Thread: Michelle Malkin: ‘Riot time!’: Food stamp users in near-panic over EBT card failures

Strip clubs and casinos probably had a big slow down.

58 Mins Ago by Daisy Luther

72 Hour Warning: Grocery Stores Across the Country Turn Away Hungry Shoppers as EBT System Crashes

3 Comments

Abandoned carts full of food were a frequent sight in grocery stores Saturday morning, as the EBT food assistance debit system stopped working without warning.
According to a Xerox spokesperson, a routine system check by the vendor resulted in system failure, leaving assistance recipients across the country with no way to buy food.

Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena confirmed via email Saturday afternoon that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems are experiencing temporary connectivity issues. She said technical staff is addressing the issue and expects the system to be restored soon. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states and all were affected by the outage. (source)

Users of EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) cards in California, Ohio, Michigan and several other states are unable to make purchases due to connectivity issues.
But it gets worse…

Xerox is notifying retailers to revert to the manual system, meaning SNAP customers can spend up to $50 until the system is back online. SNAP recipients should call the 800 number on the back of their card, and Xerox will guide them through the purchase process. (source)

However, that system is not working either – it’s “closed for maintenance.”

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.” (source)

Despite the fact that government workers report orders from the Obama administration to “make life as difficult for people as we can”, the nation is assured that the EBT failure is in fact due to server issues and NOT due to the government shutdown.

Keep in mind that the truckers are also on a general strike this weekend, protesting in Washington DC against high gas prices, rampant unemployment, and corruption in the US government.

Between October 11th and 13th they have called for a general strike, asking truck drivers around the country to refuse to haul freight, a move that could carry with it a significant impact on the American economy.

The protest calls for truckers to make their way to Washington D.C. in a massive convoy in an effort to call attention to, among other things, the Benghazi cover-up, the recent attack which killed 25 members of Seal Team 6, ever rising fuel prices, and claims that President Obama has engaged in treasonous crimes. (source)

Things are already starting to get ugly. ZeroHedge posted the following Tweets.

NOBODIES EBT CARD IS GOING THRU AT WALMART

“@Creamteam_bitch: Government done shut down the #EBT cards in Ga… These folks going crazy in walmart lol”swearrrr

EBT is down so Walmart is complete chaos right now, so glad I’m leaving in 2 hours

EBT down at walmart and MF going crazy!

THEY DONE SHUT DOWN EBT CARDS IN MISSISSIPPI…… Walmart fulla mad motha ****as right now

I almost just killed some people at Walmart, EBT is apparently down today #madhouse

This is your 72 hour warning. If you don’t already have a two week supply of food and water, now might be a good day to go stock up, just in case this is the beginning of a bigger crisis. The first three days after a major event are your window of opportunity to get prepared, based on the just-in-time food supply in grocery stores and the amount of food most people store in their homes.

If the EBT failure continues, look for the situation to get progressively worse.


http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/10/72...ystem-crashes/

Twitchy

EBT card failures cause 'complete chaos' at Walmart stores ==> http://bit.ly/19IhSXb

ABC 7 Chicago

Abandoned grocery carts fill store following Link/food stamp card outage in at least 12 states. - Eric Horng ABC7

Officials say the food stamp cards are down because of a power outage at a service center, NOT the government shutdown.

LATEST DETAILS: http://abc7.ws/18Yk1uV

FOOD STAMP RIOT AT WAL-MART


By: John Hayward
10/14/2013 03:09 PM

Think of this as a little sneak preview of what awaits us when mandatory spending gobbles up the entire federal budget – a day most readers of this post will live to see – and Food Stamp Nation gets switched off like a light bulb. A computer glitch said to have cropped up during routine system maintenance caused EBT cards to stop working temporarily in several regions of the country. Chaos promptly ensued, as reported by the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi:

Customers staged a disturbance, took unpaid for groceries and walked out of a Mississippi Walmart after they were unable to use their food stamp cards on Saturday.
People in 17 states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their food stamp debit-style cards Saturday after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.
The mini riot happened at the Walmart in Philadelphia, Miss. Shortly thereafter, managers decided to temporarily close the store.
“For the safety of our customers we did make a management decision to close the store. We’re looking into everything; looking at surveillance video and working with the local police,” said Kayla Whaling, a spokesperson for Walmart.
Whaling said the disturbance happened around 10:00 p.m. and the store reopened around 11:30 p.m. She also said she was not aware of any injuries.

