AARP

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abramoff usaNext 60 PLUS

MEDIC ADV?

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3 24 biden sotu said beat big pharma, insulin cap

moore off BS

this weekend at the CPAC conference one of your Hotline editors, Steve Moore, called AARP an “evil organization” for its nefarious relationships with the Biden administration and one of the country’s largest health insurance conglomerates, UnitedHealth.

The Biden campaign lashed out in a social media blast asserting the old chestnut that Repubs want to cut Social Security and Medicare:

Here’s a reality check: AARP doesn’t really represent the interests of seniors anymore – if it ever did. AARP is a functionary of one of the nation’s largest health insurer behemoths – United Health.

AARP now collects $1 BILLION a year (not $1 million) in royalties from UnitedHealth – a gargantuan insurer with a $500 billion market cap.

This sweetheart arrangement with UnitedHealth explains why AARP sold seniors down the river by supporting ObamaCare despite calls from their own members running 14-to-1 against it.

UnitedHealth and AARP also supported the Biden Inflation Acceleration Act, which imposed price controls on drug companies in a way that is not lowering drug prices but is slowing R&D funding for new drugs to combat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, and cancer. The last time we checked seniors are the strongest advocates for winning the race for the cure.

AARP signed on to this bill even though it raided over $250 billion from Medicare drug spending to pay for supersized Obamacare subsidies and green energy giveaways.

AARP has opposed many of the most modest debt reduction plans to save America’s future while supporting higher taxes on our kids and grandkids.

If you’re a member of AARP, maybe you should reconsider. We urge our members to check out AMAC or 60+, which are organizations that truly support the interests of older Americans.

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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.

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The lobbyist in question? Jack Abramoff, an NCPPR director. Abramoff is also on the board of USA Next, a pro-privatization Social Security group that formed as an offshoot of the Swift Boat Vets and recently ran an ad claiming AARP supported gay marriage.

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AARP to Drop Membership With Right-Wing Lobby Group ALEC After Progressive Groups Apply Pressure

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

A lighning campaign, a rapid retreat. READ MORE»

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/aarp-drop-membership-right-wing-lobby-group-alec-after-progressive-groups-apply

Progressives dedicated to protecting safety nets for seniors have pressured AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired People, to drop its dues-paying membership at ALEC, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, whose work includes drafting and promoting bills that would undermine and privatize Social Security and Medicare.

“After hearing from many of you, we’ve decided not to renew our membership to ALEC,” said a post on AARP’s Facebook page Friday. “We would never work against the interests of older Americans and our engagement with ALEC was NOT an endorsement of the organization’s policies, but an opportunity to engage with state legislators and advance our members’ priorities.”

“AARP is and always has been non-partisan,” the statement continued. “We meet with legislators from both sides of the aisle in order to do our job: fighting to improve the lives of people 50+. We will continue to explore ways to serve our diverse membership and fulfill our responsibility.”

The discovery that AARP had become an ALEC member and the ensuing grassroots campaign to pressure it to step away took less than a week.

“You and your friends joined tens of thousands of Americans signing petitions, making calls, sending emails, or sharing reports on social media asking for AARP to stop funding ALEC,” the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based investigative reporting and advocacy group that has spent years critically covering ALEC, wrote in an e-mail Friday. “The corporate bill mill had urged its members to call AARP and tell them to ‘remain strong.’”

The retirement security coalition’s members include groups like Social Security Works, which seeks to expand that program's benefits and fortify its funding, as well as journalists who have covered senior economic issues for many years, such as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik.

CMD was first to report that AARP was listed as a sponsor for ALEC’s annual meeting, which was held in Indianapolis last weekend. That led CMD and others to investigate their new relationship. As CMD has noted, ALEC is a “pay to play” organization, where dues-paying members get to sit with lobbyists and pro-corporate state and federal lawmakers to write model legislation which they then sponsor and carry through in their state legislatures and Congress.

When it comes to retirement security, ALEC has taken positions that can only be described as hostile to AARP members. As Hiltzik wrote, “ALEC has pushed for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which has saved Medicare enrollees millions of dollars by closing the Medicare drug benefit ‘donut hole’...It has opposed Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. It has targeted public pensions, pushing to cap benefits and shift workers toward defined contribution plans, which layer more market risk on individual workers’ shoulders.”

