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Confession: You’re paying my phone bill.

In the past month, I have received three shiny new cell phones, courtesy of American taxpayers, that should never have fallen into my hands...

...Representatives from SafeLink and Assurance, two of the leading New York Lifeline vendors, stand outside the food-stamp offices, paired like Mormon missionaries, young and polite and earnest. They carry electronic tablets and ask all passersby whether they’ve received their free phone “yet” — as if it were an inevitability.

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