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FCC crackdown on cellphone subsidies leaves millions without service
The Ajit Pai-era FCC has spent much of its energy cracking down on claimed abuses of the Lifeline subsidy program, but this anti-fraud effort may be hurting low-income households more than it helps. The investigative news outlet Center for Public Integrity has used FCC data to determine that nationwide enrollment for cellphone subsidies has dropped by about 2.3 million people, or 21 percent, since 2017. The cuts have been particularly severe in places like the District of Columbia, where 49 percent of Lifeline users lost their subsidies between March 2018 and June 2019. Mississippi, Wyoming and Puerto Rico also lost a third or more of their enrollment in the same time frame.
Some of the problems may stem from a verifier system that was approved in 2016. It was meant to automatically check whether people qualified for Lifeline service and reduce fraud, but its incomplete access to benefit databases appears to have rejected people who were eligible for the program. Enrollment has plunged in those six states where the verifier launched, although a connection to the Medicaid database (and ideally state databases) might solve some of these problems.
However, the current FCC's crackdown (including ongoing support of the verifier) is raising concerns that it's simply interested in cutting off support for poor people, in sync with a presidency that has focused on cutting other benefits for low-income homes. There are particular concerns that changes due in December may prompt carriers to quit Lifeline and leave customers without access. Networks are supposed to help Lifeline recipients by providing more data and phasing out support for call minutes, but they're expected to complain when the subsidy amounts to less than $10 per month.
Based on a story from USA Today
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:13AM (11 children)
I'm gonna have to hit you with a [citation needed] there, on BOTH those counts. You aren't a psychic, you're not reading my mind, and you don't actually know what my positions are. You're another lazy, worthless whiner who thinks 1) there are simple solutions and 2) you know them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:39AM (8 children)
You were able to articulate the simple reason why these problems keep growing, but are too brainwashed to realize that simply reversing it will make the problems shrink.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:28PM (1 child)
And you are still having the delusion that the opposite of something bad must be something good.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:52PM
It is not just the opposite, it is that reversing a process will have the opposite effect.
Say the fed pumps liquidity into the economy to pump a bubble, promising to reverse it later without having the opposite effect. Would you believe them? The people who thought like me were right and are making money, the people who thought some complicated mechanism would prevent that were wrong, and lost money.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:27PM (5 children)
That is some Ralph-Wiggum-tier naive stupidity there. Pull your finger out of your nose and *think.* We need to regulate smarter, not harder, and step one of smarter regulation is to make sure that it can't be corrupted from within. I've likened this to the problems faced by a concrete slab without rebar; does fine under compression, as concrete does, but any tension stress will crack it clean in half. Consider corruption, bribery, regulatory capture, and plain old cutting corners the equivalent of tension stress.
The "rebar" in this case is, like the literal rebar in a literal slab, going to have to be orthogonal to the slab and of a different sort of material. In this case, it's going to have to be meta-laws, or laws *about* laws, statutes that lay heavy fines and jail time for manipulating and perverting said regulations.
Your idea about just "reversing" the process won't work. We'd end up back in the late 19th century again where anyone could sell anything as anything. Do you really want that? Do you think you'd survive more than a few weeks in a world like that?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @05:24PM (1 child)
I'll consider corruption, etc as simply something that always happens when the gov gets involved. Since that is reality.
And I have no idea why you think people would start dying off in weeks if "anyone could sell anything again".
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 08 2019, @03:49AM
You don't know your history, do you? Go look up what was in some of those patent "medicines"--literal snake oil would have been a major improvement! And of course, tainted meat full of rat feces and sawdust is JUST the thing to promote a healthy digestion. And while you're at it, dose your cranky baby with morphine and opium so s/he'll sleep through a night. Brush your teeth with radium toothpaste for that literally-glowing look.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday November 07 2019, @05:35PM
For sure...and a huge part of that starts with not electing a president who's hell bent on heading every regulating agency with corporate enemies of said agency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:26PM (1 child)
What are you referring to here? What would be killing people off in a few weeks?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday November 08 2019, @03:37AM
Tainted meat, patent "medicine," radium in the toothpaste and watch dials (okay, that one would take more than a few weeks...), the list goes on. All these things happened, and if you had the historical awareness Madokami gave to, for example, the average tree stump, you'd know that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
psyro://Azuma-Hazuki/left-frontal-lobe/afc54412e8c34018961f2c1536b039e9?position=strapon&position=ridingcowgirl.
If it doesn't work, you should update your browser.
And don't make me switch to unencrypted psyrw:
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:34PM
Joke's on you. I'm part Dark-type and you're very clearly not running Miracle Eye or Mold Breaker. Psychic immunity is pretty useful!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...