Waiting for midnight, hungry families on food stamps give Walmart 'enormous spike'

MSNBC ^ | 11/28/11 | Jessica Hooper

[Nachum]

At the stroke of midnight, a growing number of Americans are lining up at Walmart not to cash in on a holiday sale, but because they’re hungry. The increasing number of Americans relying on food stamps to survive the sluggish economic recovery has changed the way the largest retailer in the United States does business. Carol Johnston, Walmart’s senior vice president of store development, said that store managers have seen an “enormous spike” in the number of consumers shopping at midnight on the first of the month. That’s typically when those receiving federal food assistance have their accounts refilled each

[tbw2]

If they sell snacks, they can get EBT money for it.
We’d save a lot of taxpayer money if EBT was limited to something like the WIC shopping list - peanut butter, jelly, bread, eggs, milk, bread, veggies. Add in potatos and no one starves. And the cost is a lot better and the diet much healthier than Little Debbie, pre-prepared meals and soda I see too many EBT people getting.

[Lizavetta]

Nope, just a carwash.

[mountn man]

Small county jail. He has to pay $30 a day just for his keep. Meds must be purchased through the jail system to insure legitimate scripts and drugs. Every state has different laws regarding prescriptions in jail. Sometimes it varies county to county.

[terycarl]

Somehow with no life insurance

very bad idea for a young family, sacrifice somewhere else and have at least 10 years income in term insurance...very reasonable.

[lysie]

He paid for life insurance through his laborer union dues, but was laid off. After his death I spoke to his union rep and I was told he lacked only a few work hours me to collect.

[oh8eleven]

I ditched school ...
We can tell.

[oh8eleven]

To this day I hate powdered milk.
Yes! And just the thought of fried bologna ... ugh.

[oh8eleven]

I understand what you went through.
And today they have the gall to talk about the "poor" and the "hungry" in America.

[Cyber Liberty]

Hey, it was a public service! But Thanks!!

[terycarl]

He paid for life insurance through his laborer union dues, but was laid off. After his death I spoke to his union rep and I was told he lacked only a few work hours me to collect.

Life insurance pays the beneficiary as long as the policy is in force....if this union "benefit" required so many work hours to be in effect, it is not a benefit at all, in fact if a policy existed at all (I doubt) more investigation is in order to find out where the money went.

[WowReally78]

Actually, when my daughter was going through Chemo, we did a lot of shopping for the "quick and easy" foods, and twice I accidentally ran out a few days early. Not out of EVERYTHING, but out of some of the main things needed, i.e. milk, eggs, etc. One of those months I in fact shopped at midnight, and it didn't have anything to do with DRUGS, it had to do with convienience. Maybe you guys should jump down off of your high horse for a bit and worry more about your own condescending attitudes. I saw one person's HORRIBLE judgmental comments, FOLLOWED BY A BIBLE VERSE!!! You have GOT to be kidding me! Oh, and to the person that said "Who watches their kids?" Once, Mine was in the hospital and Children's, but generally if I shop that late at night, my husband, Mother, or Aunt will watch her. Sometimes, when she wasn't in the hospital or throwing up, she stayed at a friends house for the night. Not everyone is a drug addicted, child abandoning, ignorant loser, just because they happen to need public assistance for a short time, or even for a long time depending on their circumstances. Why don't YOU try raising a child with Cancer before you let your mouth overload your judgemental butt!

[Gaffer]

Wow, you must really be behind in your reading to hit on this 9 month old post.

It is well-understood that there are legitimate needs for EBT, TANF, etc. on a temporary basis with a very very few on a continual basis.

However, the problem with the Walmart ‘spikes’ and the convenience stores - all kinds of stores accepting ‘food stamps’ is the rampant abuse, period. California recently had to stop EBT’ers from using their cards in gambling casinos!

In case you haven’t looked at the news lately, there are a HUNDRED MILLION people on some for of welfare in this country. This does not include Social Security or Medicare.

Look at the SSA.GOV website and you’ll see where 25% of all outlays are for SSI and SSDI combined! The daytime TV lawyers have seen to it that for the first time recently, more people applied for SSDI than unemployment insurance compensation. Are all these legitimate? Not by a country mile.

In your case, I am sorry your daughter had to go through chemotherapy - I don’t wish that on anyone. I’ve had three relatives go through it as well as my best friend. However, if you look at the incidences of cancer among children for the last several years it is 16 per 100,000 children. It is impossible for the Walmart ‘spike’ to be due to instances of illness in the family such as yours.

I live in a small county (25-30,000 people) north of Atlanta, it is 96% white. There isn’t a day hardly that goes by and I’m in the WM paying cash for something and get behind some young white fat girls with a WICs certificate and then topping that off by using their Peach Card (EBT here) for the rest of the free goodies they get. This isn’t because of cancer, nor is it because of temporary conditions. It is long term generational laziness. They often even come in with the welfare mothers who now gets SS and has a few dollars cash to pay for the cigarettes and beer. Often, unemployed baby-daddy is sitting outside in his late model pickup waiting on them.

While you got offended, but I’m not sorry I said what I did. Evidence shows more abuse than legitimate need for cases like yours. One hundred million people - nearly 1/3 of the entire population on some form of welfare. You should know that it all isn’t ‘need’ and you should also know that with growth like this, legitimate cases like yours will be out in the cold when all this comes crashing down on us. It will if it isn’t stopped - hard.

[Nachum]

That’s racist!

/s