Rogue Columnist

Climate, trains, downtown

Historically, May was when the temperature in Phoenix crept up to 100. Almost all week, it's been around 105 for the high. "Climate change is a hoax," as they say. The past 12 months were the warmest ever recorded, yet there is no debate, no discussion, least of all in a city likely to be heavily affected, Two days of hot wind cleared out the smoke from the wildfires, leaving only the usual smog. Better than nothing. At a book signing Tuesday night at the Arizona Biltmore, several people came up to say how much they depend on Rogue Columnist to speak truth to power, reality to the Kookocracy. It's something for me to keep in mind if some think I am just shouting the same old stuff with tiresome certitude.

Light rail seems to be doing well every time I ride it — and I depend on it (WBIYB). I can't speak for the line from Camelback to Chris Town, but otherwise it's packed-to-busy. It's curious at stations to see signs that identify trains going to Tempe and Mesa, or 19th and Montebello, but never downtown Phoenix. If you get on light rail at the Sky Harbor stop, you'd never know which way was the city center. Not smart. Tempe is trying to build a streetcar — a good sign. Otherwise, transit policy is a hash. Buses have been gutted (Your Tax Cuts at Work).

I'm not sure I understand the so-called West Link line. Is it really intended to go to Tolleson? If so, this shows how the region still doesn't get rail. Heavy commuter rail should be a priority to all the outlying suburbs, with a hub at Union Station, where passengers could connect with buses and eventually a light-rail spur as was done in San Jose. Commuter trains would provide fast service to Glendale, Peoria, Tolleson, Goodyear, Buckeye, Chandler, Gilbert, etc. The rail right-of-way is there and would require public money to expand capacity, as well as negotiations with the private railroads. But this has been done successfully around the country.

Something's burning

Coming into Phoenix Monday, we flew very near the Gladiator fire, an awesome and disturbing sight from the air. It reminded me of Boy Scout camping in the Crown King area in the 1960s, when it was wild and unpopulated. On the ground, Phoenix was drowning in a soup of dirty air. From Midtown, I could not see the South Mountains. When I tweeted this, several attempted to school me: "It's forest fires, not smog," and that kind of thing.  The instant defensiveness is so curious. a) I know all about the fires, having flown over one; b) The dirty air is in Phoenix, a health and, um, "image" problem for all those living here or even flying through; c) It is also caused by some 2 million cars, mostly deployed in single-occupancy, high-mileage driving d) If you want to get into the rising number of wildfires caused by too many people, encroachment of exurbia and climate change, that another upsetting conversation you have bumbled into. Imagine what this city could be if the defensive energy were turned to something constructive or progressive.

This morning, the wind has shifted a bit, so "everything's fine!" (Let's not talk about this scary early May heat wave). Speaking of image, someone sent me an article headlined, "Groups worry for Arizona's image." It was about potential consequences from the latest How Crazy Can You Get legislative session. They should be worried. But it's not an image but a substance problem. Oh, for a two-party state.

More later...

Book time

With the publication of my new mystery, Powers of Arrest: A Cincinnati Casebook, I'm taking a few days off for signings. Some will be in Phoenix, so check this schedule.

In the meantime, use the thread as you wish (except to sell something). Some interesting fodder is the decisive GOP primary defeat of Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana by Richard Mourdock. Lugar's sin: Working with the other side (sometimes, less in recent years). Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed candidate, said, "I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.... Bipartisanship means they have to come our way.... To me, the highlight of politics, frankly, is to inflict my opinion on someone else with a microphone or in front of a camera." Sounds just like the Kooks in Arizona. But can American democracy function this way before it devolves into tyranny?

In Arizona, the push for "open primaries" can only lead to elections where, in most cases, it will be Republican vs. Republican. This is another stealth effort at voter suppression, a broad and dangerous nationwide effort which will affect this election much more than is realized. Arpaio is still free. The downtown market pullback is a sign of how far behind downtown Phoenix remains.

As for President Obama's "evolution" to (re) supporting gay marriage, I am reminded of Keith Olbermann's majestic and moving Special Comment. I also think: There goes North Carolina. The election, too? Will the Republicans snooker the 50.1 percent with God, guns and gays all over again? Whatever happens, the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte looks to be...interesting, as they say in the South.

Update: Here's Jim Kunstler's report from the New Urbanist meet.

'Rebound'

A recent story in the Arizona Republic inspired a good deal of commentary on the thread of the last post. I'm going to hang it out there, make a few comments and let you go to town (or suburb). It starts, "The rebound of metro Phoenix's new-home market continues to build." Then:

New-home permits were up 61 percent in the region during March, according to the latest Phoenix Housing Market Letter. The increase is more staggering than the actual numbers, but still it signals "evidence of a new-housing rebound," according the report's publishers, RL Brown and Greg Burger. In March, there were 1,036 single-family permits issued. It was the first month in a while in which home-building permits topped 1,000.

Last year in March, there were 645 single-family permits issued across the Phoenix area. Overall, homebuilding -- one of the region's biggest economic drivers -- was up 74 percent during the first quarter of this year compared with 2011. Here's an even more positive number for the new-home market: Builders reported a spec inventory of only 383 houses during the first part of April.

The fight of our lives

We miss the core issue: liberalism itself isn't strong enough to force them to our side and interests. Where are our armies? Where? We're in the fight of our lives with a well-meaning if irresolute leader in Obama... But he is, for better or worse, the only leader we have. — Soleri

What is this election about? Government that is not broken but "fixed" by moneyed interests to their benefit and the destruction of the public good? Shocking income inequality with average Americans left ever further behind? The American promise of a good job and economic mobility for those who, in Bill Clinton's words, "work hard and play by the rules"? Arresting the continuous expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex and stopping America's endless wars, and with them the huge opportunity costs to the nation?