On Thursday, CMD’s ALEC Exposed project, Social Security Works, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, AFSCME Retirees and other groups wrote a strong letter to AARP’s CEO and senior legislative staff, urging it to sever ties with ALEC.

“We are calling on AARP to withdraw all support for ALEC, a group that has consistently promoted policies that hurt seniors,” the coalition wrote. “By partnering with ALEC, you have allowed it to use the powerful AARP brand to lend credibility to legislation harmful to seniors that is introduced in statehouses across the country. ALEC has been at the forefront of protecting drug companies and their ability to charge unreasonable prices, has been a strong advocate against the Affordable Care Act and has opposed Medicaid expansion, forcing lower-income retirees to make terrible choices between paying medical bills and buying groceries. ALEC pushed voter ID laws that make it harder, not easier for seniors and people of color to vote. ALEC also blocks action on climate change, causing irreparable harm to the world we will leave our children and grandchildren.”

That very day, AARP apparently decided not to renew its membership with ALEC. That decision follows many other large corporations leaving ALEC in recent years because it is a climate change denier.

“After a huge uproar from its members, we are very pleased that AARP is doing the right thing and cutting all ties with the anti-senior ALEC,” said Linda Benesch, Social Security Works’ communications director.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

crypto

The Artful Codger

Trashing the AARP with Grandma Green.

By Michael Scherer | Fri Jul. 1, 2005 12:00 AM PDT

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ANYONE VISITING THE SENIOR center in Woodbridge, Virginia, on a Tuesday runs a serious risk of being ignored, Tuesday being the appointed day for the weekly Spanish lesson, the arts-and-crafts hour, and the champion pingpong team practice. But when Flora Green, a.k.a. Grandma Green, paid a call one recent Tuesday, she outdrew all competitors. Two dozen seniors packed the main hall to listen with a mixture of reverence and awe to Green’s message of political redemption.

“I can get past those 29-year-olds who think they run the government, and you can too,” she promised, eliciting cheers and the occasional “Amen.” At 82, Green is a proud mother of 8, grandmother of 27, and great-grandmother of 22. She is also a hired gun, of a certain apostolic sort, a white-haired maverick with the charisma of a firecracker. As such, she’s an inspiration for people in the AARP set, though you mustn’t call them that in her presence. Green is the human face of the conservative Seniors Coalition, a grassroots—critics use the term “Astroturf”—lobbying group fed by member donations and industries like Big Pharma to influence votes on Capitol Hill. It’s one of K Street’s answers to the AARP, the nation’s most powerful seniors’ lobby.

In Green’s long life, the coalition post comes as something of a third act. Raised in her native western Pennsylvania, she was widowed at the age of 50, then moved to Utah and began working as a debt collector, overseeing a staff of 60. “I did quite well, too, because I am a pushy old lady,” she said. In 2000, the Seniors Coalition hired her to play Grandma in their lobbying show. She would tail an election-year bus trip sponsored by AARP, where she’d hound the group with pamphlets that claimed to expose its “shameful secrets.” “They called the police on me every day,” Green said, laughing. “How ridiculous. What, did I scare them?”

That Tuesday, she arrived at the Woodbridge event towing Mike Harrington, the head of the Seniors Coalition’s government-relations shop. “Lobbyists come in all different shapes and sizes,” he said. “Some of them wear fancy Italian Gucci suits and fancy black shoes and they drive big fancy cars.” Harrington might have been describing himself, a young Republican operative in expensive pinstripes and a tie the color of a good California merlot. “But then there are other lobbyists like Grandma Green. She doesn’t need a fancy car or a fancy suit.” Green, for the record, was resplendent that morning in a Barbie-pink jacket and pearls.

