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Ajit Pai Faces Heat Over Proposal To Take Away Poor People's Broadband Plans (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democratic senators yesterday asked Ajit Pai to abandon a proposal that the senators say would take subsidized broadband plans away from "millions of Americans." The Federal Communications Commission chairman's plan for the Lifeline subsidy program would force most users of the program to find new providers. But such users could have trouble finding replacement plans or similar prices because Pai's proposal would prevent all telecom resellers from offering Lifeline-subsidized service. "Your proposal impacts over 70 percent of current Lifeline-recipient households by eliminating their wireless providers from the program, leaving less affordable and fewer Lifeline options, while making it more difficult for the companies trying to serve Lifeline customers," Senate Democrats wrote in the letter to Pai yesterday. "Instead of cutting the program, we should ensure Lifeline reaches more Americans in need of access to communication services." The letter was written by Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Cory Booker (D-NJ).
Give me a break...
The library is often not open during hours where people who worked 7am to 6pm can go there. Libraries are cutting back due to funding cuts. Got to fund wars, Homeland Security theater, and mass incarceration after all.
And, practically, the Internet is a necessity these days if you're looking for a (better) job.
For those interested in the truth, the reason for the change was because
"A new GAO report found massive fraud within the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program, which subsidizes cellular and broadband service for low-income Americans. The agency's three-year audit of the Lifeline program, begun in June 2014 to May 2017, found that more than one-third (36%) of Lifeline customers could not be confirmed as actually eligible for the program. The GAO also found that $1.2 million annually went to fictitious identities or recipients who were dead."
As said by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, but ignored in this piece of brillent and honest reporting, âoeWeâ(TM)re currently letting phone companies cash a government check every month with little more than the honor system to hold them accountable, and that simply canâ(TM)t continue.â
And yet my taxes are supposed to pay for this?
Yep. It's called being part of a society. If you don't like it, feel free to go buy your own island or live in a cave or something.
The more one makes, the more privilege they enjoy and therefore the more they should have to give back to society. Just because your paycheck is bigger doesn't mean you work any harder. In fact, I'm willing to bet you have it much easier.
Yep. Keep the un(der)educated poor people poor and un(der)educated cradle-to-grave, because poor and dumb is easier to control, especially when they don't have access to a wide selection of news sources to keep themselves informed. It's a very old authoritarian tactic.
there's folks in the rust belt for who that $9.25 subsidy is the difference between eating that week and not. If you're in one of the blasted out cities in America where the manufacturing base moved to Mexico post NAFTA it's not uncommon. If you're lucky you work 20/week at a burger king for just enough money to keep the lights on. Should they have internet? A lot of them do so their kids can do their homework. They skip meals for it.
If anything we ought to be doing more for these people. And to devil with religious objections and let's just give them free birth control already.
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I grew up without broadband also, BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. Today it is basically a requirement for job searching.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Apparently you failed economics class.
The rich are rich because somebody created more wealth than they took and the rich were able to siphon enough in order to become rich. Honestly, it's not that hard, or do you really believe that Bezos, Gates and Buffet are that much more effective at working than the typical people working for minimum wage?
The rich themselves don't create jobs because that would make no sense. They're net takers from the economic system so if it were just them, there would be a continual drain on the economy until it fell apart completely. The reason for new jobs to be created is that somebody is willing to pay for the good or service that the job provides.
Places where that's not the case wind up like Venezuela where the economy has more or less ground to a standstill as all the profits are being siphoned off by a handful of very powerful individuals.
I don't believe it is my responsibility as a taxpayer to fund wars in other countries. Suck it up snowflake. The entire budget it the cost of one fighter jet.