To Read Our Complaint and other Materials

To read our letter to the CAC members, addressing the issues below.

Teletruth received an annonymous letter in the mail today. It was postmarked on 12/13/04. Inside the envelope was a copy of an email from Shirley Rooker, chairman of the Consumer Advisory Committee. I scanned a copy of the email which is attached.As you know, Teletruth was removed from the CAC list on 12/10/04, so we never received a copy of the email.

From: Sent- To: Subject: Shirley Rooker [shirley@califoraction.org] Monday, December 13, 2004 9:23 AM Consumer Advisory Committee FW: Post article El footer.txt (330 B) Hi, a number of you have been expressing interest and questions about the Post article. Perhaps I can add some clarification. I spoke with Pearlstein the day before the article was published. I gave him the facts, which he chose to ignore. For example, in the article he starts out by writing about the telecom industry and states that over one third of the CAC members are representatives of this industry. Pearlstein, in conversation with me, stated that his number of 12 (out of 35) counted all industry members, including WGBH and Hamilton Relay Service. Some of you have questioned why industry should be represented. Under federal guidelines, there is a requirement that a federal advisory committee be "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed." Scott Marshall can provide you detailed information on the makeup of the group, if you are interested. The column states that the CAC is a consensus organization. That is not so and I told him that several times. However, he chose to write otherwise. We have specifically provided for minority as well as majority opinions. Public records, if he had examined them, indicate that differing opinions can be expressed to the Commission. The impetus for this article came from Bruce Kushnick who is a colleague of CAC member Tom Allibone of TeleTruth. Kushnick sent Pearlstein draft copies of reports from two of the working groups that indicated they could not reach consensus. A consensus was not a requirement for either of these working groups. TeleTruth, has both the www.teletruth.org and www.teletruth.com domain names but generally uses org. even though it is a for profit company. I reviewed several of its submissions to the FCC and the org domain name was used in all of them as it was in his email to Pearlstein. While there are no specific laws governing the use of this designation, it has traditionally been used by nonprofits, and in the mind of the public indicates the organization is a nonprofit. ~ If you have any questions or concerns please contact me. Happy Holidays. Shirley Rooker 1