Dana Blankenhorn

The Capital of America

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 47 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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For every era in America, there has been a capital city, a center around which money flowed.

For the Civil War generation that center was Cleveland. Cleveland, you say? Yes, Cleveland. Because Cleveland was where Standard Oil developed. It was the nearest city to America’s first oil boom. Cleveland powered the Industrial Revolution that made America a great manufacturing center.

Cleveland was also the economic capital of Ohio, which during the late 19^th century became the “Mother of Presidents” – Hayes, Garfield, McKinley and, in time, Taft and Harding.  The Cleveland boom also brought forth John Sherman and his anti-trust act, and the whole concept of business and industry working together, under regulation, to create electrical networks, telephone networks, railroad networks and gas networks.

For the Progressive Generation the capital of America was undoubtedly New York. New York was where John D. Rockefeller fled the anti-trust cops. New York was J.P. Morgan, it was Ragtime. It was where the immigrants brought growth and food. New York organized and controlled the great manufacturers. It was the stock market, unions and Broadway. Until you made it there, until the Great Depression, you couldn’t make it anywhere.

Detroit was the capital of the Greatest Generation. Detroit won the war. Detroit built the cars that created the suburbs. Detroit was where your dad worked. Even if he didn’t work there he was deeply influenced by the business bureaucracies created in Detroit, by the worker organizations created in Detroit, and by the images used to sell Detroit values to the suburban masses – mass-produced suburbs, mass-produced lifestyles, the mass production and the mass consumption.

Houston was the capital of the last generation. Houston was oil. Houston was foreign policy. Houston was chemical plants, and refining plants.

Houston defined our generation’s architecture in my youth, and Houston came to dominate a generation’s politics – Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, George H.W. and W. Bush. Houston made us a global imperialistic power, fighting wars for oil, for economic control of the globe.

Video Killed The Internet News Star

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 46 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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2014 has been a good year for business, a good year for investors, a good year for mankind generally.

For writers, not so much.

What’s happening is that run of network ad rates are dropping to the floor, mobile makes this worse, so news sites are responding by ditching writers in favor of talking heads. If you watch some sell-side analyst tout his merchandise for five minutes, that’s five minutes the site can spend throwing ads at you, and it’s basically free – just point the camera. There is no news value in it. Getting five minutes out of a reader, on the other hand, requires that you deliver some serious content, or at least an original take. This costs money. And no one has money.

Why Obama Threw the 2014 Midterms

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 45 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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What’s unique about the present crisis, which began in 2008, is that it has been so slow moving. It has been slow moving because it has been, for the most part, non-violent. It has been non-violent, in large part, because Barack Obama has refused to give-in to liberal Democratic calls for him to be more confrontational.

That makes sense when you understand the Obama Thesis of Consensus, which I first wrote about under that name almost six years ago but had been describing, under other titles, for almost three years before that.

Consensus implies that people come to agreement, despite sharp disagreement. If consensus is what you’re looking for the last six years have been a complete failure. Republicans continue to play politics based on the Nixon Thesis of Conflict , and most Democrats today want to play the same game.

Which leads me to this startling conclusion. Barack Obama threw the mid-terms.

Are Movies the Textiles of the 21st Century?

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 44 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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When I was a kid, I was taught that Georgia’s nickname was “The Empire State of the South.”

Back then Georgia had an umbilical relationship then with my home state, New York, the original “Empire State.” Georgia, and the states around it, were where New York outsourced manufacturing that required large amounts of labor. Georgia was the original India.

Back in the 1950s the South was filled with textile mills of all kinds, and Atlanta was the regional center to which all those plants reported. One reason the Atlanta business community was so anxious to do business with this city’s black leaders, and advertise itself as “the city too busy to hate,” was to protect that relationship with New York, which didn’t much care for overt racism. For all his faults, the original John D. Rockefeller believed in racial equality. His wife was the Spelman of Spelman College. And throughout the years of my upbringing our governor was Nelson Rockefeller, a grandson of John D.