I was a cheap whore to a political party...

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:14 am

...and I didn't even realize. Well in ways other than the usual five thousand that normally go on.

Before the presidential election, The wife, kid, and I had gone to see Obama at a rally in the then hometown of Dallas. I didn't mind receiving information from Obama's camp through his e-mailing-list Well, since then, I've gotten e-mails from mostpeople on his side and every other bastard on the democratic party.

I even got e-mails from the Fort Worth democratic party in Texas. It didn't matter that I lived in Denton, Tx. If the Denton democratic party had e-mailed me, It would have amounted to something but no.

But...wait. here's the kicker. I moved to NJ in January and I was going through my files and I had a keepsake folder and I had a *sigh* :heart: an Obama keepsake from that day *sigh* :heart:

Yes, it was the signed copy of the 3X10 green card with circled X's and O's and arrows and detailed paragraphs. Sorry, couldn't resist the song reference. Anyway, the digression aside, it actually said that I had checked the non-citizen box.

So.... it seems, The Obama group or the dems have learned a lesson from the spammers of the world. or AOL. Sell your beloved followers's information for a dime, or a vote. See, I have no information to back this up but the weekly brunt of of clogged up e-mails in my inbox. So that is how I became a cheap whore for the Democratic party without even knowing it.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:02 am

That's odd, the only stuff I've gotten from being on Obama's list is...

...Stuff I asked for.

Maybe your state party was a bit more mercenary than CA's; we were giving volunteers and money to other states for the election, so we're not as 'wanted' as targets.

-Crissa

Absentminded_Wizard · Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:16 am

This could be a function of the Texas Democratic Party's desperation to gain ground in a Republican state.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:46 am

I believe that AW hit this one on the head. As a Texan Democrat, I recieve lots of junk mail from that party.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:14 pm

Somehow I got on the president's Email List. Getting email from Rahm Emanuel still creeps me out. (At least he isn't asking me for money though.)

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:33 pm

Yeah, it is sorta weird to get direct mailings from the administration.

But that's the world we live in now - more people get email than network TV.

-Crissa

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:08 am

As someone who used to work on political campaigns I'll give you one piece of advice.

NEVER GIVE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION TO POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS.
Nothing, zip.

Don't tell them you will vote for them, and certainly don't take a sign on your property.

Seriously there is no information they can give you that you can't get on your own and if you give them any encouragement they will come back for more.

My folks still get 10-20 phone calls from my old party every election just because I put a sign on their lawn 12 years ago. They like the party and still keep the sign but they get called to see if they'll donate and volunteer and all sorts of shit.

We used to call back positive responders to phone canvasing for the same kind of thing.

Just say nothing and sign nothing; trust me.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:11 am

The Obama campaign worked really hard to make sure that sort of overkill didn't happen. They had a process to weed people off call lists and did a surprising amount of database culling to make sure that numbers were only contacted once.

However, they got their base list of names and numbers from the voter registry. So... There's little you could do about them having that information.

-Crissa

shau · Post by **shau** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:08 am

I still get stuff from Obama, which is kinda weird because the only time I visited his site was when I wanted to make sure I was registered to vote.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 1:28 pm

Yes voter registration lists can have a lot of very important information.

Speaking of which my evil local town supervisor who is definitely worried about his job (even the local papers aren’t supporting him) just sent out a letter to a select group of seniors about a rebate program at the local cable company. Surprise, surprise, the select group only contained seniors registered as “BLANK” (not registered to a party).

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:22 am

Wow, that sounds vaguely not legal, tzor.

-Crissa

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:31 pm

A lot of things he does is "vaguely not legal." Teahnically speaking, the Town Supervisor is one of equals, with at most the power to set the town council's agenda. But he consistantly senns out all correspodence in his name, employs a technician who dims the mikes on all committee members except for his (the technician has claimed that, his job is to make the town supervisor good). That doesn't count the various levels of corruption that goes on (sand mining, projects with massive cost overruns, etc. The real irony is that most democrats don't like him either.