Lifeline Across America (free wireless phones for poor)

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[Erik Latranyi]

How many Freepers know about this program?

It gives a free mobile phone to low-income households and free 68 minutes of airtime per month.

Tracphone has this website:

Safelink Wireless

I tried to find what legislation established this, but cannot.

[Erik Latranyi]

Looking for an investiation into what legislation created this.

[Blueflag]

OK, before we get our panties totally in a wad, bear in mind the “lifeline” LANDLINE services have been the law for years.

Thousands and thousands of old fashioned Bell Telephone 1FR land lines, subsidized by other paying customers, are in the homes of the indigent already.

If you have a phone and cannot pay your bill, the phone company call cut off your LD and calling, but cannot cut off your 911 “lifeline” access. These landlines cost “us” a lot more to keep lit up than providing these folks with a few minutes of air time.

[Blueflag]

“call cut off” should be “can cut off”

[TSgt]

First I pay for their food, then their homes, then their medical costs and drugs and now cell phones...

General Eligibility Programs

Federal Public Housing Assistance / Section 8
Food Stamps
Medicaid
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
National School Lunch (free program only)
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

[I Buried My Guns]

Scene: A dark, dirty alley in the decaying inner city. A disheveled man with a shopping cart ambles up to a dumpster in a quest for cast-off goods, only to run into an acquaintance doing the same thing.

Person #1: "Yo yo, what up Holmes?"

Person #2: Nuthin, just cold kickin' it with my free cell phone provided by the taxpayers, yo".

Person #1: "Werd, that's dope!"

Person #2: "Indeed, the dopeness of this program knows no earthly bounds."

Person #1: "Upon primary analysis, I must concur with that assessment."

[Erik Latranyi]

If you have a phone and cannot pay your bill, the phone company call cut off your LD and calling, but cannot cut off your 911 “lifeline” access.

How did that morph into giving a free phone with free minutes every month?!

[1rudeboy]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/cellphone.asp.

[Erik Latranyi]

Yes, I know it is true.

What I am asking is how did this go from ensuring 911 service in people’s homes to a free wireless phone and 68 minutes per month?

[w1andsodidwe]

In Stockton California, free lunch is provided without means checking in parks during the summer, on the theory that the schools are closed so the poor little things will starve.

What is the number one health problem with children today. Right, it is obesity? Wonder why?

[TSgt]

I’m not being insensitive and actually grew up poor but never went hungry. I too was given free lunch in the summer and just thought it cool that it was a free sack lunch. Me and my poor friends could have ate the same items at home.

I simply don’t believe there are so many hungry people in America. There are some, but not the millions that are claimed.

[mnehring]

This is mostly a marketing scam to get people in the door though very few qualify. The Lifeline/Linkup program goes back to the Clinton administration (albeit, Obama reauthorized it this year). This is (and has been) subsidized by all those little fees you see on your cell phone bill.

All cell phone companies must offer this. What Safelink is doing is using this program to get people in the door, even though 99 out of 100 don’t qualify for it.

[Blueflag]

In real dollars it costs ‘us’ less to give them a free cel phone and 2 minutes per day of airtime as a lifeline than it does to maintain the old landline services for the indigent.

Society has long ago decided that the indigent shall have a telephone lifeline. This is a less costly way to do it.