US House to vote on whether poor people need mobile phones The US House of Representatives could end the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Lifeline subsidized phone program in a vote today. The bill, HR5525 or the End Taxpayer Funded Cell Phones Act of 2016, threatens to prohibit the FCC paying out subsidies to mobile phone carriers who offer discounted mobile phone service for …
Gummint shouldn't pay for anything, whether it's phone service or your electric bill or broadband internet. That's because it has to take money AWAY from someone ELSE to pay for "that freebie". Seems to me it just takes away the incentive to better yourself, when gummint hands out freebies and buys elections with "other taxpayers' money".
So you are a Trump supporter then?
Anything like this and Obama care are just commie plots to subvert the Good Ole Boyz then?
With views like this is it little wonder that the USA is not longer No 1 in just about anything apart from killing people with legal guns.
Then there are the NC an OK toilet laws. Abandon hope all in the USA with lawmakers like that and this one in DC.
@AC
These sort of comments really get my goat.
I'm sick to death of the government taking my hard earned money and giving it away to lazy fucks who can't be bothered to get an education or job to support themselves.
THAT is the problem with the US right now. Libtard politicians promise free shit (on the backs of the middle class' taxes) to give to people just to get a vote. It's disgusting. "Vote for me and you can have a phone! Someone else will pay for it, so don't worry."
The ACA was one such a scam. "Free" healthcare! Isn't it glorious? (I can still see that idiotic twat Pelosi grinning about how great the plan that you couldn't read until the bill passed was.) Bullshit. Nothing about it is free.
You either pay other people's premiums as a younger subscriber through high rates and huge deductibles OR
You get subsidized lower premiums (with the same high deductible) thanks to those who make more than you do.
If you are still too poor, you can pay up front if you can afford to then get some money back at the end of the tax year. Where does the money come from? My income. I have my own family to take care of, thank you very much.
Don't get me wrong, if a family is in need of financial help due to hardship I have no problem with my dollars going there. But to perpetuate lazieness and political favor by taking my money and giving it to people who just can't be arsed to do something with their lives pisses me off.
</rant>
Back to the topic on hand. This will never pass. It should, but it won't. The reality is, you don't need a cell plan to call emergency services. Just a cell phone. Any phone built in the last 10 years will dial without a SIM. But this will get twisted into a cutting the poor off from emergency services bill.
@ John 104
I feel you about being annoyed/pissed at the Feds taking my money. But I am less concerned about it going to "freebies" or "helping the less fortunate" than I am about it going to bail out banks/favored companies, funding NSA overreach, or being wasted on crap like the F35. - Or helping a Congresscritter pay his subscription to rentboy.com.
On the scale of potatoes, this is not even small; and it does have a notable positive effect (read some of Tim Worstal's past articles for an explanation). They could find the funding for the Lifeline program (and NASA, and the Education Department) by cleaning out the back of Lockheed's sofas. This money isn't even coming out of the Federal Budget, it is not being paid for by taxes. It is the "Universal Service Fee", and frankly, I'd rather it be spent on helping the indigent get a phone than it go to the TelCos for infrastructure upgrades that get promised (and paid for) but never delivered.
>I'm sick to death of the government taking my hard earned money and bombing brown people (winning those hearts and minds) as well as giving welfare to defense contractors who deliver a trillion dollar turd like the F-35 that is worse than what it is replacing. FIFY.
@JOHN 104
I'm sick to death of those who constantly blame "lazy fucks" when they've managed to live a magical life and automatically assume that everyone one else in the entire freakin' world has the same access to assistance when life gets tough (either via the government, family or friends) and the same access to education and employment when life is otherwise carefree.
I'm also sick to death of asshats who automatically think that if you, as an individual or politician, give a single flying fuck about anybody in the world besides yourself, then you're a "libtard". And in case you missed it, the "libtard" that initially approved the free phones was the patron saint of conservatives, Reagan, who ironically would be labelled a libtard if he was involved in politics today.
It's a tough world when the people who benefit more from a country's resources have pay a bit more than others for that privilege, rather than sit back and laugh while the less fortunate whither off from disease and starvation. Poor you.
May you some day end up in the situation of one of my former rabid right-wing neighbors continually complaining about gummint programs until the day he lost his presumably well-paid management job. When he started complaining about not being able to support his family (a gummint problem, of course), his main theme was, "I didn't think this could happen to meeeeeee......"
