My Politics
I don’t make much of a secret about my political leanings. I keep telling myself that I need to tone it down, but everything going on in the political arena makes it increasingly difficult to do so. Last night I was watching a new series Kim and I are following called Loudermilk and the aggressively outspoken protagonist, who is a [published music critic and currently an addicted drug and alcohol counselor, tries to explain away a rude encounter by saying that he’s under a lot of societal pressure from stuff like the whole Trump thing. It was just a quick and sideways comment that one could easily miss, but jumped out at me because it is how I feel at times. I feel like I should blame whatever moments of being in a bad mood or behaving badly on the whole political environment.
Last week I went through the whole hassle of switching mobile phone carriers from Spectrum to T-Mobile. The Spectrum service has been fine for me (though Kim has had problems with her international data reception), but I was frustrated with their system. They had my address as my old Warren Road house in Ithaca, since that was where my Spectrum Internet Cable service began, and they were literally unable to change my address to my current California address. That struck me as pretty lame. After a conversation with my oh-so-frugal friend Mike about his T-Mobile service and bill, I decided to go to the local T-Mobile store and offer myself any \my business up to the cellular carrier gods for a transition. It was accomplished with a minimum of aggravation and I was able to switch over three phones, an iPad and an Apple Watch to the T-Mobile service, while disconnecting another old iPad of Kim’s which she no longer uses and for which I was paying a monthly fee. This did have to culminate with a call to Spectrum, which lasted about 45 minutes, to properly cancel out all my existing lines and services, but otherwise it seems to have gone well. I do have a billing issue remaining since the system-generated bill I have received for my first month of T-Mobile service has two inflated line items and one unrecognized item, which total $57.50, but I will note that even with that, my bill will be $50 less than it was with Spectrum. I have an email to the service rep to solve this billing problem and if I don’t hear back from him I will go back into the T-Mobile store to seek him out. Perhaps the best thing about switching to T-Mobile is that I am automatically enrolled in the Spam-Blocker system called Scam Shield. So for it seems to be doing a good job of detecting and eliminating many scam calls.
I have been getting scam calls from several different sources. The first is what I would call unwanted aggressive fundraising for police and firefighter charities, caused by a regrettable donation of $50 some four years ago. The second is book “publishing” and promoting services, caused by some long-since failed attempts to get my self-published books promoted. The third is a new flurry of diabetic control products which has come out of nowhere since neither of us is diabetic. And last, but increasingly not least, are fundraising calls for political donations. It is this last category that has become the most troubling.
I should add that these calls are just part of the political fundraising onslaught coming at me. I also get multiple texts and emails. I know I am not alone in this regard, especially in a presidential election year like 2024, but they have all gotten more aggressive, more targeted and more annoying. I am neither a registered Democrat nor Republican, but that seems to make no never mind to these people. I get almost as many Trump-supporting emails as I do ones from aspiring Democrats looking to tap me for support. Generally I reply to all Democratic fundraising texts with the STOP command and they cease for a few days before starting up again on whatever prompt or pretext they need to stay compliant with FCC regulations (presumably). For the Trump texts (which I get from both Donald, his sons and various PACs and RNC incarnations, I use the more aggressive REPORT JUNK option to both stop the madness and report the bastards to whomever Apple or Spectrum/T-Mobile reports these things to. Recently I have been getting the “Sorry, this service mot available” reply when I use that tactic, so maybe T-Mobile is less willing to be in the reporting game since they think Spam Shield should do that trick for me.
The people at ActBlue seem to have their shit together enough to have pegged me as a sucker for a direct call from an incumbent or aspiring politician. I’m not talking about a volunteer or campaign manager, but rather the candidate themselves. Since I am not Harlan Crow or George Soros, it is surprising to me that holders and candidates for higher public office has the time and inclination to call what I would characterize as small donors like me directly. I’m sure that the ActBlue system has figured out that I do, indeed, give money to liberal candidates, but they must also have figured out that I am FAR more likely to give to a candidate with a personal entreaty rather than a simple email or text solicitation, which I generally have to ignore for sheer volume reasons. I could just be a scattergun approach to fundraising since its not as though the personal calls stop the emails and texts from coming, but I sense that they cannot possibly afford the time and effort to call unlikely donors in such a way. My son-in-law John is a mortgage broker who recently started with a new support program that makes him spend two hours each morning auto-generating calls to prospects and targets. He tells me the system is amazingly efficient at leaving pre-recorded messages for voicemail respondents and yet putting him through personally to people who answer live. The system seems to improve his efficiency by auto-generating the queue of calls that have the highest potential and priority for him and he feels it has greatly improves his hit ratio. I’m sure the same systems are at work with political fundraising and that I am at the other end of the line of just such a robocalling approach.
Tomorrow I am moving into a new category. I will be meeting a local congressman for a cup of coffee in Carlsbad. You see, where I live, the congressman is the deep-red Darrel Issa, who moved down here to run in the old Duncan Hunter seat after Hunter was caught with his hand in the till and tried to pin it on his wife. Issa represents the 48th inland district of California. He was chased out of Orange County by Katie Porter two election cycles ago. The guy I am meeting with is Congressman Mike Levin of the 49th District, which is the next closest district (the coast is always more blue than the Central Valley areas of the state, and I live right in the middle). I know he is meeting with me for fundraising purposes, but I took the requested meeting anyway since so much of my time and life seems absorbed by politics that I feel I should take the opportunity to meet with one of the people in the room where it happens. But then again, Mike, as member of the House of Representatives is in the room where it is decidedly NOT happening under the Republican/MAGA leadership of his buddy, Speaker Mike Johnson. It’s worth a drive to Carlsbad to me just to have something to talk about that makes me seem closer to the action, even though I am about as close to it as anyone who spends half his day watching MSNBC. But that is my policy of the moment and if having coffee with a congressman makes me less likely to complain about Trump just a little, that will be a worthwhile outcome.