Obama Phones

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I wonder if the guvment (we're here to help) would give me a free bull?
Oh wait--they already are--a shovel full at a time.
 
These phones originated during the Reagan administration (1984), were expanded during the Clinton term and the first cell phone (tracfone) in 2008 during George W's time. All of these milestones were passed before Obama started. For more detail try http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/cellphone.asp

I agree with most of the comments here but throwing the baby out with the bath water is not the answer. Most government programs, Soc. Sec, food stamps, medicare, etc., were started to help the deserving. Over the years politicians have morphed them into something out of control. We can rant and rave about the undeserving that take advantage of these programs forever and accomplish nothing. We're fighting symptoms and not the cause. The problems are in Washington DC, Little Rock, Jeff. City, etc. Most people don't even vote!!! We passed term limits for our State offices a few years ago, guess what, it works great. If we would do that nationally along with taking money away from the lobby groups, I thing many of out problems would be solved. :2cents:
 
Medicare, and Social Security is for our senior citizens. Most have worked their whole lives and paid into the system.
It's the low life, dirt ball, scumbag, freeloader that's ruined this country. We should take better care of our senior citizens than we do. But we don't have the money, because the dirt ball, scumbag, free loaders are getting free phones, and welfare and they haven't paid a dime into the system, and are just breeding more. It's the liberals fault. :2cents:
 
highgrit":2edf1dv2 said:
Medicare, and Social Security is for our senior citizens. Most have worked their whole lives and paid into the system.
It's the low life, dirt ball, scumbag, freeloader that's ruined this country. We should take better care of our senior citizens than we do. But we don't have the money, because the dirt ball, scumbag, free loaders are getting free phones, and welfare and they haven't paid a dime into the system, and are just breeding more. It's the liberals fault. :2cents:
you been eating way to much hatersalad :cowboy:
 
highgrit":3r4tyjz3 said:
Medicare, and Social Security is for our senior citizens. Most have worked their whole lives and paid into the system.

You might want to also include the "real" mentally and physically disabled.
 
Well I'm sure I'll take a beating for this but this is how I see it. Medicare and social security should absolutely be there for those who worked and contributed to it. I don't however feel that they should be expected to supply "luxury" items (cell phones, internet, cable tv, ..ect). I also feel that there should be welfare for those who need temporary help in hard times, but again for necessity items and not luxuries they have become accustomed to. I'm sorry but it chaps my behind to no end to go to the grocery store to see the mothers with their kids dressed in name brand latest fashions, yappin on their cell phones stocking their carts with junk food and the most expensive foods in the store paying with food stamps and wheeling it out to their brand new SUV... :bang: It is also very popular in our area for elderly parents to give their possessions to their kids so they can meet income/asset guidelines for govt benefits or their children are very well off and they are getting social security and the kids do nothing but complain how the govt should do more for them....no if you want better for your parents then bust out your checkbook!
 
For some people, a phone is a lifeline, and I don't begrudge anyone who needs it having one at other's expense. But like it usually happens, a well intentioned and worthwhile little government program has spun out of control. If they cross check their database and only provide one phone per household, maybe that would weed out some abuse. Even if some people are milking it for a free ride, I don't want to take it away from the Pegs of the world.

Congress spends way more on beverage service, their private cafeteria and health club, and a lot of other "perks" than what these phones cost I bet.

Thanks to keysbottles for the mini history lesson. I will correctly call it a Reaganphone from now on. It will make my sister do a spit-take, can't wait!
 
MO_cows":16g523o2 said:
For some people, a phone is a lifeline, and I don't begrudge anyone who needs it having one at other's expense. But like it usually happens, a well intentioned and worthwhile little government program has spun out of control. If they cross check their database and only provide one phone per household, maybe that would weed out some abuse. Even if some people are milking it for a free ride, I don't want to take it away from the Pegs of the world.

Congress spends way more on beverage service, their private cafeteria and health club, and a lot of other "perks" than what these phones cost I bet.

Thanks to keysbottles for the mini history lesson. I will correctly call it a Reaganphone from now on. It will make my sister do a spit-take, can't wait!

Yep, I wonder how they ever lived without them.... :roll:

My take, I don't like bums.
 
