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Keyword: obamaphones

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  • Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones

    09/09/2026 1:46:33 PM PDT · by grundle · 55 replies
    New York Times ^ | September 5, 2026 | Coral Davenport
    The proposed benefit, a top policy priority for Vice President JD Vance, would apply only to married couples and tap a fund intended to provide federal child care subsidies to working parents. The Trump administration is moving to allow married couples with a stay-at-home spouse to collect child care subsidies, a policy championed by Vice President JD Vance, using funds from a federal program intended to assist working parents, according to people familiar with the discussions. The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children, one of the most significant efforts...
  • Vance-Backed Rule Would Open Child Care Aid to Stay-at-Home Moms

    09/06/2026 9:11:37 AM PDT · by thegagline · 62 replies
    The New York Post ^ | 09/05/2026 | Solange Reyner
    The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would open a federal child care program — built to help low-income parents hold jobs or finish school — to households where one married parent stays home, The New York Times reported Saturday. No federal program currently pays a parent to forgo work and raise a child at home.This one would be the first, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the discussions and a draft document the newspaper reviewed. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is not final. The money would come from the Child...
  • INVESTIGATION: Hunter Biden Had Tentacles In Dark Corners Of the World Far Beyond China, Ukraine

    12/01/2021 11:43:36 PM PST · by Liz · 32 replies
    DailyWire.com ^ | May 18, 2021 | Luke Rosiak
    PART 2 OF 3. The Hunter Biden Files Hunter Biden and his business partners were involved in discussions about possible deals in dozens of foreign countries, often corrupt backwaters, at times invoking official channels like ambassadors, emails reviewed by The Daily Wire show. While most attention has focused on Ukraine, where a gas company paid the now-president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month while he was in deep crack addiction, and China, Hunter and his partners at a consultancy called Rosemont Seneca were eager to do business in a vast array of other places. The map below highlights...
  • Vanity: Shadowgate video lays out how Obama Phones allowed rioting

    08/17/2020 11:54:30 AM PDT · by spacejunkie2001 · 35 replies
    8/17/20 | me
    I'm watching the Shadowgate video and about 30 minutes in, they're talking about the revision of the Smith Mundt Modernization Act, which opened the flood gates for social media influencing via the government. The Smith Mundt Act was originally created to disseminate propaganda. It was 'modernized' in 2012. The first iPhone was released in the same month (June 2007) as the IIA (interactive internet activities) policy letter and then with a short time span, the 'obama phones' were provided to mainly the black community. They says this led to the Ferguson riots. It is sinister what is going on with...
  • Senate Democrat blasts 'Obamaphone' over fraudulent findings, complete lack of oversight'

    07/06/2017 5:24:12 AM PDT · by simpson96 · 36 replies
    Fox News ^ | 6/30/2017 | Staff
    A new government audit finds more than a third of enrollees of the "Obamaphone" program may not be qualified -- among other fraudulent findings -- prompting a Senate Democrat to roundly criticize the program's "complete lack of oversight." A report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) claims the program, which gives cell phones to poor people, stashed $9 billion in private bank accounts, the Washington Times reported. The 90-page report was requested by Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who serves as ranking Democrat on the Senate’s chief oversight committee and who is a former state auditor in...
  • Fraudulent Obamaphone Program

    07/01/2017 5:33:41 AM PDT · by reviled downesdad · 29 replies
    Washington Times ^ | Stephen Dinan
    The controversial “Obamaphone” program, which pays for cellphones for the poor, is rife with fraud, according to a new government report released Thursday that found more than a third of enrollees may not even be qualified. Known officially as the Lifeline Program, the phone giveaway became a symbol of government waste in the previous administration. Now a new report from the Government Accountability Office bears out those concerns. The report, requested by Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, also says the program has stashed some $9 billion in assets in private bank accounts rather than with the federal treasury, further increasing...
  • ‘Obamaphone’ program stashes $9 billion in private bank accounts

    06/30/2017 3:28:57 PM PDT · by ColdOne · 65 replies
    washingtontimes.com ^ | 6/30/17 | Stephen Dinan
    The controversial “Obamaphone” program, which pays for cellphones for the poor, is rife with fraud, according to a new government report released Thursday that found more than a third of enrollees may not even be qualified. Known officially as the Lifeline Program, the phone giveaway became a symbol of government waste in the previous administration. Now a new report from the Government Accountability Office bears out those concerns. The report, requested by Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, also says the program has stashed some $9 billion in assets in private bank accounts rather than with the federal treasury, further increasing...
  • Obamaphones Fraud As High As 65 Percent

