Stop Harassing Phone Calls

As a liberal, I believe you own your phone number, just like you own the front door to your home. Maybe you're renting an apartment, just like you're renting the phone number--but it's still yours, while you live there. This is why I think the phone company needs to provide better service to customers in the area of controlling harassing phone calls.

No, I don't have enemies calling me, although some of you may have experienced that form of harassment before, only to discover there is little or nothing you can do about it besides complain to your phone company, which will promptly tell you to contact your local police, who have better things to do with their time.

Worse is when the harassment targets your cell phone, because you pay for those minutes. I am fortunate that my victimization occurs only on a land-line phone, where the minutes cost me nothing, although the aggravation remains the same.

Whenever you sign up for new service with phone company, you are playing the lottery. You may get a more or less "virgin" number that no one has ever used, but that is quite unlikely these days with the U.S. population exceeding 300 million people! Expect to answer calls from people looking for John, Jake, Mary, Anita, Todd and so on. If you're very unlucky, like me, you may get a phone number that belonged to a royal turkey with all the fixings.

My phone number used to belong to a person who was heavily in debt. I have received so many calls for this guy, that I now know his name and have begun learning other details about him, such as the various businesses he defrauded. I know that his debt was sold at a discounted rate to collection agencies. These agencies buy large chunks of debt for a huge discount, and anything they collect is theirs to keep. The suckers who pay these companies may, or may not, eliminate the harassing phone calls, and their credit record may, or may not, be improved by payment. At any rate, several of these agencies are absolutely convinced that this individual dwells at my phone number, despite my frequent denials and ignoring my requests that they stop calling me. Debt collection agencies believe everyone is a liar. They do not understand the concept of someone changing their phone number and getting a new one. I can't easily change my number at this point, having given it out to family and friends, nor should I have to do so.

What I think every phone customer should have available to them is a complete list, accessible either by phone or online, of all numbers that have called, along with the owners, complete addresses and business title, if any. Just as no one can be anonymous when they knock on your front door (unless disguised), no one should be anonymous when they call your home. Many of these debt collectors have disabled CallerID on their number. I can't reject such calls, because there are friends who call me from long distance exchanges that also disable CallerID. The misguided debt collectors calling my number do not identify themselves, call early in the morning (a wake-up call), and call on random days throughout the year. Lest you suppose these calls will peter out, this has been going on for over two years and shows no sign of abating.

There should be a method of registering a complaint with a U.S. government entity, such as federal court, when a caller continues making unwanted calls. The harassing caller should be arrested, and the case submitted for criminal prosecution. The owners and upper management of most debt collection agencies belong in prison. Their companies should be liquidated. Whatever financial assets they have obtained may be sold at auction, with the proceeds used to compensate their many victims throughout the country.

Protecting ordinary people against predatory businesses is a left-wing political concern. Right-wingers prefer to focus on ways that poor and middle-class people can be punished. Conservative Republicans want to ban abortion, ban gay marriage, put pot smokers in prison, drug-test the urine of all workers, imprison immigrants, and reduce VISA's to legal immigrants. All of these measures hurt poor people in one way or the other, whereas rich people are completely unscathed by such laws. A rich woman can fly to Mexico for an abortion. The ban on gay marriage troubles a rich man less than a poor one, because the rich man doesn't need insurance or the financial and social benefits of marriage. The last bit explains why there are some gay Republicans--they care more about money than about their fellow gays.

We need to elect more liberals into public office, because they have the right priorities. The time has come to reign in the businesses that exist only to defraud, intimidate and harass consumers. The government should prosecute telemarketers, debt collection agencies, and other businesses that harass people by using the telephone as a weapon. When election time comes, you can fight back against the telemarketers by voting for a liberal Democrat, Independent or Republican (I am told that liberal Republicans still exist in some areas, like the mythological unicorn).