It is about all those things and much more. At its core, this election actually is about what kind of nation we will be. This is often a phrase tossed out by candidates between whom, as George Wallace would say, "there's not a dime's worth of difference." Or used in times of relative peace and prosperity when the stakes are less. Not this time. So, no, we didn't pick this fight, especially not baby boomers of a certain age who can remember another America, flawed and troubled but on the right path. But we're in it. We're in the fight of our lives.

Tucson drifts

What's the biggest danger facing Arizona's second city? According to Roger Yohem, writing in Inside Tucson Business, it is that the Old Pueblo will become Portland-ized:

Many of Portland’s traits infatuate Tucson’s bureaucrat copycats. To start with the obvious, Portland has a modern streetcar system that serves downtown. The real cost of Portland’s trolleys, infrastructure and tracks can be hard to gauge since much of it was taxpayer subsidized through government grants and tax gimmicks. But based on various public records, the consensus puts the initial cost at $25 million per mile. For $200 million, Tucson’s streetcar system will cost $50 million per mile. When subsidized by taxpayers, perhaps every city is entitled to pricey public transit.

I have no idea who this mammal is, but he perfectly encapsulates the retrograde ignorance that holds Arizona back. And he is an example of the endless streetcar hysteria that has enveloped the city since it began work on a (sit down, now) 3.9-mile line scheduled to open in 2013. Oh, the socialism! The Islamo-fascist-madness!

Phoenix 101: Ambulance days

The author, left, and partner Russ Covert with Medic 79 at the downtown Phoenix ambulance station in the "hellish" July of 1976

In 1974, at the age of seventeen-and-a-half, I became the youngest registered emergency medical technician in Arizona. I started as a dispatcher at Kord's Ambulance, which had the distinction of being owned by a relative of Linda Ronstadt. Soon, however, I was gravitating to the Kord's operation in Scottsdale, where my Coronado High friend Marc Terrill was working. There, under the leadership of the legendary Chuck West, the company had established the first advanced life support unit in the Southwest. It was a sea change from the throw-and-go days of ambulance drivers. This ambulance was equipped with IVs, EKG, telemetry, defibrillator, intubation gear, drugs — all the things seen on a modern rescue rig. An RN accompanied the two EMTs, who were trained as true paramedics in a program at the old Scottsdale Memorial Hospital under Dr. Bert McDowell.

From riding along and attending classes on my days off, I wrangled a transfer to Scottsdale in the fall. I was one of "Chuck's boys" (there were two female medics, too, a major breakthrough). The ambulance itself was revolutionary: Life-saving treatments could be begun at the scene. My early time was very difficult. The old guard was dominated by former combat medics who had served in Vietnam: Men who had performed surgery after rappelling into hot landing zones and no doubt they were PTSD'd to the moon. Unlike today, they had no use for the young person in their midst. They were tough, demanding, unmindful of, and quite contemptuous of, what is now called "my self-esteem." So I had to earn it. I learned more from them in a short period of time than I ever have in my life. From not even being sure of hearing a blood pressure while the siren was wailing, I learned to start IVs, intubate, triage, do CPR right, everything. I finally merited their respect. It remains one of the most thrilling accomplishments of my life, and makes me feel sad for young people today who are tossed into over-their-head jobs because they are cheap and never given proper seasoning or mentoring, whether rough or gentle.

They taught me a useful phrase and behavior from 'Nam that has served me well: Run frosty.

Our China syndrome

By Emil Pulsifer, Guest Rogue

To the extent that money spent by American consumers on Chinese imports pays the wages and salaries of foreign workers, underwrites the profits of foreign companies, and increases demand for foreign goods, it does not pay the wages and salaries of American workers, it reduces the profits of domestically operating companies, and it decreases demand for American goods.

Though subsidizing Chinese export industries creates a Chinese consumer class, which may subsequently purchase American goods, and creates a Chinese mercantile class, which may purchase American equipment as manufacturing, mining, or transport tools, as long as America is running a large trade deficit, it is in effect spending dollars to get pennies back. These are dollars (net of pennies) that, if spent on American goods and/or services, would increase domestic demand, thereby increasing hiring; and by decreasing unemployment, would increase competition among American companies for American workers, thereby bidding up wages and salaries and improving the standard of living of American households. This in turn further increases demand to American businesses, and we have the "virtuous circle."

Stanton in the Valley

I want to expand on comments I made to Steve Goldstein's Here and Now on KJZZ Wednesday about Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton making a trip to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area to recruit businesses.

Foremost, this is a great start, something I've been advocating for more than a decade. The future to diversifying the Phoenix economy lies in California and Asia, not in Dubai. That the trip is so public is a bit puzzling; real success will come from years of quietly cultivating contacts. Phoenix needs to open offices in Southern and Northern California to recruit companies. I was also disheartened that Barry Broome of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council invited himself along. GPEC must please the suburbs at least as much as the city, and given the preference of the leasing boyz for suburbia, the organization is incapable of addressing the city's needs, particularly for jobs and capital investment in the central city.

Now, a reality check. Phoenix is not going to attract headquarters from Silicon Valley. You can't touch a fixer-up cottage in Palo Alto for less than $1.5 million and it doesn't make the economy skip a step. Workers would rather commute from Modesto than move to Chandler. This is the world's foremost technology cluster, and it happened because of all the things Phoenix lacks: World-class universities, trillions of dollars in government investment, an exceptionally high number of college graduates, attracting vast amounts of capital and a large entrepreneurial class focused on anything but real estate. It has a real downtown, in San Francisco. It is diverse and tolerant. There is no Santa Clara County Sheriff Joe. A real cluster is not a couple of semiconductor fabs in the suburbs. Phoenix can no more be "a mini-Silicon Valley" than the downtown Phoenix Public Market, and I love it, can be a mini-Pike Place Market. Cisco is not going to move from the Valley to "the Valley."