    06/30/2017 6:04:43 AM PDT · by davikkm · 47 replies
    IWB ^ | LUKE ROSIAK
    A massive portion of Obamaphone recipients are receiving the benefit after lying on their applications, according to a new 90-page report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). An undercover sting operation showed ineligible applications were approved 63 percent of the time, and a review that found that 36 to 65 percent of beneficiaries in various categories had lied in easily-detectable ways but were approved anyway. The fraud reached unheard-of proportions because the Federal Communications Commission let the task of screening for eligibility fall to phone companies that profit off of enrolling as many people as possible. GAO undercover investigators applied...
  • FCC: Taxpayers Footing $500M Bill for Obamaphone Fraud"4.2 million duplicate recipients..."

    06/09/2016 7:02:22 PM PDT · by blueyon · 26 replies
    TR True Revolt ^ | 6/09/16 | Sarah Fisher |
    A letter sent by a Federal Communications Commission commissioner suggests that taxpayers are footing the bill for half a billion dollars in fraudulent "Obamaphone" subsidies. Ajit Pai, the senior Republican commissioner at the FCC, says there may be as many as 4.2 million duplicate recipients of Lifeline Assistance subsidies, also known as the “Obamaphone” program. In a letter to chief executive of Universal Services Administrative Company (USAC), Pai requests an audit of how carrier sub-contractors vet the applications for new subsidies. In the letter, first published by The Hill, Pai says that cell phone carriers may have bypassed a safeguard...
  • Obamaphone expands to Obama-Internet, with little thought of cost, abuse

    04/02/2016 6:02:54 AM PDT · by kevcol · 20 replies
    The Washington Times ^ | April 1, 2016 | Kelly Riddell
    Remember the Obamaphone? "Everybody in Cleveland have got Obamaphone, keep Obama as president, you know?" said Michelle Dowery, an Obama supporter at a 2012 Mitt Romney event, which went viral at the time. "He gave us a phone, he's going to do more ... You sign up, you on food stamps, you on Social Security, you got no income, you got disability." Mr. Obama has indeed done more. The Federal Communications Commission agreed Thursday to expand the Obamaphone, dubbed the LifeLine Program, to include high-speed Internet access. By doing so, the cost of the program will increase by 50 percent,...
  • First Obama Phones, Now Obama Loans

    02/16/2016 3:26:47 PM PST · by Kaslin · 30 replies
    Townhall.com ^ | February 16, 2016 | Brian McNicoll
    Remember Obama phones? Now it's Obama loans. The Obama administration is trying to muscle in on the small-dollar loan market, in part by muscling out the online lending industry. It is ordering banks to go against the advice of their regulators and step up small-dollar lending to economically disadvantaged customers. It's toying with the idea of offering banking services, including consumer loans, through the Postal Service. And this week we learned the Treasury Department is asking for $10 million to provide small loans to people with questionable credit through community development organizations. It's ACORN going into the payday loan business....
  • Obama Admits That Fox News Stories About Obamaphones ‘Make Me Mad’

    05/12/2015 10:49:53 AM PDT · by Nachum · 74 replies
    Breitbart ^ | 5/12/15 | Charlie Spiering
    During a panel discussion about poverty, President Obama criticized Fox News for stereotyping poor people as “sponges” or “leeches.” Part of the problem, he explained, was that so many people think that the poor are underserving of help from the federal government, causing wealthy people to actually be angry at the poor. “I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges and leeches are don’t want to work, are lazy or are undeserving got traction,” Obama said. He blamed the Fox News channel for feeding that narrative. “It’s still being propagated, I mean, I have to say that...
  • Are Obamaphones being used to mobilize the mobs?

    04/28/2015 6:12:54 PM PDT · by An American in Turkiye · 26 replies
    Self | 4/28/2015 | An American In Turkiye
    This is total conjecture on my part, but as we watch all these cities going up in flame, and we see massive amounts of people showing up and being bussed in (quite organized), I'm wondering if all those Obamaphones are being used by the regime to text coordinates, instructions, etc. What else could explain these organized riots?
  • Foodstamps for able bodied childless adults down 80% in Maine.

