That’s where BB heard about it. That doesn’t mean it’s where it came from originally. My point is that I could see Johnson wanting to call attention to these awful people who persecute him so.
But I think we basically agree that it could be a sign of shittier behavior to come.
I agree to the point that we don’t have any information about our Vietnam Veteran friend’s telephone calls to the Senator, but at the moment I’m defaulting to this: Vietnam Vet has seen some shit. He’s angry. He may have called ten thousand times, he may have called ten times–the Senator did not feel it appropriate to flesh out his “Don’t call me bro” message, and to his chagrin. Who’s got the power in this situation? The U.S. Senator or the vague Vietnam Veteran? I’m happy to take the side of the veteran until I’ve heard more.
That he’s a “crazy” or attempting to enact a “one-man phone DDOS”, we don’t know.
Also, Vietnam Vet’s “crank”-ness has yet to be demonstrated, but your overall point stands.
Cite please, on this person being a “stalker”.
Senator Snowflake doesn’t like it when his safe space is intruded on
Oh sure. And I hardly trust Johnson’s staff to fairly distinguish every time between “crank” and “concerned citizen who vowed to do something every day to bring about change.”
But there are cranks in Wisconsin. (I was one of them, once!) And everywhere else. If that’s going to be his excuse going forward, fuck 'im.
Has this quantity of “hundreds” been validated by anyone other than the Senator or his office?
I imagine that this is why they specified that he can be in touch with them by mail if it so amuses him.
If they had tried a “Never ever contact us by any means ever again or else” or had chosen some ‘acceptable’ means of contact so laughably convoluted as to be equivalent to no means at all; they’d be in a more awkward position on constitutionally protected petitioning; but given that courts often still exist in a world where USPS Certified is a gold standard for communication; a ‘send all the mail you want’ warning might go over pretty well; while still making it easy to assign all his missives to the circular file for appropriate archival procedures.
In the original posting about this (linked above somewhere), the recipient of the letter talks about making ~80 calls a day to the office. Multiply that by any number of days and you’re at “hundreds” pretty quickly.
At first glance, with a senator having to answer 100’s of calls from a single voter within a short time frame, this action of a cease and desist i could possibly agree with.
But the fact that the ‘100’s of calls’ part only happened because they won’t answer the damn phone, that changes everything. Representing the voters is the job you were elected to do. Answer the phone or resign your position, nobody’s forcing you hold your elected position.
It only states he must discontinue his “unwarranted” calls and visits, but of course he’s free to continue his warranted calls and visits. Clearly not written by a lawyer.
Cite please? I am making a personal judgement on a set of behavior. Too many people have suffered from stalking - a problem which is ignored and belittled. Police refuse to intervene, courts fail to act.
Please ‘cite’ the number of times a politician’s staff have to accept calls from a ‘frequent flier’ before you would accept that the behavior was abusive.
Then cite off.
Note this only refers to the Senator’s staff. There’s a lot of people who take their frustrations and disagreements with politicians out on their staff - and like any other employee they’ve got a right to work in a reasonable environment. In extremis, very bad things can happen otherwise.
This guy can still write to the Senator as much as he likes, and he can still vote against him if he wishes.
Got it. Especially the “personal judgement” part.
No belittling you’ll get from me. Stalking is bad and shouldn’t happen, full stop.
Well that’s a start, isn’t it? The senator operates from a position of power, established by the power of the state. He’s the man. He decides what he gets to say or not, and everyone can question that and they can all GET FUCKED if he decides he doesn’t want to answer any questions about his behavior. He could even pick up the phone, say “Go and fuck yourself” to every caller, and that’d be okay. And then, when he’s up for reelection, he’ll lose because he’s a whining snowflake afraid to account for his actions (or lack thereof).
The constituent, on the other hand, is just a person living under the state’s thumb. He doesn’t get state-provided healthcare for his trouble, nor does he have a dedicated staff (and money dedicated to pay that staff) there to help him gather information and make decisions. He makes these calls on his own time and of his own volition. He’s just a guy who’s upset with the way the Senator is doing things, and he wanted to be heard, and phone calls are the way he wanted to exercise his right to contact his elected representative.
So until the Esteemed Senator provides information supporting his claims of abuse, then fuck him and his godamn letter. Let HIM provide evidence of his difficulties with this constituent and let HIM go through the appropriate motions to protect himself like every other American would have to do if they were feeling harassed.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww and here i thought we were pals.
And…
The Capitol Police will come and remove him, by force if need be.
Being able to contact your rep and so on is not an unlimited right. There can come a time when calls and visits turn into harassment.
While their letter has no legal force in the sense some think, everyone has the right not to be harassed pointlessly.
If this person is just going over the same ground again and again and again which is what it sounds like, every minute they spend dealing with him is time they are not spending dealing with other constituents and he has no particular right to their time any more than anyone else does.
No idea if the rep is a scoundrel or a saint but I do not care.
Sounds more to me like his poor harried staff are taking the brunt of the abuse. Johnson seems to be pretty well insulated from it.
“He said that in mid-February, he called Johnson’s office 40 times on one day and 83 times another day. He said he kept calling until someone answered the phone rather than letting his call go to voicemail. He said he is persistent but has always been polite when interacting with Johnson’s staff on the phone or in person.”
Is required to hear from his constituents, as an integral and essential part of the job he was elected to do.
Bingo.
He hasn’t talked with the office hundreds of times. He simply redials until someone actually answers the phone during normal business hours. The number of times he has actually spoken with staff members appears to be at most once a day. But then nothing happens in response to his concerns (probably not even a verbal response on the topic), so he starts the process over again.
I’ll say that eighty trillion seems a fair point to negotiate from.
This is Johnson’s job, remember. He also has staff. That means receiving phone calls and visitors is their job, too.
Since the letter is signed “staff” and does not even say how many calls were received, any concern over the number of calls seems pretty irrelevant.
So where did “called hundreds of times” come from, anyway? Am I missing it in the link?
