Annoying-- Some Would Say Unbearable-- Solicitation Calls Are Back

Pallone pretends he opposes robocalls but he keeps taking their bribes and pretending

I imagine they stopped for a couple of months because call centers closed down. But I've noticed the calls identified with a "V" on my landline's screen-- solicitation calls and robocalls-- are back. It's just one or two a day now, down from 20-25 a day. People hate them and want government to do something about them-- not pretend they're doing something about them (while taking their bribes, the way chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Frank Pallone does).

Over 3 million people are employed by U.S. call centers and the big companies that operate them lobby extensively and give gigantic bribes to politicians in both political parties. So we'll never be rid of them... unless we outlaw political bribery itself... and good luck with that.

There are 7,400 call centers-- employing over 50 people each-- in the U.S. The biggest-- and most grotesque-- one is Alorica (47,298 employees), but there are plenty of other companies operating call centers like AT&T (47,152), Verizon (40,614), Conduent (28,144), Teleperformance (22,548), Comcast (17,940), Spectrum (15,908), Teletech (13,394), Sykes (13,217), Sitel (11,523), ADP (11,374).

Robo calls and phone solicitations are hated by everyone. But the government-- at best-- takes half-steps to keep them from annoying and scamming people. Yesterday-- as the Supreme Court-- prepares to decide whether automated calls to cellphones, however annoying they may be, are constitutionally protected-- constitutional law professor Garrett Epps penned a piece for The Atlantic on the issue: The Supreme Court Could Use the First Amendment to Unleash a Robocall Nightmare. "Today," he wrote, "advocates for 'free speech' will offer a good way for the Court to become the least popular institution in America: by making it decide that Americans have to live with unsolicited, repeated prerecorded calls-- so-called robocalls-- to their cellphones."

The call centers and their allies are trying to use the First Amendment to challenge a federal law that forbids anyone from calling a cellphone to transmit a recorded message.

They are enough of a nuisance that I don’t answer my cellphone anymore if I don’t recognize the number. They are also forbidden under a law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), passed in 1991. But the plaintiffs in this case-- a professional organization of political managers, strategists, and pollsters-- are asking the Court for it to be otherwise, to invalidate the TCPA’s robocall prohibition. If they prevail, it will be open season on your cellphone, courtesy of your Supreme Court.

As the Electronic Privacy Information Center warned in an amicus brief in this case, technology in robocalls has reached a staggering level: “There are now dozens of services offering mass texting software to marketers that are easily accessible online.” These companies offer ways to “spoof” (that is, portray the calling number as a local number), to make thousands of calls at once, and to drop voicemails into customer voicemails. With a 30-second online search, I found myself being offered the services of a company highlighting that its “calling capacity has been expanded to allow over 16 million calls daily for large political broadcasts.”

Does the First Amendment protect this intrusive technology, which is, in many ways, tailor-made for large-scale fraud?

The 1991 statute made it unlawful “to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice... to any telephone number assigned to a … cellular telephone service.” The penalties for violations can reach as high as $1,500 a call. (One witness at a congressional hearing in 2018 told the lawmakers that the Federal Communications Commission was pursuing him with a demand for $180 million in fines for an alleged spoofed robocall campaign.)

So far, so good. But in 2015, for reasons that aren’t clear, Congress quietly inserted a new exemption into a mammoth budget bill. Under the amendment, robocalls would be permitted if they were “made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States.”

There’s little legislative history to explain the change, but it was obviously a bonanza for private collection agencies. Note that it is not simply debts owed to the federal government; the exemption allows collection robocalls for any debt that the United States guarantees. When it considered the statute, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that as many as 41 million student loans are guaranteed by the federal government; it noted also that “various other categories of such debt are handled through other departments, which include the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Health and Human Services.”

The 2015 amendment immediately attracted the attention of industry groups, including the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), an industry group whose members run political campaigns or advise political groups seeking to influence public opinion. These members, the group’s brief says, “make calls to discuss candidates and issues, solicit candidate donations, conduct polls on political and policy issues, encourage voters to return their ballots, and organize ‘get out the vote’ efforts.”

