Money Makes the World Go Round

Today's entry is a short meditation on a job ad which I ran across yesterday. As readers of this blog know, we spend an inordinate amount of time puzzling over how the world came to be in such a mess...why did people vote for George Bush the first time, much less the second time....why is the war in Iraq still dragging on with so little public protest....why aren't we mounting a WWII-level mobilization to convert our economy to renewable energy and stop global warming....

Coming down from the mountain of abstraction, this job ad reminded me of how utterly mundane destruction can be. Here's an excerpt, with the "meat" in italics.

Gryphon Technologies (www.GryphonLC.com) is seeking PAO and congressional liaison professionals with Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Joint DoD and Homeland Security public affairs/congressional experience to provide on-site contractor program outreach and advocacy to military and homeland security customers in the Washington, DC, National Capitol Region. Junior, mid-grade and senior positions are anticipated. The successful candidates will help create critical program awareness, understanding and conviction with key stakeholders within the Armed Services, DoD and DHS, industry, public and the Congress, to U.S. and foreign audiences.[italics added]

Never heard of Gryphon Technologies either, huh?

Gryphon has extensive experience with a major emphasis in shipboard and shore site combat system and training system design, integration, installation, program management, logistics, studies, research, and analyses.

Not only is Gryphon one of the fastest growing defense firms, it's a woman-owned 8(a) certified small business. This SBA program provides some very special incentives to help small businesses compete for government grants, starting with access to a pool of no-bid contracts.

What got me thinking was the stated goal of this position, to "create critical program awareness, understanding and conviction with key stakeholders." Conviction. Let's say you take the job, and you're sitting at your first evaluation with your supervisor, and she holds up the evaluation form and asks how things are going on the conviction front. How do you know when you have succeeded in inculcating "conviction"? Do they hand you a manual when you start that explains how conviction will be measured, and provides instructions on what it is that you are supposed to do to foster the growth of such conviction?

It's a closed world we're dealing with here, no outsiders, only people who have already been working inside the defense/homeland security world (how much longer will defense and homeland security remain separate categories, other than for propaganda purposes?). Given who the company's customers are, this restriction makes perfect sense. Here's a list:

• * Naval Sea Systems Command
• * Naval Surface Warfare Center
• * Naval Undersea Warfare Center
• * Strategic Systems Program Office
• * Program Executive Offices
• * Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
• * Office of Naval Research
• * Naval Research Laboratory
• * Marine Corps Systems Command
• * Naval Air Systems Command
• * Naval Air Warfare Center
• * Missile Defense Agency
• * USAF Aeronautical Systems Center
• * Commercial Clients

The ad doesn't say how many people Gryphon is hiring, but it's more than one. And there's the nub: these positions are being pedaled as PR jobs, not lobbying positions, even though creating conviction in "members of Congress" is boldly stated in the ad. The number of lobbyists has exploded since Bush was elected in 2000, more than doubling by 2005 to 34,750. But as this little ad illustrates, the actual number of people who spend their days influencing Congress must be many times greater. Lobbyists are required to report their expenditures; PR people are not.

So when you get an email or a phone call asking you to get in touch with your elected representatives at any level of government, think about the thousands upon thousands of people who go to work every morning with a list of people to call and create their version of "critical program awareness, understanding and conviction."