Posted by William Hartung at 10:02am, January 11, 2011.
"... How in the world did Lockheed Martin become more than just a military contractor? Its first significant foray outside the world of weaponry came in the early 1990s when plain old Lockheed (not yet merged with Martin Marietta) bought Datacom Inc., a company specializing in providing services for state and city governments, and turned it into the foundation for a new business unit called Lockheed Information Management Services (IMS). In turn, IMS managed to win contracts in 44 states and several foreign countries for tasks ranging from collecting parking fines and tolls to tracking down “deadbeat dads” and running “welfare to work” job-training programs. The result was a number of high profile failures, but hey, you can’t do everything right, can you? ... "
Yup. I know this to be true because I was one of those rounded up and sent to Lockheed Martin offices for the welfare-to-work program. We looked around at each other and wondered aloud if we were going to be Rosie-the Riveter or some shit? Baffling because there wasn't a war going on at the time.
The employees got almost no guidance at all from corporate and I think through no fault of the employees the program was a dismal failure for most welfare recipients. They needed comprehensive help and the psychiatric help was the epitome of incompetent and transitory and a range of other needs were not met.
I know that this county is pretty much owned and operated by the M-I-C so it didn't surprise me, but it did fuel my cynicism. I knew about the budget cuts and privatization going on in the military. When I was offered community college classes I took the ball and ran with it even though my choices were childcare or business. Childcare? Ugh. Well, I did learn something in business classes. I learned how to track a stock price for a period of time:
Computer fiasco costs state dearly
$1.2 billion in fines over child support systemBy Ed Mendel
STAFF WRITER SDUT
March 28, 2007
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