HELLO? OBAMA DIDN’T GIVE YOU YOUR CELL PHONE
(IN CASE THAT’S WHY YOU’RE VOTING FOR HIM)
by Jon Rappoport
September 29, 2012
Maybe somebody inside Obama’s re-election campaign is spreading disinfo about the president giving away free cell phones, but if so, it isn’t true.
Poor people aren’t getting free phones or discounted service fees from the Obama administration.
People voting for Obama because they have a free cell phone are way off. They should try voting instead for a giant telecom company—only that company isn’t running for president.
Since 1997, people below the poverty line have been getting discounted phone service, because big telecom companies have been making it possible, by charging everybody else a few bucks extra on their monthly phone bills. That’s how it works.
The basic program is called Lifeline, a branch of a non-profit company, Universal Service Administrative Company, set up by the FCC in 1997, as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act passed by Congress. That’s how the poor get discounted phone bills.
The Constitutionality of the federal government setting up a non-profit company is another story for another time. Suffice it to say, it should be illegal.
Free cell phones for the poor come from SafeLink which, according to FactCheck.org, is operated by America Movil, a giant wireless company. SafeLink, however, is paid for by that non-profit the FCC set up, Universal Service Administrative Company, which in turn gets its money from the big telecoms, who charge everybody who isn’t poor a few extra bucks on their phone bills. Got it?
Nothing to do with Obama. There is no Obama Phone.
But what a windfall for the Obama campaign when poor people believe the president gave them their phones. In Ohio alone, a key election state, there are now a million people who have some kind of discounted phone service.
Are government-funded community groups and community organizers out there, across America, recruiting poor people and telling them they can get Obama Phones? There are now 16.5 million people in the US receiving discounted phone services. Between 20 and 30 million Americans are eligible. That’s quite a nice election-vote bump.
“Obama re-elected! It was the phones, pollsters say.”
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.