Rogue Columnist

The Keating Five survivor moves on to land swaps

When I was at the Arizona Republic, I constantly pushed for the paper to investigate the rash of land swaps that had moved public lands into the hands of developers with minimal oversight or even mention. What got my attention was the damage done by forest fires to "cabins" in the High Country, which were really subdivisions -- much of them on what had been National Forests when I was a boy.

In addition to the cost of the fires, heavily borne by taxpayers, these rural subdivisions siphon off water, require new taxpayer-funded roads and add to the congestion and environmental stress on what was once a lovely rural-wild part of the West.

Nothing was done, but other newspapers have probed the shady practice. And the politicians caught up in it include the incorruptable, "maverick senator from Arizona." The Washington Post reports today:

Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

It's not the first time the usually worshipful national press has had to report such activities about its favorite. There's also the Don Diamond affair. Of course the disgraced Rep. Rick Renzi faces criminal charges arising from a land swap. Business as usual in Arizona as the state's beauty, and the public's lands, are sold for dross.   

Recalling Phil Gordon, and a corridor of lost opportunities

Some of the right-wing thugs that have the loudest voices in Arizona want to recall Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for being too soft on illegal immigration. Gordon doesn't have anything to worry about, even with the ridiculously small numbers needed to get an initiative started.

If anything, Gordon's cautious temporizing over Sheriff Joe Arpaio's war on the poor -- before criticizing it before a Hispanic audience -- should earn a recall effort from the 34 percent of Phoenicians who are Hispanic and mostly American citizens (and those are 2000 numbers). But of course one reason the thugs rule is the populations that outnumber them, whether moderate Anglos or Mexican-American citizens, lack their lunatic zeal and often don't even vote.

As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the illegal immigration problem is because 1) Arizona is a border state; 2) has a low-end economy  dependent on low-wage illegal immigrant labor, and 3) is doing nothing to really address the issue. Gordon, however, is in the spotlight, in his second term as mayor, and it's fair to ask a question of substance.

Has Phil Gordon failed as Phoenix mayor?

Making serious economic reform, part II

In a previous post, I discussed economic reforms that should be made in the sick, corrupt financial markets. But this is only the start of efforts the next president and Congress must make to prevent a startling decline that is already evident in America. Whatever the Dow shows, most Americans are suffering and for the first time in generations, young people wonder, with good cause, if they can live better lives than their parents.

Real change is needed, and the question is whether the American people and their elected representatives have the guts to face the truth and move ahead. The laughable gas-tax holiday and much wishful thinking about alternative energy and hydrogen cars represent the school of destructive denial. This is "sustainability" that seeks to sustain the current unsustainable economic and social arrangements. It can't be done.

Yet much of the current mess was caused, not by inexorable laws of economics, but by policy changes to benefit the rich and transnational corporations, as well as a sprawl economy at the root of the current recession. We can change it.

The Stack: Turnaround?; Phoenix 'architecture'; ruining Biltmore; lost HQs; illegal immigrant hypocrisy

The Monday stack is rich, so let's get right to it.

We're hearing a lot of talk about seeing lights at the end of the tunnel, that the downturn is over or the recession will be mild...whatever. I hope so. But here are a few things to keep in mind. First, recovering from the collapse of a real-estate bubble takes much more time than the recovery we saw from the tech bubble after '01. Japan in the 1980s and 1990s is Exhibit A.

Second, America has many "economies." So Wall Street and the globalized macro economy measured by the Dow and the GDP may well "recover." Another economy involves good jobs and diverse opportunities outside of the minority of fortunate cities such as New York, San Francisco and Seattle. I see no signs of that economy turning around. Indeed, by many measures it slips a little further back during and after the end of each business cycle. Jobless recoveries are only one aspect of this troubling trend. Throughout the boom of the past few years, most wages stagnated and many actually lost ground. So hold the celebration.

