AARP Makes Millions Scaring Elders About Social Security
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
John L. Perry
Thursday, July 26, 2001
Elderly Americans are being frightened into paying to oppose President Bush's plan to save Social Security – as promoters make millions peddling their names and addresses.
It's a double-dip variation on an increasingly popular invasion-of-privacy tactic, this time targeted at millions upon millions of seniors who are being told their Social Security benefits are in grave danger if the president gets his way.
That is a fast-growing sector of the population, particularly vulnerable to e-mail, junk-mail and telemarketing phone solicitations.
This new wrinkle is no penny-ante scam, either. The annual rake-in is in the tens of millions of dollars a year.
Right at the center is the famed American Association of Retired Persons, regarded by legions of seniors as a bastion of integrity, a shining knight on a white steed, working day and night to protect them in their closing years.
$10 x 34,000,000
More than 34 million Americans send in $10 a year for their annual AARP membership, which entitles them to reduced rates at motels and other businesses. That substantial revenue is used by AARP also as a mighty political war chest to promote leftist causes in Congress that oppose efforts to amend the status quo in federally funded programs for the elderly.
High on the AARP agenda in the current Congress is unwavering support for the Democratic Party's drive to derail the Republican administration's proposal to allow American workers to voluntarily invest some of their Social Security funds in the private sector where they will earn greater interest.
AARP and its left-wing allies on Capitol Hill characterize the Bush plan as a frontal assault on the Social Security system that will end up destroying it. Conservatives see it as an essential part of a long-overdue effort to save the system from insolvency.
Against that background here's how the double-dip money-raising scheme is being worked, according to an investigative report by the Associated Press:
• Based on its $10 membership fee, AARP garnered at least $340,000,000 last year.
Extras for Sale
That doesn't include an additional mountain of money AARP rakes in from a variety of other extra services it sells at additional cost to members, including health and auto insurance and travel plans.
• Using a for-profit subsidiary, AARP turns right around and rents its valuable membership mailing lists – names and addresses – to allied organizations it "endorses."
Those mailing-list customers include credit-card, mutual-fund and insurance companies, all eager to market their products or services to the elderly.
AARP's membership rent-a-list brought in a tidy sum – no less than $16 million in the 1999-2000 fiscal year.
• According to tax records that the AP examined, an additional $2.8 million was garnered that year by five other organizations working the lucrative elderly field as they lobby on various issues affecting Medicare and Social Security.
But Wait, There's More
For just six organizations, the grand total approaches $20 million a year in list-rental income.
That of course is on top of all those membership and other-service fees.
• It is a murky question indeed whether every member whose name and address is rented out approves of that or is even aware it's going on.
AARP insists its skirts are clean, that it dutifully informs every last one of its 34 million members that their names may be "shared."
• Here's how another one of the leading fund-raising, list-renting entities manipulates it:
Robert Mahaffey, a spokesman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which raised $27.6 million from donors last year, acknowledged to the AP that his group's mailing-list rentals are a significant source of revenue – $1.3 million last year.
Clear as Mud
"We make it clear to our members that they have a very clear option to inform us that they do not want their names used in any other fashion, and we honor all those requests," he said.
In actual practice, the group's recent mailing to seniors printed the following in big, black letters on the envelope: THE PUSH TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY IS UNDERWAY.
Inside was a letter with the dire warning that "privatization would put retirement security at real risk."
Then followed an urgent appeal for every member to donate at least $10 for a mass-media campaign "to counter all those who would tear down Social Security."
If recipients searched hard enough, they might find, in small print on the rear of one of the inserts, an offer to let seniors opt out of having their names and addresses "shared" with others:
"If you do not wish to participate in this program, please let us know by calling" such-and-such a number.
How Many Just Say No?
It was not revealed how many members discovered that fine print and phoned in and said, "No. I don't want my name and address shared with anyone else."
Whether those assorted disclaimers, notices and options register with all members of the several fund-raising outfits, or how many of them understand or remember them, is an issue very guarded among fund-solicitors and list-renters.
It is an issue from which Congress begins lifting the lid Thursday.
Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, which will conduct the hearings, urged seniors to exercise great caution before donating money or allowing their names and addresses to be exploited.
If [the soliciting groups] are talking about representing them on matters of congressional interest, talk to your congressman or congresswoman to see if these people are in fact coming into their offices, talking to them," he advised.
"The bottom line is if you don't know anything about them and you don't want to bother learning anything about them, don't send them anything."
Persuasion by Fear
Shaw's committee may want to hear from David Slautterback, an AARP member in Wisconsin, who is anything but comfortable with the way AARP is pushing the membership into donating.
"I think they count on frightening people," Slautterback told the AP.
"It's a small tragedy – sometimes a great tragedy in people's lives – because they get notices from several different agencies and they put up money to several of them and it really gets to be a great financial burden."
The subcommittee might also want to find out just how many of the millions of members of elderly organizations know or approve that their names and addresses are being peddled around.
Or how many of AARP's 34 million members are actually dead-set against President Bush's plan to enable them to increase the value of their Social Security accounts.
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is senior editor for NewsMax.com.
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