Everybody Matters

[MADem]

55. I don't believe them and wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them, and you shouldn't either.

How soon some forget?

AARP lost MILLIONS of members over their donut hole position.

I don't personally know a single Democrat over the age of 65 who believes their bullshit. I do know people who remember how badly that donut hole fucked them over, though--and they're out the other end of it and still have not forgotten.

Now me, I'm a lucky so-and-so...I get my prescriptions, when I need them, on a military base for free. However, I've been in the drugstore and seen the stricken looks of customers asked to fork over hundreds for a prescription...so fuck AARP and their donut hole--they are lobbying tools of Big GOP Pharma and the Bill Frist Medical Industry. The woman who is the face of that organization got her start as a Reagan appointee at HUD, and the GOP has been very, very good to her, pushing her up the ladder and in the system until she broke out as a glorified lobbyist for business--not people. She's dancing with the ones what brung her, make no mistake.

Consider the source....ALWAYS. I sure do.

Here--take a walk down memory lane--can't believe you, of all people, could forget this so easily: http://prospect.org/article/seduction

Democrats didn't know about Hansen's e-mail. In fact, when recently told about it, one Democratic staffer expressed shock and said that AARP "double-crossed us." But the GOP's business allies saw the e-mail. The White House sent it out to key Republican lobbyists and such groups as the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable to make sure they knew that AARP was still on board. Over the next weeks, AARP leaders worked closely with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to craft a final bill. It passed the House on November 22 in the early morning hours, when GOP leaders left the vote open for a totally unprecedented three hours after they were initially unable to get the votes needed for passage.

Three days later the bill passed the Senate and, on December 8, President Bush signed it into law, which AARP hailed as "an important step toward fulfilling a longstanding promise to older and disabled Americans." Suddenly, the AARP wasn't looking like such a liberal Democratic ally.

For many Democrats, AARP's support for last November's Medicare prescription-drug bill came as a total shock. Not only could the law cause millions of seniors to lose more generous employer and state-coordinated drug benefits while providing only limited help to others; it is a major step toward the Republican Party's goal of privatizing Medicare and decimating employer-based health coverage.

To those few who were really watching closely, however, AARP's actions were not a surprise at all, and the group's conversion was anything but sudden. The story of the Republicans' seduction of AARP unfolded over nearly a decade, as GOP leaders cajoled, seduced, and occasionally threatened the group's leaders into changing their ways and accepting the reality of Republican congressional control. Today, with bad policy already law, the stakes are incredibly high, as regulations to implement the law loom, along with bills to repeal some of its worst aspects. And they will grow higher still if President Bush is re-elected and Republicans can continue toward their ultimate goals. As the battle to preserve Medicare unfolds, Democrats who were surprised by the bill's passage last November should understand a key part of the story, which has not been told, of how it happened.

Possibly the least surprised man in Washington last fall was Newt Gingrich. The former House speaker, who told a Blue Cross conference in 1995 that Medicare as a "government monopoly plan" was going to "wither on the vine" in favor of a Republican-designed "free-market plan," has spent the last nine years manipulating AARP.

I'm pretty confident that if Elizabeth Warren had been in the Senate when they were ramming that bill through, she would have had something to say about it--AND AARP...!