Who hasn’t heard of the American Association of Retired People better known as the AARP? Organized as a non-profit seniors’ organization in 1958 to lobby Congress, they have influenced legislation for over five decades. Have they reached their zenith?

Several years ago, disenchanted with AARP, I wrote an (www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/balba_20050113.html) exposing a myth they continued to perpetuate as true. In unison with the federal government, they claimed the existence of accumulated Social Security surpluses to the tune of $1.4 trillion. What many people don’t know: Those surpluses don’t exist.

In an Associated Press (Sept. 29) article, “Recession hurts Social Security,” the myth was repeated and enhanced:  “The deficits - $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 - won’t affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion.” (emphasis mine.) The myth continues.

Anyone see anything wrong with that statement? The $2.5 trillion surplus? Accumulation? Where would that surplus be?

In case you aren’t aware --- the federal government does not save a dime of collected revenues. Most years there have been surpluses of Social Security payroll tax revenues. But, here’s the kicker, the Treasury takes the money and adds it to the General Funds while leaving worthless IOUs in their place. Of course, the feds spend all we give them and then some.

Evidently the AARP, AP and the feds believe IOUs are as good as gold. Try cashing them in when government is not collecting enough revenues to cover its ballooning annual expenditures. Hence, the deficit and the National Debt grows.

AARP and Healthcare

The AARP is considered one of the most powerful congressional lobby groups in Washington. Recently 60,000 members dropped out when Pres. Obama hinted that the AARP endorsed the democratic Health Care Bill. With 40 million members, AARP won’t miss them.

According to GOP Policy News (www.gop.gov/policy-news/09/09/22/aarp-helping-seniors-or-helping), a 2008 House Republican Conference Report stated that AARP generated $652.7 million, over 60 percent of their revenues, selling Medigap supplemental insurance policies.

Where do these revenues come from? AARP endorses insurance companies and contracts with them for “Royalty fees.” Of course, the insurance company doesn’t pay those royalties --- AARP members pay them in their insurance premiums.

What happened to “non-profit” organization? The revenue-raising AARP Services, Inc. steers members towards purchasing insurance policies including house, vehicle, Medigap, and other services. AARP endorsed insurance results in more expensive policies when compared to insurance companies unconnected to AARP.

In a December 2008 Bloomberg article   (www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a4OkPQIPF6Kg&refer=home)  some members learned why they pay higher insurance premiums and found less expensive insurance elsewhere. The collected royalty fees supposedly help pay for other AARP products and services. And you only wanted to pay for health or car insurance, right? Not pay for services you don’t use.

They are in sync with the present chaotic congressional healthcare plan. AARP does not sell Medicare Advantage. But if that program is cut as proposed by Pres. Obama, AARP will be happy.  They will continue to sell expensive Medigap policies and collecting their “royalty” revenue.

AARP Growth Matches Government

The AARP’s original policy goal of serving seniors is becoming secondary to what’s good for the “company.” Its own over-reaching growth and power have ballooned from a once good-intentioned non-profit organization into a profit-making entity.
 
It is obvious that both the AARP and the federal government have “grown too big for their britches” as Grandma used to say. When Big equals Power. It appears the AARP is not satisfied with their monopoly over the Medicare crowd. The previous CEO, William Novelli, placed emphasis on marketing and steadily advancing to new horizons. He expanded their services to 17 different types of insurance.

It’s a new day!  The new AARP CEO is Barry Rand who came on board in April. He’s also the first Black man to hold that position. Known as a humanitarian with business acumen, maybe he won’t be enticed to “grow” the AARP bigger than it already is. Trying to keep pace with the federal government would be a waste. Let’s hope he returns AARP to the original goal of serving seniors.

Otherwise, like government, they’ll end up telling their members what’s best for them.
Bigger and Better. Sounds like our Nanny Government, doesn’t it?

© Bonnie Alba
tttalba@hotmail.com

Water is a boring subject until you’re without it, isn’t it? Herein lies the story: Three years of drought in California threatens the San Joaquin Valley.

A little CA background: The population of CA was about 10 million in pre-WWII. From 1950 to 2000, people flocked to the southern half of the state as all kinds of businesses and industries based themselves in that “sunny, mild climate.” The estimated 2009 population is about 38 million people with almost half, 17 million, in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta system of reservoirs and canals built to provide mountain snowmelt and other water from Northern California has not kept up with the growth in the southern part of the state.

In the 1950s, the San Joaquin Valley, devoted to agriculture, was called the “breadbasket of the world.” Providing produce, food and dairy products, cotton (garment industry and cottonseed oil) and feed for animals -- the farmers of the Valley managed to survive even in drought years. One element among many that they depended on -- water.

