"We'll be back....with more Stuff!"

[captainsblog]

That was the tag line used by Gong Show host (and alleged CIA operative) Chuck Barris, usually while falling-down drunk on the air.  It's also at the heart of one of the most replusive memes that's been making the rounds since the election results were final. The order of the words may vary, but the message is the same:

Obama got re-elected by moochers and takers who all want four more years of their "free stuff."

With one notable exception (which I'll get to), there aren't a lot of specifics of what, exactly, the "free stuff" is. It stands as a catch-all for All The Things that you and I have to earn and pay for but that the moochers and takers are dependent on the government for.  Most of the evidence, if offered at all, is anecdotal: of welfare queens backing up their Cadillacs at the Walmart drive-up to rake in their carts full of steaks and lobster (and the smokes and Forty bottles they used to buy with the change from their food stamps and now, in the age of EBT cards, buy with, well, SOMETHING).  Of devious civil servants who go out on disability but still manage to play golf, lift weights, do some other able-bodied work. Of illegals being eligible for Obamacare when senior citizens are having their Medicare benefits cut.

Worst of all, in recent weeks, are the indignities of the Obamaphones.  Yes, "they" are getting for free what "we" have to pay for, and it's all the President's fault.

That last part is actually true. However, the president in question was named Ronald Wilson Reagan. You could look it up:

[T]he Federal Communication Commission [decided] to implement the Lifeline benefit program for income-eligible consumers in 1984. That program had two parts: Lifeline Assistance, which provided discounts on basic monthly landline telephone service at the primary residence of qualified telephone subscribers, and Lifeline Link-Up, which provided discounts on the initial installation fee for landline telephone service at the primary residence of qualified telephone subscribers.

As cell phone usage has increased and cell phone service fees have dropped, the Lifeline program has been expanded to include wireless technology. Prepaid cell phone companies have spun off government-approved subsidiaries (such as Safelink Wireless, Assurance Wireless, and Reachout Wireless) to specialize in providing Lifelife-covered telephone services to qualifying participants.

From that basic framework, rumors like the ones encapsulated in the Examples cited above have circulated, claiming that "the Obama administration created a program to give free cell phones paid for by taxpayer money to welfare recipients." All the elements of such statements are erroneous or exaggerated:

The Lifeline program originated in 1984, during the administration of Ronald Reagan; it was expanded in 1996, during the administration of Bill Clinton; and its first cellular provider service (SafeLink Wireless) was launched by TracFone in 2008, during the administration of George W. Bush. All of these milestones were passed prior to the advent of the Obama administration.

The Obama connection comes, not from nefarious government socialism, but from good ol' ingenious American competition among capitalist companies; it derives from the same advertising genius that led to all those "Obama wants moms to go back to college" ads that infiltrated the Internet after the '08 election:

A number of web sites touting Lifeline benefits and imitating the look of government web sites have sprung up on the Internet, but those sites are privately operated ones created to promote the sales of cellular services and have no official connection to the federal government or the current presidential administration:

By 2010, Virgin Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, i-Wireless, Head Start, Consumer Cellular, Midwestern Telecom, Allied Wireless, and others had free phone plans. That's why you can find all these "free cell phone" websites that look kind of shady, like Obamaphone.net or FreeGovernmentCellPhones.net. In 2011, the FCC said that these carriers were "fiercely competing for the business of low-income consumers by marketing ‘free’ phones." TracFone spokesman Jose Fuentes [said], "We’ve had a lot of fly-by-night companies come in."

Fuentes estimated that more than 1,700 wireless companies were part of Lifeline. Between 2008 and 2012, the number of people with Lifeline phones grew from 7.1 million to 12.5 million. These companies may be fly-by-night at providing cell phone service, but they are pretty good at marketing, and as the rush of merchandise tied to his inauguration showed, Obama's name seems to move product.

And this, naturally, is to be blamed on him, and those of us who supported him.

Let me speak from the world of reality, where I live with my bride of 25 years.  She works (not as often as she used to) on cash registers at a major point-of-sale venue for those welfare queens, and in over four years of giving them her best, she's yet to meet the one who backs up the Caddy for the steaks and lobsters. In fact, if she sees any difference between "them" and "us," it's that "they" are necessarily more cautious, and at times a bit embarrassed or apologetic, in using the benefits they receive on account of being sick, disabled, unemployed or otherwise entitled to those EBT cards.

I deal with some of the poorest of the poor, who are forced by their circumstances to file for bankruptcy protection. In the 27-plus years since I started, The System has marginalized, and consistently threatened to criminalize, these people for having made bad decisions, or, far more often, having the bad decisions of customers, or employers, or society forced upon them. You cannot file a routine Chapter 7 case in this country without your client reading or seeing, literally at least seven times, that they are subject to loss of discharge and/or criminal prosecution on account of their filing for this constitutional form of relief. (At least two mandatory disclosures required to be given consumers at their first contact with a lawyer; once in a statement required to be filed with their petition; again, in a mandatory "statement of information" they must read before they can be examined by their trustee; and, at that examination, orally by the trustee and on two different FBI signs in their faces criminalizing them).

Those moochers and takers also live in a different world from you and me, and it's as far from ours as ours is from "the rich." They are subjected to high, subprime mortgage rates if they can get or keep a mortgage at all. The world of banking is often cut off, leading to high fees for check cashing or bill payment. With credit much tighter than before the '08 crash, their shopping for essentials (yes, Mittens- refrigerators and washer/dryers and even televisions and computers can be considered essential in this age) have to come through rent-to-own stores that will charge them multiple times more for the same purchase than Mittens, or even I, would pay for them.  They may be able to get "free" emergency treatment through the 2012 Romney version of Romneycare, but heaven help them if they can't pay the bill and they have even a marginal low-wage job: collection agencies, and eventually lawyers, will hound them to the ends of the earth for their ounces, if not pounds, of flesh.

But they get a free Obamaphone, so they've got that going for them, which is nice.

The racist dog-whistling in all of this is so loud, it's keeping our oldest dog awake at night from the high-pitched whining.  It needs to stop. Among our younger generation, I think, it largely has. In so many walks of life- from the streets around our local schools, to the gym I go to, to our own daughter's apartment, I see a post-racial world. But the angry white men, of the south and the Mouth, are going to continue to kick and scream until, eventually, nobody listens to them anymore.

To them, I can only end with two words:  Stuff it.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

[angledge.livejournal.com]

My dad is one of the angry white men from the South. We're almost not talking at this point. I can't stand listening to Fox News pouring through the phone from his mouth. It's like he's spitting poison in my ear.