@Fred W
You couldn't be more wrong.
30 years old, No real job, but no responsibilities either. Paying my way but by no means middle class. Upper poor would be the place. Room-mates, etc.
Get married.
Reality check. Time to get a real job!
Child on the way.
Start studying IT stuff on my own in my spare time on my dime.
Gets an A+ and lucks into a job. Continues to study.
Gets laid off during .com crash and has to go on government assistance (the afore mentioned no problem supporting) due to lack of experience. Has to get government cheese - really!
Has to have help from family to make ends meet.
Gets a low paying job but with assistance, manages to get by.
Continues studying.
Gets a gig that pays a real wage. Off of assistance thank you for your help.
Lives with in-laws for 6 months until we can afford a place on our own to rent.
Works way up ladder through dedication, hard work, long hours and skill improvement.
Now a decently paid engineer and have been for some time.
I'm 47 now, 3 kids, house, etc. Paid for by me (and the mrs).
That’s my story. Was it easy? No. So, yes, I know what it is like to be down and out, and it sucks. And the only way out is to swallow your pride, ask for help and then claw your way out through hard work. If I'm down again, I'll do whatever it takes to get back up. And I certainly won't blame someone else for my circumstances.
Color me confused.
>I'm sick to death of the government taking my hard earned money and giving it away to lazy fucks
Then, this is you again:
>Has to get government cheese - really!
>ask for help and then claw your way out through hard work
Please decide. Do you think the government should never help? That would kinda meant you not getting any cheese, wouldn't it?
IMHO, even if one takes a fairly dim view of welfare, some things should be considered:
- For better (IMHO), or for worse (in your opinion?), people are not intentionally allowed to starve or die of curable illnesses in advanced countries. So, government is going to pick up the bill some ways down the road. Is it going to intervene at catastrophe time, at great cost, or is it going to do some cheaper prevention?
- Sometimes people just get down on their luck temporarily. Helping them may transform them back into tax payers at some point. That seems to have been your case and consider that not everyone has a family to help them out.
- One should be very careful not to transform the children of one generation of poor people into a another generation of poor. Promoting upward mobility is to the benefit of the general tax payer.
Having said all that, unbridled welfare spending sometimes creates massive problems - witness the banlieues around Paris (I lived there once). Or the projects in the US. So you do have a partial point - Canada's welfare spending is low by French standards, but I would be uncomfortable increasing it to French levels unless we were achieving Nordic, rather than French, social outcomes.
The question is not whether the government should help, but how it can do so without promoting too much dependence. I don't think a basic cellphone subsidy is a bad idea - think of how hard it is to look for a job without a way to be contacted. Subsidized broadband is waaaay more debatable - I am thinking more YouTube watching is going to happen than creative usage.
As many others have stated, this is microscopic peanuts in the US budget. Many other things should be considered first to save money, including pension reform & means testing, trimming down some of the military industrial complex's more egregious white elephants. Cutting subsidies to farmers and gold plated public servant retirement plans would be on my list as well. Not this.
Basically, you don't lose votes by cutting off service to the poor. They don't vote enough and won't lobby your ass out of office either. However, you will lose votes on Medicare reform or anything that upsets the unions. Trying to ditch that pig of a F35 will have lobbyists funding your opponents no matter what.
To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, as a politician, your safest bet is therefore budgetary restraint theater of this sort.
Well, whoope-do. you made it.
But what if you hadn't done that? Where would you be now eh?
Out of the streets living in a cardboard home?
Where's your safety net?
So what happens if you are laid off next week eh?
What happens to that nice company paid healtchare plan if one of your kids get cancer?
Some of my best friends are Veterans. They know the hard times. They know how hard it is to survive.
I was with one of them earlier this month for a week. I took them and their family out to the coast for the day. This was a real treat for them.
I'm also from a working class background. Left school at 15 with nothing and worked my way up.
But there were times like when I got cancer in 2009 and my company went TITSUP. The NHS saved my life.
So please leave off the Gubbermint should take nothing from me and give to the poor. You might be poor next week.
Call me a rabid socialist/commie if you want. That is your right but I get the feeling that most of the people in this country (UK) are more like me than you.
Go on and vote DT into Pensylvania Avenue and see what happens to your country. IMHO, the depression of the 1930's will come around again. How did you get out of that? Oh yes, Gubbermint spending. What price your argument then eh?
The real question that should be asked is..... What about the people not like you?
