Primary season

Push-pollers Common Sense Issues are making 100,000 calls a night to New Hampshire voters, and the Manchester Herald-Leader is advocating a common-sense solution: hang up on 'em.

While I'm willing to give most political calls a pass, push-polling's one of those practices that slogs through the same slime telemarketing wallows in daily.

A bit of good government

Good news from Congress: the Senate passed a bill that would make the Do Not Call list permanent. Though it's not exactly the same as the bill the House has already passed, it looks like those differences are minor enough that a permanent Do Not Call list will be in place before the start of 2008.

Otherwise, Oct. 1, 2008, is gonna be Frantically Re-Register for the Federal DNC Day, rather than my birthday.

The full bill is here.

Beginning at the beginning

Two years ago, I made this post over on LJ after an incessant telemarketer was dialing my home number with an automatic fax machine dozens of times a day, sometimes dozens of times an hour.

After yanking the phone out of our bedroom wall at 2 a.m. one night because of their autofaxer, I figured out who these idiots were, collected all the info I could find on them and stuck it out there, figuring I wasn't the only one getting hammered by their fax dialer.

Man, was I right.

A bunch of people commented, the post got listed on some messageboards and it continues to get hits. Unfortunately, Global Premier Services isn't the only bunch of jerks out there who ignore the federal Do Not Call list, and so was born the idea for this anti-telemarketing blog.

If you have horror stories, tips or anything you want to pass along, shoot me an email at telemarketthis [at] gmail [dot] com. Otherwise, this'll be updated with news and anti-telemarketing resources as often as possible.