From a comment in a previous thread by Waterbury Rep. Tom Stevens. These are the people who have been robocalling us:
The executive director is Bryan Brown, formerly with the Family Institute of Connecticut. Fundamental Catholic ties.
The Chair of the Board is Robert George, professor at Princeton and fundamental Catholic. Many conservative ties. To quote Andrew Sullivan, “his passionate opposition to the civil equality and freedom of gay people is the core principle of his politics.” Ties to American Enterprise Institute, involved in opposition to Prop. 8.
Kevin Corkery is a board member. May have donated to Mitt Romney and Pat Roberts in last presidential cycle.
Chuck Stetson is a NY investment banker and board member. He founded Bible Literacy Project, which compiled a textbook based on Bible to be used in schools: “there are references to the Bible in Shakespeare, so if they don’t know the references, they won’t learn Shakespeare.” Grandfather made his money with Coca Cola, railroads and JPMorgan and was very friendly with Prescott Bush. Stetson the younger went to Yale at the same time as W and Kerry.
Ken VonKohorn is a board member and chair of the board of Family Institute of CT, which is conservative religious, not just Catholic. He’s a money manager in Westport, CT and has written for AEI. Robert George is on this board as well.
Luis Tellez is a board member and head of the Witherspoon Institute (winst.org), which publishes thepublicdiscourse.com, fundamental and conservative writing on religion and politics. Also hosts http://princetonprinciples.org/, a discussion of “Marriage and the Public Good.”
Matt Holland is a board member and and a professor of PoliSci at Brigham Young University
Thanks, Tom, for posting this. It’s very helpful.
Anyone else up for pushing for a ban on all robocalls without an opt-in (i.e., if you ask a company to call you, such as to arrange an appointment to install cable tv at your house, they may robocall you) in the state of VT?
I’m uncomfortable with this. It seems akin to banning people from knocking on your door. There is no legal requirement to open the door for a canvasser. A phone call seems comparable (frankly, so does an email). And I think the two can (and should) be similarly regulated (e.g. no calling/canvassing after 9PM, etc).
There is a free speech issue here. Sometimes free speech issues mean the annoying people get to be annoying if the concept is to mean anything.
Please spend time and energy on other more important things, like recruiting more and better candidates and supporting your legislators and cajoling others on the fence. The time spent trying to ban robocalls on the eve of such an important vote is time wasted. At this late point, these calls are water off a duck.
Rep. Tom Stevens
…but I just went to the NOM site http://www.nationformarriage.org and gave them a piece of my mind about their bigoted, hateful & unchristian stance on marriage equality. If they’re gonna robocall Vermonters, then maybe Vermonters should flood their inbox!
Got nothing but voice mail, but found out they have offices in RI, NJ & Cal and a “national office”. I told them to remove my # from their call base or I’ll sue next time. And I will. đŸ™‚
I got this call to contact one of my Reps.
He said he’s gotten quite a few calls:
Excellent!