Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 89, Ed. 1 Sunday, October 30, 2016 Page: 5 of 40
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STATE
5A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Sunday, October 30, 2016
New tools offer help to fight robocalls
he federal government
unleashed new consumer
tools to fight robocalls
and illegal telemarketers
Wednesday — and offered plans
to make sure more tools are
man Tom Wheeler presided at
the meeting Wednesday at FCC
headquarters in Washington,
D.C.
it said. “The phone companies
should take immediate actions
by offering their customers the
best call-blocking protection
currently available.”
Consumers Union released
an analysis showing that many
phone companies’ tools are in-
adequate. Traditional landline
and wireless customers have the
weakest choices, the group
found.
F
T
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Stephenson is having the
busiest week of his long career.
On Saturday night, his AT&T
megacorp announced the in-
tended purchase of Time Wam-
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Email: watchdog@dallasnews.com
Call: 214-977-2952
Write: Dave Lieber, P.0. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265
coming.
A new website shows what
major phone carriers are doing
and what you can do to block
unwanted phone calls (meet
fcc.gov/unwanted-calls).
The government made clear
that customers should be able to
give phone companies permis-
sion to block unwanted calls.
The government also wants
consumers to have a better se-
lection of call blockers and fil-
ters.
Dave Lieber
er.
Wheeler, who created the
quick-hit strike force and
named Stephenson chairman,
teased the AT&T leader during
the meeting:
“As I read in the press,” the
FCC chairman told Stephenson,
“you haven’t stopped your day
job, Randall.”
The task force includes all the
major phone carriers, along
with high-tech giants Google,
Facebook, Apple, Blackberry,
Charter, Comcast, Microsoft
and others.
Consumers Union, the na-
tion’s leading organizer in the
fight against illegal phone calls,
is on the task force representing
consumers.
The consumers group re-
leased a statement after the
meeting calling the venture, so
far, ‘half a loaf, if that.”
“Consumers need relief now,”
THE WATCHDOG
The specifics
Strike Force results, so far,
are impressive, especially for a
government venture. The speed,
two months from creation to ini-
tial report, is unusual for the
feds. Wheeler demanded a fast
start. He got it.
Recommendations
make it somewhat harder for
crooks to slide through an un-
checked system. Among the
strike force’s doings:
■ Make it easier for law en-
forcement to trace makers of the
illegal calls.
■ Work to make caller ID
more accurate and less able to be
spoofed.
■ Create information-shar-
ing systems across the industry
about crooks’ identities.
FCC Commissioner Michael
O'Rielly said he wants to target
“the criminal element. They
should be our true targets.”
Another FCC commissioner,
Jessica Rosenworcel, said to
hold off on any applause.
“It’s not enough,” the FCC
commish said. “No ‘mission ac-
complished’ until the calls stop.”
“If you need to break things
to get this done, just ask,” she
said. ‘We will help you.”
The group meets again in six
months, with the goal being full
implementation within 20
months.
Bottom line: You won’t see an
immediate halt to the calls, but if
this works, millions of Ameri-
cans will notice a difference.
The Robocall Strike Force
was created after the consumer
group — reading a Watchdog in-
terview with Stephenson earlier
this year — learned that Ste-
phenson claimed he didn’t have
permission from the govern-
ment to stop unwanted calls.
Wheeler disagreed and named
the committee, putting Ste-
phenson on top.
“We’ve come a long way in
60 days,” Stephenson told the
gathering Wednesday. “We
have a long way to go. I recog-
nize that.”
He said robocalls are his No. 1
complaint, too, but, “I’m not get-
ting those IRS calls anymore.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,”
he added to laughter in the
room. “I’ll probably be target-
It worked
During a trial run of Do Not
Originate in September, the
Federal Communications Com-
mission says, it stopped 90 per-
cent of spoofed IRS scam calls
using the new setup. Praise the
Lord.
will
Another innovation coming:
the “Do Not Originate List” — a
next-generation version perhaps
of the failed Do No Call list Under
Do Not Originate, designated
high-profile phone numbers
would never be allowed to make
outbound calls, only receive them.
Why this works: Phone
numbers for the IRS, for exam-
ple, would go on the Do Not
Originate list so crooks could
never pretend to be calling from
those numbers by spoofing cal-
ler ID.
Plans also were announced
to make it a little easier for law
enforcement to go after crooked
callers and to trace the origina-
tors of the illegal calls. Double
amen on that.
