Posted on 01/29/2012 8:56:46 PM PST by blam
Outrageous! The Government Is Giving Out Free Cell Phones And Free Cell Phone Minutes To Welfare Recipients
Michael Snyder
January 29, 2012
Did you know that the federal government is giving out free cell phones and free cell phone minutes to welfare recipients? It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Right now, there are companies that are running advertisements specifically targeted at low income Americans informing them of the fact that all they have to do is sign up and they can get a free cell phone and hundreds of free cell phone minutes every single month and it will all be paid for by the federal government. Some have referred to this as "The Obama Phone", but that is not exactly accurate.
The outrageous federal programs that are paying for this were initiated before Barack Obama entered the White House. But the fact that welfare recipients have been receiving free cell phones and free cell phone minutes under both the Bush and Obama administrations has been confirmed as being true by Snopes. All of this is paid for by "the federal Universal Service Fund". That is one of those annoying little taxes that you may have noticed on your phone bill. So what is essentially happening is the federal government is taking money from all of us so that they can provide free cell phone service for welfare recipients every single month.
When some of my readers informed me of this free cell phone scheme, I decided that I better go to the source. So I went over to the FCC website, and it turns out that there are two federal programs involved. "Link Up" provides a one-time connection discount on phone service, and it can be applied to the cost of a cell phone. So this is where the free cell phone comes from. "Lifeline" provides a monthly discount on telephone service. So this is where the free cell phone minutes each month come from. The following is a description of these programs from the FCC website....
What Benefits are Available Under the Lifeline and Link Up Programs?
Lifeline provides discounts on one basic monthly telephone service (wireline or wireless) for qualified subscribers. These discounts can be up to $10.00 per month, depending on your state. Federal rules prohibit qualifying low-income consumers from receiving more than ONE Lifeline service at the same time. That is, qualifying low-income consumers may receive a Lifeline discount on either a home telephone or wireless telephone service, but may not receive a Lifeline discount on both services at the same time. Lifeline also includes Toll Limitation Service, which enables a telephone subscriber to limit the amount of long distance calls that can be made from a telephone. Link Up Up provides qualified subscribers with a one-time discount (up to a maximum of $30) off of the initial installation fee for one traditional, wireline telephone service at the primary residence or the activation fee for one wireless telephone.
It also allows subscribers to pay the remaining amount they owe on a deferred schedule, interest-free. Federal rules prohibit qualifying low-income consumers from receiving more than ONE Link Up discount at a primary residence. That is, qualifying low-income consumers may receive a Link Up discount on installation or activation charges associated with either a home telephone or wireless telephone service. Apparently these programs are becoming quite popular.
You can find a company called Safelink Wireless offering welfare recipients a free cell phone and 250 free cell phone minutes a month right here.
You can find a company called Assurance Wireless offering welfare recipients a program that is virtually identical right here.
This is absolutely outrageous, and it is yet another sign that dependence on the government is totally out of control.
Not that assisting the poor is bad. Of course we always want to help those that cannot help themselves. We never want to see anyone go without daily food or sleep in the streets.
But providing the poor with the basics of life is much different from providing them with luxuries such as cell phones.
In some areas of the country, the poor can also receive nearly free Internet service every single month.
Just check out the following example from the Houston Chronicle....
When Comcast acquired NBC Universal earlier this year, an FCC-mandated requirement was that the cable giant offer cheap Internet access to low-income households. Comcast is making good on the mandate through a new program called Internet Essentials.
Families who qualify will be able to sign up for 1.5-Mbps Internet access – the same download speed as AT&T’s basic DSL service – for just $9.95 a month. Customers may also be eligible for a computer that costs just $150 and free Internet training.
Also, a new bill has been introduced in Congress that would give "eligible" households money to help pay for gasoline....
Low-Income Gasoline Assistance Program Act - Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to states to establish emergency assistance programs to pay eligible households for the purchase of gasoline. These days, as long as you are "eligible", just about everything you need will either be purchased for you or subsidized by the federal government.
Yes, we will always need programs to help take care of the poor, but some of the things that go on today are absolutely outrageous.
There are millions of people out there that have become extremely comfortable receiving government benefits and it will be extremely difficult to ever get them to give them up.
After all, why bust your behind for 40 or 50 hours a week at some meaningless, low paying job when you can live a similar lifestyle by just depending on government benefits?
The following is a rap video that shows the kind of mindset that is developing all across America. Please be advised that it contains some very strong language. It was done by a rapper known as "Mr. EBT", and it is a perfect example of the kind of attitude that many welfare recipients have today....
Yes, everyone needs a helping hand once in a while. But if you do have to rely on government benefits for a time, you should be fighting like crazy to improve your situation so that you can get off of them as soon as possible.
Of course the biggest welfare recipients of all are the big corporations. The federal government showers billions upon billions of dollars on them every year, and this has got to stop.
The following example comes from an article in the Weekly Standard....
General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn't pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked. Can you imagine a 57,000 page federal tax return?
That is absolutely disgusting and it is a perfect example of how corrupt our system has become.
All year long, GE has people pouring over the tax code just looking for any little tax loophole that it can exploit.