Read on for more of the Stack

Problem with 'county hospital' even worse than Republic reports

The bosses obviously on vacation, the Arizona Republic committed real journalism today. The newspaper dug out the serious accreditation crisis facing the Maricopa Integrated Health System, which serves 400,000 mostly poor residents and operates the "county hospital." According to the story by Yvonne Wingett and Amanda Crawford, two of the few surviving serious reporters at the joint:

A detailed inspection of the county's health-care system obtained by The Arizona Republic revealed widespread record-keeping problems and other flaws that could have posed risks to patients' safety.

Since the inspection, the Maricopa Integrated Health System has been overhauling operations and has spent about $1.5 million so far to address the deficiencies, which were identified in September by the Joint Commission, a national accrediting body. MIHS, which operates the Maricopa Medical Center, says it has fixed many of the problems and continues to address others.

The reports revealed a culture of incomplete or inaccurate medical record-keeping that meant, in some cases, there was no proof that vital patient-care processes were conducted.

The danger is the people see the headline and the photo of Maricopa Medical Center, then shake their heads and murmur about wasted tax dollars and freeloading Mexicans. In fact, this is an intriguing political disaster and a lost opportunity of the first magnitude.

Newspaper acts cowardly and stupid, but there are silver linings?

Only in the Arizona Republic would you see a front-page headline that says:

Grim economy, but there are silver linings

What's even worse is the story that follows, desperately trying to ignore the factors that will make this economy very difficult for a long time to come, whatever the increasingly irrelevant GDP numbers say. It would be funny if the cost were not so high from a major newspaper failing to do its job in a) reporting on the real, devastating recession in the state; b) failing to crusade for a more competitive economy, which begins with great schools, and holding legislators accountable; c) continuing to blow the whistle on the unsustainability of the migropolises around Phoenix.

Past headlines we can imagine from this crew:
"Black death devastates Europe, but there are silver linings"
"South secedes and Lincoln calls for volunteers, but there are silver linings"
"Titanic strikes iceberg and sinks, but there are silver linings"
Add your favorites.

The gas tax 'holiday' and magical thinking

How can we explain the latest Wall Street Journal/MSNBC poll that shows only 27 percent of respondents have a positive view of the Republican Party yet the Democratic presidential contenders are, at best, tied with President-elect McCain? Is it the inanity of the corporate media? Is it is ignorance of the American voter, who has been brainwashed to believe the right-wing tool McCain is a "maverick"? The next several months will tell.

It's surely not a good sign that the nation sits paralyzed before multiple crises while people distract themselves with an evil pervert in Austria and some celebutard girl posing semi-nude in Vanity Fair. The corporate media would not cover this stuff if Americans didn't tune in, in huge, denial-soaked, distraction-addicted numbers.

Obama must show he is "an average guy" -- how'd that work out for us with W? We need a president who is average with Washington, Lincoln and FDR -- our crises are that dire. And Jeremiah Wright -- must keep that front-and-center. Did Obama do enough? Was he too late? Is he damaged? Has the cow jumped over the moon?

Nor is it a good sign that the "gas tax holiday" of President-elect McCain and Sen. Clinton (perhaps running as his vice president?) has not been laughed off stage. How many ways is this a ridiculous idea? And Yet Obama is the "elitist...out of touch with average Americans" who is the party pooper by refusing to endorse it.

Housing prices drop at stunning rate

Housing prices dropped last month at their fastest rate ever. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities declined 12.7 percent in February. Here are some of the details: Phoenix year-to-year prices down nearly 21 percent (am waiting for the "say something good about the community" Azcentral to pick this up); Seattle off 2.7 percent; Charlotte up 1.5 percent.

Jeremiah Wright refuses to be silent

Barack Obama partisans must be wishing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had chosen to lay low, so maybe the "preacher issue" would go away, so maybe Obama wouldn't have to deal with white anxiety over an angry black man. But Wright will not go quietly. He is defending himself and making his case, most recently before the National Press Club. If you don't watch the entire speech on C-SPAN or a video replay, we don't have much to talk about.

Wright is as formidable an intellect as he is a "controversial" preacher. He is a preacher of the Gospel, coming from the prophetic tradition...his name is Jeremiah, for goodness sake. If the Gospel doesn't sometimes make you uncomfortable, you haven't really read it. If the election is decided on a sound byte of "God damn America" vs. the nuanced and complex message this Jeremiah delivers, then...

