I can recall seeing commercials for government provided cell phones for qualifying low income earners in the USA during Dubya’s term, the program was started in his term.
How in the blue bloody hell did they become Obama phones?! Whatever genius in the GOP got that to stick needs a raise!
Republicans really seem to like the name calling.
Nobama
Reid-Pelosi premium
Obamacare
Hillarycare
Whatever
The best you see out of dems are weak things like BU$H.
Facts have nothing to do with it.
A segment of the population really believe that Obama is giving away shit for free - look at all the ads on the Internet. There are tons of Obama loopholes that you just need to find out about. People are more likely to believe this about Obama than Bush. They would have believed it about Gore too. But being black - that doesn’t help either.
I think it’s from when this video went viral.
Am I the only one who has never heard the term “Obama Phone”?
Cuz “Obama Phone” sounds a lot more like “Banana Phone” than “Bush Phone” does.
Nope. Never heard the term until this thread. Still not sure I believe it’s a “real” thing that anyone is saying.
I think the free cell phones stem from the Lifeline Assistance program. Originally, I think, the program provided a low-cost landline, but a cell phone might be more useful to the participants (and perhaps cheaper to offer). And if that’s the source, it comes from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed by Bill Clinton. And I think it is a good thing that people have access to phones.
This program is known as the Lifeline program and is funded by the Universal Services Fund that appears as an item on your phone bill. It provides either a landline or wireless service (but not both) to eligible low-income people. It started during the Reagan administration as a means of providing low cost landline service and was expanded to cellular service during the Clinton administration.
It’s a real program. I applied to Assurance Wireless and was provided a free phone. It’s a basic phone and includes 250 free minutes and 250 free texts a month.
Ninja’ed by Dewey Finn.
Most of my patients have these free phones, plus at least one they pay for. Without exception they refer to them as their Obamaphones. YMMV
The term has been around since at least 2009. Snopes
According to this article, the program began under Clinton:
The average American is supposed to remember all the way back to 1996? I’d be amazed if their horizons extend much beyond last week.
And c’mon! Would you really want to talk into something called a “Bush” phone?!? :dubious: (Michael Douglas might, but still…) :rolleyes:
ditto
I don’t have one, but that’s what I’ve heard them called, too. And I’ve heard them promoted by people as saying that Obama would pay for you to have a phone, the same way they said Obama would help you refinance your loan.
I thought I read that the program started under George H.W. Bush.
I know the modification to allow cell phones came under George w. Bush.
The program is much abused. There are two companies that are authorized to provide cell phones under the program, but there is no cross-checking to see if someone getting a phone from one of them already has a phone from the other.
There really isn’t a reason why someone would have “another (phone) they pay for”. The program gives them a prepaid phone with a certain number of minutes each month. If they want more minutes, they just buy them.
The reason is that the phone they give you is rather crap. The folks who have both have a slightly better phone* that they pay for, until they can’t pay their phone bill on time and it gets shut off. Then they use the gov’ment phone until they can pay their regular phone bill.
*And by “slightly better”, I mean still a cheap dumb phone but with bigger buttons and easier to see screen. I have *never *seen the much memed “welfare recipient with a iPhone”.
As it mentions briefly in the snopes article, there are many fly by night cellphone companies in the program. A lot popped up around the time of the 1st inauguration to market to the urban community. They used the term. Hard to tell who did it first but it doesn’t look like a right wing conspiracy. But it is something they capitalize on. Typical politics.
The program does not pay for phones. It subsidizes service. Some of the companies chose to offer free phones as part of the service. Depending on the provider you can have your own phone and just have the monthly fee subsidized.
Typical Republican politics. Any port in a storm. Any combination of words or insinuations that doesn’t fall off the wall immediately. The sort of speech the first amendment was written for.
their well-founded fear of their kind (male) being displaced by science, made irrelevant…is behind it all, behind the conservative urge to preserve their traditional privileges.
I guess I’m more jaded than you. I just see it as typical politics.
As a strong believer in social services, the Obamaphones are the one thing I run into that really vexes me. Not because I dislike the program conceptually, but because my interactions with the users have been tremendously aggravating.
I work for a cellphone company. Not for one of the companies that administer the plan. I occasionally get a caller who has one of these phones, because they can route in if they dial 611 while hitting one of our towers.
Despite the fact that they’re calling literally the wrong company, these are some of the most obnoxious calls I take. Disrespectful, aggressive, and completely unwilling to provide necessary information. At times, they can’t even provide their own phone number or the name of the service they activated the phone through. But they’re very convinced that yelling at or insulting me will make their Obamaphone work.
I still think it’s a good idea to provide the service, but. Yeesh.