I am a Democrat. A liberal, but Democrat is close enough.
I currently get about 20 emails a day asking me to contribute to someone’s campaign or just to the party coffers for some good cause or other. I support many of these causes, but I’ll never give a penny to any political party. Why? Am I a fervent advocate of campaign corruption reform? Do I harbor an idealistic — and irrational — belief that change will come to the system? Yes and no, but that’s not why I won’t give any money to anything political.
Not my donkey, but a nice donkey
In 2012, I donated three dollars to Obama.
As a thank you, I got spammed. Every Democrat running for office no matter where they lived, sent me endless emails every week. It kept getting worse. A new cause, a few hundred more emails. Every email predicted the immediate end of the world should I fail to dip into my wallet right now! It reached an insane crescendo. One day, I spent an entire day, morning to evening, unsubscribing to what seemed to be every politician and cause looking for money. The incoming mail dropped to an almost bearable level.
It seemed that each time I signed a petition or went online to read a political post, I was automatically — without notification or permission — subscribed to the site and its multiple mailing lists. I was a piece of data being mined.
That’s wrong. It’s spam. It’s offensive.
The Democratic Party — all political parties, their candidates and causes (I found myself on the Conservative Republican mailing list because I read an article and they signed me up, too) — are on my “not one red cent” list. Because a $3 dollar donation got me spammed. By the way, if you are naïve enough to provide your phone number to any political group, expect never-ending intrusive phone calls on your home or cell phone asking for donations.
If they want my opinion, they can pay for it.
The political funding system needs reformation. Equally in need of reform is the way all political groups feel free to use your personal information for their own purposes. They will subscribe you to their mailing and calling lists because you tried to read their literature. Which, in theory, is what they want you to do. Participating in politics — trying to be a good citizen — will get you bombarded with propaganda until you declare a plague on all their houses.
It’s not okay. Really, it’s not. It’s intrusive and sneaky. It is a massive abuse of my right to privacy. I did not agree to let everyone in the world use my personal data for their own agenda. Visiting a web site does not imply permission to invade my privacy. I do not know how other people handle this sort of thing, but it means that I will never donate a penny to anyone running for office — or support of any of their causes. Ever.
A friend of mine wrote the following letter and sent me a copy. He thought I might make want to use it. Sure enough. Nice to know it isn’t just me!
Author: BEN TAYLOR
We elect you — our representatives — to… uh… represent us. You are paid healthy salaries. You enjoy the best health care in the country and even draw a salary after retirement, even though you’ve been voted out of office. What a great job you’ve got! But that’s not enough. You continuously ask us for more money — from those of us who have little more to give than an opinion.
So, what do you think about maybe doing the job you were elected to do? Without us having to cough up additional contributions — for which there seem to be endless requests?
What gives corporations the right to make big donations and project opinions that may not be shared by its employees? Employees who, for fear loss of job, are hesitant to express an opposite opinion to the handful of upper management?
Wouldn’t that donation money be better spent by passing it on to the employee salaries, not to mention the huge bonuses given to executives who really don’t need it since their already enormous salaries ought to cover any living expenses they would incur?
So, the rich guys need tax breaks? I don’t think so!
We as average citizens don’t ask you to contribute to our lives by donating money to our household budget funds or maybe helping us pay off our mortgages or car loans. All we ask is that we are allowed to take care of ourselves with dignity. That you prevent the rich, who can already pay for anything they possibly could use or want out-of-pocket from taking away the little we depend on to scrape out an existence.
Just think of what kind of country we’ll have if we are all poor. Is this what is meant by “making America great again?” Impoverishing
everyone who isn’t already rich? Ignoring science while destroying the planet for the advantage of the few who might profit? Employing social media to carry on petty quibbling, racial, religious and other ethnic injustices while great, and potentially greater, disasters occur all around us?Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!
NO! NOT ANOTHER DIME!
