"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Apr 21, 2010

Today in Swooning Gobbledygook

"Obamaism at its core is largely about bottom-up change rather than top-down dictates. The reason: federal silo'ed programs and one-size-fits-all solutions don't work well anymore. The key to building new, innovation-driven programs, especially to turn around our economy, is finding, nurturing and scaling the best private and public outcomes at the point of effective delivery - in regions and communities.

Growth, job creation and shared prosperity lies in creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and small companies to find financing, university researchers to find private collaborators and suppliers to find customers in virtual or real networks outside the DC Beltway. That's where we netted 40 million new jobs from 1980-2005, from young companies less than 5 years old.

Hence the unheralded Obama focus on bottom-up investments in US long-term competitiveness in energy and Electricity 2.0, broadband infrastructure and education reform to fertilize our future..."

Source.

I bet the assclown wrote this with a straight face and a tear in his rosy tinted eye.

2 comments:

Justin said...

Corporate speak serves several purposes.

1. A means of communication that allows participants to talk openly around those who are not insiders.

2. Filler. When people have nothing to say, rather than remain silent and unseen they can repeat what has already been said with jargon-laden corp-speech to repeat and affirm what has already been said without directly parroting.
3. The other side of #1 is the ability to woo or intimidate outsiders when talking down to them.

4. A way for outsiders to feel like insiders by using jargon to sound like them.

I’ll attempt to translate what the excerpted passage above means because I think unpacking the jargon will prove humorous and this is probably an example of 4.

“Obamaism at its core is largely about bottom-up change rather than top-down dictates. The reason: federal silo'ed programs and one-size-fits-all solutions don't work well anymore.”

Let’s define terms. Silos are departments insulated from other departments, meaning that people may not work with people from another department, information is lost and perspectives are not shared. This may not be a problem. The IT support group does not need to interface with sales. On the other hand, salespeople need to interact with the IT development group to know realistic features to promise to prospective buyers. Silos can be good because at reducing noise, bad when they need to be aware of information outside of their domain.

One size-fits –all solutions should be self-defining, what exactly the author is referring to – I have no idea. To bring it all back home, the statement above means: The people who work for or with Obama politically, i.e. aides and legislators, enact changes that come from common folk who have relatively little power rather than forcing Obama’s changes onto them, a dynamic made possible because government programs/departments that work independently of other departments and do not share information are now dysfunctional, as are the inflexible services or goods provided by the federal government.

We are off the rails already. The proposition that we need tailored public solutions and departments that share information and expertise to function is a valid question, but how the answer to that question one way or the other empowers people at the bottom of our political system to push change to the powerful rather than other way around is unclear.

“The key to building new, innovation-driven programs, especially to turn around our economy, is finding, nurturing and scaling the best private and public outcomes at the point of effective delivery - in regions and communities.“

Translation: The key factor in funding research and development programs that will clear a path forward in a post-industrial, post-bubble economy is funding private and public enterprises that deliver services efficiently and at a large enough scale to matter at the macro-economic level. Carol specifies what enterprises; environmental programs, revamping the electrical grid, and internet lines. What this has to do with political change from below or the price of tea in China, I still have no idea, but let’s set aside the political proposition and deal with his point about economic development.

If this sounds like nonsense, it is. The ‘point of effective delivery’ means where the service is consumed or purchased, in other words, the location you the customer use the internet service provided by AT&T, or where the source of the electricity powering your house. We have to find where these transactions are made, should be easy enough, and nurture them, i.e. subsidize the companies providing them. This transfer of public money to private industry will make the private companies flush with cash and they will then invest this money in R&D that will lead to innovations and create better service at cheaper rates for greater numbers of people. New industries? Politics from below? No idea.

Jack Crow said...

Justin,

Great deconstruction. That's nearly how I read it. I once had a regional sales snoop who used to speak like that, and it almost always meant he was trying to get me to enforce something unpalatable on my staff, like doing more labor, in less time, for someone else's benefit, but with vague language about the benefits of teamwork and fellow feeling.

All the corporatoids spoke it.

When I used to work campaigns, it was the same damned gobbledygook. Democrats were better at it, since they had more lying to do, to cover up the bullshit. Republicans are pretty naked in their greed, and their lies track along established nationalist/dick bragging mythlines, usually pre-sold to a dedicated clientele who don't much care about the delivery, as long as the packing is nifty and the sales girl is docile, or puritan prurient.

The short of the long - the whole piece is gobbledygook for "let's privatize more of the Commons and call that innovative, compassionate, avante garde liberalism..."