No-Call law won’t stop annoying pests
Commentary by PAT MURPHY
The hyperbole coming out of Idaho Attorney General Al Lance’s office
may be more impressive than the promised results.
"A new day is dawning for privacy rights in Idaho," Lance
declares glowingly on his official Internet web site. The cause for his jubilation is the
"Idaho No Call List," a roster of Idahoans who’ll shell out $10 each for
three years of protection against unwanted telephone solicitations, beginning on Tuesday,
Jan. 2, 2001.
No doubt, squeaky clean legitimate businesses will buy copies of the list
and scrupulously avoid calling anyone who’s registered, if not because of the
relatively modest first infraction fine of $500 (up to $5,000 for a third offense), but to
avoid the embarrassment of prosecution as a phone pest.
But loopholes in the new law make it almost certain solicitors will still
be harassing homeowners at dinnertime. Businesses with which consumers already have a
relationship (banks, credit card companies, retail stores) are allowed to continue
soliciting by phone, as are charities.
And therein lies the real problem that the new law doesn’t solve.
The most persistent and aggravating nighttime phone solicitors are from
"charities" of sorts with professional fund-raisers who attach themselves to
non-profits to rack in huge profits.
As the attorney general’s consumer protection unit can attest, it is
flooded with complaints about solicitors claiming to represent law enforcement groups that
are collecting funds for widows and children.
When I checked into one of those fund-raisers, I discovered the solicitors
work out of West Virginia and skim 70 percent of every dollar, with 30 cents going to an
Idaho police officers group.
The new No-Call law won’t even touch these annoying pests.
And any illegal solicitors involved in scams aren’t about to give
consumers their location so Lance’s investigators can charge them.
Meanwhile, my technique for dealing with these pests always works: just
hang up the phone when they begin their oily, friendly spiel.
#
This thought occurs while watching the hip grinding, leaping, squatting,
hip-hopping singers performing in a blaze of gyrating floodlights and exploding fireworks
and whose indecipherable, ear-splitting songs are big sellers among folks who enjoy being
crushed at concerts.
How did Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong,
Doris Day, Julie London and dozens of others who sold hundreds of millions of records make
it on just their voices?
#
Another thought: if the federal government collects student loans from men
and women who’ve gone from college into successful careers as physicians, stock
brokers and the like, why doesn’t Uncle Sam attempt to recover some of the millions
of dollars spent on training each military aviator who jumps ship after a few years and
becomes a well-paid commercial airline pilot?
#
Major League Baseball’s wealthy team owners are wailing again they
may need congressional legislation to spare them from crushing financial losses.
Glory be, maybe the solution lies not in a government relief but in fat
cat owners refusing to pay some individual fat cat baseball players as much as $20 million
a year -- more than most CEO’s of major corporations earn for a whale of lot more
responsibility.
