Feb. 12, 2003 - 22:39 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Rimshot World

The present days seem to be a blend of crazy ideas and weird procedures. I see that Mr. Bush is doing something sensible. Something to do with eliminating tariffs on 65 percent of consumer and industrial imports in this hemisphere. It has to do with the push toward a 34 nation Free Trade Agreement Of The Americas he sought two years ago. Gee, he must have been learning to read and started on Adam Smith's "Wealth Of Nations." From what little I have read tariffs greatly interfere with trade and welfare of countries on both sides of that wall.

One thing making waves countrywide is something that recently came into being here in Colorado. The "No Call" law. It prevents telemarketers from intruding via our telephones. In most any home the phone is always answered, even in the middle of the night. The call might be something very important, an emergency thing or the need for the person answering the phone to render aid to a friend or relative. So for many years telemarketers have been interrupting dinners pretending any number of things just to make an eventual pitch. Regardless when the call came it wasted the time of the captive holding the phone to his ear. Our law as far as I am concerned does not go quite far enough because it allows for some non-profits to call people, some politicos too.

The Colorado Law is being challenged by people who want to once again make their living corraling householders and tieing them to the phone in an effort to get our money. Its in the courts now. There is much opposition against groups in other states who are trying to get that same kind of restriction on telemarketers where they live.

I see in the paper today that Washington State regulations to protect the privacy of telephone customer account information, some of the toughest in the country, have been suspended by a federal judge. This regulation required phone companies to obtain customer approval before selling calling records or using them to market anything but telecommunication services. So for now the phone companies can sell any information about customers they wish, even though the case may eventually be thrown out of court. The information, once given out can't be recalled.

Again we innocents are to be a source of wealth to corporations who want to sell private information about us. We pay our phone bills and are then also a source of income to the big guy above and beyond their expecting us to pay our bills. There is too much of this kind of thing going on in this country. For twenty five bucks it is possible to buy a CD with a million or so addys to be used as a means to send us spam. At least we don't have to get up from the keyboard to grab the bird twittering on the land line. Yet, sometimes it takes an hour or more just deleting spam while trying to get to legitimate mail. The case was brought before the court by Verizon Communications which has about 1 million customers in the state of Washington. They maintain that Washington's Utilities and Transportation Commission overstepped its authority and infringed on the companys ability to speak to and and serve customers. Serve, my foot ! So the judge put the privacy rules on hold. Qwest also is on the sidelines.

The attempt by the big boys is to sell our peace and privacy to who ever has the gelt to buy it. Our privacy and peace is being attacked in so many, many ways now, even by our government who is pushing paranoia to the max to enable it to curb and cut off our civil rights. I guess the best thing now is to refuse to have a phone of any kind, what ever is bought would be by cash only and try to avoid in any way we can being on some damn sucker list or another. That might take care of some of the invasion.

We seem to be hemmed in by more and more regulation nowadays with very little good reason for doing so. I love my country, but when the possibility that I could be treated like a terrorist and my civil rights be non-existent, I wonder - - - is this the same country where I was born ? ? ? ?

Seems to me that we all should know that terror can and will happen here, one way or another. Israel as an example, regardless of how hard they try, suicide bombers manage to get through. I do not see how holding the cudgel of the loss of civil rights helps a damn thing here other than place us firmly under the thumb of the very people who are supposed to be serving us but intend to decide exactly how we are going to live.

We are being harassed by the push for vouchers for various things. Nothing is really being done to correct the methods of public schools -- hell no, issue vouchers so that tax money can be siphoned away. Now our dear government is still trying and suceeding in pushing faith based anything in an effort to see that our tax dollars are used the way our goverment wants them to be spent.

At times I feel like a basketball about to spiral and go down for a score against me in this Rimshot World . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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