What is AARP's Agenda?

Can someone explain to me AARP's agenda on Social Security? I'm a sixty five year old disgusted member. They bragged in their latest issue of their magazine that they had been successfully promoting the idea that Social Security just needs some tweaking with thousands of ad spots that reached millions of people. They are making a supreme effort to beat back the president's idea of private accounts for people under fifty five by saying that this is a terrible, ruinous idea. I believe that the AARP's lobby for senior citizens interests and programs in Washington is for the most part a good thing. I know that they count among their membership only people over fifty. I would be willing to bet that the majority of their membership is well over sixty and problably averages my age. Then just who is AARP speaking so vociferously for? The president has already said that his recommended changes to Social Security would not effect anyone over fifty five. I suspect that AARP has and ulterior motive for embracing the current Social Security so lovingly though what it is I'm darned if I can figure out.

The average recipient of a Social Security check gets $955.00 per month. That is less that poverty level income. AARP and many Democrats are intent on preserving that poverty level of income for it's senior citizens. Twelve and a half per cent of all wages comes out of each paycheck for the purpose of providing a decent respectable retirement income for forty five years. The government thinks the current payout is something worth bragging about. If you die before you are sixty five your heirs get nothing for all the money you have paid into the governments little ponsy system. If a private insurer offered that retirement deal you would laugh in his face.

The Thrift Savings plan offered to government employees pays instead, five thousand dollars per month at retirement and over a million cash settlement at age sixty five. Now I could live quite nicely on that. Which would you take, but, too bad, you have no choice.

There are currently eighteen workers for every retired Social Security recipient. There were, only a few years ago, over thirty, soon within my son's lifetime their will be only three. How long do you think the government will be able to continue to send me my check? Will they be able to send my son, who is in his fortys, a check when his turn comes to collect his poverty level stipend, with only some minor tweaking to Social Security as AARP suggests?

No my friends. methinks that AARP has some other agenda, they have too. Membership be dammed. Their spirited cause seems to insult the very recipients of Social Security membership they claim to represent. We know how much Social Security pays us each month. Can any one of us stand up and bragg about how much we are getting back after forty five years of paying in?
I didn't think so.

Hurricane Politics

With all the politics surrounding Katrina and New Orleans, a minor amount of real hard news has come out about the corruption within the city limits and the Mayor's and city council's domain. Why? Trying to learn what and to where that corruption extends one is left to only surmise. Gambling aboard all the ships within the city limits for sure points to some kind of paid favors. But how has that and other sorts of crime contributed to the vast amount of poverty that has existed within the city limits which, by some counts, is estimated to be one third of the population? Has the mayor been held accountable? Will he be held accountable buy some fact finding reporter? This condition of welfare and poverty and a seriously substandard school system has been around for many, many generations. Now is the time for exposure, but the media is to caught up in writing picture captions and sound bites. What have the city's elected officials been doing all these generations?

The levy commission was spending money on roads to casinos, on a casino, on construction projects but not on the levy. Four out of five major pumps were not in working condition when they were called on. Twenty five of one hundred and fifty small auxiliary pumps were all that worked when called on. The levy commission was not prepared to repair any of the four breaks in the levy under emergency conditions, it was left to the Army Core of Engineers.

The presidents ambitious plans to restore the area with money, job education, and tax breaks for entrepreneurs is all well and good but if the money is put into the hands of the mayor or any of the city council you can kiss the taxpayer money good by and expect substandard results.

To build and improved wall around the city of New Orleans that will hold against a future category five hurricane would cost in the prohibitive billions. I say let the rest of the country assimilate the poor that have already moved out or have nothing to come back to. Those that have something to come back to or had insurance to replace what they lost should come back. The government should repair the infrastructure where they can but there should be limits. No one really wants it to go back to the way it was, a poverty zone..