Under FCC regulations, political calls can be made to residential numbers. But, the commission argues, cellphones present different privacy interests, and robocalls to them are much more intrusive. At the same time, the number of households that don’t have landlines is exploding, so the ability to call landlines is less valuable than it was.

After the 2015 amendment was enacted, the AAPC brought a suit in a federal court in North Carolina, asking the court to strike down the entire robocall ban. Its argument deployed one of the most powerful and elusive concepts in First Amendment law: the idea of a “content-based restriction on speech.”

“Content basis” as a legal category originated with a 1972 case called Police Department of the City of Chicago v. Mosley, a challenge to a Chicago ordinance that banned picketing within 150 feet of a school-- unless the picketing was part of a “labor dispute.” The Supreme Court unanimously struck down the ordinance; in an opinion for seven justices, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, “Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”

...If any differentiation at all among categories of speech violates the First Amendment—if, as Kennedy believed, there is no way to balance the importance of that rule with other interests—then the AAPC is right. The First Amendment says we all have to field phone calls—dozens or maybe hundreds a day, to the point that our cellphones become useless. If the Court refuses to extend the new, rigid doctrine to robocalls, it will call into question the repeated preachments from the high bench that government can’t ban speech just because people don’t like it.

However, if it does strike down the robocall rule—well, as the southern saying goes, it will pretty much be running without opposition for the office of SOB.

One of the sleaziest and most destructive (and powerful) lobbying firms in America-- Squire Patton Boggs-- sent out a pre-packaged, pro-call center "OpEd" to California media yesterday "reporting" negatively on AB-3007, the Assembly's latest attempt to prevent robo-call operations from invading everyone's privacy. The twisted and unsigned OpEd attempts to make the case that current ineffective regulations are good enough. No Californians think they are. The call centers are furious because the new bill would "add to the existing robocall consent requirement by authorizing a person called who gave prior consent pursuant to a prior agreement to revoke that consent 'at any time and in any reasonable manner, regardless of the context in which the consent was provided.' Additionally, the bill would repeal the authorization for the use of automatic dialing-announcing devices to make calls pursuant to an established business relationship or the recipient’s request. Moreover, this bill would require telephone corporations, upon request, and at no additional charge, to make technology that mitigates consumer impacts of automatic dialing-announcing devices available to customers and to offer to customers an option to have the telephone corporation prevent calls and text messages originating from a particular source. These requirements would be implemented by the Public Utilities Commission." And this is exactly what Californians have been demanding for years.

The call centers and their scumbag lobbyists are also upset because they can be sued if they continue to annoy people and "the bill would also authorize the court to impose up to treble damages for a willful or knowing violation of those requirements."

The Squire Patton Boggs author of the article threatens that "If AB 3007 gets signed into law, I have no doubt that another wave of robocalls litigation in California will be coming in this way."

The trade organization representing the call centers is USTelecom and they spend millions of dollars lobbying and bribing members of Congress. So far this cycle they gave over $1,000 each to 25 members of Congress from both of the corrupt political parties. These are all members who would sell their mothers:

• Shore PAC (Jersey crook Frank Pallone's PAC)- $7,500
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)- $7,000
• Frank Pallone (D-NJ)- $5,000
• Keystone Fund (Mike Doyle's PAC)- $5,000
• Hawaii PAC (Brian Schatz's PAC)- $5,000
• Robert Latta (R-OH)- $3,000
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)- $3,000
• CherPAC (Cheri Bustos' super-corrupt PAC)- $2,500
• Mike Doyle- (D-PA)- $2,500
• Billy Long (R-MO)- $2,500
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $2,500
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $2,500
• Mark Warner (D-VA)- $2,500
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)- $2,500
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- $2,500
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $2,000
• Marc Veasey (New Dem- TX)- $2,000
• New Millennium PAC (Robert Menendez's PAC)- $2,000
• Eliot Engel (New Dem-NY)- $2,000
• Jeff Duncan (R-SC)- $2,000
• Brian Schatz (D-HI)- $2,000
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- $1,500
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- $1,500
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)- $1,500
• Lou Correa (Blue Dog)- $1,500

