Opinion Forum

My Obamamas List

September 29th, 2012

If President Obama is reelected, redistribution will go into even higher gear. I want His promise that I’ll get mine. Now, so I will know how to vote.

As President Obama well knows, the best socio-economic system ever devised is based on the premise “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Now old and creaky, my abilities are few and my needs are great. When President Obama again makes history by being sworn in as our first reelected President of this century on January 20th, soon to be celebrated annually as ~~Christ~~Obamamas, there are some things that I need and expect Him to give me, gratis. Everyone else should remember that since it is “better to give than to receive,” others will derive more benefit from His generosity than I will. Not only that, it’s the patriotic thing to do.

Here is a preliminary list of stuff I need.

My cell phone is about three years old, was cheap ($20) to begin with and still has no camera. I need a modern Obamaphone, with all of the goodies technologically possible. I also need free Obamaphone service.

She is correct to focus on what really matters and many voters feel the same way. According to a recent analysis by John Semmens: Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News,

“As a general proposition, it might be a bad thing for people to become too dependent on the government,” said one poll respondent. “But this whole freedom thing is kind of abstract compared to actually getting stuff for free. I mean, take the 10 million free phones the government has given out. A phone is something I can hold in my hand. I can use it to call my friends, play video games, download tunes—you know, have fun.”

“Freedom might have been important to people when they were fighting taxation without representation in 1776, but what’s that to me here and now?” asked another poll respondent. “I don’t have to pay taxes, but I still get to vote. My vote counts just as much as the sap who has to work. Shouldn’t I use it to keep the free stuff coming?”

Of course! That’s only fair, fairness is the most important of all our constitutional rights and I am entitled to be treated at least as fairly as anyone else.

My wife and I own our own home and have no mortgage. However, we still have to worry about buying gasoline. We need Him to buy it for us. Using my new Obamaphone, I will telephone Him each time we need gasoline so that He can take care of it for us.

Food stamps probably can not be used here in Panamá, but money is needed for buying food, booze and all of the other wonderful stuff for which they can be exchanged in the United States. Hence, instead of food stamps, I need money; just five hundred dollars per month will be just about right.

Gardening is work!

Mrs. Obama has a home vegetable garden on the White House grounds and doubtless enjoys toiling there with her very own hands. She probably does not have to buy the seeds, fertilizer, shovels, trowels, rakes and other necessary gardening implements. Trying to emulate our beloved First Lady, I also have a small vegetable garden and need some of that stuff too. If shipping costs are too high, President Obama can just send me five hundred dollars or so from His stash and I will purchase everything that I need here.

Since I retired in 1996, my wife and I have not had even one vacation (defined as taking time off from work to go somewhere pleasant). It’s been a long time and I need suitable employment so that we can finally have a proper vacation. I’ll do almost any kind of work that I enjoy, provided I can do it at home. President Obama can easily give me a job watering our vegetable garden; even paying me just the minimum wage will be fine. My wife and I will also need free flights on military executive aircraft to the (pre-paid) luxury resort where His lovely wife and kids most recently vacationed. That will be only fair and our most important constitutional rights are hence at stake.

President Obama has plenty of money in His stash and plans to give four hundred and fifty million dollars from it to the Moderate Muslim Brotherhood’s Egypt. Egypt and Panamá where we live are the same in that both are located outside the United States. The Brotherhood stands for moderation and brotherhood; since President Obama is big on moderation and brotherhood, those delightful people are His kind of people. I also approve of brotherhood and moderate moderation. It has not been revealed how many of our new, non-toxic and highly flammable flags he plans to include with the cash shipment, but they will have to come out of His stash as well. His stash is limitless and I need some of it too; it’s only fair to give it to me and I will be happy with even less than the Moderate Brotherhood is to receive.

I expect Him to promise to give me everything I need, because I know that He is the candidate of fairness and never fails to keep his promises. However, He has to promise me these things, in writing, to persuade me to vote for Him in November.

(This article was also posted at Dan Miller’s Blog.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: election, fairness, free stuff, Obama, obamaphone, redistribution, satire
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

4 Responses to “My Obamamas List”

Tom Carter | September 29th, 2012 at 2:07 pm

Dan, you must not live in the right zip code. I got a Lifeline package of papers in an official looking envelope from My Government in the mail the other day. It was mixed in with the usual nine pounds of junk mail that My Postal Service regularly plonks into my mailbox in order for me to throw it away.

In addition to the usual amount of government prose, there was a questionnaire that I could fill out to get a cellphone and 250 free minutes a month! Unfortunately, I was grossly unqualified, and I spent the rest of the day depressed.

I’d never heard of Lifeline before, so I did some research. According to your old buddies at the FCC, it turns out this benefit for low-income and elderly people was started during the Clinton Administration and continued through the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. At first it was a subsidy for landline phones, then as technology changed it morphed into it’s present form, for landlines or cell phones.

The average subsidy is about $10 per month. The program is funded by the so-called Universal Service Fund paid into by communications service providers (who pass the cost on to users, evil capitalists that they are). So, it’s not a tax, doncha know.

I think what’s happening here is the Obama campaign is turning this into another benefit they’re taking credit for, and many of their supporters are too ill-informed to know what it really is.

Dan Miller | September 29th, 2012 at 3:11 pm

Tom,

A free Obamaphone is your Constitutional right, without regard to silly restrictions imposed by the Friendly Communications Commission. You should stand up for your rights and demand it, along with free everything else you need. That’s the (new) American Way and to fail to do so is, at best, unpatriotic.

Dan Miller | September 29th, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Tom, a further thought. According to this article, free Obamaphones have bloomed in Ohio (not that it’s an important swinging state, of course).

A program that provides subsidized phone service to low-income individuals has nearly doubled in size in Ohio in the past year — now covering more than a million people. At the same time, federal officials say they’re reining in waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

The Federal Communications Commission announced recently that reforms have saved $43 million since January and are expected to save $200 million by year’s end. In Ohio, savings are expected to be $2.9 million a year.

The savings were realized in part because the government gave out fewer cellphones to ineligible people and took steps to avoid issuing duplicate phones.

But the size of the program in the state — and profits to the increasing number of cellphone companies involved — has exploded in recent months, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of program data.

The program in Ohio cost $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, the most recent data available, versus $15.6 million in the same timeframe in 2011. Compared to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people in the program nearly doubled to more than a million.

The poor people who rely on Obamaphones have lot’s of emergencies.

“I am unable to have a cellphone and I need one for emergencies,” said Aliesa Azbill of Dayton, who is in a work training program at Community Action Partnership. She said the 250 free minutes she gets per month through SafeLink isn’t enough to use it for much more than emergencies.

She said it has come in helpful when her home phone has lost service or her 12-year-old daughter goes to the library and she wants her to be able to reach someone in an emergency since public phones have become rare.

Due to their great emergency needs, requiring more than eight minutes each day of Obamaphone usage, we must expand the program to provide more Obamaphone minutes. It is only fair and fairness is a constitutional requirement.

Tom Carter | September 29th, 2012 at 4:09 pm

I don’t know why the Obama people are pushing free cell phones in Texas, of all places. Texas will go for Romney by 10-15 percent over Obama. The freebie phones ought to be targeted to FL, OH, VA, PA, etc.

Ever tried explaining the U.S. electoral college system to a foreigner? Usually ends with the foreigner walking away, eyes glazed over and shaking his head.