How to get a free cell phone from the government!

I feel like Ed McMahon sometimes when I read things - "I did not know that!" I'll bet that you don't know this either. You know the "Universal Service Fund" Fee on your cell phone every month? Probably not, I had seen it, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I pay $1.97 every month, so let's round up and call it $24 per year. I pay for 4 phones in my house (yay! Kids eat free!) so let's just say I pay $100 per year. After tax mind you, so it took $150 of my sweat to get the $100. But I digress.

What is this fund for? Let's check out the official gov't explanation:

The USF helps to make phone service affordable and available to all Americans, including consumers with low incomes, those living in areas where the costs of providing telephone service is high, schools and libraries and rural health care providers. Congress has mandated that all telephone companies providing interstate service must contribute to the USF. Although not required to do so by the government, many carriers choose to pass their contribution costs on to their customers in the form of a line item, often called the “Federal Universal Service Fee” or “Universal Connectivity Fee”.

Seems noble enough - but surely the government wouldn't allow people to ABUSE the free phones would they. I mean, since 2008 when a new President got in and all, and the economy went south - surely the President, who is fond of pointing at "loopholes" that benefit the "rich" (like you and me, say the mortgage interest deduction) has made sure that things have been tightened up right?

Let's take a look?

Well that is just awesome - the user base has doubled in the 4 years since Obama took office, and the cost to us has essentially doubled. Investigations by the media - not the gov't - has revealed massive fraud, people with 9 free phones and other abuses that are too horrid to contemplate - such as cushy "provider" deals to cell suppliers that make the right kind of "contributions".

So the next time you want to take your spouse out for that special evening on the town, but just don't have the $100 to justify it, sleep well in the knowledge that a pimp in Detroit is able to get 9 free phones, with your money. Sucker.

Zzzzzzzzz.........