The Wikipedia entry for AARP reads: “AARP, Inc., formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, is a United States-based membership and interest group, founded in 1958 by Ethel Percy Andrus, PhD, a retired educator from California, and Leonard Davis, founder of Colonial Penn Group of insurance companies.”
What could appear more benign or worthwhile? A non-profit advocacy organization operating at the highest levels for older people. Note the carefully chosen face of AARP in recent years, the President of the organization, Lee Hammond, a retired schoolteacher and administrator, interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. We see a pleasant, gentlemanly, middle-aged Middle American WASP. Very middling, neutral, reassuring in manner and bearing.
Except Mr. Hammond has no plausible response to O’Reilly’s assertion that AARP has become a Leftwing lobby in DC, another trough-feeding Big Gov/Obama crony shilling on behalf of ObamaCare and getting richly rewarded for their trouble. That includes special waivers on the crippling law they helped force on the rest of us. It’s called senior Community Organizing.
There are alternatives to AARP, organizations such as AMAC(Association of Mature American Citizens) that offers free market resources and solutions to the serious concerns of senior citizens. not increased centralized control and the plundering of Other People’s Money.