This is Ida May Fuller. From the Social Security website:

Miss Fuller (known as Aunt Ida to her friends and family) was born on September 6, 1874 on a farm outside of Ludlow, Vermont...Ida May never married and had no children. She lived alone most of her life, but spent eight years near the end of her life living with her niece, Hazel Perkins, and her family in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Miss Fuller filed her retirement claim on November 4, 1939, having worked under Social Security for a little short of three years. While running an errand she dropped by the Rutland Social Security office to ask about possible benefits. She would later observe: "It wasn't that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I'd been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it."

On January 31, 1940, Ida May Fuller was the first person in the US to get a Social Security check. Sure, there are problems with Social Security today, but imagine voting for Roosevelt in 1932, seeing him pass the Social Security Act in 1935, and getting a check that helped you retire--a previously unheard of federal benefit by 1940. That sure would make me want to keep voting...

The New Deal was by no means perfect (our leftist equivalents in the 30’s saw it as a major compromise) but at least the Democrats and Roosevelt did something to respond to the Great Depression, and address the injustices caused by the the excesses of 1920’s corporations.

Can we expect the same today? (woo-hoo! The Fed is suggesting a rate cut--that'll solve all of our problems!)

Even though Democrats today have managed to regain power in the US Congress, the real accomplishment of the Republicans was not their 30 year majority rule, but the slow devolution of federal power to the states they achieved while in control. The result is that we are more reliant on the kooks in Harrisburg than ever before. And it's a lot harder for cities to go to the Feds for big pots of money to solve local problems.

What’s my point?

• The Presidential election is very important, but the Democrat we elect next November can only do so much to address Philadelphia’s problems: violence, wage loss, net population loss, a weak education system, and environmental assault.
  
  
• City Council and Mayor Nutter can tinker around the edges—-there is a lot to do there—-but at some point, they have to dive in to the big issues, and the biggest among them is generational poverty and a shrinking middle class.

These are familiar themes of course, but as we move into the first 100 days of the Nutter Administration and the new City Council, I’d love to see the new leaders of the city lay out a New Deal for Philadelphia--in writing, in detail.

I want to be able to post a picture her in the next few years of a woman, like Ida May Fuller, who gets something from city government she never expected before like an affordable housing unit paid for by expiring ten-year tax abatements, or a free education at Community College, or a decent-wage job, or free after-school for her kids.

There's been a lot of talk about hope the past few weeks, and this is my greatest hope. That’s not too much to ask is it?

Doron Taussig and Tom Namako at the City Paper put together a cover story (as of last Thursday) that takes the form of a to-do list addressed to Mayoral presumptive Michael Nutter. Great minds think a like apparently as their article hit some of the same marks as my post about the future of Philadelphia’s economy and Michael Nutter.

One point they hit that really seems worth emphasizing is the renegotiation of city worker contracts that will occur next spring. The lines have already been drawn in that battle: the city will not have a whole lot of money to spend on all its needs and city workers don’t want to make any more concessions on health care.

The CP article describes the coming conflict efficiently:

Within five years, the city of Philadelphia will be spending more than one of every four of its tax dollars on what used to be called 'fringe benefits'" — pensions and health care. You can't afford to maintain this rate, and if you don't win some concessions, your hands will be tied by budgetary constraints for your entire first term. But the unions have said they don't intend to accept any benefit cuts — good bennies are practically the point of a public-sector job — and the last thing you want in your first half-year is a public-sector strike that shuts down the city you promised to make work better. The situation is so dire that it's been compared to what Gov. Ed Rendell faced when he first took office, when Philly was on the verge of bankruptcy...One other thing worth mentioning here: Philadelphia's public-sector employees' generous health and pension plans are not necessarily a bad thing. The City of Philadelphia is the biggest employer in the city of Philadelphia. It behooves you to keep 27,778 public employees and 33,500 retirees comfortable.

The authors go on to list a number of other important priorities including violence, addressing prison overcrowding, SEPTA, DHS, ethics, and of course tax cuts:

There are two changes to the city's tax structure that you've backed. One was reducing the business-privilege tax (BPT), a move you tried to make while on council until Street vetoed it. The other is reassessing property taxes, so that properties are assessed according to what they would sell for if a For Sale sign went up today, rather than decades ago.

Now that you're mayor, it would appear that these proposals' time has come. But two things could stand in their way: those upcoming union negotiations, and City Council. There's only so much money the city has to spend every year, and this year, the unions get a shot at it first. If they persuade you to spend more money on them, says tax advocate Brett Mandel, it might be hard to cut business taxes....Passing the BPT cuts, at least, seems doable: It takes nine votes to pass a bill, and eight of the members who voted in favor of cutting the BPT in 2004 remain on council. That means you need to persuade just one of possibly four new council members: Bill Green, Maria Quinones-Sanchez, Curtis Jones or (maybe) David Oh to back the idea. Take them to dinner, compliment their outfits, give them some money for area recreation centers — you remember how this is done, right?

I am somewhat biased in this conversation as I now dating a city worker (well, I have always been dating him, but Joel just became a Library trainee). Aside from the income he brings into our household, his job is important to me because it provides me with healthcare (yea domestic partnership!). I gotta tell you, I really don’t want him to lose his job. And I think you all know how I feel about business tax cuts.

Looking at the situation objectively though, and I guess this is what is what I was trying to articulate in my earlier post about Nutter and the economy, the contract fight is a great opportunity to dissect our collective priorities for the expenditure of city funds.

Do we as citizens and voters support job and benefit cuts for city workers if the money saved will go toward something that enhances our economy and creates a net gain of jobs? Is that really the choice that will be presented to us? What value and services do we as citizens get from city workers?

Messing with the livelihood of the largest pool of employees in the city is a BIG deal. Seems to me like we as a general populace need some tools to better understand what is going on.

As the CP article points out, and as many folks here have pointed out, Michael Nutter has a lot of problems to deal with when he becomes Mayor, and he won’t be able to address them all right away. In that context it is up to us to set expectations accordingly and begin to articulate which things are most important to deal with first, and be able to explain why.

That starts with identifying the issues that will be forced to the forefront (probably this one and and gun violence would be my guess) and all of us (on and offline) listing our priorities beyond those.