The Fine Print on T-Mobile’s New No-Contract Cellphone Plans

Now that T-Mobile’s new “Simple Choice” price plan is official (a bit anticlimactic considering it was available on the Web on Monday), there are still a few questions that may nag current T-Mobile customers and potential new customers.

Under the new plan, there will be no contracts, and phones will not be subsidized.

Services will be paid for month by month, at a cost of $50 to $70 for a single phone, depending on how much data you buy.

There will be two ways to purchase a phone. Either you can buy it outright, or you can make a down payment, then pay off the rest in installments over two years. So while you will not have a phone service contract, you could have a two-year handset contract.

If you currently have a contract with T-Mobile, you cannot convert to the new plan until you finish out your contract.

Of course, some people are wedded to the idea of a contract plan. If you already have one with T-Mobile, you can renew it, even though it is no longer offered. A T-Mobile representative said customers could extend current contracts as many times as they like.

What happens if you want to end your service with T-Mobile and go elsewhere If you bought your phone outright, it’s “See you later, no hard feelings.” If you are on a payment plan, you are still responsible for making the remaining payments.

While carriers have sometimes replaced broken phones that are under contract, that will not be the case under the new T-Mobile plan. If you lose or break your phone, you are still responsible for the payments on the old phone, and you will have to buy your own replacement.

That may make having phone insurance worthwhile. But keep in mind that carrier insurance plans are usually much more expensive than third-party insurance plans.

Pro-Obama Group Details Fund-Raising and Policy Goals

New details are emerging about the ambitious financial goals of Organizing for Action, the tax-exempt group created by former Obama campaign operatives to advance the president’s agenda.

In addition to the previously reported “advisory board” whose members are expected to raise at least $500,000, it turns out there is an even higher tier of donors who are granted entree to the board of directors if they raise $1 million for two consecutive years, according to a memo that describes the organization’s “finance leadership levels.”

The 30-member board will include a 10-person council made up of “leaders in industry” committed to supporting the group’s agenda. The organization is also creating a task force on policy, whose chairmen will be expected to raise at least $250,000 to finance advocacy work on specific issues, the memo said.

So far, Organizing for Action has gotten involved in the fight over gun control and immigration legislation, and in a conference call with fund-raisers on Tuesday, the group’s leaders said they expect to take on climate change issues later in the spring. On the call, Kathy Gasperine, the group’s national finance director, said she is in the process of “targeting” donors to fill the various positions.

“We’re trying to push for as much money as early as possible,” she said.

Polls Show Consistent Gains in Support for Same-Sex Marriage

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments on Tuesday about the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ban on same-sex marriage, a number of recent polls show that a majority of Americans support legalizing it.

A CBS News poll released Tuesday showed that 53 percent of Americans say it should be legal for same-sex couples to marry, up from 46 percent in a New York Times/CBS News poll last July.

The poll found that a third of Americans who support legal marriages for same-sex couples said they did not always feel that way and had changed their thinking for a variety of reasons. Among those who changed their minds, one in five said that personally knowing someone who is gay or lesbian influenced them. Other reasons volunteered by respondents included increased tolerance (17 percent) or education (17 percent) and that support for same-sex marriage is the modern way of thinking about the issue (12 percent).

More Americans now report having a friend, family member or work colleague who is gay or lesbian, with 61 percent saying so, up from 44 percent in 2003. Among those with a close relationship to someone who is gay or lesbian, two-thirds support legalizing same-sex marriage; among those who do not know someone close who is gay or lesbian, 56 percent say gay marriage should not be legal.

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage is higher among Democrats (63 percent) and independents (56 percent) than Republicans (37 percent). Among younger Americans support is higher, with nearly three-quarters of those under 30 in support, compared with slightly more than half of those over 65 who say it should not be legal.

The CBS News poll was conducted by telephone from Wednesday through Sunday among 1,181 adults nationwide, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

A Pew Research Center report released last week described the increase in support for same-sex marriage over the last 10 years as among the largest shifts in American public opinion on any policy issue. In 2003, nearly 6 in 10 Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while about a third favored allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. Pew’s recent survey found Americans have shifted substantially on the issue, with 49 percent supporting and 44 percent opposing same-sex marriage.

Other recent surveys have found similar trends, although variations in question wording produce slightly different levels of support among the polls. A CNN/ORC poll conducted March 15 to 17 found 53 percent of Americans said that marriages between gay and lesbian couples should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages, and 44 percent said they should not - numbers that flipped from 2008, when 44 percent said the law should recognize these marriages as valid.

A poll conducted the first week of March by ABC News/Washington Post showed 58 percent of Americans saying same-sex marriage should be legal, and 36 percent saying it should be illegal. Support for same-sex marriage has steadily tracked upward in ABC/Post polls, from 37 percent in favor a decade ago, to a narrow majority supporting legalizing it in 2011.

