downdb.net

Ah, Chuck Schumer.

My former Senator has, unsurprisingly, found yet another excuse for some grandstanding. According to the Washington Independent:

To discourage businesses from outsourcing their operator services, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is proposing legislation to tax businesses that set up help lines overseas. The levy, under Schumer’s bill, would be a quarter-cent per call.

Generally speaking, I find it difficult to take seriously much of anything that issues from Schumer’s mouth, press office, or his multitude of press conferences. He picks obvious, easy targets, and then chases them with pointless legislation that usually doesn’t go anywhere.

In this case, I find myself even more skeptical than usual. Schumer’s got a real twofer here: everybody loves to bitch and moan about call centers (they’re like the Postal Service in this regard), and hey, who doesn’t hate out-sourcing? Trouble is, making it more expensive for companies to use overseas call centers isn’t going to make those companies open call centers in the U.S. It’s going to make them even more enthusiastic than they already are to phase out human interaction altogether.

Instead of using your offensively fake Indian accent (HILARIOUS!) to complain about the customer rep you talked to, now you’ll get to complain about having to navigate an endlessly branching automated phone system.