There has been much discussion on the future of social security and the costs associated with it. There is concern that the Social Security Administration may run out of funds in the near future. Research potential problems of the social security program and its economic impact on society. Discuss possible solutions to avoid its collapse. Your research may include the following but is not limited to:

Where does social security currently stand?
Discuss the economic impact of the depletion of these funds.
What are possible ways to avoid insolvency?

.Introduction
Issues regarding social security and food stamp programs will forever be a question in the minds of the American people. Such issues will be displayed by a brief introduction, theories, problems, impact, strengths, and weakness. The social security and the food stamp program will be compared to each other by synthesizing the two frameworks for social security and food stamps analysis of one another. As complete descriptive analysis of the two programs is described, the areas that are not described will be addressed. Individuals seeking social security may seek assistance at your State and Local governmental agencies, international agencies, and private entities. On this website individuals can apply for social security, check on the status of their social security benefits. (Socialsecurity.gov)
II.The importance of Social Security and food stamps
One importance of social security and food stamps is to provide assistance in way of money and food. These programs assist millions of Americans every day on a monthly budget for all who qualify for such benefits. Some issues and problems exist within the programs. The government is working towards a better program to assist all individuals who need assistance now and in the future.
A. Problems with social security are
Social Security is often titled retirement for individuals who have worked hard all their lives. Many individual use these benefits as their only source of income, even though it is not intended to be the only source. ( Dolgoff, R. (1999). What does social welfare produce? International Social Work, 42(3), 295)
the welfare essentials must be the primary concern of the government. The essentials are one of the most important issues in regards to the nations food stamp benefits. For this very reason, the government makes deals with other leaders of other countries to ensure they continue benefits will occur. This learner opinion on food stamps is it was the best thing the government could do by making food stamps in form of a credit card.
(http://washingtonindependent.com/98886/the-real-impact-of-food-stamp-cuts)
However many challenges the food stamp program faces there are a few mentioned in this critique, every do not receive benefits who are qualified to receive assistance. Rather it is because they do not qualify or they are denied base on the rules and regulations. (http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=521)
B. Impact with social security is
One impact social security faces is the majority decisions are the individuals who are going to retire choices. The second, impact is the economy effect on the availability of benefits that will be available for the future. ( Dolgoff, R. (1999). What does social welfare produce? International Social Work, 42(3), 295 ) Approximately one in three people eligible for the Food Stamp Program are not receiving benefits, according to USDA. There is an estimate of about 22 large urban communities are in need of benefits who are not receiving the benefits. (http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=521)
III. Target Population and who is effect by the problems.
In reference to social security applies to individual who have worked hard all their lives and put a certain amount of income into social security. Then at the retirement age, they received it in monthly installments. The target population for the food stamp program is the poor individuals with low paying jobs or no jobs there is an estimate of about 22 large urban communities are in need of benefits who are not receiving the benefits.
IV.Review of literature.
Social Security is one of the most advanced systems in the world. The food stamp program is one of the most advances when it comes to hunger. The numbers of individuals who do not qualify for social security are the ones who either did not work or did not have parent die. The food stamp program began in the depression era to help the poor individuals of America. The social security act was invented in the 1930s. In the past there use to be dollar bills in color form. Now a days there is food stamp credit cards with the American flag on the front of the card. Both programs affect the elderly, and the poor individuals of America. Some of the problems with social security is many people rely on it as their only source of income.
The problems with the food stamp program are many individuals who qualify do not receive assistance. Therefore, in other words the program does not help all the population it is intended for especially the urban population. Some strength with social security is the government is looking for solutions for the future of individuals who will benefit from these services. Some weakness with the program is that those individuals who put money into it are not receiving their benefits in return. The strengths of the food stamp program are it alleviates hunger. One weakness this learner research is the urban community is over looked and is not receiving benefits. The solutions to the food stamp program are to have social workers re-evaluate those receiving benefits now to re-apply. This can recheck for assistance and benefits clarification.
A.Cite research articles.
(Dolgoff, R. (1999). What does social welfare produce? International Social Work, 42(3), 295)
The History of Food Stamps | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5434497_history-food-stamps.html#ixzz1F7s8S3Pw
B. Explanation of reference importance
The reference importance is to prove where the information was found and to prove this learner did not copy its own research material.
V.Theories
A. Theories to explain the problems
Theories used to explain the problems with social security are people use this as their only source of income. Many people fear there will not be enough money for everyone at the age of retirement. There have been theories about the social security ending. Some individuals state there will be no benefits for the future. Theories with food stamps are not everyone receiving it deserves it. Another theory is that food stamps are free money and you do not have to work for it.
B. What reference article to use to support these theories.
(Dolgoff, R. (1999). What does social welfare produce? International Social Work, 42(3), 295)
(The History of Food Stamps | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5434497_history-food-stamps.html#ixzz1F7s8S3Pw
VI.Impact for practice
A. Explain how the problem can be treated
Problems for social security can be treated by care analysis by social workers to ensure the qualifications of individuals. Congress may have to borrow billions to make sure Americans have money when they decide to retire. The food stamp programs can re-evaluate the applications for individuals who may qualify now to ensure they qualify later for the same benefits. This will recheck the status of all individuals who may qualify for a certain amount now and later may qualify for more. This will help all individual receiving benefits to prove their qualifications.
B. Explain what is being done to alleviate this problem
Congress is looking at other options other than borrowing from other countries and banks. Food stamp program some individuals who qualify are not putting in for it. This will help those in more dependency need to get the benefits.
VII. Summary
The social security program and the food stamp programs are two benefits for the needy and poor individuals of our country. Improvement with social security could be providing more benefits for the elderly and the disability individuals than those without disabilities. Re-evaluate benefits applications to make sure nothing has changed over the last year. There are several issues within both programs that could use some improvements, and over the years, improvements have been made. However, technology may vary with the social security program benefits are given to individuals upon retirement. The food stamp program is one that allow individuals who qualify to receive benefits if they qualify or for young children if their parents are deceased.
VIII. Conclusio:
Issues regarding social security and food stamp programs will forever be a question in the minds of the American people. Such issues will be displayed by a brief introduction, theories, problems, impact, strengths, and weakness. The social security and the food stamp program will be compared to each other by synthesizing the two frameworks for social security and food stamps analysis of one another. As complete descriptive analysis of the two programs is described, the areas that are not described will be addressed. Individuals seeking social security may seek assistance at your State and Local governmental agencies, international agencies, and private entities. On this website individuals can apply for social security, check on the status of their social security benefits. (Socialsecurity.gov)
The problems with the food stamp program are many individuals who qualify do not receive assistance. Therefore, in other words the program does not help all the population it is intended for especially the urban population. Some strength with social security is the government is looking for solutions for the future of individuals who will benefit from these services. Some weakness with the program is that those individuals who put money into it are not receiving their benefits in return. The strengths of the food stamp program are it alleviates hunger. One weakness this learner research is the urban community is over looked and is not receiving benefits. The solutions to the food stamp program are to have social workers re-evaluate those receiving benefits now to re-apply. This can recheck for assistance and benefits clarification.








Reference

Clinton, W. (1995) Remarks of President Clinton at signing of Social Security Independence and Program Improvements Act of 1995, 8/15/95 Social Security Online (Social Security Administration): Baltimore, MD. Retrieved 2/11/11 http://www.ssa.gov/history/mpeg/videosound.html

Dolgoff, R. (1999). What does social welfare produce? International Social Work, 42(3), 295
Bucher, R. D. (2008). Building cultural intelligence (CQ): Nine megaskills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780131738959.
Schmidt, J. J. (2006). Social and cultural foundations of counseling and human services: Multiple influences on self-concept development. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN: 9780205403332.
DiNitto, D.M (2007) Social welfare: Politics and public policy. (7th Ed) Boston: Allyn & Bacon

There are faxes for this order.

Writer?s

Topic: Macroeconomic Forecast Paper
Citation: must indicate the sources of all data on the reference list at the end

Requirements:
First--- Choose the indicator which is ?Unemployment Rate" and assemble THREE forecasts of this indicator prepared by different financial institutions, investment firms, or other recognized forecasting groups(e.g., the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, the Mortgage Banker?s Association, and the Conference Board). The annual forecasts can be either national or regional and should be for the next TWO years. Also gather historical trends for your indicator(Unemployment Rate).

Next--- compare and contrast the economic reasoning that would support any differences for the respective statistics you gathered. Explain the relationships among the selected forecasts. This should include the following:
a) Assess the accuracy of these forecasting groups based on how well their past forecasts have reflected what really happened.
b) In addition to identifying the forecasts for FIVE macroeconomic variables, identify the specific web site location where these statistics are reported with their actual or historic values.
c) In addition to the reasons for varying forecasts, research whether the forecasters reflect different Schools of Thought, e.g. monetarist, Keynesian, etc.

***Do this within 300 words (not more, not less)! ***

Outline and Sources to follow:
Outline for Macroeconomics Forecast
A) Economic Indicator
Unemployment Rate - The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force, which includes both the unemployed and those with jobs (all those willing and able to work for pay). Increases and decreases in unemployment rates indicate economic stability.

B) Forecast Sources
Unemployment Rates- Historic information and forecasts for unemployment rates can be accessed though the following:
a) Bureau of Labor and Statistics
b) The Social Security Administration
c) Congressional Budget office

C) Historical Indicators:
Historical Data for Unemployment and employment rates http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

References
Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2005) retrieved on
September 15, 2005 from
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.nr0.htm
The Social Security Administration (2005) retrieved on
September 15, 2005 from
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR05/V_economic.html#wp163836
Congressional Budget Office (2005) retrieved on September
16, 2005 from http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm
index=1824&sequence=0
Unemployment (2005).Wikipedia; The free encyclopedia.
Retrieved September 16, 2005 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_rate

NOTE: Please circumspectly follow the Requirements and Outlines to do the researches and write the forecast, make sure the paper will cover all the aspects from the Requirements portion.

Useful links:
http://www.nahb.org/
http://www.mortgagebankers.org/marketdata/forecasts/index.html
http://www.phil.frb.org/files/liv/livjun05.pdf
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1824&sequence=0

Here is a SAMPLE paper for the indicator ?Retail Sales?:

Assessment of Accuracy

The U.S Census Bureau has historically over estimated retail sales in previous forecasts. For example, in 2004 total retail was overestimated by 3.8%. Further, of the 22 variables that make up the retail sales 5 were not over estimated in 2004. One reason for these overestimations may be due to the self reported sampling as stated ?Advance sales estimates are computed for selected kinds of business and are based on a small subsample selected from the larger MRTS sample?(U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).

The Livingston Survey surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimates for previous years were lower and therefore not overestimated from actual in the same year as the estimated provided by the Census bureau above. This could be due to the amount of people participating in the forecast efforts. For example for the forecasts into 2006 the panel contained 39 participating forecasters.

The third assessment is for Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Although the data does show forecasts through 2009, it self reports that frequent government involvement changes forecasts. For example ?Stronger-than-expected reports from nearly every sector in recent weeks has led us to boost our forecast? (Aspen Publisher, 2005)

Specific Web Locations
Forecasts Data
http://www.economicindicators.gov/

http://www.forecasts.org/sales.htm

http://www.phil.frb.org/files/liv/livjun05.pdf

http://www.aspenpublishers.com/PDF/SS01934600.pdf#search='Blue%20Chip%20economic%20indicators'
Historical Data
Census buresu http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/advtable.html and
http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/br04-a.pdf

http://www.phil.frb.org/files/liv/livjun05.pdf

http://www.aspenpublishers.com/PDF/SS01934600.pdf#search='Blue%20Chip%20economic%20indicators'

School of Thought
The Census bureau and the Livingston Survey have the school of thought of rational expectations theory, which suggests that ?people would use all the information available to them in forming forecasts? (The Livingston Survey, 2005). As the Census Bureau are not only relying on past trends, but incorporating all information into forecasts in the forms of information taken from surveys ect. Additional information used is surveys of activities from a probable amount of businesses. Whereas, the Blue Chip Indicators follow the Keynesian model implying that expectations would imply future trends.

