INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller and Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster today launched the first-ever national “No-Call Law Enforcement Summit.”

Last year, the Indiana attorney general’s office received more than 14,000 Do Not Call complaints with more than 50 percent involving automated calls known as robocalls. The summit is being held today in Indianapolis to help state and federal agencies identify best practices on how to stop unwanted calls and prosecute violators.

“Consumers nationwide are fed up with receiving unwanted calls, and that’s why we have gathered our state and federal partners to identify solutions,” Zoeller said. “It’s important to recognize that many of these annoying calls stem from sources outside the U.S, which falls outside the states’ jurisdictions. States need assistance from the federal government, specifically the Federal Communications Commission, to do more in terms of regulating these types of calls.”

“Consumers place their phone numbers on their state’s No Call list because they do not want to receive annoying, unwanted calls,” said Koster. “As is true in many states, the largest category of consumer complaints filed in Missouri each year involves violations of state No Call and telemarketing laws. I look forward to working with Attorney General Zoeller and other states to develop the ideas generated at this summit and better protect consumers from unlawful telephone harassment and fraud.”

Participants include representatives from more than 20 attorneys general offices, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Canadian Radio-Television Commission and others. The summit’s theme is, “Building a No-Call Case from the Ground Up,” and presenters will focus on new technologies, investigation and prosecution techniques, and interstate and federal cooperation.

Zoeller is a strong proponent of a resolution passed by Indiana state legislators this year which called on the FCC to more aggressively regulate telemarketing calls and robocalls that violate Hoosiers’ telephone privacy.

Businesses often generate sales leads by using third-party telephone solicitors to call consumers, but many times those consumers’ numbers are registered on the state’s Do Not Call list. This year, the Indiana General Assembly passed a new law allowing the attorney general to hold accountable, through legal action, both the solicitors and the companies benefitting from these illegal calls.

Zoeller said Indiana’s top Do Not Call complaint in 2013 stemmed from calls offering credit services, followed by home security and home improvement calls respectively.

Fascism is the name we give to the ideology which merges the power of the purse (business, foundations, nonprofits) with the power of the sword (government) in order to create policy, impose it by methods ranging from subterfuge to force, and take a society in a desired direction.

By this method, then, citizens are deprived of private property rights and control over their lives and business activities. When private companies must compete in an open market for the best employees and for customers, that is free enterprise capitalism (or laissez-faire). However, when they form partnerships with government, or when either o­ne “partners” with foundations or nonprofit sector entities, or even, I would argue, are legally able to borrow money from banks created according to the fractional reserve system, free enterprise is compromised. The economic system begins its move from a o­ne based o­n liberty and productivity to o­ne based o­n control and plunder.

Fascism adheres to the “philosopher-king” belief that o­nly o­ne class—which is by birth, education, or social standing—is capable of understanding what is best for the whole community and putting it into practice. Thus fascism tends to develop when those in business who want unearned wealth or power join forces with would-be philosopher-kings with that Platonist vision—or become o­ne and the same, under the Platonist assumption that they and their selected cohorts are most fit to rule. At first, the system is not overtly totalitarian. Those with newfound power want as many people as they can to accept their leadership without being forced.  Although the classic fascists openly subverted constitutional democracy … they took great pains to conceal the Big Capital-Big Government partnership.

This system is fascist since it involves corporations and governments working together to make policy; it is soft fascist because (due to the lack of genuine education) it is not overtly totalitarian. Tyrannical controls are barely needed, because among the mind-controlled workers and future workers there is little resistance. Most go along, fearing unemployment. After all, as George Orwell o­nce observed, “Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the o­ne that turns his somersault when there is no whip.” Soft fascism thus employs behavior modification rather than obvious acts of tyranny. It is guided by an incentive system rather than overt acts of coercion: operant conditioning, a product of several decades of behavioral psychology to which the classical fascists were not privy.

Thus for much of the population, there is no whip. Those who do not turn their somersaults—perhaps out of a realization that their choices have been artificially reduced—are marginalized and eventually able to find o­nly menial jobs. Lack of resources renders them effectively helpless—their punishment for nonconformity, in the behavioral psychologist’s sense. The “system” is effectively insulated against their criticisms, which as Orwell also observed, will not be read in places where they threaten the governing class. This class will have the Platonist philosopher-kings at the helm, overseeing public-private partnerships involving big government, big business, big foundations, with the full backing of the mainstream media, approximately 90 percent of which is owned by a half-dozen huge corporations. This explains why you will not encounter criticisms of public-private partnerships or of the idea of sustainable development in any mainstream media outlet today.

Source: Centurean Weblog