A Fox News poll conducted March 17 to 19 showed 49 percent of voters in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, up from 42 percent last year.

And a Gallup poll found that a slim majority of Americans said they would vote for a hypothetical law giving marriage benefits to gay federal government workers who are legally married. Fifty-four percent of Americans said they would vote for a law providing marriage benefits, including insurance, tax benefits and Social Security to same-sex partners of federal employees, while 39 percent said they would vote against such a law. The poll was conducted March 11 and 12.

All polls were conducted by live interviewers nationwide using landlines and cellphones, with margins of sampling error ranging between three and four percentage points.

Soros to Give $1 Million to NAACP Legal Fund

George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, has pledged $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the country’s leading civil rights legal advocacy group, officials there said Tuesday.

The gift, which Mr. Soros is making through his Open Society Foundations, is the largest grant the group has ever received from a named donor.

It comes as the fund and other legal advocacy groups are locked in battles around the country over states’ efforts to impose tighter restrictions on voting.

The fund is closely involved with a case now before the Supreme Court, Shelby County v. Holder, which challenges the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. The group is also active in cases involving the death penalty, classroom integration and housing discrimination.

Mr. Soros and his family were among the largest donors in the country to Democratic “super PACs” during the 2012 elections. He is also a longtime supporter of voting rights and voter registration initiatives, a major focus of the NAACP fund.

In a statement, Mr. Soros said, “We need bold and courageous civil rights strategies if we are to achieve racial equality in this country.”

Sherrilyn Ifill, who took over as the legal defense fund’s top official last year, was previously the board chairwoman for United States programs at Open Society Foundations.

“L.D.F. is a great American institution that remains vigorously engaged in the fight for justice in the areas of voting rights, access to economic and educational opportunity and in challenging injustice in the criminal justice system,” Ms. Ifill said in a statement.

Q&A: Erasing Saved Web Site Passwords

Q.

I’ve been clicking the button to have my Web browser save user names and passwords for sites I visit frequently, but now I’m thinking this may not be safe if my laptop is stolen. How can I make the browser forget them all

A.

In Mozilla Firefox for Windows and Mac OS X, go to the Tools menu in the menu bar and select Options. In the Options box, click the Security tab and click on “Saved Passwords.” Click on “Remove All” to dump all the saved passwords, or click “View Saved Passwords” to selectively eliminate information.

In Google Chrome for Windows, click the wrench icon, select Options and click the Personal Stuff tab. Click the “Show Saved Passwords” button and select the entries you want to eliminate. On the Mac version of Chrome, go to the Chrome menu, select Preferences and then Settings. Click the “Show Advanced Settings” link, and under “Passwords and forms,” click “Manage Saved Passwords” to edit the information.

To clear all saved passwords in Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and later, go to the Tools menu, select Safety and choose “Delete Browsing History.” In the box that appears, turn on the checkboxes next to “Form Data” and “Passwords” and click the Delete button; turning off the checkbox next to “Preserve Favorites website data” clears cookies and other temporary files that sites have stored on your computer as well. (You can delete individual saved passwords by selecting the username and password that appear in the login field when you visit a saved site, and then pressing the Delete key.)

In the latest version of Apple’s Safari browser, go to the Safari menu and select Preferences. In the Preferences box, click the Passwords tab and choose which ones to remove from the browser’s memory. You can also remove passwords and other information from Web sites by going to the Safari menu, choosing Reset Safari, and selecting the data you want to delete.

T-Mobile Unveils New Pricing Plan, Kind Of

T-Mobile has unveiled what is presumably its new pricing plan. I say presumably because the company will not confirm or deny that the plan appearing on its Web site is its new plan.

Assuming it is (and how can you not), what kind of deal is it

T-Mobile appears to be going to all prepaid with no monthly contract plans. For an individual, $50 gets you unlimited talk and text with 500 MB of data. After you use that 500 MB, you can still go on the Internet, but at a glacial speed. For another $10 a month, you get 2 GB of data before being slowed down, and for $20 a month you get “unlimited” data, although I suspect there is some fine print that I couldn’t locate.

This puts T-Mobile up against other prepaid plans, including Boost Mobile, which is on the Sprint Nextel network and has usually been the most competitive plan from a major carrier.

Here’s how the two compare.

Unlimited service for a smartphone - voice, text and data â€" on T-Mobile would be $70 a month. Unlimited service from Boost is $55 a month, or $60 a month for a BlackBerry. The price on Boost declines by $5 a month after six on-time payments, even if they are not consecutive. A Boost user can reduce the monthly bill by up to $15 a month that way.

As with other prepaid services, both require you to buy the phone up front. Usually a contract plan hides part of the cost of the phone in the monthly fee.

