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Walmart Shopping Stampede Ensues When Foodstamp Glitch Removes EBT Spending Limits
On Saturday, tens of millions of Americans across 17 states found themselves in an unfamiliar situation: they couldn't rely on the US government for their daily foodstamp-funded bread. The result was anger, confusion and sometimes, outright panic, as shoppers left their full shopping carts in stores, and departed their favorite general retailer in a daze. However, while most outlets that accepted EBT were experiencing a one-day, non-recurring hit to their EPS, several Walmart stores in Louisiana decided to brave through the Xerox-induced blackout for several hours by eliminating the spending caps on EBT cards, leading to nothing short of shopping stampedes. The result, as CBS reports, is that "Walmart and local police in Springhill and Mansfield ... were called into the stores to help maintain order Saturday as shoppers swept through the aisles at two stores and bought as much as they could carry."
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."
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."
The police disagreed:
Police spokesmen in both locations told KSLA that no arrests were made during the spending sprees.
After all, why arrest when all the public is doing is taking advantage of government generosity taken to its logical extreme: unlimited spending cards funding by either other taxpayers or America's creditors, the largest of which is now the Federal Reserve. Isn't that what the Fed enables Congress to do on a daily basis anyway?
Naturally, once the glitch was fixed, the stampede quickly ended:
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.
There's that. Or perhaps it was all just a test run for what will happen when the Fed finally waves a white flag, and gives every American an unlimited-spending debt card in a desperate last-ditch effort to finally enact Bernanke's monetary helicopter paradrop wet dream.
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and I wouldn't shop there for at least a week, putting the groceries back in the shelves not knowing how long it was sitting there.
'Food stamp funded bread'? More like 5 gallon buckets of Cheezy Poofs.
then how do you expect to keep that fat ass growing?
street value for poofs is higher.
Gibsmedat oranpop.
Good thing they don't sell Schlitz Malt liquor, Nike high tops or chackinwangs, it could have really gotten out of hand!
I likes skrimps
Had to log in just to laugh.
Lloyd and Jamie steal more than that every day. Much, much, more.
But they actually believe they earned it.
And so does the Attorney General, apparently...
Surprise--traceback to account number means that food budget for next 3 months was just used up in one shot------
Whatcha' gonna due in December? Call Santa Claus for some more Cheetos?
Great experiment on credit "utilization" !!!!!!!!!
Then the idiots will complain that clawbacks are wrong...
Well, so is acting like you're on a fucking game show.
just thinking about these retards shopping or not shopping but complaining about it makes me sick. CUT THEM OFF THEY'RE ANIMALS ... would i be Obama i'll just starve my population to death coz they're outright stupid and don't deserve a better treatment
And that's the attitude that's going to put you on one end or the other of a gun. Soon.
So next time someone gives you a hard time for having extra food and bullets just point to this and say "Can you imagine if...."
It would be hilarious if the retailers started denying EBT card holders if the shoes they are wearing cost more than $100; just sayin.
The Chinese go to work every day manufacturing the goods the world consumes. In this trade system, the world floods money into China to pay for their lifestyle. Chinese buy their food with earned money. America claims great power status, yet many of it's people eat from handouts from a government forced to print fiat to pay for the free food benefit. We produce little in the manufacturing sector, and decent jobs are few.
All this, and America claims exceptional status to rule the world. If you don not like that statement, live with it! Look to Syria, American millions pour into the Al-Qaeda terror army the USA has hired to conquer Syria for US corporate control. Once Assad is gone, billions will pour in to Syria to make it safe for US corporate interests. Again, like it our not, these are proven facts!
Food Stamps and war, it is what America does now a days, while Chinese factories are running at full tilt and hundreds of millions of Chinamen work hard for their food and life styles. Meanwhile America prints money and hands it out asa ZIRP loans to the rich. Christ what a country we have become!
"Christ what a country we have become!"
Big thanks Jack for sharing your light. Tis always enjoyed.