They also wrote $1,000 checks for over 30 other members this year-- and the year is still young! Everytime you get a robo call, think of all the nice bribes the companies pay Frank Pallone, Kevin McCarthy and Cheri Bustos. How to stop robo calls and telephone scams? How about starting with 20 year prison terms for the owners and managers of the companies (because I'm mostly opposed to capital punishment)? Oh, yeah... and stop allowing bribery to members of Congress like Frank Pallone.

Can Congress Stop Robocalls?

Wouldn’t you like to see people who profit from robocallcalls die horrible deaths? 50 billion calls a year! 60% of all complaints to the FCC are about robocalls. And they’re not all done by firms in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Among the top 10 robocallers in the U.S. are Capital One, Fingerhut, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Santander. Theguilty parties regularly ignore the Do Not Call List. I live in California, where my state prohibits any robocall unless there is an existing relationship— and on average get around between a dozen and two-dozen robocalls a day. In May there were almost 5 billion robocalls made to phones across the country. The House Energy and Commerce Committee to the rescue? Maybe. Can instinctual corruptionists like Frank Pauline and Greg Walden do anything right? The problem in so pervasive that when I googled "robocalls," this ad to create your own cheap robocall program immediately popped up:

At least Congress can be bipartisan in a search for a solution. Washington Post reporter Tony Romm on Thursday: “House Democrats and Republicans unveiled the so-called Stopping Bad Robocalls Act at a moment when Washington is under heavy fire for failing to swiftly stem the tide of unwanted spam calls. The nearly 5 billion robocalls that targeted Americans’ mobile devices last month is roughly double the amount from the same period two years ago, according to YouMail, which offers a smartphone call-blocking app. Such disruptions have become more than a mere annoyance. They result in the theft of Americans’ personal information each year, and they threaten to overwhelm the country’s most critical communications lines, including at hospitals, which recently have reported a significant uptick in robocalls targeting administrators, doctors and patients.” The chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Frank Pauline (D-NJ) and the GOP Ranking Member, Grge Walden (R-OR) must have watched that John Oliver segment 3 months ago. They have a bill about to be voted on.

Their legislation would require the Federal Communications Commission to update the definition of what qualifies as a robocall, a move that could subject a wider array of companies to requirements they obtain consent before calling a consumer. The FCC also would have to ensure it outlaws any attempts to circumvent its rules using new or different robocall technology.

Margot Saunders, senior counsel at the National Consumer Law Center, pointed to a lawsuit that her organization has supported against Hilton Grand Vacations Company. Advocates charge that Hilton designed its system in such a way that it narrowly avoided the government’s definition of a robocall— by having a human worker essentially just click a button. As a result, they say Hilton never obtained the consent of the consumers it called. Hilton has denied it violated the law.

“We think this bill is a significant step toward stopping unwanted robocalls,” she said.

The bill also would start the clock on telecom giants such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, requiring them to implement new technology to authenticate if calls are real or spam a year and a half at most after such the proposal becomes law.

Those carriers for months have promised to implement one such standard, known as STIR/SHAKEN, that will alert consumers whenever they’re receiving a call from a dubious source or potentially block it outright, though the government so far hasn’t mandated it. In addition, lawmakers would task the FCC to figure out alternate options for rural carriers that can’t adopt the technology due to cost or technical limitations.

And the bill would make it easier for federal officials to investigate, then enforce, the country’s anti-robocall rules, removing some of the hurdles that currently limit the time that law enforcement may investigate or the manner by which they issue fines.

The House’s newly bipartisan proposal comes almost a month after the Senate adopted its own legislation, known as the TRACED Act, almost unanimously. The Senate’s anti-robocall measure differs from the House in some ways: It does not, for example, require the FCC to rethink what counts as a robocall or how consumers give and withdraw their consent to real businesses that auto-dial them for payment or prescription reminders.

