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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."
Sure, why not? I mean, letting your citizens starve has worked out so well for North Korea, we should try it here.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
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Did you by chance go to the subsidized housing and find out who owns which vehicles? They could be visitors, they could of been vehicles that they inherited from a relative, they could be other people who pay to park their cars there.
I know which cars in my own neighborhood belong to residents, because I live here and have a set of eyes that let me learn shit like that. I assume the person you are responding to has a set of eyes as well.
I live in low income housing. We have people with nice cars here. I do NOT know their situation, I do NOT know why they have nice cars. Any guess I make is an assumption, and unless I go and ask the people, then I'm going to keep making assumptions.
If you think someone is getting over on welfare, then fucking report them or shut the fuck up. All this other talk is just bullshit. Let's get down on welfare because someone people might abuse it. Well, welcome to life, where people abuse whatever they can, from all walks of life. Either start reporting it, or stfu about it.
Just quit making fucking assumptions on shit you really do NOT know.
Be seeing you...
Even if the system was much better, I wouldn't be surprised if there were people committing fraud and finding loopholes. The more relevant questions would be: what portion of people on food stamps are committing fraud (and what portion of their food stamps... there is a difference between using all of it for something illegally, and just using a small fraction while still needing the rest for food), what ratio of false negatives to false positives is acceptable (in other words, what number of people is it acceptable to let go without food because they got caught up in something meant to target those commit fraud), and how much does it cost to implement improvements versus what is loss to fraud.
There is a lot of room for improvement to the current system. Although at some point, you would be stuck with something like "Would you rather 10% of the people who get their food stamps not need it, or would you rather implement idea XYZ to reduce that to 5%, while causing 2% of legit users to loose food cards and saving only 10% of the cost of just giving food stamps to that segment that doesn't need them." And at any point, there is going to be a portion of people say, "It is more important that 0% of people get money they shouldn't than any number of needing people get the money, it is far better to remove a system with any amount of abuse regardless of how much benefit it also provides."
Food assistance isn't for the poor, it's to make sure the poor aren't poor, starving, and looking to rob/kill the rich. The total cost of all food assistance programs is about $75B or .5% of GDP, a small price to pay for a calm underclass.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.