In the past 24 hours I have heard heartfelt complaints from three people — my Dad, ADCO’s Lanier Jones and frequent commenter Steve Davis — about being overrun by robocalls and pollsters. Here’s what Steven said:
If Mitt Romney doesn’t control his robocallers soon he’s going to lose my vote. Two calls yesterday and three calls today.
To which I can only say: “Hah! You suckers! I got rid of my landline months ago, and haven’t been pestered by a one of these since!”
I mean… I feel for y’all; I really do…
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I’ve gotten five so far today. All from Romney.
If Jim DeMint calls me for Paul, I’m hanging up.
And I have gotten 6 from Romney today (4 on Sunday) — each from a robocaller claiming a different voice and identity. The only other one I got from Gingrich on Friday actually left a robo-message!
I hang up immediately and wonder who besides Satan herself (an attorney) could waste so much money.
Never in my life have I contributed $1 or $2 dollars on tax returns to such wasteful excesses that automatically conveys the mark of the beast on the supposed intelligence of a free people.
We dumped our landline a couple of years ago because all we got were political calls and alumni calls.
Political robocalls have got to be the effective equivalent of Nigerian email scams. Enough people must be swayed favorably, albeit a very small number, to make them worthwhile. Somehow, I doubt it, but…
KF is absolutely correct in this instance, except for…one little thing… warrantless telecom privacy.
Wireless security? Not so much! –
“Think back to 1996, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. On December 21st of that year, a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, were going Christmas shopping, and “just happened” to have a scanner and tape recorder in the car with them. They claimed to have “accidentally” monitored the cell-phone conversation of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as he spoke from his car in a conference call with several other key Republicans, including Gingrich. They just “happened” to record it “for history.” – http://www.rightgrrl.com/carolyn/gingrichtripp.html
Think things have changed with the latest technology and legislation? Think again! – http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/feds-appealing-wiretap-defeat/
Come join me in live-blogging this debate… https://bradwarthen.com/?p=14643
I only have a landline because I have Windstream as my internet provider. I technically don’t have a landline, but since I need to have one for my internet access they don’t charge me for it. I can receive incoming calls for free, outgoing calls are 15 cents per minute.
So what’s a better deal, having no landline or having a landline and not paying for it?
BTW – The only reason I know I’m getting these calls is that I have my ringer turned off and I see my messages flashing and growing in number.
All I used to get were debt consolidation calls. I went away for a week and I had 17 robo-messages, all from debt consolidators, and I didn’t even have any debt! Landlines are for suckers, and a big waste of money.
Why do you think the polls are so crummy, it’s because they are mostly calling (the mostly) elderly people who still have landlines.
@Juan–and I never give private information over phone lines or email– I’m pretty much an open book most of the time.
I do wonder about how MDs get around HIPAA, etc.
But look what they did to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World….
Mitt Romney just lost my vote, if he’s the nominee I just won’t vote for President this year.
3 more calls while I was at work. That’s 6 calls within a 24 hour period. That bunch of ADD riddled morons is like having a bunch of sugar overdosed toddlers in the back seat screaming “Are we there yet?”. Time to turn the car around, or stop and pull out the belt on these idiots.
I got one from John McCain calling on behalf of his “friend” Mitt Romney yesterday. What a beautiful friendship those two must have. McCain will shill for anyone these days willing to make him still feel relevant.
Robocalls should be banned or should require an option to opt out from calls from a candidate.
Let’s pass some laws restricting something. Libertarianism in action.
@Tim
Do you even have a clue about what libertarianism is?? It’s about not doing things to other people without their consent. Did you miss the part where I said there should be an opt out feature?
And anyway, the robocall process is the one regulated by non-libertarians. So how’s that working out?
It’s not about every man for himself. It’s about every man being free from being controlled by someone else. It’s about acting responsibly and ethically.
A libertarian doesn’t need a law to prevent him from letting his dog take a dump in the neighbor’s yard.
Doug, thanks for the condescension. I had gone through the entire morning without any, and was beginning to miss it. Really, I am pretty clueless about libertarianism when this is what you wrote:
“Robocalls should be banned or should require an option to opt out from calls from a candidate.”
I did not miss the part where you would “require” an opt out feature, nor the part where you said it should be banned. What non-libertarians are controlling the robo-call process? Seems like free-enterprise at work, to me.
Brad will love the part about “Not being every man for himself”.
And trust me, no one is passing laws preventing people from letting their allosaurus take a dump in someone’s yard,… because it ain’t a problem. It is a problem if people are not picking up after their dogs in spite of a gentle admonishing, followed by a more stern one, then a very stern one, etc. But thanks for bringing poop into the discussion.
@Brad
I’d rather err on the side of less government than more (as you would prefer). It’s a whole lot harder to get back your individual rights once they’ve been taken away. It’s done incrementally.
Let the government run healthcare. Let the government run the Internet. Let the government tell you what you can watch on TV in the privacy of your home. Let the government tell you what you can eat, drink, and ingest into your body. Let the government decide who you can choose to call your spouse. Let the government decide how much money you will get when you retire and and how much you must contribute. Let the government tell you that aborting a fetus is okay. This is what your system gets you.
