Bread and circuses in Roman times, now phone and circuses,
Back in FDR days, people had to settle for a party line, and even he didn’t give them that.
UPDATE,
Where do “Obama phones” come from? They come from your user fees!
The program is called Lifeline, established in 1984, originally created to subsidize landline phone service for low income Americans, funded by government-collected telecommunication fees, paid by consumers.
In 2008, the program was expanded to support cell phones which quickly escalated the cost of the program. In 2008 the program cost $772 million, but by 2011 it cost $1.6 billion.
A 2011 audit found that 269,000 wireless Lifeline subscribers were receiving free phones and monthly service from two or more carriers. Several websites have been created to promote “free” government cell phones, including the”The Obama Cell Phone” website at Obamaphone.net.
Dependence is our natural state. We need to be whacked on the ass in order to start breathing on our own.
Unless you have experienced it you really can’t appreciate how dependence can turn people into what they were on the day of their births.
Two illustrations:
1. back in the 70’s a friend bought some low-income housing from a church and went around to the tenants to see how everything was. One person complained that the only overhead light in his efficiency apartment wouldn’t work. My friend reached up, unscrewed the bulb, looked at it.
Probably nothing wrong with the light, he said. The bulb’s burned out.
I knows, the man said. I told them that over a year ago but they ain’t brought a good one ’round.
2. I remember a feature piece on WWL-TV about some charity that gave some old woman a fan. From the looks of the old woman she had been suffering sans-fan in her little apartment on Tchoupitoulas St. since around the time Jefferson bought New Orleans from Napoleon.
Her neighbors were there to help her celebrate her sudden deliverance from some of the heat. The woman cried. The neighbors cheered and waved their beers. The camera rolled, and rested on the fan, a Sears “box” window fan. $10. Retail. One year warranty.
The old woman nor her cheering well-wisher, nor all of them working together, could come up with $10 for her fan. If it was not given it could not be had.
The antidote to dependence is personal responsibility. Which makes you change your own lightbulb.
Great illustrations. When Lawrence Summers was president of Harvard he had a saying…..”No one ever washes a rental car.” America has changed from a nation of owners to a nation of renters.
Congressman Tim Griffen (R-Arkansas) has sponsored H.R. 3481. It is called Stop Taxpayer Funded Cell Phone Act of 2011. The bill is still in committee.
What this shows is how government programs grow and grow and grow. It shows that when too much federal money is flooding the system abuses are bound to happen. This program should have been done on the local if at all. I see it as a subsidy to the cell phone companies.
I also see that when free stuff from the government is taken away the people riot such as what is going on in Greece today.
I see the movie Atlas Shrugged is opening October 12th. I wonder if it is Part II?
Yes, I think it’s part 2.