Sadly and unfortunately, the lamestream media is more responsible than anything for misleading and dis-informing the people of America. This one weapon of mass distraction alone is more responsible for the collapse and crash of America, than anything in the world. Even more than the corrupted politicians and evil money-god banksters that run this wicked country killing agenda. What would happen if all the lamestream media was shut down for a month, or so using any means possible? If the people were to rise up and end this diabolical media propaganda program, there might be some hope of survival for America, and the free world.
What has the country become? A blinded thirsty old and tired horse. You can not lead the blind and thirsty horse to the water to save itself if it does not even know what water is. What to do? SHINE YOUR LIGHTS WHILE YOU CAN! This babylonian govt will use all their paid mercenaries to kill the American people, and then turn on their flunkies and minions and kill all them off also. Look how the soterobama has turned his back on his private mercenary al-cia-duh army in Syria. Right now, they are getting their arses kicked and being booted our and killed off there. Give thanks. The evil murderous fiends of the obama army MUST be dealt with and the planet rid of these evil creatures from hell.
The "MSM" is most assuredly a weapon of mass destruction.
These people are worse than Reds or Jihadists, as they claim to hold the public trust.
One wonders should we (if it happened, hope not) hang them before the traitors who are in politics?
Inquring minds wish to know others' opinions!
this was planned to help walmart out. help the people out, and to test the waters.
I see this as know difference than the government borrowing from the future.
We're in a depression. Think about this...
There are 50 million people on EBT food stamp cards.
There are no soup/bread lines on the streets anymore, they are hidden and located at your local Walmart.
Take it from me -- the food lines on the streets still exist in some cities and in some forms.
Certainly, EBT has diminished them, but not completely.
Well, grand greetings to ALL on this beautiful fall morning.
There are many irons in the fire. The babylonian govt is in deep doo-doo. We are seeing the line up for another false flag event, and things like testing the waters of anarchy after a collapse of the welfare state. Truly, we are living in the last days of free America. Plan and prepare accordingly.
Here now is the good Dave Hodges with this report that sheds some light of the possibilities that are aligning up for the uncertain future. What many feel coming is the purposely crashed economy, and more of this kind of ensuing chaos that will eventually bring on the martial law. This also includes the invasion of foreign troops. Take a read on this and pass it on.:
http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/09/08/the-ultimate-false-flag-event/
Speaking of doom...
Anyone see or hear anything else on this:
"Nano Domestic Quell" supposedly a DARPA/DoD project.
Download high res gif of Document #1
Download high res gif of Document #2
Other than from Dr. Bill Weld that is?
He appears to be the only source, and as someone who works in deep tech, the story is so full of holes it's completely implausible. If they'd left it as an engineered virus it'd pass the sniff test, but radio-activated nanotechnology using the cellphone network? Oh brother, even a 1st year understanding of physics would show why that's not physically possible.
One thing is interesting, though, and that is there's been a huge surge in very whacked conspiracy rumors in the last couple months. Perhaps it's a psychological reflection of how fucked we are?
I don't trust single sourced items either. Plus he says he's a doctor and a lawyer, and there's a lot of preachin...Strike 2.
FWIW, I noticed when I went to his site the Disconnect program blocked a larger than usual number of requests...
OK, I decided to avoid work for 15 minutes and do some digging.
Well, his profile says he works in Nevada, and the Nevada state medical licensing board has no record of a Weld licensed to practice there, no big deal, since he appears to no longer be practicing according to his C.V.. I then looked up his legal practice, and there's no entry in the Nevada state bar for him or his firm.
Apparently others did the the same: http://www.realistnews.net/Thread-the-hoaxer-offices-of-dr-bill-h-weld-f...
Everything points at his backstory being bogus and this being a fraud. At a bare minimum he's representing himself as a lawyer practicing in a state where he has no license to do so.
From what I've seen so far, it looks like he's a conspiracy message board troll.
Actually it is physically possible but it would be so unstable with such a "control" mechanism it would probably start on its own regardless much less from almost any electromagnetic noise.
Pretty much useless in the face of already having actual engineered diseases. What little possibility it has is flat out a waste of re-engineering what nature has already done for us.