References

Aspen Publisher (2005) retrieved on October 6, 2005 from http://www.aspenpublishers.com/PDF/SS01934600.pdf#search='Blue%20Chip%20economic%20indicators'

U.S. Census Bureau (2005) retrieved on October 5, 2005 from http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/br04-a.pdf
The Livingston Survery (2005) retrieved on October 5, 2005 from http://www.phil.frb.org/files/liv/livjun05.pdf

Writing Assignments
You may pick an article to analyze and interpret from among the options provided. You are to write as a professional economist. You should provide an economic analysis of various issues from your chosen article. You should bring in outside knowledge if helpful. You should discuss policy implications, future consequences, who gains, and who loses, impacts on market efficiency, and other topics as relevant.
Your paper should be 2 pages in length, single-sided, double-spaced, and have a 12 point font and 1 inch margins. Use footnotes and a reference list with complete citations as appropriate. Be sure to run spell check and grammar check. Make sure your name and topic is at the top of your paper.


A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer Openings

By CATHERINE RAMPELL and MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: September 2, 2009
To the long list of reasons American companies aren?t hiring ? business losses, tight credit, consumer retrenchment ? add the fact that many of their older workers are unable, or afraid, to retire.


Phil Sears for The New York Times
Ned and Barbara Petrucci lost about 35 percent of their life savings and have made only a little of it back in recent months.
In other parts of the developed world, people are retiring as planned, because of relatively flush state and corporate pensions that await them. But here in the United States, financial security in old age rests increasingly on private savings, which have taken a beating in the last year. Prospective retirees are clinging to their jobs despite some cherished life plans.
As a result, companies are not only reluctant to create new jobs, but have fewer job openings to fill from attrition. For the 14 million Americans looking for work ? a number expected to rise in Friday?s jobs report for August ? this lack of turnover has made a tough job market even tougher.
Consider Barbara Petrucci, a dialysis nurse who had expected to stop working soon, or at least scale back to part time. Now that her family savings have been depleted by market declines, she expects to stay on the job for a long, long time.
?Retirement is kind of an elusive dream at this point,? says Ms. Petrucci, 58, who works at an Atlanta hospital while her retired husband, Ned, 61, interviews for jobs (unsuccessfully, so far). ?We tease at work about someday having to go around at the hospital with our walkers.?
The diverted life plans of families like the Petruccis are an unintended economic consequence of the nation?s sprawling 401(k) plans. These private retirement savings vehicles, designed 30 years ago as a supplement to traditional corporate pensions, have somewhat haphazardly replaced the old system, like an innocuous weed that somehow overgrew the garden.
As is apparent in this downturn, the economic effects of such an ad hoc system can be perverse. In boom times, when companies need more workers, the most experienced employees may decide to retire, taking comfort in their bloated 401(k)s, whose values typically fluctuate with the financial markets.
Today, the reverse is happening in the first deep recession since the new accounts became so pervasive. A Pew Research survey scheduled for Thursday release found that nearly four in 10 workers over age 62 say they have delayed their retirement because of the recession. (Though the data omits some people who have retired and includes some who are still working, the Social Security Administration said that about 2.3 million people that age started collecting benefits last year.)
?One unappreciated side effect of the 401(k) system is that it?s a sort of reverse automatic stabilizer,? says Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School.
The recent retirement losses have prompted policy makers to discuss whether Americans need a stronger social safety net, not just in health care and unemployment benefits, but in retirement as well.
Economists say there are advantages to reducing the financial risk for individuals. Pooling investments, in some cases, allows workers to switch jobs more easily and helps lower fees associated with investment decisions, for example.
Alternatives include creating incentives for saving and for less risky investments through tax laws or other regulations. The Obama administration has proposed an opt-out retirement savings system, for example. And even before the crisis, some states developed plans for pooling private savings into voluntary, portable retirement accounts.
Though their pension systems may be strained, people in many countries with stronger safety nets are still exiting the labor force in lockstep despite the global recession. Last year in the United States, almost a third of people ages 65 to 69 were still in the labor force; in France, just 4 percent of people this age were still working or looking for work.
After all, Europe isn?t just the land of ?socialized? medicine. It is also the land of ?socialized? retirement plans, and like other automatic stabilizers, pensions help cushion the blow of an economic crisis.
Retirement income typically comes from a combination of three buckets: state pensions, corporate pensions and individual arrangements. In many other industrialized countries, that first bucket ? state pensions ? supports a large amount of retirees? income.
The typical American receives just 45 percent of his preretirement wage through Social Security, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. By contrast, a worker in Denmark, which has one of the most comprehensive and generous retirement arrangements in the world, can retire with a state pension that is 91 percent of his salary.
?The financial crisis hasn?t affected me,? says Jens Erik Soerensen, a 63-year-old in Hellerup, Denmark, who works as a researcher at Chempilots, a Danish company that develops polymers for use in the medical device industry.
Mr. Soerensen has calculated that when he retires, the combined disposable income that he has with his wife (Lone, also 63, who retired this year from her job in TV production) will fall by about 20 percent. The couple will also continue to benefit from universal health coverage.
?I think we can survive without changing our lifestyle, at least until 75,? he said. After that, he might have to dip into personal savings.
Of course, such a system comes with tradeoffs. To help pay for generous state pensions, Danish workers have one of the highest tax burdens. The population is also aging, meaning that there will be fewer working people to pay for the pensions and care of a graying society.
In response, some nations have been trying to encourage people to stay at work longer. In France, suggestions to raise the retirement age above its current level of 60 have met fierce opposition from unions, although the government intends to push ahead. Britain has had a bit more success, announcing plans to raise the retirement age to 68, from 65 ? in 2044.
Along with raising the retirement age, some European countries have been shifting more financial risk to individuals.
In the United States, where the practice is decades old, the question is whether people can be freed from making their own financial decisions, an act they may not feel qualified to do and may not want to do.
One study found that nearly a quarter of Americans ages 56 to 64 had more than 90 percent of their 401(k) balances invested in stocks instead of bonds, against financial advisers? standard advice for people nearing retirement age.
?Employees are just not capable of making these decisions,? said Rick K. Shapiro, a member of the army of financial planning professionals that America?s private retirement system (and private health care and college education financing systems) has spawned. ?Maybe they can learn, but they?re distracted, and they?re not incented to learn until the thing blows up.?
Even conscientious investors ? like the Petruccis, who keep an updated spreadsheet of their investments ? lose money.
?We thought we were conservative,? said Mr. Petrucci, noting that he and his wife lost about 35 percent of their life savings in the crisis and have made only a little of it back.
Still, the American preference for self-reliance, instead of more socialized financial protections, remains strong, even among those who lost big.
?I don?t want to depend on anybody else in my retirement,? Mr. Petrucci said. ?Not family members, not our children, and certainly not the government, for that matter.?

The following is a research assignment for poverty law:

Play the role of a legal aid attorney and advise Cassandra, Daniel and Emily about their options. Their primary goal is to stay on MFIP. Also, provide them social service referrals (specific agencies not needed)

Cassandra is a single mother of 12 year old boy named Jonathan. They live in a two bedroom condo. Cassandra's brother, Daniel, and her mother, Emily, also live with her. Cassandra is recently divorced from James. Cassandra has received Minnesota Family Investment Benefits-S, food stamps, and medical Assistance benefits fot the past three years. Jonathan has received Supplemental Security Income and Medical Assistance benefits for the past year.

When Jonathan was 11 years old he was hit by a car and recieved a number of physical injuries as a result and now suffers from traumatic brain injury.

Daniel has combination of physical and mental impairments. He is currently receiving General Assistance and Food Stamps. He applied for Supplemental Security Income benefits. He just received hsi approval etter for SSI benefits. His cash benefits will be $674.00 per month. He wants Cassandra to be his representative payee for his funds.

Emily is 80 years old. She has memory issues and a number of physical impairments. She worked for many years for a high school as a secretary. She receives $850.00 per month from the Retirement, Survivors, Disability Insurance program through Social Security Administration. She currently has an organization as her representative payee. She also receives Medicare and Medicare supplemental insurance benefit. Emily wants Cassandra to be her representative payee.

Cassandra was married for about ten years to James. James was physically and emotionally abusive to her. She has worked very hard to heal from this pain, but is still in counseling. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She is a high school graduate with one year of community college. She wants to be a nurse. She is able to take several courses per semester but is unable to work outside the home at this time. She is worried that any financial aid will keep her from getting benefits.

Cassandra hired an attorney to puruse her son's legal rights against the driver who ran into him. Her attorney is hopeful for a recovery and believes the recovery may exceed one million dollars.

In the next several months, she is expecting a property tax rebate of $400.00/year. Her car is worth retail value of $8,500.00 She has $150.00 in her checking account and $500.00 in her savings account. Her condo is paid in full and is worth about $50,000. This was a settlement in her divorce. Her monthly condo association dues are $225.00 per month. She has $500.00 in sewing equipment. When she has spare time, she tailors for extra money. She does not have a steady income from this. She is three months in arrears for the condo association dues. The association is threatening legal action.

Emily has a checking account with a $600.00 balance. Currently Emily is the only one listed on the account. Emily wants Cassandra to be listed on the account too. Emily has $1,000 in stock which she listed Casssandra as a joint owner. Cassandra was unaware of this until just last month.

About ten days ago, Cassandra received a notice of terminiation of benefits from Hennepin County Department of Economic Assistance. The county will terminate her benefits effective Deceber 1, 2009. She will lose her MFIP-S benefits, food stamps, and medical assistance benefits.
Please use the following sources and any others that may be applicable. Thank you.

http://www.povertylaw.org/poverty-law-library/research-guides
https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/pubs/
http://povertylaw.homestead.com/files/Reading/TRM_27287111thEdition2005.pdf
http://povertylaw.homestead.com/ResidentialUnlawfulDetainer.html

I need help with this assignment Law Profile Paper HSM 230

The agency I choose is Sunrise Foster Senior Community.(this agen cy do not exist but I created for my final paper). This agency promotes wellness for senior and older adults with disabilities. Also provide educational & recreational activities and new programs such as senior employment programs for low income seniors.

The law I choose is Older American Act (OAA) in 1965.

Write a 1,200 word minimum paper in APA format (Axia Writing Style Guide) that answers all of the following questions. Use the provided grading rubric as a guide in completing the paper:

? What is the law?
? What peer-reviewed UoP Library Database resources are available to learn about the implications of this law, if any?
? What is the purpose or rationale of the law?
? How will the law affect day-to-day operations within the human service organization you are developing?
? What are the arguments for the law? Against the law?
? Reference/cite established opinions of the law.
? Present an evaluative decision about the impact the law has on the clients and the organization if the law is not followed. Ensure the clients and the organizations are addressed separately.
? Use logical inquiry and problem solving to arrive at a recommendation or an evaluative decision.
? Include at least two sources with one being peer-reviewed from UoP Library Databases to support your recommendation.
? USE APA WRITING STYLE per the guide posted. Run the Plagiarism check via Turnitin and upload it as a separate attachment in the assignment link along with the Certificate of Originality.
? Post your completed paper as an attachment


I will provide 2 websites (1 peer-reviewed from University of Phoenix and other from the internet)

Dept. of Health and Human Services (Administration on Aging)
Older Americans Act and Aging Network

http://www.aoa.gov/aoaroot/aoa_programs/oaa/introduction.aspx

Peer-reviewed (Univ. of Phoenix)
From the great society to the aging society - 25 years of the older americans act.

