senior citizen elder

belated disambiguation see usanext 60

see social security medicare safety net

see grift direct mail bossie

aha seniors uniquely vulnerable to grift b/c not soc med savvy, ppl get more conserv as age, easy to scare /hype thus con; also hype fear in escalator echo bubble

note no left equiv

an 11 25

'Desperation': Food bank CEO says some Meals on Wheels recipients haven't eaten 'in weeks'

nyer mag 10 25

...In March, 2017, Trump signed an executive order that called for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal government. Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman, served as Trump’s first budget director, but, inside the O.M.B., Vought took the lead. According to a former senior staffer at the agency, Vought initially pushed for the President’s plan to eliminate U.S.A.I.D. and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also wanted to fold the Department of Health and Human Services, along with food-stamps programs, into a new Department of Health and Public Welfare. “They wanted to call it that because they think it sounds bad,” a former O.M.B. analyst told me. In one meeting, according to a person in the room, Vought asked, “Why do we do economic assistance abroad at all?” The former O.M.B. analyst said, “There were very few, if any, debates where Russ wouldn’t take the most extreme option available to him, the most conservative, the most budget-cutting.”

Trump’s Cabinet secretaries resisted wholesale cuts. The former senior staffer recalled, “The general counsels at these agencies are calling the White House counsel and saying, ‘We’re not trying to introduce legislation to delete ourselves, are we?’ ” Few of the recommendations in Vought’s final reorganization plan, which was released in 2018, were implemented. But the document now reads like a guide to the second Trump Administration. “I didn’t realize it then,” the former O.M.B. senior staffer told me, “but I was writing the first draft of Project 2025.”

Vought increasingly clashed with the O.M.B.’s staff over proposed cuts to popular programs. Meals on Wheels, the food-delivery program, was a topic of intense debate. Even after O.M.B. staff explained how the program, which received more than nine hundred million dollars in funding from Congress, acted as a lifeline for homebound seniors, Vought and Mulvaney pushed for major cuts that would have hobbled its operations, according to the former O.M.B. senior staffer. The staffer added that it was often hard to reconcile Vought’s deeply held Christian faith—he hosted a prayer session for select colleagues—with his eagerness to cut programs that helped the vulnerable. “It always struck me as a strange thing,” the person said. “There’s compassion, but it only extends to certain people.”

...

---

an 8 25

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller lashed out at Washington, D.C. residents protesting President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and his deployment of more than a thousand federal agents — including FBI, DEA, DHS, ATF, and ICE — to patrol the Capital’s streets. In striking remarks, Miller cast the demonstrators as white and the victims of crime as Black. His charges conflict with a new survey just released that shows the vast majority of D.C. residents oppose the Trump administration’s takeover and feel safe in their neighborhoods.

Miller told reporters that the people protesting the Trump administration’s federal takeover of the city’s streets are “elderly white hippies,” “stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” and, “crazy communists” who “have no roots, they have no connections to the city, they have no families they are raising in this city, they have no one that they are sending to school in this city, they have no jobs in this city, they have no connections to this community at all.”

Those people, Miller alleged, are “the ones who’ve been advocating for the one percent: the criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.”

IFrame Content

Whereas, Miller claimed, “residents who lived in Washington, D.C. their entire lives, their parents lived here, their grandparents lived here, and they have lived for generations in intolerable conditions of crime and decay.”

“There are hundreds of residents of this city who are shot in street violence every single year, making [it] one the most violent cities on planet Earth,” he claimed, which is not supported by evidence.

“And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C are Black,” Miller alleged, inaccurately. About 43 percent of D.C.’s residents are Black.

“This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens, for generations,” he claimed. “And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department to support the National Guard and our federal law enforcement officers.”

“So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.,” Miller said.

A damning Washington Post poll released Wednesday, however, found 79 percent of D.C. residents oppose Trump’s decision to take over the Metropolitan Police, and to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents onto D.C. city streets.

“On Monday, Trump said Washington had been ‘the most unsafe place anywhere,’ but 78 percent of residents say they feel very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods,” the Post reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

:{b3 medicare cuts will hurt/close rural hosp and NURSING HOMES

make healthcare more dificult and expensive FOR EVERYONE

TAX CUT 6K FOR RICHER sR TEMP?!

---

mma Some on the right have acknowledged the importance of Meals on Wheels. The Trump administration has threatened its future.

04/11/25

---

AN 10 24

Anyone who signs an online political petition is likely to be bombarded with fundraising requests. Donation pitches can be quite aggressive in presidential elections, and convince voters to dig deep even if their finances are stretched thin.

In a report published on October 22, nine CNN journalists detail Republican fundraising that targets seniors who are giving away much more than they can afford to.

According to CNN, "More than 1000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups reviewed by CNN, along with an analysis of campaign finance data and interviews with dozens of contributors and their family members, show how deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans and misled those battling dementia or other cognitive impairments into giving away millions of dollars — far more than they ever intended. Some unintentionally joined the ranks of the top grassroots political donors in the country as they tapped into retirement savings and went into debt, contributing six-figure sums through thousands of transactions."

On X, formerly Twitter, Politico's Nicholas Wu highlights one of the examples described in the report: an 82-year-old woman "who wore pajamas with holes in them because she didn't want to spend money on new ones" and "didn’t realize she had given Republicans more than $350,000 while living in a 1000-square-foot Baltimore condo since 2020.'"

CNN's report also describes "80-year-old communications engineer from Texas" who "had saved for decades, driving around in an old car and buying clothes from thrift stores so he'd have enough money to enjoy his retirement years."

"But as dementia robbed him of his reasoning abilities," CNN explains, "he began making online political donations over and over again — eventually telling his son he believed he was part of a network of political operatives communicating with key Republican leaders. In less than two years, the man became one of the country's largest grassroots supporters of the Republican Party, ultimately giving away nearly half a million dollars to former President Donald Trump and other candidates. Now, the savings account he spent his whole life building is practically empty."

According to CNN, the donors cited in the report "were often in their 80s and 90s."

"They included retired public workers, house cleaners and veterans, widows living alone, nursing home residents and people who donated more money than they paid for their homes, according to records and interviews," CNN explains. "The money they gave came from pensions, Social Security payments and retirement savings accounts meant to last decades."

CNN continues, "Donors took out new credit cards and mortgages to pay for the contributions. In some cases, they gave away most of their life savings. Their cell phones and email inboxes were so full of pleas for money that they missed photos of their grandkids and other important messages. At least one person continued to be charged for contributions after his death."

*Read CNN's full report at this link.

mma Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore: “We want people to keep working” into their 70s](https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/project-2025-contributor-stephen-moore-we-want-people-keep-working-their-70s)

08/01/24

---

Lance Wallnau Sees Gold in Fearmongering About ‘Confiscation’ of Retirement Funds | Right Wing Watch

commentary

Trump supporter and self-promoter Lance Wallnau, an ardent advocate for Seven Mountains Dominionism, is promoting shameful fearmongering that financial “elites” are preparing to “confiscate” Americans’ retirement accounts. Wallnau’s letter to Christian Post readers arrived in email inboxes this week with the subject line, “World-Renowned Preacher Warns Americas to ACT NOW Before Elites Confiscate Retirement Accounts.”

Wallnau’s email begins by highlighting his supposed prophetic gift for predicting the future, as evidenced by his proclamations that Donald Trump would be elected president—the email even includes a picture of the two of them together—and moves swiftly into a dire warning:

I’m Lance Wallnau, Christian author, educator and news analyst for thirty years. In 2016, I was one of the few evangelical leaders to accurately predict Donald Trump’s Presidency and historic impact.

Now, heading into 2024, I want to warn you about something which will almost certainly negatively affect your life.

Wallnau’s email explains that he is writing about “The Total Control of All Financial Accounts…Including ALL 401(k)s and IRAs,” adding, “This is a big prediction. But I am now very confident this is coming to pass.”

Wallnau’s supposed evidence for this claim? That at the most recent G20 meeting, “the most powerful people in the world could NOT stop talking about Central Bank Digital Currencies.” While CBDC’s are a complicated and controversial financial instrument being considered by many governments, and while there are ongoing debates about their potential dangers for privacy and economic stability, that’s a far cry from Wallnau’s claims that Americans’ retirement accounts are at risk of being confiscated by these global “elites.”

Hawking gold has been a financial mainstay of right-wing media outlets and online personalities for years. For religious-right pundits like Wallnau, promoting gold as a hedge against financial and societal collapse can dovetail with broader apocalyptic messaging.

A few months ago, The Washington Post wrote about the extensive marketing on right-wing media of gold coins as a retirement investment, often with outrageous markups. Reporter Hanna Kozlowska, one of the authors of the Post report, followed up with an August story for MSNBC, noting that their research found that older people who watch conservative media are “bombarded” with ads for gold:

We’ve spoken to customers who are disabled, homebound or living only on Social Security, their lives upended by losing their only nest eggs. And although complaints and allegations of fraud against these companies have been public for years, right-wing media outlets have continued to benefit by accepting their advertising.

The kind of fearmongering pitch Wallnau’s email included is a common sales tactic, according to Kozlowska. “To lure customers, the companies often use fear-based and politically tinged messaging in their advertising and on sales calls,” she wrote for MSNBC, citing an example of an ad sent to a Newsmax list claiming, “Nancy Pelosi has been on a secret mission to KILL the US Dollar.”

Wallnau’s recent email encourages readers to get a kit explaining “how to transfer your current retirement funds into a physical gold IRA without paying a dime in penalties or taxes.” Clicking on the link provided takes readers to a webpage that includes another message from Wallnau invoking God and the Bible to back his pitch:

I’m an author, public speaker, business consultant and man of God. We’re living in an age of economic and social crisis. Don’t be afraid, though. We can tap into our spiritual faith to endure adversity, and the Bible explains how we ready ourselves. God gave Noah a blueprint for the ark, and I believe God has empowered us to build our very own financial arks for the stormy seas ahead.

Birch Gold Group didn’t need the recent G20 conversations about CBDCs to sound the alarm about “confiscation.” It sent Daily Wire subscribers an email in April 2022 with the subject line, “Biden Lackeys Found Planning this ‘Confiscation’ of Savings.” It warned that deficit spending and inflation amounted to an unannounced confiscation of people’s retirement nest eggs, and offered a kit that would show them “how to LEGALLY convert your retirement savings into the rock-solid foundation of precious metals.” That echoed a similar email from two years earlier. And they’re not the only ones warning about “confiscation.”. Subscribers to The Blaze got a similar message from GSI Exchange. The Hartford Gold Group sent a similar email last year to readers of The Patriot Post

Despite the sales rhetoric about gold being a safe haven, investing in gold is not a sure thing. Between 1990 and the beginning of 2023, stocks provided a better return than gold; gold has done better since 2000, but dropped between 2020 and 2022 and has been relatively flat in 2023. And that’s not taking into effect huge fees and markups that can face unwary buyers of gold and gold coins.

