This is what we have to overcome...

(Sent from my conservative sister, Paula (thanks!)):

(*Note -information provided by Charlie Sykes/WTMJ AM620): 

Advocates have quickly turned the perk (free cell phones) into an entitlement. The spokesman for the leading company offering the subsidized phone says, "Having a telephone service, just in general, is not a privilege, it should be a right of each one.”  Presumably this means that they are also entitled to free text messages, call waiting, and caller ID as well.

The cell phone freebies are subsidized by the Universal Service Fund, essentially a tax on phone service that was originally used to subsidize rural phone bills.  The program was expanded in the Reagan years with the creation of the “Lifeline” program that provided modest subsidies for the phone bills of poor people. In 1996, Congress further expanded the subsidy program by creating the Universal Service Administrative Company with the express mission of ensuring "all Americans, including low-income consumers and those who live in rural, insular, high cost areas, shall have affordable service and [to] help to connect eligible schools, libraries, and rural health care providers to the global telecommunications network." While this subsidy was largely still limited to landline phone, in 2008 under the Bush Administration  it spawned a further subsidy known as Safelink, which began providing free cell phones.

 Even so, Tracphone apparently wants to have it both ways. In web ads pushing the free phones to poor people in Wisconsin, for example,  Tracphone touts: “FREE government supported cell phone.”  But in a Lifeline/Safelink “Fact Sheet,” the company insists that “Safelink phones are not paid for by taxpayers or the federal government.”  This is a quibble without a distinction, since the funds are paid for from the federally created Universal Service Administrative Company, which was created by Congress and set up by the Federal Communication Commission and funded by the Universal Service Fee, which is a tax in all but name.)