There are three distributive elements of CA water, depending on the measure of snow melt from the mountains:

a) Estimated 23 million residents, mostly located in middle to southern CA;
b) Valley farmers, do-or-die irrigation of some 750,000 acres of cropland; and,
c) Delta Smelt, a teeny-weeny fish which court decisions favor above a) and b).

Let’s not forget the Chinook Salmon which require rushing water to do its annual winter spawning which affects the salmon industry.

You might ask then why don’t the farmers pump their irrigation water from the ground? Electric and diesel generators to pump well water have become very expensive. But in drought years, even this method is not enough.

The 2009 lowest snow accumulation since 1992 has brought on a drought crisis!

The combined state and federal water shutoff, thereby saving a fish, to Valley farmers is killing the world’s breadbasket. The prediction is dire -- 40,000 jobs lost; hundreds of farms bankrupt; over 750,000 acres of farmland turning into desert.

The trickle-down effect on businesses, retail and otherwise, through higher prices of food and dairy products, will be felt near and far, and the crisis will grow.  Broke people can’t buy more than the necessities.

Scarcity of food? Free trade? You’ll be eating many more imported foods from South America and China -- just to save a fish or two.

As a Valley (Kings County) friend dived into finding answers on the water crisis, she found a tangled web of “all different agencies (state and federal) involved with very different statistics.” She says the political impact of “the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service (and their so-called ‘biological opinions’ on the smelt and salmon), and the Endangered Species Act -- these people have a lot of power. Something really ‘fishy’ is going on.”

Governor Schwarzenegger ( http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/13183/ ) noted some of this in his July 2009 letter to the U.S. Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce, “The recent biological opinions issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect threatened fish species in the Delta include overlapping and conflicting actions and restrictions that provide little or no fisheries benefit but do come at a high cost to the economy....Ironically, these opinions work against each other, especially in wet years, which may lead to species conflict and devastating water shortages in following dry years.”

Since the 1970s, ecology has grown into a “save the animals, fish, fowl” movement which has turned state and federal agencies into homes for “animal over man” policies. When it became a political issue and ended up in the courts -- against all common sense, progressive judges ruled for animal over man.

The tangled political web of state and federal agencies involved in determining “who gets water” is perverse. Why do they always come down on the side of the animal, bird, or fish in this ongoing management of life’s essence, water?

On September 16, Rich Matteis ( http://cfbf.com/agalert/watercrisis.cfm ), Administrator for the California Farm Bureau Federation, wrote that “legislative leaders have called on the governor to convene a special legislative session within 30 days, to continue seeking a workable water solution. The consensus among observers is that this will likely be the next step.”

It may be too late. Thousands of acres are now arid and blowing in the wind. This is just the latest example of liberal progressives’ invasion into citizens’ lives and livelihoods. All for a fish!

© Bonnie Alba

On August 20th, Pres. Obama held a conference call with about 1000 Jewish leaders and a Webcast with an estimated 140,000 religious leaders and people of faith across the nation appealing for support of his health care plan. 

Obama preached his health care plan using God. He also replaced his usual “I” with “we” in his speech with the conferees.

Some of his words:

On health care as both a political issue and a moral imperative:
“I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper. And in the wealthiest nation on Earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.”

On citizens’ criticism of Obama’s health care plan at town halls: 
“I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness ...I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth.”

“These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation.”

Obama made a frank appeal to Jewish religious leaders and actually stated the following claim: “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.”

Think about this last claim.

Do you remember Pastor Rick Warren’s interview with Obama during last year’s election campaign? Warren asked him, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”

Obama: “...answering that question is above my pay grade.”

It appears that Obama has moved up in pay grade and now wants to “partner with God in matters of life and death.” May It Never Be!

Isn’t it possible that God would take issue with Obama’s claim?

At some time or another we have all tried to place God in a box of our own imaginings, desires, and self-serving attitudes or, as man is prone to do, put himself right up there on the Throne of God. In this case, he is claiming a partnership totally out of sync with what we know about God through His Word.

If God is Sovereign, it is impossible for man to ‘partner’ with Him in matters of life and death. Life and death belong solely to God. He is the God who opens and closes the wombs of women; He is the God who gives breath and decides the span of years man will live and when man will die.

Just as men and women have taken upon themselves to kill in their wombs what God has graciously given, so too is the “end of life” issue. Anyone who has attended the last days of parents and loved ones knows how difficult it is to watch as they cling to life. We also know the wrenching despair we feel watching them suffer.