A nano-scale device (let's make is a BIG nano-scale device, say 1000nm, which is huge and technically not nano technology) would be able to support an antenna that is ~0.000003 wavelengths at cellular frequencies. There simply isn't enough energy coupled with an antenna that size to have a usable signal at conventional transmitter powers -- so I'd take your assertion one step further and not call it unstable, but actually unusable as described. And this is assuming all this technology exists, most of which doesn't.
I agree, it would be silly to do anything so technically challenging when so many biological agents are already in the toolbox. If the guy claimed there were radio-control dispersal systems or something like that, it'd be at least plausible, but between the tech he's suggesting and his total lack of background and easily documented fraud about his claimed profession... Off to the circular file with this story.
Thanks for your time seek, that's why I asked the question about it here...
I wouldn't even bother investigating further. It's not impossible - though highly unlikely - that self-assembling units could make an antenna that could pick up a signal of a desired wavelength. Just like it's not entirely impossible I could win the powerball twice in a row.
As for energy, again at the nano-scale one could consider the option of using the body itself as the primary energy source and using the antenna merely as a coordinating signal, one-way, since there's no way in hell it could broadcast out anywhere. That one strictly IS impossible.
I won't bother reading more of the nonsense we both agree is nonsense to figure out what else was claimed, we can both see the writing on the wall on this one.
American exceptionalism on full display for the world to see. It's human nature to fill your cart up with cheap trinkets made in China to feed your family.
Back in my day we used to have to eat Erector Sets.
Sundays, if we were lucky, we got Lincoln Logs.
Looting at the top will only spur looting at the bottom.
But the economic mess we are in? That's obv black people's fault #smh #itsthebankersstupid
More economic growth
next month the ebt will read: you have zero dollars and no cents
Check your spelling, that should read 'no sense'.
Planet of the Apes.
That's an insult to apes who are more civilized, and don't rely on somebody else to feed them.
Just like the wife, can't live with her, can't live without her.
How the hell do I post images? WB7? Asking you.
*you* donT
Google HTML Code.
Step 1. Google HTML Code.
Step 2. buddy up to a Tyler
(Step 1 is optional.)
You have to be a blog contributor writing your own articles. WB7 told me when I asked.
"You bastards! You blew up my EBT card!
Ah, damn you all, damn you all to Hell!"
This is the dry run for what's coming to the theaters near you when the dollar turns to poop.
Nice going HH, your squiggly screwed my ie8 computer
It won't load past that point.
Google Chrome is working fine.
As soon as the first person made it through the line with no EBT limit, the call went out to Jerome's entire phone book. Within minutes the entire town knew it was freebie time at Walmart.
I've seen it happen. Word went out that there was a pricing glitch on a $1200 TV at Walmart that was selling for $120. Within fifteen minutes at least a few dozen red-eyed gang member thugs showed up and demanded every TV of that model in the back.
A lot of the EBTs were being used to buy food so they could go over to customer service and return it for Walmart gift cards. That is a favorite EBT tactic. You can return food, and when you make a return at Walmart you have your choice of how you get your credit. So they return the food and get a few hundred dollars on a gift card they can use on anything.
If they gave out advanced degrees in scamming the system, your average welfare queen would clean house. She might not be able to make change on a $.99 item paid with $1, but she'll get a PHD in food stamp fraud.
One would wonder, just how can this "flash buying mob" explode so fast?
Answer: Obamaphones and the luxuries one can afford when they don't have to spend money on food.
Damn.......I would never think to return the food for a gift card......these guys are good !!!
Where I would run circles around them is monetizing That gift card......they buy the junk, I want the $$$$$$$$
Correct, but what you are forgetting here is the honchos at Wal-Mart are fully aware of this fact and through their policies subtly encoranging this. Not sure many of the EBT fraudsters are smart enough to come up with this on their own.
x
You keep saying this as if it is some great truth or revelation. EBT = fraud on multiple levels. These scams have been perfected in every party store in Detroit over the last 50 years. Yes, the vendors make money on this and yes they encourage this activity and yes it is entirely legal. EBT fraudsters, as you put it, do not need to be bright. They just need to pick up that ObamaPhone and speak to their relatives and friends about the latest and greatest way to make somw quick cash out of food stamps.