They — both parties, all parties, all the pols — have done it to themselves. Before pointing fingers at “the system,” they need to admit that they are the system. They are the abusers.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I know there is no way I’m giving anything to anybody. Ever. Not even when I wish I could. Because I know if I give a couple of bucks to one person, every single politician will have their hand out and bomb me with letters of upcoming catastrophes. This has got to stop somewhere.
How about now?
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Categories: Election, political parties, Politics
VOTING THIRD PARTY 
SOON, ELECTION AGAIN 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
I love Ben’s letter!
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Ben will be glad to see it 🙂 He doesn’t have a blog. He just follows and comments, otherwise I’d refer you to him.
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That is a great letter and would apply equally well here and probably most places.
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All our political parties seem to think begging is the way to go. Funny, though. That’s just for them. We are supposed to go out and work.
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A wee clarification: You don’t need to provide those parasites (let’s call them what they are) with your phone number to get riddled with phone calls. I will sound horribly paranoid probably, but I’ve begun to get phone calls from one of the senators from the opposing side. And not just once, these keep coming. I’m wondering if they’ve developed a way to monitor just how much of the canned message you listen to, and if it’s not satisfactory, they call you back again and again until you hear something of their unwelcome message. Makes me more determined to get rid of my landline. Between those idiots and the grifters selling life alert buttons, knee and back braces and ‘better credit card rates”..I never get any ‘real’ calls any more. The line is always tied up. And if they start in on my cell phone? Oh, they’ll have to get me to turn it on first…
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Me too. I don’t know where they get our information. I assume they buy the lists somewhere. And we seem to be on a LOT of lists.
You know those “discount cards” at the grocery store? They are a major source for all data mining because they include our addresses, phone numbers, driver’s licences … as well as what we buy and when we buy it. I NEVER use those cards. They are just a way to collect your data and resell it.
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I don’t know why, except if it depends on the whims of wordpress, but I don’t receive your posts unless it’s in reply to something I post on my site. I can try “following” you again. That might work. I hope we can work it out because I want to read your posts.
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WordPress has been messing up our followers. I lost 4,000 of mine for almost to months. You may have been one of them. There were so many, I didn’t even know how to find them. Now I’d better go and see if you are hooked up to me!!
NOW you are hooked up to me. You were completely gone. I had to enter your whole email address to get you up, but I’m following YOU on both posts and comments. You’ll still have to do something like that from your end, but at least I will know when YOU post!
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How about we all write them a letter asking for donations to our campaign to survive the political upheaval that they caused, that in turn affects the economy, and our cost of living! Like the Jerry Seinfeld episode, where asks the telemarketer for his home phone number so that he can call him later, “Oh, so you don’t want people calling you at home? Now you know how I feel!”
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They wouldn’t pay attention to letters. We need to swamp them in emails, call them 100 times a day (using a robot, of course) and then send people around to the house to ring their bell. Let so this RIGHT.
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😁
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Yes! You’re absolutely right. I am tired of being nickled and dimed to death as soon as I donate a penny. I, too, am beseiged by the Democrats,plus every website for donations to animal rights and rescue. Now, I just skip through the dew, ignoring them all. When I’m ready and can afford a donation, I’ll give it. I not only get requests on Facebook, but the daily mail is a pile of pleas, attempting to guilt me into giving. Enough!
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I’ve got the regular mail under control. All I had to do was NEVER ANSWER ANY OF THEM FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARS. That finally did it.
I got NOMOROBO.com (it’s free). so they intercept the phone calls. But the email is the worst! It’s like being buried under an avalanche. Daily. And that was BEFORE Trump. Now, it’s worse.
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Yes. It’s like my students saying “Society is against me” and they ARE society.
Political parties DON’T need my money. The same with charities — I gave money (carefully) to various charities re: fires and floods. When I got MAIL from one of them all I could think was that my measly $35 went to send mail to people like me. Really pisses me off.
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They seem to be raising money to keep themselves in business. My favorite was I got a call from a woman who said she was collected to raise money to help out women who’d had breast cancer. They would be giving financial assistance to all those poor unlucky victims.
