Posted on 10/17/2013 7:06:14 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
Georgia has become the first state to charge a fee to low-income people who receive free cellphone service through a federal program, saying the move would combat fraud.
The Georgia Public Service Commission voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a $5-a-month charge on participants in the Lifeline program, which is designed to ensure low-income households have access to basic communications services.
Georgia Public Service Commissioner Doug Everett, who proposed the rule, said the program's structure encourages wireless providers to sign up as many customers as possible to rake in taxpayer-funded subsidies, without first verifying their eligibility. Each eligible household is supposed to get only one phone with free service.
Mr. Everett, a Republican, said his rule was motivated as much by carriers' aggressive sales tactics as by consumer abuse. "I believe the program is broken," he said. "We found multiple phones in the same household because no one is verifying or checking information."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ping!
Dept of Just Us is not going to like this.
Half of them will be shut off.
And to quote one recent Walmart EBT glitch shopper I personally heard.
“F**k that, I ain’t spendin my own money”
Oh the humanity!
What’s “basic” about a product that didn’t exist 10 years ago? What else is considered “basic,” 3D HD TV with 800 channels? If they want “basic” they should get free postage stamps and that’s IT.
Oh yeah, this will be as popular as a new voter ID law with the DC crowd.
Didn't BO call it "skin in the game"? If you aren't working and paying FICA taxes, you don't have skin in the game.
You mean, the state of Georgia is actually charging the USERS? Not just the vague “rich folk”? I say more power to ‘em!
Maybe *basic* cars for all, basic car insurance for all, basic house full of basic furniture and basic clothes. Maybe that’s what’s next on 0’s *Free$#it* list.
give-em phones that can ONLY call 911, and their doctor.
If opposing a program is blatently racist doesn’t that mean that the program was inherently racist to begin with?
In Democrat lingo that means you hate poor people.
But...that’s taking cigarettes out of the mouths of children!!!!
only if they are lazy... see my tagline
I’d like to take the “skin in the game” idea a little further: you don’t pay federal taxes = you don’t vote in federal elections.
Amen.
never saw a cell phone til I was 35 or so. First one was a bagphone.
Now it’s a necessity??
Nobody gave me jack; I went to work and pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. Ate mackerel and bread and peanuts until I figured it out.
I think we all ought to quit our jobs and go on welfare. I wonder how congress would react if millions of working Americans walked into work Monday and quit. Tell the takers it’s their turn.
Waivers for everybody!
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