| Author | Message | ||
     themp Supporter Username: Themp Post Number: 1519 Registered: 12-2001 |
 Nice group. | ||
| LibraryLady(ncjanow) Supporter Username: Librarylady Post Number: 2220 Registered: 5-2001  |
http://www.usanext.org/issues.cfm Their two big issues, AARP and The Passion of the Christ. Telling, no? | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 3172 Registered: 8-2003 |
LibraryLady -- What generalization are you making about the group? What is your generalization about AARP? | ||
| Robert Livingston Citizen Username: Rob_livingston Post Number: 899 Registered: 7-2004 |
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| Rastro Citizen Username: Rastro Post Number: 728 Registered: 5-2004  |
cjc, no generalization is necessary. They explicitly call AARP a liberal organization. I love how they imply AARP is in favor of gay marriage and against our soldiers. No need to back up any claims. Just make them. That's all that's really necessary. As for what appears to be their third cause, fighting against controls on vitamins, they're a bit wacko. I've worked a bit in the natural supplements industry. Their comments on the bill are misleading, and they either don't understand, or don't want to understand why this bill came to be. | ||
| Michael Janay Citizen Username: Childprotect Post Number: 1597 Registered: 1-2003  |
This is related to the Swift Boat vets how exactly? | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 3173 Registered: 8-2003 |
The story is USA-Next has hired media people who worked with the Swift Boat Vets. | ||
| themp Supporter Username: Themp Post Number: 1521 Registered: 12-2001 |
"To help set USA Next's strategy, the group has hired Chris LaCivita, an enthusiastic former marine who advised Swift Vets and P.O.W.'s for Truth, formerly known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, on its media campaign and helped write its potent commercials. He earned more than $30,000 for his work, campaign finance filings show. Officials said the group is also seeking to hire Rick Reed, a partner at Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a firm that was hired by Swift Vets and was paid more than $276,000 to do media production, records show. For public relations, USA Next has turned to Creative Response Concepts, a Virginia firm that represented both Swift Vets - the company was paid more than $165,000 - and Regnery Publishing, the publisher of "Unfit for Command," a book about Senator John Kerry's military service whose co-author was John E. O'Neill, one of the primary leaders of Swift Vets." NYTimes | ||
| Michael Janay Citizen Username: Childprotect Post Number: 1599 Registered: 1-2003 |
So they hired the same Ad agencies? Thats what this is about? There has got to be more, right? | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 3174 Registered: 8-2003 |
This thread is designed to show how evil Art Linkletter has become. | ||
| hariseldon Citizen Username: Hariseldon Post Number: 279 Registered: 5-2001  |
Evil, perhaps. Senile, most definitely! | ||
| mtierney Citizen Username: Mtierney Post Number: 771 Registered: 3-2001 |
Hariseldon: It will be in just a blink of an eye in a cosmic sense before some wag will titter that you are no longer capable of having a sound mind because you have been blessed with living to an advanced age! What in the world does disparaging Art Linkletter have to do with this thread? Or is it an attack on those who call themselves AARP members? If so, AARP takes people ages 50 and up.It has long ceased being the representative of issues for your parents and grandparents ages. It's focus is on the baby boomers who will be flooding the senior ranks shortly. Librarylady, could you explain your post? | ||
| Reflective Citizen Username: Reflective Post Number: 743 Registered: 3-2003 |
I saw Art Linkletter interviewed two days ago. Hadn't thought about him for years. Talk about being in great shape. He said he has spent the past thirty years dealing with seniors issues. He doesn't understand AAARps position on Soc Sec. and is concerned how they are scaring the older people who aren't impacted at all. Last, he said he'd rather be over the hill, rather than under it. In certain audiences I think that gets a chuckle. | ||
| Nohero Citizen Username: Nohero Post Number: 4356 Registered: 10-1999  |
"He doesn't understand AAARps position on Soc Sec. and is concerned how they are scaring the older people who aren't impacted at all." Well, if he can explain how the private accounts will "save" social security, then he's the first one, because not even the President can explain that one. "USA Next" was originally a lobbying effort for the pharmaceutical industry, and it's apparently been adapted for the effort to The ugly side of their message involves the apparent attack ads and character assassination techniques which their consultants find so appealing. | ||
| Reflective Citizen Username: Reflective Post Number: 746 Registered: 3-2003 |
Linkletter addressed AARP's post cards, telephone calls , magazine ads and senior forums, which were specifically directed at seniors. Falsely implying they would be cut off. We can disagree on fixing SS, but scaring seniors for a political purpose is another new low blow and has no role. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 3176 Registered: 8-2003 |
Come on, it's all the AARP has got left. They're trying to work themselves into the good graces of the Democrats after going along with Bush's Medicare Drug Welfare bill. Their support of that drug bill is not inconsistent. AARP doesn't care how things are paid for (or not paid for) so long as seniors get even more benefits. As for personal attacks, another one on AARP would be that they encourage their members to buy mutual funds through their organization. These funds are out of the Scudder family, whose results are dismal compared to the rest of the market and whose fees aren't really that low. I'm just wondering if AARP gets a cut of the fees. If they really cared about the people they claim to serve, they'd change fund companies. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 3177 Registered: 8-2003 |
