…but, really, it has nothing NOTHING to do with the slimdown
People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.
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.
Ohio’s cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio’s cash system has been fixed, however he said that its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down. […]
“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.”
Just a lesson to you all about what happens when The State finally takes over all medical care.
You be nice, or grandma doesn’t get her insulin. Capiche?
Any government big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
See also “trial balloon” and “stimulus/response diagnostics”
Gee, I’m shocked to find shoddy development, lax budgeting, bad capacity planning, and sloppy change management procedures when huge inefficient government bureaucracies use contractors for (ostensibly) important functions!
A trial run for the “big one”?
A trial run for the “big one”?
Prolly unintentionally. Given that the gubmint can’t get 100-yr-old technology to work properly, things breaking down from glitches and incompetence is entirely plausible.
God works in mysterious ways.
We’re just lucky to have domestic incompetence doing the work foreign enemy hackers can’t do…
Never attribute to malice anything that can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Never attribute solely to stupidity that which can be more fully explained by stupidity and malice.
Don’t worry. It’s only a “glitch”.
“No one should put maintenance in during the daytime.”
– Which implies that you would greatly lesson any harm by doing maintainance late at night, which in turn would be news to all the EBT slackers that buy their bottles at the all-night liquer outlets, after scoring some pot on the corner.
You can be nice and grandma still might not get her insulin.
Filed under: We’re from the government, and we’re here to help
o!bots not happy
‘Riot time!’: Food stamp users in near-panic over EBT card failures
‘riot time!’
How long before stories of cannibalism show up on CNN? I got a sawbuck on tomorrow afternoon.
The very next year, Marshall changed the name to ‘Redskins.’
Seen on Twitter, paraphrased: “They’ve decided to change the name Washington Redskins because of its insulting connotations. Now they’re the Maryland Redskins.”
Obama and Biden go walking in EBT-shutdown land.
Starving? I find that hard to believe. Don’t these people have anything to pawn to tide them over to tomorrow?
someone needs to set up some cameras so we can see the looks on their food stampy lil faces
Reason #15032 why making fun of “preppers” is about as foolish as it gets.
That’s for sure, di. We always have scads of stuff for lean times.
this is so foodstamp
The #EBT thing over at Twitter is yielding some interesting results.
Some are conservatives (or mobys) who say horrible things about the poor, plus the usual liberal screaming about the heartless “baggers.”
I, of course, make the mistake of engaging some, and it’s not pretty.
Time to clean the patio.
Fixed that for you.
Thanks!
In America, “going hungry” means the mini-mart on the corner is out of Cheeto’s.
Or Hot Pockets.
From the size of some of the people on food stamps, they could stand to fast for a day or six.
Well, it’s a good trial run for when it happens for real and not just a glitch. Me, I went to the range. Purely by happenstance.
Sure, this could be a random act of Bill Gates. But damned if I don’t have a couple second thoughts, given the timing, with the Shutdown at an impasse, and Barky needing more pressure put on his favorite whipping boys in Congress.
Keep your eyes open and your back covered. “Three meals“.
EBT reported to be back online.
In other news, Obama finds his own “reset button.”
The Obama’s are the worst gift givers ever.
Kinda like a drug resistant gonorrhea riddled hooker. Only without he class and style.
Isn’t there supposed to be an office in the government staffed with people who do nothing but plan for gifts to foreign visitors? I mean, it’s not like they don’t spend enough money on otherwise wasted offices…
Office of Protocol or Social Secretary or something…
What a bummer. Imagine being stopped at checkout. Apart from everything else I feel sorry for people who rely on it.
That happened to me once. Master Charge decided to call in all their dead beats (me) and my extended card was held up. Luckily I did have cash that time but no other cards. I thought, “Poop. We had had such a nice relationship, I pay the minimum, slide by, run up more charges and go on and on, they made a fortune off my bad habits. It was mutually beneficial. I got so mad I paid it off.
That shows ’em.
But I remained stubbornly resolutely angrily credit cardless for a full decade until it became impossible and I still hold them all in low regard.
