#BlackFriday comes early as computer glitches cause welfare frenzy*

from foxnews.com: In some Walmart stores, customers emptied shelves like it was Black Friday, while in others, no one could buy anything — all thanks to a weekend of glitches with the nation’s welfare system. Problems involving Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, the government payments to the poor that are administered by states with the help of private companies, plagued at least 17 states Saturday and Sunday, creating retail riots. At Louisiana stores in Springhill and Mansfield, cards registered no spending limits, prompting recipients to go on buying binges… Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena told USA Today that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems were experiencing connectivity issues after a routine test of a backup system at a location in the Midwest caused an outage. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the federal government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states. All were affected by the outage.