---

aha uniquely vulnerable to grift b/c not soc med savvy, ppl get more conserv as age, easy to scare /hype thus con

no ln 7 23

How 'gold IRA' industry ads became a 'mainstay of right-wing media': report

Fox News' Laura Ingraham In July 2022 (Gage Skidmore).

Alex Henderson July 25, 2023

For many years, right-wing media outlets have been aggressively promoting gold as a safe haven for retirees. Anyone who has spent a lot of time consuming right-wing media, be it Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax TV or AM talk radio, has likely come across gold commercials.

In a report published by the Washington Post on July 25, journalists Jeremy B. Merrill and Hanna Kozlowska stress that the "gold retirement investment industry" has "become a mainstay of right-wing media."

"An analysis by The Post of political newsletters, social media, podcasts and a national database of television ads collected by the company AdImpact found that pitches to invest in gold coins are a daily presence in media that caters to a right-wing audience and often echo conservative talking points about looming economic and societal collapse," Merrill and Kozlowska explain. "The Post found no similar ads for gold retirement investments in mainstream or left-wing media sources in the databases."

READ MORE: Fox News' relationship with Turning Point USA is 'basically over': report

Lawsuits against "gold IRA" companies, according to Merrill and Kozlowska, are not uncommon. One of the companies that has been sued is Lear Capital, a Fox News advertiser that sells gold and silver coins.

The Washington Post reporters note that "over the past decade, more than 30 customers in 20 states have sued a dozen gold IRA companies."

Terry White, a disabled retiree, told the Post he invested $174,000 in gold coins with Lear and found out the company charges a 33 percent commission. White said he lost almost $80,000.

"For years," Merrill and Kozlowska report, "gold IRA industry advertising has echoed accusations against Democratic politicians commonly found in news segments on conservative outlets. The ads tout the coins as a safe haven from economic uncertainty and social upheaval. Most of the coins are manufactured by the Royal Canadian Mint, which says they're bullion — a kind of coin whose value is determined by the underlying metal. As such, they meet IRS rules for retirement investments."

READ MORE: 'They must comply': Newsmax employees subpoenaed in Smartmatic defamation lawsuit

According to Merrill and Kozlowska, an "analysis of ad data and financial records" shows that the"gold IRA" industry "spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets."

"Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have promoted the coins," the Post reporters observe, "while ads for Lear's competitors have appeared on a podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Newsmax broadcasts of former President Donald Trump's political rallies."

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson's Twitter viewership falling as battle with Fox News stalls: report

Find the Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

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may 2019

the political fundraising entity run by David Bossie, the head of the controversial conservative group Citizens United and a Republican National Committeeman from Maryland who is close to President Trump, has come under scrutiny over the past week for its fundraising practices.

A joint report from *Axios*and the Campaign Legal Center found that Bossie’s fundraising organization collected $18 million over the last two years, but directed only a small portion, about 3 percent, to direct political activity, using most the rest of the money to solicit more funds, often by capitalizing on Trump’s image or Bossie’s relationship with the president. The article brought a rebuke from the Trump campaign.

A Maryland Mattersanalysis of the group’s financial activities found that a substantial portion of its overall direct political spending went to Bossie’s home state of Maryland, where prominent Republicans are standing behind him.

The 18-page Campaign Legal Center report concluded that Bossie’s fundraising entity, known as The Presidential Coalition, gave $425,442 directly to state and local campaigns since 2016. A Maryland Matters review of the coalition’s reports to the IRS revealed $93,000 on spending to Maryland candidates and political campaign committees. State beneficiaries included candidates for local boards, county executive and targeted General Assembly seats.

After the report was released last week, The Presidential Coalition released a three-page response, defending fundraising practices and attacking the Campaign Legal Center, a national political reform group that is frequently at odds with Bossie. Through his work at Citizens United, Bossie has challenged federal campaign finance limits – and the landmark 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision has unleashed unlimited political spending in elections.

In part, The Presidential Coalition’s response stated that the analysis “totally ignores the legitimate staff, infrastructure and other political activity costs associated with the organization’s work” and the higher costs of soliciting small-money donations.

Fundraising under fire

The Campaign Legal Center’s analysis focuses on the explosion in fundraising success by The Presidential Coalition since Trump was elected in 2016. That year, The Presidential Coalition raised less than $1 million.

But in 2017 and 2018, the numbers increased dramatically to $5 million and $13 million, respectively.

Solicitations from The Presidential Coalition feature Trump’s election in several ways, including photos of him, and, on at least one mailer, a return address label that features an image of the White House and the anagrammatic 1006 Pennsylvania Avenue address of Citizens United, which Bossie has led since 2001.

The mailers also frequently address Bossie’s relationship with the president; he served as Trump’s deputy campaign manager and is also Maryland’s national committeeman to the Republican National Committee.

Some of The Presidential Coalition’s solicitations in the past two years have promised copies of Bossie’s book “Trump’s Enemies” – co-written with the president’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski – if donors give over a certain amount, often $45.

The Presidential Coalition spent $445,972 on purchases from book retailers in the last two years. But The Presidential Coalition’s response to the Campaign Legal Center/Axiosreport saidonly “a small amount” was spent on his book, while the bulk of book premiums were for copies of “Trump’s America,” by former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“TPC members are very excited to receive these books and DVDs,” the coalition wrote.

Most of the donations The Presidential Coalition receives are in small sums. About $12.2 million of the $18.5 million raised in the last two years came from donors who gave less than $200 per year and thus don’t have to be publicly disclosed on the coalition’s tax filings.

Of the donors who gave more than $200 in a year, a majority listed their occupation as retired and the average donation amount was still relatively small, $225.

In Maryland, The Presidential Coalition’s donations also came primarily in small-dollar amounts and from a number of donors who identified themselves as retirees.

In 2017, at least 70 Marylanders donated $31,106 through 180 donations to The Presidential Coalition.

In 2018, 127 Marylanders gave $55,383 through 265 donations.

The donations included:

A retired man from Harford County who donated 16 times for a total of $1,626.
A Carroll County retiree who donated a dozen times, in amounts ranging from $30 to $100.
A woman from Carroll County who gave 11 times for $1,025 total.

There were a few large donors from Maryland, who gave donations greater than $1,000 at a time, including a retired woman from Owings Mills who made four donations of $6,300, $2,000, $1,000 and $250.

More than 57 percent of the donations from Maryland were for $100 or less.

The Campaign Legal Center report said the elderly can be particularly vulnerable to fundraising appeals and that the small donations solicited by The Presidential Coalition detracted from other political giving that could have had a greater impact on campaigns.

“…The Presidential Coalition’s ongoing activities … not only mean that vulnerable voters are getting misled, but they also mean that the conservative movement’s limited financial resources are being diverted away from more effective political organizations – or from President Trump’s own campaign,” the report says.

After the Axios story and report were published, Trump’s campaign condemned any organization that uses the president’s likeness deceptively.

“There is no excuse for any group, including ones run by people who claim to be part of our ‘coalition,’ to suggest they directly support President Trump’s re-election or any other candidates, when in fact their actions show they are interested in filling their own pockets with money from innocent Americans’ paychecks, and sadly, retirements,” the campaign responded in a statement to Axios. “We encourage the appropriate authorities to investigate all alleged scam groups for potential illegal activities.” [gfx w/ cands who got 4?]

Support in Maryland

Support for Bossie remained strong among Maryland Republicans in the days after the reports were published.

The coalition has a history of supporting candidates in Maryland and Virginia specifically, and lists involvement in state races dating back to 2013 on the website stopmarylandliberals.com.

State Sen. Michael Hough (R-Frederick), a leading party fundraiser in the state, said Bossie has been helpful to conservatives in the deeply Democratic state for years, especially before the Republican Party found a figurehead in the ever-popular Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr.

“There are very few people I can think of over the last 10 years who have been more consistently helpful to conservative candidates in this state than David Bossie,” Hough said in a telephone interview on Friday.

Bossie and The Presidential Coalition have bolstered Hough’s campaigns, and the senator said he meets annually with Bossie to talk about fundraising strategies for key races in the state.

In 2017 and 2018, The Presidential Coalition made 35 donations to 26 campaigns, including $5,000 to Hough.

Other notable donations included those to support Republicans in the state party’s “Drive for Five” effort to break the Democratic supermajority in the Maryland Senate last: Mary Beth Carozza ($6,000), Bill Dotson ($3,000), Ron George ($6,000), Craig Giangrande ($3,000), John Grasso ($2,000) and Christian J. Miele ($6,000). Only Carozza won her race, and she now represents the Lower Shore in the Senate.

Other members of the General Assembly received support in successful campaigns, including House Minority Leader Nicholaus R. Kipke (R-Anne Arundel), House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County), Del. Matthew Morgan (R-St. Mary’s) and Sens. Justin Ready (R-Carroll) and Johnny Ray Salling (R-Baltimore County).

Szeliga was among the lawmakers contacted by Maryland Matters who offered support for Bossie.

“I’ve known Dave Bossie for many years,” she said in a written statement. “Dave is a true patriot and conservative leader who made history defending free speech in the landmark SCOTUS case Citizens United,” Szeliga wrote on Saturday. “I am not surprised that the liberal establishment is attacking him as we approach the next election. He has been very effective in helping elect President Trump and other conservative candidates across the country.”

Ready said Bossie and The Presidential Coalition have been helpful to his campaigns, boosting him as a young conservative in early races.

Bossie’s Maryland supporters also noted that an organization’s full impact can be more than just direct political contributions.

Bossie’s relationship with fellow Maryland Republicans has not been without controversy or tension, however. In 2016, Bossie ousted Louis Pope, a longtime stalwart of the state GOP associated with the party’s more moderate wing, to become Maryland’s Republican National committeeman. And he has been aggressively lining up Free State Republicans to support Trump’s reelection even as Hogan publicly ponders a longshot GOP primary challenge to the president.

Bossie’s four-year term as a national committeeman ends a year from now. He is eligible to seek reelection – and the decision on whether to grant Bossie a second term will be made at next spring’s semi-annual Maryland Republican convention.

