My family just goes for the caller ID option. It's only something like $1/month extra, and we can not pick up if the ID shows as "Unknown Name / Unknown Number" (almost always telemarketers), or a certain family member that always asks for money we don't have...
I don't think creating and maintaining the list will be as much government bloat as some of you have been saying, either. Everything I've seen about it involves those wanting to telemarket to buy the list every quarter, and paying enormous fines if they call a number on it. That should be more than enough to pay for the list's maintainance. And if the exemption thing that was mentioned below is true (I truly hope it isn't...), then that would be more government income from Someone Else, meaning (in theory) less taxes (or more money to some politician's pet (pork) project).
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Originally posted by Krsqk:
I envision something like most neighboring states have worked out with each other regarding state income taxes. It's a fairly complicated system, but it shows that states can actually work together and get something accomplished with the proper motivation. Unfortunately, the proper motivation in that example is money, and lots of it. Maybe if we pushed the fines high enough, we could make it worthwhile to get along (and even see a tax cut here and there--yeah, right ).
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There's one small problem with this... the arrangements between neighboring states are between neighboring states. So one state only really has to deal with a few other nearby states in that situation. With telemarketers, it's each state making deals with every other state (that's 49), not to mention US Territories (don't know how many here), and foreign countries. I'm sorry, but the individual states are not capable of handling that, and the conflicting rules and regulations will be a nightmare. The lawyers will love it, of course...
Telemarketing to cell phones is a big problem too. It would definitely make me very angry to be charged for someone else to have the privledge to advertise their crappy product over my cell. That hasn't happened to me (yet)... but I think I'll look into my service plan and see if there's a (simple) way to charge the caller for unsolicited calls.