At the same time, the FCC has forged ahead with some improvements of its own, including an order in June that allows wireless carriers to enable, by default, services that automatically block suspected spam calls on behalf of consumers. The agency, however, opted against requiring that AT&T, Verizon and other carriers offer those services without charge. House lawmakers have proposed prohibiting companies from imposing fees for such services.

Engadget.com explained the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill. “The [House] measure would require that carriers authenticate calls and offer opt-out blocking at no extra charge, with transparency to make sure you don't miss an important conversation. The FCC, meanwhile, would be granted extended statutes of limitations on robocall offenses. In return, the regulator would have to issue rules protecting against unwanted calls (including the option to withdraw consent), clamp down on abuse of robocall exemptions and submit a report on its implementation of the reassigned numbers database. The Senate bill doesn't require the new FCC rules. The Act is due for a panel vote next week. Whether or not it makes it to the President's desk as-is could be another story. While both sides of Congress are clearly in favor of stricter regulation of robocalls, they'll have to reconcile bill differences-- it's possible that the finished legislation will be watered down. Between this and the FCC's block-by-default initiative, though, you'll see at least some kind of improved enforcement against automated calls.”

If You Love Getting Robo Calls, Skip This Post

Years ago, I told Alan Grayson that the way to become the most popular political leader in America would be to figure out a way to ban robocalls, or-- at the very least-- how to make that ole 'do not call' list work again. But nothing ever came of it. He told me that "If you’re talking about how one gets rid of robocalls, then the answer is that you prosecute the people who send them. It would be child’s play for the FBI to track down and indict and convict the senders, even if they are in other countries. But this has a zero priority at the FBI, so it doesn’t get done. There are vast swaths of criminal conduct that are never prosecuted because the FBI and the police don’t devote the resources to put the cases together. The system is interested primarily in crimes against the system."

So I tried numerous other consumer-friendly members of Congress. No one has decided to take it on... until a couple of nights ago when John Oliver did. Spectacularly. Do yourself a favor and watch every minute of it-- even one quick lame joke someone inserted for no discernible reason.

How About The Death Penalty For People Who Call People On The Do Not Call List?

I've been telling politicians for years that whoever solves the flood of invasive telemarketing calls we all get from people trying to sell us stuff, despite the completely ineffectual and widely ignored "Do Not Call Registry," would become a hero-- could even run for president. Here in California, we just learned, is that we've been receiving more calls than ever. I can attest to that personally. No matter how much I curse or just hang up, the calls ae unending-- and daily. Californians received nearly 3 billion robocalls in 2017; The FCC and FTC aren't doing don't anything to stop calls made to cell phones illegally and without consent.

According to the YouMail Robocall Index, which tracks the volume and extent of robocalls in the United States, more than 2,974,676,000 robocalls were made to California area codes in 2017.

The industry data comes ahead of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) March 23 policy forum, Fighting the Scourge of Illegal Robocalls. Both agencies have taken a strong stance against scam and spoofed number robocalls but have been softer on legitimate businesses making illegal calls to cell phones and without consent. In February of this year, Capital One was the top generator of robocalls to California phone numbers while Comcast and Wells Fargo appeared in the top 5 in a number of area codes.

“This data illustrates a rapid expansion of the use of robocall technology and the toll these abusive calls take on California consumers,” said Margot Saunders, senior counsel at the National Consumer Law Center.

Earlier this year, the FTC’s “Biennial Report to Congress” revealed a sizeable uptick in consumer complaints about robocalls in 2017, with 4.5 million complaints filed in 2017 compared to 3.4 million in 2016. More than 824,000 Californians complained to the FTC about robocalls and other violations of the “Do Not Call Registry” in 2017.