Authors:Binstock, Robert H..
Source:Generations, Summer/Fall91, Vol. 15 Issue 3, p11-18, 8p.
Document Type:Article.
Subject Terms:OLD age assistance -- Law & legislation
OLDER people -- Legal status, laws, etc.
SOCIAL change
SOCIAL goals
LAW
LEGISLATIVE bills.
Geographic Terms:UNITED States.
Abstract:Discusses the history and achievements of the Older Americans Act which was passed in 1965. Fundamental features during the 1960s and 1970s; Broad focus on all persons aged 60 and older; Gap between the social goals proclaimed in the legislation and the meager funds and limited authority; Fragmentation of implementing authority among government entities; Reauthorization of the act in 1991..
Lexile:1410.
Full Text Word Count:5803.
ISSN:07387806.
Accession Number:9707290001.
Database: MasterFILE Premier...

When the Older Americans Act (OAA) became law as a grant-in-aid program in 1965, few sectors of American society, were even aware the complex societal challenges generated by population aging and the innumerable day-to-day issues confronted by older persons (Morris and Binstock, 1966). In the quarter of a century since, the OAA administered by the Administration on Aging (AoA), U.S.Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)--has been an excellent vehicle for identifying and emphasizing the challenges and issues of an aging society Its accomplishments, at the least, include (1) continuous and dynamic identification of needs of older persons; (2) creation and exemplification of strategies, programs, and services for meeting those needs; (3) provision of tangible and intangible help to innumerable older Americans; (4) development of a nationwide infrastructure for helping older persons, comprising 57 State Units on Aging, 670 Area Agencies on Aging, and about 25,000 associated service-providing agencies; and (5) recruitment and socialization of thousands of carer professionals to the field of aging.

The expansive social policy context in which the OAA was created, however, came to an end about a dozen years ago. Since then, social policy retrenchment has been in vogue, and the general political environment--previously supportive of almost any policy proposals to benefit aging persons--has become increasingly hostile to older people.

During the evolution of these changes in the broader political environment, the level of federal funding for the OAA has not grown significantly. It has become apparent that the networks--in its present mode of operation--cannot begin to achieve the comprehensive social goals set forth in the legislation. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, congressional leaders have persistently asked whether the funds and the energy. expended through the OAA might be used with greater leverage or in a substantially different fashion. As the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging has observed regarding the OAA, "It is dear that Congress will need to go beyond the incremental changes in reforming the act, to enhance and further the goals it set for itself and the Nation back in 1965" (U.S. Senate, 1985, p. 270). As the OAA faces congressional reauthorization in 1991, beginning its second quarter of a century, its overarching mission is unclear.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The creation of the OAA and its development into a nationwide network of services to older persons took place in a general context of American domestic politics that was rather different from today's. From the early 1960s through the mid-1970s the policy environment for social programs was expansive, starting with President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and continuing through President Richard Nixoh's New Federalism. Public sources for addressing social problems were perceived to be plentiful, and there were fewer debates than today over the wisdom and propriety of public initiatives to solve social problems. Virtually any social issue that could be well articulated as a matter deserving of national attention became legitimated as an appropriate issue for federal intervention.

The political atmosphere was especially favorable to programs for older persons. Prior to the late 1970s the predominant stereotypes of older per-sons in American society were compassionate. Elderly persons were seen as poor, frail, socially dependent, objects of discrimination and, above all, deserving. For some 40 years--dating from the Social Security Act of 1935--American society accepted the notion that all older persons are essentially the same and worthy of some form of governmental help. Our national and state governments acted on this perception by adopting and financing major old age benefit programs and tax and price subsidies for which eligibility is determined by age rather than need. Through Social Security, Medicare, the Older Americans Act, tax privileges for being aged 65 or older, "senior citizen discounts," and a variety of other measures, elderly persons were exempted from many of the "means tests"--income and asset screenings--that are applied to other Americans to determine whether they qualify for public assistance.

During the 1960s and the 1970s just about any issue or problem that advocates for the elderly could identify as affecting some subgroup of the older population became a governmental responsibility toward all older persons: income maintenance; insurance for private pensions and healthcare; nutritional, legal, supportive, and recreational services; housing; home repair; energy assistance; transportation; help in getting jobs; protection against being fired or compulsorily retired from jobs; special mental health programs; a separate National Institute on Aging; and so on. By the mid-1970s a congressional committee, using loose criteria, identified 134 federal programs benefiting older citizens, overseen by 49 committees and subcommittees of the Congress (U.S. House of Representatives, 1977).

THE OAA: A POLICY OF THE 1960S & 1970S
Three of the fundamental features of the OAA, as it has evolved to date, reflect the Political context of that earlier era. One defining element has been a broad focus on all persons aged 60 and older as the constituency of the OAA and its programs. Another basic characteristic has been an incredible gap between the ambitious social goals proclaimed in the legislation and the meager funds and limited authority that Congress has made available to achieve them. A third feature has been a considerable amount of diffusion, both in the types of programs and services offered by the OAA and in the fragmentation of implementing authority among federal, state, and local entities.

The congressional sponsors of the 1965 legislation, Senator Pat McNamara of Michigan and Representative John Fogarty of Rhode Island, made it dear in committee hearings and floor discussions that the OAA was to be of service to all older persons, regardless of income status. The sponsors were especially concerned that program for the aging not be stigmatized as welfare programs for the poor (Porter, 1991). The universality of the older Americans constituency to be served by the OAA has been expressed tangibly since then through the distribution of federal funds to the states under Title III--Grants for State and Community Programs on Aging. The states receive proportional shares of funds through a legislative formula based on the population 60 years of age and older in each state as a proportion of the national total of persons aged 60 and older (OAA, 1989, Sec. 304, a, 1).

Particularly reflective of the 1960s and 1970s is the extraordinarily ambitious range of policy goals set forth in the OAA's Tide I--Declaration of Objectives, which has undergone little change in the past 25 years: "(1) An adequate income in retirement. ... (2) The best possible physical and mental health. . . . (3) ... suitable housing. ... (4) Full restorative services for those who require institutional care, and a comprehensive array of community-based, long-term care services (5) Opportunity for employment (6) Retirement in health, honor, dignity. ... (7) . . . meaningful activity within the widest range of civic, cultural, educational and training, and recreation opportunities. . . . (8) Efficient community services, including access to low-cost transportation. ... (9) Immediate benefit from proven research knowledge. ... (10) Freedom, independence and the free exercise of individual initiative ..."(OAA, 1989, Sec. 101).

The amounts of money that Congress authorized for the first three years of OAA operation--$6.5, $11, and $16.95 million--bore no relationship to the magnitude of the tasks implied by the bold objectives proclaimed in the legislation. The funds were primarily used for modest ad hoc grants to public and voluntary organizations within the respective states, to plan, operate, and demonstrate programs such as multi-purpose senior centers, municipal councils on aging, and a variety of social services such as homemaker and home health, information and referral, friendly visiting, and telephone reassurance.

Appropriations grew in small annual increments until 1973, when they jumped sharply--by 248 percent, from $61 to $212 million--to fund both a newly authorized nutrition services program and the development of a nationwide network of Area Agencies on Aging that was to plan, arrange for, coordinate, and advocate for services within each state. Since then smaller incremental annual increases have brought the total appropriation to $1.25 billion in fiscal 1990 (U.S. Senate, 1990).

What appears to be a steady increase in funds appropriated for the OAA over the past 25 years, however, is misleading. If the dollar amounts are adjusted for inflation, OAA appropriations reached a peak in fiscal 1981, the last budget year during President Carter's administration, and have de-dined substantially in constant dollar values since then (U.S. House of Representatives, 1984). Moreover, the relative insignificance of the funds appropriated for achieving O/AA goals can be appreciated by comparing them with expenditures on other programs assisting aging Americans. In fiscal 1990, for example, Medicare expenditures (U.S. Congress. 1991, p. 152) and Social Security payments to older persons (U.S. Senate, 1991, p. 204) totaled $343.2 billion, or 275 times the OAKs appropriation.

The token amount of funds available for achieving the OAKs ambitious objectives is a characteristic of many social programs that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than risk the displeasure of social-issue advocates by resisting their requests for innumerable policy initiatives, Congress dealt with an overload of demands by creating thinly funded programs that demonstrated congressional responsiveness to social issues. The funds made available were essentially symbolic because their magnitude bore no realistic relationship to the dramatic policy objectives proclaimed in legislation. Issue constituencies were appeased by having specially earmarked programs through which they could share in "the social pork barrel" (Stockman, 1975). And the generalities of legislation enabled Congress not only to evade inherent political conflicts embodied in social issues but to pass them on to the states and localities along with substantial discretionary authority for spending the sparse funds made available to them.

Title Ill of the OAA, as amended through the present, is a classic example of this social policy formula. It provides funds for services, planning, advocacy coordination, evaluation, and administration to each state that designates a State Unit on Aging (SUA). These SUAs, in turn, subdivide their respective states into Planning and Service Areas (PSAs) and designate an Area Agency, on Aging (AAA) as an administrative entity, for each PSA. The legislation authorizes AAAs, in accordance with plans submitted to SUAs, to expend federal funds on nutrition services; senior centers; a broad range of supportive and outreach services, including 40 services explicitly described in the statute; and "any other services ... necessary for the general welfare of older individuals" (OAA, 1989, Sec. 321, a, 19).

This omnibus Title III of the OAA is a prototype of the formula that enabled Congress to demonstrate its social responsiveness and gain political triumphs in the 1960s and 1970s. AoA and other implementing agencies could demonstrate results relatively quickly and tangibly, without achieving policy goals, by reporting on the entities and programs established, dollars distributed among constituencies throughout the nation, and the number and types of clients served. Some interest groups and service providers that were unable to gain access to the limited funds available may have complained, but national politicians could sympathetically refer them back to the semiautonomous state and local implementing agencies. Moreover, excluded constituencies could always be accommodated through inclusion in subsequent amendments, such as Title VI--Grants for Native Americans, added to the OAA in 1978.

Much of the development of the Title III network took place in the 1960s and 1970s under the leadership of the first three U.S. commissioners on aging, responsible for administering the OAA. The top priority of the first commissioner. William D. Bechill, 1965-1969, was to mobilize the grant-in-aid program. Facilitating speedy qualification of designated SUAs, and building congressional support for the program, he assured the OAA's survival. John D. Martin, 1969-1975, consolidated Bechill's successful work, particularly through the implementation of area wide model projects that demonstrated the capacities of states to pool existing resources together with OAA funds to establish selected state and local service-delivery systems.

Succeeding Martin, from 1973 through 1978, was Arthur S. Flemming who had served as secretary, of Health, Education and Welfare under President Eisenhower. Flemming led the development of the Nationwide Network of Aging Services, authorized through 1973 amendments to the OAA (see Gold, 1974). By the end of Flemming's tenure, the Tide III network included more than 550 AAAs, 1,100 multipurpose senior centers, and 9,700 nutrition sites. Without Flemming's leadership in developing this nationwide service structure, it is probable that the OAA would have been folded into a block grant in the 1980s when the Reagan administration emphasized elimination of governmental agencies and regulations. Moreover, Flemming was the first commissioner to emphasize his offices legislated authorization to exercise leadership on issues of aging within the federal government, In less than one year, for example, he negotiated some 20 interagency agreements between AoA and such agencies as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Ficke, 1985, p. 16).