Cruel and usual

We know Amnesty International as an organization known for spotlighting human rights abuses in Third World places. You know, places such as Sudan, Syria and Arizona. A new report criticizes the state's prison system for conditions that "fall below international standards for humane treatment." Among the findings:

More than 2,900 prisoners are held in Arizona’s highest security maximum custody facilities, the majority in the SMUs at ASPC-Eyman. Most are confined alone in windowless cells for 22 to 24 hours a day in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation, with little access to natural light and no work, educational or rehabilitation programs. Prisoners exercise alone in small, enclosed yards and, apart from a minority who have a cell-mate, have no association with other prisoners. Many prisoners spend years in such conditions; some serve out their sentences in solitary confinement before being released directly into the community.

Among those held in these conditions are the mentally ill and children as young as 14. State officials refused to meet with Amnesty International representatives. Although the Arizona Republic carried a story, it will soon be forgotten. Newspapers don't crusade any more, which would require day after day of stories that dig into the conditions, the human pain and who is responsible. Anyway, who really cares about these people? As my character Sheriff Peralta says to the bleeding heart Mapstone, "The thing about the criminal justice system is that it's full of criminals." Out at the mega-churches and the stakes of Arizona, one is taught that Baby Jesus is there for the prosperous and the members of your tribe. Not, say, thieves hanging on crosses.

What we won't discuss

I was tied up Thursday with my Sunday column for the Seattle Times. It was a good thing; otherwise, my head might have exploded. All the oxygen in the mediasphere was taken up by a "Democratic strategist" named Hilary Rosen, who said of Ann Romney on CNN, "Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why do we worry about their future?" Vast condemnation ensued, ending with Rosen apologising. This wasn't just taking up space on Twitter or new-media sites, but the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among others. A blogger for The Nation argued why Rosen was correct. I can't even imagine the wall-to-wall coverage on the boob tube.

As Evan McMorris-Santaro blogged at Talking Points Memo, "Welcome to the next seven months."

So if it wasn't already obvious, there are certain things that won't be discussed in Campaign 2012. The perhaps-failed launch of a proto-ICBM by nuclear-armed North Korea got short shrift Thursday. It may eventually be used as a cudgel against President Obama, but not today. Look over there — it's Hilary Rosen! Iran is pursuing both nuclear arms and long-range delivery systems, or not. Will we dig deep on this issue in the public square, including how Israel is driving American foreign policy not to our best interests? Don't count on it.

Getting the most out of Rogue

This blog contains more than the twice-weekly essays augmented by our smart commenters. I call your attention to the new feature under In-Depth Reports (to your right), Climate Change/Peak Oil. It aggregates some of the most important news stories and scientific reports on the two biggest challenges facing the planet and the nation — whether we want to admit it or not.

They join other aggregations among the In-Depth Reports: Arizona's Continuing Crisis, a compendium of Kookiness, folly, cruelty and environmental destruction; the City Desk, which aims to assemble urban best-practices and issues surrounding urbanization and sustainability; Campaign 2012,  and the Best of the Front Page, an archive of important news stories. The Front Page itself, also to your right, is updated several times a week.

If you're an Arizona history buff, check out my admittedly impressionistic Phoenix 101 series. New to Rogue and wondering what the hell this is? Read the primer.

 

Michael Crow

When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University in July 2002, the watch began almost immediately: How quickly would he use ASU as a springboard to a bigger and better job? It hasn't happened. Crow said he had a ten-year plan for "the new American university" and he has been as good as his word. Crow was one of the three people that progressive Arizonans vested their faith in during those hopeful years. Janet Napolitano played defense against the Kookocracy, but abandoned the governor's office to become President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security with little left behind as a legacy. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon suffered a lost weekend of a second term, badly downgrading any assessment of the man in full. I always thought it was a sign of Arizona's unhealthy lack of private-sector stewards that all three stars were on the public payroll, but such was the case. Only Crow, to many the least likely, stuck and kept faith.

Crow was dealt a bad hand, if a very good salary: The Legislature had been cutting general-fund appropriations to the universities since the 1980s and was virulently anti-education. The state constitution mandated that ASU, especially, take virtually every qualified in-state student without giving it the means to pay for this obligation. The university had grown into a gargantuan thing. It had few friends at the capitol as opposed to, say, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Yet even Crow's critics must admit he played this hand masterfully. It wasn't long after his arrival that the UofA, which always considered itself "the university," was enviously muttering, "We wish we had a Michael Crow."

The vision of a New American University was buttressed around finding new revenue. I learned this early, when Crow asked me how ASU could be of more help in illuminating the economy. I sent him a list of some 30 indicators that were not tracked in the echo chamber of population growth and construction permits. This ended up in the economics department where the mandate was to produce it, and find a way to sell it.

Opportunity costs I

The Navy has its heart set on building 55 littoral combat ships. So far, each is costing around $700 million. That's about half the annual federal subsidy for all of Amtrak. For one ship. And although it looks "like Darth Vader on the sea," as the New York Times put it, one doesn't have to be an amateur naval historian, although I am, to see this craft could be sunk by the ghost of Billy Mitchell flying a 1920s bomber. This is another deeply troubled defense program, plagued by cost over-runs and likely not just to disappoint but actually put our security at risk. Imagine how we could be using this money, or the trillions we're spending for wars in Afghanistan or Iraq — and there, as Everett Dirksen would say, we're talking real money. Such an exercise lets us better understand the opportunity costs of the course we're pursuing into decline.

One important effort should be retrofitting suburbia for a high-cost energy future, which is inevitable no matter how much we frack or use the dirty oil from our good friends to the north. Of course, most of American suburbia was built for the car. Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built since World War II. Place-making and civic design were lost. Massive, cheap, look-alike construction, laid down on an industrial scale, has continued and metastasized, bigger and uglier, decade by decade. All this was heavily and stealthily subsidized by taxpayers and federal policy,  encouraged by a brief moment in history when gasoline was cheap and America was less populous. Jim Kunstler rightly calls it "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." Now it's a built environment whose time has come and gone. Exurbia is done. Much of the rest of suburbia will face ever-greater stresses.