All in all, it was a successful
rollout of promised innovation
and teamwork from the two-
month-old Robocall Strike
Force. The joint industry-gov-
ernment group is led by AT&T
chief executive Randall Ste-
phenson, who with FCC Chair-
Check out The Watchdog on
Mondays onNBC5 at 11:20 a.m.
talking about matters impor-
tant to you.
ed.’
BRIEFLY
ACROSS THE STATE
HP
cems about the management of
his father’s finances since his
death.
thur is in foreclosure, expensive
jewelry is missing and various
bills have gone unpaid.
The judge removed Chinara
Butler, Pimp C’s widow, at a
court hearing Wednesday.
— The Associated Press
Beaumont
Administrator removed
w
A Texas judge has removed
the widow of rapper Pimp C as
the administrator of his estate
after the rapper’s son raised con-
The Beaumont Enterprise
reports an attorney for Chad
Butler Jr., the rapper’s son, told a
judge Pimp C’s home in Port Ar-
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-S
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Eileen Vanous, 84, is a life-
long member of St. Paul and
treasurer of the fundraising
campaign.
‘We’re going to do this. We
cannot let this building go
down,” she told the Waco Tri-
bune-Herald. “Some say it
would never fall down, but we
can’t take that chance, and there
is no way we were going to aban-
don it.”
The exterior of St. Paul re-
mains illuminated at night, and
a guest book resides inside for
those who can’t resist recording
their visit.
a local contractor, Don Barrett,
who has worked with me on
projects at the Dr Pepper Muse-
um for 25 years. I asked him if he
was interested in getting in-
volved in another older, historic
structure, and he was agreeable.
It was then we began to brain-
storm.”
They recruited the assistance
of John Rogers, a structural en-
gineer in Waco, and Greaves
met last week at the church with
Michael Robb, a representative
of the Texas Historical Commis-
sion. Greaves said he gave Robb
the grand tour and hopes he can
assist St. Paul in finding funding
sources.
By Mike Copeland
Waco Tribune-Herald
MARLIN (AP) - A 97-year-
old church building just outside
the Falls County seat of Marlin
speaks to the artistic soul of pho-
tographers and artists from
around the country who pause
to capture its image.
But St. Paul United Church
of Christ has a secret that pass-
ers-by know nothing about,
something that threatens its fu-
ture, has rallied its small congre-
gation to action and has become
an obsession for Waco architect
B. J. “Billy” Greaves, who thinks
he was meant to come to the
church’s rescue.
Shifting ground now firmly
hugs the walls of the building’s
basement, squeezing them like a
vise and putting the entire
wooden structure in jeopardy.
When the soil becomes wet from
rainfall, water seeps through
cracks in those walls. But with-
out those faults, pressure would
build to a point at which the bar-
riers likely would explode.
A pump removes moisture
that builds up in the basement,
the process begins again, and
decades have passed without a
permanent solution.
Most Sunday mornings, 10 to
15 people show up to worship at
St. Paul United Church of
Christ, which was founded in
1894 by German immigrants.
But now that small group must
raise more than $300,000 to
rescue their longtime spiritual
home, their ‘beacon on the hill”
as they call it. Armed with bake
sales, quilt raffles, letter-writing
campaigns and grant requests
aimed at entities such as the Tex-
as Historical Commission, they
vow to get it done for themselves
and for St. Paul’s past.
After all, these are descen-
dants of the church body that
saw lightning splinter a church
steeple in 1914 and raised money
after World War I to repair it.
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But installing a system to
support the building’s structural
integrity is another matter, one
that requires divine intervention
and an angel such as Greaves.
For the past three years, he has
taken it upon himself to study
the problem from every angle
and recruit the help of builders
and engineers to prepare a game
plan.
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“A couple I go to church with
at First Baptist Waco were just
riding around in the country-
side, spotted the church and
went over for a closer look,”
Greaves said. “They ran into a
couple of members of the con-
gregation, got to talking to them
about the church and asked how
it was doing. They were told
there were significant issues
with the building and they really
didn’t know what to do or who to
turn to for help. My friends told
them they knew an architect
who might be of assistance.”
Enter Greaves, who set up an
appointment to tour the church,
which he soon discovered was
home to a congregation with
limited financial means but a lot
of heart.
“Being a person of faith, I
don’t put much stock in coinci-
dences. I think things are guided
to happen, and I felt this was a
worthy project for me to get in-
volved in,” he said. “I talked with
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 89, Ed. 1 Sunday, October 30, 2016, newspaper, October 30, 2016; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1127421/m1/5/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .