He’s in landline hell. So who should he call about a faulty do not call registry?

“Hi, I’m Liza from Spectrum,” says the woman on the phone in an upbeat voice. “Are you tired of paying high bills for telephone and TV service?”

I hear that two or three times a day, surely a thousand times by now. I am a trifle bored with Liza, even irritated. So far in this call, the scam people have wasted no paid human labor. The gougers use a recorded American voice to conserve their own big bucks. It is only my labor, and perhaps yours, that is wasted.

Big-time scammers abhor blowing even cheap foreign labor on calls that victims hang up on. First they use Liza to get you or me on the line. Then the voice says, “Just press one to speak with a live agent.” I punch it, and a weary voice surfaces from across the globe speaking halfway decent English.

“Hello, we can save you money on TV and lots more.” This time it’s a real — if impoverished — foreign worker in India, the Philippines, Nigeria, maybe Indonesia. He or she slaves away in a boiler room call center with dozens more wage slaves, their foreign accents yammering in the background.

It’s a great way for the crooks to defraud us while aggravating countless millions more worldwide. Spam calls flood in from across the globe, but my Ooma land line often reports the source as Bonner Springs, Lee’s Summit, Topeka, Wichita, Great Bend, North Kansas City, Le Cygne.

“This is a courtesy call from AT and T and Direct TV,” the next one spiels from my phone. “We’re running a promotion…”

In 2003 Congress passed a law creating the do not call registry, listing telephone numbers of families demanding that telemarketers not contact them. I signed up that year and just verified I am still on the books. Yet fake calls now overpower by 10 to 1 the rare call from a friend. I am about to give up my Ooma landline.

“The FTC takes aggressive legal action to make sure telemarketers abide by the Do Not Call Registry,” says the Federal Trade Commission website. “To date, the Commission has brought 151 enforcement actions against companies and telemarketers…the agency has recovered over $178 million in civil penalties and $112 million in restitution or disgorgement.”

Less than $200 million over 20 years: It’s chump change for intruders who make landline use unbearable. Not much of a problem, some “experts” say, since only about one-third of Americans even have landline phones. But now for me it’s my cellphone as well. As I write this, I just took a cell call supposedly from an American health care company, although the federal government ban on cellphone intrusion is stiffer than that for landlines

Those “experts” also say that since the calls come mainly from overseas, it is technically impossible to stop them. Really? Our astronauts landed on the moon 54 years ago and then returned to Earth. Our robots crawl all over the planet Mars and send back home movies. Our scientists devised a COVID vaccine only months after the pandemic started. Why is our government so pitifully helpless to stop intrusive calls?

How about banning major imports from countries where the calls originate, maybe pearls or textiles from India? How about American law enforcement offer help to those nations in closing down their boiler rooms? How about a jail sentence of one month for actual callers, plus a million dollar fine and 10 years imprisonment for big-shots running the scam? Above all, abolish the barriers behind which American politicians hunker down to dodge fake calls. Let’s be sure our congress people, senators and the president get their full share of intrusions.

Incidentally, websites tell me I should never verbally fight back, because then intruders will know I am a human to be exploited behind this number. But, hey, excuse me for a moment: My house phone is ringing. I lever myself up from the chair and limp across to say hello.

“Hi, I am Natalie, calling from the business lending department,“ says a sexy-sounding female voice. “How are you?”

Mad as hell actually, but I listen a moment longer before pressing the number one. When a real human answers from across the world asking how I am today, I say, “Just fine.” Then I lay the phone down and walk away from the chirpy little voice, hoping to waste just a trifle of their time, as Liza and Natalie have wasted mine.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.