THE POLITICS OF AUSTERITY & 'INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY'
Since the late 1970s, governmental social programs have been in retreat, and the climate of American politics and public discourse has become increasingly hostile to older persons, in general. Public resources are perceived as scarce. A need to "reduce the deficit" is a rhetorical mainstay of domestic politics. "Containing healthcare costs" is widely considered to be one of the major goals of our society. Population aging is commonly viewed as worsening each of these problems--and others as well. More than 28 percent of the annual federal budget, or over $350 billion, is expended on benefits to older persons (U.S. Congress, 1991, pp. 141, and 152). Persons aged 65 and older, 12.6 percent of our population, account for one-third of the nation's annual healthcare expenditures (U.S. House of Representatives 1989, p. 4), or about $200 billion our of a total $600 billion in 1990, Because the elderly population is growing, absolutely and proportionally--from about 32 million persons today to an estimated 68 million, 23 percent of our population in the year 2040 (U.S. Senate, 1989, p. 4)--there is much anxiety about the costs of governmental expenditures on older people in the future.

Within this context the long-standing compassionate stereotypes of older persons have been undergoing an extraordinary reversal, which began in the late 1970s. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, a new set of images--as inaccurate as were the earlier stereotypes--have depicted older persons as prosperous, hedonistic, politically powerful, and selfish. The epithet "greedy geezers," first unveiled in 1988 (Fairlie, 1988), has become a familiar phrase in journalistic accounts of federal budget politics (Salholz, 1990). Images of the prosperous, hedonistic, and selfish elderly have laid a foundation upon which the aged have emerged as a scapegoat for an impressive list of American problems, including the injustices experienced by poor children, the declining status of the U.S. economy, and the high costs of healthcare (see Binstock and Post, 1991).

The various problems for which elderly people have become a scapegoat have been thematically unified as issues of "intergenerational equity" through the efforts of Americans for Generational Equity (AGE), a Washington-based interest group formed in 1985. AGE's primary credo is the proposition that today's older people are winning an intergenerational war with younger age cohorts regarding the distribution of public resources (Quadagno, 1989). This construct of intergenerational conflict has been widely adopted in the media as a routine theme for describing many social policy issues, and has also gained currency in elite sectors of American society. In a recent speech, for instance, the president of the prestigious American Association of Universities warned that "the shape of the domestic federal budget inescapably pits programs for the retired against every other social purpose dependent on federal funds, in the present and the future" (Rosenzweig, 1990, p. 6).

The notion that there is a war between generations also seems to have captured the mind-set of powerful members of Congress. For example, as Congress ended its 1989 session, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, observed: "One of the most unhappy results of our ongoing budget gridlock has been an uneven contest between the very young and the very., old. ..." He said that "the sad story of the 1980s" was that "the old have gotten more while the young have gotten less" (Tolchin, 1989). There were, in actuality, no legislative choices or contests between "the very young and the very old" during the decade, and the old did not get "more." But the very fact that Rostenkowski was willing to characterize congressional activity in the 1980s in these terms reflects the general trend through which the flamework of inter-generational equity has become a conventional perspective for describing tradeoffs in health and social welfare policies.

THE OAA IN THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
Within this larger political context of the past dozen years, dominated by rhetorical themes of fiscal austerity and intergenerational conflict, the commissioners on aging who followed Flemming assumed that there would be no major expansion of resources for the OAA and attempted to focus the efforts of the network on selected priorities. Robert C. Benedict, 1978-1981, emphasized service and advocacy, for frail and vulnerable elderly persons. His top priority was the development of "a comprehensive array of community-based long-term care services," a goal that has been one of the few significant additions made to the Declaration of Objectives in the OAA since 1965 (OAA, 1989, Sec. 101, 4). Lennie-Marie E Tolliver, 1981-1984, focused on collaboration between public, voluntary, and private sectors in the provision of services. She also emphasized preventive health measures; indeed, she frequently characterized her constituency of older Americans as the "wellderly." Carol Fraser Fisk, 1984-1989, emphasized "capacity building" in every. community of the nation. Recognizing that the limited AoA appropriations could not begin to support the volume of services needed by older Americans, she challenged the network to build, through advocacy in every. community, a system of services--public, voluntary, and private--that would be readily available to provide effective help to older Americans and their families.

The priority of the present commissioner, Joyce Berry, is a National Elder-care Campaign focused on in-home and community-based services to help older persons who are at risk of losing their independence. By holding 250 community forums over the next several years, she aims to develop local action plans based on coalitions of resources from the local chapters of several dozen organizations that have nationwide affiliates--professional, business, labor, and public sector associations; secular and religious social action and charitable federations; and the American Red Cross, the American Library Association, and other federations of community-based organizations.

ISSUES IN THE 1991 OAA REAUTHORIZATION
As we begin the 1990s, the OAA does not have a central defining mission. It still carries forward some of its basic characteristics from the earlier political context in which it was created and developed: a universal constituency of persons aged 60 and older; a huge gap between the act's declared objectives and the skimpy funding available for achieving them; and a diffusion of goals and federal, state, and local implementing authority. The issues and proposals for OAA amendments that have surfaced during the 1991 process of congressional reauthorization of the act express these ongoing themes and also illustrate substantial fragmentation among the component parts of the network and its constituencies.

The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (N4A), the professional organization representing many of the 670 AAAs, has proposed that AAAs be designated a coordinator for all federal programs at the local level. It also proposes that the network be authorized to have the "lead role" in the development and management of a national community-based long-term-care system, and be authorized to fund such efforts through contracts and other arrangements with private, for-profit firms (N4A, 1991).

The National Council on the Aging (NCOA), a confederation of social service organizations and individuals providing direct services to older persons, opposes N4A's proposal to provide leadership in long-term care on the grounds that the "major focus of the OAA is to promote and maintain health and foster independence"; accordingly it favors a substantial investment of funds in a health promotion program. It also regards N4A's vision of partnerships between for-profit firms and the publicly supported network as a potential conflict of interest (NCOA, 1991).

The major proposal of the National Association of State Units on Aging (NASUA), the professional organization representing SUAs, is the enactment of a new Title VII--Grants for State Elder Rights Programs, which would include the following components under state control: long-term-care ombudsman programs for both in-home and institutional care services; programs to deal with the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of older persons; a legal services program; a benefits counseling program, covering public entitlements and private insurance: and an outreach program. NASUA also wants legislation that would enable SUAs to have control over AAAs with respect to the uses of any private funds that may come under their control and to ensure that such uses serve a "public purpose" (NASUA, 1990).

One of the amendments offered by the Bush administration would authorize states to permit or require service providers under Title III to engage in cost-sharing, that is, charge fees to older persons who have incomes that are more than 200 percent of the federal government's official poverty line. The administration envisions that the revenues from fees would be used for targeting additional services to older persons with comparatively greater need than those who pay fees (Sullivan, 1991). The network is presently allowed to seek "voluntary contributions" for services and apply the revenue for expansion of services.

N4A generally rejects cost-sharing on the grounds that it is an income test for eligibility. Yet it makes a rather substantial exception by advocating cost-sharing for in-home services to long-term-care patients and their families, which presumably would be a major source of revenue for the role that N4A proposes for itself as the principal developer and manager of community-based care systems throughout the nation. NASUA supports the general principle of cost-sharing, provided that the incomes of older persons are determined through a simple self-declaration. However, NASUA does not want fees applied to advocacy and access services that are at the core of its proposed Wide Vii--Grants for State Elder Rights Programs.

NCOA vociferously opposes the administration's proposal for cost-sharing. It views Title III services as an "enddement" for all older persons, regardless of income, and asserts that enactment of a cost-sharing amendment "would be a betrayal of trust of all older Americans" (Porter, 1991). In addition, NCOA argues that those older persons who would not be required to pay, particularly low-income minority older persons, would likely view the program as welfare and withdraw altogether rather than be stigmatized through participation. Interest groups that advocate for minority populations among the elderly--black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific, and Native American--share this view. The American Association for Retired Persons, an organization with some 35 million members, has not taken a stand on this issue, perhaps because of the political weaknesses it exposed when it supported the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988.

These and other issues that have surfaced in the 1991 reauthorization process are similar to those that were debated in the 1978, 1981, 1984, and 1987 reauthorizations. In fact, one specific current issue--the extent to which Title III services should be targeted to low-income minority, elderly individuals--has been an ongoing matter of controversy since 1972 (see O'Shaughnessy, 1991a). Two recent Federal District Court cases (Appalachian Agency j;or Senior Citizens v. Ferguson, 1988; Meek v. Martinez, 1987) and a General Accounting Office report (U.S. Congress, 1990), which indicated that AoA has not been aggressive in fulfilling some of its responsibilities for administering targeting policies, have spurred the Bush administration, the organizations representing components of the network, and most of the constituency organizations to favor some form of policy changes for increasing allocations of funds and services to low-income minority populations.

THE FUTURE OF THE OAA?
As the OAA begins its second quarter of a century, the larger context of domestic politics is such that substantial increases in public resources for policies designed to help older persons, categorically, seem unlikely. In the Medicare program, for example, out-of-pocket deductibles, copayments, and Part B premiums are likely to increase, and the Social Security benefits of older persons in higher income ranges are likely to be taxed even more than at present. Even if a major expansion of public long-term-care insurance is enacted by Congress, it will likely be designed as a generic program for persons of all ages and not as an earmarked program for older persons (see Binstock et al., in press). And it is most unlikely that the OAA will receive a major infusion of additional resources.

In this political milieu, Congress and all parties interested in the OAA will be pressed, increasingly, to confront some very basic issues. What is the national policy underlying the continued existence of the Title III network? Can the funds and efforts expended on it be used more effectively in other ways? Can it be built upon and reshaped to play a new role that makes sense in the contemporary context?

The 1991 reauthorization of the OAA is unlikely to resolve these fundamental issues or provide a clear, overarching sense of mission for the Tide Ill network. Most of the changes presently considered call for minor, incremental adjustments in the funding patterns and allocation of service programs through Title III. NASUA's proposal for a new Title VII, elder rights programs, may be enacted and thereby add to the broad portfolio of programs authorized by the act. But even so, it will not change substantially the OAA's mission or the low level of funding.

Although the Administration's proposal for cost-sharing has engendered heated controversy on the grounds that it will introduce a "welfare" stigma to participation in OAA programs, in fact the vast majority of state governments already employ mandatory cost-sharing in major programs serving older persons (O'Shaughnessy, 1991b). Moreover, cost-sharing in OAA programs would simply be an extension of an established trend in congressional action on major policies that affect older Americans.

For nearly 10 years Congress has been actively expressing a clear and consistent theme--that economic diversity among older persons should be taken into account in the provisions of major public policies. The Social Security Reform Act of 1983 began this trend by taxing Social Security benefits for recipients in higher income brackets. The Tax Reform Act of 1986, even as it eliminated the extra personal exemption that had been available to all persons 65 years and older when filing their federal income tax returns, provided new tax credits to very low-in-come older persons on a sliding scale. And the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 continued this legislative approach in two respects, through its progressive taxation provisions and its requirement that Medicaid pay for the Part B premiums and cost-sharing expenses for Medicare enrollees who have incomes below the poverty line. (Although the former provision was repealed in 1989, the latter remains in effect.)

One of the few public proposals for fundamental change that has surfaced in recent years is N4A's notion that AAAs should play the lead role in developing and managing a nationwide system of public/private partnerships in community-based long-term care. Although this proposal is very unlikely to be adopted in the 1991 reauthorization because of its controversial elements, it implicitly raises some basic issues concerning the future foie of the OAA.

