{"id":66269,"date":"2016-06-10T11:40:35","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66269"},"modified":"2016-06-10T11:40:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:40:35","slug":"yet-more-obamaphone-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66269","title":{"rendered":"Yet More ObamaPhone “Good News”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written previously about the \u201cLifeline\u201d program, AKA \u201cObamaPhones\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Short version:\u00a0 the program today is poorly conceived, badly run, and rife with fraud.\u00a0 You can see my previous articles about it here<\/a><\/em> and here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s some more news about Lifeline.\u00a0 And as before \u2013 if you pay taxes or pay for your own phone service – and thus pay for stupid crap like this – the recent news concerning the program kinda . . . sucks.<\/p>\n

For those who might not be familiar:\u00a0 \u201cLifeline\u201d provides subsidies so that \u201clow income\u201d households can have a phone for emergency essential communications.\u00a0 The program is theoretically limited to one phone per \u201cindependent economic household (IEH)\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the program was landline-only, that was fairly easy to enforce.\u00a0 Then in 2005, cell phones were allowed under the program.<\/p>\n

Now, Stevie Wonder could have seen that was a bad idea from a fraud perspective.\u00a0 But the program was changed to allow cells anyway.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, Lifeline enrollees are still required to give a valid address.\u00a0 Also theoretically, multiple enrollments at the same address are a \u201cno go\u201d.\u00a0 Except . . . they\u2019re not, really.<\/p>\n

You see, telecom companies are allowed to \u201coverride\u201d the IEH (e.g., one subscriber per address) requirement.\u00a0 The override is designed to be used for places like homeless shelters, where conceivably multiple persons who qualify might reside.<\/p>\n

However, recent reporting from telecom companies participating in indicates that over 1\/3 of Lifeline subscribers last year used this \u201coverride\u201d \u2013 e.g., a second (or third\/fourth\/fifth\/whatever) line at an address already having a Lifeline subscriber.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no telling how many more covert fraudulent ones were issued (multiple subscribers in one household, but not all using their actual residence address on their application).<\/p>\n

There is no way in hell all of those overrides were legit.\u00a0 I’d be surprised if even 2% of them were.<\/p>\n

It gets even better.\u00a0 In one company\u2019s case \u2013 Total Call Mobile \u2013 99.8%<\/em><\/strong> of their Lifeline subscribers were approved using the override (the overall average was 35+%).\u00a0 Yeah, Total Call Mobile is the same company that recently got fined $51M by the FCC for program violations \u2013 and as I noted here, likely still came out nearly $40M ahead on the deal.\u00a0 Nice gig if you can stomach the work, I guess.<\/p>\n

Further, employees at Total Call Mobile said they learned how to do that from employees at other companies participating in the program.\u00a0 So some of the other Lifeline providers are doubtless doing the same, albeit certainly not on the same scale.<\/p>\n

The aggregate cost of this apparent fraud to taxpayers?\u00a0 Try around $476M annually<\/span> \u2013 or nearly half a billion dollars.\u00a0 And that\u2019s likely a low estimate.<\/p>\n

The Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em> and Washington Free Beacon<\/a><\/em> each have recent articles describing this latest Obamaphone fishiness.\u00a0 They\u2019re worthwhile reading, even if they might turn your stomach.<\/p>\n

We need to make major changes to this fraud-filled abomination of a Federal program.\u00a0 IMO it needs to go back to landline-only \u2013 pronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written previously about the \u201cLifeline\u201d program, AKA \u201cObamaPhones\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Short version:\u00a0 the program today is poorly … Yet More ObamaPhone “Good News”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,220,213,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-government-incompetence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}