Op-Eds

AARP Puts Liberal Agenda First, Seniors Last

Groucho Marx famously quipped that he wouldn’t want to belong to any group that would want him as a member. Perhaps from the great beyond Groucho can take heart in the fact he’d feel perfectly comfortable as a member of today’s AARP, whose embrace of “Obamacare” once again demonstrates their complete indifference toward their 35 million dues-paying members, if not outright hostility toward seniors everywhere.

Martin: Seniors Hard Hit

Very few Americans have been able to isolate or immunize themselves from today’s economic hardships, but for America’s seniors and working families, the impact is even more severe. Savings built and strengthened over a lifetime have been erased. The cost of living continues to climb. And golden years for many that should be filled with travel, relaxation and quality time with grandchildren are instead filled with apprehension and anxiety.

Mother’s Milk Of Politics

“In 1962, I covered Congress as a reporter for a news bureau that included the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, the Columbia (S.C.) State, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, WFLA-(Tampa) TV, 50,000-watt radio stations WDBO (Orlando) and WGBS (Miami) to name a few of the more than two dozen media outlets.

From that perspective, I witnessed one of the most lopsided presidential victories ever. Democrat Lyndon Johnson beat Republican Barry Goldwater, 486 electoral votes to 52 with a popular vote of 43 million to 27 million.

Strong-Arming Seniors Will Be The Death Of Medicare

Only in Washington could a supposedly self-funded government program that’s operating in the red and facing insolvency walk away from an opportunity to save billions of dollars.Yet that’s exactly what Medicare, the health care program for seniors, is doing: shamefully ignoring an opportunity to save billions by forcing retirees who want to pay for their own medical coverage to accept Medicare.

Line Item Veto Needed

“Congress: Give The President The Line Item Veto” in the January 3, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal, President Bush authored an op ed entitled, “What the Congress Can Do for America” in which he wrote, among other things, “It’s time Congress give the President a line item veto.”

Spooking Seniors

Scaring Seniors Into The Voting Booth by Pat Boone And Jim Martin: “We seniors (yes, we’re both in that club) have any number of things to be concerned about in our later years, things that go to the welfare and happiness of our children and grandkids, prevention of identity theft, what to do in case of power outages owing to natural phenomena like hurricanes or floods, whether there will ever be a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, sales scams via telemarketing or on-line fraud, home security and the like.”

Is The Answer Blowin’ In A Windfall Tax?

Virginia’s new governor, Tim Kaine, a “new Democrat” with his party’s old penchant for taxing and spending, spent much of his response to the president’s State of the Union address urging Big Oil to “share in our sacrifice” by forfeiting “excess profits.”

Stay The Course, Mr. President.

“The carping and back-biting among the liberal elite over our fighting for America in Iraq is a national disgrace…and I for one am sick of it!” says 60 Plus President, Jim Martin. “President George W. Bush has called himself a ‘war time President’ and as such, I wanted him to know this is one old Marine leatherneck, out of thousands, who is proud to call him Commander in Chief.”

Gore Needs To Just Chill Out

The unabated anger of Democratic presidential candidates and the liberal media towards George W. Bush still feeds off their moral certitude that he cheated Al Gore out of the presidency in the 2000 elections.

Create Personal Retirement Accounts

James L. Martin article in The Miami Herald, Saturday, January 31, 2004 “The Medicare prescription-drug fight last year was about America’s 60-plus generation. Now it’s time to do something for their children and grandchildren by fixing the creaky Social Security system.”