‘Left-wing smear tactics’

Bossie did not respond to Maryland Matters’ requests for comment last week.

Neither Citizens United – where press questions about the report were directed – nor three Maryland companies that were prominent vendors for The Presidential Coalition, responded to questions about the coalition’s indirect support for candidates or the content of publications made on behalf of the coalition.

The coalition’s response to Axios said that its political activities include “internal membership activities” that aren’t subject to disclosure on state or federal campaign finance reports, and the coalition’s 2017 tax return claimed it spent $5.4 million on “political campaign activities” including “polling and surveying of members and the public, communications with members and the public on issues and matters relating to the appointment and election of individuals to public office.”

But the Campaign Legal Center’s report said evidence doesn’t back up such claims of indirect candidate support. The coalition’s mailers exclusively focus on raising more funds and not on calls to action on behalf of candidates and independent expenditures on behalf of candidates don’t show up in state or federal campaign finance reports, the Campaign Legal Center report noted. The telemarketing firms hired by The Presidential Coalition, which were paid more than $1 million over the last two years, also specialize in direct marketing campaigns rather than political fundraising or advocacy, the report stated.

“Simply put, there is a vast chasm between what the Presidential Coalition is telling its majority-small-dollar donors and how it is actually using the funds,” the report states.

The Campaign Legal Center suggests a number of solutions to monitoring The Presidential Coalition’s fundraising activities, which it says “fall into a legal grey area,” including limiting “personal use” expenses for 527 organizations like The Presidential Coalition, revoke the tax exempt status of such groups, or at the state level, requiring tax-exempt organizations to devote a certain percentage of donations to program activities.

While the Campaign Legal Center pointed out that states have been cracking down on deceptive fundraising and fraud practices in recent years, The Presidential Coalition said it is being “unfairly targeted by left-wing smear tactics because we are outspoken defenders of the President.”

“We will never back down,” the statement concluded.

dgaines@marylandmatters.org

an 1 23

A columnist at The Palm Beach Post highlighted what he believes is the “real problem facing Floridians,” arguing the most pressing issue in the state is "not trans swimmers, unvarnished Black history or diversity training at your job," but the right's ongoing effort to gut Social Security.

According to Frank Cerabino’s column, Florida relies on social security payments to its residents more than any other state. He reported that more than 1 million residents look to the program to keep "from living below the poverty line."

But even with that knowledge, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has his sights set on eventually cutting Social Security payments as he claims the program is "going bankrupt."

Cerabino counters Scott's assertion with a statement from the Social Security Administration.

“After the projected trust fund reserve depletion in 2034, continuing income would be sufficient to pay 78 percent of program cost, declining to 74 percent for 2095,” the administration confirmed.

Scott's ideas around the program approaching bankruptcy are outlined in his "Rescue America" plan, which Cerabino asserted could "gut" Medicare and Social Security in five years.

As of now, Floridians can receive Social Security payments if they're at least 62 years old, and "as late as 70." But Scott's fellow GOP lawmakers are considering raising the "retirement age" — or "the point that the monthly payments are paid at 100 percent of the primary insurance amount" — from 67 to 70.

Matt Bruenig with The People’s Policy Project explained that "there are really 96 retirement ages in Social Security, one for each month between the ages of 62 to 70." Further, "the earlier you take your benefit, the less you get; the more you wait, the higher the monthly payment," Cerabino reported.

"A proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 is just a proposal to cut monthly benefits by around 23 percent at all 96 retirement ages," Bruenig said.

The AARP Policy Institute studied the number of people who use Social Security at age 62 versus the number of “later claimers,” and found that “early takers have less education and are more likely to live in rural areas and less likely to have IRAs or other defined-contribution plans.” They also are prone to live with a “work-limiting health condition.”

As a result, Cerabino reports that cutting their Social Security willresult in povertyfor many.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said, “Without Social Security benefits, 37.8 percent of older adults would have incomes below the official poverty line, all else being equal. With Social Security benefits, only 9 percent do.”

Research done by the center highlighted that over 1.3 million Floridians, or 6 percent of Florida's population, aged 65 and older can live above the poverty line with the help of Social Security.

Cerabino concludes his analysis by once again drawing attention to the issues Florida lawmakers are focusing on, such as "peril from asylum seekers in Texas, drag queen story times or felon voters." Perhaps, the sunshine state's lawmakers and those voting for them should instead turn their attention to the stealth "retirement" of Social Security.

aha: traditional target for direct mail scams b/c maybe sort of inherently conservative (tho New Deal Dems? soc sec ansd medicare ended elder poverty, zealously guarded and they vote/ third rail of politics]

retired big donors?

covid sacrifice zone

aha: sadly target for grifters, fear, not tech savvy

aha: cable tv $ show (santelli rant); [social] media hypes fear then charges to allay it: investor advice

economist manly rational truth teller, hard nosed empirical #'s guy vs eg ben stein pundit always wrong, (provably) but never in doubt/ out of demand

reductionism

cheerleaders for capitalism, social darwinism (if you're ppor, you are dumb, lazy, immoral

cable TV $ show: 1/20 brainfart, spark by kudlow, mnu on cnbc

networks have too

jrnlism free zone? libtard vulnerable?

you do not need gubmint [soc sec?] if big 401K (or gold or bitcoin?]

7 22 aha remember newltr end of world grift hype fear

sage/savvy savior will warn you before so protect/profit

gold std --> constitutional currency?

bitcoin grift? libtard?

reboot cold war paranoia?

7 22

Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the landmark court victory known as Jarkesy v. SEC and the Chinese economic warfare in the U.S. Patent and...

We are in an Economic War.

By Kevin Freeman

economic weapons deployed media coverage patriotic investing May 21, 2022

Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the impact of the Economic War we are facing from both domestic and foreign forces.

The Economic War Room

The Economic War Room monitors critical pressure points on an ongoing basis. We report who, what, when, where, and why they will impact you. More importantly, we bring in top experts to help you understand and respond to the threats they pose and how you can respond!

What People Are Saying About Kevin Freeman:

“Kevin Freeman understands the threat of financial terrorism as well as anyone. You’d have to be negligent to ignore his timely advice about protecting your family from the economic attacks that are clearly on the horizon.”

—FRANK KEATING,

Retired President and CEO, American Bankers Association, former governor of Oklahoma

“Along with the Internet our markets, banks, and other financial systems are vital institutions that are far more vulnerable to complete disruption than we would hope, especially to carefully-planned intervenors with the opportunity, motive, and means to, say, bring down the dollar. Freeman explains persuasively and clearly why we may be beginning the third act of a monetary and fiscal tragedy. You don’t care about dark pools, huge Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth funds, naked short selling, and bear runs? I’m afraid you will, and rather soon.”

—R JAMES WOOLSEY

Chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Director of Central Intelligence

Become an Economic Patriot

Get access to top National Security, Cyber, and Investment talent.

Watch Economic War Room and other great BlazeTV content.

aha see newsletters How to benefit from the coming crash hits both greed and fear emotion, Sr cits and gop sensitive to threat, this allows concrete action to mitigate

1220

Newsmax has been grifting its audience by falsely claiming that there’s a “natural cure for Alzheimer’s.”

losing sr cits bigly

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-attempting-to-raid-medicare-trust-fund-in-shameless-stunt-to-pay-for-drug-discount-cards-report/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannons-dodgy-nonprofit-teamed-up-with-company-linked-to-gold-scammers

no lnx db teads

Steve Bannon’s Dodgy Nonprofit Teamed Up With Company Linked to Accused Gold Scammers

DIGGING DEEPER

Platinum Advertising, which worked for Bannon’s Citizens of the American Republic, tied to firm accused of defrauding seniors of $185 million.

William Bredderman

Researcher

Published Sep. 27, 2020

When former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s nonprofit sought to restore an American golden age, it turned to a company with connections to a consortium that allegedly strip-mined the retirement accounts of elderly conservatives, The Daily Beast has discovered.

Bannon’s “economic nationalist” group Citizens of the American Republic hired the Wyoming-based firm Platinum Advertising Corporation in 2018 to handle its “websites/social media,” Internal Revenue Service records show. A tangle of corporate and legal documents ties Platinum Advertising to TMTE Inc.—a precious metal dealer accused on Friday of fraudulently extracting $185 million from senior citizens by selling them overpriced bullion.

The massive joint action the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission and 30 states announced against TMTE alleged that the Los Angeles-based company had suckered 1,600 mostly silver-haired victims into sinking their life savings into precious metals sold at up to 300 percent of their market value. The charges are familiar to anybody who has followed the long trail of news reports and regulatory actions describing how TMTE—which has variously used the monikers Access Unlimited, TEM, Chase Metals, and Metals.com—cashed in on the right-wing paranoia of the Trump era.

Even prior to the CFTC-led case on Friday, a dozen states, including Alabama and Kentucky, had accused TMTE of posing as an investment adviser and bilking senior citizens of their assets. Articles in Quartz last year detailed how the company used a combination of politically themed Facebook ads, talk radio spots, misleading websites, and high-pressure telephone sales tactics to target right-leaning, Fox News-viewing retirees and convince them to purchase gold and silver at hugely inflated rates. These efforts often involved overt biblical appeals, or echoed the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and Republican pundits by invoking the threat “liberals” and the “Deep State” supposedly posed to the economy and to the victims’ personal finances.

“Metals[.com] reached potential investors through advertisements on Facebook, conservative talk radio show, and conservative-leaning financial newsletters,” Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan told The Daily Beast. “They targeted these ads at potential investors at or near retirement age with conservative political leanings.”

These echo findings in Missouri, Arkansas, and Nevada that TMTE relied on ominous advertising, “scare tactics,” and “misstatements and omitted information” to sell marked-up coins to vulnerable people aged 60 and up. Despite signing multiple cease-and-desist deals and disgorging millions of dollars, TMTE has publicly denied ever committing fraud.

Citizens of the American Republic’s bank-shot association with TMTE, which has never before been revealed, is just the latest problematic partnership for Bannon, who was caught up in a two-count federal indictment alleging fraud at a separate nonprofit, We Build the Wall, Inc. But the ties between the former Breitbart chairman and TMTE are less direct and more complex than his relationship to the alleged private border wall grifting operation.

The most recent tax forms Citizens of the American Republic filed with the Internal Revenue Service show it paid Platinum Advertising Corporation $143,655 in 2018 to shape its web presence. Platinum Advertising’s filings in Wyoming reveal little, beyond that the company registered in that jurisdiction in 2018. Gerald Pitts was listed as its secretary and director. Pitts runs Wyoming Corporate Services, which has filed paperwork in the notoriously opaque state for dozens of clients, including TMTE.