“Critics seeking to gut the TCPA’s protections against robocalls claim the law leads to frivolous lawsuits,” said Saunders. “On the contrary, the overwhelming number of robocall violations go unchecked, with even the most conservative estimates showing a 1000-to-1 ratio of complaints to government agencies as compared to lawsuits filed. And that does not even account for the tens of millions of illegal robocalls to consumers who do not file complaints or lawsuits.”

Even as robocall complaints increase and TCPA lawsuits decline (there was a 10% reduction in 2017 from the previous year), banks and other companies, backed by industry lobbyists, are continuing to petition the FCC for exemptions to this key consumer privacy law.

“Rather than petition the FCC for exemptions that weaken robocall protections, companies should focus on following the rules,” said Saunders. “We hope that this FCC will protect consumers against these illegal calls. Maintaining a strong TCPA will benefit consumers and level the playing field for law-abiding businesses.”

How about this, though-- a quarter of a million people in the U.S. are employed by telemarketing firms-- and that doesn't even count the robocalls! That's a lot of daily calls. And a lot of bullets if they're all to be shot.

GOP's Animal Farm War Against Regulations Is Toxic

First, here's how their war on regulations isn't toxic, just annoying. Have you ever been on the phone-- or in the middle of something important-- when you've been interrupted by a robocall? I signed up for that national opt out thing the GOP was so against and for a few years the number of annoying calls went way down. Now they're up again-- from robocalls. Republicans don't like the idea of telling businesses what they can or can't do. You need to dump toxic wastes into public drinking water to make a better profit-- well, of course you can. That's part of the American way-- or at least the Ayn Rand-Paul Ryan American way. As for the annoying robocalls, it looks like the FCC is getting enough pressure from irate voters to fix the loophole Republicans put in the rule.

The rule changes adopted at Wednesday's open meeting would make it more difficult for telemarketers to disturb consumers, by requiring consent before they can place automated robocalls to a home phone line. A previous exemption to the rule for established business relationships was also eliminated.

The rules also require telemarketers to provide consumers with an automated opt-out mechanism so they can stop receiving the calls, and limit the total number of dropped or "dead air" calls a firm can make within each calling campaign.

"Too many telemarketers, aided by autodialers and prerecorded messages, have continued to call consumers who don’t want to hear from them," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. 

"Consumers by the thousands have complained to us, letting us know that they remain unhappy with having their privacy invaded and their time wasted by these unwanted calls."

Toxic, however, is a story I heard about on the radio yesterday-- a crime severely in need of some regulations and enforcement. It's the story of fake Avastin on the U.S. market. The GOP's Law-of-the-Jungle/only-the-strong-survive "free market" capitalism postulates that a product that kills people will turn off consumers and they'll stop purchasing it and the culprit will go out of business and the whole world will be a happier, gayer place. Republicans are, clearly, insane and dangerous to normal people.

The maker of the widely used Avastin cancer drug said Tuesday that it is warning doctors, hospitals and patient groups that a counterfeit version of the medicine has been found in the U.S.

Tests of counterfeit vials of Avastin showed that they didn't contain the active ingredient in Roche Holding AG's intravenous drug, according to the Swiss company's Genentech unit.

It isn't clear how much of the counterfeit product was distributed in the U.S. or whether it has caused any harm. A Genentech spokeswoman said the company doesn't know if any patients were given the fake drug.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating, and has sent letters to 19 medical practices in the U.S. that the agency says buy unapproved cancer medicines and might have bought the counterfeit Avastin.

An FDA spokeswoman said it hasn't received any reports of patient side effects that appear to be linked to the counterfeit product.

Most Americans don't question the integrity of the drugs they rely on. They view drug counterfeiting, if they are aware of it at all, as a problem for developing countries. But the latest incident, which follows the appearance of other fake drugs in the U.S.-- including counterfeits of the weight-loss treatment Alli and the influenza treatment Tamiflu-- suggests it is a growing risk, especially as more medicines and drug ingredients sold in the U.S. are made overseas.

