Food stamp recipients latest victims in Corbett cost saving crusade
A headline in the Wilkes-Barre Citizen Voice caught our attention the other day. "Food stamps outage sparks outrage."
Food stamp recipients latest victims in Corbett cost saving crusade
A headline in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens Voice caught our attention the other day. "Food stamps outage sparks outrage."
The Department of Public Welfare, in an effort to make changes to the food stamp card for low income residents, announced last week it would be disabling the cards between 11 p.m. Saturday and noon on Sunday to switch vendors.
Only there was a glitch.
The card access was not restored on Sunday, the day that many families were stocking their fridges and pantries the week before Easter. In fact it didn't go back online until sometime midday Monday, a Wilkes-Barre super market worker tells us.
On Sunday, there was chaos at supermarkets throughout Wilkes-Barre, the newspaper reported.
In some stores, angry customers barked at cashiers and abandoned shopping carts full of food while stock workers scrambled to return ice cream and frozen dinners to the freezers before they thawed, all on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
"It was a total mess," said Tom Baseski, owner of Thomas' Market in Kingston.
Oops, we did it again.
That's what we thought when we heard the news.
For at least the fourth time since Gov. Corbett took office in Jan. 2011 a vulnerable population had their government services disrupted by "glitches" during major overhauls to programs affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the name of reform, cost savings and "efficiency."
Consider:
Medicaid - More than 110,000 children children lost coverage last year during the Corbett administration's quest to combat "waste, fraud and abuse." Recipients were stripped of coverage while eligibility reviews were conducted, the Inquirer reported. Benefits for some 23,000 children were eventually restored, many required legal help.
Unemployment compensation - The closure of state unemployment offices and layoffs of more than 100 workers frustrated efforts by thousands of unemployed Pennsylvanians to receive their compensation checks in a timely fashion. The state Department of Labor and Industry blamed the problems on federal funding cuts that the U.S. Department of Labor denied occurred.
Payments to health care providers - Hundreds of health care workers - most of whom work for wages barely above the minimum - but who provide vital services to the disabled, went months without paychecks during a year-long transition to a new Boston-based payroll company. As of last month, the issue was still not resolved.
In the case of the food stamp cards, the state switched from J.P. Morgan to Xerox as the card vendor in a move that a DPW official told the Citizens Voice will save $700,000 a month.
The official added the change will not "affect users."
Tell that to millions who rely on food stamps. An employee at Schiele's Market in Wilkes-Barre tells us the card didn't go back online until sometime midday Monday.
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the arrogance of the entitlement class is stunning.— Yogi Spinoza- They have no shame!— ProPublicEducation
- Has Gov. Heartless ever looked for "savings" in the corporate welfare he hands out so willingly?
Didn't think so.
Cuts always and only come from programs that real people need - and never from give-aways to the well-connected and the wealthy.
It's always about the money with rightists - even if the Teahadists think they are defending a moral position, they re really doing the heavy lifting for the job destroyers and tax evaders that squat atop our society, trickling not one penny of their record-breaking profits down upon us mere workers.— JeffJenk - This mere worker is tired of supporting mere non-workers.— Yogi Spinoza
- Yogi - you are not supporting the non-workers.
You are paying for the frackers' luxury homes, the for-profit prison industry overseas "investments", billionaire's publicly-financed stadiums, a bloated state government (rethug-dominated) full of patronage parasites, sweetheart deals for all of Corbutt's buddies in private industry, private and charter school owners who take much more than any teacher in our schools, etc...
But go and blame your problems on the single mother who gets a couple of hundred dollars a month to live on.
Do hateful bigots have to be so stupid? I guess that is a given for anyone who holds those disgusting beliefs about their fellow human beings.— JeffJenk
