Georgians pay the federal government more than $262 million a year in mandatory universal service charges. That’s the hidden fee you pay on your cell phone bill every single month.
That fund is supposed to help the government pay for free phones for the poor.
But CBS Atlanta News found multiple phones being given away to people who already had a free phone, and to people who don’t need them or even want them. And the more phones these companies give away, the more money you pay.
[…]”Get your free government cell phones today, sign up today, get your free phone today,” a Life Wireless contractor yelled out the door of his car.
The pitch the salesman is making is for people to get something for nothing – a free cell phone. In some cases, they receive the phones whether they need them or not.
“I signed up for two already, I got like two of them,” one woman said.
The woman was in line to get her third free phone. In some cases, the people lining up for free phones admitted they already had three or four government-supported phones.
[…]But the bigger problem is that the FCC has no database where companies can check if a person has received one, two, three or even four cell phones from various companies. All someone has to do is show they are on government assistance, show their I.D. and they can get a free phone.
This is nothing but wealth distribution – an effort to equalize life outcomes for all regardless of prudence, thrift and hard work.
The government could save tens of billions of dollars each year if redundant and duplicative programs were cut, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday.
The GAO report examines programs and services that could be streamlined to increase efficiency of government and save money. It looked at areas of where it found either duplication or overlap of services — when “two or more agencies or programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the same services to the same beneficiaries — and fragmentation, when “more than one federal agency (or more than one organization with an agency) is involved in the same broad national interest.” Fragmentation often amounts to an overlap.
This year, GAO identified 32 new areas of duplication and 19 additional areas of waste and inefficiency. The report cites duplication in almost a thousand individual programs, costing taxpayers over $300 billion per year. This is on top of more than $100 billion identified in last year’s report.
Examples include:
37 uncoordinated EPA laboratories and 94 “green building” programs for which costs cannot be determined because “information agencies provided was incomplete and unreliable.”
$736 million spent on 14 different diesel emissions programs and federal funding for 55 surface freight transportation programs.
160 various housing assistance programs at a cost of $170 billion annually.
Abound Solar Inc., which received a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee to build two factories, shut down production and fired 180 people after panel prices fell by half last year.
Abound stopped making its first-generation solar panels and will refit its manufacturing lines to produce more efficient products, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said yesterday in a statement.
The move is a response to the same forces that drove Solyndra LLC into bankruptcy after it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in Houston.
The Sansone family is not getting any apologies after they were put through hell by school officials, social workers and police last week.
And, the smoking gun — a child’s drawing that triggered the whole thing — will never be seen.
“I am really sorry that the family is as upset as they are, but we followed proper standards and procedures,” said Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Child Services for the Waterloo Region.
She told QMI Agency if the same situation happened again tomorrow, her organization would do the exact same thing over again.
“I do not see any need for our agency to apologize for fulfilling our mandated responsibility,” Scott said.
The drawing that startled the teacher, who started the domino effect, has vanished.
Scott told QMI Agency it was drawn on a white board and had been erased. She doesn’t know if anyone other than the teacher ever saw it. She also doesn’t know if anyone took an image of it.
Jessie Sansone, a 26-year-old father of four, was arrested at his children’s school, strip searched and held by police, told he was being charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Three of his children were taken by Family and Child Services to be questioned and his pregnant wife, Stephanie, was hauled down to the police station after their four-year-old daughter drew a picture of her dad holding a gun.
Police searched their house and neighbours said cops were going through the house all afternoon.
Eventually, police let Sansone go, saying all they found was a transparent plastic toy that shoots little plastic balls. The toy gun costs $16 at Canadian Tire.
Scott said it wasn’t just the picture, but the resulting conversation with the junior kindergarten teacher that caused the state workers to go into red alert – but she won’t say what was said.
“If there is a drawing where there is some information relayed through that drawing that children may have access to what is described as a gun, and that access may be unsupervised and these children may be concerned because the gun was pointed at them and they didn’t feel safe, that would concern anyone,” said Scott, speaking theoretically.
