OBAMAPHONE! ONE PHONE, ONE VOTE!

OBAMAPHONE! ONE PHONE, ONE VOTE! ObamaPhone means one phone, one vote. Most Americans have now seen on YouTube or heard about the deranged woman from Cleveland shouting into the camera: “Keep Obama as President. Everybody in Cleveland , low minority, got an Obamaphone and he gonna do more for us.” She sums up: “He gave us a phone ... Romney sucks.“ Ok, you say, if Obama wants to use his campaign money to give out ObamaPhones ‘he can do that’. But Obama ‘didn’t give her that,’ to paraphrase Obama’s infamous ‘you didn’t build that’ to entrepreneurs. Oh, oh, you think, if Obama didn’t give her the ObamaPhone, then the government gave her the phone and the ObamaPhone comes out of your taxes if you are part of the 53% who pay taxes. Good news! The government didn’t pay for ObamaPhones with tax money. Bad news! You pay for ObamaPhones directly every month when you pay your telephone or wireless bill! Every bill you pay contains an item called Universal Access Charge, or some other weasel words to disguise it; so each month you make a direct payment to fund ObamaPhones. The amount varies by month, usage and devices you use. This month my simple land-based phone bill showed 87 cents; another month showed that I contributed $2.62 for ObamaPhone. The more you use your phone, the more you contribute to ObamaPhones. How about that for being patriotic? Give Obama credit, as an old Chicago politician and student of the Saul Alinsky school, he knows how to exploit anything. For a couple years the permanent Obama campaign has run a site that extolls his largess. At http://obamaphone.net/ the homepage of obamaphone.net reads: “The free ObamaPhone is an important program, especially for low income families that would otherwise not have access to basic communications.” The site instructs visitors how to get what the site calls an ObamaPhone. To be legal, but not necessarily honest, the site does have a buried disclaimer that the ObamaPhone does not come from Obama, nor was it instituted by him. Of course, no voter who falls into the 47% of non-taxpayers, mentioned by Romney, leaves the site without a ‘free’ ObamaPhone and a sure idea of whom to vote for in November. As the Cleveland women shouts, “...and he gonna do more for us.” A sign of a great politician is getting credit for what you didn’t do; Obama has succeeded admirably. What is the origin of what is now known as the ObamaPhone? In 1996 President Bill Clinton, now elder statesman and saint of the Democrat party, realized that rural hospitals, libraries and schools did not have adequate telephone access (Fact Check: I verified that Fayette Memorial Hospital, Carnegie Library and both school systems actually did have telephone service in 1996). I wonder how anyone as clever as Bill Clinton forgot to mention our police department and the fire department, which, I’m sure he believed were still receiving ‘smoke signals’ in 1996. Of course, the real goal was elsewhere in the legislation. Added to the warm and fuzzy institutions named was a little clause also guaranteeing phones to ‘rural poor.’ How rural is Cleveland where everyone has an ObamaPhone? The USF (universal service fee ) was a super win for Bill Clinton, Congress and government. Now it is co-opted by Obama as if it were his own. Congress mandated that all telephone companies providing interstate service must contribute to the USF. Although not required to do so by the government, many carriers choose to pass their contribution costs on to their customers in the form of a line item, often called the "Federal Universal Service Fee" or "Universal Connectivity Fee." Note: Clinton and Congress got the credit for helping rural hospitals, libraries and schools connect for the first time to telephones and they grandstanded as compassionate statesmen. They also got to appoint a passel of new bureaucrats to monitor the telephone companies- a major win for big government. The telephone companies must collect the tax, well disguised in your telephone bill, and pass out free phones to those who qualify, otherwise known as the 47%. They do the work and the government gets the credit. The original plan was for regular landline phones but it has now morphed into free cell phones for which demand is accelerating. If you feel your freedom and money are wasted on an ObamaPhone for someone else, you can opt out. All you have to do is cancel your landline phone and scrap your cell phone and you will no longer be taxed, but you may have a communications problem. But as the bigger benefit, you may then qualify as a poor rural resident ( even if you don’t live in Cleveland ) to get you own personal ObamaPhone. There’s even a bonus. If you sign another 47%er up, you get extra minutes on your ObamaPhone. And, don’t forget to vote for your benefactor this November. t The candy man in the White House. To watch the Clevelander’s reasoned discussion of ObamaPhones go to www.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio.