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The Lifeline program was established by the Reagan Administration in 1985 to provide discounted phone services to low-income Americans. The program was expanded by the George W. Bush Administration in 2005 to include wireless services. Typically, these involve a modest prepaid service requiring no deposit, which includes a free cell phone, free minutes, and free texting. This program provides a basic need that many low-income individuals would not have access to otherwise.

In 2015 there were 12.6 million households enrolled in the program, most of them on Safelink, part of Tracfone.

Guess what brand phone they give out?

yup, ZTE

Soylent green is poor people!

That's disingenuous, deliberately misleading BULLSHIT

A short history of the ‘Obamaphone’

During the 2012 election, a viral video concerned something call the “Obamaphone.” A woman in Cleveland exclaimed she and all her friends were given “Obamaphones.” Free cellphones from the government! It registered in my mind as an oddball concept, but I never followed through. The term somehow got creatively twisted to sound as if Obama — the administration, or the campaign maybe — was buying votes with cellphones.

So what is the etiology of “Obamaphone”?

...

During the Obama administration, the FCC’s approach to universal service expanded. Congress in 2009 enacted a law ordering the FCC to develop its National Broadband Plan. The Obama administration, well into the internet and wireless age, agreed that broadband and cellular services are essential. So, yes, citizens of various federal programs could qualify for a cellphone — a basic one, not the latest iPhone or Galaxy — with a plan they receive under Lifeline.

The program has come back into the news in recent days, principally on conservative sites, because of a Government Accountability Office study of Lifeline, one of four FCC programs funded by the Universal Service Fund.

The fund itself has reached about $10 billion ...

So, cell phones weren't given out until Obama.

So, yeah, they're appropriately called OBAMAPHONES. And the program is rife with fraud - again appropriate for an Obama initiative designed to curry favor/buy votes.

The serious answer here, is that politics is populist by its nature. The USPS is ultimately in a position to have to pass major changes back through congressional oversight. Closing of post offices, raising of rates, changing work shifts and delivery schedules in a major way - all have had to go back to congress, where ALL have seen major push back. Change is easy to call for - people want "change" they just usually don't want the change to come at their own expense. So when the post office talks about closing THEIR OWN post office in Podunk, Nebraska, it's time to mount up and call the senator! And when a set of businesses face the prospect of losing absurdly low bulk mail or package rates, they spend hundreds of thousands or millions on their lobbyists to voice doom and gloom predictions in public, to fund "friendly" research, and to grease the skids in congress in private through staff entertainment. Seem cynical? Look for yourself. https://www.linns.com/news/pos... https://www.thenation.com/arti... https://federalnewsradio.com/m... https://federalnewsradio.com/b... Or go search it: https://www.google.com/search?...

The serious answer here, is that politics is populist by its nature. The USPS is ultimately in a position to have to pass major changes back through congressional oversight. Closing of post offices, raising of rates, changing work shifts and delivery schedules in a major way - all have had to go back to congress, where ALL have seen major push back. Change is easy to call for - people want "change" they just usually don't want the change to come at their own expense. So when the post office talks about closing THEIR OWN post office in Podunk, Nebraska, it's time to mount up and call the senator! And when a set of businesses face the prospect of losing absurdly low bulk mail or package rates, they spend hundreds of thousands or millions on their lobbyists to voice doom and gloom predictions in public, to fund "friendly" research, and to grease the skids in congress in private through staff entertainment. Seem cynical? Look for yourself. https://www.linns.com/news/pos... https://www.thenation.com/arti... https://federalnewsradio.com/m... https://federalnewsradio.com/b... Or go search it: https://www.google.com/search?...

URL doesn't work, but fair enough. When will more than 400,000 be on Windows 10? The only source I can find says they won't even start until late 2016. So this may just be a question of timing.

Yeah. And it's particularly telling that the TSA goons are the ones who, pre-9/11, couldn't even get the inefficient, untrained, low paid knucklehead security jobs that existed at the time. The TSA quite literally recruits from the labor pool that comprises walmart greeters, fast-food workers, gas-pump jockeys, pizza delivery drivers, and the stoners ordering said pizza:

http://federalnewsradio.com/ma...

WTF?

My raise last year was 1.9%, basically a SoL increase considering the gov't gave tech folks a 1% increase. 7% says I'm truly in the wrong company/job.

Cost of housing is ok, gas is cheaper, but the positions are bland/generic.... where this article talks about complaints on high housing, 7% increase, and a boat of positions.... Silicon Valley (which is what this article really discusses) is not the tech industry. It's a major hub, but the the be all end all.

The plane is coming in under cost.

Oh, Really?

The plane is also supposed to be having these various problems you mention because it is still in testing.

Oops. You're not supposed to be doing that anymore.

The plane is also on schedule

Right. Which schedule? The one they made last week?

... and the schedule wouldn't really matter anyway since no other country is fielding fifth generation fighters in significant numbers and we already have one that is fully operational (F-22).

Good. So we're spending trillions of dollars on technology we don't need. An excellent, fiscally responsible approach to defense spending.

For a troll, you're not so smart. Use arguments that are harder to pick apart.

2008 IBM was banned from bidding on government contracts with the EPA, and it took until last year before we started seeing significant contracts come back in.

One of which was to do Application Rationalization for SPAWAR, funny enough.

http://www.federalnewsradio.co...

Not really. NSA employees and contractors routinely engage in LOVEINt and BIZINT now.

The "LoveInt" thing is about 1 person per year, and they have been disciplined or fired.

We're talking about them selling HSBC or UBS secrets to Goldman-Sacks. An NSA employee might not even do jail time for this.

You're kidding yourself.

Booz Allen would not lose future contracts for this.

Air Force suspends Booz Allen's San Antonio office

You don't really seem to have gotten anything right in your post. Maybe you could try again?

Seriously, you mean a data center like this can't handle the traffic?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

and the 5 million people (as of 2011) with security clearances aren't enough?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/security-clearances-increasing/

and the NSA recruiting at Defcon and math colleges all around the country isn't happening?

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/411/2890348/NSA-hiring-reforms-serve-as-model-for-government

These guys have cash and are all of their activities are shielded under FISA and the National Security Act and State Secrets Privilege.

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/fix-fisa-end-warrantless-wiretapping

It's happening, it is a reality, and it is more than possible. Even with an inside whistle blower, the courts will not limit the power of the government to spy on us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

The only thing we really have going for us is the Catch-22 on the use of the data. If it is every used in a trial, chain of custody and 4th amendment issues likethe exclusionary rule will suppress the evidence since it was obtained without a warrant. The only thing that stands in the way of the NSA and fully implementing 1984 is the 4th amendment.

Cities in California are going bankrupt.

Citizens demand lower taxes, get them. Less money coming in = risk of bankrupcy. That's not a failure of government, that's math.

City services disappearing.

For poor people. Rest assured, when the rich guy bitches about a streetlight, it gets fixed that day, while the single mom tries to get someone, ANYONE, to listen to her about the water that's so bad her cat won't drink it gets ignored. (First-hand experience.)

City Attorney tells residents "lock your doors and load your guns".

That's what happens when you can't pay for public safety because the world will end if the rich asshole can't save $100/year on his property insurance. (Again, first-hand experience.)

So services are disappearing, while local governments are increasingly shaking down poor residents for money.

Fixed that for you.

Anything that pulls in money gets resources

Your point?

anything that actually serves poor citizens gets cut.

Fixed that for you.

Inspectors will show up to fine you.

Follow the rules and that won't happen. Don't like the rules? Elect someone else. Can't get that person elected? Tough shit, follow the rules.

Police will run no knock raids, confiscate "drug money", and take anything that isn't nailed down as civil forfeiture. Good luck ever getting it back.

Thanks, "War on Drugs". You can't really blame the cops for wanting to keep the lights on.

The functions of government are being collapsed to collecting money to pay government employees to take more money.

And yet your taxes are lower than they've been in half a century. And, the IRS' budget has been cut for two years running.

Your rage at 'the evil nasty gub'mint" is misplaced. You should really be angry at the rich (most of the above), the liars ("Your taxes are going up! The government wants to take your guns/rights/property/religion away! The size of government is growing!"), and the self-described morally superior (war on drugs.) Who, come to think of it, have an undue influence in government. Maybe we should work on that instead of trashing the idea of self-government without a viable alternative to anarchy.

Lets keep this discussion fair at least. here

For 2012: Pensions $805 Billion Medicare $432 Billion Welfare (Medial and handouts) $764 Billion Deficit $1.1 Trillion (Remember how unacceptable Bush's $500 Billion was?)

So yea, we can keep hammering defence and ignore other areas, but that just shows you as a partsian shill.

Really? Please show some honest links on those. You will find that the 'welfare' section includes Medicare as well.
Here is a nice pic
here is another.

The fact is, that the items that YOU hate (wic, medicaid, HUD, etc) are next to NOTHING. If you wipe them out, we would still have about 3/4T deficit. Worse, our costs would rise elsewhere. So, you COULD go after Medicare and SS, but good luck with that. I noticed that even the republicans that voted for the neo-cons expect that THEIR ss/medicare will continue. Of course, none of them want to raise THEIR taxes either.

I meant to include this link - the USPS has a 13 billion dollar surplus sitting in its retirement accounts.

The costs won't go down. The problem isn't that insurance companies are charging a lot. The problem is that the federal government attempted to regulate costs in the 1960's when a lot of single payer systems were building out their own government health care industry. The owning of the industry is what kept their costs down whereas with the HMO act and the government's Medicare reimbursements, created a situation that actually encourage inflation of costs. Government payments are not for the costs actually charged by the hospitals, they are to the tune of an average cost in the area. So if hospital A says it costs $50 for a band-aid and hospital B says it costs $100, the government would pay $75 to either. This actually encourages medical providers treating medicare and medicaid patients to inflate their costs in order to pump the average up. When insurance companies complained, these providers create a preferred network discount option that allows them to jack the costs up, but provide a discount to covered insurances. As long as the medical provider charges non-covered patients the full costs, it goes to the area average that the government pays out.