The social workers still have an “open investigation” on the family, despite police dropping all charges and launching a review of their own conduct.
The walls of the modest Sansone home are covered with family photos, certificates of achievement and framed scripture. The soft spoken young couple now have a lawyer and wanted to share with QMI Agency they are humbled and encouraged by all of the messages and posts supporting them.
Sansone said earlier that he had felt humiliated and isolated sitting in a cell, not knowing where his children were, or why he was being charged with anything, but getting messages from Tahsis B.C. to Truro, N.S., is balm for the soul.
The education system is dominated by liberalism. There is strong desire for completely control of thoughts and actions in order to prevent anyone from being different from others. They think that absolute uniformity will prevent conflict and make everyone feel “happy”. I wonder how happy that little girl was, though? And I wonder how happy her father was while he sat in a jail cell reflecting on how his tax dollars were being used by secular leftists to persecute him? I hope he did not vote for the Ontario Liberal Party or the NDP – they are ones who support this kind of thing.
A common occurence
This sort of thing happens all the time in socialist welfare states like Canada. The Supreme Court just ruled that educational bureaucrats should have more authority than parents to educate children. In Alberta, the government wants to make it illegal for parents to tell children that homosexuality is morally wrong.
Here is a story from Canada that shows why we need to be careful about enacting compassionate, non-judgmental, liberal social policies.
Excerpt:
A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter.
The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting “inappropriate pictures of herself” online. The girl’s father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class’ graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do so.
The girl then contacted a legal-aid lawyer who was involved in the parents’ custody battle, who convinced the court to order that the girl be allowed to go on the trip with her class. The father appealed the decision on principle, although his daughter went on the trip in the meantime.
The appeals court reportedly warned in its ruling that the case should not be seen as an open invitation for children to take legal action against their parents when grounded.
The girl now lives with her mother.
The more you reduce the male role and male authority in the family, the fewer men will want to take on the responsibilities of being a Dad. We need to be careful not to replace husbands and fathers with big government social programs and intrusive, anti-male courts. Men like to make decisions. We don’t want the nanny state telling us what to do – and paid for by the taxes we pay.
You may think that this would be overturned on appeal, but the father LOST his appeal, too.
Women need to stop voting for bigger government
So, what the daughter, wife, prosecuting attorney and judge (all feminists?) are all telling this Dad that he can donate sperm, pay bills, and pay taxes for social programs, but that he cannot PARENT his own children.
I have two questions:
Does anyone care what men want, or should we just be ordered around like little boys?
Do we really think that state coercion is going to make men be more involved with their marriages and children?
I think that marriage should allow men to express themselves as fathers, just as much as women can express themselves as mothers. Parenting should be an equally shared responsibility, and the father should have as much parental authority as the mother. Equality. It’s very important to understand that women in general, and single women in particular, tend to vote for bigger government, with the goal of making everyone feel good, shutting down free speech that offends people, and providing social programs and welfare to protect those who act recklessly and irresponsibly. But I think that’s time that women realize that bigger government means less power for individuals and families.
If women want to get married and have a family and let a man be a father and husband, then they need to stop voting for more social programs and higher taxes. Voting for more government is killing the traditional family. Instead, women need to take responsibility for evaluating men and choosing men who can perform the traditional roles expected of men in marriage. Do not outsource the roles of men to government, it just results in fewer and fewer men who are willing and financially able to get married.
It’s important to know what men want and need from marriage, and then to promote laws and policies that equip them to marry and provide incentives to them to get married and stay married. Marriages are best when men are respected as leaders, earners and decisions makers – that’s how men are. If women don’t want men to be empowered to lead and provide, then women don’t want real marriage – and they’re not going to get marriage. Marriage is dying right before our eyes already – because of of our own votes.
WINTERY KNIGHT 