-study leader. Holland, a 62-year-old structural engineer, has helped start a Seekers and Skeptics Bible study group at Community Christian Church in Fayetteville, Ga., to answer the kinds of questions he...

Bill Would Help Retirees Get a 'Paycheck for Life' (CNSNews.com) - Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) has re-introduced a bill intended to help middle-class Americans make their retirement income last for their rest of their lives. The Retirement Security for Life Act of 2007 (S. 1010) amends the tax code to encourage the purchase of annuities - investment vehicles that provide guaranteed lifetime income. Under the proposal, individuals would get a federal tax break on up to $20,000 of the annual income generated by annuities that promise lifetime payments. An average taxpayer in the 25 percent tax bracket would get a...

Cassandra Devine knows how to solve the coming "entitlements" crisis, preordained when the 77 million baby boomers begin hitting 65 in 2011: Pay retirees to kill themselves, a program she calls "transitioning." Volunteers could receive a lavish vacation beforehand ("a farewell honeymoon"), courtesy of the government, and their heirs would be spared the estate tax. If only 20% of boomers select suicide before the age of 70, she says, "Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will be solvent. End of crisis." OK, Devine is a 29-year-old fictional blogger in Christopher Buckley's satirical novel "Boomsday." Infuriated at the injustices awaiting her generation, she...

As America's baby boomers approach senior status, a troubling number are dying from causes that have marked the generation since the 1960s - drug abuse, suicide and accidents. A new analysis by Scripps Howard News Service of death records for more than 304,000 boomers who died in 2003 shows the legacies of early and lingering drug use, a tendency toward depression at all stages of life and a stubborn determination not to "act their age." All of those problems contribute to more deaths from drugs, suicides and accidents than seen in previous aging generations. Most of the nearly 78 million...

Anyone who thinks that organized religion in Canada is dying “would be wise to think again,” says sociologist Reginald Bibby. Mainline Protestants (Anglican, United, Lutheran and Presbyterians) in Canada have collectively experienced an increase in monthly-plus attendance in church services since a decade ago, from 26 per cent in 1995 to 31 per cent in 2005, according to Mr. Bibby of Alberta’s University of Lethbridge. In his latest book, The Boomer Factor: What Canada’s Most Famous Generation is Leaving Behind, Mr. Bibby – who has been monitoring social trends in Canada for 30 years – said that while most observers...

All those baby boomers with aging parents should pay close attention to a recent court decision in California. An appeals court ruling in a nasty divorce in Placer County highlights the little known but significant legal obligation of adult children who, to the extent they are able, should support their indigent parents. In the case before the appeals court, a divorcing wife disputed her husband's right to deduct from the proceeds of her share of community property the $12,000 he had spent to support his elderly, infirm mother. The wife called the support payments "an unauthorized gift of community funds."...

Is TV's youth obsession backfiring? By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer 40 minutes ago NEW YORK - Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are accustomed to being catered to, but that's not the case with much of television today. Now there's some new evidence that they're finding this mighty irritating. A study conducted by Harris Interactive suggests that the television industry's obsession with youth is backfiring. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe that most TV programming and advertising is targeted toward people under 40, the survey said. More than 80 percent of adults over 40 say they have a...

"...He’s not alone. According to a 2005 study by the Boston College Center on Aging and Work, traditional retirement where employees totally stop working may never happen for most baby boomers. Instead, the study suggests that 50%-66% of retirees will be vying for bridge jobs, parttime or short duration work for at least five years after retirement...

Unless Social Security and Medicare are revamped, the massive burden from retiring baby boomers will place major strains on the nation's budget and the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday. "Reform of our unsustainable entitlement programs" should be a priority, he said in prepared remarks to the Economics Club of Washington. "The imperative to undertake reform earlier rather than later is great," Bernanke added. It marked the Fed chief's most extensive comments to date on the challenges facing the United States with the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers. In his remarks, Bernanke did not offer Congress...

Bathroom humor is always great fun to a fourth-grader and there’s a little bit of that in the above that seems to have been passed down from generation to generation since…since…well ever since kids started standing in lines and needed to say something cool to maintain their place in them. I must confess that there have been lots of times when I have cut in line: at the movie theater with that “front two rows only” desperation; approaching the crowded freeway exit with that “I’m already 10 minutes late” rationale. Still, my biggest cut in line occurred on April 13th...

Drug use up for boomers, down for teens By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Some moms and dads might want to take a lesson from their kids: Just say no. The government reported Thursday that 4.4 percent of baby boomers ages 50 to 59 indicated that they had used illicit drugs in the past month. It marks the third consecutive yearly increase recorded for that age group by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Meanwhile, illicit drug use among young teens went down for the third consecutive year — from 11.6 percent in 2002 to 9.9...