For example, should the Title III network concentrate its efforts on just one or a few priority types of services, more or less to the exclusion of others? One or a few types of older client such as frail and, perhaps, low-income minority elderly persons, to the exclusion of others? Since community-based care is required by more than twice as many adults under the age of 65 than by persons aged 65 and older (see Gornick et al., 1985, pp. 22-23), should the mission of the OAA be broadened to serve clients of all ages, and should it be funded accordingly? Should responsibility for community-based care and nursing home care be in the hands of different agencies? Should the OAA network attempt to become the major provider of any type of public service for older persons? Or should its role be to identify and exemplify new types of important services to be provided, subsequently, on a much bigger scale through Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other large programs of the state and federal governments? Should it concentrate on helping older persons and their families locate and arrange for services, and leave the responsibilities of direct service provision to the tens of thousands of other public, nonprofit, and private agencies that already provide them (see Binstock, 1987)? These and many other issues concerning possible future missions of the OAA have hardly been addressed, let alone agreed upon.

One issue on which NASUA, N4A, NCOA, and other constituencies of the OAA are united, however, is the desirability of elevating the U.S. commissioner on aging to the position of assistant secretary on aging within DHHS, so that the interests of older Americans might be better represented within the department and with other federal agencies. To be sure, the commissioner on aging has always been legislatively authorized to "serve as the effective and visible advocate for the elderly within DHHS and with other departments, agencies and instrumentalities of the Federal Government. ..." (OAA. 1989, Sec. 202, a, 1). But, for a variety of bureaucratic reasons, it has been difficult for most of the commissioners to fulfill this role in a visible fashion. At present the commissioner reports directly to the DHHS secretary.

This united plea for an assistant secretary on aging may, at bottom, reflect a desire for the network to break out of the diffuse, fragmented, and underfunded mode of operations that it has developed and maintained over the past 25 years. What seems to be expressed is the hope that an assistant secretary, might provide sufficient leadership to transcend the multitude of special interests that now constitute the network and articulate and implement a vision, an overriding sense of purpose for the future. It would be most fitting if the OAA, which has served so well in helping us to recognize and meet the challenges of aging, could now find a new and revitalized role within the aging society over the next quarter of a century.

REFERENCES
Appalachian Agency for Senior Citizens v. Ferguson, 1988. 702 F.Supp. 1262 (W.D. Va.).

Binstock, R. H., 1987. "Title III of the Older Americans Act: An AnaLysis and Proposal for the 1987 Reauthorization." Gerontologist 27(3):259-265.

Binstock, R. H. and Post, S. G., eds., 1991. Too Old for Health Care? Controversics in Medicine, Law, Economics, and Ethics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Binstock, R. H., Post, S. G. and White-home, P. J., in press. "The Challenges of Dementia." In R. H. Binstock, S. G. Post, and P. J. Whitehouse, eds., Dementia and Aging: Ethics, Values, and Policy Choices. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fairlie, H., 1988. "Talkin' 'bout My Generation." New Republic 198(13): 19-22.

Ficke, S.C., ed., 1985. OAA--1965-1985, 20th Anniversary: An Orientation to the Older Americans Act. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Stare Units on Aging.

Gold, B. D., 1974. "The Role of the Federal Government in the Provision of Social Services to Older Persons." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 415:55-69.

Gornick, M. et al., 1985. "Twenty Years of Medicare and Medicaid: Covered Populations, Use of Benefits, and Program Expenditures." Health Care Financing Review (Annual Supplement): 13-59.

Meek v. Martinez, 1987. United States District Court, Southern District of Florida. Case No. 87-1233-CIV-KEHOE (December 11).

Morris, R., and Binstock, R. H., 1966. Feasible Planning for Social Change. New York: Columbia University Press.

N4A (National Association of Area Agencies on Aging), 1991. Recommendations for the 1991 Reauthorization of the Older Americans Act. Washington, D.C.

NASUA (National Association of State Units on Aging), 1990. Older Americans Act 1991 Reauthorization: Policy Statement, December, 1990. Washington, D.C.

NCOA (National Council on the Aging, Inc.), 1991. Position Statement on the Older Americans Act Reauthorization Washington, D.C. Mimeo.

OAA, (Older Americans Act), 1989. The Older Americans Act of 1965, As Amended Through December 31, 1988. Prepared for the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Education of the House of Representatives (Serial No. 101-A) and for the Special Committee on Aging of the United States Senate (Serial No. 101-B). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

O'Shaughnessy, C., 1991a. Targeting Services to Older Persons Under Title III of the Older Americans Act. Memorandum to the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Subcommittee on Aging. Congressional Research Service, Library, of Congress. March 13.

O'Shaughnessy, C., 1991b. Older Americans Act: 1991 Reauthorization and FY 1991 Budget Issues. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. May 2.

Porter, D. M., 1991. "Public Policy Report." Perspective on Aging May/June:31.

Quadagno, J., 1979. "Generational Equity and the Politics of the Welfare State." Politics and Society 17(3):353-76.

Rosenzweig, P.M. 1990. Address to the President's Opening Session, 43rd Annual Scientific Meeting, the Gerontological Society of America. Boston: November 1

Salholz, E., 1990. "Blaming the Voters: Hapless Budgeteers Single Out 'Greedy Geezers.'" Newsweek, October 29:36.

Stockman. D. A. (1975). "The Social Pork Barrel." The Public Interest 39:3-30.

Sullivan, L. W., 1991. Letter and enclosure to The Honorable Thomas S. Foley, Speaker of the House of Representatives. May 20.

Tolchin, M., 1989. "Lawmakers Tell the Elderly: 'Next Year' on Health Care." New York Times, November 23:10Y.

U.S. Congress, Congressional Budget Office, 1991. The Economic and Budget Outlook: Fiscal Years 1992-1996. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

U.S. Congress, General Accounting Office, 1990. Older Americans Act: Administration on Aging Does Not Approve Intrastate Funding Formulas. Washington, D.C.: GAO/HRD-90-85.

U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Aging, 1977. Federal Responsibility to the Elderly: Executive Proton, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Committee Publication # 95-97.

U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Aging, Subcommitee on Human Services, 1984. Older Americans Act: A Staff Summary Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Committee Publication #98-482.

U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Aging, 1989. Health Care Costs For America's Elderly, 1977-1988. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

U.S Senate, Special Committee on Aging, 1985. Developments in Aging: 1984, Volume 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Report #99-5.

U.S. Senate, Special Committee on Aging, 1989. Aging America: Trends and Projections. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

U.S. Senate, Special Committee on Aging, 1990. "Older Americans Act Information Sheet." Older Americans Act Seminar. Washington, D.C.: January 31. Photocopy.