But Platinum Advertising—named for one of the priciest precious metals on Earth—also registered an affiliate in March of this year in California, where TMTE operates. And the registration statement bears the name and distinctive signature of Conor O’Reilly, whose LinkedIn profile shows he was employed full-time during that period as in-house counsel and compliance officer to Metals.com. Among his listed responsibilities were “reviewing, revising, and approving any legal work done on behalf of the company” and “the formation of various entities.”

O’Reilly’s signature also marks the cease-and-desist and rescission agreements that TMTE and its affiliates agreed to in Colorado and Texas in 2019. In May 2020, two months after registering Platinum Advertising in the Golden State, he Docusigned a consent order with the Missouri secretary of state, again identifying himself as TMTE’s counsel and compliance officer.

TMTE’s attorney, Charles Harder—who has also recently represented Trump and his family—initially denied any link between TMTE and Platinum Advertising, even going so far as to suggest the latter company may not be real.

“Today is the first day that TMTE has ever heard of the existence of ‘Platinum Advertising Corp.’ (assuming that it exists),” he wrote in an email. “TMTE knows nothing about it and, again, is not in any way affiliated with it.”

Confronted with the evidence of O’Reilly’s involvement in Platinum, Harder asserted that the lawyer “was not exclusive to TMTE—he also did legal work separate from, and completely unaffiliated with, TMTE.”

This claim contradicts all publicly available evidence regarding O’Reilly, who did not reply to calls or emails from The Daily Beast. His LinkedIn profile characterizes his employment arrangement with Metals.com as “full-time” and “in-house,” and does not list any other work as an attorney. O’Reilly was admitted to the bar in December 2018, just one month before he began his job at Metals.com, and he is the only person by that name licensed to practice law in California.

During negotiations with the Texas State Securities Board in 2019, O’Reilly presented himself as an important official at TMTE.

“He represented that he had the authority to contractually bind the company,” said Enforcement Division Director Joseph Rotunda. “We are not talking about a low-level employee.”

Rotunda told The Daily Beast he was familiar with Platinum Advertising, but could not say whether it was involved in any criminal scheme, due to the ongoing legal actions.

[Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-linked-groups-push-study-claiming-china-manufactured-covid

STUDY BUDDY

Adam Rawnsley,

Lachlan Markay]

Further, all other legal documents bearing O’Reilly’s name or signature are traceable to TMTE or one or more of its principals. The only corporate entity besides Platinum Advertising he has registered at the state level is USA Marketing Inc., another California affiliate of a Wyoming company originally incorporated by Pitts. USA Marketing uses the same Golden State address, inside Los Angeles’s Century Plaza Towers complex, as Platinum Advertising.

Wyomingfilings from late 2019 list Graham Norris, a Utah-based lawyer, as USA Marketing’s “director.” Norris, who frequently works with Pitts, was listed as TMTE’s CEO, CFO, and secretary in a 2018 filing in California. A 2019 lawsuit brought by former executive vice president of sales at Chase Metals identified Norris as one of that company’s three principals.

In May this year O’Reilly applied for a trademark on behalf of another Wyoming-based precious metals-slinging company called Capital Today, Inc.

Capital Today’s state-level corporate filings are highly similar to Platinum Advertising’s. In Wyoming, both initially usedGerald Pitts as their registration agent, then switched to the Cloud Peak Law Group. In California, both firms used the exact same Wyoming address, the exact same California address, and the exact same agent for service of process—an Ethan D. Kirschner of Culver City, who did not respond to requests for comment.

Finally, the trademark application O’Reilly filed for Capital Today, which operates USAMint.com, used the address 8383 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 700, in Beverly Hills. Metals.com identified this location as one of its two in its correspondence with the Missouri secretary of state’s Securities Division, and the aforementioned lawsuit brought by the ex-sales executive described the Wilshire Boulevard suite as Chase Metals’ “principal business location.”

This also happens to be the address of Tower Equity—the investment firm founded by Norris’s fellow TMTE principals Lucas Asher and Simon Batashvili, which was also named and seized in the joint federal-state action on TMTE on Friday. All of this strongly indicates a nexus between Platinum Inc. and firms tied to TMTE—strongly enough that, when confronted with this evidence, a representative for TMTE walked back part of Harder’s statement in part.

The representative admitted that O’Reilly in fact had registered Platinum Advertising on the metal dealer’s behalf. However, they insisted that TMTE had only acquired the company as a “shelf entity” for future use in 2020, and that it was unaware of Platinum Advertising’s work for Bannon before and that the firm has not done any work with him since. Platinum Advertising, they maintained, currently has no assets, no employees, and has never had any business dealings during the time TMTE owned it. In fact, they asserted that the principals of TMTE had never even heard of Platinum Advertising before The Daily Beast inquired about it.

The TMTE representative declined to provide any documentation or on-the-record statements to substantiate these claims, and even suggested that Bannon might have hired another Platinum Advertising based in Wyoming. However, the state’s business records show only one entity of that name—the same one O’Reilly signed for in California.

In the TMTE representative’s version of events—at least, the version that lines up with the available documentary evidence—Bannon contracted Platinum Advertising to handle web and social media outreach for his conservative nonprofit. Then, sometime afterward,TMTE—which sells precious metals, including platinum, by targeting conservative voters on the web and through social media—happened to purchase the same company completely unaware of its history. Despite being completely empty and inactive, Platinum was somehow known to the Texas State Securities Board even when it was unknown to TMTE’s principals.

A representative for Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, did not answer repeated requests for comment.

Bannon has picked up a number of unsavory associates since his unceremonious exit from the White House in 2017. The Daily Beast revealed in June that the distributor of his podcast War Room is a longtime white-collar criminal. The former Goldman Sachs banker and Hollywood producer also launched several ventures with Guo Wengui, a billionaire Chinese national accused of an array of crimes in his home country, all of which he denies. Two of these entities have recently funded and promoted a dubious study asserting COVID-19 originated in a government lab in Wuhan.

It was on Wengui’s yacht that federal authorities arrested Bannon on fraud charges related to We Build the Wall Inc., itself a joint project with disabled war veteran, conservative activist, and serial entrepreneur Brian Kolfage—who has also been accused of misappropriating funds.

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older voters Nancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/inside-trumps-brazen-plot-to-gut-social-security/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-trump-administrations-monstrous-idea-direct-payments-in-exchange-for-cuts-to-social-security-benefits

penny drops

an 420

Trump tries to reassure ‘our beloved seniors’ after polling shows he’s hemorrhaging their support David Badash / The New Civil Rights Mo

bill o'r: gonna die anyway

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/bill-oreilly-many-people-who-are-dying-both-here-and-around-world-were-their

an 320

this is a trap’: Progressives sound alarm on Republicans’ Social Security sneak attack hidden in coronavirus bill Jake Johnson / Common D

aN 320 next day sr found abandoned/dead in spain, after italy said cd not cope

no lnx

Former FBI agent stunned by GOP’s willingness to die for 401ks: I dealt with suicidal cults — this is a ‘new level of craziness’

Written by Sky Palma / Raw Story March 24, 2020

During an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News this Monday, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said that he’s willing to bet there’s plenty of senior citizens in America who would be willing to risk contracting COVID-19 if it meant getting the economy back on track.

Patrick said that he, as a senior citizen himself, would be “willing to take a chance” on his survival “in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves” for his children and grandchildren, adding that people he’s talked to say the same thing.

The interview went viral and plenty of critics weighed in with reactions, including former FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan, who suggested Patrick’s sentiment isn’t unlike the “suicidal death cults” he’s dealt with in the past.

“I dealt with suicidal cults before,” he tweeted. “I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness.”

Ali H. Soufan

@Ali_H_Soufan

I dealt with suicidal cults before. I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness. https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1242245135129346050 …

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren

Embedded video

320

congressman Skipped the Coronavirus Relief Vote. Instead, He Went Home to Tell Senior Citizens to Blame Mass Media.

Rep. Don Young of Alaska isn’t the only politician to downplay the threat of coronavirus, in direct contrast with his state government’s public efforts. He may be the only one to do so at a gathering of senior citizens, though.

by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News

talk radio

320 aha lt gov dan patrick sportscaster career revived by talk radiom one of the 1st to sign up rush; do we need a tag? poster?

it's the petri dish of the fever swamp ? [freepers?] the bottom of the escalator, unheard in flyover country? an older tech that older ppl use/trust? on some rural hiway the only signal?

AHA: TALK RADIO + POL-OP + TWITTER = DJT

trump trolls soc med TV etc for odd story, repkg retweet amplify, seeking retweets, constant instant feedback via crude stats

TWITTER is reductionistic, it's "killer app" attraction is 140 character, why?

mma 320

grift watch: How right-wing media are trying to profit off a pandemic

We've talked about how right-wing media are trying to downplay the pandemic. Even worse are those that are trying to profit off of it.

Infowars host Alex Jones claimed that his supplements were "literally a stopgap" against coronavirus.
Jones then claimed that his toothpaste kills coronavirus. After he did that, New York's Attorney General Letitia James told Jones to "immediately cease and desist selling and marketing products as a treatment or cure for the coronavirus."
Newsmax told its older-leaning audience to avoid a future coronavirus vaccine and instead give it money for something “far more effective.” After we reported on that, Newsmax issued a statement disavowing the claims. And yet, days later, Newsmax sent an emailsaying that if you give it money, you can learn “secrets” to “never getting sick,” including from the coronavirus.
HuffPost has reported on even more right-wing outlets using similar grifting tactics.

uk boris landslide 2 rw tabloids read by sr, infl TV GUK 1219

https://www.axios.com/david-bossie-presidential-coalition-elderly-donors-7b37f0c1-da94-4313-87bd-552730fea295.html

elderly Bossie donors say they thought they were helping Trump

About two-thirds of the contributions made to David Bossie's Presidential Coalition in 2017 and 2018 came from donors giving less than $200 in a single year. And of the donors identified in its tax forms, most said they were retired.

Data: Presidential Coalition's forms 8872 from the IRS; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios

Facebook's political ad archive shows that most of the organization's ads "are overwhelmingly targeted to, and viewed by, Facebook users 65 and older," according toCLC’s report.