In Louisiana, the EBT glitch temporarily removed the spending limits on food-stamp cards, triggering what CBS News euphemistically describes as a “shopping spree”:

Walmart workers phoned their corporate headquarters to ask how they should handle all the shoppers with unlimited, government-funded spending limits, and were told to keep the registers ringing.
“We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families,” Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA. She added that Walmart was, “fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage.”
Amateur video taken on shoppers’ cell phones shows dozens of shopping carts, piled high with merchandise, abandoned in the aisles of one Walmart after the announcement was made that EBT cards were once again showing accurate spending limits.
Police spokesmen in both locations told KSLA that no arrests were made during the spending sprees.
Shoppers gave mixed reactions to the incident, with one man in the Springhill store told KSLA it was simply “human reaction” to stock-up when given the opportunity. Shopper Stan Garcia was more critical of the unscrupulous shoppers, however, saying that taking advantage of the brief glitch in the benefits system amounted to “plain theft. That’s stealing, that’s all I got to say about it.”

Come, come, Mr. Garcia, don’t be so old-fashioned! Haven’t you learned that it’s not “stealing” when the government is involved?
Angry social media postings predicted, and in some cases called for, violent riots. Keep in mind this whole situation was resolved in a matter of hours. It doesn’t take long for civic order to break down in a dependent population, does it? Evidently many people in the affected areas concluded the EBT system failure was a deliberate aspect of the government shutdown. As if Barack Obama would ever treat these folks the way he treats war veterans!
This is doubtless one of those stories we’re not supposed to notice or comment upon, because it’s cruel, mean, and probably racist to pay attention to the objective reality of what Food Stamp Nation does to its clients. There are people who genuinely require food assistance, but they’re lumped in with an enormous and growing population that really doesn’t, conflating necessary welfare and charity with unnecessary and poisonous dependency. We’re supposed to think only of impoverished mothers with starving children, not spoiled adult children who can’t handle a brief disruption in their support system. It was inconvenient and annoying, but “annoyance” doesn’t seem like the right word to describe some of the reactions.
Frustrated users of the utterly failed ObamaCare online system have been told to send in dead-tree paperwork via snail mail. Since the EBT system is not used for most of the data-harvesting operations it’s theoretically capable of – mustn’t let the taxpayers have a clear look at what those cards are being used to purchase! – maybe it would be best to turn food stamps back into stamps, just to be on the safe side, until our titanic mega-government figures out how to run a website.


http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/1...t-at-wal-mart/

Food-stamp shoppers pick Walmart bare after computer glitch gives them UNLIMITED funds. But who will end up footing the bill?

• The store was left 'decimated,' stripped of meat and almost all the food on the shelves
  
• EBT is funded by Louisiana tax payers
  
• Once cards starting working again shoppers abandoned their full carts in the middle of the store and left
  

By ALEXANDRA KLAUSNER
PUBLISHED: 10:40 EST, 14 October 2013 | UPDATED: 12:39 EST, 14 October 2013
87 shares
357View comments


A food stamp glitch in Springhill and Mansfield, LA gave food stamp card owners unlimited funds. The Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, which have a limited amount of dollars per month, weren’t showing any limits at all.

Food stamp assistance programs are funded by the government and Louisiana tax payers.

EBT carrying Walmart shoppers in Springhill and Mansfield, LA cleared the shelves of Walmart on Saturday night.

When Walmart employees noticed that cards weren’t showing limits, they called the corporate office and were advised to allow shoppers to use the cards anyway.

Apparently the lack of card limits was due to a power outage during a routine maintenance test by Xerox, an EBT vendor. EBT cards contain government-funded amounts of money catered to each individual's financial needs.

At 9 p.m. when cards started working again, customers left their carts sprawled out all over the store


Emergency Benefits Transaction cards (EBT) have designated amounts of funds that under-financed individuals can use to buy food each month

‘We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families,’ Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA.
Police officers were called in for crowd control and safety monitoring.

'It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town,. There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no meat left. The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated,' said Springhill Police Chief Will Lyn.

'I saw people drag out 8 to 10 grocery carts,' the officer told ABC news.

There were no arrests made that night and witnesses told KSLA that the incident was a 'natural human' response to free food.

From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., a frenzy of shoppers filled their carts to the brim with as much food as they could get their hands on. When the cards came back online at 9 p.m., people literally abandoned their carts full of food in the middle of the Walmart and left.

One woman who tried to ring up $700 worth of food only had .49 cents on her card. She was held by police for ‘stealing’ but was let go on the condition that she would give the food back to Walmart.

Walmart had to stop selling food at 9 p.m. Their shelves were stark and both empty and full carts were left all over the store.

When asked by KSLA whether or not Walmart would somehow be refunded for the loss of produce, Walmart representative Kayla Whaling responded that they were, ‘fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage.’

A spokesperson for EBT in Louisiana told The Daily Mail that they are preparing a statement about Saturday’s incident.


An entire line of full food carts were left unattended after food stamps went back online on Saturday night

One EBT Card carrying woman takes advantage of the glitch by stocking up on her favorite apple juice

Walmart shelves in Springhill, Mansfield were cleared in an EBT glitch and stores were forced to stop selling food

Video at the Page Link:

KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana News Weather

Read more: EBT benefit card glitch sparks Walmart shopping sprees in Louisiana

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