Richest Man Slim Cited for Profiting From Phones for Poor

[Purveyor]

Congressional Republicans want to rein in a $2.2 billion U.S. mobile-phone subsidy for the poor, saying it’s riddled with fraud and benefits the world’s richest man, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

Slim’s TracFone Wireless Inc. received about a quarter of the funds from the U.S. government’s Lifeline program, according to the latest figures. Today, a House subcommittee convenes a hearing to ask why the program, paid for by fees charged to U.S. phone subscribers, tripled in cost since 2008.

“It’s not fair that people save and work and pay for phones from whatever funds they have, and other people get them for free,” Representative Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican who wants to eliminate the mobile subsidy, said in an interview. “It’s not fair the biggest beneficiary of this is Carlos Slim, the billionaire owner of TracFone.”

Slim owns Mexico’s biggest phone company America Movil SAB (AMXL), which offers mobile service in 17 Latin American countries and the U.S. Its TracFone unit is the largest recipient under the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s Lifeline program, taking in $451.7 million, or 28 percent, of payments in 2011, the last year for which records are available.

“It doesn’t matter who owns the company,” Jose Fuentes, a spokesman for Miami-based TracFone, said in an interview. “Tim Griffin needs to focus on finding jobs, not trying to focus on a valuable program.”

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/richest-man-slim-cited-for-profiting-from-phones-for-poor.html

[TekGryphon]

1. The manufacturing either benefits their tax-dodging aristocrat or our tax-dodging aristocrats.

Either way it doesn't benefit our economy.

In that case, I'd rather we just go by price and quality merits.

[Eleanors38]

2. Carlos Slim does have a quarter billion invested in the NYT. nt

[moondust]

3. So, Republicans have drawn the line?

Not fair? Not fair? A Republican whining about an obscenely rich guy getting much, much richer?

Obviously somebody has hacked the Bloomberg site and inserted an Onion piece.

[Cal Carpenter]

5. Well, he's an obscenely rich *Mexican*,

and that seems to piss Republicans off worse than your average uber-rich American or European. I guess.

[kickysnana]

4. Dear GOP, you cannot have total information awareness if you take away those cell phones

and people go back to anonymous burner phones.

I don't think that this land line subsidy was expanded to cell phones to help the poor. I think it was put in expanded to be able to register phones to specific people. Millions of them.

[HiPointDem]

7. +1

[Downwinder]

6. Representative Tim Griffin knows how he is scamming the

Government and thinks everybody is doing it.