[Personalize it]
\nMeet Ezra Freeman
\n[insert picture of friendly black woman – the type who was the nanny raising abandoned children of rich liberals]<\/p>\n
Ezra never expected her Golden years to be like this. Born in Detroit in 1946, she worked for 42 years preparing healthy meals in the cafeteria of Martin Luther King Jr High School on Gratiot Avenue. She struggles now to just survive on her meager pension of $423 a month and now the State of Michigan may try to take even that away.<\/p>\n
She remembers the good times of her youth growing up in Detroit when she and her friends would cruise Woodward Avenue celebrating life, playing Motown music on the car speakers for all the world to hear. Now she spends summers without air conditioning and winters without heat. The streetlights on her street stopped working years ago, and every night she fears some home invader could make it her last.<\/p>\n
It didn’t used to be like this, but after her fire captain husband died in 1997 in a building fire, she was left to survive only on her pension. Her only child, a son, died in 2004 in Afghanistan.
\n[The problem]
\nOne of the reasons Ezra’s pension is at risk is that Detroit’s pension system is broken, and out of money. One of the big factors in the insolvency is that there are a few individuals getting pensions that are as much as $150,000 a year. The pensions were put in place by the same managers who now loot the pension fund for their own obscenely large pensions, while Ezra hides in her closet at night, and can’t afford her arthritis medication so she keep doing her volunteer work at her church.
\n[The Solution]
\nAny person with a sense of social justice can see this situation is unfair. We have a responsibility to provide security to Ezra in her retirement. Since the Michigan Consitution protects the bloated pensions of the elite managers who make up the top 1% of pension recipients – many who started getting their pensions as early as age 50 after only working a few years. Fairness and equity demand that this situation of unequal pensions must end.<\/p>\n
Since the benefits handed out to the rich retirees can’t be cut, the solution to this inequity is to impose a 90% equity fairness tax on any government retiree who has a pension exceeding 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (that would be around $40k a year). Those funds could then be used to keep the pension fund solvent so Ezra does not have to worry that her lifeline will suddenly vanish one day.<\/p>\n
Any person with a shred of compassion has to agree with this plan. Don’t you agree?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Personalize it] Meet Ezra Freeman [insert picture of friendly black woman – the type who was the nanny raising abandoned children of rich liberals] Ezra never expected her Golden years to be like this. Born in Detroit in 1946, she … Continue reading