In addition to the specter of fake medicines, U.S. drug makers are confronting their own shortcomings. Companies including Johnson & Johnson have had to shut down manufacturing plants due to quality problems. Earlier this month, Pfizer Inc. said it recalled about a million packs of birth-control pills because improper packaging could raise the risk of unplanned pregnancies.

...Experts say counterfeits are a relatively small but still serious problem for the nation's drug supply. In the U.S., most prescription medicines are distributed by authorized suppliers, who buy them from their manufacturers and assure their integrity. Pharmacies, too, put pressure on the distributors to ensure quality.

Still counterfeits can enter the drug supply through unauthorized distributors and Internet pharmacies that try to turn a quick profit selling the inauthentic products. Doctors and patients might not know they are using a counterfeit if it doesn't cause harm but simply fails to work.

This is the crackpot the entire GOP is based on:

Follow-ups: on Buddy Roemer's campaign for "a clean election," and cell-phone robocalls

by Ken

Last night I raised the question: "Is Buddy Roemer any worse a candidate than "Brokeback Rick" Perry? (Probably not, but is he any BETTER?)" This was in response to Eli Saslow's Washington Post Style-section piece "Buddy Roemer among those struggling for a slot in GOP presidential race," about the really marginal GOP presidential candidates, including the former one-term governor of Louisiana, who last held public office in 1991, when he was defeated for reelection running as a Republican. (He had been elected as a Democrat.)

Now I don't really enjoy kicking a guy when he's down, unless he asked for it. But in Buddy's case, well, it all seemed so pathetic.

He had been out of politics for almost 20 years, but he still felt confident that his opinions would resonate. Repeal health-care reform. Raise the eligibility age for Social Security. Seal the border and enforce immigration laws.

Worst of all, "he thought an audience would be waiting for him," and it apparently came as news to him "that becoming president is not always about experience and ideas. It’s also about money, fame and momentum.”

As I wrote Howie back when he passed along the above tweets: "as if we needed any more proof of how pathetic his 'campaign' is?" I mean, really now, a guy who's paying attention to what I write here?

I'd be surprised if there's any DWT reader who wouldn't love to see elections where the determining factors weren't money, fame, and momentum. And who wouldn't like to see what Buddy calls "a clean election." (The Post article points out that "had never accepted political donations of more than $100." However, that's running in no larger election venue than the state of Louisiana, and it was also 20 years ago. My guess is that these days even statewide elections in Louisiana -- even Governor Booby's recent cakewalk reelection -- are more expensive to buy than that.) But really, does the degree of cluelessness on display in the Post story offer any hope for improvement in our electoral system?

Let's take Buddy at his word:

I want nothing more than to prove that a candidate can run a clean campaign. Maybe I'm naive, but I believe in my message.

If he really still believes his message, doesn't that go beyond "naive" to "totally out of touch"? Because hasn't he in fact proved that he can't run "a clean campaign" and get enough attention to raise himself above the grade of electoral laughingstock?

You'd think it would at least be a source of some comfort to him that his current party (as of the last time I checked, anyway) isn't lacking for candidates committed to repealing health-care reform, raising the eligibility age for Social Security, and sealing the border and enforcing immigration laws.


AND SPEAKING OF THOSE CELL-PHONE ROBOCALLS
JUST AROUND THE CORNER . . .

On Thursday I wrote about the business community's aggressive drive to wipe out the existing legal ban to robocalls to cell phones without the recipient's express approval. Really, my interest wasn't so much the particular issue as the way it demonstrates the 21st-century tactics of the hard-driving Hard Right, as it seeks to mop up the few areas of the economic and social order not currently under its control. In particular, I was set off by the pathetic stoogery of the woeful ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Brooklyn's Ed Towns, who let then-ranking member Darrell "Not Presently Under Idictment fer Nuttin'" Issa walk all over him in his brief stint as the committee chairman, and is now the only Democratic congressman signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill to strip cell-phone users of this modest protection.