And one of the Presidential Coalition's top fundraising vendors, the telemarketing firm InfoCision, paid a settlement after being accused by the Federal Trade Commission of engaging in "false and misleading" tactics and accused by former employees of preying on the elderly, CLC points out.
"Steve Brubaker, chief of staff for InfoCision, said the company disputes the allegations but agreed to settle the case to avoid a lengthy court battle," per the Center for Public Integrity.

Yes, but: "Most organizations, left or right, in this space target an older demographic. Not to scam them, though that does exist, but because they're most likely to donate," said Walter Lukens, CEO of the Lukens Company, a direct response marketing agency.

Axios reached out to more than a dozen of these donors, most of whom were retired. They all said they thought their money was going toward supporting the president.

"I gave them money after seeing their mailers, and because I think Trump deserves it. … I'm old and easily fooled I guess. … It's disappointing, very disappointing," Wallace Payne, an 86-year-old Republican from Paynesville, Minnesota, told Axios after we informed him of the breakdown of spending.
"I thought the money was going toward the president," Barbara Bloom, a retired widow in her 70s, said: "You know, I'd get repeated duplicates for things. [Their mailers] would most of the time say the first $15 was for your membership, but how many times do you pay membership? … It's ridiculous, it's insulting. I'm just really disenchanted with it all."
Even one of the Presidential Coalition's biggest individual donors, 85-year-old George Kunkel, who gave $101,000 during 2017 and 2018, said he thought "the money goes toward supporting the president": "I know some of it went to the president and his campaign because I saw the ads," he told Axios before we shared details of how the money was spent.

Go deeper: Axios' full investigation into David Bossie's Presidential Coalition

axios

a political organization run by David Bossie, President Trump's former deputy campaign manager, has raised millions of dollars by saying it's supporting Trump-aligned conservative candidates — but has spent only a tiny fraction of that money supporting candidates.

Instead, federal records suggest the Presidential Coalition has spent nearly all its money — raised mostly from small-dollar donations — on more fundraising, as well as administrative costs, which include Bossie's salary, according to a new report produced by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) in collaboration with Axios.

The group's mailers and ads, obtained by Axios and reviewed by CLC, a campaign finance watchdog, repeatedly stress Bossie's relationship to Trump. Contributions to the organization increased after Trump's presidential victory and then skyrocketed in 2018.
[nice grapf on viz scam eg 1006 penn ave]
raphic: Harry Stevens/Axios

A senior Trump administration official told Axios: "The problem the president is going to have with this is 1) he does not like when people are perceived to be profiting off of him, and 2) these are not max out donors. This is money that many likely think is going towards the president's re-election effort when it is not. So effectively every dollar groups like Bossie's and similar groups raise is a dollar the campaign does not."

Despite no longer working for the Trump campaign, Bossie is still close to the president. Bossie flew with him on Air Force One in March to a rally in Michigan.
The Trump campaign declined to comment.

Why it matters: "There is a cottage industry of groups targeting vulnerable communities with self-serving borderline scams," CLC writes in its analysis. "What sets the Presidential Coalition apart is that it is explicitly — and successfully — capitalizing on Bossie's connection with the president of the United States."

In response, Bossie called our story "fake news brought to you by a collaboration of the biased liberal media and unabashed left-wing activists."
In a long statement, he charged that CLC cannot fairly assess his organization because the group has a "conflict of interest" because it "is a highly vocal and fierce critic of the landmark Citizens United v. FEC case." (Bossie runs Citizens United.) You can read Bossie's full statement here.
Bossie also said the analysis "totally ignores the legitimate staff, infrastructure and other political activity costs associated with the organization’s work," adding that "it is expensive to raise substantial amounts in small donor contributions using direct mail, digital, and telemarketing."

Details: Onits website, The Presidential Coalition says it has been "dedicated to identifying and supporting conservative candidates running for office at the state and local levels of government" since its founding in 2005.

The group's fundraising appeals also urge supporters to "grow the Republican 'farm team'" and "train and prepare conservative candidates to run and win in local elections."

But based on the 527 organization's IRS data, just $425,442 (or 3%) of the $15.4 million it spent during 2017 and 2018 went to direct political activity, which CLC defines as "direct donations to candidates or political committees, and a small number of state-level candidate ads."

"There is no question that the money spent on programming is well below anything someone in the industry would consider a legitimate amount," said Walter Lukens, CEO of the Lukens Company, a direct response marketing agency.

At least $445,972 was spent on apparent book purchases. Copies of the Presidential Coalition's direct mailers — which Axios obtained and shared with CLC — show the organization offered people who donated above a certain amount (usually $45) a copy of one of Bossie's books, "Trump's Enemies."

Bossie's response on the books: "In 2018, TPC spent a small amount on Trump's Enemies. The bulk of the book premiums, however, where [sic] for copies of Trump's America, which was authored by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. TPC members are very excited to receive these books and DVDs."

Data: Campaign Legal Center's analysis based on Presidential Coalition's forms 8872 from the IRS; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios

The rest of the money appears to have been spent on more fundraising for the Presidential Coalition, largely via direct mail and telemarketing, expenses to support those activities (such as postage and donor list cultivation), payments to other groups run by Bossie, and administrative expenses.

Compare that to the Republican Governors Association, another 527 organization supporting state-level Republican candidates, which spent about 80% of its funds on campaign contributions and political advertising over the same period.

Meanwhile, more than $650,000 of the Presidential Coalition’s 2017–2018 spending went to two affiliated organizations also run by Bossie, Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation — 1.5 times as much as the group spent on direct political activity.

Those payments included personal salaries for Bossie: In 2017, Bossie earned a $105,541 salary from the Presidential Coalition.
The remaining expenditures went to overhead and administrative costs.

The bottom line: There's a vast difference between what the Presidential Coalition is telling its donors and how it actually spends their money. And as the CLC writes, "Not only do these dubious practices mislead and potentially even prey upon vulnerable populations, but they also drain resources away from more effective political groups" — including Trump's campaign.

Go deeper: Elderly Bossie donors say they thought they were helping Trump

cosign student loans, on hook delay retire

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-fundraisers-convinced-right-wingers-to-donate-10-million-to-defeat-obama-and-then-kept-almost-all-of-it/

no lnx

How fundraisers convinced right-wingers to donate $10 million to defeat Obama — and then kept almost all of it

Written by ProPublica July 27, 2019

After recruiting thousands of donors for the American Conservative Union — the powerful organization behind the annual CPAC conference — a Republican political operative pushed the same contributors to give millions to a PAC that promised to go after then-President Barack Obama, but then steered much of their donations to himself and his partners.

The PAC, called the Conservative Majority Fund, has raised nearly $10 million since mid-2012 and continues to solicit funds to this day, primarily from thousands of steadfast contributors to conservative causes, many of them senior citizens. But it has made just $48,400 in political contributions to candidates and committees. Public records indicate its main beneficiaries are theoperative Kelley Rogers, who has a history of disputes over allegedly unethical fundraising, and one of the largest conservative fundraising companies, InfoCision Management Corp., which charged millions of dollars in fundraising fees.

The saga of how politically connected fundraisers used one of the nation’s leading conservative organizations as a springboard for fundraising that mainly benefited the fundraisers themselves sheds light on the growing problem of so-called scam PACs — organizations that take advantage of loosened campaign finance laws to reap windfalls for insiders while directing only a small portion of receipts to actual political advocacy.

Watchdogs have long complained that ethics laws fail to prevent the exploitation of donors by organizations operating with little or no oversight, and even President Donald Trump’s campaign issued a warning this year about “dishonest fundraising groups” using the president’s name to raise funds.

Rogers’ and InfoCision’s work on behalf of the ACU also shows how lax regulation allows big-name political organizations to recruit donors without identifying either the source of the calls or the ultimate beneficiaries of the donations. ACU appears to have had little control over the PAC’s operation and was not the source of its fundraising scripts.

“The individuals — or many of the individuals — who seem to be profiting off of scam PACs are the same people who also provide services to mainstream players,” said Adav Noti, a lawyer who worked for more than 10 years at the Federal Election Commission. “Obviously not every political consultant is fleecing small donors. But the consultants who are fleecing small donors, largely the way they’re able to do that is because they have experience and connections.”

Rogers and InfoCision did not respond to repeated requests for interviews — including lists of detailed questions. But the extent of their operation is detailed in a series of emails and documents obtained by ProPublica and Politico from a person with direct knowledge.In the records, Rogers and his cohorts discuss how to contour their pitches to collect the most money, betting that the most red-meat appeals would draw the most dollars.

“This makes me a little queasy … which is good,” Rogers wrote after reviewing a script for a fundraising call that questioned Obama’s citizenship. “This is approved.”

The emails raise questions about Rogers’ work ostensibly on behalf of theACU, which burst to fame in the 1970s and calls its conference “the birthplace of modern conservatism” for its role in elevating Ronald Reagan. The CPAC conference, most recently held at National Harbor, Maryland, is widely considered a crucial point of connection between GOP leadership and the grassroots activists who whip up excitement for the party’s agenda.

In 2010, the ACU enlisted Rogers to find new donors for the organization. To do so, Rogers formed a political nonprofit called the New Conservative Coalition and began soliciting money. It raised nearly $3.4 million between 2010 and mid-2012, although none of that money went to the ACU, IRS filings and records from Colorado show, because prospecting for new donors routinely consumes most or all of the money brought in.

By early 2012, the group appears to have test-marketed pitches to donors that were too extreme or embarrassing to be associated with the ACU itself. The emails reflect the insistence of then-ACU Chairman Al Cardenas, the veteran conservative lobbyist, and others in the organization that no trace of the ACU’s fingerprints be visible in the scripts given to telemarketers.

“Kelley just left me a voicemail that ACU has received a few calls in their office from people who ACU thought had received a [fundraising] call … [and] been directed to the ACU’s conservative.org website (and then called the ACU office.),” wrote one of Rogers’s colleagues. “… it may be nothing … but would you double check to make sure their [sic] in NO reference to ACU, conservative.org or Al Cardenas in any script, including the thank you call script?”

After finding references to ACU affiliates in some of the scripts, an operative asked, “I’m assuming we need ALL ACU references removed — is that right?”

“Yes … just get rid of all of them,” responded another.

At another point, Rogers’ colleagues expressed concern about Cardenas’ Hispanic heritage and the tenor of their anti-immigration message to donors. The script, drafted in January 2012, declared that undocumented immigrants “account for a large percentage of our crime — and prison costs … and take jobs away from Americans.” Those claims are not supported by evidence.

“Cardenas, the ACU Chairman, is Hispanic,” the consultant working with Rogers wrote. “In an effort to keep this script under the radar I think we should re-name it ‘Obama’s Plan.’”

