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| The World This Week |
"Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection!" -- Jim Morrison
James Douglas Morrison was born on Dec. 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida. Were he alive in the flesh and not just in his music and verse, he would be 60 years old this week. That would make him, potentially, one of 35 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons.
Michael O'McCarthy of Greenville, South Carolina is alive in the flesh and 61 years old. He has lived a life of excess to rival Jim Morrison's, but he has long since recovered his bearings.
O'McCarthy is, among many other things, a political organizer and an active member of AARP, and he is mad as hell at the latter organization for having been hijacked by the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, and for being made to support legislation -- like the just-passed "Medicare Reform Bill" -- that will ultimately harm seniors. He is not going to take it any more, either. He is going after the Republican politicians who now serve as the unelected, and unwanted, puppet masters for the AARP, led by the group's handsomely paid CEO William Novelli, former adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Rather than make a grand symbolic gesture by burning his AARP card and quitting in disgust O'McCarthy has started a movement to take back the organization. His first step toward achieving this is a nationwide petition drive to recall the board of directors of AARP.
As O'McCarthy says, "I began the notion of a recall of AARP executives because WE seniors have made that organization the largest organization of seniors in history; by virtue of that, it is OUR organization. Thus, I believe we ought to decide within that organization what is best for US. Not the politicians, and certainly NOT the salaried execs."
Even as his petition drive picks up steam, O'McCarthy needs help in order to take this promising effort to the next level (he can be contacted at Opolitique@aol.com). Though he can't stop the Medicare bill from becoming law, he hopes to "create a basis for forging a movement of seniors that will have a much greater impact on our future than that of the corporate machinations of AARP." Think about that for a second: 35 million angry former fans of the Doors -- nearly all of whom vote -- saying, in effect, "we want the world and we want it NOW!" Break on through to the other side, Michael O'McCarthy!
Just in case you missed the political storm over the AARP's "endorsement" of this Republican-spawned monstrosity or you are too young to care, let me put it this way: Congress has, in Morrison's words, "traded your hours for a handful of dimes. " That is, in the guise of offering seniors "drug benefits" in 2003, this bill is really the first step toward full privatization (read: profit-driven) of Medicare. For many millions of Americans Medicare is the only thing that stands between them and a death sentence. By the time those of you 20- and 30-somethings who are reading this are out shopping for dentures and bifocals, you'll be lucky if a for-profit Medicare tosses you a handful of urine-soaked aspirins.
What is indisputable, here and now, is that the AARP is in the grip of the Republican Party, whether its members like it or not. And the GOP is in the pocket of the insurance and drug companies.
The poster girl for the corrupting influence of money on the legislative process is our own U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-5th District). Mrs. Johnson receives more money from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries than any other member of Congress. Is it any wonder, then, that she hails the Medicare Reform Bill as "exciting"?
More truthful is Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), a senior citizen whose Harlem constituency will be harmed by this bill. Rangel pointed out yet an added sham: "AARP has a conflict of interest because it gets substantial profits from sales of insurance" to the elderly. Rangel is mad as hell, as is retired Army general Wesley K. Clark of Arkansas, a senior citizen who calls the bill, "a giveaway to HMOs." Howard Dean, speaking from the perspective of a medical practitioner, said, "This bill is a disaster ... . To do something is not always the right thing to do if the something is worse than doing nothing."
Might-have-been senior citizen Jim Morrison shed some light on all this back when he was a 20-something rock star. In his masterpiece, "An American Prayer," he wrote, "They are waiting to take us into the severed garden."
(thanks, Beverly)