I’m sure it happens all around but I only noticed it once, an IBT card being used. I’m surprised how many people use cash. The one time was the bottle shop downstairs, late at night, near closing, a guy stumbles in, shit-crusty wet pants, barely standing, barely able to purchase one last little bottle. The checker was reluctant with two customers observing, all four in silence, the only communication shallow grunts. It was existential. It was saturated with pathos. The proper thing to do is call the wagon, yet freedom rings, sometimes it goes ))) thud (((
Twitter has implemented a policy to limit one’s daily tweets.
To prevent spamming, I get that. But they couldn’t provide a Captcha so I can prove I’m not a bot?
I was right in the middle of some really interesting conversations. Now they think I chickened out.
They say it’s to reduce strain on the hamsters.
They can’t warn me when I have 10 left to wrap it up?
Worse, there’s no way to contact support except, wait for it…
…sending a tweet.
Jerks.
Points
Laughs
…walks away….
I don’t do Twitter very often, but I just popped over there to see what was going on.
Love this dude
https://twitter.com/sirjamesa12
He’s a self-described “anarcho-communist”, but apparently it’s the type of anarchy that still has EBT cards.
“Anarcho-communist,” that must be the one where they finally “do it right.”
Guess so, geoffb. I was thinking Bakunin-style but apparently this is a different deal.
According to the Wikipedia article, you get to keep as much of your stuff as is “considered necessary”. “Considered necessary” by whom is unspecified, but I’m guessing that people like sirjamesa12 would be glad to take on that burden.
an emp attack would really sink these poor dears day: no ebt and no twitter
oops it must be having a glitch go on darlin
swipe it again
Good news! EBT cards are working again. You’re all happy about that, right?
I don’t know. What does your carefully crafted LIV narrative tell you to think?
never let an excuse to h8 obama go to waste.
Nah. Too long for a bumper sticker. I’ve already forgotten it.
Katrina? I Blame Obama
http://www.policymic.com/articles/60447/louisiana-republicans-think-hurricane-katrina-is-obama-s-fault
never let an excuse to h8 obama go to waste.
I don’t hate him. I just want him to go away. Far, far away.
Hey, it makes as much sense as liberals blaming Bush…
http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/2006/09/hurricane_katri.html
In case you thought maybe I was kidding:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report/2005/09/01/hurricane-katrina-bushs-fault
Drum, it’s just another instance of them being able to dish it out but not being able to take it.
We listened to 8 years of Chimpy McHitler. They scream “Racist!” at the drop of a hat.
“Katrina? I Blame Obama”
Don’t be stupid hellomynameissteve, Obama lowered the oceans. As far as you know. Meanwhile republicans voted for lead in the water and for kids to have broken legs. I read it on Huffpo.
Just learned the following on Twitter:
Enough. I may not get out with my sanity on that one.
This probably should have been a Tweet Vol 2. #488 :
” I just heard a version of ‘ The Windmills of Your Mind’ probably sung by Al Stewart but maybe not. It really made me want to punch myself.’
Actually, that 70% comment is supposed to be what I think.
I hate people.
Racist isn’t something you ARE anymore Di it’s something they wish you to be. And they don’t distinguish between wishes and reality well.
That Blame Bush site on Typepad is a spoof, BTW. If you spot a comment there signed “Cheney W. Halliburton,” that was me.
Racist is the new Kulak. Think of it as a “this property is condemned and to be demolished on _______” sign.
may be of interest
Little Knots of Agony
Ima have to burn down my Twitter account and start over. I’ll never be able to go into my interactions again.
It was depressing that everyone’s implied interlocutor was such a horrible person, not resembling me at all. But no one would listen to ME. I had to be an awful racist with nothing to say about How To Improve Your Lot.
It’s also depressing that so many able-bodied people are languishing in projects and “hoods” because they keep getting told “the deck is stacked against you.” Had I the ability, I’d go find those on-the-ball moms in poor neighborhoods and pair them and their kids up with a family that owns a small business or a farm, then have that community help mentor them to get productive life skills down.
