NOT for me
I am AARP-eligible. Have been for years.
I even joined one year for the "discounts."
I quit AARP when I discovered the discounts were of no value to me.
But now, there is "no way" I'd ever buy AARP membership or any product associated with the AARP.
It is endorsing candidates.
AARP OUGHT to be politically neutral.
AARP currently is propagating the Obama lies - how healthcare will be lost to seniors, how our taxes will soar if Romney is elected.
That's pure and simple bovine excrement.
I'm not suggesting that some things coming out of the Romney camp don't smell like nature's own fertilizer - I've lived on horse and cattle ranches and I've moved an outhouse or two so I of what I "smell."
Probably the thing I find most egregious about AARP's claiming into bed with the incumbent is that fact that AARP members - certainly not all of whom are enamored by the president with a questionable past - are paying to place advertisements for Obama.
If Romney wins in November, and frankly I hope he does, the AARP organization stands to lose some clout in the District. It's paid management just shot itself in the foot.
No longer representing ALL seniors, AARP now represents only liberal seniors, seniors who will swallow the president's malarkey. Maybe seniors who want to hobnob with Hollywood's rich and - at least in their own minds - famous.
While I cannot - while I will not - object to individual AARP members following Obama's yellow brick road - and we now know, after nearly 4 years of Obama's care that "this isn't Kansas anymore, Toto" - I object to an organization that claims to represent me based solely on my "advanced years". AARP does NOT represent me.
I did not fall for the Democrats "creative bookkeeping."
I know my sons will not have Medicare as I know it.
They know they won't have Medicare as I know it today.
Social Security, once a "voluntary tax" by the way, also will be "modified" over the coming decades, sooner if Obama and his cronies stay in office and raid the once sacrosanct Social Security fund.
Change is inevitable.
In order to keep Medicare and Social Security well into the future, someone has to pay the piper.
The United States has one of the lowest tax rates - even for the middle class - of any country in the world. It also has one of the least funded social networks. A typical Norwegian pays a roughly 43% tax rate.
An Israeli earning more than US$125,000 can expect to pay a whopping 48% tax rate.
But Norway and Israel both offer many more social services, including subsidized health care.
Americans so far are unwilling to pay for Norway-type social services.
Whether or not the social services are "worth" it is in the eye of the beholder. I lived in Israel and know that health care, especially for the elderly, is not all that great; on the other hand, my daughter and grand-daughter do well by the system, a system into which they contribute.
I suppose I would not object quite so strongly to AARP's political stance if it was based on facts, on reality.
Only a Democrat with blinders can believe the numbers the AARP is pandering to the people.
And as for Sesame Street and PBS - I, too, like Oscar the Grouch and the Cookie Monster, but given some of the federally funded programming I think a small stipend from the Federal pocket is sufficient. There are plenty of organizations around that will sponsor PBS' liberal viewpoints; besides, unless you are living in Never-Never Land, PBS already has a abundance of commercials - out and out advertising.
(I'm waiting for Cookie Monster to have a Betty Crocker logo on his furry blue chest or Oscar the Grouch to sport a Waste Management baseball cap.)
