Magazines

Traditional magazines focusing on news and politics have crashed.  Of the top 100 American magazines by circulation, the biggest in this category is Time -- in 26th place.

 Mattie Kahn at NYT:

The media business might be in free fall, but in Issaquah, Wash., the merriest band of magazine makers in America drives to Costco headquarters and sets about producing a monthly print periodical that is delivered to more households across the United States than Better Homes & Gardens, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic combined.

And it’s growing. Each month, 15.4 million copies of Costco Connection are mailed out to “executive” members, who pay double the yearly membership fee of $65 for the magazine and other perks. (Another 300,000 are distributed via Costco warehouses.) Its reach is so vast that Costco Connection is now the nation’s third largest magazine by print circulation, behind AARP: The Magazine and The AARP Bulletin.

AARP v. PhRMA

Nicholas Florko at STAT:

AARP’s white-haired “strike force,” as the organization calls them, is on the offensive like never before — bashing big business with a righteous indignation that could surprise activists decades younger and positioning AARP as the drug industry’s primary opponent.

“I can’t really think of another time when there’s been this strong a message in opposition to an entire industry,” said John Rother, the group’s former head of policy and the current CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care.

As Max Richtman, head of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, put it, “PhRMA is an 800-pound gorilla. And I think they’re meeting another 800-pound gorilla in AARP.”

Positioning itself as pharma’s main antagonist, however, has opened up the group to a new line of attack from PhRMA, the drug industry’s lobbying arm, which has launched something of a counter-offensive campaign. Its ads zoom in on the roughly $600 million AARP rakes in each year from selling private Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplement insurance plans to its members. That hefty sum, PhRMA says, raises serious questions about the motivation behind AARP’s push.

“In many respects, AARP is an insurance company that is masquerading as a seniors advocacy organization,” said Robert Zirkelbach, executive vice president of public affairs at PhRMA. “AARP has significantly increased their involvement in the drug pricing debate, and we think it’s important to point out what might be motivating their perspective.”

AARP and Social Security

At The Huffington Post, Daniel Marans writes that AARP has started an effort to persuade get presidential candidates to discuss their plans for Social Security, but it will not say which  reforms it prefers.

Frederick Lynch, an expert on the politics of aging at Claremont McKenna College and author of One Nation Under AARP: The Fight Over Medicare, Social Security, and America’s Future, argues that AARP's relatively neutral approach in its “Take A Stand” campaign reflects the “fundamental conflict” between its brand as a purveyor of services for older Americans and its historic role as a defender of seniors’ policy priorities.

“They want to be the Consumer Reports of health and services for seniors,” said Lynch, who encouraged AARP to come out forcefully against Social Security cuts in 2011. “But the minute they get partisan, they’re gonna lose some people. So there is sort of a tug of war between their trust brand -- the Good Housekeeping 'Seal of Approval'" and being more of an advocacy-oriented organization.

Since some AARP members reportedly left the group after it backed the Affordable Care Act -- which included Medicare cost savings that many seniors viewed as benefit cuts -- the organization has likely become more cautious, Lynch suggested.

Lynch says that AARP was more willing to advance a position on controversial issues under the leadership of William Novelli, who ran the organization from 2001 to 2009.

Under Novelli, AARP supported the creation of Medicare’s prescription drug program in 2003, and opposed President George W. Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security in 2005. Under CEO Barry Rand, it also notably backed the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Lynch worries that if AARP does not step up as a major opponent of benefit cuts, it risks ceding ground to less scrupulous groups and individuals like Trump, who is clearly appealing to the economic and cultural insecurities of the same Baby Boomers who make up a disproportionate share of the organization’s membership, according to Lynch.

“Trump is representative of Boomer politics,” Lynch said. “The fact that he immediately took Medicare and Social Security off the table has increased his strength.”

That would be a shame, Lynch argues, since if there is one organization capable of uniting Boomers across racial and class lines and turning them into a cohesive political force, it's AARP.

“AARP is the 900-pound gorilla,” Lynch said. “There really is nobody else.”