Boost smartphones range from $30 to $300. T-Mobile has a larger selection of smartphones priced at $50 to $680 and gives you the option of paying in full up front or making a down payment with a monthly fee for 24 months. The high-priced example is the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which is listed online at $200 down and $20 a month for two years, equal to the $680 cost to buy it outright. So although it’s a no-contract service, you still have a two-year commitment to pay off the phone.

Of course, you have to consider the network itself. If you want the fastest data speed, Sprint offers LTE, which is the speediest signal, but T-Mobile doesn’t. However, Sprint’s LTE is in a limited number of places. If you are not in a Sprint LTE city, T-Mobile may be faster, because its non-LTE network averaged higher speeds than competitors.

The Early Word: Marriage

In Today’s Times

• Rarely has a former commander-in-chief declared that an action he took in office violated the Constitution, but former President Bill Clinton is now urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, which he signed into law in 1996, Peter Baker reports.

• A spring snowstorm that blew into the nation’s capital on Monday did little to deter the few dozen people waiting outside the Supreme Court for one of the coveted seats inside for a pair of same-sex marriage cases this week, Jeremy W. Peters writes.

• The modern fight for gay rights is less than a half-century old, and as the Supreme Court hears two landmark cases on same sex-marriage this week, the speed and scope of the movement are astonishing supporters, John Harwood reports.

Around the Web

• Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, is starting a lobbying firm that will include executive donors from the tech world and prominent Washington political consultants, The Hill reports.

• The government spent nearly $3.7 million on pensions, travel, office space and postage for former presidents last year, The Associated Press reports.

Happenings in Washington

• President Obama will greet the Los Angeles Kings, Stanley Cup champions, and the Los Angeles Galaxy, Major League Soccer champions, in the White House on Tuesday.

• Supporters of same-sex marriage will hold a rally at the Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments on Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Bachmann Is Subject of Ethics Investigation

WASHINGTON â€" Representative Michelle Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, is the subject of an ethics investigation examining allegations of wrongdoing that emerged in the aftermath of her failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, a lawyer for the lawmaker confirmed Monday.

The inquiry by the Office of Congressional Ethics â€" a quasi-independent agency that acts like a grand jury to address allegations of wrongdoing by House lawmakers and their staff â€" follows claims by her former campaign aides that Ms. Bachmann may have improperly used money raised by one of her House-affiliated political action committees to assist her presidential efforts in advance of the Iowa presidential caucuses in January 2012.

Peter Waldron, a Florida evangelical organizer who once served as national field coordinator of Ms. Bachmann’s presidential campaign, is among those who raised the accusations, which he also brought to the Federal Election Commission, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in January.

Separately, a former Iowa staff member for Ms. Bachmann has accused her campaign of stealing a database of names and e-mail addresses of Christian home-school families in Iowa, a matter that has reportedly resulted in a criminal complaint in Iowa.

William McGinley, a lawyer at Patton Boggs, a prominent Washington firm, said on Monday in a statement that an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics is underway, as had first been reported by The Daily Beast. But Mr. McGinley said he is confident it will be concluded without any findings against Ms. Bachmann.

“There are no allegations that the congresswoman engaged in any wrongdoing,” Mr. McGinley said in his statement, adding that he and Ms. Bachmann are “constructively engaged” with the investigators on the Office of Congressional Ethics, as he is convinced it “will conclude that Congresswoman Bachmann did not do anything inappropriate.”

At a minimum, the Congressional Ethics inquiry demonstrates the messy aftermath of Ms. Bachmann’s failed presidential bid. She has been the subject of continued disputes by her former campaign aides that have hurt her reputation among conservatives, particularly in Iowa.

The fact that Congressional Ethics is examining the matter suggests that allegations involve at least someone on her House congressional staff, if not the lawmaker herself. The Office of Congressional Ethics does not have the jurisdiction to look into claims of wrongdoing if they only involve political staff members not on the government payroll; its jurisdiction is limited to the operations of the House of Representatives itself.

Still, the acknowledgment by her attorney that a review by Congressional Ethics is underway does not mean that any charges will be filed. In many cases, allegations are reviewed by the Congressional Ethics staff and then dropped, even before the matter becomes public.

Typically, such investigations only become public after the Congressional Ethics staff has found convincing evidence of wrongdoing and recommended that the House Ethics Committee â€" which has the power to advocate punishment of lawmakers â€" looks into a matter.

In Ms. Bachmann’s case, the Ethics Committee has not received a referral, one official on Capitol Hill said Monday, suggesting that Congressional Ethics has not yet concluded if there is probable cause to recommend a formal ethics investigation.

Spokesmen for Congressional Ethics and the House Ethics Committee declined to comment Monday.