Combine this with differences in FDA drug and medical device approval procedures, scale wages and we get a lot of increased costs that will not disappear and could actually rise if a single payer system is implemented without introducing the competition of government owned medical facilities. The problem with replicating government owned facilities is the propensity for inefficiencies and waste. I mean we just had a big scandal where the GSA was squandering money and they are supposed to be the watchdogs on the other agencies. But it gets worse, some are trying to down play it as not as bad as other instances.

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/942/2832926/Analysis-GSAs-scandal-pales-in-comparison-to-historical-misdeeds

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

- Winston Churchill

It's not the representative form of government that's at fault, it's the influence that money has on the political process. Representatives want to get elected and keep their jobs, that takes money but also if you serve in the Government you shouldn't be allowed to go back and lobby that same Government when you leave your job or to be able to go to work for somebody who has significant financial interest in your former position or influence within the government. It creates undue influence that not only compromises sound decision making but also introduces more chances for corruption and conflict of interest. Unfortunately conflicts of interest usually aren't discovered until it's too late and we the taxypayers wind up picking up the tab for it.

Anybody remember the Air Force tanker deal? and all the BS after that? Does the Air Force have new tankers? No so the old KC10s and KC135s are still flying and costing us more according to this.

"I think no matter how we look at it, there's no time to lose," she said. "We know that the oldest KC-135 is due for some significant structural overhaul in the years 2019 to 2037. The cost for these types of overhaul could boost the bill to maintain the KC 135 force to over $6 billion per year."

So now the Tanker Deal, which may face delays and is estimated to cost $51B for the replacements, may also cost us more because we have to maintain and upgrade the older planes because they'll be in service longer. So let's see, wity Druyun's help Boeing was awarded a contract for twice the street price of their 767 aircraft, this sent off warning signals and it all went downhill from there. 9 months in prison? This woman cost us billions and will continue to cost us billions because of the influence of money and the revolving door of contractors and government workers.

It's not only in big deals either, it can take the form of relatively small ones as well.

Yeah- you have be able to order pizza (and read the ad on the box) or pump gas (and read the ad on the pump).

Yes- the TSA hires from ads on Pizza boxes and gas pumps.

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=97&sid=2000678

Federal News Radio

They (Google) seem to think that Google Apps for Government _is_ Google Apps Premier with some additional security aspects that do not disqualify the application suite's FISMA certification.

He knows that they want $4 million to keep one website operating for a year, right?
""We need at least another $4 million just to keep USASpending.gov operating this year," the official said. "We are looking at a pass-the-hat approach, but it could be challenging to get that done in time."

$4 million to keep a website running? I think I see the problem, that's at least double or even triple what average hosting fees are.

Locked out since June? This seems newsworthy to me, where is the lame stream media on this story?

My B.S. detector is going off.

Am I the only one taking note of "Federal News Radio" as being pretty much unheard of? The name sounds like a network, yet it is apparently a single station, WFED a directional AM station in Washington D.C.
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/ It's strange that the website shows 1500 AM, but doesn't even mention the call letters. I'm surprised to see so many stories listed on the website, and puzzled that the large buttons near the top of the page don't link anywhere.

The story may be legitimate, but I'm very suspicious of news sources that seem to pop up out of nowhere with weighty-sounding names. There certainly are interest groups that cook up such things for one agenda or another.

FCC technical details for 1500 AM
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=74120

It looks like the source is just another news-talk AM station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WFED

The US government just awarded a large contract (or set of contracts) for IaaS:

Here

They have 11 vendors - one of which is a company that is using AWS under the hood.

Nope. That's a real story, it hit on http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?sid=1377352&nid=250 yesterday. Look at the date posted on that page. I read their version of the story about 3pm yesterday.

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more, regretfully...
  
  

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more...
  
  

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more...
  
  

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more regretfully, see Part II
  
  

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more, regretfully...
  
  

I know that Sandy Berger (just so no one thinks I'm biased) is a real moron but come on, how much lack of intelligence does one have to have to think that they could get away with this?

Dead On, Mate. A software project with three quarters of a million lines of code is surely going to have hundreds of open SPRs at the time of its release. If things are going well, most of them are going to be relatively unimportant. Still, You have to wonder if the FBI's CIO knows much about real software projects and how they work.

I prowled around the Internet trying to find any sort of bio on Azmi. Here's what I came up with http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=5&sid=760419. His background isn't awful, but neither is it especially reassuring. There's nothing there that says to me that this isn't a guy with an expensive haircut and no proven technical or administrative ability. But he could also be fighting the good fight against heavy odds. No way to tell I think. At least he doesn't seem to be a political appointee.

Nothing against Mr Azmi, but apparently if has been common knowledge that VCF was a fiasco since early 2005. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/New-FBI-softwa re-may-be-unusable/2005/01/14/1105582686258.html I'm sure that the problems are not Azmi's fault. Given the timeline, I don't see how they could be. But he's had two and a half years to recognize that there is a problem and get the project back on track. I have to wonder if he is the right guy to try to fix this mess.