Documents and interviews unearthed in recent months by Brave New Foundation researchers illustrate a $28.4 million Koch business that has manufactured 297 commentaries, 200 reports, 56 studies and six books distorting Social Security’s effectiveness and purpose.

Together, the publications reveal a vast cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers’ spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a self-sustaining echo chamber to transform fringe ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.

AARP admits they have been quietly hinting at being willing to support cuts to Social Security benefits for months.

The National Organization for Women accused AARP of implicit corruption in their statement, recalling the 2003 prescription drug benefit battle. NOW brings up Medicare Advantage, the privatization scheme that ultimately passed as part of that bill.

fter AARP’s policy director, John Rother, told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that they were open to cutting Social Security benefits, AARP issued a clarification supposedly “denying” that this was true. Or at least that’s how most people interpreted it. “Oh, don’t worry, that was a gaffe. AARP has clarified for the record that it’s not true.”

A closer look at AARP’s damage control statement, entitled “AARP Has Not Changed Its Position on Social Security,” reveals it to be a non-denial.

I was so disgusted to read that AARP now supports cutting Social Security benefits today that I wrote the following email to them cancelling my membership.

My guess is that they were thinking of doing so as a way to give cover to Democrats wanting to cut a debt ceiling deal with the Republicans before the August drop-dead date, and who are too cowardly to back tax hikes on the rich and corporations as the only real solution. The timing is certainly suggestive: Announce it soon, then do a nationwide bullshit blitz on the virtues of cat food, so that the Democrats don’t suffer too much come 2012.

News from an alternate Earth where the NRA advocates as fiercely for its members as the AARP does.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the AARP has officially reversed its course and will be no longer working to protect Social Security.

In a direct affront to their membership, one of the largest and most well-known advocacy groups in the country has thrown in its lot with the likes of Alan Simpson

I asked DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz about all this today, as she greeted attendees at Netroots Nation. She was fairly blunt. “I will tell you that benefit cuts are not on the table,” she said. “They’re not on the table for me and they’re not on the table for our party in the House.”

When an organization that is formed for the purposes of advocating for seniors abandons its support of Social Security, it has really jumped the shark. Eric Kingson, one of president Obama’s former Social Security advisers explains why now is the time to leave AARP.