Chris
08-25-2013, 09:47 AM
We joke about Obamaphones but I didn't realize it's a $2.1 billion giveaway nor how crony capitalistic it is, from buying votes to handing out favors.
First, defund Obamaphones (http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130825/OPINION01/308250002#ixzz2cza4P5PJ)
Nothing better illustrates the impossibility of killing a federal entitlement than the fraud-riddled Obamaphone program.
The $2.1 billion giveaway, funded by a tax on every cellphone service contract, is a well-documented boondoggle — an estimated 41 percent of the phones go to ineligible recipients.
Earlier this month, my former intern, Jillian Melchior, was able to obtain three of the free phones on the streets of New York City without telling a single fib. Melchior, now a reporter for National Review, says the service reps who signed her up seemed completely uninterested in whether she was eligible for the program — she isn’t.
While signing up for one of the phones, she was taking calls on her personal iPhone.
Hers was not the first report on Obamaphone abuse. Other investigations have found Obamaphones in the pockets of drug dealers, and families that get phones for every member, including children.
So why hasn’t it been axed? Because federal spending programs rarely die, and are even more rarely reformed.
Every dollar the government spends has a constituency. In this case, the private companies providing the phones are perversely motivated to ignore eligibility requirements — the more phones they pass out, the more money they make. The recipients of the phones are voters, and the administration has no incentive to alienate its own voters to save such a piddling amount as $2.1 billion.
...
First, defund Obamaphones (http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130825/OPINION01/308250002#ixzz2cza4P5PJ)
Nothing better illustrates the impossibility of killing a federal entitlement than the fraud-riddled Obamaphone program.
The $2.1 billion giveaway, funded by a tax on every cellphone service contract, is a well-documented boondoggle — an estimated 41 percent of the phones go to ineligible recipients.
Earlier this month, my former intern, Jillian Melchior, was able to obtain three of the free phones on the streets of New York City without telling a single fib. Melchior, now a reporter for National Review, says the service reps who signed her up seemed completely uninterested in whether she was eligible for the program — she isn’t.
While signing up for one of the phones, she was taking calls on her personal iPhone.
Hers was not the first report on Obamaphone abuse. Other investigations have found Obamaphones in the pockets of drug dealers, and families that get phones for every member, including children.
So why hasn’t it been axed? Because federal spending programs rarely die, and are even more rarely reformed.
Every dollar the government spends has a constituency. In this case, the private companies providing the phones are perversely motivated to ignore eligibility requirements — the more phones they pass out, the more money they make. The recipients of the phones are voters, and the administration has no incentive to alienate its own voters to save such a piddling amount as $2.1 billion.
...