\nA friend just popped up on IM to tell me quite a story…<\/p>\n
*my friend*: hey, you there??<\/p>\n
*my friend*: you won’t believe what just happened to me. I called Ted Leiu’s office this morning (our state sen here in El Seg <\/i>[actually an Assembly member…A.L.]) to complain about the new budget bill. The woman on the phone was totally dismissive of me and literally hung up on me. So i called her back to ask her if she hung up on me. i made standard comments about how she worked for the people and that was no way to treat people who have an opinion. She asked me for my name, address and phone number and i gave them willingly.<\/p>\n
*my friend*: Just now, a uniformed CHP officer showed up at my door to ask me some questions about the call. Ted Leiu’s office called the CHP and said that i was some sort of danger. When asked if i had been aggressive or used profane language, they said no, but we are worried about him. So the CHP officer, who was very nice and totally understood my position, said that since they turned in a complaint, he had to follow up on it. And that the visit would require a notation in their files about the visit.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
*my friend*: the reason i had called to begin with was to tell Ted Leiu that I was strongly considering moving out of the state based on this new budget and the lack of seriousness in Sac. Now, i am really thinking about it<\/p>\n
*me*: I’m here….<\/p>\n
*me*: reading…one sec<\/p>\n
*me*: that’s fricking outrageous…<\/p>\n
*my friend*: yeah. kinda funny but really kind of scary<\/p>\n
*me*: worse than that….<\/p>\n
*me*: gut check…you can be intense<\/p>\n
*me*: what was your affect on the phone??<\/p>\n
*my friend*: the cop even told me that he asked them if i was threatening or profane and they said no.<\/p>\n
*me*: wow…that’s outrageous…<\/p>\n
*my friend*: i was pissed off when the woman hung up on me and i called back to ask if she had done that. i used the old line about, “Don’t you work for the people?” and i think that pissed her off<\/p>\n
*me*: tough<\/p>\n
*me*: she needs thicker skin<\/p>\n
*my friend*: i was not mean or rude but i was angry that i was being dismissed<\/p>\n
*my friend*: i really think it is time to leave. i dont want to be the “last jew out of prague”<\/p>\n
*my friend*: when you see a large CHP officer at the door asking if you are the one who called your senator’s office, that is scary <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’ll restate my real-time reaction – that’s fricking outrageous. I’ve sent an email off to Lieu’s office and will post any response I get.<\/p>\n
But here are the facts as I know them. A fellow constituent – I’m in Lieu’s district as well – calls to register his unhappiness with the new budget (I’m working on a post about it – personally, I think it’s a pretty good one under the circumstances, and disagree with my friend), and feels blown off by the person whose job it is to listen to him and communicate his views. She hangs up on him, and when he calls her back to challenge her on her behavior, she uses the power of the state to send an armed state law officer calling on my friend.<\/p>\n
Absent some pretty significant bad behavior by my friend – and I’m guessing he’s honest enough with me that in a personal communication like the one above, he’d have acknowledged it – there is simply no excuse whatsoever for this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Assemblyman Ted Lieu’s office just called the police on a constituent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}