Xerox "Routine Backup Test" Leave 17 States Without Food Stamps 305
An anonymous reader writes "People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported. 'Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality,' spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown."
This is exactly why testing backups is necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Fail-safe (Score:4, Insightful)
People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday,
Why is it that a convenience -- our credit cards, are able to weather a failure like this by simply allowing all purchases, but our food stamp cards simply stop working? Credit card systems are, at every level, designed to cope with a failure by simply authorizing the purchase. Only a very small number of transactions would have been failed anyway for insufficient funds, etc., and these are reconciled when that part of the system is restored to service... meaning there's very little loss to the provider for this.
For that matter, if they've decided to design the system in this fashion, where were the redundancies? If a routine backup can result in failure on this scale, then it begs the question of where and how the backup of the actual systems, not just the data, got overlooked.
Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally."
Source [snopes.com]
How true are those words? I only wish President Obama still believed what he did as Senator.
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:1, Insightful)
So increasing taxes to help government spending helps private employment?
Lets double the tax rates on everything if thats the case, or triple and then those 3 people looking for jobs will easily be able to find them.
Do you know what folks do. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's hardly fair to expect people to get a job just to eat. Everyone is entitled to food, shelter and reasonable transportation. It say's so in the US Constitution.
It does? Where? Since when?? The closest my US Constitution comes is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Do you know what happens when people get desperate? They stick knives and guns in your face.
Yeah, sure they may get caught, but in the meantime, you're dead. Got your own gun? Doesn't work when they stab or shoot you in the back.
Get it? These social pograms are to prevent folks from doing some very desperate things.
But that's just practicality. Let's talk about just being a human being.
We can act like a human being or we can act like animals where it's the survival of the "fittest"; which means in this culture, making money.
But when you are someone who grew up not learning the skills - material or social - to get a job, it is very difficult if not impossible. And I can tell you from experience, nobody clues you in about any defects one may have - you hear nothing or "you are not a good fit". No one ever points out what one's difficiences are. Many of these folks grew up in broken homes, were abused, live in the shittiest areas and have no ability to move.
And the job market being so tight as it is, it is completely unrealistic to "just go out and get a job". We have college graduates - folks with degrees in nursing, engineering and CS let alone "worthless" degrees having a horrible time.
You people take your lives and your opportunities for granted. You grew up where you had the opportunities or at least the knowledge how to get those opotunites. I grew up in a working class family that didn't go to college. I was the first to go to college because I was fortunate enough that my parents were able to afford to live in a middle class town and I could go to a school with college prep classes. I was able to have friends that had college educated parents and knew the "system" - like there are folks to help you get into college and better your life. Many of these poor folks don't even realize sugh things exist - really.
And when you live a life of no hope, you may even give up. he thought of "why should I even try when the rules are against me."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cue the folks who grew up in a log cabin and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. That's great that you knew how to do that. That - knowing how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps - is a skill in itself.
I myself am getting helpless too. I see the billionaires just rigging the game more and more. I don't beleive the American myth that one can work hard, take a chance, and make it big. In reality it is know someone in the right spot. I tried a couple of businesses and they failed. I'm tapped out at 50 and i'm scared about my future - it looks like SS and dog food in my retirement. Well dog food - SS is going to be confiscated by the student loan people. I stupidly went back to school for retraining. Yeah, no one hires 40+ year olds for entry level positions.
I mean really, when Mitt Romney was running, he said all he did was "examine reports" and made no decisions; like closing down factories or anything that cost people jobs. he made over $200 million by just examing reports - a $50K a year "analyst job". I could do that! But I don't have a well connected daddy to get me a cushy job that let's me make millions doing what a low level peon does.
Just count your blessings and stop judging other's lives and their characters because you are where you had opportunites that many others don't have.
Re:Fail-safe (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the news articles mentioned that merchants were supposed to record transactions manually and allow purchases up to $50
Due to the government shutdown, I cannot provide primary source data such as would be normally available from the USDA, etc. In lieu of that, the links provided represent the best non-authoritative sources available at this time.
The average household size is 2.48. Source [usatoday.com].
The average person spends about $70 a week on food Source [loweryourspending.com]
76% of people on food stamps are disabled, elderly, or children. Source [feedingamerica.org]
Around 44 million Americans are on food stamps now*
* [Couldn't find credible source; Estimated from multiple sources]
This would mean that the average weekly trip to the grocery store, for an average household, would be $173.60. If your number is correct, then the government has opted to allow vendors to 28% of a family's food to be processed. Also according to the article, this outage may last up to three days.