If you point out that the emergency phone program was started by the Regan admin, I will figuratively smack you on the snout.
Wal-Mart is of course fully aware of this and it is a major part of their business model. They are absolutely the worst sort of corporate welfare parasite, apart from the MIC. Another major part of their business model is to pay the majority of their employees so little that the qualify for SNAP and Medicaid. .Gov pays for a large chunk of their payroll expenses AND they get even more $$$ back as SNAP cards get used at their stores. There is nothing to be admired about Wal-Mart. NOTHING.
Is that what they call a clean bill in the congress?
these guys could be hired at JP Morgan or Goldman for adding liquidity and creating a market...
Locusts... plain and simple.
Sorry HH. Stupid computers.
"Ready.......set.............FREEEEEEE!!!!!
Obamanites (aka "the 47%") in action, nd in full glory.
Funny how you don't see any skinny poor people in this country. Only fat ones.
Just imagine if these folks put as much effort into getting a job as they do to stealing.
Downvoted you for only seeing one side of the equation. Do you not think Wal-Mart relies on and encourages this? If you think not, you are a tool. And it is not "the 47%" that are responsible for this - none of the would ever happen without the subtle consent of the TPTB. Turn off Rush and start looking at the big picture.
I don't listen to Rush.
You are a tool for allowing excuses for people to thieve.
Wal-Mart doesn't make me a thief.
Does it make you one?
I know....these peeps be innocent n' shit.
Maybe you should visit one of your liberal, enlightened paradises and get mugged or worse.
I am not making excuses for people to thieve. I was merely pointing out that by blaming "the 47%" you were missing the part Wal-Mart plays in this. I cannot see anywhere in my post where I excused the behavior of the EBT fraudsters. You seem to be not alone in terms of comprehension failure it looks like from the downvotes I received.
I apologize for accusing you of listening to Rush (the bloviator not the band) if you do not.
And BTW, I am not a "liberal" I just reject the divide and conquer strategy of TPTB as represented by "the 47%" meme.
Hold the phone... what this Rush thing? Don't be talkin smack about Rush now!
It is very likely this was staged to make it seem like the government shut down is screwing up everything. You have to remember those EBT people are the people the government is speaking to when it puts one of it's talking heads on the screen. Those are the people they want to get politically active and give the government more power through sheer force of numbers...
This is how Trotskyism and Fabianism work.
Absolutely. Dependent people become the army of those who are pulling the strings.
History repeats itself, many parallels to be found in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
The group behind the Russian revolution is the same group that people so aptly call TPTB today.
Edit: Actually wikipedia is probably the least accurate source for this kind of stuff.. but there is plenty of accurate info out there.
And what "group" might that be, you anti-semite?
Oooo!! Touchy! Hit a nerve did he?
"Oh my God, I'm so glad my Mom doesn't work here anymore!"
What a mess.
Clean up on aisle 5.
And apparently 4 and 3 and 2 and 7 and.....
Honestly did we need anymore proof that Wal-Mart is nothing but a giant goverment entwined parasite, not some noble capitalist enterprise as some morons still insist? This giant slug of corporate socialism would not be where it is without generous supply of EBT cards and abuse of eminent domain and tax breaks to set up its corporate welfare centers on the cheap. They would not have "we will still accept EBT even when it has been shut off" if they were not certain they were going to get every penny (and probably a little extra) bag from Uncle Sugar.And that is not even counting how the extra benefit they get from .gov since many of their employees qualify for both SNAP and Medicaid. F*** them and F*** the people of Wal-Mart and F*** the politicians who feed this beast.
Plenty of mercenaries getting live training for a civil break down of society over in the mid-east right now. I'd imagine it wouldn't take much funding to drive them through neighborhoods and sweep the homes of ya'll peeps that are dealing in larger quantities of gold and kept on an NSA list for future reference ? What's that you lost it in a boat? em k here watch your daughter's left arm and see if while it falls to the floor it helps jog your memory of where you put the gold.... by the way I eat hearts nigga.
Yea I'd say fewer guns and more ammo/mags is the way to go.
We are waiting.
