[telecom] just like the real beneficiary of Food Stamps is Big Agriculture...

A nice little hatchet job from a Bloomberg reporter pointing out that Carlos Slim is a major beneficiary of the "free" phones for the poor program, aka the completely misnamed "obamafones".

("free" in quotes because the US taxpayer, and/or the US phone utility payer, is the source of funding)

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_____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key snipped-for-privacy@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Reply to
danny burstein
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Indeed. As the story points out later, this is the lifeline phone service program, which dates back to the Reagan admininstration. Slim is involved because he owns Tracfone, the largest prepaid MVNO. It's also probably because the program only pays $9.25/mo and Tracfone is one of the few wireless carriers that can provide a useful amount of service at that price. (I have one, and pay $100/yr for about 1000 minutes.)

Beyond that it's just typical right wing grandstanding and demonizing the poor. Evidently the Republicans have never had to look for a job, or have too little imagination to envision how hard a job search would be if you don't have a number where employers can call you back to schedule an interview or let you know you got the job.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

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