In an interview, Cardenas said he didn’t recall any disagreements between ACU and InfoCision. He said ACU had been careful to run the fundraising project by its lawyers.

“The only thing I remember is making sure our executive director thought it was a good idea” to seek out new donors, Cardenas said. “Probably, the consultants got upset with the parameters that our legal counsel set.”

Asked why ACU would shield its identity when pitching donors, Cardenas said, “Using our name and my name is something we wouldn’t want to happen because a) it would hurt our own fundraising purposes, and b) we have very little control over content and we didn’t want our reputation to be tainted in any way — but I’m only guessing.”

The ACU executive director at the time, Gregg Keller, declined to comment. The ACU and current director Matt Schlapp did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including an emailed list of specific questions concerning the organization’s dealings with Rogers and InfoCision.

By the end of the summer of 2012, Rogers and InfoCision had broken with the ACU and created a new federal PAC, the Conservative Majority Fund. It began raising money using the New Conservative Coalition donor list and aggressive fundraising tactics, which painted Obama as a shady figure whose real name was “Barry Soetoro” and who “had long-term relationships with terrorists,” according to scripts for calls circulated among people working on the fundraising campaign. Neither claim is accurate. The PAC said it was hiring investigators to press the case that Obama was ineligible to be president.

That message struck gold: $2.8 million poured in from more than 30,000 donors during the five months between July and December of that year alone. To kick off its campaign, the PAC paid $371,000 in August 2012 for a television ad that briefly aired on cable television and urged viewers to call the PAC, where they would be solicited for donations. After August, it ran no television ads and made no expenditures for anything other than fundraising.

FEC records show almost all the money went for calls to donors like Mike Miller, a jeweler in Barrington, Illinois, who gave $500.

“At the time they called, it seemed like such an important thing,” Miller said in a phone interview. “I was assuming they were legitimate.” When told about the group’s lack of spending on disqualifying Obama from the ballot, he said, “If they did this, and didn’t use it for intended purposes, I want my money back.”

On the day after Obama won reelection, the PAC changed its call scripts, telling donors that Obama’s “immediate plans are to pardon the terrorists at Guantanamo, give full amnesty to illegal aliens and give the United Nations the authority to tax Americans,” according to a fundraising script in the emails. There is no evidence that any of those plans were under consideration by the Obama administration. Donors were told that the PAC had hired a team of investigators and lawyers to press for impeachment. There is no evidence in FEC records that it ever did.

The fundraising scripts included suggested responses if the prospective donors said they were unemployed, on a fixed income or had significant medical bills to pay, encouraging them to give a smaller amount. When recipients asked not to be called again, the script instructed the telemarketers to offer to place them on a “restricted list” so that they would not get more than one call every 30 days. If recipients insisted, they would be added to a no-call list.

Rogers has previously come under harsh scrutiny for raising large amounts of money but spending little on the promised advocacy. Former Virginia gubernatorial candidateKen Cuccinelli sued Rogers for his involvement in a PAC that raised money purportedly to support Cuccinelli’s bid to be governor in 2013 but did not spend any to help Cuccinelli win. The case was settled in 2015. In 2017, Rogers’ Maryland office was raided by the FBI, but no charges were brought.

Election integrity experts have warned that alleged scam PACs are siphoning tens of millions of dollars in political donations into the coffers of fundraisers each year, while misleading donors.

Lynne Archer, 72, gave the Conservative Majority Fund $3,800 between 2012 and 2018. Archer said she tries to be wary of potential scams, but the Conservative Majority Fund had always sounded “like a legitimate group” when it solicited money.

“Damn, I gave a lot to them,” said Archer, who lives in Sugar Land, Texas, and works for her husband at an automobile dealership. “I don’t like that at all.”

Noti, who used to work at the FEC, called the proliferation of scam PACs “incredibly corrosive to American democracy” because of the impact on donors like Archer — many of them elderly — who give money in good faith to political causes.

“It’s going to chase people out of the system once those donors realize their money’s been stolen,” Noti said. “They’re going to be disillusioned and disenchanted, and rightfully so.”

Both Rogers’ Annapolis, Maryland-based Strategic Campaign Group and the Akron, Ohio-based InfoCision, a direct marketing firm, were once staples of GOP fundraising. Rogers’ clients included Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran and National Security Adviser John Bolton, while InfoCision helped raise money for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Rifle Association.

When the ACU sought to expand its roster of donors, it contracted with Rogers and InfoCision to make calls to a large number of potential contributors — a time-consuming, and therefore expensive, process known as “prospecting.”[EXTRACTION?]

During the spring and summer of 2012, several employees who worked in the political division at InfoCision, along with Rogers and other consultants, began using increasingly aggressive fundraising tactics for ACU — though the organization was never supposed to be named in fundraising materials or scripts.

The scripts tapped into voter concerns about illegal immigration. One, in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, declared that there was a “huge scandal” that the group had “recently uncovered,” in which Obama was “now planning to deliberately target 20-million poor Latino immigrants — a desperate effort to win re-election,” according to the emails.

Those pitches led to a flurry of emails discussing the nature of the appeals — and whether they might alienate Cardenas. Rogers was the main conduit for complaints, often relaying concerns from ACU leaders to the fundraisers crafting the various appeals.

Several months later Rogers proposed something else entirely: He and InfoCision would take the lists of donors they had harvested while working with ACU, split off their own fundraising operation, then open it as a PAC and raise money without ACU as a client.

“It’s becoming very apparent to me for many reasons that we are going to have to de-affiliate” the fundraising with ACU, Rogers wrote. “I am still trying to resolve issues with them but I can tell we are headed for trouble.”

Tensions between the ACU and the people operating the donor recruitment operation continued, emails among InfoCision employees indicate, because the PAC’s early fundraising pleas sometimes included references to ACU despite ACU’s wishes that they didn’t.

“We now have to eliminate ALL ACU references” in the materials for the group, wrote Erik Byers, an account executive who helped oversee the work done on behalf of ACU, to his colleagues on June 29, 2012. “Kelley got blasted by ACU.”

Soon after, in early July, Rogers and a handful of other individuals established the Conservative Majority Fund and began raising money.

Because InfoCision telemarketers (called “Communicators”) might recognize that they were reusing fundraising appeals, a company manager stressed the importance of a separate identity.

“We’re starting a new, independent PAC, with an established donor base,” Matthew Birkbeck, then a marketing executive at InfoCision, wrote. “It’s exciting, so sell it! We can’t have the Communicators talking about ACU. There are threats of lawsuits surrounding this!!!”

Calls and emails to Birkbeck were not returned.

By mid-August, Rogers wrote to the ACU that the fundraising operation with them “is completely shut down in all fronts.”

In the months that followed, the InfoCision managers created increasingly provocative call scripts focused on voter fraud, Obama’s (false) country of birth and — after his reelection — launching an impeachment drive to remove him from office.

In addition to Rogers, the InfoCision account manager Byers, a consultant and two other InfoCision employees, including Birkbeck, were involved with the Conservative Majority Fund, according to the emails. All of those people had also been involved with the previous work with the ACU, and the group worked quickly to close accounts and reassign paperwork to the new organization.

Scott B. Mackenzie, a Republican bookkeeper who serves as the treasurer for dozens of political committees, was treasurer of the group, responsible for filing its reports with the FEC.

Mackenzie did not respond to a request for comment. Byers, of InfoCision, did not respond to requests for comment.

The PAC’s executive director was Dennis Whitfield, a former deputy labor secretary during the Reagan administration. Whitfield worked as a consultant for ACU in 2012, according to the group’s website. He also worked with Rogers at Strategic Campaign Group. Whitfield’s name was used to help promote the Conservative Majority Fund, for example on an October 2012 letter about voter fraud that cautioned: “I mean, imagine how you’ll feel if Obama wins because of all this? We’re scared to death!”

Phone calls to Whitfield were not returned.

The InfoCision staff and Rogers got their first look at a fundraising script and a television ad for the new Conservative Majority Fund on July 5, just two weeks after Rogers floated the idea for opening the PAC. They described an effort to remove Obama from the ballot and raised questions about his eligibility to be president.

“We need to gather 10,000 signatures from each congressional district to have him removed from the ballot,” one script read, before callers asked people for donations. The procedure for removing candidates from the ballot varies by state, but does not require the specific goal claimed by the script. If the donor gave money using a credit card, the caller was instructed to try to upsell them: “I want to let you know that we’re developing some new TV ads about Obama’s past that are going to shock people. We need to get the ads on the air quickly, so can we count on you for an additional gift[?]”

Rogers approved both pitches, according to the emails.

Using the ACU donors and lists of conservative donors pulled from InfoCision’s collection or purchased from other vendors, [SOCIAL MEDIA HOOVER UP INFO/ADDY BIG DATABASE?] the new group raked in large amounts of money: Between 2012 and 2018, the Conservative Majority Fund disclosed raising more than $9.6 million, almost entirely from small-dollar donors. At least $9 million of that has been paid to InfoCision for expenses reported as fundraising costs. Strategic Campaign Group, where Rogers works, received an additional $229,000, while Mackenzie was paid $172,000 as the PAC’s treasurer.

In its reporting to the FEC, the Conservative Majority Fund disclosed spending $5.3 million on what it described as expressly political expenditures, but nearly all of it was on fundraising calls — placed by InfoCision — that criticized Democratic politicians, particularly Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Conservative Majority Fund produced two TV ads, but it appears to have spent little money airing them. Most of its recent activity has been phone calls and social media posts supportive of Trump, whose image figures prominently on the PAC’s website.

There’s no further evidence in records that the Conservative Majority Fund was active in the 2012 elections. Nonetheless, the group bragged in various solicitations to donors that it was taking on a range of anti-Obama organizing, which included: employing a “Truth Squad” to lobby states to remove Obama from the ballot; “hiring undercover researchers” to expose attempts by the Obama campaign to commit voter fraud; and putting “media specialists” on television and radio shows, as well as authoring newspaper and magazine articles and social media posts, “giving regular updates on Obama’s dirty tricks.”

ProPublica and Politico did not find any record of experts from the Conservative Majority Fund appearing on television or radio to discuss the election and could find no evidence from the states cited by the group — Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona and Illinois — indicating it lobbied to remove Obama from the ballot. And the Conservative Majority Fund could not have worked in states to stop “phony [voter] registrations,” which an October 2012 letter to donors said it would do. By then, the voter rolls were closed in many states and could not be changed by anyone.