There are families here in the US where generation after generation stay on Government assistant their entire lives. No one ever rises above like you did. The children are taught this as a way of life along with their children. When someone does finally get off government assistance the entire family looks down on them.
I personally have friends that came from small towns here in the deep south that have made it off government assistance, have good jobs, struggled like you did, they have family members that will not even speak to them. My friend has family members have even told him "You've sold out to the white man"
I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE, I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GENERATIONAL DEPENDENCY.
How do we end the Generational Dependency? Liberals are typically in denial as to how bad this problem is, conservatives typically think it's much worse than it actual is.
How do we find common ground?
I know a girl who was chucked out of her house and made homeless at age 16, not her fault not drugs or drink etc, just arsehole parents.
I also know someone whose father buggered of with some other woman whilst his mum died slowly of cancer, as soon as his mum was dead his father cut of all contact, he was about 15 at the time.
Know what it's like to be down and out, no you don't. I've been at the level of couch surfing homeless, trust me its not really homneless, it's not down and out.
Were they lazy no, one was hoping to do his A-Levels, the other got herself of the streets and a decent job, weren't easy for her though.
Also I notice you said assitance, little hypocritical that considering you say goverment shouldn't be paying for anything. Or is it only certain types of assitance, such as the ones that helped you out?
How do you decide, who is lazy and who isn't in a fucked up situation? I'd like to know, working in benefits n the UK for a while, we estimated maybe 5% were fleecing the system.
You have just decided it's 100% what seriously was your selction criteria?
PS I like the fact healthcare is paid for through tax contributions in my country, I'm always gobsmacked how you let your costs be determined by how much the mhospitals and drug companies think they can get away with, even more gobsmacking though is they have managed to sell the lie to you so much you actually support the people screwing you.
This is a special case.
40 years ago there were phone boxes everywhere. You could just run for a few 100m in a city and call emergency services. That call was free too. That is no longer the case. If you do not have mobile you cannot call police, ambulance or fire service.
While I understand the dear congressman's urge to ensure that such services are not available for the ones in dirty rags which violate his sense of exclusiveness, I do not agree with it. Being able to call police is a universal right - it is part of basic equality as postulated by Bill of Rights, ECHR or whatever form it has in the particular jurisdiction. If the people are made unequal in their right to access justice, there is no way in hell justice can be "for all".
You're probably lower-middle to working class, and therefore would benefit the most from socialism. However you oppose it because it benefits neo-con elites that you should do so.
Did you ever think about trying things differently? The US has a very high incidence of mental illness, so something about the way your society is structured is making people ill.
Assuming that you're serious and not just trolling then please answer this:
If -- as is required under the law -- the poor are supposed to be searching for work so they can get off of welfare (i.e., "other people's money"), and they can't afford a cellular or landline telephone, how the hell is a potential employer supposed to contact them?
This is nothing more than a Catch-22 bill sponsored by a grandstanding Congressthing "poor-shaming" and playing to his conservative base in -- surprise, surprise! -- an election year.
Not trolling. Just pissed about my tax dollars going to waste on this sort of thing. And useless fighter jets too. :)
One can get a job almost entirely by computer these days. Any public library has them for use. If a phone is needed, you can borrow a friends or family member. There are ways to get things done. They may be distasteful in our modern social world, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. Again, swallow your pride and do what it takes. OR, just give up and make excuses.
And under the law, you can get a land line. Fine, get one. Free. Go for it. Not the same as a smart phone with data plan, etc. That is entirely NOT what the program was for.
"how the hell is a potential employer supposed to contact them?"
eh, we didn't have potential employers or jobs before we had cell phones? That's good to know. How the fuck did we ever get anything done prior to the 1990's when practically nobody had mobile phones?
It's like I told my teenage son a few years ago when he was looking for a job - "Get off your lazy ass and go by to see if they want to hire you yet." Nothing says "I really want to work here" more than bugging the manager to hire you. Certainly beats lounging around watching TV while waiting for the phone to ring about your dream job.
Sorry, cell phones aren't necessities. Neither is the Internet. Both are handy at times, but neither is required. We'd probably be better off with a lot less of both of them. I realize that's going to be a very, very unpopular opinion on a nerd site like this, but that's the truth that I tried to instill in my kids.
