and what comes to mind? Being at home after a long hard day at work, just having sat down at your laptop, ready to catch-up on your email when...the phone rings...Hello, Mr/Ms American (you know that it is a sales pitch because they are using your formal name) my name is Volunteer for ObaMcain and we are asking you for your support, and vote on election day."
You tell them that you are on the Do Not Call List, and they reply that they are not subject to that law as it allows calls from political and nonprofit organizations. Grudgingly the caller senses that you are not going to be receptive to their pitch and breaks-off the call. That's not the end of it though, you are going to be subjected to, perhaps, dozens of these calls between now  and election day.
Privacy is not being bothered with phone calls and political mail, especially if you have asked them not to call or contact you.
Your Privacy Right Trumps their First Amendment Right!
Where did they get your information? From Your Voter Registration! And thousands of people are going to be going "door to door" and making telepests of themselves until the first Tuesday in November!
Both Obama and McCain have hired communications ad visors (that get paid a percentage of the print and television advertising fees paid (!) and a percentage of the fees charged by the telemarketing companies that take on political work when it is available (because it pays a guaranteed rate.)
Karl Rove (Bush's Brain, The Architect) developed the modern practice of information mining of consumer data (they know the magazines you subscribe to, the newspapers you read and the television channels you watch the most (when you use your credit card to purchase the stuff advertised on TV- it all seems to cost $19.95 plus postage and handling) and combining that with your zip code.
The US Census Bureau conveniently provides marketeers with CDs of consumer information organized by...Zip Code+Four that can be obtained, and misused by groups other than political parties and individual candidates. We remember answering a knock on the door at  6 PM and a guy standing there with a computer print-out on his hand. He said he was an Environmental Activist working for "Heal the Bay." He recited his script and then asked us for a donation.
The computer print-out was the Voter Registration information for our local voting precinct and several others nearby. I also recall seeing pages of them blowing across the Pacific Coast Highway towards the beach later in the week as they had been dumped in the roadway.
More on the US Census: The Constitution provides for a census every decade to count the number of Americans. Now that the information sought extends to what size of apartment or house you and your family live in and hundreds of other factoids about your household that now have become a profit center for the agency; businesses of all sizes have become dependent upon those valuable facts that can be targeted by marketing and political propaganda professionals to build a profile of you.
Now the Census Bureau has abandoned the "Long Form" (that took an hour to fill out) replacing it with the American Community Survey that asks 3 million households every year for the same information, which means the demographic data is constantly "refreshed."
What is a voter to do if both dominant political parties support the same bad policies? Click:
www.communati.com/steve-lee/think-democracy
We are concerned that anybody can be Karl Rove now that your personal information is available on digital media. if you have the bucks and the basic data-base skills you too, can be a high-paid "Political Consultant." Click:
www.communati.com/steve-lee/robo-calls 
Have you ever wondered where politicians get most of their bad ideas? Click:
www.communati.com/steve-lee/bad-ideas
20 Reads  September 15/ 50 Reads Sept 20 / 100 Reads Sept 23
 
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