Posted on 08/14/2013 12:08:47 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
If you like your ridiculously high cell phone bill, there’s good news: President Obama wants to make it even higher! The president is pushing a plan to raise money by hiking cell phone fees and use the revenue generated to wire up local schools with high-speed Internet access. The idea of allowing states and towns to figure out how to pay for their own Internet access is evidently anathema to this administration, as is the idea that government should stay within its constitutional boundaries.
He’s also planning to do this without input from Congress, via the Federal Communications Commission, according to the Washington Post. Congress, not the executive branch, is empowered by the Constitution with the ability to levy or reject taxes.
By circumventing Congress, the president would also avoid hearings, debate, and give and take — what we used to call the legislative process. Now it’s just the government and its functionaries blackmailing the citizenry.
Cell phone users already pay for another massive Obama social program, the so-called Obamaphones. That free cell phone program, which began as a modest program in the Reagan era to help poor and rural families get telephones, exploded from 2009 to 2012 — there were one million of them in use in swing state Ohio in 2012. There is little if any oversight to prevent fraud.
This new program, called ConnectEd, will be added on top of the Obamaphone bill.
In the case of ConnectEd, White House officials worried that Obama could be accused of raising taxes on all Americans who use phone or Internet service, amid a broader debate in which Republicans are saying he is trying to raise taxes on the middle class. The cost for the initiative is estimated at $4 billion to $6 billion, and the administration said it could work out to about $12 in fees for every cellphone user over three years.
A senior administration official said that if the idea had come up during the presidential campaign, it probably would have been abandoned because of the political risk. Democrats faced withering critiques in the 1990s for advocating gas taxes to fund roads and bridges, and then-Vice President Al Gore was put on the defensive over the “Gore tax,” the 1996 law that gave the FCC the power to charge such fees.
Obama doesn’t like the Constitution very much and, like lefty columnist Thomas Friedman, gets envious of foreign governments that can rule by fiat.
Obama had long expressed frustration that countries such as South Korea had embraced technology in the classroom so much better than the United States had. He became enthralled with the idea and gave it the go-ahead.
“We are here to do big things — and we can do this without Congress,” he later told his staff in a meeting, an aide said.
Yes we can — become an authoritarian state in which the federal government controls every last drop of everything
He just doing his job as community organizer, leveling the playing field.
It is becoming more and more obvious that he must have faked his attendance at the ‘constitutional law’ course he claims to have taken in college.
Does this lowlife ever have an idea that doesn’t involve taking my money or my rights?
I thought we already went through this routine so Slick Willie and Algore could “wire” the elementary schools in order to provide quick access to porn sites for the kiddies. The Kenyan needs to check what cell phone users are already being taxed for. I’m pretty sure this tax excuse has already been used.
Yet they scotched the T-Mobile/AT&T deal because it was “bad for consumers”. What a piece of work these guys are!
No. But, he’ll offer his friends and family waivers from his diabolical schemes.
Forcing more into using Obamao-phones?
I pay $9.99 a month for my cell phone and it includes no minutes. Even if I don’t use it, I pay taxes and user fees that go to pay for free Obamaphones that include 250 minutes for those qualified. Now he wants those of us paying to pay still more to throw more money to schools by paying their computer usage expenses? It might make more sense to just have an old phone that I can only use for 911.
It's the only way he can buy a friend.
You could have a go phone for $27 for 3 months and roll your minutes each time you recharge.
But, but, I thought the AlGore tax on every ones phone in the 1990s was supposed to pay for "wiring" all the schools to the Internet. I guess the schools are constantly needing "rewiring."
Impeach that Communist BASTARD! F you Boehner, /FLIP
Impeachment File on Communist, Benghazi Coward “B. Hussein Obama,” formerly known as Barry Soetoro, currently a Legal Citizen of the Sovereign Nation of Indonesia.
More redistribution (stealing) of money from the producers to the slackers who vote democrat.
“Does this lowlife ever have an idea that doesn’t involve taking my money or my rights?”
He’s just trying to spread the wealth around a little. OK a lot. :-)
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