Now here's the thing; A lot of those families live 'paycheck to paycheck'. Even if it is welfare; They don't have a fully stocked pantry. If they don't buy food today, a lot of them don't eat. And most people go shopping on the weekend. Your quoted $50 means the average family runs out of food in just under two days. I was unable to find any citation to back your assertion that they were allowing purchases as long as they were under $50 as well, so I have my doubts as to its validity. Anecdotally, two of my friends who have food stamps in the midwestern area reported being unable to purchase any food or remove any amount of cash benefits from their accounts.
So either the situation is 'rather bad' -- 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for at least one day this week on average. Or it's 'very bad', in that 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for three days. And possibly longer -- many of those people use public transportation or arranged rides to get to the grocery store every week. Especially the elderly and disabled. These rides are picked out weeks ahead of time. For them, they could be looking at not eating for a week or more.
So I return to my original point: Why is it that credit card companies, who offer a convenience, do this, but our government, which provides something that in a very literal sense is life or death to some people, does not? There is no answer to that question that I come away with that makes this look like anything other than criminal neglect of a vulnerable population.
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:5, Insightful)
There Are 3 Unemployed People Competing For Every Job Opening [huffingtonpost.com]
But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.
This doesn't take into account people like, for instance, my sister, who hasn't worked since the mid-nineties and is grimly determined to do whatever it takes to remain on government assistance for the remainder of her life. Justified by "I had bad things happen to me in my youth; society owes me a comfortable living in the manner and place of my choosing as a result."
I'm pretty sure she's not the only one.
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:4, Insightful)
It is exactly because natural rights are violable that it is important to protect them.
Your "right to life" is not a directive to the rest of us to keep you alive, it is a directive to the rest of us not to actively try to kill you.
Yes, it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it does (Score:0, Insightful)
Apparently you have never worked hard to earn lots of money. You obviously prefer to ride upon someone else hard. You should be ashamed instead of putting down people who work hard.
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never understood how anyone could morally justify confiscating 90% of someone else's income for income over a certain amount. I don't care if your intentions are altruistic or not, you simply don't have the right to make that choice for me. If you want to spend that money, go earn it yourself and spend it however you want, and I'll do the same.
Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling (Score:4, Insightful)
|Congress controls the spending. Btw, "Bush's wars" propaganda is getting boring. Democrats overwhelmingly supported them (unanimously in case of Afghanistan) and it was Clinton admin that set the stage for Iraq war with regime change policy (Iraq Liberation Act 1998). You can argue whether it was right or wrong but you can't blame just one side for it - they all had the same intelligence. Same applies with the current administration. Would they really cut the spending if Republicans weren't fighting for it all along.
Re:Yes, it does (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if I get you right you are claiming that taxes they take are all used for services that improve the lives of the people paying those taxes directly?
Wow, that must be an amazing utopia to live in, it sure as hell doesnt work like that around here..
Whereas PRESIDENT Obama... (Score:2, Insightful)
tried to drag us into conflicts in Libya, Egypt, and a completely bone-headed Syrian intervention that would have had us in a face-off with Putin over something Putin is every bit as committed to (Syria and his naval base there) as Obama is to "Obamacare"...... and all while DOUBLING the nation's debt.
Oh, and by the way, there never was a Clinton-era budget surplus; Politicians in both parties (Democrats AND "establishment" Republicans) love to pretend they have been fiscally responsible by simply leaving things "off the books". The so-Called Clinton surplus numbers were only projections and only valid if you pretended some of the biggest items on the books (Social Security and Medicare) had no future obligation (and therefore no need to actually save/invest the money coming into the programs, freeing that money up for current spending). Corporate executives who do their accounting this way (not including wall st bankers with Washington lobbyists) go to jail.
Bush inherited a mess too... a recession, the popping of the first internet bubble ("pets.com" anyone???) and years of no American response to terrorism accompanied by legal blocks preventing intel agencies sharing data with eachother.
EVERY president inherits things and some inherit very bad messes; Reagan inherited a crippled military, double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, gas lines (people lined-up around the block to buy gas and only allowed to buy every-other day depending on your license plate#) double-digit unemployment...AND a Democrat congress that used the debt ceiling and the budgets to TRY to block his every action. Obama is LYING when he says the current situation has never been faced by a previous president - I remember it quite well. By the time Reagan ran for re-election he had every one of the economic indicators turned around and things were so good his campaign theme was "morning in America". Obama stepped into a much better situation than Reagan inherited by EVERY measure but the "mainstream"/Democrat press runs interference for him and he has become dependent upon their support; he's had FIVE YEARS and we actually have fewer full-time workers now than we did when he was sworn in. Oh, and Obama was no innocent bystander to the 2008 meltdown, he was a senator in the Democrat-run senate at the time which (working in concert with the Democrat-run House) wrote the laws and budgets in 2007 and 2008 after they pronounced Bush's proposals "dead on arrival"
It does not matter what you inherit..... what matters is what you make of it.