U.S. Senate, Special Committee on Aging, 1991. Developments in Aging: 1990 Washington, D.C.: 102nd Congress, 1st Session. Government Printing Office. Report #102-28.

~~~~~~~~

By ROBERT H. BINSTOCK


Robert H. Binstock, Ph.D., is the Henry Lute Professor of Aging, Health, and Society at Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio. His latest book, coedited with Stephen G. Post, is Too Old for Health Care? Controversies in Medicine, Law, Economics and Ethics (Johns Hopkins University Press).

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Pick an administrative agency and explain its function and how it is organized. An example would be the Social Security Administration and what its function is or the State Attorney's Office, Probation/Pre trial Release etc. It must be a government administrative agency. You must use a scholarly journal resource use APA style.

Your assignment is to write a paper of no more than one page in length

In Unit 3, you will compose a Reflection Paper.
Read the Guidelines for a Reflection Paragraph (see below)
Read the Guide to Writing a Successful Reflection Paragraph (see below)
This guide presents two sample reflection paragraphs, along with comments about the successful and unsuccessful aspects of the paragraphs. Use the guide to explore potential strategies for responding to assignments in this class and to learn the general habits of successful writers. Remember that the main purpose of this guide is to demonstrate the process of writing successful position paragraphs, not to give any particular insights into course materials.
Preparing for and completing your project.
Your task is to write a paragraph that analyzes one specific idea from this week's course content. You choose which idea to write about; in this assignment, reflect deeply on a topic that matters to you. If you need help selecting a topic, consult with your instructor.
Complete your reflection paragraph. You should write about a topic that strikes you as interesting, important, and relevant. For example, if, when reading the assigned chapter in the text, you recalled a personal situation involving biomedical practices that you thought was unethical, you might write a reflection paragraph about how that situation relates to your reading. The point of the assignment is for you to reflect deeply on one concept from business ethics and its relevance to your own life. If you find it difficult to select a topic to write about or have any questions about how your paper should be organized, please consult your instructor.
Guidelines for Reflection Papers

Reflection Papers require concise, focused, and organized writing. Your assignment is to write a paper of no more than one page in length (and, preferably, no more than one paragraph -- see below) that analyzes one specific ethical idea from the current course material. You choose the idea to write about; the point of the assignment is to reflect deeply on a topic that matters to you. If you need help selecting a topic, consult your instructor. In general, a good strategy is to write about whatever you consider to be the most important (or interesting, relevant, controversial, wrongheaded, or strange) point raised in the reading.

What exactly do you need to do?

Review the supplemental materials. Make sure you have read the assignment carefully enough to be able to make a considered judgment about your topic. Remember: Your Reflection Paper must focus on a single topic, so make sure that you have identified just one point to write about.

Review relevant Discussions. Take some good reading notes and try summarizing crucial points concisely and clearly.

Reflect on what you have uncovered, with an eye to forming your own opinion about the text and about the topic. Questions you might want to consider include:

Of the issues discussed in the text, which topics are most important to you?

How much ethical theory can you apply to your own experiences? Explain.

After applying ethical reasoning, would you view the situation differently? If yes, how so?

These reflections will provide the raw material for your Reflection Paper. Your paper should be a carefully crafted distillation and summary of your reflections. You may use up to one page, but a single, superb paragraph is preferable. Here's one format you can try:

First: A sentence that clearly and concisely identifies your topic. Your sentence should be free of jargon (or it should explain any jargon that is absolutely necessary), and it should immediately get to the heart of the matter. Don't start with a general introduction to your topic and then take four or five sentences to describe it -- your goal is to crystallize the essence of the topic in one excellent sentence.
Concision, clarity, and focus are crucial.

Second: A sentence that explains the philosophical significance of your topic. You can explain how it fits in with the rest of this week's assignment, how it connects up with other issues we have read about or discussed, how it has affected you or your life or why you find it important or interesting. You may spend several sentences doing each of these things if you wish, but an excellent sentence focusing on just one of them is vastly preferred to a mediocre "kitchen sink" answer.

Third: A sentence that sets out your opinion about this topic. To maintain focus and clarity, it is best to write about just one evaluative point as concisely and carefully as you can. Space may remain to raise a second point, but only do this if you are sure that the rest of your paper is just right.

Fourth: A sentence that provides the ethical reasoning that would support your opinion or stance on the issue: This sentence should clearly demonstrate your understanding of the ethical theory used (Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Ethics of Care or Kantian Ethics) to support your position.

Fifth: A statement of conclusion. Your conclusion should tie your thesis (specific issue) to your stance or opinion through the ethical reasoning to conclude an ethical position.

Leave yourself enough time to rewrite, edit, and proofread your paper. (Hint: A sufficiently clear, focused, and concise paper should "sound right" when you read it out loud, and should be reasonably clear to a friend who is not in the class.)
You can see examples of successful and unsuccessful Reflection Papers, as well as instructor comments and suggestions, in the "Guide to Writing a Successful Reflection Paper."
Guide to Writing a Successful Reflection Paper:
Example of Good Paper:

Utilitarianism in business is a consequential theory of ethics that can be summarized as seeking an outcome favorable for everyone affected ??" the greatest good for the greatest number. This theory assumes that what is best for the majority is the most ethically correct decision; however, as in all consequential theories of ethics, this can lead to unethical outcomes for the minority. For example, a limited view of industrialization has lead to a polluted environment in the rivers near my home. In order to be ethical, utilitarianism requires that individual take a long-term, wide-ranging view of their actions.

This paper begins with a clear thesis statement and defines the single topic.

Sentences two and three assert and illustrate a weakness in the utilitarianism. This reflection paper would have been much weaker without this concrete illustration.

Sentence four revisits the topic and provides a descriptive application to the problem presented.

This reflection paper contains a variety of sentence structures, an informed vocabulary and an error free presentation.

Unsuccessful Reflection Paper:

Ethics is a hard topic. One of the hard things about ethics is that there are so many different theories. One theory that I dont like is utilitarianism. It is not a fair theory because it can lead to people being hurt in the name of doing good. If a person only uses utilitarianism, then they will wind up hurting people that they dont know. If you are going to be a utilitarian, you should think about others too. Another theory is divine command theory is more like what I believe.

This paper begins with a general statement that does not advance the authors argument.

The topic is not stated until the third sentence. In a brief paper like this, it is best to only use the words required to make a point. All fluff and padding should be eliminated.

The fourth and fifth sentences are judgmental and imprecise. The illustration is not concrete and does not make a good point.

The sixth sentence appears to be a conclusion, but once again it is too general and does not apply the concept clearly.

The seventh sentence is completely off-topic and should be deleted.

This reflection paper does not contain a variety of sentence structures, does not use an informed vocabulary and does not contain an error free presentation.
this week's course content
Red Chapter 3 in "Bioethics in a Changing World"
Medicare: A program under the U.S. Social Security Administration that reimburses hospitals and physicians for medical care provided to qualifying people over 65 years old.
Medicaid: A program in the United States, jointly funded by the states and the federal government, which reimburses hospitals and physicians for providing care to qualifying people who cannot finance their own medical expenses.
Employment-based Health Insurance: The current system of health insurance in the United States.
Managed Care Organizations: Any arrangement in which, for a preset fee, an entity sells a defined set of medical care and administrative services to a sponsor of network of participating providers that operate under written contractual or employment agreements and whose selection and authority to furnish covered treatment is controlled by the entity.
Five Principles of universal health care, socialized medicine, and single payer system: Portability, accessibility, universality, comprehensiveness, and public administration.
Deinsurance: the process of uninsuring previously insured services.
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO): A corporation financed by insurance premiums whose member physicians and professional staff provide curative and preventive medicine within certain financial, geographic, and professional limits to enrolled volunteer members and their families.
Direct-to-consumer Advertising: A technique used by the pharmaceutical industry to advertise through magazines, television, radio, and the Internet directly to consumers.

Bioethics Resources:
These articles and links will help you prepare for the discussion and seminar this week.
Norman Daniels and Marc Roberts, Health Care Reform, The Hasting Centers Bioethics Briefing Book, chapter 18 http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/BriefingBook/Detail.aspx?id=2180



Unit 3 Overview
Justice and Health Care
Access to basic health care is a highly debated topic in American society. In unit three, we will explore the issues of universal health care, managed health care, racism in health care, and rationing health care

WEEK THREE CHAPTER:3 READING FROM BIOETHICS IN A CHANGING WORLD (SEE ATTACHED ADOBE ACROBAT FILE)
Reference:
Parks, J. A., & Wike, V. S. (2010). Bioethics in a changing world. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.


There are faxes for this order.

The Paper is to be a comprehensive research study on the public policy topic of Social Security.

Analysis of the topic should include:

The scope and nature of the public policy problem.
How the problem came to public and political awareness.
The evolution of related public policy.
Level of government and the actors involved.
The intergovernmental structure and political concerns.
Conflicting public opinion and impact on policy solutions.
The approaches to policy formulation, adoption, and evaluation.
The suggested policy direction (continuation, change or termination) and future impact.

The Paper:

1. Must be five double-spaced pages in length and formatted according to APA style.
2. Must begin with an introductory paragraph that has a concise thesis statement.
3. Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.
4. Must end with a conclusion that reiterates your thesis.
5. Must use 5 scholarly sources and document all sources in APA style.
6. Include a separate title and reference page formatted according to APA style.

There are faxes for this order.

WRITER PREFFERED : heatherk13

Directions:

Questions need to be answered thouroughly and needs to be addressed in detail with clarity. Please make sure that ALL questions are answered.

**The fax that will be sent will help with the paper and you are to use two or three sources to get your information.

Make sure that APA Style is to be used and reference page is also APA.
**********************************************************

Questions:
1) Which program was selected?
Important: This paper will be written on the social security program. It will be written ONLY on the elderly, and retirement. (Note: Tittle II pertains to that.)

2) What is the policy background for this program?

3) What are the challenges confronting the selected program?
Note: example: People that were self-employed don't have enough for retirement. Another example, People that worked for cash.
Example, The economy doesn't look good for us because back then people survived only until about age 50. Now we live till about 80 or older.

Those are examples you may use.

Thank you, Cynthia


There are faxes for this order.

I would like an Economics Opinion/Editorial ont the topic of the US Social Security system.

The paper should include a brief overview of the issue to include how the SS system works and what casued the projected shortage of funds to pay retirees.

The bulk of the Opinion/editorial paper should a focus on the economics of the issue and to discuss several alternative possibilities to remedy this economic challenge of not having enough money to pay future retiirees. Ok as part of that economic analysis to reference pros and cons of the few alternatives cited and any economic issues impacted by the alternatives.

The best paper should provide evidence in the economic analysis along with the economic theory behind the issues discussed and challenged in the opinion/editorial style paper.

The paper length is only about 800 words but to address the above, probably good to cite several sources of the information used.

Thank you.

Here's the assignment. Thank you in advance!

Please use headers to distinguish each question and please double space.

1. Give a brief summary of what Social Security is and how it works. Include when it started, what the purpose is and how it is funded and who is eligible.

2. What are the major concerns about Social Security today? Include statistics on the status of the fund, including when expenditures may exceed revenue and reasons why this may be occurring. Be sure to attribute sources.

3. Discuss the pros and cons of privatization (or partial privatization) as a reform. (You may use the "External Links" on Blackboard for groups that are for and against privatization).

4. What are the possible options for maintaining the current system?

To understand this issue further, review what the public thinks about Social Security privatization. Go to the Polling Report website listed at http://www.pollingreport.com. On the left side, click on "SEARCH." Type in "Social Security."

Begin by scrolling down to "Sampling Error" to get an understanding so that you can better interpret the polls. To further your understanding, go back and scroll down to "Questions" to gain insight into public opinion polling.

Now click on "Social Security" and answer the questions below. You may limit your responses to polls taken in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

5. Looking at the polls, how did support patterns for privatization differ among respondents (Democrats vs. Republicans vs. Independents; older vs. younger citizens, etc.). How can you explain these differences?

6. The polls show some variation in the responses. How can you account for these inconsistencies among the polls? Use specific examples to help explain your answer.

7. Go to "Problems and Priorities." How important an issue is Social Security? Do Americans consider it a major problem? How important is it in determining how they will vote for? How have the responses changed over time. What might explain these differences in results?

8. Give your opinion on whether you think Social Security should remain as is or whether reform is necessary. If you believe reform is necessary, explain which alternative you support.

I need a research paper about social security and retirement. The paper bascailly has to include critical views on social security, both opposing and for. The paper also must include how/if these views affect the way the government runs social security. Must also include basic information about social security such as theory behind it, what it is, what it does, what is the social security policy today and if so will it change and why. The paper mostly should be made up of the critical views but has to include everything else i''ve listed and anything else that may be necessary to make the paper flow...thanx P.S. i also need a works citied page. I put down i need 4 sources, but it wasnt specified, so whatever is necessary to write the paper is fine.