Could some of it be saved and improved? Yes.

Ethnik studees

Jon Stewart did a priceless takedown Monday of the Kookocracy's war against the Mexican-American ethnic studies program in Tucson. Al Madrigal went to the Old Pueblo, where school board member Michael Hicks (happily? cluelessly?) sat down for an interview with the world's most famous parody/news show. He talked about his concern with "a lot of the radical ideas" of the program.

Had Hicks attended a class? "Why even go, why even go?" this GOPer from central casting said. "I base my thoughts on hearsay from others..." Yes, this is more of Arizona earning publicity one can't buy, further cementing the Crazy State's reputation. But it's also important to know that the Kooks succeeded. The ethnic studies program is gone — Tucson was under threat of a $15 million penalty from the state — although one for African-Americans continues.

The Kooks would have more standing if the Arizona they have now run for years didn't consistently rank at or near the bottom in per-student funding (and it's not Utah, with a homogeneous, heavily LDS population). That funding keeps declining. Education Week's Quality Counts survey ranked Arizona 8th from the worst nationwide in a variety of measures. All this has happened on their watch. Their solution is to get one of their many shills to explain it away. Nor has the state's "achievement" in being a leader in charter schools made things better. Quite the contrary, although public money has been used to privatize profits for the politically connected charter racket. The biggest victims: Hispanic students in ignored, under-funded districts.

His Waterloo

"If we're able to stop Obama on this (health care), it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." — Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina

You didn't think the best Supreme Court that money can buy was going to let Obamacare go into law, did you? From the questions asked of lawyers and the dismal performance of President Hoover's Solicitor General, it doesn't seem likely. Now the question is not merely whether the court will strike down the individual mandate but also use this as a springboard to go after more, beginning with Medicaid. Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas have waited their careers for this moment. Anthony Kennedy is a Reagan appointee. The Federalist Society and the entire right-wing infrastructure have built themselves for it. Now we will get another lesson in why it has been a calamity to have 30 years of mostly Republican presidents packing the federal judiciary. Activist judges? You ain't seen nothing yet.

The so-called Affordable Care Act has been a trainwreck from the beginning. Mr. Obama didn't make it a centerpiece of his campaign, so he had no mandate to do it. Most Americans don't understand it. Like the Dodd-Frank financial "re-regulation" legislation, it is compromised to appease the plutocrats, in this case the insurance industry. About the only clear benefit I can parse is the prohibition against denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

Worse, he wasted a precious year on "health care reform" that should have been spent in very obvious and effective measures to save an economy in free fall (and loudly claim credit). To address the worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression and reset the economy for a prosperous, sustainable future. "Never let a crisis go to waste," my ass. Instead, Mr. Obama chose health care. Here his constant template was revealed, alternately passive and ineffective, helped along by a spineless Democratic majority in Congress. The result: The triumph of the Tea Party in the 2010 election shellacking. He would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-termer? Were he not running against Willard Romney, he would be consigned to the Jimmy Carter dustbin — and he might yet be, for the Republican, whose health-care program in Massachusetts became Obamacare, has unlimited money.

Our appetites

A reader has demanded that I write about The Hunger Games. I had never heard of the young-adult novels by Suzanne Collins or the new movie until this. I doubt I will see the film; a few years ago, Hollywood stopped making much that appeals to my "demographic." The old entertainment writer in me will simply say that Jennifer Lawrence, the lead, is a remarkable young actress. Her self-assured, perfect-pitch performance in Winter's Bone makes her one to watch.

Of course this isn't that the reader was asking. He's convinced that America is on the brink of mass starvation brought on by a lack of jobs. Here's the deal: Until Paul Ryan and the GOP Boyz defund them, 15 federal food and nutrition programs, including Food Stamps, are offered to those in dire straits. It would be obscene to compare the plight of Americans, however heartbreaking, with people in the developing world who are genuinely starving to death. That said, the Agriculture Department tracks "food insecurity," defined as "at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food." Nearly 49 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2010, 6.4 million in the most serious circumstances.

A future with lethal, televised gladiatorial games — that I can believe. It wouldn't require the "destruction of North America," only a little slippage in the ratings and a few more miles down the road of national decadence. A situation where the starving unemployed — which is where I think the reader was going — rise up in revolution against the plutocrats and their lackeys in D.C.? Nope.

State of extremism

Arizona may not be competitive in much — cheap housing and hot weather come to mind. But it seems determined to "out-crazy" other states in its rock-ribbed, doubled-down reactionary politics. Almost every day comes a story that speaks to the core concerns of today's right wing. For example, Joe Arpaio, High Sheriff for Life, is "investigating" the "fraud" of President Obama's birth certificate, claiming it is a cover-up "ten times worse than Watergate." Can Arizonans hear America laughing?

Other issues are not so funny. The assassination attempt on Rep, Gabrielle Giffords, inspired by the climate of hate, remains a huge stain. The Legislature long ago went from, let us say, liberalizing the laws affecting firearms to encouraging situations where firearm violence is inevitable. Salon, internationally read, has begun an entire archive devoted to Arizona and the entries are not sunny! Scottsdale! or championship golf! Among the headlines: "How Breitbart and Arizona seized on 'critical race theory' " and  "Arizona's vicious war on workers." The New York Times specifically established a Phoenix bureau to cover Arizona crazy when the anti-immigrant, Jim Crow, voter-suppression SB 1070 debate was emerging. From Daily Kos : "Arizona out-crazies other contraception bills. Use birth control, get fired." Talking Points Memo reports on the violent neo-Nazi groups congregating in the state.

