Social Security defenders on Thursday celebrated news that the Biden White House has withdrawn a regulation pushed by the Trump administration that, if finalized, could have stripped disability insurance benefits from hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.
One of several attacks on Social Security the Trump administration attempted to complete during its final days in power, the proposed rule would have subjected some disability insurance recipients to more frequent eligibility reviews—a move that would have added another layer of difficulty to an already strenuous process aimed at determining whether beneficiaries still qualify for the program.
"Wonderful news," tweeted healthcare activist Peter Morley, who specifically thanked advocacy group Social Security Works for its outspoken opposition to the regulation.
After the rule was first published in the Federal Register in November of 2019, Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told Common Dreams that the proposal represented "the Trump administration's most brazen attack on Social Security yet."
"When Ronald Reagan implemented a similar benefit cut, it ripped away the earned benefits of 200,000 people. Ultimately, Reagan was forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry—but not before people suffered and died," Lawson said. "Every current and future Social Security beneficiary must band together to defeat this horrific proposal, or else all of our earned benefits will be next."
On Thursday, Social Security Works applauded all of those who spoke out against the Trump administration's proposed policy change:
Thank you to the over 135,000 people who submitted comments opposing this horrific policy! https://t.co/9yYUU8bHxc
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) January 28, 2021
President Joe Biden's record of pushing for cuts to Social Security was the subject of much progressive criticism during the 2020 presidential campaign, but he vowed during the race to protect the beloved New Deal program and increase its modest monthly payments.
In order to boost the chances of achieving the expansion of Social Security benefits that he promised, progressive advocacy groups are urging Biden to fire Social Security Administration Commissioner Andrew Saul and Deputy Commissioner David Black, Trump administration holdovers who worked to advance the former president's far-reaching assault on the program.
"The only thing that is acceptable at the Social Security Administration is a new commissioner and a new deputy commissioner who believe in the system," Lawson told Common Dreams last week. "The movement won't accept anything less."
This article first appeared on Common Dreams. You can read it here.
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.