I asked her if she wanted my mailing address since I am one of those women and if they are giving money away, I sure could use some. She got very confused and said she was only collecting money. I said, “Well, I’m your victim. So when is this money likely to arrive? How much? Could it make at least one car payment? How about a mortgage payment? Or enough to have a nice dinner out one night?”
She hung up. Damn. I thought I was making progress, too.
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Ha ha ha right?
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I’ve gotten a few of these where they tell me they are giving money to breast cancer victims. I ask them who gets the money? They get very confused. Because I’ve had cancer twice and half my friends have breast or lung cancer — and they are the ones still alive. No one ever got one red cent from anyone. Anywhere.
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SO, when did you realize they weren’t interested in helping you, and probably lied about helping others like you? You’d think that the people making those calls would think about what they were doing, right?
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You would think that, but you would be wrong. All they know is they make calls and get paid. That’s it. I doubt it even crosses their mind that we are people.
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Another call, another buck… and who gets hurt is not their problem.
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Sometimes it’s just plain extortion.
Leslie
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It IS extortion, but not legally. They threaten us with endless catastrophes and when that passes, they round up the next crisis.
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a little divine justice is in order….
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The problem with our political system is that the primary job of a politician, particularly those elected to the House of Representatives, is to get re-elected. And that takes a lot of money. So almost as soon as they take office, they devote themselves to fund raising for their next election, rather than representing the interests of their constituents.
I don’t think this is what the Founding Father’s has in mind.
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I can’t find the wording. I’m sure it’s there, but my eyes are not locating it.
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No, that wasn’t your mistake. It was MY error in my original response to your post.
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It’s like another tax. Whatever we pay, add 25% to bribe our elected people to do what they were elected to do.
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So when do they get around to doing their job if all their time is spent campaigning for the next term? No wonder we’re in such a mess, with a total “Jerk” for president.
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There’s the rub. They never get around to doing the job that they were elected for because they spend so much of their time fundraising so that they can do it all again for another two year term. And yes, our president is a total jerk!
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I also found that all you have to do is be a registered whatever you are, on the voting list, and every candidate that is running will call you, these days most of them are automated so you don’t have the luxury of hanging up on a human, (bored, drunk, or otherwise) but you do have the luxury of hanging up at the first whiff of dead hollow air that tells you ‘this is a recording”.
Im thinking of switching parties this time around, let’s see what THAT does. Heh, a dem AND a rep. on the same phone number.
I did start telling the live ones when they called that I was an Atheist and was planning to vote for the Atheist candidate. click.
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NOMOROBO.Com.
They will hang up on ALL of them for you. Half a ring, no more after that. AND (wait for it ) … it’s free.
Worse really — you don’t EVEN have to be registered. You just have to sign a petition, or enter your name in a “contest” … and a lot of those “contests” on Facebook are just ways to grab your identity. No, they aren’t con artists in the original sense. They are political charlatans stealing our identities to use for themselves, then sell to the rest of the world. In this money-grubbing enterprise, all parties are equal. They are ALL out to get every penny they can wring out of us and they will NEVER be finished.
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I know! It’s ridiculous. I’ve also donated, so now I have to send all their stuff right to “delete.” I sent $10 to Wikipedia because I do use it frequently and here they are again bugging me, along with everyone else. All the animal places and their endless stickers. Quit sending me stickers! Use that money for my donation. ARGH!
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The majority of fund raising is done so they can raise more funds using the funds they already made. The really BIG organizations give a piddling amount to whatever their cause is. The rest goes for stickers and placards and salaries. And hiring more people do do more of the same. I am very careful about who I give money to. VERY careful. Most of them give so little as to be effectively ZERO.
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Very timely and right on target. I’ve just gone through my (G) mail and there must have been 8-10 requests from political (reform) organizations asking for money so they fight the current administration. Every day the request list gets bigger. Obviously, I’d love to stick a dagger into the heart of darkness but if you want my help — show ME the money.
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