.
In Mississippi the GOP E said conservatives would prevent blacks from voting. Now they'll prevent cancer stricken war veterans from having a phone.
10/6/14, "Top GOPers, including a Cheney, are behind a new pro-Obamaphone ad campaign," Washington Examiner, Luke Rosiak
"Mary Cheney and prominent Republican consultants linked to Karl
Rove, Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are working to
expand or protect the Obamaphone entitlement program, apparently on
behalf of the telecom companies that make millions on it.
A secretive front group called Prepaid Wireless Users of America was
formed several weeks ago to launch a massive pro-Obamaphone advertising
campaign in the D.C. broadcast market.
The Federal Communications Commission program — begun in 1985 and still formally known as the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers — charges a dollar or two per line on every American's phone bill.
The revenue generated by the "Universal Service Fund fee" is then
used to pay select phone companies $9.25 per month for each poor person
they sign up for a free phone.
As the Lifeline initiative evolved from a
landline to cell phone program, its cost doubled in five years to $1.75
billion in 2011, and in some states, the number of phones given out
exceeded the total eligible population.
The ads tie the free-phones-for-the-poor giveaway with military service, featuring an elderly veteran speaking
while war footage rolls.
The ad's voiceover says "some in Congress want to take away his
phone," implying that not having it would
endanger him because of his
cancer.
The strategy is aimed at convincing congressional Republicans, who
support veterans and the military, to back off of their opposition to
the Obamaphone program, which has no connection to veteran status and is
more commonly associated with welfare.
Most Democrats need little
convincing to support it.
The ads have been in heavy rotation during the Sunday morning talk
shows favored by the Washington policymakers and influencers, as well as
during widely-viewed events such as Washington Nationals baseball
games and the nightly news.
The group's bare-bones website,
which also features lots of military imagery, includes no telephone
contact number, address or other information about the group. An email
sent to it by the Washington Examiner prompted no response.
But loosely-knit groups of impoverished consumers don’t make six-figure ad buys. Documents obtained by the Examiner from the FCC show that PWUA shares the address and staff of BKM Strategies.
BKM is a Republican consulting firm comprised of Barry Bennett, who
was involved in several major Republican super PACs; Kara Ahern, a
fundraiser for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and the
RNC, and Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bill Allison, a lobbying expert at the Sunlight Foundation, said the
fact that major Republican consultants are promoting an entitlement
program shows that “in Washington's mercenary culture, there are few
principles that stand in the way of a payday.” Bennett unabashedly defended the Obamaphone and other entitlement
programs. “Of course I support these programs,
because I don’t hate poor
people,” he told the Examiner.
“As conservatives,
we can’t hate Obama so badly
that we hate
something just because he put his name next to it. If it were called
'Obama food stamps,' would conservatives want to do away with them?”
Bennett asked.
Told that his position on entitlement programs put him to the left of
politicians on behalf of whom he has worked, including former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Bennett said, “there’s
not a moderate bone in my body.”
Bennett said the group was “consumer-based,” but “I’m not going to
give you the list [of funders] because a lot of them haven’t given
permission.” He said the ad buy was “less than $500,000.”
He added, “I think we’ve succeeded in what we set out to do, which is change the face of Lifeline.”
The FCC documents say PWUA’s “chief executives” are Bennett, Cheney and Joe Jansen.
Jansen was chief of staff for former Rep. Jeanne Schmidt, R-Ohio.
He has contributed blog posts to the conservative group Taxpayer Protection Alliance.
“Wow. Just wow. Big government money ensnares a lot of people,” said
David Williams, president of the taxpayers group, when told of Jansen’s
new client.
“When you have Republicans and Democrats both talking up a blatantly
wasteful program, that’s going to make it really hard to do any
meaningful oversight,” Williams said.
The PWUA group paid $16,000 per 30-second ad to run the spots during
ABC's "This Week" Sunday political affairs program in the D.C. market.
The FCC paperwork also lists the names Patti Heck, who is president of Crossroads Media, and Main Street Media Group, a Crossroads affiliate.
Crossroads Media has ties to Rove's American Crossroads and
Crossroads GPS conservative activist groups and shared an office used by
several political shops employed by Romney's 2012 presidential
campaign.
Heck, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also worked for the Republican Governors Association and the RNC. Crossroads Media, Main Street and the Rove groups are based at 66
Canal Center Plaza in Alexandria, Va., along with Restore Our Future, a
pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, and Targeted Victory, a company founded by
Romney confidante Zac Moffatt, who ran digital operations for the 2012
GOP presidential campaign.
The company that has received the most income from the Lifeline
program is TracFone, whose CEO, F.J. Pollak, was an Obama campaign
fundraiser. The company spent nearly $1 million on lobbying last year.
TracFone initially responded to requests from the Examiner, but a spokesman refused to say whether the firm funded the ad campaign.
At least one House Republican isn't impressed by the Lifeline ads.
“The biggest beneficiaries of this are the corporations that have
been pushing these phones, and now they are spending millions of dollars
on an ad campaign intended on making sure they can maintain their
position at the government trough,” said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., who
sponsored a bill to eliminate the program.
It is "a poster child of corporate welfare," and “I don’t think
Republicans or Democrats can justify the money that has been spent on
this program,” he said."
=========================
Comment: GOP E uses the same formula they won with in Mississippi in June 2014 when they said a conservative candidate wanted to prevent blacks from voting. They solicited black democrats to defeat a conservative candidate in a GOP primary runoff. Now they say conservatives want to prevent cancer stricken war veterans from having a phone.
What passes for the Republican Party is merely a racket. Pat Caddell has made this point for some time.
6/30/14, "The Ruling Class went down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site
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