Ever notice that people that use the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps usually had their college paid for by mumsy and daddsy? Yes there is taking personal responsibility and being an adult and honestly especially if you are born with a decent brain its not that hard to make a living wage at least in the US if you are willing to live in a city. Its just most people who have actually pulled themselves up by their bootstraps are not usually the ones that preach at others in my experience.
So by your reasoning people on welfare should not be able to use roads, community services, emergency medical help, or indeed get welfare, because all of this (and much more) is paid for by taking money from people who do pay taxes ?
Let me offer you this FREE piece of advice, my friend. To quote Mr. Jello Biafra : 'In the real fourth reich you'd be the first to go'. Enjoy.
are you including corporations with that?
cutting off subsidies to boeing alone (>12 billion a year) would pay for the phones (approx 2 billion a year) and leave you 10 billion better off.
maybe you should be looking at the people pointing at the scapegoats rather than the scapegoats themselves.
Social psychology has shown a pretty clear direct link between how well off you are compared to your peers and how little empathy you have for others. Also counter intuitively people who have been through something someone else is going through economically often have less empathy than someone who hasn't.
>then use the money for food and clothes. And if there is something left over, then they can buy a TV or smokes or beers, or whatever drug they waste it on...
Yeah really we need to be spending more on our war machine. Also why build schools when we can build private prisons instead. Win win, get the poor off the street and make money storing them like cord wood.
Ok but no police or fire protection for you. Also don't be using the public roads or schools. Finally I hope you have your own private army to protect what is yours. One edge to living in Somalia is there is no big bad nation state to take away your hard earned money. A real libertarian paradise.
> but I would happily take back 30-40 cents of every dollar they take for waste
Ok how? By nominating Trump. Good luck with that. If you live in red state the odds are very good you actually get more money indirectly from the federal government than you pay anyway. Remember they are borrowing a lot of it and unless your a millennial you probably won't live long enough to watch the system finally sh1t itself. That generation is so fscked but then again that's what they get for hating privacy so much.
Or how about something completely crazy and strange.....Let me keep what I earned!!!!!
Here's another one, why not look at your country as a society as a whole and think what can we do that makes it better? what makes us more civilised? what actually forwards humanity as a whole?
Do you for example think having a large class of poor, who cannot get healthcare, who the cost of college is so far out of their reach as to be a pipe dream is an improvement, do you think thats a win?
You know how I paid for college gave the US Govt a blank check on my life. Then then repaid me with money for school sooo you know I worked for it.
I have no empathy for people to lazy to work hard for their own well being and life. If you look at some studies people on government assistance in the US actually get more than many middle class people in benefits when you take in everything. Why the F should someone on welfare get over 60K in benefits to survive. Our idea of poor in the US is so jacked, I have lived/travelled all over the world and in many countries they would beg to be as poor as a person on welfare in the US with new shoes, a cell phone, 60 inch tv, free daycare, and an XBOX...yes I have seen all of those in family members houses on "Assistance" at the same time have 3 young children literally buying a gallon of milk a day, spending every single penny trying to pay medical bills for their births etc while they tooo had similar medical bills all paid for by the govt. I bet if I took the amount of money I spend on things they got for free and too got it for free, I would have been living great too and not contemplating bankruptcy. Now that was a few years ago my hard work has paid off and I do quite well, while many of those family members still get assistance and still have nicer things than me....one of my relatives just bought a new tv and PS4 all while on assistance and I am all over here like hey I just bought my first new pair of running shoes in over a year cause my feet hurt when I ran for my PT test the National Guard. But Hey at least I got a BS, and MS degree for a greatly reduced price.... so year I dont feel all that sorry for the poor many of which live better than my middle class family, and they have no intention of changing their situation.
I am not heartless unemployment is a great thing because you get money after you have been working and run into hard times, but generational welfare where the "Poor" get to live on my back has to STOP!
>but generational welfare where the "Poor" get to live on my back has to STOP!
Need to be thinking trailer park more than ghetto by the way. Look at where the "bad back" disability fraud is going. By the way more of your tax money is going for Baby Boomer medical care (Medicare) and other entitlements they voted themselves (ie prescription drug benefit, etc) than to the poor under 40.
Im not differentiating here welfare and disability are both hugely abused and sadly the abuse hurts the legitimately disabled etc.. I am from one of those poor purple states (WV) and I used to see it all the time. People using an EBT card for food with a brand new iphone in their hand, and a fifth of Jack Daniels and cigs paid for with cash.. freaking disgusting.