Or, as Obama put it in his magisterial address, we could say "not this time." Unfortunately, I increasingly fear that won't happen. Old habits die hard. Old prejudices. So we will march forward to the McCain presidency. If so, then let Jeremiah say all the things that make the comfortable feel uncomfortable -- so it is in the Bible.

It doesn't matter now. God's will be done. That's what Christians pray every Sunday in church, "the most segregated hour in America," many without even realizing what they're affirming.

Does this Jeremiah have anything to teach us?

In search of McCain conservatism

President-elect McCain, his worshipful media coterie in tow, visited New Orleans and declared that the response to Hurricane Katrina had been "disgraceful and terrible," and, according to the doting New York Times, "pledged it would never happen again." The corporate media seemed especially relieved that the "senator from Arizona" had distanced himself from the toxic Texan currently residing in the McCain's next mansion.

Yet the federal response to Katrina was the natural outgrowth of "conservatism" as it has come to be practiced by the mainstream of the party of Lincoln. The calamity was not an aberration. It was pretty much what would be expected from the combination of ideology, policy and practice from today's "conservatives."

Maybe the "senator from Arizona" will redefine conservatism. The media desperately want him to be Barry Goldwater (I hear from excellent sources that the elderly Barry, a real senator from Arizona, was dismissive of the carpetbagger McCain). But even Goldwater never ran the government, never contended with the issues facing a 21st century, continental, diverse empire/nation. My experience is that McCain is not much of a hard-core ideologue, except for being a tightwad, a naysayer and, oddly for a combat veteran, trigger happy with the armed forces and eager for foreign adventures.

So what will McCain Conservatism be?

The only way out for Democrats is 1960 redux

Smoke-filled rooms have a bad reputation. Yes, they gave us Warren Harding, but they also gave us Harry Truman. The only way out now for Democrats is to light up the cigars, close the door and force a Kennedy-Johnson ticket.

The question becomes, who gets to be Kennedy? Surely Barack Obama, who has inspired so many, including, poignantly, JFK's daughter Caroline, with the similarity. And Hillary, with her sharp elbows, my-way-or-the-highway style and even ham-handed speaking, resembles LBJ. Maybe she even has some of the better angels of his nature, although we would pray she didn't reach the Oval Office through the same tragic circumstances.

But ah, my foes and oh, my friends, that won't work. Obama must play the role of the outsized senator from Texas.

Phoenix does something right

The city denied the request to turn the iconic road on Camelback Mountain into a private drive for the swells.

The race goes on, toward the edge of the cliff

Hillary Clinton's campaign of late has been all about creating doubt. She's succeeded, but not in ways she intended.

Obama can't put her down, can't win big states. Fair enough. It's also true that she can't put him down, despite starting with seemingly insurmountable "inevitability." She won despite his money advantage. But despite all her negative attacks he cut her projected margin of victory in half or more. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr. makes the interesting point that Obama's personality -- which Obama will voters see, Stevenson or Kennedy -- is now a central part of the race. But Clinton's base in Ohio and Pennsylvania make it clear that many white Americans won't vote for a black man. I think that would have held even without the hyped Rev. Wright and "bitter" stuff. Many Clinton voters say they will vote for McCain instead of Obama if Hillary doesn't prevail.

I think they'll vote for McCain anyway. Hillary downed shots, talked of her fondness for firearms and threatened Iran with nuclear annihilation. She relentlessly portrayed Obama as an "elitist." With $100 million made since Bill left office, the Clintons are "just like us." But, as Harry Truman said, "If you give someone a choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, they'll choose the Republican every time."

So I doubt Obama can win a general election. I doubt Hillary can. With the baggage of Bill and his squandered presidency, with her daughter working in the hedge-fund industry that destroys American jobs, I doubt her investment in real change. The only question is what will be left of the America I grew up in after four years of John McCain.