This paper is for a discrimination of Economics class. It needs to explore the question is there age discrimination against the young in The Social Security System? I would like at least 4 sources cited. I would like there to be at least 5 quoted sources, or citations. Also I need a complete bibliography page, but no footnotes necessary.

Instructions:

1) Discuss why Social Security is important for society.
2) Talk about the background/history of Social Security.
3) Mainly, discuss the impact or influence Social Security has on Public Personnel Administration.
4) What is the future like for Social Security.

NOTE: In citing, please include direct page numbers from the book (requested by professor). Bibliography must include the Edition of the book used. Please use a book that I can purchase from Amazon or at a bookstore.

Thank you again!

Paper needs to be Cited APA style. Its a social work paper about the Critical Analysis Model and Applied to Social Security Income: (SSI). I am sending 1 attachment with the instructions about the paper

There are faxes for this order.

Middle ground argument on privatizing Social Security. In a 1,000-word argument, develop and support a more practical position that is in the middle of two extreme claims

? Introduce an issue and explain why a middle position is appropriate at this time.
? Substantially and accurately summarize each extreme position with special emphasis on what makes each position impractical.
? Evaluate each position, identifying the shortcomings of each view.
? Prove why your position is more practical.

Topic is Social Security. Please discuss the history of it and what kind of short term and long term problems we are facing and solutions suggested to address these concerns.

Write a short page paper??"no longer than four pages??"comparing and contrasting our Social Security system with that of Canada. This paper should contain the following sections, with one or two paragraphs in each section: Introduction to the U.S. Social Security system (based on textbook readings) Introduction of the Canadian (or other) system (based on Internet or book research) Comparison of the systems (objective similarities between the systems) Contrast of the systems (objective differences between the systems) Evaluation of the current U.S. system against the other system (subjective analysis) Recommendations for improving the U.S. system based on your research. Use and cite/quote from at least five external sources, which may be any combination of online and/or paper research. Be sure to include a cited page using APA format. By necessity, due to its brevity, you will be covering broad concepts for this paper, not detailed specifics

This paper is about Social Security which is a goverment agency. Within this paper the following questions need to be answered: What is the social problem the program is designed to address? Who is the target population? Hwo are the services/assistance provided? What is the sources of funding? What role do social workers and social work profession play in this program? Is the Program successful? What are the changes in policy and program would you like to see and why?. I will fax items from required text book to be implemented in the paper. It is mandated to use text book materials as well as class discussion. Therefore I want to incoporate in this paper the plans of the Bush administration to privatize Social Security and I want this to be quoted as per class discussion. The book that I will fax the information to be cited Social Work, Social Welfare, and American Society, sixth edition, by Philip R. Popple adn Leslie Leighninger 2005. Please make sure the book pages are cited and that the materials faxed are being used. I faxed materials for a paper before and it was not used at all. I need to quote the book otherwise the paper is of no use to me and I will request reimbursement of my money if this material is not used. Also this paper is APA style only and APA is 1" all around. I am paying for 12 pages of work and that is what I want. The last material had many gaps in between paragraphs which ended in less pages than what I paid for.
There are faxes for this order.

My teacher already select 4 articles about my paper - Newsweek's Allan Sloan ( "Why your tax cut Doesn't add up), Newsweek's Jane Bryant Quinn (she compares the retirement-planning stories of several americans, noting that their success(or lack thereof) was driven by timing, investment skills and luck), Washington Post's William Raspberry (He questions President Bush's faith in the markets as an answer to Social Security's long-term solvency, saying that faith should be put to the test by having the Social Security trust fund shifted from government bonds to Wall Street stocks), and Post's reporters Jonathan Weisman and Ben White on Wednesday(they looked at some of the economic assumptions underpinning the president's Social Security plan)

PART ONE OF THE ASSIGNMENT---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 2 CASE ASSIGNMENT

Community library

You recently get a job offer from a local community library. The manager asks you to develop a database system to track customers and books they check out.

Task 1

Your initial assignment is to create a table for customers. The manager tells you that this table needs to track the following information: all customers' social security number, first and last name, address, city, state and zip code, email, phone number, birth date, and date of applying for a library card. Your task is to first "sketch" a customer table (basically what data items or columns should be included in the table) using the Customer_information table at background section as an example. Your table should contain the following:

Column heading include all the attributes that need to be in this table.
Populate the table with five records of data

Task 2

Your next task is to design one more table: Customer checkout table to track the books and CDs that the customer has checked out from the library. Customers and Customer Checkout table are related to one another.

The Customer table contains the basic data on each customer and the primary key is customer number. There is one row for each customer.

The Customer Checkout table contains the data for each book. The primary key consists of two pieces of data: Checkout number and customer number. One customer can check out 1 or more books/CDs at a time, but only one customer on a check out order.

Use the templates below to design the two tables.

"Templates" for Table Design

Customer Table

THE TEMPLATE SHOWN WAS JUST A TABLE THAT CONSIST OF 6 COLUMNS AND 4 ROWS.

Task 3

Draw an ER diagram of your complete design for the community library. You can use Visio, or Microsoft word feature to draw the chart, or write down the table schemata and describe the relationships among them.
Include half page report about your experience with this assignment.
Case assignment expectations

demonstrate understanding of using ER diagram to represent database design.
Correctly design tables based on requirement.



BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
So what is a database anyway? A database is a structure that holds organized data (raw facts) and information (data that are processed to answer questions) for storage, access, update, and manipulation. Very often, people confuse database with database management systems (DBMS), DBMS is software that we use to create and manipulate databases, e.g. DB2 which is used for this course, Access, and Oracle. The relationship between DBMS and Databases is similar to the homework file you create using Microsoft Office.

Compared to using flat files such as Microsoft Excel, databases offer many advantages:

it holds much more data
since the data and the applications that manipulate data is separate, it is easier for databases to keep data integrity
it can be accessed by multiple users at the same time (this claim needs to be modified now multiple users can access excel simultaneously using skydrive although it is not quite user friendly)
efficient operations through performance optimization.

There are many types of databases based on the manner that the data is stored, organized, and manipulated:

Hierarchical model
Network model
Relational model
Entity-relationship
Object-relational model
Object model

Modern DBMSs are quite user friendly, it is easy to build a database quickly without giving too much consideration about database design, that creates redundancies and anomaly later. Therefore, we strongly suggest you to resist this temptation, solid relational database design takes time and patience to learn. This course will cover database design methodology in module 3. The methodology of designing relational databases can be summarized into the following steps:

Determine the scope of the project and identify all relevant Entities and Relationships (module 1 and 2)
Use Entity Relationship diagram to capture these entities and relationship. (module 2)
Convert the ER model to a number of relations. (module 2 and 3
Go through a process called normalization to eliminate or reduce redundancy by splitting relations.(module 4)

Database design is a very important processing before you start creating databases. After we finish database design, we can use SQL (Structured Query Language) to create, populate, and manipulate databases.

For example, if the store is having promotion event in Long beach, use the following SQL statement to retrieve the customers' names who lives in Long beach:

SELECT Name

FROM Customer

WHERE city=Long Beach;

More details on SQL commands are introduced in Module 4.

As we mentioned earlier, there are many kinds of RDBMS(relational database management systems). The one used in this course is IBM DB2 Express-C since it is popular and it is free.

Data modeling

Data modeling is very important for database design. How the data is modeled will determine how the data will be accessed and manipulated. In module 1, we learned that there are various kinds of databases based on how data is modeled, e.g. hierarchical model, network model, relational data model, object-relational model, and object oriented model. The most popular data modeling is relational data model which is also the focus of this course. In a relational database design, generally speaking, the process is to:

Decide on the purpose of this database and scope of the project
agree upon the kinds of information you would like to retrieve from the database
identify all relevant entities and relationships
Note the difference between entities and attributes. For example, student is an entity (can also be called a table, or a relation), name and phone number are two of the attributes associated with the student entity.
Use ER diagram to describe the identified entities and relations
Convert the ER model to a number of relation schemas
Eliminate (or reduce) redundancy by splitting relations. This process is called normalization

Each relation (also called table in relational database modeling jargon) contains a collection of values associated with these attributes. For example, in module 1, we have the following Customer Information table.

Customer_information

Customer ID Name Phone number Email City

0000001 John Wayne (650)-718-9920 [email protected] Mountain View


0000002 John Smith (714)-110-8901 [email protected] Long Beach


0000003 Mary Jane (562)-456-3490 [email protected] Los Alamitos


In this module, we are going to use this table to introduce concepts that are important to database.

Tuple (record): Each table has a set of tuples which are ordered list of values. In this case, one tuple is

0000001 John Wayne (650)-718-9920 [email protected] mountain view

Attributes: Each table has a set of attributes that describe this table. For example in this case, Customer_ID, Name, Phone number, Email, and City are the attributes for Customer_information table. Each attribute has different data types such as varchar, float, etc. All attributes must have unique names in the table.
Primary key: Each table has an attribute or combination of attributes that could unique identify one record from the others. For example: Customer_ID can distinguish one student from others even if they have the same name.

Database design issues

Pay attention to the following when you design a database

Each field should have one discrete data. For example, it is better to have separate fields for street number, street name, city, state, and zip code than combining them into one field. Otherwise, it will e hard to retrieve one piece of data such as city when it is mixed with other data.
No missing value is allowed in primary key.
There should be no orphan tables in the database. Each table should be related to one or more than one table. When two tables are supposed to be related, there must be a field that relates the two databases.
There is no need for each table to connect to every other table in the database.
When two tables are in a one- to-many relationship, the primary key from the "one" table should be inserted as a foreign key in the "many" table, but not the other way around.
All field names must be unique in each table. However, DBMS allows same names in different tables. However, it is good practice to create unique names for all tables to make it easier to write query.
Make field name as descriptive as possible. Field1 and Field2 do not make much sense while writing queries.
Set up build in Constraints to ensure data are entered correctly. For example: phone number and zip codes should fit in specified format.
Referential integrity needs to be enforced so that there are no orphans in the table. When two table are in relationship, their data need to be checked when they are created or deleted.


HOW TO ACCESS:
Download IBM DB2 Express-C

There are a wide range of database management systems to choose from. The one that we are going to use for this course is IBM DB2 Express - C. The reason this DBMS is chosen is that, it has provided a lot of functions and also it is free.

To download DB2 Express - C, you will need to go to http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/about.html, register with IBM first before download. If you have any questions, read the e-book Getting Started with DB2 Express-C) and videos. The ebook and video will help you with the DB2 book with the download and get familiar with the DB2 environment.

Follow the steps below for download:

Register with IBM
go to http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/about.html
click on Downloads link on the left of the site
Choose the suitable one based on your operating system. The current version is 9.7.4.
download a zip file to your computer. Unzip it
go to yourdir/EXPC/image/, and run the right setup application.

Read Chapter 3 of the DB2 instruction book for installation.

For this course, we will use the Control Center for database administration. For the advanced Database Management course, we will migrate to IBM Data Studio as the primary tool for database administration. Chapter 5 Sections 5.2 ??" 5.4 of the DB2 book describes some tools you may find useful for this course.


The goal is to ensure you have properly installed DB2 Express-C and get familiar with its environment. After you have finished downloading DB2 Express - C, Please follow the detailed installation instructions in Chapter 3 in IBM's DB2 book



REQUIRED READINGS TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT:

Data, information, knowledge and their interrelationships:
http://www.tlainc.com/articl134.htm

Data base concepts:
http://www.fhi.rcsed.ac.uk/rbeaumont/virtualclassroom/chap7/s2/dbcon1.pdf

Chong, R, Hakes, I, and Ahuja, R., Getting Started with DB2 Express-C.
Chapter 1 ??" What is DB2 Express-C?; Chapter 3 ??" DB2 Installation.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/DB2/FREE+Book-+Getting+Started+with+DB2+Express-C?S_TACT=index&S_CMP=expcsite

SQL tutorial:
http://www.1keydata.com/sql/sql.html

ODBMs v. RDBMs
http://www.objectivity.com/pages/objectivity/faq.asp

Object oriented databases management systems:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/clamen/OODBMS/README.html

About object oriented database management systems:
http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/definition/object-oriented-database-management-system

Read relational data modeling section of Data modeling
http://www.liberty.edu/media/1414/%5B6330%5DERDDataModeling.pdf

ER diagram
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~valeriab/1022-spring08/Chapter6.pdf

Relational Database Design Requirements
http://www.databasedev.co.uk/database_design_requirements.html

Allen, S. and Terry, E. (2005), Beginning Relational Data Modeling, Chapter 3 ??" Understanding Relational Modeling Terminology
http://cdad.tuiu.edu/Uploads/Presentations/59908Chapter3.pdf


PART 2 OF THE ASSIGNMENT-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 2 SLP

Developing a database system for A University Student

In this assignment, you will start to create a database using the DB2 Express-C Control Center without writing any SQL statement. You can find how to do it at 5.2 of the IBM DB2 book.

Project description

You are hired by University IT department. Your first assignment is to work on a database project to store student information and track their progress in their coursework (what courses students have taken and their scores etc). Eventually your database should be able to generate the following report:

Students who live in California
Student who live outside California
