More Reform Mutterings

Let's face it -- NYC has not really had to noodle all that much with Albany. Upstate has not wanted to deal with downstate. IOW upstaters have not seen a need for Albany to be something other than a place to transfer dollops of tax dollars from downstate to upstate. I have always wondered about the influence the Burned Over District period has on this attitude. You basically have an upstate culture that produced a bunch of loony perfectionist religious nuts. The narrative in the Damnation of Theron Ware revolves around how upstate WASPS dealt with the dynamism of immigrant life. “They” the others came from elsewhere, i.e. NYC. One can find echoes of this today among the conversation of upstate locals. NYC is still frequently represented as a site filled with inhabitants living a vice-filled life.

Meanwhile, NYC from the Dutch on has seen itself as a topos organized for the making of money. Which in many ways only reinforces the perfectionist upstater’s perception of those from NYC; they are non-WASPs only interested in trafficking with the devil's tools -- that is to say money or illicit goods which during the Depression was booze. Hence the two cultures in Albany, downstate and upstate, have not seen much of a need to deal or talk with each other.

Spitzer's tone notwithstanding, I wonder if it will ever change. Are we doomed to just be appleknockers vs. those from the Big Apple; and perhaps more importantly what does reform mean to these two groups. IMO we are caught in a downstate/upstate solipsistic trap in which each side only hears their side. Mark Blitz blames Albany for the destruction of upstate’s industrial base. It is weird because he never seems to ask about the policies that moved Carrier and big chunks of GE to China. Globalization may be a slightly larger factor in Upstate's demise as a manufacturing center instead of Albany. Plus one hastens to add, the folks in Smug City were just too stupid to ever imagine a non-silver halide life. The Brennan Center folks act like the 3 guys in a room happened in a vacuum. IMO more works needs to be done to explicate why that process was created and seemingly never criticized during its inception. Where was the modern equivalent of Nast? There are just too many silences and unanswered questions for me at this point.

Meanwhile, the financial services end of the NYC economy is threatened by the rise of London and Singapore. IOW both sides need to talk and understand each other before it is too late.

Ah sic transit gloria!