At this rate, you won't have to wait much longer.
No self worth. No shame. No morality. No remorse.
No chance this goes on another decade.
I swear shit like this is gonna put the Onion out of business
sounds like ovomit USA anti Christ
I don't think it goes on another year -- nor do I think _I_ go on another year.
mofo, mo free shit from obama's mofo stash!
damn, tyrone got 10 cartons o newpoats an' rastus got all de lobster!
mofo!
Looking at the article title, I thought that it was an Onion article, Nope.....
I guess we should be glad the store s had food. Wonder what might have happened if they didn't? Or what happens if they might not have food one day due to all of the financial scams and shenanigans both private and public? Or due to a blip in the just in time delivery system? Stock up while you can.
Yep. I just planted my winter veggies, and my neighbor is doing the same. When hard times hit we're gonna be looking out for one another.
I suggest you do the same, if possible.
People who leave their shopping carts without unpacking them, because of a EBT glitch, belong in Fema camps. First put your 'stuff' back, then go home. For a start.
Locusts on the Horizon. 2.99 ebook from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Locusts-on-the-Horizon-ebook/dp/B00CFP2PCE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381778477&sr=8-1&keywords=locusts+on+the+horizon
Prepare, prepare, prepare. You don't want to be caught in the middle of a SHTF scenario in a death trap like Ghetto Mart needing any food or supplies. Get everything you can now and keep building your stockpile. When the SHTF you won't have to venture out into Mad Max territory for anything...you can stay home protecting you and yours with hopefully lots of ammo and guns as well!
Never go to Wal-mart unarmed...you've been warned.
Never go to Wal-mart.
Fixed it for you.
EBT cards now have their own EBT cards.
If I can't have grass-fed beef, I don,t want to live in this world no more.
Dear EBT subscriber,
You have exceeded your limit by $999.00. Your new balance is -$999.00. We will deduct your negative balance each month until you reach your previously agreed upon benefits.
Thank you for choosing EBT.
Warmly,
Barack Hussein Obama
When the locusts eat through the entire harvest....better luck next year (for all of us, but at least the locusts will have died off).
The eggs for the next swarm have already been laid.
The difference between the free shit army and the fraud banks on Wall Street?
NOTHING, NOT ONE FUCKING THING!
Keep those printers going in the buttfuck republic of fraud.
There's a word for this "glitch", it's called looting.
wereäs I geyts me free shit
'what are we going to do with them?"
That line in the Lincoln movie was the most pertinent of the entire movie AND the entire period. Special thanks to the Dutch and English for bringing the slave trade here!
I dont mean that in a bad way, it's a big ass problem and still is when you shun everybody including those with more pigment in their skin.
3 meals from anarchy.
And at all times, 1 day from utter chaos
3 meals from anarchy.
The word you're looking for is chaos, not anarchy.
Anarchy just means that we live without overlords; it does NOT imply violence and insanity.
Chaos just means disorder. Burning man is anarchic and chaotic. How about three meals from savagery.
note to CH: the word anarchy was co-opted a long fucking time ago.
might be wise to find a new word rather than bicker over a dis-used one.
food for thought
This is why this whole program is fucked and is nothing more than subsidy for JPM Chase who issue the cards and make money on swipe fees and all politically connected middle men like Xerox. Call me stupid but shouldn't a food welfare program give people food not debt cards. For that money they spend instead of using people for corporate welfare they could give everyone a box of food and job it out to nonprofit local charities to distribute food locally to local people in need. Let the money go where the program is intended for fucking food to buy fucking food from food growers instead of paying food growers to not grow food and the nonprofits well they get their skim in the money used to fund salaries, nothing more. The mission isn't compromised in that regard unlike this bullshit. They used to do just this at one time before the went all fiat (first foodstamps (dollar equivalent) now digital fiat aka debt cards on these programs giving people a weekly allotment of food consisting of things like powdered eggs, butter, etc. That is the fucking problem with this program is we give people food and only food for programs whose stated purpose is to provide food. What revolutionary and common sense idea that they will never do since the real welfare queens get cut off aka the debt card issuers who don't even provide what the programs stated purpose is, they provide nothing except a shitty plastic card but get the lions share of the funding to the program.