But these folks are a human barricade
Their chain of causality is exactly backwards regarding social pathologies and their relationship to economic failure. Poverty does have its self-perpetuating spirals, but if you’re already poor, postponing child-bearing until after marriage will HELP. It might not make you a millionaire, but who needs to be?
And I guess it’s not OK to state clearly and unambiguously that not everyone who is on welfare got there the same way, and that you can do everything right and still end up in a hole, and that yeah, some people are born into holes, and not everyone has the same opportunities, and that my life fell apart, too.
No, there are no principles of success that you’re better off following. Damn, if Evan Sayet wasn’t absolutely right.
xerox did this to you, food stampers
they did it on fucking purpose cause they know that you’re impotent loser-assed piece of shit food stampers
but you are NOT impotent
you should DEMAND that Kathleen Sebelius and HHS design the technological back-end for the EBT program and manage it from here on out – this is NOT a job for a for-profit corporation
there is a petition to accomplish this at Starbucks – GO SIGN IT
this is NOT a job for a for-profit corporation
Because governments are always so much better at designing things.
If government had been in charge of the fight against polio, by now we would have the world’s best iron lungs – streamlined, micro-miniaturized head’s up display readouts, nuclear-powered, the works – at a taxpayer-funded cost of several trips to the moon. But we wouldn’t have a vaccine.
oh.
ok nevermind
People on the #EBT thread didn’t realize that a lot of conservatives were jeering because we’re always saying that gubmint does only a couple-three things well and the rest they make into a dog’s breakfast.
The EBT system going down and stranding needy people with food being an example of the problem with GUBMINT doing it, not that we delight in people starving.
But that doesn’t flatter them enough, so it has to go.
i like it. ebt becoming like barackycare online. the “niggas” will really see their saviour up close and personal.
stranding needy people with[out] food
it stranded folks who don’t plan for emergencies.
it stranded folks who were doing impulse buying
this could have been a learning experience for the liv ebt buyer but that has to wait for emp event when both ebt and twitter are shut down.
Look. Some people really have fallen on hard times. They really are living on the edge. Obamacare effect, remember?
If the ONLY people on public assistance were the old, infirm, and temporarily unlucky, conservatives wouldn’t complain.
It’s the needless waste of human lives that galls.
LIVs learn?
Stop it newrouter. You’re killing me.
Funny thing, di, those were exactly the things that our Founders intended our government to be doing – military, postal roads, regulating the currency and making sure that everyone gets treated the same. The rest should be people doing for themselves or through the non-governmental charitable organizations
I remember when being on “relief” as my granny called it, was shameful.
“We was poor” she said ” But we didn’t take nobody’s charity.”
Apparently, you have to be born white and rich to be decent, honest, and diligent.
Apparently, you have to be born white
go read the davidthompson post for proggtardia in action with the “educated”
now the liv the industrial strength stupid is “educated” into them
When did “genocide” become a verb? If blacks are being genocided EVERYDAY! it would seem there would be fewer and fewer of them.
New math?
The EBT may not have been working, but Richard Goode has. Take 18:23 out of your day to hear him toil: The TwoCube, C Minor, op. 13.
We can noun verbs and verb nouns… This is Ebonics!
I believe that is: Dat be bonics, yo.
Nome sane?
Literally apparently means “not literally” now.
– If blacks are being genocided EVERYDAY!-
they are by other blacks and these blacks kill some whites for the sport.
Nome? As in Nome, Alaska?
Ebonics includes geography?
Learn something new every day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2sWiZ8BizI
From Mar. 2010 : ATF Agent Seizes 30 Toy Guns. Says They can be Converted to real weapons.
There is apparently no limit to the stupidity of the ATF. I guess with a lot of work, if you were good with shop tools and fasteners then you could turn an airsoft gun into a stock kit for a real gun? I’ve known of people who put their .22’s in one. But you need to already have a .22 to that and by putting a .22 into a weird ex-airsoft body that has been cut up to accept it you gain WHAT that the law should be looking into?
Followup from PJ Media.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/agents-of-incompetence-atf-dodges-foia-still-has-seized-bb-guns-part-iv/?singlepage=true
Also, birth control is like having your teeth checked: preventative care.