This is not an image problem. It is a reality problem, no matter the many Arizonans who are not crazy or extreme. In a state that already ranks so low on virtually any measure of social or economic well-being, it is a bright red "DO NOT COME HERE" alert, whether to companies deciding where to make quality investments or talented, educated people choosing their home.

Killer nation

The surprise is not that an American soldier walked off his base and murdered 16 Afghan villagers, including nine children, but that it hasn't happened more often, including in the United States. This is what happens when we keep our armed forces at war for an astounding 10 years. No wonder Gen. George Marshall was so eager to finish the Second World War, fearing that a democracy couldn't survive a war that went past five years. And no wonder Americans who now "support the troops" have historically been wary of a standing army and unimpressed by a chest-full of medals.

This is what happens when our wars have no front lines and no conventional armies as enemies. The war is everywhere and nowhere. Combatants are hidden in a civilian population already tired of our occupation, our disrespect for their customs and religion, and willing to supply information to the enemy. Soldiers in these circumstances learn to despise and dehumanize the ungrateful civilians they are supposed to be protecting. Even conventional wars coarsen nations, destroy young people, encourage atrocities.

This happens when Americans have slipped norms of decency, abandoned books in favor of homicidal video games, dress (and act) like adolescents, joined the military because the union blue-collar jobs they once could count on have moved to Asia, and found themselves defrauded and lied to by every institution in our national life. And guns, guns, guns everywhere.

Green shoots in the desert?

Some old timers still blame a December 1988 Barron's article ("Phoenix Descending") for the collapse of the city's real-estate boom. This is fantasy, of course: The market caved in on its own, pulled down by too many hustles, too much overbuilding and the savings and loan scandal driven by local steward Charles H Keating and his pet senators. Now Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones has tried to make amends with a Wall Street Journal story about Phoenix's "nascent real-estate rebound." Indeed, it "holds lessons for the rest of the country." Another fantasy?

The Journal continues:

Phoenix has found a viable formula. Low prices are igniting demand from first-time buyers and investors who are converting the homes to rentals. The local economy is on the upswing with several big employers like Amazon.com Inc. and Intel Corp. hiring again, which is further increasing demand for housing. And the region is benefiting from a surge of buyers from Canada who are using their favorable exchange rate to scoop up bargains in the desert.

Could this be true? Has long-suffering Phoenix "found a bottom" and is beginning a rebound? As Zhou Enlai may have said when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: It is too soon to say. What it means about the metropolitan area's real competitiveness and future is murkier still.

Mesa rising?

Something is happening in Mesa. Light rail is being extended three miles along Main Street from Sycamore to Mesa Drive, reaching downtown and putting it within walking distance, on a decent day, of the Arizona Temple. A brewery is coming to Main Street. Pioneer Park might get a botanical garden, pushed by a citizens committee that also proposes extending light-rail to Gateway airport. (Building an inspiring city hall would be nice, too). Officials brought in 50 developers to show off potential downtown sites. Council members actually expressed hesitation about some senior housing projects, worried they would get in the way of efforts to attract market-rate, transit-oriented residential development downtown.

The "city with wide streets and narrow minds" is actually attracting higher education: the A.T. Still University branch offers osteopathic medicine, dentistry and health care; Benedictine University is expected to open a campus downtown. This is on top of the downtown branch of Mesa Community College and ASU Polytechnic. When metro Phoenix saw itself in the running for a new Apple campus, which not surprisingly went to Austin instead, it's no secret the company was looking most at Mesa. The Mesa Arts Center has stopped trying to compete with Phoenix and is doing well with, among other things, community festivals.

Could this be Mesa, Arizona? A city more populous than Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc. with nothing to show for it? Something seems to have changed.

The asterisk presidency

Now is the time when all good progressives and people with brains are supposed to line up behind President Hoover. After all, where else can we go? The Republican theocrats and plutocrats have made their dangerous irrelevance clear through an endless series of "debates," and Willard Romney still can't close the deal with his own party. Washington Monthly tries to rehabilitate Mr. Obama in an article that contains this paragraph:

Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history. Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry. A vast expansion of national service. Net neutrality. The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years. A revolutionary reform to student aid. Signing the New START treaty with Russia. The ending of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

And if you missed it, "he shifted counterterrorism strategies to target Osama bin Laden and then ordered the risky raid that killed him." Another Washington Monthly piece lists the president's top 50 accomplishments. Yet each one requires an asterisk.

Phoenix 101: Pinal County

Dorothea Lange captures Coolidge on cotton harvest day, during the Depression.

Pinal County is known for many things, mostly appalling. It's ground zero of the central Arizona real-estate debacle, a "bedroom community" to Phoenix with cheap, shoddy tract houses and miserable commutes, the place whose lack of planning or sense of decency allowed subdivisions to profane one of the most glorious mountains in the West. This lack of any respect extends to consenting to a Super Wal-Mart right next to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. Pinal boasts one of the ugliest drives in America, on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson.

And, of course, it is where Paul Babeu, for now, is sheriff. Babeu is disgraced, not because of his department's racial profiling, whoppers about beheadings, anti-immigrant hysteria or allegations that Babeu threatened to have his Mexican ex-lover deported. No, this once rising star in the Arizona Republican Party is a human political sinkhole because he was forced to admit he's gay. Bye-bye Congress hopes, Babeu. Your homies will tolerate any infringement of civil liberties, particularly of brown people, but they will not abide "the gay."

Yet these 5,365 square miles — five times the size of Rhode Island — contain so much Arizona history. Personal history, too: I attended kindergarten in Coolidge. We lived there for a year, for reasons too complicated to deserve a detour, but ultimately coming down to Arizona's fight against California for Colorado River water — what else?

The GOP's last stand?

"The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a ­natural-majority coalition for Democrats."

