The corruption of the welfare state is on display in a new undercover video from Project Veritas, which sent undercover videographers to get some of those free “Obamaphones”… while openly telling the corporate reps distributing the phones that they intended to sell them for drug money.
The corporate representatives were not fazed by this in the slightest. One of them helpfully directed the undercover operative to a pawn shop, to find out how much cash he could get for that taxpayer-funded cell phone. ”Yeah, I don’t care what you do with it,” the representative mutters. Another rep seems mildly disturbed by the sale of these phones for drug money, but describes it as a fairly common practice.
One representative acknowledges that selling the phone is illegal, but suggests pleading the Fifth if caught. (Project Veritas playfully illustrates this with a quick shot of IRS official Lois Lerner taking the Fifth to avoid congressional testimony.)
For an amusing change of pace, a female Project Veritas undercover filmmaker bursts into a profanity-laced rant about how she needs to “sell as many of these phones as possible to pay off my bills and stuff” – bills she ran up by purchasing designer handbags. ”All I’m saying is, thank god for Obama, because Obama is basically paying for Louis Vuitton bag right now, if you know what I mean,” she declares. That’s laying it on a bit thick, but the phone company representatives are serenely untroubled, advising her to keep her plans to herself.
(A disclaimer, which is also duly delivered by Project Veritas at the beginning of the video: the “free” cell phone program long predates the election of Barack Obama, but the phones have become widely known as “Obamaphones,” including among beneficiaries of the program. Most Americans learned about this jaw-dropping excess of the welfare state when an Obama supporter was filmed ranting about “Obamaphones” at a Mitt Romney for President rally in 2012. The true name of the program is “Lifeline,” its cell phone benefits began under President Bush, and it adds up to a cool $2.19 billion per year, sucked out of you taxpaying chumps through a surcharge on your monthly phone bills.)
If your blood isn’t boiling yet, wait until you see how company managers, including corporate executives, handle reports of illegal conduct by their employees. The video ends with a promise that it will be sent to Dave Skogen, CEO of Global Connection Inc. of America, one of the big companies that rakes in millions from the “free” cell phone program. The UK Daily Mail picks up the story from there:
Company CEO Dave Skogen wrote to an O’Keefe associate on June 10, assuring her that ‘[s]hould an agent or employee of GCIOA not live up to our standards, including enforcing the rules of the Lifeline program, we respond quickly and in an appropriate manner.’
‘We do not benefit from customers selling their Stand Up Wireless phones and do not encourage them to do so,’ he wrote.
But when MailOnline contacted Skogen for this story and shared a lengthy collection of direct quotations from his salespeople’s remarks, he offered little other than an assurance that ‘[w]e have been and will continue to be committed to following all applicable laws and regulations as we serve our customers.’
Pressed for a more detailed statement, Skogen complained that MailOnline ‘asked us to respond to a story on a program that does not exist (free government cell phones) and a video we have not seen.’
A “program that does not exist?” Skogen’s company has made $38 million from the Lifeline program, and he thinks it doesn’t exist?
The Daily Mail weighs the prime corporate welfare steaks that have been cut from this plump cash cow:
Both land line and mobile bills in all 50 states and the District of Columbia include a Federal Universal Service Charge, a portion of which subsidizes the program.
That makes the program a handout to both lower-income Americans and the companies that supply the phones. To many on the political right, the enterprise has been twisted beyond any semblance of its original purpose.
Like industry leader TracFone, which has received more than $1.5 billion – including $440 million in 2012 alone – to provide phones to 3.9 million recipients, StandUp and Terracom behave more like corporate titans than good Samaritans.
TracFone is owned by Mexican multibillionaire Carlos Slim Helu.
Stand Up Wireless’s parent company, Global Connection Inc. of America, has collected more than $38 million for its subsidized phones. The company itself is owned by Milestone Partners, a venture capital firm based in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
The Oklahoma-based TerraCom Wireless has harvested a total of $168 million for its participation across 23 states. Its self-described ‘sister company,’ YourTel America, Inc., has reaped nearly another $103 million.
Read the full story at www.anmison.com!
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