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Jindal moves to strip food stamps from abusers

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  • Jindal moves to strip food stamps from abusers





    The Jindal administration vowed late Wednesday to strip food stamp benefits from recipients who misled retailers about their spending limits during a technical malfunction.

    Recipients who walked away with groceries that exceeded their food stamp balances face losing their benefits for a year, two years or permanently depending on how many prior infractions they have. Exactly how many stand to be punished is unclear. More than 12,000 transactions generated insufficient funds notices once the electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, system came back online Oct. 12 and retailers could process stored transactions.

    However, retailers might have repeatedly run transactions through in an attempt to get payment on groceries sold when the system was down.

    Suzy Sonnier, secretary of the state Department of Children and Family Services, said the Jindal administration will start with the most egregious cases first.

    “We must protect the program for those who receive and use their benefits appropriately according to the law. We are looking at each case individually, addressing those recipients who are suspected of misrepresenting their eligibility for benefits or defrauding the system,” Sonnier said in a prepared statement.

    Sonnier’s announcement came just days after U.S. Sen. David Vitter urged the Jindal administration to take action in a national news story that unfolded with the help of smartphone technology. Shoppers snapped images of empty store shelves and bulging grocery carts at Wal-Marts in Springhill and Mansfield.

    However, abuse of the system apparently occurred across Louisiana.

    “The recent over-the-top food stamp theft and fraud gave Louisiana and the program a real black eye. I’m certainly glad the state is acting on my urgent suggestion. I look forward to discussing the details with Secretary Sonnier in my upcoming meeting with her and Attorney General (Buddy) Caldwell,” Vitter said in a prepared statement.

    When the system goes down, retailers are supposed to limit food stamp recipients to $50 in groceries. Some retailers simply turned away food stamp recipients. Others allowed them to buy as much as they wanted and stored the transactions to process when the system rebooted. The retailers that ignored the emergency protocol lost countless dollars.

    The breakdown generated confusion about who could punish the abusers. Taxpayers did not lose any money. Retailers suffered the losses.
    Good. Those who abused this should get whatever punishment the law has coming for them, but loss of government benefits definitely should be the first step.

    And I was ready to say that the retailers who just let people run willy-nilly should be punished as well, but since they apparently ate this (according to the article, anyway), then I'd say they've suffered enough.
    It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
    In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
    Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
    Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

  • #2
    Originally posted by Adam View Post
    Good. Those who abused this should get whatever punishment the law has coming for them, but loss of government benefits definitely should be the first step.

    And I was ready to say that the retailers who just let people run willy-nilly should be punished as well, but since they apparently ate this (according to the article, anyway), then I'd say they've suffered enough.
    Poor hater!! Figured I['d say it before Bok & Norm.
    If it pays, it stays

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Frostbit View Post
      Poor hater!! Figured I['d say it before Bok & Norm.
      Screw that. Those kids deserve everything they get. Next time, they will learn to be squeezed out of the right crotch like good Americans.
      “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

      ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Frostbit View Post
        Poor hater!! Figured I['d say it before Bok & Norm.
        Don't be silly. You're an excellent hater.
        Enjoy.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Adam View Post
          Good. Those who abused this should get whatever punishment the law has coming for them, but loss of government benefits definitely should be the first step.

          And I was ready to say that the retailers who just let people run willy-nilly should be punished as well, but since they apparently ate this (according to the article, anyway), then I'd say they've suffered enough.
          I do agree they should be held responsible for their actions. I'm thinking they should have to pay back benefits, but that might be too much to deal with. If somebody went over by let's say twenty or fifty dollars, then it might be argued they didn't know any better. When people are filling their carts full of food and emptying shelves just because they can, there should be a punishment.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
            Screw that. Those kids deserve everything they get. Next time, they will learn to be squeezed out of the right crotch like good Americans.
            Yes, because even poor and chaotic people deserve that lower moral standard. God forbid we reserve that right to influential, wealthy Democrats.
            "Alexa, slaughter the fatted calf."

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
              Screw that. Those kids deserve everything they get. Next time, they will learn to be squeezed out of the right crotch like good Americans.
              Is that really how you view your place in life?
              "Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason, and so cannot be opposite to it."
              -John Locke

              "It's all been melded together into one giant, authoritarian, leftist scream."
              -Newman

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              • #8
                Why should these welfare dopes be held responsible for a glitch they didn't cause? It's clear that this unlimited spending problem was limited to just two Walmart stores in the entire state… Walmart has already written off the losses, has chosen not to seek retribution to those who took advantage of the mistake and has most likely learned a valuable lesson about teaching cashiers what to do in an outage. Jindal's government didn't lose a dime on this, so why seek retribution?

                If anyone is to be held responsible for this, it should be the retailers who did not follow protocol first, THEN the welfare recipients who knowingly abused the system. But since the government didn't lose one penny on this, I don't know why they'd even bother.
                “Any sufficiently advanced capitalism is indistinguishable from rent seeking.” ~ =j

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