Baby boomers like to trumpet their generation's achievements. But their fondness for conspicuous consumption and foreign travel has led to many a modern-day ill, from rising debt to environmental woes. This week, former US President Bill Clinton - perhaps the archetypal baby boomer - turns 60. With his penchant for playing sax, feeling everyone's pain, and his admission that he flirted with marijuana (without inhaling), Clinton has come to symbolise the generation born between 1946 and 1964 who shook up Western society. Now, as the boomers become "ageing hipsters", we're constantly being reminded of their achievements. They gave us rock...

Desperate Grandmas Kay S. HymowitzNow sexagenarians, narcissistic feminists are still seeking the Best Sex Ever.Time passes, and we get old. Our faces wrinkle, our hair goes gray and MIA, our teeth yellow, our knees ache, we forget the names of people we said hello to just yesterday on the way to pick up the Geritol, and there are days when a nap sounds real nice.At least that’s the way it’s been for most of humanity. But rumors that boomers will be joining the great biological stream turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. Boomers—especially feminist-influenced women of a certain...

GAO: Boomer effect on stocks negligible Fri Jul 28, 7:47 PM ET WASHINGTON - A congressional investigation has discounted any danger that a wave of retiring baby boomers will cause a precipitous decline in the stock market by suddenly selling off their financial assets. The Government Accountability Office concluded most boomers have few assets to sell, retirees tend to spend their assets slowly, longer life expectancies may stretch that out even more and many will probably continue working past their normal retirement ages. Boomers are the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. The oldest of that generation are...

For the past 10 years, adults ages 55 to 64 have been the group most likely to start a new business, according to a study released in May by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship. And now that baby boomers are reaching retirement age, the trend is only going to grow. People are living longer and are more likely to pursue dream businesses rather than tend to their gardens when their workaday lives are done. About 80 percent of boomers claim they want to work in retirement, according to Sara Rix, senior policy adviser at the Public Policy...

Parents of University of Florida students log on to their children's personal Gator-Link accounts to check grades, then call deans when they don't like what they see. University of Central Florida parents call administrators to complain when their kids can't get into classes they want. At Florida State University, parents of graduating seniors haggle with job recruiters. They want to make sure Junior gets a good salary and work schedule. University administrators have a name for these baby boomer moms and dads who hover over their offspring's college lives. "Helicopter parents," says Patrick Heaton, FSU's assistant dean of student affairs....

Brooklyn Law School NEW YORK — Despite the best-selling success of Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation, it’s impossible to quantify the difference between the concepts “great,” “greater” and “greatest,” because their use depends upon the user’s values. Someone’s “great” quarterback can be someone else’s “greater” player and a third person’s “greatest” — depending on the values used: leadership, passing ability, broken-field running, calling the best plays. While Brokaw saw the World War II generation as the “greatest,” James Madison would doubtless have evaluated his own that way because of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Abraham...

Early baby boomers Claudia and Jim Burns will celebrate their third anniversary this year. It is her third marriage, his second. (Photo by Sylwia Kapuscinski) Loosened Family Ties Haunt Baby Boomer Vanguard Reaching Age 60 BY KATHLEEN O'BRIEN   At first, the only thing setting the earliest baby boomers apart was their sheer number. They acted much like their parents' generation when it came to life's milestones. By age 20, nearly half of the first wave of boomers were married. Once married, they started having children. The similarity ended there. Now, as the boomers born in 1946 reach age...

Woe Is Me, Me, Me BY EVELYN THEISS They are brash and cynical. They believe they're entitled to quick financial and professional success. They're also lonely and anxious. That's the picture that psychologist Jean Twenge draws in her new book about the young men and women she dubs "Generation Me."On the plus side, these young people are confident and also extremely tolerant of those who are different from them. Born in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, they are the children of baby boomers, who she says were incorrectly considered the most self-focused generation. Not even close, says Twenge, an associate...

My David Cassidy HairBaby Boomers are turning 60 now, and I can't take it anymore. I'm 43, at the tail end of the Baby Boom, and I'm sick and tired of the boomers imposing their trends, their ideas and their fashions on me. I'm still particularly sore over the David Cassidy haircut my sisters made me get in 1973. As it went, my sisters, who had a habit of treating me like their personal Ken doll, demanded I get my hair cut like Cassidy. They exploited one of my chief insecurities to get me to do it. "If you part...

I've had a couple of bad experiences recently that sharpened my worry about what life will be like for retirees in the future -- I fear that a catastrophe of declining standards of life is heading our way. I'm thinking about how bad it has gotten in terms of how customers are treated. A few days ago, I called the saleswoman at an auto dealer who sold me my last car a few years ago. I asked her to come over and show me the newest model of my car and told her if I liked it, I would buy...

