Posted on 10/02/2010 4:21:32 PM PDT by STONEWALLS
HOUSTON—At midnight on the first of the month, a scene unfolds at many Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sites that underscores the deep financial strains that many low-income American consumers still face.
Parking lots come to life after 11 p.m. as customers start to stream into the stores, cramming their shopping carts full of milk, infant formula and other necessities.
Then at midnight, when the government replenishes their electronic-benefit accounts with their monthly allotments of food stamps, nutritional grants for mothers with babies or other aid for needy families, they head for the registers.
"We're not starving or anything, but we come every month at 11:55," said Tyrel Fogle, 26 years old, early Friday morning as he loaded a cart with frozen food at a Wal-Mart here on the northwestern edge of the nation's fourth largest city.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I'm sure there are enough Churches and Christian organizations in the city to make sure that NO one, especially babies and little children, go hungry.
A lot of them it's the only time for both of them to shop together especially if they are factory workers working different shifts, and/or most of them are night owls anyway, but I've never seen the welfare class out at that time. I was also amaze at the amount of them that brought their kids along too.
It is not due to embarrassment. People these days swipe a card.
It is due to poor management...otherwise, they could show up ANY night at midnight. Instead, they show up at midnight when the card is going to be recharged.
“If you really think about it, the only reason someone gets out there in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they have been waiting for it,” Bill Simon, the head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. store business, said at a Goldman Sachs conference last month....
There is a significant portion of the unemployed population that is at home, not getting up til noon, and has walmart as a midnight diversion.
“NPR has run a somewhat identical story.”
...thanks for posting that...I noticed that the NPR story features a white working class MARRIED couple...not too much of that in my area.
PS...I notice that NPR had a little tab begging for money?...they’re such leeches...they can’t make it in the free market.
Some things never change, eh? It's such a universal truth, I'm amazed that many liberals don't seem to understand it. My mother-in-law was a liberal, yet complained constantly about her daughter who didn't manage her life or money well all the while she gave her cars, computers, etc., and "loaned" her lots of money.
I can’t believe you are all complaining about these industrious folks. They aren’t sitting in there subsidized house demanding that the food be brought to them. They get up off their couches and drive to the store in the middle of the night it is usually raining or snowing. Some might think that I have diminished expectations after years of disappointments. But there is a glimmer of hope and change. Now with the new cards they can’t purchase cigarettes or beer. The must trade these food items for money and come back and pay cash.
It is too bad that these WORTHLESS PEOPLE cannot be tested for drugs, alcohol and tobacco in order to qualify for their benefits. It is even worse that none of them can be sterilized in exchange for collecting benefits.
So it's official: The Journal is just another wall in the Echo Chamber.
I looked at the picture (in the actual paper)that accompanied the article before deciding whether to invest any time in reading it.
That boy looks like he's eating OK. And whaddaya suppose those tattoos cost? How about his jewelry? Decorative sunglasses?
Etc. etc.
The article is from Houston, so I rather doubt it was either raining or snowing. As someone who’s not in Texas, and who almost exclusively shops in the evening, it’s rarely raining or snowing here at that time, either.
It’s hard for me to be glad that these people are actually going to the grocery store to get their own food.
BUT you aren’t addressing that fact that it’s not just ANY night at midnight.
It’s the night that their cards are refilled. You CAN survive on food stamps without needing to be at midnight on the night they are refilled.
If you are that desperate...you are a poor manager.
” I think it is due in part to embarrassment, as well as irregular and chaotic lifestyles.”
yep...exactly!....when my wife taught at community college, you wouldn’t believe the ‘dog ate my homework’ type excuses...only it was often true...preposterious events happen all the time in the underclass...ever notice the number of ambulance chaser lawyer commercials on daytime TV?...that’s because crazy stuff regularly occurs to folks with an erratic lifestyle.
A bit more about the shoppers:
If you are that desperate...you are a poor manager
Agreed. But for many I do not think that shopping at midnight is a hardship. I was looking at income property recently. My Good God. Lower class housing units were filled with peole who smoked, watched TV on huge screens, drank beer or stronger, and had to be woken up for a noon walkthrough.
I have walked through dozens and dozens of these units.
Pot plants in the closets, filth on the floor and fast food and packaged food everywhere. Most all looked able bodied.
Guess they are neither stupid nor ignorant (at least not to stupid to leech off the rest of us nor ignorant of how to get the handouts). That just leaves lazy.
They have been well-trained by social workers, and politicians to be entitled, and lawyers to be belligerent.
If we have such a large hunger issue, how do we also have an obesity epidemic? Should we spread the food (like spreading the wealth)?
I see these people everywhere - healthy, young, unmarried with multiple babies and multi-hued children, gold teeth, $300 sneakers, $500 tatoos, gold chains and carts full of video games and plastic junk.
Every dollar wasted on capable, functioning people like this who are living off taxpayers and government handouts because of their own foolish choices, laziness or drugs is one less dollar available to help the truly needy.
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