What I found hilarious, or at least would if it were the least bit funny, was the congressman's statement in which he simply parroted the propaganda presumably furnished by his friendly telecom lobbyists:

During the hearing, I thought it was especially interesting to hear how this 20-year old law prevents consumers from getting useful information about their accounts using technology that did not exist when the law was originally passed. Do we really want to stop FedEx or UPS using modern technology to deliver your holiday gifts on time? Of course not, but that is what we heard at the hearing is one consequence of this 20-year old law. Other consequences we heard were about how the law limits notifications about threats such as fraud alerts, data breaches, and product recalls.

My larger concern was this example of why it has been so important to the lease-holders on the American Right for decades now to accomplish the moronification of the American electorate. In the process I had to provide some background on the robocall issue, and under deadline pressure I simply blanked. The place I should have directed you is our own Noah's recent post "Congress Launches New Attack On The Quality Of Life."

#

Flood Of Endorsements For Obama As McCain Steps Up Ugly, Vicious Robo-Calls

Even newspapers that endorsed George Bush are swinging over to Obama! This morning the Atlanta Journal-Constitution joined almost every big city newspaper in the country-- except, of course, Murdoch's Völkischer Beobachter New York Post-- in endorsing Obama. Mostly they talk about what a great president Obama will make but, like most editorials, they delve into how McCain disqualified himself:

In fact, the competence of McCain’s campaign staff is itself cause to question the candidate’s executive abilities. To some degree, the rigors of creating and running a campaign organization can be a test of the skills needed to create and run an administration. And even many Republicans acknowledge that the McCain campaign has been poorly organized and erratic, lurching from one crisis to another without the sense of a strong hand at the tiller.

Columnist William Kristol, a longtime McCain backer, calls the McCain campaign “close to being out–and–out dysfunctional,” concluding that “its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.”

And of course, the most unfortunate evidence of that “strategic incoherence and operational incompetence” was McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a person utterly unprepared for the high post in question.

Even beyond injecting an ugly strain of fascism into mainstream politics via the cynical and dangerous-- many say "unpatriotic"-- Palin selection, McCain's campaign went completely off the rails with his latest deluge of negative robo-calls, annoying millions of Americans in their homes with his swinish distortions and widely rejected erratic claims about Obama's "connection" to the Republican's greatest bugaboo: Terrorism. For people being bothered by these calls, McCain is the terrorist. And it isn't only Democrats who are noticing. Harry Reid is shocked that McCain has stooped to such "scummy" tactics and even Republican rubber stamp-- and close McCain ally-- says McCain's robo-calls "have no place in Maine politics." Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle told reporters that McCain's tactics are not just outrageous and false, but also a distraction from issues that people really care about like the economy. "We are seeing now in Wisconsin the sort of dying gasps of the McCain campaign. It has really run out of steam on the issues that matter to people. It's pretty obvious now that he doesn't have any ideas about the economy. He knows he's out of ideas and out of time."

Newspapers and television stations across the country have registered disgust with McCain's newest tactics. Brain Mooney hit the nail on the head in yesterday's Boston Globe: "With 17 days until the election, John McCain and his Republican allies are stepping up their character assaults, which paint Barack Obama in television ads, mail, and now, automated phone calls, as a shifty coddler of terrorists. McCain's candidacy has stalled as the nation's economic problems have deepened, and his campaign has increasingly focused on raising questions about Obama's character and background."

Republicans Rain Negative Automated Calls on Voters in Swing States was the NY Times headline.

Voters in at least 10 swing states are receiving hundreds of thousands of automated telephone calls-- uniformly negative and sometimes misleading-- that the Republican Party and the McCain campaign are financing this week as they struggle to keep more states from drifting into the Democratic column. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, has denounced such phone calls in the past: In the 2000 primaries, Mr. McCain was a target of misleading calls that included innuendo about his family, and he blamed them in part for his loss to George W. Bush. This January, too, in South Carolina, Mr. McCain described the calls against him as "scurrilous stuff," and his campaign set up a "truth squad" to debunk them.

This helps explain the huge disparity between editorial endorsements between the two campaigns-- and the overwhelming rejection of McCain, even by Republican papers.