So writes Jonathan Chait in New York magazine, as good a barometer of elite progressive opinion as one will find. His article looks at the fear driving the Republican Party this election season, specifically that the nation is getting less white, more diverse and the GOP is betting everything on a "Hail Mary" pass this year to defeat President Obama — or face being on the losing end of a long-term realignment.

Somehow this piece came to be twined in my mind with a recent New York Times article about how illegal immigration has lost its power as an issue in Arizona. It begins, "The angry protests over Arizona’s tough policies focused on illegal immigrants are mostly gone. The sponsor of the state’s touchstone immigration bill has been recalled, while two sheriffs who championed the crackdown are enmeshed in legal difficulties..." So the state's more interested in, say, real-life economic issues. It's also conventional wisdom in the political press that Arizona could be in play come November.

But is any of this real?

The exit interview

The urbanist Yuri Artibise left Phoenix last year, returning to Vancouver. It's part of a continuing brain drain, although to be sure such assets as ASU continue to bring in new creatives. I don't know where the tally stands, but I fear Phoenix continues to lose more than it attracts. Architect Taz Loomans recently conducted an interesting "exit interview" with Artibise. It made me realize that it's been five years since I got the first inkling that the Arizona Republic would take away my column, which would eventuate in me leaving town. So I thought I'd use Loomans' questions as a test for myself.

What do you miss most about Phoenix? My good friends. (I tried to select one "most"; for more, see my additions in the comments section).

What did Phoenix have that Seattle doesn’t? It is the repository of so much of my history, so many of my hopes. My mother and grandmother, long dead, are so alive on the streets of Willo, Roosevelt and Storey. The church where I was baptised is still going, as is my grade school, still in its inspiring, grand building, and enchanting Encanto Park. Union Station, where I spent countless hours as a child watching trains and dreaming of far-away places. The streets I worked as a paramedic, learning too much too young. The different mountain vistas that always orient me. Phoenix is the home of my heart, a place so mangled, mismanaged, raped and pillaged, but still worth fighting for. No matter how long I am gone, when I return I can drive the streets and walk the neighborhoods as if I had never left. The ghosts of the Hohokam still speak to me on winter nights when the cold wind blows from the High Country and the peculiar acoustics of the valley mingle train whistles and voices of the beloved dead.

Phoenix update

Back from a week in Phoenix, some observations:

1. The place still gives off the quality of a fallen souffle. Sure, a few projects are getting press out in some of the more affluent suburbs, but the utter collapse of four years ago still lingers. It's not for lack of trying by the Usual Suspects: Bottom has been hit, a turnaround is only (xx) years away, cheap land and sunshine will continue to be the basis of the economy, blah, blah, blah. But the old growth machine will not sputter back to life for one more run (with championship golf!). Too many crapola tract houses, too much debt, too few well-paying jobs, no speculative bubble driven by liar loans and securitized mortgages sold on a historic scale. What's Plan B? There is none.

2. A lack of seriousness pervades the state. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton tweets, "In Phoenix, we have a full commitment to sustainability: Sky Harbor Airport Dedicates Solar Power System." Space does not allow us to fully deconstruct these 104 characters, but we can make a start. Sky Harbor is a red giant of concrete and air pollution, contributing mightily to the heat island and dirty, unhealthy sky, and this is somehow redeemed by a "solar power system" that will power...the airport? No, the linked news story says it generates "enough to handle half the power needs of the rental car center, east economy parking lots and toll booths." Oh. (A real reporter might want to know if this includes generating electricity for the rental car center air conditioning, too, which seems unlikely, and how long the solar operation will have to run before it "repays" the fossil-fuel inputs it required and may still require).

Revolution 2.0

It is starting to dawn on America's press corps that the Arab Spring is not going to usher in Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East. The upheaval in Egypt, for example, has not led to rule by educated young Arabs, secularism, women's rights and peaceful pluralism. We find the same military control that has marked the country for decades along with the danger of an Islamic state inimical to Western values, as well as to stability in the region. Nineteen Americans face murky criminal charges. And so it goes. A world with way too many unemployed young men, a world facing scarcity, will fall back on the tribal, brutal and nationalistic.

In America, we await breathlessly the next phase of Occupy. Meanwhile, the super PACs and plutocrats continue to have their way. I return to a periodic theme: What happens here? What happens next? Jim Kunstler thinks we are ripe for a "John Brown moment." Some very smart Rogue readers expect big trouble at the Democratic and Republican conventions this year. And there is endless faith placed in Facebook and Twitter as tools to empower the powerless to overthrow the plutocracy.

I am skeptical but persuadable.

Paul Babeu open thread

By now, you know the allegation that Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu threatened to have his Mexican ex-boyfriend deported. New Times and the Republic have the stories. He's now wrapped up a press conference where he 1) Denied the allegations 2) Said he was gay and came out for marriage equality and gays in the military, and 3) Said he's staying in the congressional race.

That Babeu is gay is only relevant if he previously supported GOP policies against equality or that hurt gays. If so, he's not just a hypocrite but one who had power to hurt others. Now we'll see if Arizona still has a real press corps: Who will be investigating these allegations, and if nobody, why not? If this was planted by his political enemies, as Babeu claims, who are they? Dig deeper. Who are Babeu's backers and contributors? What are their agendas? How has his secret life informed his performance as sheriff? And how about him making his political name by immigrant bashing? What connections does he have to the for-profit prison industrial complex? Get every piece of every paper trail. Follow the money. And when Babeu laments the economic condition of Pinal County, remind readers that it has been under conservative control forever, its leaders allowed it to be victimized by a vast real-estate hustle, and this is the Randian paradise produced by the policies he's campaigning on.

Rogue readers may take it from here...

Statehood and its world

They couldn't pick a better time as that in life / It ain't too early and it ain't too late / Startin' as a farmer with a brand new wife / Soon be livin' in a brand-new state / Brand new state!