    04/12/2015 8:29:02 PM PDT · by yuffy · 12 replies
    americanthinker ^ | April 12, 2015 | By Newsmachete
    Foodstamp enrollment by able bodied childless adults in Maine (which has a conservative Republican governor) is down 80% after imposing a very modest requirement that recipients work at least 6 hours a week in a volunteer program. Of course, the media portrays this as an exercise in cruelty. The food pantry here, just off the main drag in this neat college town, gets busiest on Wednesdays, when the parking lot is jammed and clients squeeze into the lobby, flipping through books left on a communal shelf as they wait their turn to select about a week’s worth of food. The...
  • FCC: Lifeline Program Fraud and Abuse Surpasses Two Million Subscribers

    11/05/2013 11:16:25 AM PST · by ColdOne · 8 replies
    weeklystandard.com ^ | 11/5/13 | Jeryl Bier
    In a continuing crackdown on the federal government's Lifeline program, sometimes known as "Obama phones," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that fraud and abuse in the program exceeded two million subscribers. New rules were established after it became clear that subscribers and providers were taking advantage of the system:
  • Georgia Slaps $5 Fee on Free Cellphone Service for Poor (Obamaphones)

    10/17/2013 7:06:14 PM PDT · by Pan_Yan · 45 replies
    Wall Street Journal ^ | Oct. 16, 2013 7:44 p.m. ET | Gautham Nagesh
    Georgia has become the first state to charge a fee to low-income people who receive free cellphone service through a federal program, saying the move would combat fraud. The Georgia Public Service Commission voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a $5-a-month charge on participants in the Lifeline program, which is designed to ensure low-income households have access to basic communications services. Georgia Public Service Commissioner Doug Everett, who proposed the rule, said the program's structure encourages wireless providers to sign up as many customers as possible to rake in taxpayer-funded subsidies, without first verifying their eligibility. Each eligible household is supposed...
  • Free Govt. Cell Phones Will Create Jobs for Latinos

    09/04/2013 1:02:11 PM PDT · by jazusamo · 15 replies
    Judicial Watch ^ | September 4, 2013
    A fraud-infested government program that gives low-income populations free cell phones should expand in Hispanic communities because it will help bolster employment rates, according to a powerful Latino rights group working to save the program as Congress considers killing it. The controversial cell phone giveaway, known as Lifeline Assistance, has grown immensely under President Obama and in fact has become known as “Obama Phones.” It went from costing American taxpayers $819 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2012 , according to figures provided to an Idaho newspaper by one of its U.S. Senators. The money is collected nationwide from...
  • The move to defund “Obamaphones”

    08/25/2013 5:52:10 PM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 14 replies
    Hotair ^ | 08/25/2013 | Jazz Shaw
    Nolan Finley, writing for the Detroit News, is making the case this week for setting an example in defunding wasteful entitlement programs by axing the “Obamaphone.” He refers to the $2.1 billion annual program providing free cell phones to low income individuals who qualify for other federal assistance so that they can seek and obtain work, contact family members or dial for emergency help. But the program is widely known to be fraud riddled, with an estimated 40% of phones going to the ineligible. So why hasn’t it been scrapped or at least overhauled? So why hasn’t it been axed?...
  • Me and My Obamaphones: They are scandalously easy to get.

    08/01/2013 7:22:49 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 37 replies
    National Review ^ | 08/01/2013 | Jillian Kay Melchior
    Confession: You’re paying my phone bill. In the past month, I have received three shiny new cell phones, courtesy of American taxpayers, that should never have fallen into my hands. The Federal Communications Commission oversees the so-called Lifeline program, created in 1984 to make sure impoverished Americans had telephone service available to call their moms, bosses, and 911. In 2008, the FCC expanded the program to offer subsidized cell-phone service, and since then, the expenses of running the program have soared. In 2012, the program’s costs had risen to $2.189 billion, up from $822 million before wireless carriers were included....
  • FCC Warns Companies Not To Skip Income Check For "Obama Phones"

    07/08/2013 2:07:00 PM PDT · by Biggirl · 17 replies
    The Hill ^ | July 8,2013 | Julian Hattem
    The Obama administration is urging companies to thoroughly check a person's eligibility before providing cellphone service that is subsidized by the government.