A Dilemma for AARP

Frederick R. Lynch writes at The San Diego Union-Tribune:

To mobilize and gauge member support for its own entitlement agenda, AARP launched “You’ve Earned a Say,” an online and town hall campaign to educate members about Social Security and Medicare’s fiscal realities and to test tolerance for reform. As part of this mobilization, AARP must rebuild lost trust and lost membership (nearly half a million) in the wake of accusations that it sold out Medicare to the Affordable Care Act. Based on observations at two recent California town halls, building an “age power” consensus must also transcend two key divisions: social class and political ideology. The format was the same in both the heavily Hispanic, working-class eastern L.A. suburb of Pico Rivera and in the predominantly Anglo, upper-middle-class San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo. PowerPoint presentations portrayed Medicare and Social Security’s features, funding sources and allocation of expenditures. But both the tone and types of responses at the two gatherings were very different.

...

These contrasting town halls pose a strategic dilemma for AARP: “Social justice” concerns favor insulating working-class seniors with minimal entitlement changes – perhaps through means-testing of benefits by income. Meanwhile, upper-middle-class seniors with employer-sponsored pensions and health insurance are more willing to consider major reforms, but might see indexing remedies as unfairly penalizing hard-earned achievement and careful retirement planning. What to do?

AARP initially rallied seniors with the somewhat self-righteous, individualistic slogan, “You’ve Earned It.” A more unifying theme might be found in AARP’s own organizational mantra, coined by its founder Ethel Percy Andrus: “What we do we do for all.” This slogan echoes her Greatest Generation’s spirit of E Pluribus Unum and national community so vital in achieving their proudest policy legacy: Medicare and Social Security. The New Deal and Great Society goals of strong government safety nets are still part of many AARP members’ generational DNA. Re-energizing those more cohesive traditions might moderate members’ differing class and ideological entitlement views – and could appeal to a battle-weary and polarized general electorate.

Courts and Federalism

As we explain in our chapter on federalism, courts have played a key role in defining the boundaries between state and federal authority.  Recent news stories illustrate the point.

At The Los Angeles Times, Julie Cart reports:

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily halted California's ability to enforce rules to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation fuels, effectively taking the regulatory teeth out of the state's year-old program.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence O'Neill issued a preliminary injunction that ruled the California Air Resources Board's low-carbon fuel regulations violated the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause by discriminating against crude oil and biofuels producers located outside California.

The regulations require producers, refiners and importers of gasoline and diesel to reduce the carbon footprint of their fuel by 10% over the next decade, as part of California's landmark global-warming law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The regulation calculates the life cycle of fuels from their extraction — or cultivation, in the case of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol — to their combustion. For example, the state considers how corn is grown, harvested and converted to ethanol intended for California gas tanks, a life-cycle evaluation called "seeds to wheels."

Also at The Los Angeles Times,  David G. Savage and Carol J. Williams write:

Federal judges have blocked strict new immigration laws adopted by conservative legislatures in half a dozen states, including a ruling last week that said South Carolina may not set up a "street-level dragnet" to stop and arrest illegal immigrants.

But immigrant rights advocates who have cheered those rulings may soon find their luck has run out as those rulings head for the Supreme Court. Legal experts believe the high court's conservative majority will take a sharply different approach.

...

When Congress last revised the immigration laws, it said states may "cooperate" with the federal government in "the identification, apprehension, detention or removal of aliens not lawfully present in the United States." The states that have passed restrictive laws say that's exactly what they are doing.

The Obama administration disagrees. In its legal arguments against Arizona's law, the administration says the state's policies conflict with the federal government's emphasis on deporting violent criminals, drug dealers and smugglers who are in the country illegally, not the hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants who may be living and working here.

But in May, the Supreme Court signaled skepticism about a similar argument.The justices upheld another Arizona law that punished employers who hire illegal workers. In his opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sounded a states' rights theme and set a "high threshold" for striking down a state law on the grounds that it conflicted with the aims of the federal government.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports:

In a newly released study on the state immigration laws, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) reports that in 2011, state legislators from across the country introduced 1,607 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees. This is a significant increase from 2010, when 46 states considered more than 1,400 bills and resolutions pertaining to immigrants. As of Dec. 7, 2011, 42 states and Puerto Rico had enacted 197 new laws and 109 new resolutions, for a total of 306.

AARP, Boomers, and Social Security

Our chapter on interest groups discusses AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. The group's issues are much in the news with the aging of the "baby boom" generation, the large cohort of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, the oldest of whom turn 65 this year. At its website, journalist Patrick J. Kiger talks to Frederick Lynch about his new book, One Nation Under AARP: The Fight Over Medicare, Social Security, and America's Future.