Abortion, virtually up to infanticide, is birth control and a necessary and routine health maintenance procedure.
Hemorrhaging is a minor side effect in an over the counter drug that can be distributed to minors without their parent’s permissions because their parents are presumed to be retarded Jesus freaks who believe that magic tricks are real and are like totally ignorant about fucking or something.
If you can’t unilaterally put your off spring to death with no due process then you are a slave, a livestock brood mare who lives chained up in a pen on a baby farm.
All sex is rape. Somehow.
There is no legitimate rape, but some rape isn’t rape rape.
Also “binders full of women” is sinister code for a dangerous policy that comes from a place of deep institutional misogyny.
Children are our future and we need to fundamentally transform the entire world to spare them anything uncomfortable like, say, having to grow up.
Even if it means killing them before they’re born because if they were born their circumstances would cause them to grow up too soon (like, before they’re on Social Security).
I know that this is kinda sorta the point of the subtext already, but I’ll say it out loud anyways:
That only makes sense if you think of pregnancy as a disease.
miserere nobis
Blake
re: Nome sane? You have to say it aloud. Pretend you are listening to a pro football player being interviewed:
“So, you just gotta get out there and do what Coach say, nome sane? Me and my fellow a-tha-letes, nome sane?, you know, basicly we do what Coach tell us and the good Lord help us win this game. Nome sane?”
Hope this helps. Subscribe to further lessons here.
And then the EBT cards worked too well. The result? A lot like what was threatened when they weren’t working, the looting part of the riots:
Food Stamp Glitch Leaves Walmart Shelves Bare: ‘Like a Tornado Had Came Through’
The cards were working but they didn’t show what the limit was so…
The EBT consumers know what their balance is. It’s printed at the bottom of every receipt for everything they buy from booze to groceries to lotto tickets.
As proven by .49 cents left woman who tried to heist $700 worth of eats and left them there when busted.
I see an awful lot of snack foods in those grocery baskets. It’s probably racist for me to notice, so I denounce myself.
Stripping the shelves at Walmart is probably the first time in years these people have worked up a sweat through physical exertion.
Reckon these proficient Walmart consumers are presently asking themselves how they’re going to extract medical services when the day comes that their DisasterCare card doesn’t function?
I’ll be interested to see the aftermath. You can bet your ass that Wal-Mart kept records of all the transactions, and will cheerfully send their nightly reports to the State for processing. There’s going to be an awful lot of people with ($800) balances this week.
I can’t wait to hear all the sob stories in a week or two, about these poor mothers who can’t feed their kids because
they binged on “free” foodof an unfortunate and unfair mixup that left their benefits exhausted.No. That would require foresight and critical thinking skills.
Ha, McG! Ya mean they can’t just rip medical services down from the shelves? Holy shit, Bullwinkle, we might gats a problem here.
Ah, yes. The “greedheads” at Walmart. Not content with exploiting the poor by having low prices and accessible stores (with employment opportunities, no less), now they’ve entrapped the customers with non-working cards by pretending to put them on the honor system, only to call the cops when it turned out their cards didn’t have the funds. Trust them to make it look like they care about happy customers, while actually engaging in a racist conspiracy against them.
“LIVs learn?”
Eventually. They got prohibition passed, and ratified and learned such that it was eventually repealed. It’s learning of a sort,
I’m not sure the repeal was because the LIVs learned anything. Prohibition passed because the pols forgot how stupid the LIVs are.
They learned, briefly, to ignore the LIVs.
Now they’ve not so much forgotten again, they consider it a feature rather than a bug.
Proficient at quickly texting everyone they knew once it was announced to the few customers there at the time that Walmart would still allow payment with EBT cards that they couldn’t confirm the balance on.
That required the ability to realize how that “flaw” could be scammed today. It also required the non-ability to think that the scam wouldn’t be found out later or the knowledge that the welfare EBT system as practiced there in the “Clown-disaster” years would simply shrug and not care as it would be not be “fair” to hold anyone to account.
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