Name of students who take ITM440 course
Name of students who live in California and take ITM440 course
Student names, courses they have taken, and letter grade for each of these courses.
Any other information you would like to retrieve from the database?

By module 4, your database should accomplish all the tasks above. In this assignment however, you are required to work on part of it.

SLP assignment

1) Your task is to first "sketch" a Student Information table (basically what columns should be included in the table) using the Student_information table at the following as example. Your table should contain the following:

Column heading include all the attributes that need to be in this table.
Populate the table with 10 records of data

You can use the Student_information table as example, add or remove attributes based on your analysis.

Student_information

Student ID Name Phone Email Street number Street name City State

0001 John 408-452-6241 [email protected] 1100 Pine Sacramento CA

0002 Mary 714-452-0211 mary&yahoo.com 45 Rose San Diego CA

0003 Jason 562-890-2233 [email protected] 6780 Winchester San Jose CA

0005 Lily 650-123-8000 [email protected] 2340 El Camino Albany KY

0006 Matt 312-567-4560 [email protected] 211 Campbell Bowling green OH

0007 David 650-338-9910 [email protected] 5122 Peach Jackson MS

0008 Jason 310-456-6790 [email protected] 4590 Moody Occasion side CA

TWO ADDITIONAL RECORDS :
0009 Tim 770-323-9955 [email protected] 5569 Decatur, Ga
0010 Sue 770-808-8688 [email protected] 227 Dacula, Ga

2) Sketch a course information table using the following table as example. Feel free to add or remove attributes based on your analysis. Your table should contain the following:

Column heading include all the attributes that need to be in this table.
Populate the table with 10 records of data. (tip: use course catalogue for more course numbers and titles)

Course_information

Course ID Title credit

ITM432 Principles of Finance and Financial Information Systems 4

ITM433 Computer-Human Interaction, Groupware, and Usability 4

ITM434 Business Ethics and Social Issues in Computing 4

ITM435 Marketing and Marketing Information Systems 4

ITM436 Operations Management and Operations Information Systems 4

ITM440 Database Technology and Database Administration 4

ITM441 Network Technology and Network Administration 4


ADDITIONAL ITEMS TO ADD:

ITM423 ??" Systems Acquisition, Systems Development, and Project Management 4 Credits
ITM424 ??" Introduction to Software and Technical Support 4 Credits
ITM442 ??" Knowledge Management, Business Intelligence,and Enterprise Systems 4 Credits


3) Use ER diagram to represent the data modeling.

4) Write a one page discussion on problems you have encountered in this assignment and what issues you might find in this design.

5) Create table you have just designed in DB2 without using SQL statement. Take a screen shot of the tables and paste them to the document.

SLP assignment expectations

You are evaluated based on whether the tables have been created correctly and your demonstrated effort.
Clear explanation of your express with this assignment.


BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
YOU WILL USE THE BACKGROUND INFORMATION FROM PART ONE OF THE ASSIGNMENT PLUS

REQUIRED READINGS:

5.2 of the IBM DB2 book.
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/db2/express-c/wiki/Getting_Started_with_DB2_Express_v9.7_p4.pdf

PART 3 OF THE ASSIGNMENT-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 3 CASE ASSIGNMENT

In this assignment, you will first normalize the tables in Community library database, then create the database using DB2. You are required to accomplish the following

Based on what you have learned in this module, describe the tables you designed in module 2 case assignment, do you think they have met the requirement for the first, second, and third normal form? If you believe your tables are already in the third normal form, explain why.
If there are changes in your design, draw another ER diagram based on the revised design.
Write SQL statement to create tables you just revised in DB2 environment, and execute them in the Control Center. Take a screen shot of the SQL statements and tables you have created and paste it to word document.
Describe your experience with this assignment, problems you have encountered, and lessons learned.

Case assignment expectations

Demonstrate understanding on normalization
Apply SQL to create tables


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION NEEDED:

REFER BACK TO THE WORK DONE IN THE PREVIOUS SECTIONS AND INCLUDE THIS INFO
A well designed database will be free from anomalies. However, these anomalies do exist if we are not careful. The two main categories of anomalies are: data redundancy and violation of data dependency.

Data redundancy occurs when:

the same data is repeated in different tuples
the same data is stored in more than one relation (table)

Violation of data dependency occurs when:

information stored in the same table can not uniquely determine other information stored in the same table.

These anomalies can create many problems such as

using more memory than is necessary
update anomalies. For example, when changing the telephone number, instead of changaing one time in one table, you will have to change in several places, otherwise, the information is not accurate.
deletion anomalies. For example: when one customer has cancelled his account, all sales records related to him were removed, this will lead to sales data inconsistency.

Normalization is a process that helps to design database schemata that are free from anomalies. For example, the following relation schema

Customer (Customer_id, first_name, last_name, product_id, product_description)

can be split into three to avoid repeating first_name, last_name and class_name, like this:

Customer (Customer_id, first_name, last_name)

Product (Product_id, Product_description)

Sales (Customer_id, Product_id)

This normalization process is called decomposing. Read Normal forms, functional dependencies, decompositions for more details.

A normal form is a criterion on a relation schema. Study required reading materials for more information on normal forms and normalization.

This module will introduce some basics of Structured Query Language (SQL), the language used to manage and manipulate databases. The second module will go more in depth on the topic.

To create a table in SQL:

CREATE TABLE table_name
(
column_title1 data_type,
column_title2 data_type,
column_title3 data_type,
....
)

For example:

CREATE TABLE Customer
(
customer_ID varchar,
customer_Fname varchar,
customer_Lname varchar,
....
)

Please note that, it is okay to use lower case for key words such as CREATE TABLE, yet it helps to use upper case to distinguish command from variable name. Also, indentation in SQL statement is for the purpose of easy reading, functionally, the following instruction achieves the same effect.

CREATE TABLE Customer (customer_ID varchar, customer_Fname varchar, customer_Lname varchar, ....)

In SQL, all attributes must be associated with a data type, and the data types available depend on the particular DBMS. Below are some widely available data types:

VARCHAR(x): text strings of at most x characters
INT: integers
FLOAT: real numbers
DATE: Gregorian dates

To delete the table you just create,

DROP TABLE Customer;

REQUIRED READING:

Normal form definitions
http://www2.yk.psu.edu/~lxn/IST_210/normal_form_definitions.html

Normal forms, functional dependencies, decompositions
http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~ryanjohn/teaching/cscc43-s11/c43-fd-v03.pdf

Normalization and SQL DDL Statements POWERPOINT WILL BE UPLOADED TO THE ORDER.

Allen, S. and Terry, E. (2005), Beginning Relational Data Modeling. Chapter 2 ??" Introducing Relational Theory (read the remaining sections from Introducing Normalization).
http://books.google.com/books?id=62CFtFea0NsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&
cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true

Litwin, P. Fundamentals of Relational Database Design
http://www.deeptraining.com/litwin/dbdesign/FundamentalsOfRelationalDatabaseDesign.aspx

Basics of database normalization
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283878

Andrew Cumming (2009). A Gentle Introduction to SQL
http://sqlzoo.net/

Chong, R, Hakes, I, and Ahuja, R., Getting Started with DB2 Express-C. Chapter 8 ??" Working with Database Objects.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/DB2/FREE+Book-+Getting+Started+with+DB2+Express-C?S_TACT=index&S_CMP=expcsite

Davidson, Louis (2007) Top Ten Common Database Design Mistakes
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/ten-common-database-design-mistakes/

PART 4 OF THE ASSIGNMENT------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 3 SLP


In this part of the assignment, you are to use what you have learned about normalization to improve the Student database design. Following are your tasks:

Normalize the tables you have designed in module 2. Explain how you redesign your tables to satisfy the requirements of 1NF, 2NF and 3NF. When necessary, it is perfectly okay to create another table. If you believe your tables designed in module 2 already met the normalization requirement, explain why.
Modify the database you created in Module 3: drop the tables that you have redesigned for normalization, and keep those that are intact.
Create new tables as required in your new design, using SQL in DBMS.

Include the SQL statements and screenshots of your new tables in the paper.
SLP assignment expectations

Create tables that met normalization standards.
Use SQL to create and drop tables.



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
USE ALL OF THE ABOVE INFORMATION TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT

PART 5 OF THE ASSIGNMENT--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 4 CASE ASSIGNMENT




In this case assignment, you will write the SQL statement to work on the community library database. Following are the tasks you are required to perform:

Populate data to the tables in your database
Retrieve the contact details of library customers
Retrieve the contact details of library customers who live in certain city
Update the residence information of a certain customer
Retrieve names and phone number of customers who have overdue books as of a certain date
Describe what you have learned in this assignment.

Write a paper (3 page) that includes your SQL statements and screenshots of the queries in DB2.
Case assignment expectations

Demonstrate the ability to work with SQL data manipulation language.
Communicate effectively with audience.



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION :

SQL DML (Data Management Language)



SELECT statement



Very often, we will want to retrieve data from one or more tables. To do this, we use SELECT statement. The format is the following:

SELECT columnName FROM tableName WHERE criteria

For example:

SELECT phone FROM Customer WHERE lastName = "Smith" and firstName = "John";

in this statement, we retrieve phone number of a customer called John Smith from Customer table. We could select multiple attributes and separate them with a comma.

To see data from two or more tables, we need to combine them into one table by using the join operation. These two tables must share one common column. The format can be the following:

SELECT columnName, columnName2

FROM table1Name, table2Name

WHERE table1Name.column-name = table2Name.column-name2;

For example:

SELECT Customer_FirstName, Customer_LastName

FROM Customer, Order

WHERE Customer.Customer-id = Order.Cid;

This set of command retrieves first name and last name of customers who have placed an order.

From the above example, you can see that the conditions that select certain data are placed behind WHERE. There are ways of forming conditional expressions

Comparison operators: =, <, <=, >, >=, <>.
Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT
The LIKE operator used to find strings that match a given pattern
Parentheses can be used to indicate the order of evaluation.



The INSERT statement



The insert statement is used to add new values to a table. The general format is

INSERT INTO tableName VALUES (value1, value2...);

For example:

INSERT INTO Customer VALUES (00001, "John", "Smith");

This statement adds customer John Smith and his customer id to Customer table. When you add values to a table, the number of the values and their data types must be exactly the same as the attributes of the table, and in exactly that order.



The UPDATE statement



To modify values in a table, we use the following SQL statement format.

UPDATE tableName

SET attributeName = newValue or expression

WHERE criteria



For example:



UPDATE Customer

SET maritalStatus = 'm'

WHERE firstName = "John" and lastName = "smith";

The above statement updates the marital status of John Smith to m.



The DELETE statement



The delete statement removes rows in a table. The format is

DELETE FROM tableName

WHERE criteria




REQUIRED READINGS:

SQL DML Statements POWERPOINT WILL BE UPLOADED

SQL tutorial
http://www.w3schools.com/SQl/default.asp

SQL course
http://www.sqlcourse.com/index.html

Greenspun, P., SQL for Web Nerds: Queries
http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/queries.html

Greenspun, P., SQL for Web Nerds: Complex Queries
http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/complex-queries.html

PART 6 OF THE ASSIGNMENT-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODULE 4 SLP

For the University Student database, generate reports that were specified in module 2 SLP.

Students who live in California
Student who live outside California
Name of students who take ITM440 course
Name of students who live in California and take ITM440 course
Student names, courses they have taken, and letter grade for each of these courses.
Any other information you would like to retrieve from the database?

Write a paper (2 page) that includes your SQL statements and screenshots of the result of your queries in DB2.
SLP assignment expectations

Demonstrate the ability to work with SQL data manipulation language.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
USE ALL THE ABOVE INFORMATION, INCLUDING MODULE 2 SLP RESULTS AND THE DB2 SYSTEM


PLEASE SEPARATE ALL PAPERS BY SECTIONS. .
3 PAGES FOR MODULE 2 CASE ASSIGNMENT
2 PAGES FOR MODULE 2 SLP
3 PAGES FOR MODULE 3 CASE ASSIGNMENT
2 PAGES FOR MODULE 3 SLP
3 PAGES FOR MODULE 4 CASE ASSIGNMENT
2 PAGES FOR MODULE 4 SLP


There are faxes for this order.

Assignment: Balance in the Administration of Justice and Security Integrative Paper

Write a word paper that suggests how the evolution of justice and security over the 21st century may best balance rights and freedoms with vigilance and sufficient authority to protect the citizens in a free society, while respecting constitutional guarantees concerning individual rights.

Pay particular attention to balance as a concept that serves as a guiding principle in administrative decisions for justice and security operations.

? Review the cumulative issues concerning the legal environment in which justice and security administration operates.
? Evaluate the changes in technology and mass communication with the effects these have on the justice and security areas.
? Evaluate the issues involved with individual rights versus the needs of the justice system and security to maintain order and public safety (Provide these sections in headings).

Include an Introduction and Conclusion and run paper through plagiarism checker.

Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.

Write a 1,900- to 2,400-word paper that suggests how the evolution of justice and security over the 21st century may best balance rights and freedoms with vigilance and sufficient authority to protect the citizens in a free society, while respecting constitutional guarantees concerning individual rights.



? Pay particular attention to balance as a concept that serves as a guiding principle in administrative decisions for justice and security operations.



o Review the cumulative issues concerning the legal environment in which justice and security administration operates.

o Evaluate the changes in technology and mass communication with the effects these have on the justice and security areas.

o Evaluate the issues involved with individual rights versus the needs of the justice system and security to maintain order and public safety.



? Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.

The paper is for an undergraduate personal finance course, so please have the material pertain to personal finance as much as possible. The topic of the paper is "The future of social Security"

-topic: THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL SECURITY
The given requirements are,
-3 pages in length, double-spaced,Times New Roman, 12pt-font, 1"margins
-Must include clear stated objective, plan of action, and list of references/resources.

Suggested format
A. Introduction/Background
B. Topic Development
C. Conclusions/Recommendations
D. Bibliography (MLA Format)

-The paper will be graded on clarity of content and development, mechanics(spelling/grammar), and research techniques(evidence of effort). the paper is due wensday.

please email me at [email protected] with how soon the paper will be ready or for any other question.