Dana Blankenhorn

The truth behind Beckapalooza

Some critics called it Whitestock, but that's not the story here. Most Republican meetings are overwhelmingly white. Despite demographic trends, this also remains the reality of America.

No, there's a deeper truth about this gathering that should give mainstream Republicans pause. That is its cause.

As Beck himself noted, he thought about making this an economic call, but he instead made a social call. His shows and his stands over the last six months have all emphasized social issues, the most divisive on the agenda. Even the claim to be "reclaiming Civil Rights" was a tell in this regard.

But it wasn't a black-white tell. It was a movement tell. Beck is not of the Tea Party. He's of the Taliban party.

This should not be a surprise, but with his earlier emphasis on economic issues it will be to some observers. It shouldn't be a surprise because Beck has always been aligned with the American Taliban. Mormonism is less about belief than about actions, less about what you say than about what you do. Conformity was bred deep into Glenn Beck, and conformity is what those who followed him to Washington are most interested in.

Fact is, black and brown and Indian and Muslim and gay and young and secular Americans don't fit into Glenn Beck's America. There is no place for them there. There is no place for the majority of Americans in Glenn Beck's America, unless we wish to deny our nature.

Run Against The Oilagarchs

The "enthusiasm gap" is as great today as it was 40 years ago, when the anti-war movement was at its height, when Nixon seemed surrounded by enemies, when his cause seemed most hopeless.

He had tried everything he could think of to accommodate the left. He supported creation of the EPA, OSHA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But it meant nothing to his enemies, and his friends were turning on him as a result.

So what happened? He won a virtual draw in the 1970 elections, with highlight races like James Buckley (right) winning a minority victory in New York and Bill Brock knocking off Al Gore Sr. balanced against losses elsewhere. (It is easier to score gains when you start with a minority, as Nixon did.)

And he learned not to accommodate. He would never again appear so liberal to his own base, and would try henceforth to feed them more than rhetoric.

The Core of the Issue

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 35 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Every political crisis in American history is, in fact, a sign of economic transformation.

Today's transformation is the move from energy defined by resources to energy defined by devices, by technology.

There is plenty of energy around -- from the Sun, from the ground, from the wind, from the air all around us. All we need do is harness and deliver it. This will trnasform all our financial, political and international relationships, so those who depend on the old relationships are fighting back with everything they have.

It's not about mosques or gay marriage or anything else we seem to worry about. All these issues are means to an end. They are pushed by, and products of, the financial strength of the oil power. Follow the money and this becomes obvious.

The right American for Europe

I haven't written about soccer recently, so all you politics fans stand down a moment.

In the wake of a disappointing performance at the World Cup, American football has to start over. Landon Donovan is 28 and will be heading downhill by 2014. Most Americans currently playing in Europe are being treated shabbily, they're being called lazy and lacking in ball skills. They have no leverage to be treated better.

The next U.S. coach -- and it probably won't be Bob Bradley again -- needs to add agent to his skill set. He needs to take responsibility for having key players learning and playing constantly. While European coaches can complain about the selfishness of their hopefuls, the American coach needs to be selfish for his players.

The USA team was hurt last time by the fact so many of our stars and potential stars were sitting on European benches. Solving the problem needs to be job one. Since European games are now all over American TV this job is becoming more urgent. (Ironically part of the solution involves sending some of our kids to places like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, where they are more likely to get playing time and the fans' abuse will toughen them up.)

But there is a job two that is closely related. That is getting our top stars onto top European clubs and onto the field of play.

As Europe heads toward the closing of its transfer deadline, much of the speculation concerns Donovan. He played well at Everton, and they want him back. But Donovan doesn't want to go back. There is one MLS player, however, who is at the top of his game, who would benefit enormously from European play, and who could become a starl there.

Edson Buddle.

Buddle is 29. He has been scoring at a breakneck pace for a year now. He is the best scorer the Galaxy has, including Donovan. He is up for the challenge. He can go into an English side and do a lot more than Altidore did, because he has more experience.

American soccer deserves more respect. MLS is no longer a place where any European pro can shine. The level of play is on a par with the top of England's Championship -- and level with that of Scotland. (It's actually faster than Scotland.) But we don't get respect because our best young players aren't ready for top European leagues, they're shuttled from pillar-to-post and don't develop, and our best players tend to stay here.

Buddle can change that and I  hope he does. Soon.

The coming labor shortage

The papers are filled with stories bemoaning unemployment.

The job market does suck right now. Kids are growing up more slowly and experts bemoan that.

Well here's what the experts won't tell you. The kids are all right. And we're heading for a labor shortage.

Some areas of the economy are already short on trained hands and minds. Health IT, the field I cover at ZDNet Healthcare, has a severe labor shortage. This is going to become far more generalized across the economy over the next decade.

The current unemployment situation is temporary. People who have jobs are being worked harder than ever. It's part of the deflationary spiral we are in -- salaried employees are getting virtual pay cuts. There is also a startling disconnect between the skills many people have, and their location, and the skills some employers need.

These things tend to work themselves out. Fact is there are immense opportunities in today's economy. There is a need for green energy and insulation services not being met. Our infrastructure is crumbling, and that's a need. Chronic conditions and an aging population guarantee big needs for health workers. Getting capital to these opportunities is a short-term problem.

But over the longer run, seen from the perspective of the next two decades, we will have bigger and bigger labor shortages, in all industries, at all levels. Baby boomers want to retire, but there aren't enough younger workers to replace all their roles. And there certainly aren't enough younger workers to clean out our leaking bodily fluids as we head for that great dirt nap in the sky.

