The Shuster Project

Tobacco Industry Fraud & False Claims Issues

Click HERE To Read Our Letter Sent to Senator Kerry's Presidential Campaign

Below is The Shuster Project’s FINAL response to this odd bunch and to the admission made by Jeff Bowman that the GiveMeLiberty.com bunch culls and steals people’s email signatures off of private petitions and God knows where else simply in order to mass-email their SPAM invitations to the greatest number of people GiveMeLiberty.com feels would be “most receptive" to their message.

Stealing people’s email addresses off of online instruments such as Petitions or other private materials is both illegal and unethical.

Kind of gives you a hint about the nature of this GiveMeLiberty.com web site and it’s “leaders,” doesn’t it?

Dear Jeff and Bob,

I believe I also am beginning to see what is happening here.

Oh, and Bob, I'm not any "Tom, Dick or Harry" that wants or needs anything from you, I assure you.

It was your unresearched and unsolicited spam/invitation to your February function that resulted in the qualifying process we employed in order to determine whether to participate or not.

Oh, and Bob, where can I read your proposed legislation that provides sweeping address, corrections to and empowers recovery of vast and numerous and various corporate income tax fraud and sales tax fraud?

The answer to your ridiculous question to me, Bob, can be found in our Bill before the Connecticut legislature, (HB6942), representing the beginning our of legislative proposals to address the very issues/question you so coarsely chose to word to me:

                               http://rxshuster.org/cthousebill.htm

I'm well aware, Jeff, of the petition you refer to.

It was yet another unsolicited invitation sent to The Shuster Project and, upon my review, I was more than happy to assist in that matter and signed it.

I am signatory #16908.

It is the policy of The Shuster Project to NEVER harvest the names or email addresses of ANY individual or organization from ANY online petition, Form or other electronic instrument as that is recognized as a clear and blatant violation of recognized, responsible and credible Internet protocols.

The Shuster Project has generated approximately 12 Petitions, thusfar, at the "E-The People.com" web site, with one presently in circulation at this time, and we have NEVER directly contacted any of the signatories to those petitions beyond providing them with our contact information and web site links within the body of the Petition itself.

If you were so careful in your selection of those petitions on the Internet that you admit to harvesting email addresses from, then assume that the people on the other end of those harvested email addresses "would most likely be receptive to our

message" and then you issue unsolicited invitations to your function(s) from that harvest and one of those organizations reviews that invitation, finds some disagreement with but also finds some common ground with your stated goals upon reviewing your own web site, then that organization "redefines" the scope of their potential contribution(s) to your effort in February and is then excluded from providing that meaningful and substantive contribution, we continue to be unable to fathom, here, exactly how the unacceptable practice of harvesting email addresses and issuing unsolicited invitations to your function(s) affects, or has any influence on or in, your decision to exclude The Shuster Project from making a brief yet significant presentation at the February 17th event.

Having been contracted for my marketing and management skills by various Fortune 500 companies, I am well aware of the "numbers" game relative to contacting people with the intent to sell them something.

If you make 20 calls a day, 5 days a week, you will wind up with 100 contacts of which 20 will be potential leads and of which you should successfully close 5 people or more on the "sale."

To generate an unsolicited email to a harvested email address, however, under any circumstances, is a serious matter and always viewed as "Spam" or "spamming" and is grounds to have your Internet Service Provider remove your directories from their servers, effectively shutting you down.

Because The Shuster Project has not, does not and will never engage in that practice it is an issue that will never come before us.

Although I receive upwards of 50+ emails per day with many of them being just that kind of unsolicited requests not all that unsimilar to your own blind, unresearched, unsolicited invitation to us, I am quite patient in receiving such a large volume of unsolicited requests such as yours and review each one upon their merit and "first impression" sincerity.

Many of the groups that contact us have yet to achieve the level of acceptance, credibility and recognized leadership and awards that we have, but I remember our humble beginnings, our high ideals to which we have remained loyal and honest to while we reached out to national organizations, national leaders, politicians and other legitimate recipients to the correspondence describing the work we were doing and the assistance we had asked from them.

Our strength(s) and our credibility is/are in the considerable scope of our work.

The Shuster Project receives in excess of 2,500+ "unique" and unsolicited visitors to our web site each month that view/generate over 7,000 page hits per month that are not reflected in our counter, that is configured to accurately record and reflect only unique and individual visits.

It would be to our advantage to do what most other web sites do, that is to configure their counters to reflect each and every page hit, thus skewing the count in an attempt to portray a greater visitor rate than is legitimate.

We knew, even at the time our web site was under construction, that we were going to stick to our plans to always follow the correct and legitimate protocols of Internet behavior so as to provide and lend the leadership and credibility standards other activist cause web sites could follow and learn from.

The Shuster Project continues to be successful in building responsible consensus and coalitions despite knowing that much work remains before us despite the many idealogical differences between ourselves and the vast numbers of organizations we are working with.

Of our recognized successes, many lay in working to always find common ground and build from there.

The bridges we have built and continue to build over many differences between ourselves and many groups, organizations and individuals are quite numerous now.

I have spoken enough with you in this matter and I have taken enough time on the matter of the February 17th event from my already hectic schedule as we are now preparing to soon launch video presentations into our web site, in addition to the audio PC-Talk Shows that we already provide.

The reason Jeffersonian-themed organizations and web sites consistently fall short and seemingly always miss the mark is always apparent to everyone else but those Jeffersonian-themed organizations and web sites.

When one of them finally realizes that in order to be successful, to build credible, responsible, legitimate and recognized consensus and coalition(s) so as to be accepted and embraced by the very audience(s) you seek to be "receptive" to your message, try not to continue killing those messengers not from your own flock.

Try setting aside petty ego, try finding common ground with those organizations you trip upon and then build upon those foundations.

I will debate this issue no further, another Jeffersonian trait that can be quite tiresome when this needless exchange has taken far more of my time than making my brief but significant presentation on February 17th would have taken.

This issue on this matter before me is now closed and be advised I will respond no further in this area should you seek to continue correspondence in this matter.

Although this is the last correspondence you shall receive on this matter from me or from anyone at The Shuster Project, please feel free to keep in touch but not in this matter, ever again, unless it is to reverse your decision to exclude us from making a brief but significant presentation on February 17th.

This is my final and direct issuance in this matter.

This web site is equipped with the "Get 1 on 1" guest response system.
If I am in my office, you can contact me in "real time."
If I am out of my office you will be prompted to send me an e-mail.
I will get back to you as quickly as I can.