Let's start with a statistic. Florida has a 9.7% unemployment rate. How to help, Florida style? Hire JP Morgan Chase (the recipient of federal bailout money) to run the food stamp program. Pay them 50 million dollars over three years. And the kicker: outsource the call center jobs to India. Yup. Someone is so brain dead at JP Morgan Chase as to think "Well, no one in Florida needs a job, we'll just take government money and spend it in a 3rd world country". They operate 4 call centers for the Florida Food Stamp Program, 2 of which are in India...none are in Florida. Lovely. After the newspaper "Palm Beach Post" broke the story, Florida officials now claim to have a promise from JP Morgan Chase to relocate those jobs back to the US. Better, but shouldn't Florida's money be spent IN FLORIDA?
To be fair, part of the blame goes to Florida for their lack of oversight. Indiana did it better...they also use JP Morgan Chase but their contract specified the call center jobs stay in Indiana. Only problem? They laid off 100 people when they hired JP Morgan Chase. Something tells me many of those 100 are now calling JPMC for food stamps. JPMC probably thinks of it as job security. I see it as the definition of short-sighted.
