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| EBT cards are down in several states. I am guessing conservatives are rejoicing over that one! |
Yeah, I know that conservatives believe that those on food stamps and welfare are the reasons for America's turmoils. I can't fault them for believing in the poor being "moochers" and "Obama's people!"
They're entitled to be condescending. I mean that type of stuff right there is a reason for why President Barack Obama won reelection. The middle and lower class believe that the safety net is there to keep them from robbing and looting. Cause if you have to steal to keep food on the table, you probably would. Trust me, if the opportunities were given, the poor would steal from a grocery store if they couldn't have access to the safety nets. Believe me, you never know what happens until you become one of them!
If you're disabled, I guess that you better get better. Because you're going to need a job as well. If you're in need of a firearm, get one because you're going to need it.
In the minds of the racist right, some are fixated on those "gubmint" leeches taking out of their hardworking pockets. They don't see that less than 10% of the federal funds go to food stamps. Most of the federal funds go to either infrastructure and federal agencies.
Republican lawmakers from state and federal levels are diligently pushing legislation that cuts food stamps and unemployment benefits to the bare bone. Some states believe that you're entitled to less than $100 for a family of four. Some believe that you have to have a drug test to get student loans, food stamps, welfare, farm aid, disaster relief and unemployment benefits.
With the rising costs of electricity, heat, food, gas, rent, necessities such as toilet paper are going up, more people are using safety nets. The more things that go up, the likelihood that many would resort to safety nets and food banks for assistance.
Conservatives are rejoicing over the nationwide glitches in the EBT program. Xerox technical services are down and many Americans can't use the EBT (electronic balance transfer) card at local stores.
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| Coming from ReallyGhetto.com. Assuming its a racially insensitive website. |
The Republicans tried to pass a bill in the House of Representatives to shed off over $40 billion in the SNAP program. The Democratic-controlled Senate and the president told the Republicans don't even try it.
But they did it anyway. This budget deal proposed by Republicans include cuts to the healthcare law, cuts to safety nets and a strong pullback on regulations (in regards to the environment).
The Associated Press reports that 17 states were affected by this problem and they're trying to fix it as quickly as possible. For conservatives, they rather see it down indefinitely.
People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.
The electronic benefits system experienced a temporary shutdown during a routine test of Xerox back-up systems, company spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said Saturday.
"While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon," Wasmer said in an emailed statement. "Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients' patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible."
U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the government shutdown.
Shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said fellow shopper Barbara Colman, of Saco, Maine. The manager put up a sign saying the EBT system was not in use. Colman, who receives the benefits, called an 800 telephone line for the program and it said the system was down due to maintenance, she said.
"That's a problem. There's a lot of families who are not going to be able to feed children because the system is being maintenanced," Colman said. "No one should put maintenance in during the daytime."
She planned to reach out to local officials.
"I'm trying to reach out to everybody because I'm not thinking of me an adult who can figure out things. I'm thinking of the simpler person in the world who is sitting there trying to just do basic shopping to feed their kids. You don't want children going hungry tonight because of stupidity," she said.
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| This photo circulates around white extremist websites. |
Illinois residents began reporting problems with their cards — known as LINK in that state — on Saturday morning, said Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.
Smith said that typically when the cards aren't working retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money a customer has available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren't able to use their cards.
"It really is a bad situation but they are working to get it fixed as soon as possible," Smith said. "We hope it will be back up later today."
In Clarksdale, Miss. — one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest states in the nation — cashier Eliza Shook said dozens of customers at Corner Grocery had to put back groceries when the cards failed Saturday because they couldn't afford to pay for the food. After several hours, she put a sign on the front door to tell people about the problem.
"It's been terrible," Shook said in a phone interview. "It's just been some angry folks. That's what a lot of folks depend on."
Mississippi Department of Human Services director Rickey Berry confirmed that Xerox, the state's EBT vendor, had computer problems. He said he had been told by midafternoon that the problems were being fixed.
"I know there are a lot of mad people," Berry said.
Sheree Powell, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, started receiving calls around 11:30 a.m. about problems with the state's card systems. More than 600,000 Oklahomans receive SNAP benefits, and money is dispersed to the cards on the first, fifth and 10th days of every month, so the disruption came at what is typically a high-use time for the cards.
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| Plenty of experiences at a Walmart. The people of Walmart website is a popular blog that takes shots at the company and the insane things some do while shopping at the retail giant. |
Like Ohio's Johnson, Powell said that Oklahoma's cash debit card system has since been restored, but the EBT cards for the SNAP program were still down. Powell said Oklahoma's Xerox representative told them that the problems stemmed from a power failure at a data center, and power had been restored quickly.
"It just takes a while to reboot these systems," she said, adding that she did not know where the data center was located.
Powell said that some grocery store cashiers had been speculating that the federal government's shutdown caused the problem, but state officials have been assured that that is not the case.
"We are hopeful it will be up this afternoon but we were not given a specific time frame," she said.
David Akerly, a spokesman for Michigan's Department of Human Services, also confirmed that residents in his state have reported problems using their cards.
Colman said the store manager promised her that he would honor the day's store flyer discounts next week.
Before I go, do you know a friend or family member using an EBT card?
Do you believe the poor take advantage of the safety nets?
Do you support intrusive laws such as drug tests in order to receive a safety net?
Isn't what you do at home a "private matter!" See I thought libertarians and conservatives were all about limited government intrusion on what you do at home.
I guess it only applies to them and not the rest!
Here's an Ohio man ranting sarcastically about the situation. Not understand the plight of the poor, the needy and the disabled. Just ranting because he has a camera and a whole lot of bigots that agree with him. As usual, he'll speak a good game but still get the whole scenario wrong!