I am glad somebody here sees the big picture. It is amazing that some commentors here actually think that things like EBTs are forced on poor suffering businesses like Wal-Mart. It's ridiculous. The Wal-Marts depends on such subsidies for their business model to suceed - if more people were spending their own money more would realize they what they are buying is mostly shit. This is just another rent extraction scheme, not really intended to help anyone but politically connected corporations. Anyone else helped by such programs is purely incidental.
That's right. It's another welfare program for the finance industry, and along the way the retail industry, and the cheap industrial food industry. It has the added, if incidental, benefit of keeping people who are sinking in the collapse of our economy isolated, distracted, and stuffed full of empty processed calories. If 1 out of 6 Americans had to go stand in line to get actual food, they'd see how many of them there are and there would be hell to pay. This is a much tidier method to extract wealth from the lower and middle classes, and send it to the elites, while pacifying those who might get unruly.
Everything Obama does can be summarized as reparations.
bingo. X + JPM = no fucking good
but nothin like a lil race bait to keep the fishies' eyes off the prize.
ovomits finest supporters
ZH locked down a poster who frequently used 'joobucks' in their posts.
Here we have a thread full of racial hatred against black people.
Good to see what the change in "Review our notice on Racial Discrimination" was all about. Can't get too close to the truth but it's fine to keep other divisive issues alive.
Zerohedge has been co-opted.
I'll just leave this here..
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
-Voltaire
They should have kept him. He was going comparatively easy on them.
And off topic but one of the reasons the healthcare exchanges are experiencing glitches. They want your personal information for them databases no matter what whether you sign up or not.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-...
A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.
HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs
“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)
As you know if you’ve been following this space, Obamacare’s bevy of mandates, regulations, taxes, and fees drives up the cost of the insurance plans that are offered under the law’s public exchanges. A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.
That raises an obvious question. If 50 million people are uninsured today, mainly because insurance is too expensive, why is it better to make coverage even costlier?
Political objectives trumped operational objectives
The answer is that Obamacare wasn’t designed to help healthy people with average incomes get health insurance. It was designed to force those people to pay more for coverage, in order to subsidize insurance for people with incomes near the poverty line, and those with chronic or costly medical conditions.
...
But as we already know there are plenty of people falling into the loophole of too rich for Medicaid but too poor for Obamacare and too poor for Obamacare gets no subisidy period since they aren't eligible for Obamacare since being too poor only qualifies you for Medicaid. That argument fails right there. It is not about the poorest of the poor, it never is except when it is politically convenient.
...
But the laws’ supporters and enforcers don’t want you to know that, because it would violate the President’s incessantly repeated promise that nothing would change for the people that Obamacare doesn’t directly help. If you shop for Obamacare-based coverage without knowing if you qualify for subsidies, you might be discouraged by the law’s steep costs.
So, by analyzing your income first, if you qualify for heavy subsidies, the website can advertise those subsidies to you instead of just hitting you with Obamacare’s steep premiums. For example, the site could advertise plans that “$0? or “$30? instead of explaining that the plan really costs $200, and you’re getting a subsidy of $200 or $170. But you’ll have to be at or near the poverty line to gain subsidies of that size; most people will either not qualify for a subsidy, or qualify for a small one that, net-net, doesn’t make up for the law’s cost hikes.
This political objective—masking the true underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans—far outweighed the operational objective of making the federal website work properly. Think about it the other way around. If the “Affordable Care Act” truly did make health insurance more affordable, there would be no need to hide these prices from the public.
Subsidy verification created a traffic bottleneck
Comparable private-sector e-commerce sites, like eHealthInsurance.com, allow you to shop for plans and compare prices simply by entering your age and your ZIP code. After you’ve selected a plan you like, you fill out an on-line application. That substantially winnows down the number of people who rely on the site for network-intensive tasks.
The federal government’s decision to force people to apply before shopping, Weaver and Radnofsky write, “proved crucial because, before users can begin shopping for coverage, they must cross a busy digital junction in which data are swapped among separate computer systems built or run by contractors including CGI Group Inc., the healthcare.gov developer, Quality Software Services Inc., a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit; and credit-checker Experian PLC. If any part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace.”