OK, I stole that from the musical Oklahoma!, about the 46th state, which entered the union in 1907. But the sentiments applied no less to the 48th, Arizona, the Baby State, the Frontier State, the Valentine State. At least for the Anglo settlers and not a few Mexican-Americans, especially in Tucson, statehood was a grand achievement, a validation of the efforts to build a new civilization in a wilderness. The government had declared the frontier closed in 1890, but it was very much alive in Arizona. The only photograph of my great-grandmother shows a grizzled, sun-baked woman standing outside an adobe hovel, my family's first home here. Air conditioning was decades away. She survived a Comanche attack as a baby — was scalped and wore a wig the rest of her life — when federal troops were withdrawn from the Texas frontier during the Civil War. In the 1890s, the family came to Arizona Territory. Plenty of heart and plenty of hope, indeed.

Many have been writing about the difficult path to statehood. I will only add that one big but largely forgotten impediment is that Arizona would come in as a Democratic state. Thus, it's no surprise that the Republicans who dominated Washington for decades after the Civil War would be loathe to give the opposition two new Senate seats and another in the House, along with Democratic electors in the Electoral College. Not only that, but allow statehood for a bunch of former Confederates and Southern sympathizers (Arizona Territory had a delegate to the Confederate Congress). And that's just what happened, with Henry Fountain Ashurst, Marcus Aurelius Smith and Carl Hayden beginning Democratic control of the state that would continue pretty much uncontested for 40 years. At his worst, Ashurst made Ben Quayle look like Pericles — he opposed a National Park for Grand Canyon, for example. Yet he also said, "When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me questions about such (international) policies; instead, you ask me, 'What about my pension?' or 'What about that job for my sons?' " Hayden, of course, went on to become one of the greats.

Things about Arizona

It's centennial week in Arizona, and the local media are doing their part. On Sunday, the Arizona Republic had a clever front-page display of wishes for the next hundred years from readers. My favorite was that Arizona enters the 21st century before it's over. Another asked for less conservative politics (good luck with that). The paper is trying very hard and doing good work. Inside were some quick hits by state worthies on what you should know about Arizona. They were relentlessly upbeat, as is a requirement for being viable here as a worthy: "The good people of Arizona have always had grit"; "We defy a stereotype as some might see existing in Maine, Texas or California"; "We are an iconoclastic bunch"; "It's a fantastic state with an early history that is just special," and, from Gov. Jan Brewer, "There is nothing that can't be accomplished here." Draw your own conclusions.

As usual, the rest is left to homey. "Every dirty job that comes along...," as Clint Eastwood growls in the original and best Dirty Harry film. So what are some things you need to know about Arizona? It's one of this blog's missions, but I'll try to put it into short Gannett-ese (sorry, my crack graphics/design team is off):

1. Arizona is not metropolitan Phoenix. Even though Phoenix-like mass-produced sprawl housing and shopping strips have spread statewide, most of Arizona has very different history, topography, cultures and socio-economic challenges from the big concrete blob in the center of the state.

Phoenix 101: The capitol

The Capitol and legislative chambers in the 1960s, before the erection of the brutalist Executive Office Tower.
Channel 12's Brahm Resnik asked me to nominate the three most significant Arizona political events since statehood. It's a bit like wanting a cinephile to name only three favorite movies. I settled for 1) statehood, which was not a given when it happened; 2) The congressional delegation's ultimately successful decades-long pursuit of Colorado River water, and 3) SB 1070, which is a bright red marker for the hotbed of intolerance, ignorance, extremism and backwardness into which the state has descended. Other events could contend, such as Barry Goldwater's 1952 defeat of Sen. Ernest McFarland, marking the birth of the Republican Party's ascendancy.

One of the most telling political stories, however, doesn't concern politicians or elections, at least not directly. It's about the old capitol building. The copper-domed structure was actually built as the territorial capitol and completed in 1901. The architect was James Riely Gordon, who designed many court houses in Texas, as well as a grand one for Bergen County, N.J. Gordon set aside his usual Romanesque Revival style to create a territorial capitol made from native materials. It was originally intended to be much grander, but the territory cut back funding. Additions made in 1918 and 1938 preserved the Gordon design.

President Kennedy (perhaps apocryphally) quipped that it was the ugliest state capitol in America. This was certainly not true: The Alaska capitol resembles an insurance company office; the Ohio statehouse with its forever-incomplete dome defines homeliness and lack of proportion, and North Carolina's looks like the court house for a small, poor county. The only saving grace for New Mexico's building is that it is in Santa Fe. To me, the old Arizona capitol always held a certain modest grace, particularly when I was growing up and it dominated the vista at the foot of Washington Street. But it's also true, odd and perhaps telling that Montana, which still doesn't have 1 million people, has a much bigger, grander capitol. And otherwise poor, conservative states such as West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi boast majestically beautiful statehouses.

Halftime in Arizona

Note to national and international Rogue readers: As Arizona marks 100 years of statehood this month, you'll have to put up with more than the usual number of AZ- and Phoenix-centric posts.

In 1962, Arizona marked its 50th year as a state. It's a vivid memory for me, although I was but a child. I loved the commemorative seal with the cactus wren, so much more appealing than today's gaudy centennial emblem. Fifty years of statehood was a remarkable event for those still living who had witnessed statehood and lived in Arizona Territory, my grandmother among them. The state in 1962 had barely more than 1 million people, with Phoenix not yet at the half-million mark. Phoenix was becoming a big city with comforts unimagined 50 years before, especially air conditioning. Still, the frontier was close enough to touch, living history was all around and much of the state was still wilderness. Vast empty distances separated the settled areas and those were compact and clear in their purpose.

