Push poll favoring Clinton reported in California

(Photo courtesy of EYASU.SOLOMON at Flickr)

I try to stay on the subject of Fraud, Phishing and Financial Misdeeds, but every once in awhile I stray a little off subject.

Although, technically push polling is slightly off subject for this blog, it is similar to what I normally write about. "In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain," according to Wikipedia.

Substitute personal for political in the Wikipedia definition and some might consider push polling a form of fraud.

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, "push polling," here is Wikipedia's definition:

A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll. Push polls are generally viewed as a form of negative campaigning.

With Super Tuesday coming up tomorrow -- and the fact that the great State of California has a lot of delegates at stake -- I wanted to help bring attention to some push polling tactics that are surfacing.

Andrew Malcolm reported on the LA Times blog that a push poll is being conducted in California that appears to favor Hillary Clinton. A former news producer, Ed Coghlan, "played" along on an unsolicited call he received, which supports this contention.

From the blog post:

Ed, who's a former news director for a local TV station, was curious. He said, "Sure, go ahead."

But a few minutes into the conversation Ed says he noticed a strange pattern developing to the questions. First of all, the "pollster" was only asking about four candidates, three Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, who was still in the race at the time -- and one Republican -- John McCain.

Going a little further into Coghan's deduction that he was being push polled:

Also, every question about Clinton was curiously positive, Coghlan recalls. The caller said things like, if you knew that Sen. Clinton believed the country had a serious home mortgage problem and had made proposals to....freeze mortgage rates and save families from foreclosure, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for her?

Ed said, of course, more likely.

Every question about the other candidates was negative. If Ed knew, for instance, that as a state senator Obama had voted "present" 43 times instead of taking a yes or no stand "for what he believed," would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?

The LA Times did try to nail down the Clinton campaign as to who was behind this poll and here is what happened:

Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign. was contacted by e-mail last night. He answered that he was there. He was asked if the Clinton campaign was behind the push-poll knew who was behind it or had any other information on it. That was at 5:27 p.m. Pacific Time Saturday. As of this item's posting time, exactly eight hours later, no reply had been received.

So far as me personally, if I get a pesky (what I consider) telemarketing call from a candidate, I plan to just say "no" and hang up.

Wouldn't it be nice if someone got a do not call list going for political interests that use tactics that are just as seedy (my opinion) as the most deceptive telemarketing tactics the list was designed to protect us from?

Full post about this matter from the Los Angeles Times, here.

Do the record profits in the oil industry make sense?

Gas prices have gone over $3.00 a gallon for most of us, and seem to rise whenever there is an anticipated emergency, whether it actually happens or not. I've long been an advocate of the "does it make sense theory” and prices being raised for emergencies that never actually happened, DOES NOT, at least to me.

Meanwhile, billions of our dollars and human resources (young men and women) are being used to protect the area, where a lot of our oil comes from.

I've never figured out why our tax dollars are being used (seemingly without charge) to protect a few people, who have a lot of money to throw around. All we seem to get in return is higher prices, and dangerous people, we need to protect ourselves from.

Most of the terrorists in the 9-11 attacks were not from Afghanistan, which has little oil. In fact, most of them, including the mastermind still at large; come from one of these countries, using our resources to protect it.

It costs us a lot of money, and our brave young men and women to provide them protection. To me, it would make sense that those, who are enjoying our protection, showed their appreciation a little more.

But all our oil doesn’t necessarily come from these foreign lands we are paying to protect. Is there a common denominator to all this? The oil companies are sharing in the RECORD profit taking, also. These companies are largely owned by Americans, and other Westerners.

If the oil industry is so prone to dangers, it doesn't make sense that they are making more money than anytime in history? Based on their record profits, it doesn't seem to be hitting their bottom lines.

It does seem to be hitting the bottom lines of everyday American households, as well as, other industries, which will have to pass the costs off to everyone in the form of higher prices.

Recently, Walmart announced their sales are going down because people don't have as much disposable income to spend. A lot of everyday Americans shop at Walmart. I'm using Walmart as an example, but they aren't the only large business beginning to see this trend.

Wikipedia mentions this in their analysis of oil price increases in the past few years, here.

Personally, I'm an advocate of getting rid of the industry by exploring alternative energy sources, but until we get there, perhaps the little guy should get a fair deal?

The People's E-Mail network is sponsoring a drive to let our legislators and newspapers know that it's time to conduct an unbiased investigation to determine if their is any foul play connected with the current pricing structure, which is making a few people very rich.

John Edwards, a presidential candidate, has also called for an investigation of the industry. AP story, courtesy of Yahoo News, here.

It would be nice to see him get some support on this, preferably of the bipartisan type. Maybe it's time to make sense of a situation of a phenomenon that DOES NOT to a lot of us?

The way to do that is to investigate the problem, or discover the truth. If there is no fraud, then the oil industry should have nothing to fear.

You can let your elected representatives and local press know how you feel about this, here.