If Seniors Can't Punish AARP for Selling Them Out, We Are Doomed.

It will mean that the corporatists have so thoroughly infested the polity that democracy won't even work in nonprofit associations. And AARP, lest we forget, is an association of motivated, up-in-arms, active citizens. If they can't make their organization respond to their anger, how can we expect to make our government, our polity, respond to ours?



So do AARP executives support this bill because they hope to share in the bounty? Maybe, but it probably runs deeper than that. Once an advocacy group becomes as much a business as a service organization, its executives are likely to start identifying more with industry interests than with the groups they are supposed to serve.

Thus it may seem odd on the surface that William Novelli, AARP's chief executive, wrote a glowing preface to Newt Gingrich's book on health care reform. After all, Mr. Gingrich has long advocated turning the administration of Medicare over to private companies--an unpopular idea, and also an expensive one (forget the clichés about inefficient government: private companies have much higher overhead than Medicare). But what looks like wasted money to taxpayers and retirees looks like opportunity to private providers. Enough said.

Am I being too cynical? How could I be? In case you haven't noticed, we live in a golden age of pork: the other big piece of legislation marching through Congress, the energy bill, makes the Smoot-Hawley tariff look like a classic of good government.

So it should come as no surprise that Medicare "reform" appears likely to be another triumph for the coalition of the bought-off--a coalition that, sadly, includes AARP.


Paul Krugman, "AARP Gone Astray"

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/opinion/21KRUG.html

membership fees for many of us that we could have used for something else were spent for the ads that would be destroying the health care safety net that we all need as we get old.

It's also an outrage that despite the loud and clear anger the membership is expressing, the media talk as though, just because AARP directorate is in favor of it, this bill (and the gutting of Medicare) is a done deal.

carries with it the promise that AARP members will vote however AARP says we should, usually that's supposed to be how it works and often it does. I know I will vote environmental issues pretty much the way the Sierra Club says to. I don't think that is going to happen this time and in the future though, which will in effect make the endorsement worthless.

I know that I myself have informed my elected officials how against this I am and I am sure AARP members all over the country have done the same.

That is what everyone needs to do.
:hi:

are absolutely essential to the outcome of this fight. Politicians know that the 50+ demographic tends to be highly motivated to participate in elections, and therefore, they will be paying a lot of attention to what contituents in this demographic say. We hope. The other possibility is that a mood will fester and grow in DC to privatize, privatize, privatize, because of the tax cuts and deficit in particular, and also because of the power of the corporate lobby. So it seems to me that this will come down to the question of which side has more guns--or better put, better guns: the privatizers, with their corporate sponsors and deficit-based argument, or the people. That's why I believe it's essential to win this battle. The AARP sellout is emblematic of everything that has become wrong about America.

And I just want to add that younger people must get energized to fight this, because this battle is about what social benefit they can expect as status quo when they retire. Once the privatization camel's nose is under the social spending for seniors tent, once Medicare goes, SS is right behind it.

Of course, burrowing from within and turning organizations devoted to the protection of the people who support them into Imperial Front Groups is without a doubt one of their prioties.

Ultimately, and taken to the extreme, it means the former CEO of Exxon appointed to the chairmanship of Greenpace and don't think the Busheviks wouldn't go that far as the incestuous nature of the industrial and lobbying elites, it will become more commonplace.

And even if it isn't a strategy, as the specialized lobbying elite grows ever more constricted by Imperial Prerogative (ie those not tight with the Imperial Family have zero chance of being heard) it will also happen more and more.

But the AARP betrayal is not surprising. If you think about it, it is a logical outgrowth of all the other institutions once meant to serve the American People that now dircetly serve the interests of the Empire and could give a shit about the people.

among the rank-and-file, and the total calmness, apparently, of the ruling class (which includes Dems like Baucus and Daschle), as they walk the nation's seniors and future seniors into this massacre of the New Deal/Great Society social contract. I can't fathom the mind of a Democrat who finds this acceptable, who doesn't see what it means, despite the outrage it has stirred up among the people. Is this a reflection of utter cooptation and cowardice or of utter cynicism? Are they "misreading" Medicare prescription drugs the way they "misread" IWR?

this is an important point...let's dicuss

Can the members of the AARP depose the current governing board and put one in place that is more compliant to the wishes of its members?

to resign over this. I don't know what their by-laws are. It's an interesting question.

I just read about this at the Boston Globe Web site:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/325/nation/AARP_support_slammedP.shtml

AARP support slammed

By Tony Pugh, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 11/21/2003

WASHINGTON -- An important advocacy group charged yesterday that the AARP was pushing the GOP-crafted Medicare overhaul because the group stood to gain business from the measure.

Ralph Nader's Public Citizen estimated the giant senior citizens' lobby could gain $60 million or more a year, mainly from royalties on health-related insurance policies it sells to its members.

Separately, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California accused the 35-million member seniors group of being ''in the pocket'' of Republicans out ''to destroy Medicare.''

In addition, picketers have been marching outside AARP's Washington headquarters, and an AARP spokesman said about 800 of the group's 35.5 million members had asked to resign.

Among those resigning were 85 members of Congress who sent a letter to AARP Director Bill Novelli. Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, said the AARP turned its back on its members.

''Any organization that is willing to sacrifice its principles for short-term political gain and favors from the Republican Party no longer deserves our membership or support,'' Woolsey said.


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