The stack: Tempered, lost Camelback, the med school joke

Peggy Noonan, always a formidable writer and sometimes a formidable thinker, makes this point about a Barack Obama weakness:

His youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.

I'm not sure I buy the second part. Many white Americans won't vote for a black man. It's that simple. Her first point is well-made, and frankly is a problem for most at the top echelons of American society now that meritocracy is dead. A Harry Truman couldn't become president now. And the days are largely gone when a son of the elite, such as Jack Kennedy, served in combat alongside his fellow citizens of all walks.

Which brings us to John McCain. Noonan says slyly he should promise to be a one-term president. "For many in the middle it would be a twofer," she writes. "You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older." This is her partisan side clouding judgment. McCain is seasoned and has suffered. But to what end? To promise a continuation of the disastrous policies of his callow successor, and the general ideological tilt by the elite untested theorists on the right? To burnish a temper that is legendary and unsettling? I've been beaten around the head by life enough to be not merely skeptical, but scared of this man.

There's more in the stack. Read on.

The real elite and what they don't want discussed

ABC deserves every hit it has taken for the "debate" that focused on swift-boating Barack Obama, including a question fed to former Clinton intimate George Stephanopoulos by right-wing thug Sean Hannity. A couple of other points deserve our attention -- indeed, they are the real story.

First, most television "news" stopped being journalism years ago. This has been aggravated by the elimination of the fairness doctrine and deregulation that allowed consolidation in the media. Now the owners of the public airwaves have no requirement to support the public trust by providing balanced news. They have a powerful interest in supporting the corporate tilt of Washington, which even manifests itself in Charlie Gibson's flat-wrong assertions about the capital gains tax. Talk about elitists. The corporate electronic media are part of the elite (Charlie wants his tax breaks and completely understands man-of-the-people McCain with his eight houses and millions).

With silliness such as the taped "questions" by "average" uninformed (God help us) voters, such as the poor woman who asked about the flag pin, it's obvious this elite has an agenda. They have chosen sides. Note McCain never gets questioned about his genuinely questionable ties. They want us stupid. The public schools have been destroyed. Even the conservative Economist says meritocracy is dead in America. Endless hours of television and cheap electronic distractions add to the mindness suckling at the Matrix. Just to be sure, we have "debates" such as the one in Philadelphia.

What on earth might we realize if we didn't have our minds on flag pins and Obama's pastor?

What to expect in the McCain administration (my friends)

I hope you noticed the different receptions given to John McCain and Barack Obama at  the Associated Press earlier this week. The supposed liberal, Obama-loving media offered McCain a love-fest, complete with his favorite donut with sprinkles and no follow-ups to some of his bizarre or controversial answers to questions. When Obama appeared, AP director Billy Dean Singleton, who has destroyed some of America's best newspapers, asked the Illinois senator if he would favor shifting troops to Afghanistan to fight "Obama bin Laden." I am not making this up.

One of the biggest challenges to Democrats this year is that the mainstream media simply won't report fairly on McCain, much less go after him the way it did when Obama made the "bitter" comment. Combined with Democrat self-destruction, the ignorance of much of the electorate, and the way Republicans steal close elections, I think McCain has a very good chance of winning the White House.

So based on McCain's record in Arizona, his policy statements and temperment, let's imagine the next four years.

The stack: Air madness, fake green, the Kookocracy keeps on keeping on

We start out with news of Delta Air Lines and Northwest intensifying their merger talks. We won't hear how the mergers of the past have only worsened the mess at the airlines. Why? They take away competition, leave the remaining carriers in a group-think mode that discourages innovations (hello, newspaper industry), and are paid for partly by laying off the experienced employees and cutting the service that make for a great airline.

The combined carrier will be two drunks holding each other up -- most mergers fail to deliver their promised "benefits." If either carrier is too weak to stand, let it liquidate (it wouldn't) and make room for new competition, Doing the same disastrous thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is a definition of insanity. Ah, but every time the crazy top execs and investment bankers get richer. Meanwhile, we do nothing to improve our transportation system, such as building high-speed rail.

There's also a stack of Arizona funnies..

Is it already over for Obama, III?