Personal Example -- which millions of families have gone through:

My Dad, who had developed dementia and continued to have mini-brain strokes, fell one morning and broke his hip. The surgeon wanted to operate -- we said yes. But before the scheduled surgery, he developed kidney failure. Our family gathered and waited for the doctor’s prognosis. The Doctor (urologist) gave us the choices --- explaining that in older bodies, the systems start to shut down so it was up to us whether we wanted to go ahead with dialysis and, once his kidneys started functioning, do the hip surgery. Since I had the Conservatorship of my Dad, it was up to me but I sought the advice of family too.

We opted to keep trying .... Dad’s kidneys started working after 6 days, then he was scheduled for surgery. When the nurses removed the dialysis shunt from his neck, he died. They thought it was possibly a blood clot. He was 79 years old. From the time he fell to the time he died, he lived for eleven days. Did we make the wrong decision? Should we have just let him go? Did he suffer for nothing in prolonging his dying?

From time immemorial, families and their doctors have struggled to make difficult decisions about medical care and prolonging the death of an elder. It’s part of life.

Despite the family burden of decisions, grief and sorrow -- the government and a panel of men should never judge who lives and who dies when a decision is required, much less which medical treatment should be given or withheld.

Are you willing to have family life and death decisions placed in the hands of strangers?

Never in America!

© 2009 Bonnie Alba

The Obama administration’s strident push, along with congressional dem-libs, for their ownership of America’s healthcare is not a myth. It is one more step to totalitarianism and tyranny. There are unspoken questions. Think about it. Who believes Al Gore’s Global Warming is a fact? Aren’t they the same people pushing for control over the banking system, businesses and health care? Is there a connection between the Global Warming belief and our health care? These are unspoken and undiscussed questions.

The 1973 sci-fi environment movie “Soylent Green” speaks to us today. It arrived on the scene one year after “Roe vs. Wade” and abortion was ruled a “woman’s right.” This film directly showed a plausible path our nation might take if the then much-propagandized overpopulation theory occurred, possibly along with drastic climate changes. It’s 2022 and New York City’s 40 million people live in chaos. The (government-controlled) “Soylent Corporation” controls the food supply which is trucked in to feed the starving masses.

The shocker occurs when Detective Thorn (Charleston Heston) and Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) investigate the murder of a top CEO of the corporation and discover the food cakes doled out to the people are actually reprocessed, dead humans. And where did those come from?

By indoctrinating people to show up complacently at a special  building, they are treated to personally requested surround-sound music and revolving slideshows or movies of their favorite scenes of Earth while they are drugged into eternal death. Where do the dead bodies go? To the Soylent Green manufacturing plants in the dark of night, of course.

Live bodies in, processed food out -- government’s solution to starvation. Talk about mass-assisted suicide and cannibalism!

[Sure, if Global Warming actually occurred and the ice caps melted, New York City and the rest of the coastlines would likely be under water -- but this was sci-fi and the beginning of the 70s environmental movement.]

Doesn’t it sound like science fiction when Veteran’s Affairs has a little booklet called “Your Life, Your Choices” for injured military returning from the warfront? The questions relate to injuries and being a burden to loved ones and society. Why put them through that, right? Just go quietly into the night. In other words “die”.

Euthanasia is only one issue but could lead to other life-death choices for handicapped, mentally disturbed, even murderers on death row. These decisions will affect and change the bedrock of Western Civilization and our national and international world view forever. Scientific pursuit of bio- and chem- research, delving into the mysteries of why we age, growing replacement parts, curing diseases, cloning, mixing species (chimeras or hybrids) all point to a society out of control and descending into chaos and madness.

The overall intuition is if the federal government takes control of Americans’ healthcare,  the closer we are to a socialist-style nation. But it is more than just a tyrannic power grab by elite liberals. It is the destruction of the capitalist system that has served us well for over 200 years.

The far-reaching health care bill is a prescript of what may come as more socialists gain full control of the three branches of our government and the economy. If the Global Warming Cap ‘n Trade bill is enacted, we will be well on our way to the death of the Republic under God.

The Health Care issue is what it took to awaken a slumberous people into a living nightmare of what is coming, not for our sake, but for our children’s and grandchildren’s sake. We can’t go back to sleep --- we must be ever vigilant of government no matter who is in power.

So is it crazy to compare what is happening now with the theme of an out-of-date sci-fi movie? I venture to say that in 1973, no one advocated telling surviving war veterans to make a choice to live or die. No one then advised mandatory counseling for the elderly on end-of-life decisions. Also, no one was really happy about Roe vs. Wade except liberal women and those who believe in Global Warming today.

Of course all of the above would not happen overnight. Soylent Green could occur over 5-6 decades of socialist government control with re-indoctrination of the next two generations as evidence the lukewarm concern of the present young generation.

Under the guises of “government wants to help you” and Global Warming, Soylent Green and that other science fiction premise, 1984, may fully arrive in this century.

© 2009 Bonnie Alba