Ah yes insults, tools of the weak minded would you like to dispute half of what I said or just throw stupid attacks.
Ill just leave this here as proof that welfare pays too well. I honestly believe these figures are low as I looked into it and I did not see any mention of free daycare for children etc.
http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/welfare-payouts-top-20-per-hour-in-eight-states
Oh look all 8 states are blue states where the higher education level and cost of living means 20 an hour is not living high on the hog like in Mississippi. 20 an hour for say a family of four or more is what is needed to live near the West or Northeast coast in a lot of cities. Here's another secret, a lot of poor people generally are actually pretty bad at getting benefits they could get. For every one moocher I bet there are four or five working multiple jobs and not taking much at all. Most of the US financial problems are due to middle class and rich Boomers and who are going to be sucking up all the Federal money until they finally mercifully die.
>Ah yes insults
Never did insult you. May have took some shots at an ideology you identify with but after this Trump debacle (and Ted Cruz in second yikes) its hard to look at it as a serious point of view with its heart in the right place. Want to know something else crazy I actually agree this subsidy should go. Mostly a giveaway to the cell companies. Come to that conclusion more from common sense instead of just automatically demonizing anything related to the government or the poor (not saying you do but plenty of others do).
Where did I say I was a Trump or Cruz supporter? I hated them both. I would much prefer someone like Allen West or a libertarian such as Gary Johnson. I cant believe that these idiots are the best we can find to run our country but then again...WE don't find them really they are chosen for us for the most part.
"Where did I say I was a Trump or Cruz supporter? I hated them both. I would much prefer someone like Allen West or a libertarian such as Gary Johnson. I cant believe that these idiots are the best we can find to run our country but then again...WE don't find them really they are chosen for us for the most part."
That "we don't find them" strikes me as totally naive. It was very clear that most of the senators and representatives of the Republican party thought Trump was a terrible candidate who, if elected, would make a disastrous president, so it wasn't them who found him. It's the ordinary guys like you (but not like me, I'm a Scot not an American so guys like me had no say) who chose him as your party's candidate. SO yes, YOU (maybe not you individually, but certainly the collective YOU corresponding to your WE) did find him and choose him, so stop pretending it was otherwise.
"Most people would be completely happy with a middle ground."
Newsflash: the middle ground is where you are now. Pretty much by definition.
Are you completely happy? No, because you think it should be somewhere else. Like most of your contemporaries. The only think you can't agree on is where, specifically, it should be. And so you end up with a compromise solution that makes nobody "completely happy".
This is how politics works. And how it's supposed to work, this is by design. I don't think Trump supporters (note, I'm not saying you're a Trump supporter, I neither know nor care whether you are or not) understand this: they think politics is a consumer business, where you decide what you want then find the company to provide it.
It's not.
Before you give up on conventional politics, reflect: the only known alternative to "compromise" is called "war".
Ah yes insults, tools of the weak minded would you like to dispute half of what I said or just throw stupid attacks.
Indeed yes. My post was a childish stick poke (this is an internet comment thread on a tabloid website for goodness sake). Incoherent ranting could also be said to be a tool of the weak minded. Did you notice that the linked article pointed out that the welfare-payments-higher-than-minimum-wage-in-some-states study was based on made-up welfare payment levels. One wonders whether it limited itself to a consideration of only out-of-work welfare payments. It didn't attempt to debate what relative levels of minimum wage versus theoretical maximum welfare aggregated payments means, if anything because, presumably, complexity.
Anyway, I was reacting more to the tone of (some of) yours and others' posts
@JOHN 104
>>And I don't have contempt for poor people. I have contempt for lazy fucks who won't do anything to change their circumstances and blame others for their problems.<<
But you're completely happy & self-righteous condemning and punishing 100% of those in need just because 1% of them are lazy.
... home of "I'm alright, Jack, screw the little people..."
Of course it's always *their* fault that they're poor, look at people like JP Morgan and Carnegie and Rockefeller, *they* all managed to become massively rich so why can't everyone else?
Well, apart from the fact that they (and others like them) only became massively rich by screwing their workers with crap wages, trying to ensure that that labour couldn't organise and form Unions and, of course, using any and every "legal" or underhand method to bankrupt any possible competitors to preserve their monopoly positions which would allow them to charge as much as they wanted for their products and services...
God Bless Help America!
We'll be ok. Going to take some down votes from across pond but oh well stop some of the arrogance up front.
