Republican Robocall Pretexting Campaign 674
WCityMike writes, "In 53 Congressional campaigns across the country, including the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th, the New Hampshire 2nd, and the Illinois 6th and 8th (and possibly all races), the National Republican Congressional Committee is conducting a $2.1 million campaign to make it appear as if Democrats are spamming callers with telemarketing calls. The NRCC hired Conquest Communications Group to conduct a massive nationwide robocalling campaign with calls specifically scripted to appear as if they're coming from the Democratic candidate — in violation of FCC regulations on such 'robocalls,' which requires the identity of the caller to be stated at the beginning of the message [47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1)]. The call begins with 'Hello. I'm calling with information about,' and then says the name of the Democratic candidate. There is then a pause; if the recipient hangs up here, they will receive repeated calls back with the same message, potentially up to 18 times or more (according to one callee). If the callee doesn't hang up, they hear a smear message from the machine about the Democratic candidate. The NRCC thinks the legality of the calls is, conveniently, a 'complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend.'" Update 20:47 GMT by SM: Thankfully we all learned how to deal with these folks last week.
Should do things the DNC way ... (Score:1, Informative)
Conquest Communication Group Link (Score:1, Informative)
The system is broken (Score:2, Informative)
the congressional seats of a state using the proportional Jefferson Method (equivalent to the D'Hondt Method).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method [wikipedia.org]
This would result in viable third parties and real choice. Voting for small parties at the federal level before the system is fixed is futile.
This current system ensures that only two parties exist at federal level. Imagine if there were for example five parties and they got votes in a state like this: 40%, 30%, 15%, 10%, 5%. Wouldn't it then be a good idea to allocate the seats to parties according to their proportional support among voters? Let's suppose that there would be six House seats in that state. Using the D'Hondt method we would get the following allocation
of seats: Party 1: 3 seats, Party 2: 2 seats, Party 3: 1 seat, Parties 4 and 5: no seats. And the hegemony of the two big parties was broken. This system actually works and is fair, unlike the one used in the USA. In Finland we have eight parties in the parliament. A rich variety of opinions and ideologies is always present and no single party can easily gain a dominant status.
We've had these in NY-25 for about a week! Grr! (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone have an idea what we can do about this, one day before the election?
Re:don't call list? (Score:3, Informative)
You would think... but the politicians who wrote the law remembered to put in a clause allowing politicians to continue to call you. Nice of them, wasn't it?
Google it (Score:3, Informative)
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:chTn88IH384J:
Re:don't call list? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Conquest Communication Group Link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:We've had these in NY-25 for about a week! Grr! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Conquest Communication Group Link (Score:1, Informative)
site:www.conquestgroup.com Conquest Communication Group
and use the cached link to view the pages.
Re:I was wondering when this would happen... (Score:3, Informative)
Voter Information (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.vote-smart.org/ [vote-smart.org]
I'm in Mass, and I think they do a decent job with handling the information. For those who are in a voting office, you can see their records. Another really helpful thing is to check the NPAT (National Political Awareness Test) results, if available. Being the day before the election, the site seems to be running a bit slow, so be patient. Hope the site is helpful. (I am not affilated with vote-smart.org in any way)
Re:Why does this seem to be republican-only? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Conquest Communication Group Link (Score:1, Informative)
Re:"smear message"? (Score:2, Informative)
What planet are you on? The number of American civilians killed by terrorists has gone up every year since 2001 [flickr.com].
Re:Why does this seem to be republican-only? (Score:5, Informative)
He's referring to the fraudulent letters [latimes.com] distributed by Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen.
The letters were sent to 14,000 registered voters, and claimed (completely falsely) that naturalized citizens are not only ineligible to vote, but would be jailed or deported if they showed up at the polls. They were printed in letterhead that looked deceptively like that of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and were signed by the completely fictional "Sergio Ramirez".
So I'm afraid that you're mistaken; these were naturalized citizens, registered voters, and the tactic was specifically designed to deceive them into forgoing their right to vote.
Re:Suuuuuure it's complicated (Score:3, Informative)
Or the RNC way? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1
a Republican official was CONVICTED of this, too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
If you're going to rip of MAD magazine... (Score:4, Informative)
Guaranteed Effective All-Occasion Non-Slanderous Political Smear Speech
By Bill Garvin
MAD #139, December 1970
Re:"smear message"? (Score:2, Informative)
A quick search finds data
here [economist.com] or
here [cedarcomm.com] readily contridicting your statement. We have gone from about 58% when Bush to office to about 64% now. Another thing to realize is that the projected government expenditures on medicare and social security are about to explode. Demographics are going to make the simple outgrow the deficit thesis very hard to support.
Re:"smear message"? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, you can keep paying off one credit card with another. But the issue of whether deficit spending actually boosts economic growth is up in the air. On one hand you do have the Keyensian economic effect.(which is interesting considering Republicans supposedly reject Keynes), but on the other hand you have the drain caused by interest payments. Interest ads no value. You're not creating any economic growth by spending $400 billion on interest, and you also have the issue of the $9 trillion which is tied up in federal bonds instead of being available for economic investment into the private sector.
The interesting thing is, we're at a point today where the interest payments on the Federal Debt(about $400 billion) is larger than the amount of the annual deficit(about $250 billion). So we're at a point now where if not for the debt, we'd have a balanced budget. So our debt is actually draining on our budget and making the debt larger. Why is that an issue? Because being in a situation where your debt keeps rising in order to pay off your existing debt is a recipe for bankruptcy.
Whoa... Your beyond drinking the kool-aid. Your flat off in la la land. Paying off the debt would not drain the economy, rather quite the opposite. It would free up the $9 trillion plus interest payments for private economic development.
debt-to-GDP is increasing, and has been for several years. http://zfacts.com/p/318.html [zfacts.com]
It would only be decreasing if the deficit was held to zero, allowing for inflation to decrease the present and future value of the debt. That hasn't happened since the Clinton era.
Your understanding of economics and deficit spending is disturbing. I've encountered it before, and it appears to be a result of a propaganda campaign by some Republicans to prop up their existing power structure. That is, ignore the problems and look at the furry rabbit slight of hand.
I don't know if it's worth responding to you, because I don't think you care about actually educating yourself and understanding the issues.
Re:Then we can be like Italy! (Score:3, Informative)
Not in Australia. We do have proportional representation and coalition governments but it hasn't resulted in instability. Our governments typically last longer than US governments, probably because we don't have a two term rule.
Our main right wing party is a coalition of the Liberal and National parties. They get along pretty well.
Still not good enough (Score:3, Informative)
There was an estimate hanging around of 600K people which died since the start of the US invasion.
Even if it was 1/6 less than that and in reality 100K this is the number of live lost over way LESS than the 20 years than Saddam had.
So.... Quote "has resulted in tens of thousands fewer" sorry but this is not true. Extrapolated over the same time period, the us invasion any way you see it killed MORE people than if Saddam was still in power. ESPECIALLY that all massacre happenned while he was a US "friend". He refrained from anything way too bad in the last years.