"pretzel palace"

[Dan Goncharoff]

Aren't these all California entities? Makes sense that Jerry Brown would
use it.

I am frustrated that Google refused to come up with these sites for me.

DanG


On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "pretzel palace"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The earliest hits on GB I see are in 1975, both from US government
> institutions.
>
> One is at http://ow.ly/aVsGI:
>
> On the one hand, our type of organizational structure was criticized by
> our Governor, department of health, press, and others as a "pretzel palace"
> and our 1976 Medi-Cal contract was renewed on the express condition that we
> combine our...
>
> 1979 "Time" (http://ow.ly/aVtES) talks about economic policies:
>
> He termed the Administration's energy and economic policies "a pretzel
> palace of confusion."
>
> 1991 "The Profit Motive and Patient Care: The Changing Accountability of
> Doctors and Hospitals" (http://ow.ly/aVsXU) talks about convoluted
> organizational arrangements:
>
> The president of HMO International, one of the for-profit management
> companies that was associated with a prepaid plan, likened the convoluted
> organizational arrangements to a "pretzel palace." He said in congressional
> testimony that HMO International's "organizational structure [of different
> corporations and partnerships] is almost incomprehensible, onerous to
> manage, duplicative of expense, and in a word, it is wrong."
>
> Someone else wonders what "pretzel palace" means at
> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/67768/what-does-a-pretzel-palace-mean.
> The answers include a suggestion that brittleness has to do with it, but
> that doesn't seem to match the evidence.
>
> Also, the expression "Byzantine pretzel palace" occurs twice in GB.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>
> On May 15, 2012, at 7:46 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
> > Jerry Brown yesterday said of California's budget "It=92s a pretzel
> palace =
> > of
> > incredible complexity.=94
> >
> > I have never before seen the phrase used before in the context of
> financial
> > complexity.
> >
> > GB shows a hit in Asia Sentinel from 2006:
> >
> > "Restructuring negotiations were colored by controversy over a
> bewildering
> > corporate pretzel palace that included a shadowy series of banks in the
> > Cook Islands and Cayman Islands and countless legal challenges..."
> >
> > It's talking about corporate structure instead of budgeting, but similar
> > enough for my taste.
> >
> > The use of the phrase implies to me, however, that it is expected to be
> > familiar to an Asian audience in 2006. Does anyone have any insight into
> > the use of the phrase?
>
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