Hypocrisy from AARP on Social Security James K. Glassman SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE The president has made fixing Social Security his top domestic objective, but the fight won't be easy -- in part because of fierce opposition by AARP, the seniors' lobby, with 35 million members. AARP is using an old strategy: trying to scare the wits out of old people. The organization wants its members to think that it would destroy Social Security to offer young people the option of personal accounts. The president's plan will likely allow workers to put up to 4 percentage points of what they now pay in taxes into a small number of broadly diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds. This is hardly radical. Half of American families already own mutual funds, and most AARP members are retirees who don't pay into Social Security anyway, so they won't be exercising the option. But those facts don't stop the AARP from painting a frightening picture that equates investing with casino gambling. In one ad, labeled "misleading" by the nonpartisan watchdog FactCheck.org, the AARP shows a wild trading pit with the headline, "Winners and Losers are stock market terms. Do you really want them to become retirement terms?" Another AARP ad features a man and woman considering the Bush plan and saying, "If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots." But the AARP is talking out of both sides of its mouth. It says that stock and bond investing is like playing a slot machine at the same time it promotes stock and bond investing by selling 38 mutual funds to its members and taking a cut from each sale. As Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, once said, "I never saw the AARP do anything that would hurt their business." AARP's funds include far riskier choices than advocates of Social Security reform would ever offer to American workers: for example, a Latin American stock fund, a junk-bond fund, and a fund that holds shares of companies based in such highly volatile markets as Indonesia and Russia. AARP Services, the lucrative business arm of the AARP, entered into a deal with Scudder Investments to sell mutual funds to its members as part of a special affinity program. According to a prospectus, Scudder pays AARP an annual fee for the use of its trademark that ranges from .05 percent to .07 percent of assets. That can come to a lot of money. One fund alone, Scudder Growth & Income AARP, manages $5 billion. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. AARP's Web site carries solid information about how to invest wisely, but the organization's ads against Bush's Social Security plan make investing -- even under the tough restrictions advocated by reformers -- look like a game for dumb suckers and out-of-control gamblers. The AARP's professed concerns do not extend to its own choice of mutual funds. Scudder has not enjoyed a reputation for stellar performance in recent years -- to put it mildly. Morningstar, the mutual fund research firm, gives many of the funds mediocre and poor ratings. For example, Scudder's balanced AARP fund -- which, since it holds a mix of stocks and bonds, would normally be a good choice for older investors -- wins just two stars (below average) from Morningstar out of a possible five. The fund ranks in the bottom 10 percent of its category over the past three years. Another possible choice for seniors is the AARP Large Company Growth fund, but, since its inception in 2001, it has failed each year to beat the broad market average, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. The fund gets just two stars from Morningstar and the admonition, "We see no reason to buy it." Long-term stock and bond investing is not gambling. In fact, it's the opposite. Since 1802, stocks have returned an annual average of 6.8 percent, after inflation, and research shows that the longer you hold shares, the lower the risk. The folks who run the AARP know this. Instead of scare tactics, they should offer their members better services -- as well as more honesty and less hypocrisy. James K. Glassman is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and host of the Web site TechCentralStation.com. | ||
| Maple Man Citizen Username: Mapleman Post Number: 493 Registered: 6-2004  |
I fail to see any hypocrisy here. Owning or selling mutual funds is a separate issue from whether or not privatizing Social Security is a good thing. Although Republicans like to see the world in entirely black and white terms, not everything in the world lines up neatly in opposition. For example, it IS possible to believe that seniors should own mutual funds, and also believe that they should continue to receive the same Social Security pension that they do now. | ||
| Nohero Citizen Username: Nohero Post Number: 4358 Registered: 10-1999 |
So, the assumption is that the USA Next folks think the AARP is vulnerable on either the "scare the seniors" or the mutual fund issue. Despite that, USA Next instead relies on arguments such as "The AARP hates the troops!" and "The AARP supports those scary homosexuals!" Is it possible that they don't think much of their arguments which are actually relevant to the issue? | ||
| Bobkat Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 7696 Registered: 5-2001 |
Swift Boat and Move on type ads are common in political campaigns. This seems to be new in that forces apparently allied with the administration are attacking over legislation. To be honest I find this kind of scary. I think Bush has indicated he doesn't want to change things for people who are retired or are near retirement age. That doesn't mean that Congress will respect that wish. My guess, and I admit it is a guess, is that benefits for people who reach retirement age in the next ten years will be indexed using the CPI, not wages. |