The Obama-Biden ticket maintains its strong lead in the race for newspaper endorsements, picking up 17 more papers in the past day, including the giant Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune on Friday afternoon, and the Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Salt Lake Tribune, Kansas City Star, Southwest News-Herald (Ill.) and Chicago Sun-Times tonight.

This brings his lead over McCain-Palin by this measure to well over 3-1, at 58-16, including most of the major papers that have decided so far. In contrast, John Kerry barely edged George W. Bush in endorsements in 2004, by about 220 to 205.

McCain was endorsed by the Mountain Valley News in Cedaredge, Colorado (circulation 2,000). The circulation of all his endorsements-- primarily because of Murdoch's Post-- is a million and a half. Obama's endorsements will reach over 7 million readers.


UPDATE: McCAIN GETS AN ENDORSEMENT

The nation's most right-wing big city paper, after Murdoch's and "Rev." Moon's vanity projects, is the Dallas Morning News and, as expected, they came out for Grampy McSame... sort of: "Mr. McCain offers the continuity, stability and sense of authority people want, as well as a decisive break from the Bush years."

If You Run Into McCain, Be Sure Not To Mention...

Lately McCain doesn't want to talk about the man he said he admires as much as anyone in the world, Colin Powell, who most grassroots Democrats see as a dishonorable and disingenuous cog in the Bush Regime machine, because Sunday Powell, as opportunistically as ever, is supposedly endorsing Obama on Meet the Press. Powell isn't the only longtime McCain crony McCain would rather not answer any questions about. Republican crook Harry Sargeant III has donated a great deal of money to McCain and other GOP elected officials. Mentioning his name on the Double Talk Express will get you left on the side of the road.

Sargeant is the worst kind of war profiteer crawling on the face of the earth, one of dozens among the inner circle of McCain backers. They contribute the McCain's campaign because they want the war to continue and because they want more wars, which make them richer and richer and ever more powerful. He wound up in a position to cheat taxpayers by serving faithfully as finance chairman of the criminal organization known as the Florida Republican Party. His oil trading company has stolen millions from the Pentagon and the taxpayers and he's given a hefty share of the loot to McCain and other GOP crooked pols. Among the Republicans who have partaken in his bribes-- between $100,000 and $250,000 in what many see as protection money-- are Oil Industry shills like John Cornyn (R-TX), Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, McCain (above the legal limit), and the RNC (over $75,000). None will return any of the tainted money. His coziness with high ranking Republicans allowed him to win outrageous contracts he would never have had a chance to get without bribery of GOP politicians.

He has managed to tuck away at least $200,000 bilked from American taxpayers. He has raised over half a million dollars for McCain this year and hosted a fat cat fundraiser for McCain in his Delray Beach mansion, where McCain was able to hobnob and collect checks from elements of organized crime. Sargeant has also been funneling illegal Arab money into McCain's campaign and McCain, reluctantly, is agreeing to return these contributions.

And, of course, it isn't just mentioning Republican stalwarts Powell or Sargeant that will get your head bitten off around McCain. Just start a conversation about his massive robocall slime machine. McCain used to complain about them-- when Bush unleashed them on him in 2000-- and he called what they do "hate calls." Now this integral part of the McCain campaign is bothering people in the battleground states with automated phones calls calling Barack Obama an associate of terrorists. Is it any wonder that every respectable journalist in the country-- unless you consider David Broder somehow respectable-- has noted that McCain is running the worst sewer campaign in history? [Note: One of Congress' most demented and extremist members, Minnesota lunatic fringe Republican Michele Bachmann loves the gutter politics of course. It's what she is.]

Even Maine rubber stamp Susan Collins is denouncing McCain's sleazy robocalls, a tactic that New Hampshire Republicans are calling a "waste of money," while carefully skirting the issue of McCain's fitness to lead the country. Others are just laughing that McCain is using the exact same crooked firm to slander Obama that Bush used to slander him in 2000! McCain sure has sunk to new depths. What wouldn't he do to win?