If kids are growing more slowly -- and parents who spent the last 20 years scaring their kids about the evils of society deserve a lot of the blame -- that's going to even out. They're likely to live longer. They're very likely to be working longer, because they will be needed, and because the physical demands of work fall with each generation.

So chill.

The ghosts of hate

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 34 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One important point liberals conveniently forget is that, despite controlling the Presidency and Congress, they don't yet control the agenda.

The agenda is controlled, still, by the old Thesis. It's only after a new Thesis is validated, as the Nixon Thesis was validated by Reaganism, the FDR thesis by Truman, or the Lincoln Thesis by Grant, that the ability to set an agenda shifts. 

This is what makes life so hard for the leader of a new Thesis. His followers are rushing ahead of him, the media is making every analysis based on the old Thesis, and believers in that old Thesis are going crazy.

Seriously crazy. 

The death of James J. Kilpatrick last week is a good place to start the discussion. Kilpatrick was a conservative in a liberal age. He was an outright segregationist in the 1950s, but had to retreat from that position, as he retreated from others during his career. Ideological offense was not his metier which is why, by the time Reaganism flowered, he seemed antique. 

How does today differ from, say, 1994? It's important to note that Republicans today don't really have a coherent agenda, save opposition. They don't really have an agenda because everything that should be their agenda has been discredited -- tax cuts, foreign wars, "small" government, government as a business.

How can I prove my point to you? It's right here on this page. Just look at the left side.

Who is Phyllis Schlafly now?

Let's play The 1970 Game!

The myths, values and assumptions that make up an American political thesis are peculiar to their time and based in opposition to what appear on the surface to be inevitable trends.

Those who set their stall in opposition are natural idealists. While there is nothing wrong with ideals in the abstract, absolute adherence to them always leads to trouble down the road. Agendas change, the problems change, ideals become ideology, and things that made perfect sense a generation before now seem to make no sense.

To white suburbanites this is what the 60s were all about. They had left the crowded cities to gain more control over their lives and those of their children. Yet the violence and anarchy of those cities was following them, through the TV, into their very homes, into the minds of their children, and taking control in the form of long hair, rock music, and questioning of their authority.

This is the milieu Phyllis Schlafly came from.In 1964 her ideas seemed daring. Her greatest foes were other Republicans, like Nelson Rockefeller, and she was often disappointed that the Nixon Administration mainly gave her only lip service.  (Schlafly's Wikipedia entry offers a recent picture, but I think this portrait, taken from her 1964 book, is more appropriate. She was once, as they say, a babe.)

She organized, she persevered, and when the Nixon Thesis was validated (renamed Reaganism) she was in the forefront, still pushing society to conform more-and-more closely to her authority. She's still at it, well past her sell-by date, a sad and brittle figure, with an openly gay son.

This is not to dismiss her in any way. She is an important figure in America's political history. But she was never satisfied, and can never be satisfied. She is highly polarizing, and has always been so. As a politician she was a failure because she would not bend from her principles.

So who is Phyllis Schlafly now?

An Opportunity Agenda

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 33 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This is the point in any crisis Presidency when the ghouls come out.

The problems haven't been solved. The President seems to be moving too slowly. He's trapped between his need to be the old AntiThesis (Clinton the Triangulator in this case) and the old fading Thesis (Bushism) still practiced in the Capitol. His own troops are dejected. Change is hard.

What turned things around for all past crisis leaders was, simply, an agenda. Setting a course against the true enemy, in defiance of political assumptions, is the test of leadership.

In the current case, that agenda is simple.

The War Against Oil.

As I've said before, a climate bill isn't really a climate bill. It's really a jobs bill. It's also, right now, the hardest bill to get through the Congress. Republicans won't touch it, and many Democrats are wary as well.

The argument is over stimulus. The question should not be how much, but what the stimulus does. A stimulus that doesn't take us in a useful direction is mindless spending. Whether that's in the form of government aid or tax cuts, it's equally mindless.

We need a stimulus that creates stuff.

The last depression was ended by World War II. Republicans love to say that. They don't like to admit that the war was fought at a deficit, although it was. But we don't have to build bombs to win this war. We can win it with plowshares.

But we first have to declare it.

Opportunity Lives Here

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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More than 15 years after the Web was spun it is still filled with opportunity.

What marks many of today's opportunities is that they're not about machine work. Machine work is the low-hanging fruit of the Web. Machine work has an immense profit margin, and incredibly low costs.

Google does machine work. Its success proved that, when machines face man online, machines are going to win. Yahoo was, originally, a directory, and invested heavily in sites like Geocities and Broadcast.com which required human work to fill them with stuff. Google, meanwhile, invested in machines, in software to parse the Web in various ways, and proved that's the way to the greatest profit.

This does not mean people have no place. It just means profit margins aren't quite as fat.

I have written many times here about the opportunities in my own field, journalism. Many of them still remain. The way to approach them, as always, is from the business side, defining an under-served market, place or lifestyle for which you have passion (and about which you have some knowledge), then organizing that market, and finally offering sellers the chance to meet buyers through entertaining editorial.

This is CNN's real problem. It has nothing to do with what the yahoos who argue about "journalism's failures" think. The channel never really defined its audience, its target market. Fox did. MSNBC (finally) did. So did dozens of other cable success stories. CNN never did -- they said they were a news station, and above all that. Bullshit. No one is above all that.

Let their failure be your guide in your journalism endeavors. And now with no further ado, some new niches for you to profitably explore: