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The government benefit cards that allow people on public assistance to buy food went down Saturday, impacting welfare recipients in Los Angeles and other cities across the country. Distressed shoppers began calling and emailing the KTLA 5 newsroom Saturday morning to report the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system wasn’t working. A Food 4 Less store in Hollywood confirmed that the EBT system went down at about 7 a.m. A Stater Bros. Market in Downey also said the system was not working. The California and federal government EBT websites remained out of service as of Saturday afternoon.

DETROIT - Michigan residents in a federal food program are being denied purchases with their debit-style cards because of technical problems. A woman from Fenton, who asked not to be identified, spoke with WWJ about her experience. “I’ve been in two different stores and in both stores, I was told that food stamps could not be authorized so I was not able to make a purchase. I’m absolutely outraged and furious,” she said. “Today is Saturday, my only day off to go grocery shopping for my children and I’m very, very angry that this has happened.” Officials said they’re not...

The number of Erie County residents in the food stamp program is the highest its been in 20 years. One in 5 people, or 20.5 percent, in the county are on food stamps. In all, more than 57,000 Erie County residents are on food stamps, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About 38,000 city of Erie residents, or nearly 37 percent, are on food stamps, a 24 percent increase from 2009.

Kelly Ishaq, manager of Broadway Food Center on Broadway Street in Toledo, said the system hasn’t allowed customers to use their cards to buy food. A message comes up saying “unavailable,” he said. Brian O'Connor, a central Toledo resident, said he ran into a similar problem at the VIP food market, Bancroft Street and Ashland Avenue, and that other residents in the apartments where he lives were "panicking" about their food-stamp cards not working.

Customers at BJ’s Wholesale Club, Hannaford supermarkets and other grocery stores in Maine abandoned their carts at registers and headed home empty-handed earlier Saturday. Lou Craig, the owner of College Carry-Out in Augusta, said he had to turn away about 50 customers Saturday because the system wouldn’t accept their EBT cards. “They just won’t go through,” he said. “It just prints out ‘declined.’ ” Craig said its a particularly busy time for those using food stamps, because their cards are usually reloaded with cash value from the 10th through the 14th. Jason Quincannon, acting store manager at Hannaford on Forest...

Will Obama Stop the Music This November? The current “shutdown” of 17% of the federal government has primed America for chaos with constant left-wing rhetoric and news media reports couched in apocalyptic terms such as crisis, brink, catastrophe, hostage, arsonist and terrorist. But a catastrophe is useful to a would-be tyrant only as long as it can be blamed on a hated enemy. In 1933 Hitler’s agents burned the Reichstag, not just to sow fear and confusion, but primarily in order to charge his Communist enemies with treason as an excuse to obliterate them. The German “mainstream media” dutifully parroted...

In my work, I see more people who want to focus on losing weight rather than gaining weight, so I don’t often stop to think about the problem of hunger. It’s easy to overlook the fact that hunger is still a big problem in in the United States. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2011 about 50 million Americans were living with food insecurity — 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million children. What is food insecurity? It’s the inability to provide adequate food on a consistent basis. For adults, not getting enough food can have harmful...

A federal grand jury indicted nine Baltimore retail storeowners for a food stamp fraud scheme that netted at least $7 million over the last three years. According to officials, the storeowners would allegedly debit food stamp cards for cash instead of food and split the proceeds. The food stamp scheme has been going on since 2010, officials said during a Sept. 17 news conference. U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge William G. Squires Jr. of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General and Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt of the Federal Bureau of...

From the art of selling excess food stamp dollars at the end of each month, to JP Morgan profiting from the program as a line of business, Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger introduces the following micro-documentary on the rise of our food stamp nation. Produced by Future Money Trends, this video covers it all, exposing the dismal and far-reaching consequences to society.[Disturbing 12.5 minute documentary video in article]

Senator Susan Collins say a proposal in Congress to slash food stamps funding would hurt Mainers who need it most. House lawmakers passed a bill Thursday that would make around $4 billion dollars in cuts each year to the almost $80 billion dollar-a-year food stamp program. Maine is among the top five states with the biggest share of people on food stamps at 18-percent. Collins says the program needs to be reformed but the proposed cuts are too deep. “We have a lot of elderly people living in rural Maine who really depend on food stamps in order to get...

