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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."
Because some people abuse a system, that we should shut an entire system down and let people starve instead.
Right.
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes, yes you are. Civilization is a lot better than the alternative.
--
BMO
Because some people abuse a system, that we should shut an entire system down and let people starve instead.
Right.
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes, yes you are. Civilization is a lot better than the alternative.
--
BMO
Because some people abuse a system, we should punish the abusers and fix the system. We are currently rewarding the abusers and expanding the broken system.
That's retarded on the face of it, you don't even have to start the debate of whether or not the system should exist in the first place.
Agreed. Canada has exactly the same problem. I came out of high school, worked 6 years as an apprentice got my license as an electrician and have since been out of work. I don't qualify for welfare but there is gov. subsidized housing down the street with a parking lot full of 2012 pickups and BMWs. Both countries need a serious overhaul to their welfare systems.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
What rational argument? There's only two "arguments" that ever come up:
"Hurr, durr, welfare queen derp" which has - since its inception - been a patently false concern.
"Herpaderpaderp smartphones lolololol" - yes, people who become unemployed actually have cellphones that they bought during their previous employment! What's more, they tend to keep them, since skipping out on the contract is generally catastrophically expensive when you have no income, and you generally need a phone to get a new job! Fucking amazing!
I won't even go into the, "THEY'RE BUYING ALL THIS STUFF THAT THEY'RE NOT REALLY ACTUALLY BUYING BECAUSE I'M A LYING SACK OF SHIT WHO NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT THE LIST OF ALLOWED PURCHASES!" non-argument.
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.
I'm fine with welfare but they need to crack down on it. Alot of people are on it that don't need to be!
You know this for fact? If you know people that are on welfare that shouldn't be, then report them.
If you don't know anyone that is taking advantage of Welfare and are just saying this because you hate paying taxes. Fuck off.
People like you are worse then those who take advantage of Welfare.
If you got proof, bring it. If you don't, fuck off.
Be seeing you...
http://www.whptv.com/mostpopular/story/Sixteen-PA-residents-pleaded-guilty-to-welfare/xAQekhwrt0ar1uqAE18a6g.cspx
http://www.wbng.com/news/local/Broome-County-Arrests-12-on-Welfare-Fraud-Charges-185548162.html
Those are both CBS affiliates. I've seen 60 minutes also do an expose on food stamp fraud a few years back. They videotaped people exchanging food stamps for drugs at a store in Chicago. It's so common no one even blinks about it anymore. If you haven't seen news about it on even the left wing tv affiliates then you just don't watch the news or you selectively listen to it.
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 don't have any problem feeding people who honestly need help but anyone except an idiot knows the system is broken. Why everyone starts foaming at the mouth anytime anyone mentions fixing the fraud in the system is beyond me. No one....well...most people don't want anyone to starve but we don't like being taken advantage of either. Why can't you see that?
I remember when food assistance programs meant you got your monthly allotment of government welfare cheese and other staples delivered to your door. im all for taking it back to that time. The 'modern' method of distributing benefits definitely opens the way to fraud, especially when you can get cash from the ebt card at casinos. It has made fraud so easy now many of the benefits are not going to their intended purpose. However, there are not too many crack dealers that will trade a block of cheese for drugs. That is the way it should be. Keep the benefits, just change the method of delivery. i think that would help more than anything. im tired of working hard to fund some other's drug or gambling habit with this kind of abuse.
You have no idea what a EBT is do you?
EBT have 2 uses. 1 use if for food stamps. That money on the card for food stamps can ONLY be used to purchase food. You can NOT use it to take money out of your food part.
The other use of EBT is putting on money from services like DSHS.
For example, before I was on disability I got $330 a month to live on from DSHS, and $190 in Food stamps (food credit really). I was able to take out $330 using an ATM, but the $190 was just for Food.
That money I got monthly doesn't matter if I got it on the EBT card, or if I got it in a check, it was my money to spend. And it has nothing to do with Food Stamps.
So, if you saw a person using a EBT to take out money, he/she was doing what they are allowed to. They are NOT using their Food Stamps to get money from an ATM. That is NOT even possible.
So before you start spouting off about what you saw, trying learning a bit about it first before you make accusations that are NOT true.
Be seeing you...
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...
getting fucked in the ass by a government that takes more and more
Hey troll, tax rates are lower right now then they've been in a long long time. They were a good bit higher in Clinton's day, and it keeps on going higher when you go back a lot further. That's the problem. We are spending, but not paying for it.
Look how much we payed back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's.
Ever since old Ronny took office, we've had low taxes, and been driving the deficit up and up because we aren't paying anywhere near what we used to.