Starting the day after Obama was reelected, employees at InfoCision began circulating plans for a new message for callers: a case for impeaching the president.

“Impeachment is our only option,” said a recording that InfoCision planned to play to potential donors, according to emails circulated among the operatives on Nov. 7, 2012. “And Republicans are already considering Obama investigations. As the nation’s most effective conservative group … We are launching the official ‘IMPEACH OBAMA’ campaign.”

At least from a fundraising perspective, the campaign was a success: In the first six months of 2013, FEC records show, the PAC raised an additional $1.7 million.

At least since 2015, federal regulators have been aware of complaints about the tactics used by the Conservative Majority Fund, as well as other PACs linked to Rogers and Mackenzie, the PAC’s treasurer. But the Conservative Majority Fund continued to operate with relatively little attention from authorities, a reflection of how federal laws do little to protect the public from potential scam PACs, according to watchdogs.

The FEC has twice probed the Conservative Majority Fund’s activities — but the commission, despite being the main federal regulator, is limited in what it can do. In July 2016, the FEC found the Conservative Majority Fund had misreported items on its federal disclosures during the 2013-14 election cycle. It paid a $3,500 fine.In October 2017, the FEC approved an audit covering the last six months of 2012 that found the Conservative Majority Fund had misstated its financial activity.

Both inquiries only skimmed the surface, looking at financial forms submitted to the commission.

The commission rarely chooses to launch full investigations — which allow it to ask questions, interview employees and demand documents from a group — without first having evidence of wrongdoing.

There are also holes in federal law that make it difficult for the commission to exercise meaningful oversight of groups like the Conservative Majority Fund. While the law prohibits raising campaign money while fraudulently “acting for or on behalf of any candidate or political party,” it does little to address a PAC like the Conservative Majority Fund that didn’t do this. The bar for federal law enforcement in proving a broader criminal statute like wire fraud is far higher. Last year, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York for the first time indicted two men for wire fraud who ran PACs that raised money in the name of causes such as autism awareness and helping police.

In a 2016 memo on the issue, two FEC commissioners implored their colleagues to take action against scam PACs but acknowledged that federal law gives political committees “great leeway on how they use the funds” they raise.

“The power of the Commission to directly and comprehensively protect political contributors is limited,” the two commissioners concluded.

In late 2018, the FEC formally asked Congress to take action against “fraudulent PAC practices” by some PACs.“These committees solicit contributions with promises of supporting candidates, but then disclose minimal or no candidate support activities while engaging in significant and continuous fundraising, which predominantly funds personal compensation for the committees’ organizers,” the commission wrote.

When Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate, sued Rogers and a PAC called Conservative StrikeForce, he said they’d used Cuccinelli’s name to raise more than $2 million, but donated just $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s campaign.

Cuccinelli settled with Rogers and Conservative StrikeForce in May 2015 for $85,000. Cuccinelli’s spokesperson did not respond to an interview request.

In 2017, the FBI raided the Annapolis office of Rogers’ consulting firm. At the time, Rogers said the FBI appeared interested in work his firm did in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial race, but the FBI did not shed any light on its actions. The pre-dawn raid was a near-unheard of occurence in the political sphere, but it didn’t result in charges being brought against Rogers or the PAC. Rogers’ firm shut down its website and closed the office in Annapolis.

InfoCision, meanwhile, paid a $250,000 settlement in 2018 for “deceptive charitable solicitation calls” in an unrelated case. InfoCision callers initially told potential donors they were not calling to solicit donations when that was not the case, according to the Federal Trade Commission. But the FTC does not have similar jurisdiction over political fundraising, highlighting that business solicitations are more highly regulated than political fundraising.

Election law experts have proposed changes that would discourage scam PACs by broadening anti-fraud provisions in federal election law or enacting an anti-self-dealing provision that prohibits PAC operators from turning an excessive profit. Smaller changes, such as expanding the requirements for PACs to disclose more information to donors who visit their websites, could also help curb the number of scam PACs operating in the political space.

“It seems that it would not be that hard and it should be something that is bipartisan, you would hope,” said Ann Ravel, former chair of the FEC.

The argument for enacting more regulation on scam PACs is “similar to why there’s oversight over nonprofits who take money from individuals in the name of good causes, and then use it to enrich themselves,” Ravel said. “It’s stealing.”

Filed under:

Politics

wiki

Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) is a United States-based conservative advocacy organization and interest group, founded in 2007. Its president and founder is Daniel C. Weber, a retired insurance agency owner.^[1][2]

AMAC is a membership organization for people age 50 and over.^[3] The group calls itself "the conservative alternative to the AARP."^[2] It is one of several organizations to position itself as conservative rivals to the AARP; others include the American Seniors Association and 60 Plus Association.^[3][4][5]

In 2014, the group is based in Lady Lake, Florida.^[4]

Political activities

AMAC describes itself as "vigorously conservative" and gained support from talk show host Glenn Beck and other conservative figures.^[6] AMAC strongly opposes the Affordable Care Act (ACA)^[7][8] and has pushed for its repeal.^[4] In March 2014, AMAC claimed a membership of 1.1 million members, up from 40,000 in 2008, which it attributed to backlash over the ACA.^[4]

AMAC supports a plan for Social Security which would gradually increase the earliest retirement age to 64 (from 62) and "guarantee cost-of-living increases in a tiered structure based on income."^[4] AMAC supports the oil and gas industry, claiming that they "are safer for the environment than ever." The group's president, Dan Weber, called for a rollback of Obama administration policies to promote clean energy.^[9]

The AMAC has a volunteer "delegate" program, aiming to select an AMAC member in each congressional district across the country to meet and lobby members of Congress.^[10]

In February 2017 AMAC issued a warning to the upcoming 2017 Academy Awards ceremony to not tolerate speeches against President Donald Trump, threatening to launch a boycott of theaters.^[11]

Political analyst Josh Bernstein is currently a National Spokesperson for AMAC, which sponsors his weekly political talk show. ^[12]

References

^ Association of Mature American Citizens's file: Association of Mature American Citizens: Organization from Washington, D.C., PolitiFact.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Hill_2-1) John Hill, Association of Mature American Citizens says under Affordable Care Act, 16,000 IRS agents will pry into private medical records, PolitiFact (December 2, 2012).
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Lade_3-1) Diane C. Lade, Anti-AARP groups looking to woo new retirees, Sun-Sentinel (January 14, 2013).
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Johannes_4-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Johannes_4-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Johannes_4-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Mature_American_Citizens#cite_ref-Johannes_4-4) Laura Johannes (30 March 2014). "AARP Faces Competition From Conservative-Leaning Groups". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 October 2014.
^ Kate Zernike, A Silver Tinge to the Political Ring, New York Times(September 11, 2012).
^ AARP Brushes Off Obamacare Complaints During 1200 WOAI News Interview, WOAI (AM), December 9, 2013.
^ "Sebelius' cuts in home health care funds could jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs". Fox News. February 24, 2014.
^ "New concerns over ObamaCare impact on jobs". Fox News. 2014-02-24. Retrieved 2014-03-06.
^ John Grimaldi (2014). "AMAC: We need a new energy policy"(Press release). Association of Mature American Citizens.
^ Linda Voorhees (January 24, 2014). "Tom Platek selected as liaison delegate to Congressman Tim Walberg". MLive.
^ Bedard, Paul. "Oscars warned: 'Diss Trump and face a theater boycott".
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-04-19. Retrieved 2017-04-18.

Categories:

=utube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7K0wNhrt6fQdTj9zQQwLtw

omg intro

"political savat" by many of his media peers

AMAC 1.3 mil members 50 stations in 25 states radio

turth honesty and ; dissects left intellect and facts

Josh Bernstein UNMASKS FISA Court Judges LIVE At SC Tea Party Convention

1,596 views

1 year ago

I had the pleasure to speak at the 6th annual South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention this weekend in Myrtle Beach. It was awesome to be among such great Conservative speakers

aN 619

1 in 12 senior citizens didn’t have enough food in 2017 — and the Trump administration is threatening to make it worse

Joan McCarter / Daily Kos

receiving a membership pitch in the mail from AARP just before one’s 50th birthday is an American rite of passage.

The advocacy group, which itself turns 56 this year, is a powerhouse with 37.8 million members, known for its travel discounts and branded insurance products. In Washington and at the state level, it is the dominant voice speaking for older adults on issues from health care to utility rates.

But now, a handful of conservative-leaning groups are seeking to provide an alternative voice to AARP, which they say leans too far to the left despite its stated “nonpartisan” nature. These competitors include nonprofit advocacy groups and for-profit firms hoping to gain a slice of the lucrative market selling supplemental Medicare insurance.They generally describe themselves as supportive of free enterprise and family values.

While alternatives to AARP have existed for at least two decades, several groups say they have gotten a boost in recent years because of AARP’s support of the politically divisive Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010. One group, the American Seniors Association, urged members to tear up their AARP cards—and it now proudly displays them in a fishbowl in its Alpharetta, Ga., headquarters. Another group, the Association of Mature American Citizens, or AMAC, based in Lady Lake, Fla., says its membership shot to 1.1 million members last year from 40,000 in 2008, in part because of anger over the health-care law.

What’s the Motivation?

Judy Smith, age 72, is a member of AMAC. Her initial reaction to the Affordable Care Act: “This isn’t going to protect seniors; this is going to push us by the wayside.” A retired health-care administrator from Las Vegas, she says she quit AARP about three years ago after becoming disillusioned with the group’s support of the health-care overhaul and a general feeling that the group was “swinging farther to the left.”

Such reactions stem, in part, from how the new health-care law works. According to the Congressional Budget Office, spending on Medicare, the government health-care program for older adults, will slow by $716 billion between 2013 and 2022. Some older adults believe that AARP—which collects royalties on Medicare supplemental plans to which it lends its name—would stand to gain if spending cuts prompted more people to buy additional insurance.

“Who are they really interested in: seniors or lining their pockets?” asks Stephen Crawford, 61, a retired industrial engineer from Albany, Ga. He says he quit AARP in 2010 over the health-care law and later joined the 60 Plus Association Inc. in Alexandria, Va.

AARP did lose about 300,000 members due to its support of the ACA, says David Certner, director of legislative policy at AARP. But, he says, the group also lost members in 2003 when it was accused of being “an arm of the Republican Party” for supporting a GOP plan to add prescription-drug benefits to Medicare. Today, about one-third of AARP’s members are Democrats, a third Republican and a third independent, he says. “We try to represent the largest cross-section of our population,” he adds.