2013 Gallup gross median household income
Rank Country Gross household income Gross per-capita income
6 United States 43,585 15,480
19 United Kingdom 31,617 12,399
By state (2014)
50 Mississippi $36,919
"2013 Gallup gross median household income"
The devil is in the details. If they have to pay for their (private) healthcare /health insurance, and said healthcare costs an order of magnitude or two more than what Brits pay to the NHS, and pay $100 prescription bucks that in Europe cost a tenth of that, and the only way to settle an abuse by a health insurance company is to engage in eyewateringly expensive and time-consuming litigation, perhaps the Brits are better off than the USAians. And the cost of living in all but the biggest cities in the UK is probably lower than the cost of living in Mississippi.
In the USA a single -serious- medical problem can bankrupt a well off family in months. Many people with chronical diseases simply can't afford the treatments. Working parents have to pay for nurseries or domestic service...
Every benefits program can -and will- be abused, but that's not the important part. The important part is how good those programs are for Society.
>And the cost of living in all but the biggest cities in the UK is probably lower than the cost of living in Mississippi.
Most of your points are good ones but not this one. The only places I saw in Europe (lived there for some time) with a lower cost of living than Mississippi were all east of Germany. Remember there are places in the rural south where you can build yourself a decent size house with several acres of land for under a hundred grand. You are lucky to find a flat at that price in a lot of places in Europe.
">And the cost of living in all but the biggest cities in the UK is probably lower than the cost of living in Mississippi.
Most of your points are good ones but not this one. The only places I saw in Europe (lived there for some time) with a lower cost of living than Mississippi were all east of Germany."
Well, I suspect that you only saw expensive places. I've been in New Hampshire (not long or often), New York City (also not long or often), San Francisco (quite often), Seattle (quite often), Cambridge MA (quite often), Chicago (only a week), and Los Angeles (only a week) and I can safely say that apart from NH they all had a higher cost of living than anywhere in the UK except London (the most expensive city in Europe) and Edinburgh and Manchester and Barcelona, and they all have a higher cost than Munich or Paris or Vienna or Venice or Brussels or Prague. I guess that apart from NH the places I've seen in the USA are all expensive places - so I imagine that my view has the same sort of distortion as yours will, both being based on small samples.
"Remember there are places in the rural south where you can build yourself a decent size house with several acres of land for under a hundred grand. You are lucky to find a flat at that price in a lot of places in Europe."
I curently split my time mostly between England and Spain. In the Comunidad Autónoma where my Spanish house is, it's possible to buy a flat for 70k USD in the big towns, and a 3 bedroom house in a rural area for less than that (and those are the prices after inflation by expat demand). In the town where my English house is, there's a pretty wide spread of prices, but flats start at about 90k USD and three bedroom houses start at about 130k USD'; 10 miles south of there prices are a lot lower.
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>they are more likely to video and post someone getting mutilated than call for help
That would be India where people in car accidents often die in the the road with no assistance given and the police not called. Showing once again how even the poorest in the first world tend to do better than most in the 3rd world (sane sober adults don't starve to death in the first world for example).
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36446652
Shouldn't they use that money perhaps to provide cell coverage to buttfsck rural Alabama? (trailer parks by the way tend to eat up welfare faster than ghettos). I thought even non activated cell phones can call 911 if they can get a cell signal. That just leaves buying really old feature phones or something for a few dollars each and giving them away.
"Among those opposing the current iteration of the bill is mobile industry lobbying group CTIA – The Wireless Company, which argues in a letter to Congressional leaders that the bill "ignores America's inexorable shift away from wireline and toward wireless service, and the reality that many of those the Lifeline program aims to help, like the homeless, simply cannot be served with wireline connections.""
Seriously? This is a joke, right? Please, tell me this is a joke! Homeless people need discounted cell phones so they can call who, 911? First, you don't need a cell plan to call 911, you just use emergency dialing. Second, how are the homeless receiving the phones when they require an official service address? Third, like they would not sell the phone for a bottle of rye. Fourth, how the f are they going to charge the thing? And on, and on, and on. Also, when did landine become wireline?
Government and lobbyist.Two classes only a mother can love.
Follow the money... the "service fee" collected by the Telco goes where? To the government general fund. Then supposedly to the FCC which returns it to.... you guessed it... the Telco. I'm sure there's a "process" involving much paperwork for the indigent/poor to get a "free phone" but most won't know about it. So where's the money then.... "profit". Either from the outrageous charges for the phone that the Telco bills for itself or the unspent monies.
