AARP Attacked

"The more I read the AARP blog on Social Security, the more I trust their perspective. I have to wonder what vested interest they have in any particular position other than to maintain the trust of their members. They advise you to ask your most trusted financial advisors about Social Security. They quote esteemed economists. They certainly won't earn any commissions from your choosing to not participate in any privatization plan. They aren't just this season's retired persons' AARP or the retiring Boomers AARP. They want to be the Gen-X AARP in the future, too. So why else would they oppose privatization unless they judged, on its merits, that it was a bad path to follow?


And now I have an even stronger reason to believe them; they are about to be attacked by a group formed specifically to undermine them. You can read about it on AARP's blog, but it's also being reported widely elsewhere. The blog includes links to some of those reports on other blogs and in national newspapers. The new group, called USA Next, includes some of the same people who brought us the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and the campaign to discredit CBS around the reports on George Bush's military service. It would be one thing if USA Next was run by responsible economists with real concern for citizen's welfare, but this PR attack strategy smells too much like politics for me to give it any credence.

But do your own homework, folks. I'm just telling you how I'm thinking about this."