Peter Roskam’s robo-call service seems to be calling up a storm these days judging from the number of hits I’m getting on strings like ” why is Peter Roskam calling me” and “stop roskam calls”. Roskam’s latest taxpayer-funded misinformation campaign is a series of “Tele-Townhall” events where Roskam purportedly wants to hear his constituents concerns regarding healthcare reform. Roskam’s mind is, of course, already made up regarding healthcare reform. He is going to do everything in his power to see that universal coverage never happens. These events are designed to scare susceptible voters into siding with him.
My suspicion is that these events are rigged to give Roskam a sympathetic audience. Why? Because 3 times in the past month or so, I have ANSWERED a robo-call to hear Roskam’s recorded voice telling me that Roskam is presently talking to my fellow constituents about healthcare and that he’s sorry that he missed me. This happened again just yesterday when he hosted his most recent event. So my theory is that Roskam has a phone list for his constituents which he cross-references with primary voter rolls or campaign contribution data or even just zip code demographic data to determine who may and who may not be a safe participant. “Safe” receipients get invited into the conference. Unsafe recipients, like me, get the “sorry I missed you” message. And Roskam can still say he called everyone.It would be no great feat to accomplish this with a minimal knowledge of relational databases.
So that’s my theory. I can’t prove it and I might be dead wrong. But Roskam has a history of playing dirty in campaigns and that history raises my suspicion level.
Would be very interested to hear from anyone their thoughts on this or their experience of one of these meetings. Would also be very happy to hear from Peter Roskam his explanation of the “sorry I missed you” calls.
Related posts:
- Taxpayer-funded Junk Mail from Peter Roskam on Healthcare Reform
- Peter Roskam’s 5 Principles for Healthcare Reform
- Why Are My Tax Dollars Being Used for Peter Roskam’s Campaign Mail?
- Is Representative Luis Gutierrez Really Going to Unite with Peter Roskam to Kill Healthcare Reform?
- Roskam Touts Partisan Report in Effort to Kill Universal Access to Healthcare
I’m no fan of Roskam. But I was able to get in on his tele-townhall a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised and pleased of the percentage of calls he took that were supporters of the public option. He not so deftly avoided directly addressing his lack of support for the public option while continuing to assert that there is overwhelming opposition to it in our district. His only position on the public option is that it’s the first step to single payer and we can’t have that. We’re being ill-served.
Thanks, John, for sharing. Glad to hear that Rep. Roskam is at least allowing expressions of differing viewpoints by callers admitted to the townhalls. I have been unable to be admitted.
The day before the townhall I called his Wash office, identified myself as a constituent and asked if I could at least monitor it. Roskam’s staff gave me the phone number and pin and that’s all there was to it. They did say I wouldn’t be able to participate because I hadn’t pre-registered. I have a question….in his last election, Roskam had literature tucked underneath wiper blades in our church’s parking lot. Is this legal? I was angry and asked a church staff about it and he said it happened without the church’s permission.
Doubt the literature distribution was illegal, unless it violated some local ordinance.