How Politicians Are Using 911 Emergency Services to Scam Millions of Consumers

How Politicians Are Using 911 Emergency Services to Scam Millions of Consumers

www.alternet.org

911 monies are a direct surcharge on customer phone bills, whether landline, wireless and Internet service. Though it varies by the state, this charge adds $0.25 to $1.50 a month to phone bills per line, with only a few states not having a separate 911 charge. Worse, in most states, 911 services are not put up for bid, so the existing phone companies get the lion's share of monies paid for 911 services.

Politicians need to be held accountable for the ripoff of the nation's 911 services; otherwise, when the next public emergency arises (dare we say a September 11th-type attack) or citizens

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Yet ANOTHER monumental scam operation and rip-off of virtually EVERY one of us tax-paying citizens, by a tag team duo between Big Brother and the phone companies, and one, of course you virtually NEVER hear reported on or investigated by our corrupt corpomedia outlets.

So these "surcharges" that you often see on the bottom of your phone bills, and in this particular case the 911 services surcharge, basically rarely are allocated for the very thing they claim to be there for to begin with!

Virtually SCANT amounts of what you are being charged for actually go into operating this emergency system, and then bureaucrats allocate the vast majority to the entities they see fit---Things like the security-surveillance complex, and giving judges raises. lol.

Just another way for them to scam the populace on the sly, which rarely if ever goes noticed by anyone. And yet we are nearly ALL paying for this robbery and misallocation of our tax-dollars.

The criminality of our gov and these corporations is virtually without limit. Any concievable way they can figure out to pick our pockets and scam us, they are up to it.

www.alternet.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


You need to run for public office. You are a natural, and come down on the right side of every issue in my opinion.

Originally posted by mydarkpassenger
reply to post by DimensionalDetective

 

You need to run for public office. You are a natural, and come down on the right side of every issue in my opinion.

I think not. While I admire and respect DD as much as anyone, if he were embroiled in the gamesmanship of politics, who would find and relay all the valuable information? A gift of that magnitude is not to be wasted... on the other hand.... who am I to say?

On topic:

The scam extends beyond the infrastructure providers. Their metrics are skewed to make the emergency response system appear to be more successful than it is. I have second-hand knowledge that I trust which indicates these particular people, riding this particular gravy train, are well-aware of what they are getting away with, and the police department administrations make the best use of that fact to ensure their budgets are as robust and 'gainful' as they can possibly be. But that is another matter.

Great catch again DD!

What do you expect from a society the worships the scammers....
We are all looking for the perfect scam it seems.....High paying work that is easy to do, and takes up little of your recreation time.....
The whole value system is based on this principal.
Those who do less for more are lionised and envied.
The corporations are only as guilty as the people who run them.....It is humn greed after all that these are based upon.
Everywhere you look you can see this less for more principal applied by all kinds of people.
Till that changes, nothing else will......

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


Actually they are, and I say this with direct knowledge of how it works. In addition to FEderal charges and State charges on your phone bill, you also have county and city on top of it. A lot of cities and counties have their own emergency services tax (911-Police-Fire).

The reason cell companies are collecting those taxes is because of the decline in land line use. Cell phones at one point were never taxed for 911 services. Since landlines are pretty much disappearing, the taxes in place already were not working out as planned (tax was only on landline, decline in land line, no tax on cell = reduced tax money they are obligated to collect).

Cell companies do a lot of other stuff to assist in this area, from programming towers to bounce to the nearest 911 center, ability to trinagulate cell phone calls from towers, phase 2 911 systems, reverse 911 systems, emergency text systems to alert people of a problem etc etc etc.

The tax money from those companies do go to cities. The city my brother works in has finished up the legal issues that surrounded it. The ruling clarified the tax code, and the cell companies have shelled out over 20 million to the city for taxes collected.

Originally posted by stirling
What do you expect from a society the worships the scammers....
We are all looking for the perfect scam it seems.....High paying work that is easy to do, and takes up little of your recreation time.....
The whole value system is based on this principal.
Those who do less for more are lionised and envied.
The corporations are only as guilty as the people who run them.....It is humn greed after all that these are based upon.
Everywhere you look you can see this less for more principal applied by all kinds of people.
Till that changes, nothing else will......

I began to comment on this many years ago.... I agree.

It seems as if the culture of those in the right places, the "highest places", are motivated and fulfilled by how much they can "get away with."

How much can I charge? How much profit can I get? How little can I get away with giving? How can I circumvent ethics to increase my return? How many suckers can I scam....? Who are the most vulnerable? How can I make them more vulnerable? Who won't fight back? How can I make it so that if they fight back I win even more?

reply to post by Maxmars


That too is true Max. DD is probably a much more valuable resource right here.