Jay Angoff, a former federal official at the agency that oversees the exchange, told the Journal that he was surprised by the decision. “People should be able to get quotes” without entering all of that information upfront.
Weaver and Radnofsky say that the core problem stems from “the slate of registration systems [that] intersect with Oracle Identity Manager, a software component embedded in a government identity-checking system.” The main Healthcare.gov web page collects information using the CGI Group technology. Then that data is transferred to a system built by Quailty Software Services. QSS then sends data to Experian, the credit-history firm. But the key “identity management system” employed by QSS was designed by Oracle, and according to the Journal’s sources, the Oracle software isn’t playing nicely with the other information systems.
Oracle hotly denies these claims. “Our software is the identical product deployed in most of the world’s most complex systems…our software is running properly,” said an Oracle spokeswoman in a statement.
...
Any news on how many WalMart Greeters were trampled? tia
(Somethin' told me it was a bad idea to let 97yr-old granny take the job)
"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."
Hey Stan the man...Congressmen do it...Obama does it...evem Michelle does it...when the government till is open, shop 'till you drop. It's the trend, and the trend is your friend.
re ...Congressmen do it...Obama does it...evem Michelle does it...
Too right - if Hillary (who, before she & Slick Willy slithered-out, backed-up the truck & took everything outta the WH that wasnt nailed down) had been at WMart she wouldve been complaining that there was no silverware to stuff down the front of here pantsuit.
You can see the Fed and Obama are following the Zimbabwe model.
The Zimbabwe market reached 50,000. Their thinking .... DOW 50,000 if they can only trash the US dollar enough.
Only thing that matters to Washington now is the stock market.
DHS insider (Rosebud) called all of what's transpiring.
LINK???
The US has become the EBT nation.
Queue a bit of that gangster hip-hop.
Blasting from trunks at 0200?
I wonder what the Kardashian EBT annual revenues are?
Would it's disclosure be treated as a state secret and a criminal act?
Bernanke should have been @ WalMart signing autographs and signing people up for ObamaCare.
I mean Bernank has "saved" the US economy with his QE policies according to evvry left wing, facsist media outlet from CNN to the NY Times.
Reparations. It's not 40-acres and a mule, but hey, they takes what they can gets.
My ancestors were starving to death in Ireland back in the 1800's. So go see the blue blood Mayflower descendants on Wall Street about reparations.
The Irish were a great deal back then. The next boat arriving from Galway had all the de facto slaves anyone wanted at no cost. Pay a pittance wage, and if they died - so what? Always plenty more on the next boat.
No housing, no feeding, just work the hell out of them! Better than a technically defined slave.
But defeat them, NOT!
And this stupid story belongs on ZH because????????
Is that a serious question?
I see a positive in the failure of the EBT cards...
Morbid obesity might become a thing of the past.
What's hilarious is that the EBT using majority is white.
Goddamn 99.9% of the 3 branches in DC are white.
99.9% of corporations subsidized by the federal government are white owned or white chaired.
Sure, let's blame it all on the niggers.
fwiw: Even though it might look like there's fun being had at certain...minorities... expense, I wouldn't look at it like that. There's enough disgust to go out to so many, corrupt government, money grubbing evil pieces of shit at the top, low level character waste of humans working the system from all races and creeds. This is so far from a race deal: it's moral rot, and that kind of rot knows no color, social standing, nothing, it clings onto and then leeches through anyone or anything that is weak. There's a lot of them all over this place, nowadays, it seems.
Regarding Corporations: Don't confuse White with Zydokomuna. It's a common mistake.
And while the RAW NUMBER of EBT users are White (only be a million or so), in percentage terms the numbers for blacks and latinos are "off da chain" as they say.
Not in my town LA, 99% of all the ebt users I see are Latinos, (the poor blacks have been ethnically cleansed to Palmdale).
I was at the 99 cent store during the outage, it was a ghost town, I usually have to wait in a line 6-8 deep of Latino ebt users- most speak no English, during the outage no line.
