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Big Telecom Is Using Robocalls To Fight a Net Neutrality Bill in California (vice.com)
A group with financial ties to AT&T is sending automated messages claiming the law would raise cell phone bills. From a report: Big Telecom is once again trying to disrupt a net neutrality bill in California, this time by robocalling seniors to spread misinformation about the bill. "Your Assembly member will be voting on a proposal by San Francisco politicians that could increase your cellphone bill by $30 a month and slow down your data," says a voice on an automated call paid for by legal reform group the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC). "We can't afford higher cell phone bills. We can't afford slower data. We can't afford Senate Bill 822 (more popularly known as SB822)."
The call urges constituents to contact their state representative and ask them to vote no on the bill, which passed a senate committee last week and will be heard in the Assembly this week. It even provides an option to automatically connect to the recipients' Assembly member. At the top of the call, it cites the non-profit Congress of California Seniors, leading many -- including state senator Scott Wiener, the net neutrality bill's author -- to believe the calls are targeting senior citizens specifically. "The industry has engaged in a massive misinformation campaign around this bill for months," Wiener told me over the phone.
But the claim that cell phone bills will go up is not based on anything in the actual bill, which would simply restore the federal rules that telecom companies operated under from 2015 until the 2017 repeal, which only went into effect a few months ago.
The call urges constituents to contact their state representative and ask them to vote no on the bill, which passed a senate committee last week and will be heard in the Assembly this week. It even provides an option to automatically connect to the recipients' Assembly member. At the top of the call, it cites the non-profit Congress of California Seniors, leading many -- including state senator Scott Wiener, the net neutrality bill's author -- to believe the calls are targeting senior citizens specifically. "The industry has engaged in a massive misinformation campaign around this bill for months," Wiener told me over the phone.
But the claim that cell phone bills will go up is not based on anything in the actual bill, which would simply restore the federal rules that telecom companies operated under from 2015 until the 2017 repeal, which only went into effect a few months ago.
wanted to put an end to 'Net metering'. That's a fancy way of saying they pay you for the electricity your solar generates. Well, that's a pretty popular thing in my neck of the woods. So it didn't seem possible for them to do it. They needed a law, you see.
So they ran ads. The ads had a bunch of old folks sitting around a table talking about something scary. They didn't say what, just that it was scary as hell. The ad ended with an impassioned reminder to vote yes (or no, I can't remember) on proposition such and such. At no point in time did they discuss what the proposition was. It passed in a landslide.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still in favor of democracy. But something has to be done to counterbalance old folks with dementia being manipulated into voting for things they don't actually want because they can't understand. I'm in favor of mandatory voting. Force everyone to the polls with a few exceptions (e.g. if you're declared mentally unfit, and no, being convicted of a crime or even in jail shouldn't keep you from voting, that's the oldest voter suppression trick in the book).
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Forget Russian boogiemen, this is the REAL disinformation campaign threatening our democracy, with hundreds of times the manpower and money put behind it. Forget cloak and dagger, spies, and autocrats on the other side of the world trying to undermine their rivals. Pure unbridled greed combined with free-speech protections covering wide-scale public manipulation campaigns are the REAL threat.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
ALL of the c-levels of any company that pulls this shit, ought to be sent to maximum-security prison for a minimum of one year. And 80% of of the company's profits, for the next five years, should be confiscated and used to feed and shelter the homeless. Shareholder dividends, and the price at which they can sell their stocks in the company, should be cut in half for five years. These measures would immediately put an end to this kind of behaviour.
If I was ever in the presence of any of the despicable psychopathic bastards who approved this criminal propaganda campaign, I would be hard pressed not to take keys in hand and sucker punch him at least once. If I came across one of them on fire, I'd be tempted to piss on him - but not so much that it might extinguish the flames.
Yeah, none of the above is ever going to happen. But fantasizing about it takes some of the edge off the anger I'm feeling right now ...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Actually, it's that net neutrality tends to increase regulation and Government intrusion driving up costs to offer new services, and thus retarding growth in the space.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The efforts to fight Net Neutrality have really heated up here in California. There must be some huge money lining up to fight this thing, because there are non-stop anti-NN commercials showing up all over televised sports, on Hulu, and on every cable station and web video. These aren't cheap little local spots, but very slickly-made ads with dire music about how these rules will mean your bills will go way, way up, and your internet will slow down (!) and even how Net Neutrality is "bad for small business" and will probably give you flesh-eating disease. The ads are all paid for by organizations with anodyne-sounding names like, "California Families for Freedom and Morality", and it all smells to high heaven.
There happens to also be a very similar campaign being waged by PG&E here, who has been funding a shit-ton of commercials supposedly from an organization called, "The BRITE Coalition" (the acronym stands for Building Resilient Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s Economy). Every commercial tells you how wildfires are bad, m'kay? and if you don't want more wildfires, the solution is to a) give PG&E a hefty rate hike, and b) remove any liability PG&E has when their faulty equipment starts a wildfire. Again, the money being spent on this campaign is just huge. You can't watch anything without seeing one of their commercials about how these giveaways to PG&E will mean that you support those brave first responders, who gosh, are just trying to keep your kitty-cat safe from being burned the fuck alive. It's really something.
Further, I get the impression that the same ad agency is doing to spot buying for both of the above campaigns because they almost always run one after the other, and in some cases, fill every commercial slot in a 1-hour episode of Castle Rock.
So, in summary, fuck these guys. If your name is so toxic that you can't even use it on your own goddamn advocacy commercials, maybe you have more important issues to deal with as a company, you know?
You are welcome on my lawn.
source: I know a few convicted felons. You typically need references plus a good chunk of money for court fees (something hard to do when you've got a conviction on your record). That's why it's called voter suppression. You never make it completely impossible to vote. If you did that then the jig is up. You just make it really, really hard.
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I believe that once I can shoot one and it stays dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.