One should always remember to fact check the fact checkers. As is frequently the case, Snopes is being disingenuous and not quite presenting the full story:

Following deregulation & the breakup of ATT in 1984, the FCC, instituted a fee, charged to long distance providers, to pay for access & affordability to rural and other high cost areas to comply with existing mandates in The Communications Act of 1934. That program continued until The Telecommunications Act was passed in 1996, which created the Universal Service Fund, which called for the fees previously paid only by long distance providers, to be paid by all phone service providers, which was, naturally, passed on directly to consumers. So we all pay for it on our landline AND cell phone service. This created a HUGE surplus in the fund, so rather than reduce or eliminate the fee, they decided it's really not enough that everyone has access to landline phone service, but should also apply to wireless access. Now it's imperative that everyone have access to broadband, too. That's what in the works right now. But I digress...

So while the various incarnations of the lifeline program have existed since 1984, and was greatly expanded in 1996, Obama was the 1st president to make sure that everyone in the Dem's constituency knew about the "free phone program" by endlessly promoting it's importance and how easy it is to qualify. Here's the criteria to qualify (taken from FCC website).

To participate in the program, consumers must either have an income that is at or below 135% of the federal Poverty Guidelines or participate in one of the following assistance programs:
•Medicaid;
•Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps or SNAP);
•Supplemental Security Income (SSI);
•Federal Public House Assistance (Section 8);
•Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP);
•Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF);
•National School Lunch Program's Free Lunch Program;
•Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance;
•Tribally-Administrered Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TTANF);
•Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR);
•Head Start (if income eligibility criteria are met); or
•State assistance programs (if applicable).
 
OK, my point would have to include the ironic fact that subsidies to poor folks end up making the really rich (Carlos Slim in this case) a lot richer. You can bet that Trac-Phone sellers are told to make sure that every poor person who gets a phone recruits some more poor people to get a phone.
Do Food Stamps benefit poor people or grocery stores? It would be interesting to know how much of that welfare is spent at Wal-Mart, Kroger, HEB etc.
Is section 8 a subsidy to the poor or to your local developer of sleazy apartments?
Just askin.
The folks who live in the gated communities are just as responsible for this as the people who find themselves down.
This is why I oppose EVERY tax increase and every "entitlement". The only people who pay are the suckers in the middle.
 
Workinonit Farm":11uka4dc said:
Ouachita":11uka4dc said:
Katherine, don't make me google it; what is "Galt"? Forgive by ignorant hillbilliness

From the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Which is now a movie, in 2 parts, which I have not seen. Excellent book!

John Galt is one of the characters in the book. Essentially,the book is about what happens when the people who 'keep things rolling', the job creators, the railroads, airlines, corporations, etc "stop" doing what they are doing. They get fed up with all the unionization, the demands, the attitudes of entitlement and the new laws that "punish" them---fine them---force them to "give" more to the people. They see that it failed in so many other countries that became "The people's republic of England, The people's republic of France etc. And the one guy, John Galt, manages to get together with all these men of industry, innovators, inventors etc and these guys "disappear". Where they go is a very out-of-the-way place here in the US and basically start all over while the rest of the USA (and the world for that matter) implodes because it was now left up to the takers and the leeches and the parasites to "get things done".

That's it in a nutshell. The book was written in the 1940's I believe. I got it for Christmas last year and read it last winter. What happened in that book, is happening now in other countries and starting to happen here, a welfare state.

I hope that explained it? Maybe?

Katherine
No way a movie can capture the essence of the book. READ IT. But not if you are a socialist because you would find it too upsetting.
Ayn Rand espoused the philosophy of "Objectivism, or Objectivist Ethics".
There is an Ayn Rand Institute and several high ranking people have known her personally and met in her study/discussion group. If memory serves, Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan to name a couple. I think it was Greenspan who admitted he could not match her intellect. In crossing intellectual swords with her she won every time.

Google Ayn Rand quotes.
 