They ought to put up a YouTube live camera at any grocery store checkout line in LA, it would be an endless parade of alien looters.
guess I'll roll out this tin foil nonsense. and why the hell not. Seeing carts with "food to feed their families" just tossed away like garbage once their ObamaCards stopped working is more ridiculous than a musing about the following:
Why did dhs purchase enough ammo and guns for a banana republic's homeland defense if they didn't need them for said Banana Republic's default on the 17th?
over 70% of people think no problem re: solving/postponing. Stock market can't lap up enough shares of anything. buy buy buy the S&P 500 backed by the full faith and credit of the Fed.
Isn't the last thing one would expect, a default? No ebt, no SS, no gubmint job cash money: Enter DHS as all out proverbial -Oboy hits the fan. things get worse and worse, it be Thanksgiving and NO EBT turkeys, and stuffin' and xbox's for all the peop's. Worse and worse cuz no one can gets trampled at Walzmart cuz no SS and No EBT SNAP cards.
Utter decay. THEN B.B. steps in, solves it all.
Back to watching the Prophet Alex Jones. (/sarc re prophet)
How is it I never get a glitch like that? My bank is entirely too professional...I guess it DOES pay to let the gubbamint run things, even if only rarely.
Even though the gubmint knows which EBT accounts overspent, it will be hard to cut these people off. What they ought to do is turn the IRS loose on them and go after the tax refunds. Not that this group pays much income tax, but rather they should get it back from all those tax credits they get for not working! Thanks to Obamacare we already have the IRS setup for collections.
You really need to wonder about the Walmart manager training program. The cashiers will do as they are told. It's the mid-level checkout supervisors at those Walmart stores that screwed up by allowing this obvious problem to continue - unless, of course, they were calling their family and friends to 'come on down'.
Try reading the story Jose..
This was a very brief crisis, and look how fast those stores got cleaned out. Keep supplies on hand.
I agree that in a big crisis the shelves would be emptied faster but this wasn't really a crisis at all. The word spread quickly via Obamaphone: "Ben's dropping money from the sky down at Walmart". The crisis will come not when the EBT card limit is broken but when the 1st of the month comes and the EBT card is empty. As you said, keep supplies on hand.
The writing is on the wall. Debt Nation, Welfare Nation, COMMUNIST NATION.
This is going to end very badly. Only those who move to take care of themselves will survive. Stock up on everything while you can.
But you better defend it in a SHTF scenario, or it becomes someone else's stuff. Keep this in mind.
I see the shifty hordes.
I see the signs everywhere I look, "we accept EBT!" Huzzah!
What have we created? We've created cohorts of slovenly, fat-assed takers and moochers at best, and potentially murderous thugs at worst. At the drop of a hat the thin veneer of social convention falls away to reveal the thieving masses of the purposely bred and officially encouraged great unwashed. They are ready to strip the land bare and consume all in an orgy of rapine and pillage. There's a monster been created here. I fear what we've wraught. It could be the shape of things to come.
Me? I've played by the rules and paid my taxes and worked like a dog for what little I have. A paid off house and car and two motorcycles. Yipee. And these people... These people would take it from me in an instant given the chance, and even kill me for it.
It's just too depressing. I just can't metabolize this any more.
Wow, EdgerAllen Bogdog! I'm with yah though. Maybe metabolize some vino or something...break out the booze and have ball...if that's all..
They would kill you for that can of generic hash you saved up for.
important experimental trial for those considering SHTF scenarios.
The pictures I saw reminded me of the looting that went on during the 1967 riots, the Rodney King riots, and the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Gee what did all these looters have in common? They should have all been Trayvoned.
Then start it. I'm not kidding.
I'm not even necessarily for or against it. I'm just sick of the talking about it. You, I, and everybody else pretty much knows what's coming down the pipe if/when the benefits stop...
If it's what you believe, violence and war are about the only real solution -- much like why the Occupy movement failed. If you, through your non-violence, let the other side dictate initiative, they will dictate initiative.
Almost looks like the banks Fed bank overnight counter .
Walmart should not have called the police -- should have called Animal Control.