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HP Software Update Cancels Food Stamps
Spy Handler writes "A software update of the California welfare computer system (CalWIN) caused 37,000 Food Stamp recipients to lose their EBT (a credit card paid for by the government) benefits last weekend. According to the article, Hewlett Packard was responsible for the failed update of CalWIN, but at 8:00 a.m. today Xerox (who administers another state welfare system called CalFresh) issued a patch that reactivated the EBT cards."
Can they do it at the National level?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
This article seems to be worded to make Xerox look good and HP look bad.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
People used to want to get off food stamps due to the public shame associated with them. Now, since no one knows your on them, their is no shame for living on the dole.
California almost trimmed the state budget!
It's a feature.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
That was a time-bomb put in by Carly Fiorina years ago, thinking that she'd (still) be Governor by now.
Knew when I saw the title, there would be posts praising HP for their blunder. Look, welfare needs reform, no one (sane) doubts that, but to end the whole system indiscriminately is both counterproductive and inhumane. There are many reasons why someone would need to go on welfare so learn a bit more sympathy and please stop the thinly veiled "kill 'em all" attitude.
Besides, the they fixed the mess in a day, so at most this was a major inconvenience.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
If HP Issued the patches, and xerox pushed a fix, then who's fault is it really?
One of the biggest gripes about the patch release cycles is that they are slow. Companies like HP state this is for people to be able to do full testing etc to make sure nothing goes wrong. So the real question here is who didn't do their testing on the systems before the patches go live?
It's obvious there has been mistakes made, but blaming the wrong company/person never helps the situation. There are people who currently rely on the welfare payments to make ends meet, and ensuring this type of stuff doesn't happen is critical. Regardless if you agree or not to the payments themselves, while they are valid they need to make sure they are delivered on time and correctly.
I bet there are a lot more people that cheat on their income taxes then cheat on welfare
Okay, since most of you probably never been on it, I will give you some info.
Back before EBT was thought up, we had Food Stamps. They were basicly like paper money, but food stamps, only could be spend on food, but you got real change back. So this was abused. People would purposedly by cheap stuff to get change back to spend on drugs/alcohol.
In the 90's they decided to go to a debit like card. This had a few purposes. One was about giving people actually real money change for the food stamps, the other it was cheaper to get digital.
So they decided to go with EBT cards. The Food Stamp part of the card is only for buying Food. You can NOT use it to take money out, you can NOT use it to buy Alcohol. Only food.
They also decided to put DSHS monthly payments on it, which is why you might see using one in an ATM machine, but they are NOT using the Food Stamp part of it.
Be seeing you...
So the strip clubs and casinos will have less visitors?
Americans who want 40$ an hour to scrub toilets and mow grass... its California after all, dont expect me to shed a tear when some asshat looses their 40$ an hour car washing job they should have never even had.
What I hate about stories like this, are the comments, commending the bug because "there are too many people on welfare, and it costs us too much." Yet these commenters, have zero economic evidence to back that up... How do I know? Well, I read actual governmental reports, looking at spending, do some basic arithmetic, and then come to a conclusion provided by evidence. I've head it called "science" before, but I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the term.
Even more sad, to me, is that most of our "welfare" services are quite cheap (nominal) compared to Medicare/Medicaid and Defense spending. Especially, when actual costly budget items (like tax breaks/incentives) go relatively unscathed. I for one would like to see an increase in spending on programs like Food Stamps; so, instead of less. Welfare programs should not be a zero-sum game (and aren't unless administered poorly).
I'd highly recommend most of you look at the CBO or BEA websites for actual statistics:
http://www.cbo.gov/
http://www.bea.gov/
And actually find out how much is spent on things like Food Stamps (SNAP)... Or for the overtly lazy, but curious:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43175 ... which translates to less than 3%
-Seve
P.S. Pro tip for anyone who doesn't know: correlation is not causation.
my brother tried, very unsuccessfully, to get food stamps after losing his job (single father). Also, if you do manage to get on public assistance there is a) a Maximum of 5 years cash assistance, after that it's food stamps only and they average $102/mo and b) you're social worker will force you to take the first job that comes along (and yes, they can and will cut you off if you don't), which depresses your wages.
So I say again, citation needed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
or an Astro Turfer for a right wing blog. One of the two. People who live in the projects can't afford $1000/mo car payments. Also, the social workers track what kind of car you own. Even the drug dealers don't do that well.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
that maybe, just maybe these people's drug problems are caused by poverty, instead of the other way around? I'm not asking you to stop judging (I'm judging you right now), I'm asking you to think reasonable about cause and affect, and ask yourself if you're really just looking for excuses to leave these people to their (rather horrible) fate.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well finally something good comes out of HP. It's been a long time.
sig
Are unemployment payouts really 4 times higher now than in 2001? Whats going on?
It's $520 billion for the last 5 years, making the average per year cost $104 billion.
And the numbers are shrinking.
In December of 2011 accumulated costs were $434 billion. Making 2012 $18 billion below average.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is probably going to help reduce the rate of obesity in California. We should be thanking HP, not scolding them.
anything can be monetized if you are willing to take a loss. If you give somebody something for free, he will be willing to take a nearly 100% loss in the monetization process....
