Well, the Hit Pieces have begun......

[EC]

These are from the Chicago Tribune, they endorsed*, today alone is a hit piece against Boxer and now against AARP since THIS time they are against one of * 's prize programs, Me I think they lost allot of people over the Medicare fiasco and realized they were wrong and lost more than they gained in that payoff...So now this piece on AARP looks like a veiled threat to me...play along or loose funding....

Sign of the times: Ready, aim, deface

Victor Davis Hanson, Tribune Media Services, a senior fellow and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Published February 4, 2005
Few have appreciated the symbolism of the recent heated exchange between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during Rice's Senate confirmation hearing. Hours on end, speaking without notes, a proud, poised African-American professional woman from Birmingham, Ala., parried withering cross-examination from a succession of liberal senators angry over the Iraq war.

Boxer, the Bay Area's premier progressive and crankiest of the questioners, has had a history of defining political disagreements in terms of personal partisanship, of us-vs.-them rather than of mere opposing ideas.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0502040392feb04,1,97636.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed


Will the real AARP stand up?
By Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, a Washington think tank
Published February 4, 2005
AARP, the seniors lobby for everyone in the U.S. over age 50, likes to claim that it's "dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age" and that it promotes social change through "information, advocacy and service." Its 35 million members each fork over $12.50 annually in dues. What do they get for their money? A close look reveals that AARP is less an advocacy group for the elderly than a discount broker for the middle class. That may explain why it has such political clout in Washington.

Because AARP is a non-profit, it pays no taxes on much of its revenue. Its consolidated 2003 financial statement shows it took in $770 million, up 20 percent from the year before. That includes $211 million in member dues but it also factors in more than $300 million in royalties and management fees--which must explain why its top executives take home CEO-like pay. AARP Chief Executive Officer William Novelli, a former public relations executive, had a 2002 compensation package worth more than $650,000.

That has caused grumbling among many seniors, and it has gotten some members of Congress wondering about the motives and interests of AARP. A decade ago the organization handed over $135 million to the IRS, which couldn't believe its business profits would qualify as gifts to charity. Former Sen. Alan Simpson then held hearings in which he questioned how the group could make a profit on its business enterprises at the same time as it used its tax-exempt status to apply for federal grants.

AARP now has a taxable business subsidiary. But some things never change: In 2003, the most recent year on record, AARP received more than $67 million in taxpayer-funded federal grants. Some of that money went for an AARP program to help the elderly fill out their tax forms--they are paying to fund groups like AARP!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0502040393feb04,1,490853.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed

[andyhappy]

1. disgusting

It is absolutely disgusting that this is what our 'free press' has become.

Bring back the fairness doctrine!

How can any of the repugs actually say that the war was not about WMD's? They live in a fantasy world and newspapers like the Chicago Tribune serve to perpetuate the myth until it becomes 'reality'.

[EVDebs]

2. Warren Buffet said that in class warfare, it's over, his side won.

[tom_paine]

3. What a surprise! Another Stalinst-style Bushevik Front Group

and Propaganda Mill

http://www.capitalresearch.org/

State Propaganda for a State-Coerced (really controlled by modern, less brutal means) Media.

Simply put, the Free-Market Stalinists are EVERYWHERE, just as it was before during both the Rightist Nazi and Leftist Soviet Regimes.

Luckily OUR Totalitariuans are Kinder and Gentler, for the moment.

The bottom line is, as in those previous regimes, anyone with a megaphone has been bullied into silence (at least, for the most part, they haven't been killed).

The totalitarians hold unooposed sway and their ideology is now transmitted almost without opposition.

In the best traditions of this New Incarnation of Totalitarianism, people are free to speak without being killed or Gulagged, but if you have access to an audience of hundreds of thousanda or millions, expect reatliation, expect undercoverage and expect the Party Sub-Media in concert with Corproate TV Pravda to smear and distort on you horribly.

Of course, PARTY Scribes have unlimited access and are always greeted by the "Neutral" Corporate TV Pravda with either joyous agreement or nervous silence (actually, that almost NEVER happens)

History repeats, oh how badly it repeats.

[SnowGoose]

4. I wouldn't want to be a newspaper up against the AARP

that is not a recipe for success.

[tanyev]

5. My question is,

What is the Capital Research Center and where does it receive its funding? And who else has ties to the Capital "Research" Center?

[tanyev]

6. Thought so.

Thursday 15th August 2002: Exxon and Republican lobbyists work to stop Johannesburg progress.
Signatories include:
* Terrence Scanlon from the Capital Research Center
- funding from Exxon $25,000 in 2001
http://www.rio-plus-10.org/en/info/rio+10/74.php

Scanlon's Capital Research Center, founded in 1984, is one of the lesser-known Washington, DC-based think tanks that serves as a conservative watchdog over so-called liberal/left nonprofit philanthropic institutions.

In mid-February, Scanlon told a packed house at the 28th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that "for the first time we have an opportunity to go after these groups and take away their federal money." Conservative News Service (CNS) reported that in his remarks, Scanlon named several organizations that are receiving federal funding including the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). He told the gathering that the "AARP received $73 million in federal grants in 1999, 73 million of your tax dollars went to the AARP. Most of this money came from the Labor Department for job training programs for seniors."
http://www.celticcrow.com/news/defunding.html

Barb Van Andel-Gaby joined the Heritage Board of Trustees in 1996. Carrying on the tradition of involvement in conservative causes established by her father, Jay Van Andel, Van Andel-Gaby serves on the Board of Directors of the Capital Research Center -- a think tank headed by former Heritage Vice President Terrence Scanlon that tracks the flow of charitable dollars -- and has played an active role in Heritage’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies since its founding in 1985.
http://www.heritage.org/About/Departments/trustees.cfm


And that's just 3 of first 5 items of a Google search. Let me say again how much I loathe these people.