Yeah.. I'm cynical as hell about some of these programs....
This program is so abused it needs to be done away with.
My problem is that there is so much abuse that people that really need them don't stand a chance.
My friend worked and payed taxes his whole life, but now he's paralyzed except for his left hand, a phone is his only contact with the outside world. I purchased a tablet for him so we can communicate, but I can't afford to pay for a phone and monthly service. All of his income goes to his care.
Fix the program or do away with it. STOP the abuse!
I live in a small town 50 or so miles south of Atlanta, GA. You can take a drive in the downtown area and see several "road side stands" setup with a large banner "FREE CELL PHONES".
You can lie 100% about who you are, how much money you make and where you live and walk away with an active cell phone.
The only people this is benefiting from is the cell phone companies getting paid by the government for handing out phone.
This is complete waste, fraud and abuse.
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I do love the thumbs down for all the points about swallowing your pride, being accountable for your own actions, and asking for help, etc. Makes me smile because it proves the point. It is distasteful to have to rely on others for help for some reason (I don't mind really). I wonder if any one thumbing down has had to rely on others to get where they are? Or been poor and worked their way out of a bad life situation?
But I do wonder.. You say you have worked your way up from "upper poor" to decent middle-class, cool. You said you had to go on assistance to get your feet back under you, and that you had to live with the in-laws for a time to find your own place. I get this. I had to move back into my parents house when the .com bubble (mk I) popped.
Why then are you down on people getting some help to get themselves on their feet? You have said that you want to help those who have fallen on hard times, but don't want anything going to the "lazy" or people who waste their money on booze/drugs/TVs. How do you propose to tell the difference on an industrial/nationwide scale? A landscaper who gets injured on the job, and is on pain meds looks very much like a wastrel heroin junky, if you're a thousand miles away.
"Swallow your pride and ask for help", you opine; but what of those who have no-one to ask? If you don't have family you're fucked?! What of the people trying to get out of the trailer park they were raised in. They have no-one to ask. But they shouldn't get it from the Gov't because that came out of your pocket?
Dude! just.. Dude.
As a side note: the phones that are subsidized by the Lifeline program are not smartphones. They are $30-60 "Basic Phones": flip phones and the like, the ones that have a physical numberpad and a battery life of weeks.
If that is the case, than I will accept correction, and moderate my stance on this program. I will change to "It needs to be reformed" rather than "it needs to be killed - With Fire".
Cell phones are incredibly useful and can increase not just the well being of the recipient, but the overall economy. However, smartphones are a bit OTT for freebies, especially with a data plan. Means testing (actual testing) to prevent the abuse stated above with the "Free Phones" road-side stands would not be against my philosophy.
As others have noted here, there is far more abuse in the system than there should be. Hand up, not hand out as it was noted. If i hadn't had family, I would have gone to state and federal programs to get me going again. There are job centers everywhere in the states. You just have to be willing to go there. Might not be the dream job but it will be money on the table and that's a start. Housing assistance is harder to come by, I will admit, but it is there. There are ways.
I fully support programs to help people who are disabled. It happens. But I don't like the abuse by Joe construction worker who gets a twinge and defrauds the system.
I support programs to feed you when you are down and out. Used it myself. Gladly pay.
I support all of these things, in the name of bringing people back to happy, self sufficient tax payers. The problem is, there is no system in place for making it mandatory that you have a plan for getting off of assistance. If you are getting any sort of hand out because you are on hard times, there should be a comprehensive plan to get you working with a hard end date.
I do love the thumbs down for all the points about swallowing your pride, being accountable for your own actions, and asking for help, etc. Makes me smile because it proves the point. It is distasteful to have to rely on others for help for some reason (I don't mind really). I wonder if any one thumbing down has had to rely on others to get where they are? Or been poor and worked their way out of a bad life situation?
I'd say I have had it as tricky as you, have a downvote.
I'm in the UK and have been trying to support a friend of mine who hit the skids big time.
He had a broken neck and can only manage to walk on good days, in good weather, about a mile, before he's basically wiped out.
His other half walked out, and took his documentation with her. No disablement meant no income. No state ID meant no way to do anything. I had to get a special courier to get a new birth certificate so he could get state ID and everything else sorted within the few short weeks before the rent ran out.
