http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4278433.htmlbunch of links -- mostly wapo -- that documents simpson's efforts to neutralize aarp.
and then there was alan simpson going after aarp when he was on the cat food commission
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0825/Social-Security-Alan-Simpson-offends-almost-everyone-with-cow-quip'But Wednesday, a quip made by the man who is now a co-chair of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission was no laughing matter – at least to liberal activists and bloggers now calling for his head.
In an e-mail this week to Ashley Carson, executive director of the National Older Women's League (OWL), Simpson compared Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million
!" Only he didn't say "teats" but something similar, and shall we say, a bit more colorful and perhaps derogatory. And he concluded by telling Ms. Carson to "call when you get honest work!"
Ouch! In a few words, Simpson managed to infuriate feminists, Social Security recipients, and liberal Democrats (a group already none too happy with the Obama administration).'
back in the day -- aarp was a more aggressively vocal defender of seniors and SS and medicare.
they are some what more muted today -- because of republican attacks.
here's a great article from daily kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/09/12/901163/-Alan-Simpsons-history-as-a-total-dick
' Here’s where the missing history and context come in, and why they should be useful for journalists who will cover this story for the rest of the year. In the mid-1990s, Simpson, as chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s subcommittee on Social Security and family policy, picked up the attacks made on the organization by conservative think tanks worried that AARP could block their efforts to cut Medicare and Social Security....
Simpson, who disagreed with the AARP’s positions on Medicare and Social Security, believed the group was obstructing budget cuts that Republicans needed to make in order to offset a planned round tax cuts. Simpson held hearings on the AARP’s finances. "I’m a chairman. I can have hearings," he boasted to reporters in the Capitol corridor, dancing a little jig and pumping his arms in the air. A few days before he announced the hearings, Simpson said "People ought to know where their money comes from and what it’s used for." As I reported at the time, Simpson never produced a smoking gun, but he created plenty of smoke, focusing on irrelevancies like the size of AARP’s new building and its executives’ salaries.
But the AARP recognized what the hearings were really about. At a meeting with AARP’s board and staff, Simpson told them "I want you to know that the intensity of my investigation will be directly related to the intensity of your fight on Medicare." In an interview then, AARP’s chief lobbyist John Rother told me: "Many people on the right wing realized that AARP was the force to contend with. They realized they wouldn’t get anywhere unless they dealt with us as an institution."