GE made $14,000,000,000 in profits, but they paid less taxes to the government than you or I did.
There is something very, very wrong with that picture.
All of this unnecessary welfare has got to stop.
No more free cell phones for people on welfare.
No more giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to big corporations.
We simply cannot afford it.
The U.S. debt problem is way, way out of control. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and it gets about 150 million dollars worse every single hour.
Sadly, none of this is likely to change any time soon.
The big corporations provide the money that our politicians need to win campaigns, and most of our politicians are very careful not to bite the hands that feed them.
On the other end of the spectrum, our economy continues to crumble and the number of poor Americans continues to increase. So even if we don't provide them with free cell phones, the truth is that the number of Americans that need basic food and housing is not going to go down any time soon. In fact, it is going to go a lot higher in the years ahead.
We are rapidly becoming a European-style socialist welfare state.
In America today, the poor are absolutely showered with outrageous government benefits and so are the big corporations.
So who pays for all of this?
You and I do.
I am afraid that the joke is on us, and nothing is going to change as long as we keep sending the same kind of politicians back to Washington D.C. over and over.
GREECE
“There is something very, very wrong with that picture.
All of this unnecessary welfare has got to stop.
No more free cell phones for people on welfare.”
I have mixed feelings about this...
On the negative side, I have two friends that get free phones... One of them has a newer car than I do. However, have you noticed that there are no phone booths anymore?
On the positive side, people do need to make a phone call sometimes, and they cant afford a $50 a month plan from cricket. You cant look for a job without a phone number...
If you are food stamps or Medicare, you probably qualify
Has this guy been living in a cave? Free phones have been around for quite a while now.
There’s a line on your monthly cell phone bill: Wireless surcharges and other charges and credits. That’s the money you contribute for free cell phones and minutes for the poor. Mine was $8.48 last month.
It’s one of those “under the surface taxes.”
When Allen West made his speech yesterday at the Republican Gingrich event, he used a phrase I had used months ago.
“The Safety Net has become a Hammock”
Ain’t it the truth brother.
Great minds think alike. LOL
They can’t afford MetroPCS but they probably have cable TV and XBox Live.
I don’t have mixed feelings about this.
If you can’t afford them, you do without.
Something the “entitled” don’t have to do in the Bath-House Barry administration. Barry is INCITING riots, because those of us who pay our way or do without are angry about the EBT cards, the housing loans based on public assistance payouts and free cell phones.
I look forward to the looters’ reactions when these give-aways are taken away. The gubmint thinks those folks are gonna riot? It’s gonna be US-rioting to protect what’s left of OUR hard work from these cretins.
(Welfare rats get oodles of other freebies, of course, and they are no less offensive.)
Welfare rats, most of them anyway, feel totally entitled, and have no gratitude whatever to those of us who have worked a career (and have served in uniform) in order to provide them with free telephone service.
(And no, it is highly not likely that welfare rats use the phones to look for work. Why should they?)
.
On the positive side, people do need to make a phone call sometimes, and they cant afford a $50 a month plan from cricket. You cant look for a job without a phone number...
$29 gets you a burner phone that you can load up with cash to get calls at the rate of $1/day of use plus $0.10/minute for the call. If your calls are infrequent or bursty this works pretty well.
I don’t have as much of a problem giving a cell phone to someone looking for a job.
However, lets be honest.. Not many on welfare are actively looking for a job.
There are free phone services out there on the internet. Google Voice is one.
Set the account up at the library, call in from a phone (anyone’s) and record your voice mail greeting. And check your VM from someones phone or internet connection when your at the job bank looking for work.
Also, I can’t think of anyone looking for a job that might need 250 minutes worth.
Go to Walmart and get a throwaway Cell phone for $20 bucks.
No monthly fee. Use it for emergencies only.
How people have survived this long is beyond me.
I could use some socks, a bag of charcoal briquets... and some gas in my truck. Thanks everybody.
what do you want to bet they will use it to text propaganda messages directly to their mob crowd.
Mr Snyder, try to learn to think and write in whole paragraphs instead of in single sloganeering sentences. That said, your outrage is justified, but listen up for a sec.
I’ve gotten these ads in the mail on Tuesdays when the ad circulars come, and here is what I noticed about the offer, and what I perceive as the real outrage. I’ve thrown out this trash so I cannot provide the full evidence, but here it is from memory. In order to qualify for this program you have to be a recipient of one or more of about 20 government programs, all listed in the ad, and that for me is the outrage, programs most of us don’t realize exist and chew up billions of our tax dollars, while we are screaming now about just one of them.
And the prick always talks about the middle class. He’s killing the middle class. Effort hurts rather than pays off. The middle class does without one thing to pay for their cell phones. They struggle to pay their orthodontia monthly. The poor get it all for free. Why work?
Brought to you by none other than Slick Willie and Al Gore slipped into the telecommunations bill on their watch and billed as the universal service fund. We have all been paying this for years.
Pretty soon the government will be handing out the Regime’s version of the Iphone called the “MYPhone”. Instead of starting it up by addressing “Siri” you have to say “Heil Barack”.
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