There was a case which made news, last year in the US if I recall, in which a guy was seen buying cases of bottled water from a store and then opening them and dumping the water in the alley. When the reporter questioned the guy, it turned out he was using EBT to buy the water, dumping the water, and then turning the bottles in to get the recycling fee back as cash. A horrific % loss that nobody sane would take with their own money, but when the EBT is free and provided by the taxpayers and with a drunk who just really wants some liquor this looks perfectly logical
Before America went all big-government-social-program crazy, our poor and our drunks were left to local charities. Bums in church-run soup kitchens got healthy food (they were not left to starve) in a manner that did not permit the resources to be re-directed in destructive and wasteful ways. They also might have to listen to somebody preach at them about personal responsibility and cleaning their lives up. In modern America, that's bad..... bums should be encouraged to live their alternate life styles, nobody should judge them, and money should be taken by force from hard working people to pay for them
If you give somebody a dollar, he can spend it on something you would wish he did not spend it on. Even if he does spend THAT dollar on what you intended (like food) it then frees-up some other dollar he has (which he WOULD have had to spend on food) to be spent on something else.
Changing the FORM (cash/coupon/EBT card) of the money you give does not fix this problem
Giving THINGS with value is just another FORM (things can be traded/sold to convert to something else or cash)
The ONLY partial solution is to go back to soup kitchens: Give hungry people a meal they must eat on the premises. It's only a partial solution because while it stops them selling/trading what you give them they are still able to spend money they have on other things (since you are feeding them and they do not then need to buy that food)
The true solution is to stop giving people stuff for "free" .... particularly when that stuff is being paid for with money stolen at gun-point from hard-working productive citizens. (Note: if you resist paying taxes, and resist all other government efforts to get the money from you, government WILL show-up with guns)
Meanwhile, thousands of welfare recipients in California were tragically forced to use their drug profits to buy lapdances and liquor. Nobody knows when HP will fix this error so they can go back to buying new cars with their drug profiteering.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Software update fails, wow! Poor little food stamps.
none
The half of the country living on welfare need to be out working all day in orange coveralls.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Food stamps? Seriously? When did WW3 start?
I see you've never been hungry or had to do without, and some hungers are worse than others. Unless the person with the LINK card is an addict, he's going to use it for food.
But if there's still some food in the fridge and you're out of soap and so nasty you can't stand yourself, you're likely to do something like you mentioned. An alcoholic would peobably do that for a forty ounce, a cigarette addict would do it for smokes. It doesn't just look logical, it IS logical. Not everything is valued in dollars. Those who have little have little to lose.
Before America went all big-government-social-program crazy, our poor and our drunks were left to local charities.
And those charities didn't even come close to filling the need; most rich people are greedy, stingy bastards or they wouldn't be rich. Fortunately we've evolved past that callous attitude to the poor... at least, most of us have.
Free Martian Whores!
Wow, both incredibly naive - "Unless the person with the LINK card is an addict" Yeah right, lots of people get it simply because they can, like those folks who live at home and don't have to provide for anyone..
And pretty full of yourself too - "at least, most of us have"
Nice.
If HP Issued the patches, and xerox pushed a fix, then who's fault is it really?
Please mod this up. The article says Xerox administers the CalWIN program. Xerox would likely be responsible for at least smoke testing this patch, even though it came from HP.
Since the article isn't very detailed, it's hard to tell who is to blame most, but it seems at least as much blame goes to Xerox. I can think of many scenarios that would make it either companies' fault.
What if Xerox used nonstandard data structures for their CalWIN? It might not be possible for the program creator to imagine every possible scenario. That's why no one slaps an Oracle patch on a production system without first testing it for weeks or months beforehand.
At the very least, I'd expect Xerox to do a phased rollout of the patch to small group of users. If there are problems, many fewer people are affected.
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
"A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
* it is being paid to individuals rather than households;
* it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;
* it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered.
Liberty and equality, efficiency and community, common ownership of the Earth and equal sharing in the benefits of technical progress, the flexibility of the labour market and the dignity of the poor, the fight against inhumane working conditions, against the desertification of the countryside and against interregional inequalities, the viability of cooperatives and the promotion of adult education, autonomy from bosses, husbands and bureaucrats, have all been invoked in its favour.
But it is the inability to tackle unemployment with conventional means that has led in the last decade or so to the idea being taken seriously throughout Europe by a growing number of scholars and organizations. Social policy and economic policy can no longer be conceived separately, and basic income is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling two of their respective central objectives: poverty relief and full employment.
There is a wide variety of proposals around. They differ according to the amounts involved, the source of funding, the nature and size of the reductions in other transfers, and along many other dimensions. As far as short-term proposals are concerned, however, the current discussion is focusing increasingly on so-called partial basic income schemes which would not be full substitutes for present guaranteed income schemes but would provide a low - and slowly increasing - basis to which other incomes, including the remaining social security benefits and means-tested guaranteed income supplements, could be added.
Many prominent European social scientists have now come out in favour of basic income - among them two Nobel laureates in economics. In a few countries some major politicians, including from parties in government, are also beginning to stick their necks out in support of it. At the same time, the relevant literature - on the economic, ethical, political and legal aspects - is gradually expanding and those promoting the idea, or just interested in it, in various European countries and across the world have started organizing into an active network. "
See also the "Triple Revolution Memorandum" from 1964, which I quote here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures -- unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potent
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
dave packard looked up and smiled