Do boomers and politicians consider AARP a policy advocate?

[Former senator] Alan Simpson, of course, has been the most visible foe of AARP all along. He's the one who says that the organization represents millions of people who are united only by their love of airline discounts.

I'm not agreeing with that, but he brings up one of the problems that AARP has in exercising leadership. It has a dual role. It's an organization that provides reasonably priced services, particularly insurance, which was the reason for its founding. But there's also the social entrepreneur and advocacy side.

There is confusion in the public mind as to what AARP is, and that's where some of the criticism comes from. Do they really care about us or are they just interested in selling us insurance?

What are your thoughts on that?

AARP can be both a service provider and a political spokesman and leader. People such as Simpson may perceive a conflict of interest, but in my research, I really didn't see that. When I talked to people at AARP who were doing research on the boomer generation, there never was any sign that they were concerned about how that would affect the insurance side or anything else.

AARP is unique, and I think this hybrid structure is actually part of the genius of AARP. It's a self-funding lobby.

But that does raise the charges of conflict of interest.

In the book, you make the case that AARP's biggest problem has been what you call "mission drift." Would you explain?

I don't think that AARP founder Ethel Percy Andrus ever envisioned in her wildest dreams that the organization would ever reach 40 million members. But AARP has become so successful and gotten so big that it's a challenge to maintain its identity.

There's a lot of talk at AARP about how it's an organization for all generations, for everybody who has a birthday. I understand where that's coming from, because they want to build consensus. And Andrus did have the mantra, "What we do, we do for all."

But at the end of the day, AARP has to be for seniors. Otherwise, why don't we rename it the American Association of Persons?

A Rasmussen survey measures opinions about the group:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters hold at least a somewhat favorable opinion of AARP, while 34% offer an unfavorable review. In November 2009, following AARP’s endorsement of the health care law, 53% viewed the organization favorably and 40% unfavorably.

The current numbers show 18% with a Very Favorable view of AARP and 15% with a Very Unfavorable opinion. Thirteen percent (13%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Among seniors, 56% have a favorable opinion, while 40% say the opposite. Among those under 40, roughly one-in-four have no opinion one way or the other.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of Democrats and a plurality (48%) of voters not affiliated with either major party view the organization for older Americans favorably. Republicans are evenly divided. Most liberals (58%) and moderates (62%) like AARP; 48% of conservatives do not.

After recent reports that the group was going to modify its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits, a number of members protested loudly. In response, the group denied the reports. At the McClatchy newspapers, Mark Davis writes:

For some AARP members, reports about the group's apparent shift on Social Security benefits irritated long-standing sores they developed over the organization's previous actions.

Some had derided AARP's position during President George W. Bush's push for Medicare pharmaceutical benefits. Others blanched at its role in supporting President Barack Obama's campaign for health care legislation, which The Journal report said had cost AARP 300,000 members.

AARP

Our chapter on interest groups (p 281) notes that AARP had to do a u-turn in 1989 when its members disapproved of its position on Medicare catastrophic coverage.

At The New York Times, Frederick R. Lynch advises AARP to shed his ambivalence about Social Security benefit cuts:

Legendary allies, like Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Claude Pepper of Florida, are gone. A formidable phalanx of key policy players have mobilized to advance proposals for deep cuts or radical restructuring of entitlements. AARP’s ambivalence will only embolden politicians who already have challenged the alleged unity of the “senior vote,” realizing that it has long been fragmented by differences in income, ideology, education, race, religion, gender and marital status.

But a strong AARP stand on Social Security and Medicare has the potential support of not only 78 million aging boomers but also the general public; polls have found broad majorities opposed to slashing Social Security and converting Medicare into a voucher system.

It might also heal the ideological rifts and mini-mutiny wrought by AARP’s support of Mr. Obama’s health care plan. That episode cost AARP at least 400,000 members, many of whom wrote angry letters and e-mails accusing it of selling out older Americans and redistributing Medicare funds to other groups (a suspicion that lingers because the Obama health care overhaul projects a reduction in the rate of increase in Medicare spending). Finally, leading a popular political crusade might dispel the stereotype that AARP puts profits over principles.