EW YORK - They partied and protested, then grew up to dominate America with their chutzpah and sheer numbers. Yet now, as the oldest of the baby boomers prepare to turn 60, there are glimmers of doubt within this "have it all" generation about how they will be judged by those who come next. ADVERTISEMENT The ferment of the '60s and '70s — when boomers changed the world, or thought they did — faded long ago. Nostalgic pride in the achievements of that era now mixes with skepticism: Have the boomers collectively betrayed their youthful idealism? Have they been self-centered...

<p>Patricia Lewis is like many other professionals who reach retirement age. She's widowed. Her three children are grown and married. Suddenly, the dream home in Stafford, Va., that she planned to spend the rest of her life in seems too big and requires too much maintenance.</p>

SAN DIEGO -- People are busy talking about what this country is going to look like in a few years when a cohort of 78 million Americans acquire a title they never wanted: senior citizen. Hippies who turned into yuppies are about to turn into golden oldies. Just what I wanted to hear: more about the baby boomers.USA Today recently wrapped up a series on aging in America that touched on everything from life expectancy to saving for retirement to long-term health care issues. The newspaper insists that by the year 2046 -- when those Americans who were born from...

The transition to adulthood used to be one of the main goals of the young. Adulthood was seen to be a status worth achieving and was understood to be a set of responsibilities worth fulfilling. At least, that's the way it used to be. Now, an entire generation seems to be finding itself locked in the grip of eternal youth, unwilling or unable to grow up. Concern about this phenomenon has been building for some time. Baby-boomer parents are perplexed when their adult-age children move back home, fail to find a job, and appear to be in no hurry to...

FLORENCE, Ore. — By some accounts this Lane County coastal town was one of the nation's top retirement communities. Now real-estate agents and others say it is on the verge of pricing itself out of business. It is running out of workers in the service-based economy, dashing the dreams of would-be owners and pushing renters out of the area altogether. In some areas that's a boom or bubble. Not here. "We have a housing crisis in Florence," said developer James Genereaux, whose four-stage, moderately priced Park Village project sports a waiting list 100 people long. "When prices go up 40...

Today, as is wont to happen from time to time, I overheard a hall way conversation at the headquarters of a major US based multinational that I simply could not avoid hearing. The topic of discussion was the current campaign to "help the poor Africans" being lauded by entertainment figures such as Bono and Bob Geldoff. Those conversing were two low level managers. It got me to thinking about the way in which globalist utopianism truly is a bourgeois, grass roots thing, which affects many highly educated, overall "respectable" and "normal" people across our society. How is it that the...

Ken and Jessica Sierszen are the kind of bikers the motorcycle industry just can't get too many of. He rides an American Iron Horse chopper. She rides a Buell motorcycle and completed a Harley-Davidson Rider's Edge program aimed at getting women and younger riders into the sport. The Sierszens, who live in Bay View, come from a middle-class background, aren't shy about spending money on their bikes, and plan to ride for decades. That's exactly what the U.S. motorcycle industry wants as the baby boomer generation pushes the middle-age envelope. "My interest will always be on two wheels," Ken, 42,...

[snip] What is guaranteed about Social Security is that it's facing a demographic tsunami. In 1940, there were 42 workers per retiree. The ratio today is down to 3-to-1 and it'll be 2-to-1 before today's 20-year-olds are eligible for Early Birds. More young immigrants would help, but a recent report by Stuart Anderson, a senior official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in President Bush's first term, concludes that a hefty 33 percent jump in immigration over the next 75 years would only trim Social Security's impending multitrillion-dollar deficit by 10 percent. More domestic babies would also help, but there...

The vast baby boom generation is now well into its fifth decade; we're becoming the old coots we used to rail against. And according to the Media Audit, a Texas research firm, a quarter of all Internet users in the United States are 50 or older. Seniors are embracing the Internet faster than any other age group, and 36 percent of people between 65 and 74 are online.

This appears in this morning's Dallas Morning News. Have a very blessed Nativity. *** In this corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Leonardo DiCaprio, adorable star of "Titanic," "Catch Me If You Can," and now, "The Aviator." In the other, we have - oh, pick a name. Clark Gable, Cary Grant, even Jimmy Stewart, for cryin' out loud. Notice any difference? Such comparisons are prompted by DiCaprio's newest release, "The Aviator," in which he portrays aeronautics engineer, Hollywood mogul, and big-time player Howard Hughes. As Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman puts it, DiCaprio is "a dynamo of an actor" but "at...