Government taking more and more, what a laugh. You must get all your 'information' from FAUX news.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
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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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/
And a lot of people abuse the EBT cards for non essential goods and services. I had someone in front of a Wal Mart offer me an EBT card with over one hundred on it for sixty cash. Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops
Are unemployment payouts really 4 times higher now than in 2001? Whats going on?
High paying jobs are going overseas, and we're importing massive numbers of workers on visas (H1-B et all). The media doesn't mention any of this any more than they mention the Koch Brothers letter to Boehner telling him not to vote on Sandy relief. Everything you hold dear and love is being taken away from you by the investor class.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
(food stamps aren't legal for restaurant/prepared food)
In California they are. Most of the fast-food restaurants here accept EBT.
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...
To say that "People can use EBT cards to buy legit things and then trade them for other goods" and that's a problem is leaving out the part where SNAP != EBT which also includes disability payments. SNAP, aka food stamps, can only purchase food - you must be able to ingest it to bill it against a SNAP account. If you see someone using an EBT card to pay for non-food items then they are on the "cash side" of the card. You see the state uses the same financial network (EBT - Electronic Benefits Transfer) to handle cash disbursement for other social programs such as disability. Rest assured you must be extremely fucked to get cash distribution via EBT.
If you see someone using an EBT card to purchse tide you should perhaps feel sorry for their condition instead of feeling like you need to put a stop to it. Does a disabled person not get to enjoy other perks of life such as video games? Who gets to decide what they can and can not purchase with their income (remember: this is not food stamps, this is their revenue source).
In the US at least, some apartment complexes have a mixture of subsidized and unsubsidized apartments.
A previous coworker of mine lived in one, and while he wasn't on federal assistance, he did buy a nicer BMW. I used to joke that when people saw his car pull into his apartment building, they'd bitch and moan about welfare leaches.
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."
you seem like a reasonable, compassionate person.
(actually, no you don't!)
I can tell you never had to go thru tough times, a long-term layoff, tight job market or life problems that emptied your savings.
but go ahead and blame poor people for being poor. lots of people love to push people while they're down. its fun, right?
I hope you get a dose of bad luck in your life. it will convert you to being a bit more compassionate.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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
fraud done by poor people: pocket change in the US scale of money.
fraud done by ultra rich: BILLIONS and not at all pocket-change!
if you want to 'fix' something, there's more justice to be had by going after banksters and other neo-mobsters than the poor folks just trying to get up into the middle class.
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time 'cracking down' on those whose lives are at poverty level and have very little hope of pulling themselves out.
abuse at the welfare (etc) level is just noise-level. we have bigger fish to fry, IF we wanted to. but the protected rich are untouchable. sigh..
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hankâ(TM)s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.
DOZENS of withdrawals from 200 MILLION records. If every government program was abused on the order of less than 1 thousandth of 1%, then we'd all be sitting pretty
and there is no proof that the money was actually spent on alcohol (likely perhaps, but probably not in all cases). But regardless, any program that wastes less than 1 hundredth of 1% (and here it was even less) is a raging success.
I came out of high school, worked 6 years as an apprentice got my license as an electrician and have since been out of work.
Really? And you've never considered going to Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec, Newfieland, or Nova Scotia and be working within a week. Though you could go to Alberta and be working within two days.
Demand is high in all of those provinces for skilled trades, electricians included.
For those of you outside the U.S., we have those who need financial help to get food. This in a county that exported about 3.5 million tons of rice. The government run help program is called SNAP. Through the SNAP program, the U.S. government is now spending roughly $5.6 billion per month on food assistance helping out 41,836,000 Americans. Doing the math that's $5,601,600,000 (monthly cost) / 41,836,000 (Americans on food assistance) = $133 per person
I think a lot of people like to beat up on those that receive food stamps because they find stories where the few are defrauding the system. Just look at the above data. How much can you do with $133 (99 euro) per month?
But hey, let's spend lots of additional money employing cops and tie up court time to go after someone that's defrauding the government on SNAP money. I mean the talking heads on TV tell you you should be mad that your fellow citizen is receiving aid. From your paycheck even!
I don't mind that my tax dollars goes to help feed fellow Americans. What I mind is being forced to help the banks (by taking my tax dollars) through the TARP bailout. That 700 billion could have paid for the SNAP program at current levels for close to a decade. As for TARP - how many bankers went to jail over that ?
Source:
Table I got my numbers from:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
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.
Both countries need a serious overhaul to their welfare systems.
I know what you mean, everywhere I go I see evidence on non-stop subsidies: construction assistance, building subsidies, tax breaks and forgiveness, food subsidies, welfare and cash infusion for self-inflicted problems...
Damn corporations.
Oh, you were talking about people?