Washington, DC – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today: “House Republicans’ vote to deny nutrition assistance to hungry, low-income Americans is shameful. The Senate will never pass such hateful, punitive legislation. “Under the leadership of Chairwoman Stabenow, the Senate forged a bipartisan compromise that saves $23 billion without taking food out of the mouths of hungry Americans. Whenever the House gets serious about passing real legislation, they should follow the lead set by Chairwoman Stabenow.”

The House is expected to consider a bill this week that would cut food stamps by an estimated $4 billion annually and allow states to put broad new work requirements in place for recipients. The legislation also would end government waivers that have allowed able-bodied adults who don’t have dependents to receive food stamps indefinitely. The vote comes after the House defeated a wide-ranging farm bill in June because many conservatives believed the cuts to the nearly $80 billion-a-year food stamp program weren’t high enough. That bill would have made around $2 billion a year in cuts. …

NEWARK— The owner of four dollar stores in Essex and Union counties pleaded guilty today to defrauding the food stamp program out of $5 million by letting customers use the federal subsidy to pay for electronic devices and other non-food items, prosecutors say.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Food stamp fraud is a “significant problem” in Rhode Island. That was the message U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha sent Thursday when he announced that nine people are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $3 million. During a two-year undercover investigation, Neronha said eight Rhode Island residents and one New York man were found to be illegally allowing food stamp recipients to use their EBT cards to obtain cash in exchange for a large surcharge at five Providence convenience stores. ... Six people were charged by...

<p>The food-stamp program spending grew primarily because of new program rules, and going back to 2007 program rules would yield significant savings for taxpayers.</p> <p>Something unusual has been happening with the food-stamp program, now known as SNAP, for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Between 2007 and 2012, spending on SNAP more than doubled, adjusting for inflation and population growth.</p>

In addition to illegally trafficking in food stamps for years, Mohammad’s store operated illegally after the secretary of state canceled its business license in 2009 because of Mohammad’s failure to pay the business’s taxes. Store manager Ahmad Damra and clerk Mahmoud Jamil Damrah allegedly helped Mohammad defraud the SNAP and WIC programs for a total of approximately $780,710. Court records allege that the store traded customers’ WIC checks for a cash, allowing customers circumvent program restrictions on using taxpayer funding to purchase products such as beer and cigarettes.

We know that the employment situation in the US is terrible with 70% of jobs created since January 2009 being low-paying, part-time jobs. And median household income keeps declining. 20130816_mainstreetmisery After reading James Hamilton’s horrifying paper on the size of off-balance sheet liabilities for America, I thought I would put together the following table to you could see the household share of government debt, entitlements and The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet. householdshare There are 115,310,000 households in America. Government spending in the U.S. as of Q2 2013 was a little over $5.8 trillion. That equates to $50,328.68 per household. The...

The percentage of Americans that are economically independent has dropped to a stunningly low level. In order to be economically independent, you have got to be able to take care of yourself without any assistance from anyone else. Unless you are independently wealthy, that means that you either have your own business or you have a full-time job. Unfortunately, as you will see below, the percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at an all-time record low and the percentage of Americans with a full-time job has declined to a level not seen in about 30 years. As a result,...

Let me put it this way, my jaw hit the floor. Earlier this week I was able to screen a portion of this Friday’s Fox News documentary “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” hosted by Bret Baier. It airs Friday at 10 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. This investigation focuses on a federal program called SNAP, or "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor promised his Democratic colleagues that they would put the food-stamp portion of the traditional “farm bill,” which they split from its usual “agricultural policy” copilot earlier this month, on the agenda in short order. Republicans, however, have been cooking up a new plan for the food-stamp program just about certain to send all Congressional Democrats into an almighty uproar, via Reuters: U.S. House Republicans plan to propose a $40 billion cut to the nation’s food stamp program, the head of the House Agriculture Committee said on Thursday, twice the cuts previously sought by conservatives.Committee Chairman...