EBT benefit card glitch sparks Walmart shopping sprees in Louisiana.
KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana News Weather
The Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system allows recipients of government food stamps to purchase goods using a digital card with a set spending limit, but for a few hours over the weekend, that limit disappeared for many users visiting Walmart stores in Louisiana.
[Then word got out, apparently, and the "shopping spree" began.]
. . .
Walmart workers phoned their corporate headquarters to ask how they should handle all the shoppers with unlimited, government-funded spending limits, and were told to keep the registers ringing.
. . .
Amateur video taken on shoppers' cell phones shows dozens of shopping carts, piled high with merchandise, abandoned in the aisles of one Walmart after the announcement was made that EBT cards were once again showing accurate spending limits.
Police spokesmen in both locations told KSLA that no arrests were made during the spending sprees.
Shoppers gave mixed reactions to the incident, with one man in the Springhill store told KSLA it was simply "human reaction" to stock-up when given the opportunity. Shopper Stan Garcia was more critical of the unscrupulous shoppers, however, saying that taking advantage of the brief glitch in the benefits system amounted to "plain theft. That's stealing, that's all I got to say about it."
"Simply 'human reaction' to stock-up when given the opportunity." By this logic, I guess it's also simply "human reaction" to thieve, rape, and murder if opportunity and desire coincide?
The people who went on the "shopping sprees" are disgustingly poor examples of human beings-- but I have only marginally less scorn for those who would go out of their way to excuse such behavior.