With no ID, he couldn't even get a bank account (he didn't have one, because they charge over there) so there was no simple way to get money to him.
Basically, he was facing living in a cardboard box, or walking in front of a tram, as most of the shelters are female only and men are left to fend for themselves. He managed to get a place in a shelter and for the last year, he's been slowly getting back on his feet. Even UK society is only starting to wake up to the violence that men face - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-34696595 - it isn't all a one way street.
But thanks to that phone, he was able to do more than just contact the services in order to get things moving again, it also acted as his organiser, calendar, alarm clock, a key device in enabling him to start piecing things back together again. Oddly enough, he might actually end up making it as an artist. He's already been offered free gallery space.
At a time when states are waking up to the fact that they've got to spend money to save money on the homeless situation - http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/denver-using-86m-loan-to-build-apartments-for-chronically-homeless-people - doing this is just insanity itself.
Short sighted, idiot numbskullery of the highest order.
Requiem Opus - Introduction (audio fixed) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Je8isgKaVg
To blame the poor for their problems, and the powerless for being powerless.
Its a bit harder to work out how to assist them out of poverty without creating dependency, and some schemes do turn into abuses that fail to help the needy - that is why all such things should be audited to establish if they are working and fix them if not. Its too easy to just yank the assistance schemes away because a proportion of the recipents abuse the system
The thing is, relative poverty in the 1st World and absolute poverty in the 3rd World will always exist, but how you prove you are a 'Just Person' is that you actually try and do something about it.
This.
As I said in a previous post. I worked temp job on benefits for a local council. At first I was pretty pissed off, the ones who phone up a lot and whinge are often the scrounger ones (which considering you are doing a low paid temp job not to be unemployed is annoying), but realistically it's a small percentage. Most people don't want to be on benefits and for a large percentage of the population it's shit.#
But what we see is always the scam artists who work the system and make far nicer headlines to get righteous anger, and then people go well it's all like that lets cut benefits. No it's not all like that, it really isn't, but if we do we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I've talked to people who have broke down in tears because we helped them when a disaster has happened, memorable one was a woman whose husband (the main breadwinner) had just died, the fact we had the facility to say forget your council tax at the moment thats not a cost that should bother you now, sort out the rest, your mortgage etc. Thats who we fuck up to make us feel like we aren't wasting our money on a scrounger, you klnow what, things like this, thats society, thats us actually aknowledging that we have moved on from monkeys in tress to becoming a cohesive whole society that actually tries to go forward.
What about those little kids whose parents are fuck ups? should we be punishing them? should we be limiting their future? There's a school in Leeds friend works at, they have had kids eating out of bins because of smack addict parents. Now I'll agree wuth anyone those parents are shit. But here's a question, thats that kids formative years, how do you think they are going to turn out as an adult? Whats their 16 year old life going to be if they are living like that at the age of around ten? The sins of their parents are going to dog them for years man, they are going to need help and you know what I actually don't think that situation they will likely find themselves in later on in life, will really be much of their fault.
Now don't get me wrong there are issues.
Some people getinstitutionalised, seen that we need to really sort that out.
I actually think benefts cheats get off very lightly from what i have seen, that needs fixing for definite. But to label everyone as bad and make them suffer for the actions of a few, explain to me how is that fair?
There's probably problems with child benefits and people having kids for them, and similar things.
But these are problems we sholud not be punishing everyone for to get to a few.
*I don't know where this people on benefits are all rich thing comes from either, unemployed I basically lived in a slum, a lot of my stuff I had bought in my working life was ruined by mold, Couldn't afford to move that takes money, and yeah rents paid, so is council tax, let me tell you the remaining £65/ week does not go far, especially when you are on card meters in a house with terrible insulation. There were more than a few nights and days I lived with no utilities waiting for my next payment. I used to sleep with a duvet a sleeping bag and two layers of clothes in the winter. Before that I had worked all my life hard, a year and a half unemployment financially broke me.
#also btw landlords who phone up to find out the max they can charge for benefits, I've had people complain they cannot buy their mothers house and then charge rent, so she can claim on benefits.
My state ended its telephone assistance program last year. With the federal lifeline program, I only save a couple dollars off my phone bill. If I was a corporation, I could get all kinds of state and federal benefits.
When was the last time anybody saw a public pay phone? I remember when I could call my parents just with a dime. The last time I ever saw a pay phone, it cost me a quarter to make a local call.
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