You Know All Those Obamaphones You've Paid For? You're About To Pay For ObamaSMARTPhones...

According to this, if you're a taxpayer, you're about to get screwed again.  But if you're a person who gets one of those Obamaphones?  You're about to be as delighted as this young lady:

The FCC is "proposing to expand its Lifeline program to help subsidize Internet service for low-income Americans."  It's a $1.7 billion program, and Republicans are against it, naturally, because there's a crap-ton of "waste and inefficiencies" in it.

I'll wait over here while you stop being shocked at the government wasting your hard-earned money.

The update has been made a "priority" now, because it needs to "adapt to current technology."  Basically, we're talking about upgrades to smartphones, y'all.  

Yep:

One senior FCC official noted...that studies have shown smartphone use is popular with low-income individuals. 

You think they're popular with low-income individuals, FCC?  Really?

I'm super-hoping that they used taxpayer money to do the studies to figure THAT genius information out, because wow.

But at least they're making some reforms to the program:

The commission will ask if establishing a "neutral third party administrator" would be better than having telecom companies handling sensitive customer information they would not otherwise have. The commission will also ask if the overall program should be capped with a budget. 

In the meantime, the proposal would require providers to maintain customers' eligibility information to help with oversight. The proposal would also require companies to retain records for 10 years. 

It's such a huge relief that these customers won't have any of their private information shared with anyone, and I can't believe there is a commission that has to ASK if the program should HAVE A BUDGET.

This is why we can't have nice things ("we" meaning taxpayers...the folks in this program will more than likely get killer smartphones...you know).  

Just thought I'd let y'all know that when you're busy getting ready to go back to work tomorrow (some of us work seven days a week, who am I kidding?), you need to really get fired up and put some pep in that step.  There's a person out there that is depending on you to get them a really awesome smartphone sometime in the near future.

YAY YOU!

Via: Chicks on the RIght

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Maybe Pain Will Teach You Millenials Not To Vote For Your Own Serfdom

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You Millenials voted for Obama by amargin of 28 percent, which will make it a lot easier for me to accept the benefits you will be paying for. We warned you that liberalism was a scam designed to take the fruits of your labor and transfer it to us, the older, established generation. Oh, and also to the couch-dwelling, Democrat-voting losers who live off of food stamps and order junk from QVC with their Obamaphones.

You didn’t listen to us. Maybe you’ll listen to pain.

I have been told that being hard on you Millennials will turn you against conservatism, that I should offer you a positive, hopeful message that avoids the touchy problem of your manifest stupidity.

No. There’s no sugar-coating it – your votes for Democrats have ensured that you are the first generation in American history that will fail to exceed what their parents attained. Embracing liberalism was a stupid thing to do, done for the stupidest of reasons, and I will now let you subsidize my affluent lifestyle without a shred of guilt.

I’m a 48 year old trial lawyer living on the coast in California – I should have “Hope and Change” tattooed on my glutes. I’d have an excuse to be lib-curious, but you Millennials? Why do you support an ideology that pillages you to pay-off Democrat constituencies? Your time in the indoctrination factories of academia trained you in a form of “critical thinking” that is neither. Somehow, you came to embrace the bizarre notion that conservatives are psychotic Jesus freaks who want to Footloosisze America into a land of mandatory Sunday school and no dancing.

Via: TownHall

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District of Columbia mayor proclaims ‘Lifeline Awareness Week’

OBAMAPHONES FOR EVERYONE

District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray has proclaimed the second week in September to be “District of Columbia Lifeline Awareness Week” in an effort to sign up more people for taxpayer-funded phones.

“[T]he Lifeline Assistance programs offer tremendous benefits for eligible consumers in America which help make basic telephone services more affordable and provide a discount to eligible low-income customers,” Gray wrote in his proclamation.

The Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia, an independent agency that regulates D.C. utilities, announced the Lifeline awareness week Thursday.

“The goal of the Public Service Commission is to sign up as many eligible District consumers as possible,” Commissioner Joanne Doddy Fort said in a statement. “We hope that by raising awareness of the Lifeline Program, we can ensure that the District’s Economy II Service Program can reach more consumers. In today’s highly interconnected world, no one should be left out.”

In D.C. the Lifeline Program is known as Economy II Service and under the federal and local program District residents who participate or are eligible for certain public assistance programs are able to receive phone service through Verizon’s Economy II Service as a discounted rate of $3.00 a month or, for seniors, $1.00 a month plus applicable fees.

The Lifeline Program, which is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has come under criticism from Republicans recently as the program’s cost has more than doubled, from $822 million in 2008 (when the FCC expanded the program to subsidize cell phones) to $2 billion in 2012, leading some to label the phones provided though the program “Obamaphones.”

“This phone program has expanded far beyond its original intent, and as so many middle class Americans struggle underneath this economy, it is really offensive for Washington to make taxpayers pay for free cell phones for others,” Louisiana Republican Sen. Davis Vitter said in a statement earlier this year introducing a bill with Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe to end the mobile phone service subsidy in the Lifeline Program.

In August, a National Review reporter revealed in an article how she ended up receiving three taxpayer subsidized cell phones, despite being well off and upfront about her ineligibility. According to the author, as recently as June there were 13.8 million active Lifeline subscriptions.

Via: Daily Caller

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Free Govt. Cell Phones Will Create Jobs for Latinos

A fraud-infested government program that gives low-income populations free cell phones should expand in Hispanic communities because it will help bolster employment rates, according to a powerful Latino rights group working to save the program as Congress considers killing it.

The controversial cell phone giveaway, known as Lifeline Assistance, has grown immensely under President Obama and in fact has become known as “Obama Phones.” It went from costing American taxpayers $819 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2012, according to figures provided to an Idaho newspaper by one of its U.S. Senators.

The money is collected nationwide from paying telephone customers and redistributed in the form of subsidies. Like all bloated government giveaways, this one has gotten out of control and is rife with fraud and abuse. Now lawmakers are scrutinizing it and some are using their legislative power to pull the plug, or at least cut the Obama Phone craze.

There are three bills pending in Congress that seek to nix the Lifeline program. The threat has created a big frenzy among leftist groups that claim the free government cell phones are crucial to the livelihood of many poor communities. Some powerful organizations have taken it a step further, actually pushing to expand Lifeline by asserting that it’s essential to survival.

For instance the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights group, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), says that millions of Hispanic households in the U.S. depend on the wireless lifeline phones for work, health and safety. Killing or restricting the program, which LULAC itself refers to as “Obamaphone,” would hurt some 7 million Hispanics, the group says.  

LULAC’s executive director, Brent Wilkes, actually claimed in a recent news conference that Lifeline services could help create jobs for Hispanics, which he says are “under-enrolled” in the federal program. “Whether the focus is jobs, health or public safety, wireless Lifeline is critical to millions of low income Hispanics,” Wilkes says. Maintaining a sustainable wireless Lifeline program will allow pool Latinos to “better their lives,” he added.

To back up these claims, LULAC cites a preposterous study that says a wireless phone can play a key role in getting a job. The academic who conducted the study says in a LULAC press release that the free government phones are an important economic tool and a real key to jobs and incomes for poor Americans.

Via: Judicial Watch

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