She also rides in style: in a 37-foot motor coach emblazoned with her billboard-sized image and called the “Straight Talk Express” (a moniker taken “straight” from John McCain’s 2000 campaign bus). “That’s what I try to provide all seniors I meet with,” Green said. “Straight answers and no nonsense.” She has logged half a million miles crossing the country over the past five years, warning seniors in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Wilmington, Delaware, about the dangers of buying medications from Canada. (In fact, there are no known cases of Americans being sickened by pills purchased from pharmacies over the border.) She has appeared as just-another-voter at a Bush town hall meeting, taking the microphone to praise the president and his Medicare policies. She regularly stars in Capitol Hill press conferences, and targets wavering pols with busloads of senior volunteers. And she’s helped drive the enrollment of the Seniors Coalition to a claimed 4 million members.

Meanwhile, she’s shaking her fists at the AARP for all other seniors to see. The AARP is suffering many thorns for its opposition to the Bush administration’s plans to block drug importation and privatize Social Security. In a recent ad,USA Next, a conservative seniors’ group dreamed up by the same GOP direct-mail wizard, Richard Viguerie, who dreamed up the Seniors Coalition, suggested that the AARP advocates homosexuality and disdains American soldiers. Although the Seniors Coalition has split with Viguerie, Grandma Green sings in a similar—if less shrill—chorus. “I’ll come right out and say it,” she declared, speaking of the AARP as she walked the crowd at Woodbridge, handing out autographed pictures of herself next to an American flag. “They don’t like me.” She pronounces AARP as one syllable, like a small dog barking.

The real pedigree of the group Green represents is hidden under layers of PR and politics. The Seniors Coalition was cofounded in 1989 by conservative activist Dan C. Alexander Jr., three years after he was sent to prison for arranging construction kickbacks as an Alabama school-committee member. Today, its top outside lobbyist is C. McClain Haddow, a former Health and Human Services official who spent time in prison with Alexander for failing to file a timely ethics waiver when he gave his wife a government contract. Haddow has also lobbied for generic-drugs manufacturer Mylan Pharmaceuticals.

The organization’s Washington activities regularly blur the needs of seniors with the agendas of corporate donors. After it took money from Microsoft in 1999, the coalition lobbied on antitrust litigation, and after it took money from Lottery.com in 2000, it lobbied on a bill that would restrict Internet gambling. Money also poured in from the American Petroleum Institute and the American Public Power Association—just as the coalition spoke out against the Kyoto Protocol and lower gas-mileage standards.

The Seniors Coalition is especially tied to the drug industry. PHRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s trade group, gave the organization $2.2 million between 1999 and 2000 (the only two years for which full financial disclosure is available). Other drug industry sources funneled the group an additional $300,000 during that time. But Tom Moore, the coalition’s chief operating officer, writes in an email that only 22 percent of his organization’s funding comes from industry, and that the group “retains its complete independence in developing [its] legislative agenda.”

Meanwhile, almost everything Grandma Green said at Woodbridge parroted PHRMA talking points. Since January, she has focused her message on the dangers of imported prescription drugs, arguing against proposed laws, supported by about 73 percent of the American public, that would allow importation. The stakes are huge for the industry, since the United States is currently the only industrialized nation in the world that does not regulate the price of prescription drugs. Green derides countries that might become suppliers of bargain drugs. “Do we drink the water down in Mexico?” she asked while at Woodbridge. “I don’t think so. I’ve been down there.”

The message has confused some of Green’s fans. Over lunch of pasta salad and chocolate pudding, Woodbridge senior Betty Graham wondered how the current pricing system could be justified. “It seems that the drug companies sell drugs to foreign countries cheaper,” she said. “And that is not right.”

By then, though, Grandma Green had already left the building.

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Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/07/artful-codger

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AARP California State Office

Community / Government Office

1415 L St, Sacramento, CA 95814 (866) 448-3614

https://www.facebook.com/aarpcalifornia/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-mcpherson-84192117

Nancy McPherson

State Director at AARP

Greater Los Angeles Area

LOS ANGELES— Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced a new collaboration between the Office of the Attorney General and AARP California to protect seniors from abuse and fraud.

http://www.californiaalliance.org/doc.asp?id=4

WHO WE ARE: The California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) is a statewide nonprofit organization that unites retired workers and community groups to win social and economic justice, full civil rights, and a better, more secure future for ourselves, our families, and future generations. Join us on Facebook. CARA is the official state affiliate of the Alliance for Retired Americans, www.retiredamericans.org.