I am compassionate. I HATE watching anyone go without. I think that the poor should be fed, I think that the elderly and the disabled should have access to a phone that they can use to call help in case of an emergency, I think that women that have kids that wind up with a loser husband who won't support any of them should get all the help they need to raise the family...
My problem comes when the help comes from the government instead of face to face interaction where people with the means to solve problems meet the needy. Any other system will lead to corruption. Once the government get's involved, the burden get's placed blindly on everyone who pays in and it makes it to easy for people who want to help to rely on "the system" to solve problems that are right in front of their eye's.
I myself find that I get to where I ignore real need thinking that I've already paid the tax to solve need but that system doesn't work. We have to pay into the broken system or go to jail for tax evasion. If we are willing to solve need ABOVE AND BEYOND what we are already being taxed for and applied it where it would do real good, we'd put the government out of business.
 
If the government took away these programs we would have to take turns sleeping. You wouldn't be safe no matter what you did. A family 5 generations deep in handouts would never work. They would steal. -------------------toeing the politics line here. They are buying support on both ends. The top and the bottom. Who really pays, and who really suffers. I'm all for helping handicapped people. Giving elderly people back what they worked for. Why give anybody else anything.
 
Bigfoot":3ko2n1wh said:
If the government took away these programs we would have to take turns sleeping. You wouldn't be safe no matter what you did. A family 5 generations deep in handouts would never work. They would steal. -------------------toeing the politics line here. They are buying support on both ends. The top and the bottom. Who really pays, and who really suffers. I'm all for helping handicapped people. Giving elderly people back what they worked for. Why give anybody else anything.

Bigfoot, even the 'handicapped' play the game. I'm sorry for the their handicap but, there are enough work credits given to employers these days so that the handicap is not always a good excuse but they play it anyway. Some folks will go to any extreme not to work. And that TracPhone? BS. Sure, maybe some of them go to the real needy but the lionshare of those phones and all the other "to go' phones, are purchased by wetbacks ('illegal immigrants' to the liberal class). I would agree with you that the truly needy should be given some kind of break but our government is no where near being able to police the whole process properly.
 
cow pollinater":2isdp4kx said:
I am compassionate. I HATE watching anyone go without. I think that the poor should be fed, I think that the elderly and the disabled should have access to a phone that they can use to call help in case of an emergency, I think that women that have kids that wind up with a loser husband who won't support any of them should get all the help they need to raise the family...
My problem comes when the help comes from the government instead of face to face interaction where people with the means to solve problems meet the needy. Any other system will lead to corruption. Once the government get's involved, the burden get's placed blindly on everyone who pays in and it makes it to easy for people who want to help to rely on "the system" to solve problems that are right in front of their eye's.
I myself find that I get to where I ignore real need thinking that I've already paid the tax to solve need but that system doesn't work. We have to pay into the broken system or go to jail for tax evasion. If we are willing to solve need ABOVE AND BEYOND what we are already being taxed for and applied it where it would do real good, we'd put the government out of business.

Worth repeating.

Well said! :clap:
 
cow pollinater":2o7sbl9d said:
I am compassionate. I HATE watching anyone go without. I think that the poor should be fed, I think that the elderly and the disabled should have access to a phone that they can use to call help in case of an emergency, I think that women that have kids that wind up with a loser husband who won't support any of them should get all the help they need to raise the family...
My problem comes when the help comes from the government instead of face to face interaction where people with the means to solve problems meet the needy. Any other system will lead to corruption. Once the government get's involved, the burden get's placed blindly on everyone who pays in and it makes it to easy for people who want to help to rely on "the system" to solve problems that are right in front of their eye's.
I myself find that I get to where I ignore real need thinking that I've already paid the tax to solve need but that system doesn't work. We have to pay into the broken system or go to jail for tax evasion. If we are willing to solve need ABOVE AND BEYOND what we are already being taxed for and applied it where it would do real good, we'd put the government out of business.

Used to be called a community....
 
Anyone ever notice how loud birds can sing while they work their tails off building nests.

Cow birds lay their eggs in other bird's nests.
 
I think poverty is in the eye of the beholder. Will Rogers put it best when he said that if you are going to be poor there is no place like america to do so as we are the only country where you can drive your automobile to the poor house. So we should be thankful for what we have and also for what we do not. Just think what it would be like if we got all the government we're paying for.
 

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