Hillary Clinton and her admired partner, John McCain, are attacking Barack Obama for supposedly being "an elitist." I know from the newspaper industry that an "elitist" is anyone who reads, thinks and won't pander. Obama said:

"...you go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they feel through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not...And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

He's right, of course, and he might have added they have been brain-washed to believe all their problems are because of taxes and "liberals," rather than the corporations, fat cats and Republicans who have used government to assist the hollowing out of the American economy, society and sense of national purpose.

Now, under attack, Obama is on the defensive. As the Washington Post reported:

He acknowledged this morning, his mistake was to suggest that many small-town values are formed by cynicism. "You know the truth. It is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us," he told the Muncie audience.

But he added, "what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream."

Of course, both Clinton and McCain are serial liars, but they speak to the American people the way one speaks to slow children, pander to their prejudices and rarely try to make them think about the real challenges the nation faces.

It's not merely that a black man can't be elected president in America. It's that a smart, honest person who treats citizens as adults and challenges them to think can't be elected. That would be too "elitist." My advice for all Dems is to leave guns alone, and be careful about religion. But that's not what this is really about. Obama threatens not only corporate power, but the two big industries that make their living through perpetual stalemate: right-wing ideologues and Clintonites. He has to be taken out. Enjoy President McCain.

(Read previous Obama posts here and here).

Addendum: Josh Marshall has a couple of interesting updates: Hillary now talking about what a gun nut she is, and a fascinating 2004 Charlie Rose interview with Obama where he thoughtfully fleshes out his "bitter" comments. He's right on point. Meanwhile, HuffPost reminds us of Bill Clinton's comments on "insecure white people."

The deeper issues behind the airline crisis

Thousands of flights have been canceled for safety reasons, and as usual the corporate media are missing the larger issues.

One is that that FAA was so cozy with the airline industry that warnings from inspectors were being dismissed. This is a lethal echo of what happened in the economy, where lax regulation was the biggest cause of the subprime mortgage meltdown and wider credit crisis. The IMF calls it the worst shock to the world economy since the Great Depression. Not only did regulators look the other way, they enabled the crisis by pumping up a credit bubble. Regulators were told what to do by the industry.

The most radical reading of Milton Friedman and other conservative economists would say a company has no other responsibility than to make money for its shareholders. Everything else, to the extent that it is a good at all, will be taken care of by the market. There is no public good -- that is a socialist construct. Presumably this means when poorly maintained airliners start dropping out of the sky, the surviving customers will chose other carriers.

In the real world, capitalism works for all when it is balanced by effective regulation, especially to ensure safety, competition, lawfulness and to prevent the formation of monopolies and cartels. It also thrives because of public works, projects that the market itself can't achieve but nevertheless enhance productivity and quality of life.

Another shadow issue is how these airlines have spent years cutting staff and outsourcing maintenance, pushing out their most experienced -- and most "expensive" -- employees. Salaries for pilots (they're not important, right?) and other workers have been slashed. Unions have been busted. The savings have gone to huge compensation for senior executives, and to a plutocracy on Wall Street. Even average shareholders have not benefited.

But the biggest problem -- the one we dare not even talk about -- is how the crisis at the airlines shows that the American transportation system is outmoded and broken. No presidential candidate is even mentioning this.

Poor little rich Scottsdale

Some readers have asked me to comment on the latest dysfunction in Scottsdale, including the forced departure of City Manager Jan Dolan. I will, but with more than mixed feelings.

First, I went to high school in Scottsdale when it was a sweet small city and hadn't been completely changed by money, transience, political extremism and the urban problems (without urban solutions) that plague all of Phoenix. Among its virtues was a small-town merchant class that was genuinely invested in a place of manageable size (Roosevelt to McDonald). My Scottsdale is gone forever, but the small city that it was in the 1970s nurtured much good in my young life.

Second, Scottsdale's future is already baked in the cake. The thugs that want to recall the mayor for allegedly even thinking about light rail need not worry. They have "won." What you've got is what you've got, and the world will intrude. Of course their agenda is always more power and intimidation than accomplishing anything.