Member Support

AARP backed the Affordable Care Act and even ran national ads in 2009 arguing that the nation’s health-care system was broken and in need of fixing. Polling of its membership showed “overwhelming support” for key provisions of the ACA, Mr. Certner says. Among them: making it illegal for insurers to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions and limiting the amount they can raise rates based on age. It is false that AARP will gain financially from the ACA, he says.

Beyond politics and policy, rivals to AARP are interested in the lucrative market of selling insurance to older adults. In 2012, AARP collected $500 million in royalties on Medicare supplemental plans, dental insurance and other products sold by third parties under its brand name. American Seniors Association is a for-profit group that distributes profits to shareholders. AMAC is also a for-profit entity but returns all proceeds to the main organization to continue its advocacy work, says founder Dan Weber.

The 60 Plus Association doesn’t offer insurance and has nonprofit status; it gets money from individual donations and from conservative political-action committees, says the group’s chairman and founder, Jim Martin.

Of course, AARP has a big head start—in the insurance market and in gaining access to legislators. The group’s operating expenses in 2012 were $1.35 billion. In 2013, according to public filings, AARP spent $9.6 million on federal lobbying; it usually employs about 35 to 50 state and federal lobbyists, Mr. Certner says.In contrast, AMAC, which started hiring professional lobbyists in 2011, spent about $71,000 on federal lobbying last year.

The lobbying numbers, however, don’t include television advertising—an area in which 60 Plus has made itself noticed. During the 2012 election cycle, the group says, it spent some $15 million on television commercials, mailers and phone calls to older adults.

When it comes to membership numbers, it is difficult to make comparisons because the organizations use different calculation methods. Still, it is clear that the newer groups are David to AARP’s Goliath, says Susan MacManus, a political-science professor specializing in generational politics at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“It’s a Catch-22,” she says. “How can you show there is a reason to join unless you are effective? How can you show you are effective unless you get people to join?”

The newer groups say that they will eventually make a dent, and that two or more may merge for greater clout.

Differentiating Themselves

The conservative groups have clear differences with AARP on several issues, but less so on others. Perhaps the biggest disagreement: They want to repeal the ACA, which AARP still supports. The 60 Plus Association has been a leader of the push to repeal the federal estate tax, while AARP says it supports keeping the current estate tax, which now applies only to estates larger than $5.34 million.

And to prop up the Social Security program, AMAC has a detailed plan that would gradually increase the earliest retirement age to 64 from 62 currently—but would also guarantee cost-of-living increases in a tiered structure based on income. AARP is “adamantly against” any cuts in Social Security to deal with the current budget deficit, Mr. Certner says, but is open to discussing ways to safeguard its future.

On other issues, the smaller groups’ differences with AARP are less clear. AMAC is lobbying to restore Medicare cuts in the wake of the health law, which will hit “very sick, very poor old people” who prefer to stay at home rather than move to nursing homes, says Andrew J. Mangione Jr., vice president of government relations. AARP, for its part, wrote the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last summer expressing concern about those cuts.

Miss Johannes is a writer in Boston. She can be reached at encore@wsj.com.

wiki ref

AARP Faces Competition From Conservative-Leaning Groups

Rivals Say AARP's Support of the Affordable Care Act Has Given Them a Boost

Laura Johannes

March 30, 2014 5:05 p.m. ET

Receiving a membership pitch in the mail from AARP just before one's 50th birthday is an American rite of passage.

The advocacy group, which itself turns

https://amac.us/aarp-faces-competition-conservative-leaning-groups/

https://thinkprogress.org/experts-warn-trumps-epa-policies-mean-more-cases-of-autism-41360fe83430/

no lnx

Experts warn Trump’s EPA policies mean more cases of autism

Small particles of air pollution can travel directly from the nose to the brain, causing damage.

JOE ROMM

MAR 1, 2019, 10:37 AM

Some of the country’s leading experts on healthy brain development have come together to warn the public that President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back science-based air pollution standards will come at a high cost to our children.

Published in the American Journal of Public Health this week, these scientists and doctors cite “mounting evidence linking air pollution to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, like autism, ADHD, memory deficiencies and reduced IQ.”

The article makes several specific recommendations for how the government can protect children, one of the most important being to “strengthen and enforce federal fuel efficiency standards.” As the article explains, “Increasing evidence links prenatal exposure to traffic-related air pollutants and PM2.5 [tiny particulates] to autism spectrum disorder.”

But that’s in sharp contrast to the work being done by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has started the process of weakening existing standards.

The Trump administration released a proposal to roll back Obama-era federal fuel economy standards and revoke California’s ability to set its own fuel mileage and emissions standards. CREDIT: David McNew/Getty Images]

Widespread disapproval greets Trump’s rollback of auto emissions and fuel efficiency standards

Co-author Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, director of the University of California Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center funded by the National Institutes of Health, told ThinkProgress that starting with the Clean Air Act of 1970 — and for decades after — the EPA used the growing scientific evidence connecting serious health effects to air pollution as the basis for stronger and stronger air pollution rules.

“But under our current administration, many of these rules are being rolled back,” she warned. This is despite the overwhelming evidence, she said, that “energy produced from fossil fuels has really caused a lot of premature death and illness in people for decades.”

She explained that the reason she and her colleagues came together to write this article is that “we now have yet another reason besides the cardiovascular and respiratory impacts” to tighten air pollution standards: the impact on children’s brains.

Hertz-Picciotto, who is also director of the Program in Environmental Epidemiology of Autism at UC Davis, has been researching the environmental causes of autism for many years. She points out that there is increasing evidence that the very small particles (PM2.5) associated with fossil fuel combustion can “travel directly from nasal passages to the brain.”

PM2.5 is particulate matter (PM) smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. In comparison, a strand of human hair is more than 20 times wider than PM2.5.

Scientist have previously noted that the link between PM2.5 exposure and Alzheimer’s may also be due to the fact that tiny air pollution particles can travel from the nose to the brain.

Researchers have found that particulates from coal plants (like this one in Kansas) and vehicles increase the risk of dementia. Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Trump’s EPA policies risk more Alzheimer’s cases, doctors warn

Hertz-Picciotto explained that cutting carbon pollution is a double win because not only does it reduce the harmful particles, it also reduces the risk of global warming — which comes with a slew of other impacts that endanger children’s brains.

“Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires, which cause short-term, high-level exposure to combustion-related pollutants,” the study notes. Also, simply exposing pregnant women to higher and higher temperatures “increases risk for premature delivery, itself a risk factor for developmental delay.”

Since even low levels of the smallest particles are dangerous to humans, Trump’s plans to roll back EPA air pollution rules are even more cruel and immoral than they first appeared.

As the authors conclude, if their recommendations to tighten air pollution standards are taken seriously, “fewer children will face the challenge of living with neurodevelopmental disorders and more people will be able to fully participate in society across their life span.”

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/10/21463/telemarketer-conservative-causes-pays-250000-fine

A telemarketing company that fundraises for politicians, charities and major corporations has settled a complaintfiled by the Federal Trade Commission over allegedly “false and misleading” tactics.

Akron, Ohio-based InfoCision Inc., whose clients have included a pro-President Donald Trump political action committee, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential committee and groups connected to the Tea Party, today agreed to pay $250,000 tosettle a civil complaint brought by the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission.

During the pastfive years, federal political committees have paid InfoCision at least $24.8 million,a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission records indicates.

The federal government accused InfoCision’s telemarketers of misleading donors by telling them they weren’t calling to collect donations when, in fact, they were — a violation of the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule.

“Consumers in the United States have suffered and will suffer injury as a result of Defendant’s violations,” the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission wrote to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Absent some penalty, the government agencies argue, InfoCision “is likely to continue to injure consumers and harm the public interest.”

Steve Brubaker, chief of staff for InfoCision, said the company disputes the allegations but agreed to settle the case to avoid a lengthy court battle.

“We feel strongly the investigation had no merit whatsoever,” Brubaker said. “The agency never produced a single consumer complaint, or even suggested that consumers actually had been confused.”

InfoCision has come under fire in the past for its telemarketing practices. Former employees have alleged the company preys on elderly people, and an investigation by Bloomberg Markets Magazine found InfoCision was keeping most of the money it was raising on behalf of the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association and other charities.

InfoCision’s settlement document with the Department of Justice, filed today in federal court, doesn’t include details about which charities InfoCision had been calling on behalf of when it allegedly misled donors. Mitchell J. Katz, a spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, said that information isn’t public.

Political committees that have hired InfoCision include Carson America, the campaign committee representing former presidential candidate Ben Carson, which paid $5.2 million. A Carson representative could not immediately be reached.

A pro-Trump committee, Great America PAC, has spent $435,600 on InfoCision since 2016, according to FEC filings.

The Tea Party Majority Fundhas spent about $2.2 million on InfoCision since 2013, and the Tea Party Leadership Fund paid the company about $433,100 during the same time period.

Conservative-leaning Citizens United Political Victory Fund, which is led by Trump’s former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, has paid InfoCision $2.1 million since 2013.

The Stop Hillary PAC, which morphed into the Committee to Defend the President, also used InfoCision to raise funds in 2014.

Dan Backer, an attorney and political consultant who represents numerous conservative political committees including Committee to Defend the President and Great America PAC, defended InfoCision as having a “sterling reputation for integrity.”

“This is just another a case of government bullying by unaccountable bureaucrats,” Backer said. “It’s outrageous, and exactly why Americans across the board are disgusted with Washington.”

senior citizen elder

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older votersNancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an

Trump tries to reassure ‘our beloved seniors’ after polling shows he’s hemorrhaging their supportDavid Badash / The New Civil Rights Mo

this is a trap’: Progressives sound alarm on Republicans’ Social Security sneak attack hidden in coronavirus billJake Johnson / Common D

congressman Skipped the Coronavirus Relief Vote. Instead, He Went Home to Tell Senior Citizens to Blame Mass Media.

Political activities

References

What’s the Motivation?

Member Support

Differentiating Themselves

AARP Faces Competition From Conservative-Leaning Groups

Rivals Say AARP's Support of the Affordable Care Act Has Given Them a Boost

Trump is screwing up so badly he may finally lose older voters Nancy LeTourneau / Washington mo520 an

Trump tries to reassure ‘our beloved seniors’ after polling shows he’s hemorrhaging their support David Badash / The New Civil Rights Mo

this is a trap’: Progressives sound alarm on Republicans’ Social Security sneak attack hidden in coronavirus bill Jake Johnson / Common D