@tim
How about the recent attempts to ban the number of pets a person could own in Richland County? How about the attempts to limit the ownership of cats to only those kept indoors?
You are clueless about libertarianism. You confuse it with anarchy. You confuse it with lawlessness. You confuse it with selfishness. Other than that, you’re spot on.
As for the robocall process, um, maybe you should investigate what laws have already been passed to control it. And maybe investigate the fact that political consultants in SC have been arrested and charged with crimes related to robocalls. Did the libertarians come up with those laws?
Here’s one example:
“A year ago, GOP operative Ginny Allen was charged with six counts of making illegal, unsolicited phone calls in Aiken County, S.C. Allen confessed to making the calls (ostensibly on behalf of S.C. Sen. Greg Ryberg) and was allowed to enter a pre-trial intervention program rather than face jail time.”
Here’s the specific SC statute against robocalls:
“SECTION 16-17-446. Regulation of automatically dialed announcing device (ADAD).
(A) “Adad” means an automatically dialed announcing device which delivers a recorded message without assistance by a live operator for the purpose of making an unsolicited consumer telephone call as defined in Section 16-17-445(A)(3). Adad calls include automatically announced calls of a political nature including, but not limited to, calls relating to political campaigns.
(B) Adad calls are prohibited except:
(1) in response to an express request of the person called;
(2) when primarily connected with an existing debt or contract, payment or performance of which has not been completed at the time of the call;
(3) in response to a person with whom the telephone solicitor has an existing business relationship or has had a previous business relationship. ”
So the law exists but is not enforced most of the time. Both the Attorney General’s office and the Consumer Department of Affairs are supposed to regulate the calls and enforce the law. But, like most government agencies, they don’t do a whole lot.
I have no interest in calls from Romney or Gingrich and have never authorized them to call me.
That’s it in a nutshell: “It’s about not doing things to other people without their consent.”
Nothing is done in this country without our consent — unless we don’t know about it. And nowadays, there’s little we don’t learn about.
That’s the problem for libertarians. They don’t understand what self-government through representative democracy is — or, to the extent that they DO understand, they don’t like it.
Our government acts with our consent, as expressed through elections. But there is no “our” in the libertarian dictionary. Just “I, me, mine.” If you don’t personally get the consent of the individual libertarian, he’s ticked off.
And they actually imagine that a civilized society can function getting every individual persons specific, situational permission to everything.
Which boggles the mind, but there it is.
Doug, where do you get that stuff? Why can’t your understand that while while you have a default position (“I’d rather err on the side of less government than more”), I do not.
And where do you get the idea that “the government” (which, as I keep telling libertarians but they never take it in, is just us) wants to do all those things? Or that I want it to do those things?
And don’t you have it precisely backwards when you say, “Let the government tell you that aborting a fetus is okay.” The libertarian position is pro-choice, by definition. Which is the opposite of my position, because I believe society has a stake in whether someone gets to be born or is killed first. The pro-choice people believe one person — and the most interested person at that, which flies in the face of our notion of the rule of law, which requires that interested judges recuse themselves — should have the power to decide life or death. I see that as anathema in any sort of civilized society. Because I am not a libertarian.
@Brad
Where do I get “that stuff”? From reading your blog for years. I don’t recall many occasions where you thought the government was doing too much in any area… and you are quick to jump on any bandwagon that includes doing more: blue laws, ATV laws, national healthcare, gas taxes, etc.
Prove me wrong – tell me where the government is too involved in your life.
What I observe is that libertarians like the laws the like and don’t like the laws the don’t like. Choosing not to make a law when you have the power is the same as making a law when you have the power. One just involves more thought than reflexively saying NO NO NO.
But fine. let’s trace this back, to help me with my cluelessness. You are the one who wants to ban robo calls, and now you are saying that I am. I don’t give a hoot about them. They don’t bother me. Why do you cite restrictions on robo calls as a bad thing, then come out and say you want restrictions on robo calls. But then, I am clueless.
If you just erred in being consistent, just own up to it. You are tying your own arguments up in knots to prove your consistency to the religion.
Doug,
honestly, you don’t want to fund the government, then complain when they don’t enforce laws you don’t think should be on the books, but you want to have laws on the books you want to be enforced to make your life comfortable. Help me. I am clueless.
I just expanded my last comment into a post…
RE: Robocalls–apparently they fall within the exception if you ever voted in that parties primary.
I believe they are worse than useless, but apparently the folks who employ them believe otherwise.
Doug, I don’t believe the government IS too involved in my life. That’s why I’m not a libertarian. I don’t feel harried, picked on, bullied. Government in no way threatens me. I marvel at these people (the Paulistas) who think it threatens THEM. Who don’t think that they are the government, who see as something OUT THERE menacing them.
Like that young girl in the paper this morning who said Ron Paul makes her feel all warm and fuzzy because “He’s talking about giving us back our rights that have been stripped from us.”
WHAT rights that have been stripped from you? That demands explanation, but to Paulistas, it’s just an article of faith. They are put-upon, picked on, by the big, bad “they” out there.
And I don’t know what the stimulus is that provokes that response.