'OCCUPY AARP!

We believe that the OWS crowd has a legitimate beef with the Wall Street Barons who:
-Made all the financial/investment mistakes imaginable leading up to the Crash of 2008 that is still lingering with us;
-Ran to Washington to get bailed out; and
-Now have had all of their wealth restored and kept their jobs with the help of the US Taxpayer and the seemingly-oblivious Chinese and foreign sovereign lenders who keep shoveling money to the US absent any substantive reform at any level of business or government.

Here is something that the OWS crowd is finally getting around to that will really and truly make a difference though.  We suggest you consider seriously doing the same if you are 'mad' about anything and everything.

Apparently, the OWS crowd is suggesting that everyone transfer their checking and savings and business accounts away from the banks that made such disastrous decisions in the first place and then put them all in smaller community banks that did not engage in such idiotic behavior.

We. Salute. That. Approach!

Seriously. It is called 'market pressure'. The only way anyone in the world of business ever really 'gets' the message is when sales drop and revenues dry up and profits evaporate and their pay is threatened and reduced.

It is the only way.

For banks, it is also called 'disintermediation'. Meaning deposits dry up faster than dew on a desert flower in the morning. But it gets the attention of their senior executives fast and then they start doing anything they can to make you happy so you will keep your money with them and not with someone else.

Which brings us back to the AARP.

We think it is time everyone knew the real truth about the AARP.

They may not know it but their 'Burly-Man' ad we spoke of in the prior posting pretty much rubbed a lot of people wrong. Including several seniors we have spoken with over the last couple of days.

Besides being just basically 'offensive' in tone and manner, these responsible seniors said the ad also completely reflected a total lack of concern about the United States of America as a whole.

'They apparently don't care if we fall into another major economic/financial collapse or if we have hyperinflation or a weaker economy as a result of these devastating debts we owe as a nation' they said.

Why is that? Why would the executives of the AARP be so diffident about the future prospects of the United States of America?

The AARP started out as a noble mission: help poor seniors survive end of life circumstances with dignity.

We get that. We support that. Everyone does. Liberal, Conservative, Independent, the Martian who just landed on Planet Earth.

But what has the AARP become over the past 30 years of its existence?

A monolithic, monstrous health care insurance, car insurance, life insurance behemoth! $1.4 billion in annual revenues! What kind of benevolent charitable organization lobbying for the interests of Ma and Pa Kettle racks up $1.4 billion in annual revenues from any source?

Check out the compensation for their chief executive. 'Thomas C. Nelson, Past Ex-Officio/Past COO AARP Foundation; AARP, respectively $1,176,614. Includes a separation payment of $682,285. The full amount of Thomas Nelson's compensation was paid by AARP, not AARP Foundation.'

Wow! That sure is a lot of $10 annual memberships if that is all they are doing at the AARP. 117,661 seniors would have had to have paid the $10 annual membership fee just to pay one person at AARP, Mr. Thomas Nelson.

Sounds like Wall Street overcompensation to us.

We never thought of the AARP as a benign, saintly, Mother Teresa-type organization in Washington seeking to bring solace and hope for the downtrodden seniors of this nation.  They are a bare-knuckled, hardcore political machine that seeks to destroy any politician who dares speak the truth about our out-of-control entitlement spending programs.  We have seen them do it time and time again in this nation supposedly that worships 'free and open speech'.

They have protected Social Security and Medicare benefits for the less-fortunate, we grant them that.

But they have assiduously expanded the scope of both programs under the guise of 'protecting the elderly' when many seniors are now living much higher standards of living than their children who are struggling to keep up with paying for their highly-subsidized SS and Medicare benefits!

Again, why in heaven's name are we still paying for over half of Warren Buffett's Medicare benefits from the general taxpayer revenue and loans from China? He and millions of other well-off senior citizens 'don't need SS or Medicare and can take care of themselves!'

Do we have pass an Emancipation Proclamation for Seniors to free them to do so?

Here's what let's do today:

Everyone who reads this article, and agrees with it, please tear up your AARP card if you have one.

Send a note to the AARP in Washington that you will not re-join until they get serious about rectifying the out-of-whack budgets for SS and Medicare in the federal budget.

In addition, send this article to everyone you know on your email lists; Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and let's call this the virtual 'OCCUPY AARP' movement in cyberspace.

We don't want you to go camp out in the cold, sleep in dirty clothes or starve to death on hunger strike or anything hard like that.

We just want you to sit at your computer in the warmth and security of your home today and help 'starve' the beast called the AARP until their senior executives 'get with the program' and start supporting even some of the President's own Bowles-Simpson recommendations on entitlements that he has never properly introduced in legislative form for some odd reason.

If the AARP starts seeing the 'disintermediation' of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of sub-60 year old people (and above 60-year old people who agree with us), they will change their tune and they will change it fast.

They are just like the bankers on Wall Street. Send them a message. And keep it going til they change their ways.