Prescott, for example, the onetime territorial capital, was an enchanting little town with appealing rough edges. None of today's sprawl existed. It had only recently lost its status as a division point on the Santa Fe Railway between Phoenix and Williams Jct. Mining and ranching were the economy. The highway up Yarnell Hill was notoriously treacherous. Flagstaff was a major railroad town, also depending on sawmills for the logging industry and Arizona State College. The Mogollon Rim was virtually uninhabited, just one of many parts of the state as wild as ever. The state highways were two lanes, taking you to rich history that wasn't across the street from a Wal-Mart. Even in Phoenix, you could see old cowboys, the real thing, living out their last years in the elegantly-designed-but-neglected old apartments that graced the neighborhood between Seventh Avenue and the capitol.

The 50.1 percent

Some readers have accused me of not paying proper homage to the Occupy "movement." I risk being seen as "a grumpy old man." What — and not getting The Google and The Twitter while telling stories about the old days of taking the ferry over to Shelbyville and wearing an onion on my belt...which was the style at the time? Okay, I suppose Occupy raised consciousness of the 1 percent of the super-rich and the 99 percent of "the rest of us." Good intentions abound. We know more about pepper spray.

Meanwhile, in the real world where real policy is made, the right marches on. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure pulled its funding to Planned Parenthood for breast-cancer screening. The reason given is that Planned Parenthood is "under investigation." Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Florida, chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is auditing Planned Parenthood to see if any public funds were used to pay for abortions. The Komen money, about $680,000, was used exclusively by Planned Parenthood to provide breast screening for the poor and under-insured (and most of the organization's activities are not about abortion). On top of this, Komen recently hired an anti-abortion Georgia Republican politician as a vice president. This is not just about the abortion debate: Many "conservatives" now are opposed to birth control.

The result: A nice bank shot that hurts an organization reviled by the right, makes a loud statement against women's freedom of choice and accessibility to health care, and hurts the poor! Nicely played.

Phoenix 101: Maryvale

In the late 1950s, my uncle bought a house from John F. Long in Maryvale — and I mean he bought it from John Long himself sitting in a trailer on land that would become Phoenix's first major post-war suburb. My uncle was pretty much Long's target demographic: A veteran of World War II and Korea, young with a family and a good job. Tens of thousands more did the same thing. His house was a sparkling new ranch with an "all electric kitchen" and a pool. Every time we visited, I felt inferior, us living in a down-on-its-heels Spanish period-revival house, built in the 1920s with a gas range, just north of downtown. My mother sniffed that his commute faced the sun coming and going. But how I wanted to live in Maryvale. It was the future. Except it wasn't. Now our old house is restored and valuable in one of the state's most desirable historic districts. Maryvale is a linear slum.

It wasn't supposed to turn out that way. Long named the district after his wife and loved it until he died. He was unapologetic about building affordable starter homes for ex-GIs and his company tried to support Maryvale even as it began an inexorable decline. He took the model of Levittown, the "planned communities" built by William Levitt in the northeast in the last 1940s and 1950s. But Long added his own twists, such as the distinct Phoenix ranch house and abundant pools. Like its model, Maryvale was defined by curvilinear streets with cul-de-sacs and walls, providing a sense of privacy. Sometimes the newness could be jarring: I remember walking with my uncle through cabbage fields — across the street (until these were obliterated by more houses).

Housekeeping

Some commenters are having occasional trouble getting their stuff posted. They write it, submit it, and it just disappears. I have removed every "safety" to posting possible, so you'll rarely now even have to put in the coded letters. Still, it happens. A Typepad tech wrote: "Do you happen to know how long the reader(s) took to leave one of their comments? You mentioned that their comments tend to be on the longer side, so if it's taking them a while to draft them before submitting the comment then it's likely that the comment session has ended before they get the chance to send it to the post. Could you ask them to try copying their comment text, refreshing the blog post, then pasting the comment into the comment box and submitting that way? If it works regularly for them that way then their session is just timing out due to the length of their comment." Nota bene.

I remain skeptical, because when they have asked me to post their comment, I have the same problem (I have to do an elaborate move to finally get it up). One thing of which to be aware: If you copy text from sites such as AzCentral, they have invisible (unless you have an HTML reader) embedded code which may corrupt your comments. So, you software geek lurkers — I know you're our there — any other suggestions? (Note the comment from "An Infinitude of Tortoises").

Meanwhile, I'll be in Phoenix the week of Feb. 13 to mark the centennial and blog from home, and I'd love a chance to meet readers. If a group can agree on a time for mid-day or afternoon coffee at Park Central Starbucks or drinks at Portlands ("The Portland," as Cal has christened it), let me know. It has to be accessible by light rail.

 

State of the Union

Leave it to Jan Brewer to embarrass Arizona on any national stage given her. When President Obama came to visit Intel a day after his State of the Union address, the governor "greeted" him in a memorable photo: Her mouth angrily open and her finger in his face. Way to go, Jan! Wonder how Intel feels about its day in the sun as a high-tech employer that actually invests in America being eclipsed by you? The governor's whining on Fox "News" about Mr. Obama criticizing her book is a laff-riot. First, did she actually write this book or was it produced by the propaganda machine of which Fox is an integral part? Second, if she did write it (or even has her name on it), there's no such thing as bad publicity. Oh, to have the chief executive trash South Phoenix Rules or Deadline Man. I would be smiling — and use it as a blurb in the next editions.

Brewer's behavior no doubt plays well in places such as Gilbert and Chandler and Alabama. Outside the red precincts of reality denial, this is more confirmation of Arizona's nuttiness and National Laughing Stock/Cringe-maker. What would Barry Goldwater say? Brewer tried to claim she only wanted to give him a letter about Arizona's "comeback" (huh?) and invite him to go to the border with her (uh?), but, as the Republic reported: "It was clear from the moment they greeted one another that this would not be a run-of-the-mill encounter between the president and a local official. At one point, she was pointing her finger at him and at another, they were talking at the same time, seemingly over each other. He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn't finish her sentence."

As Harry Truman repeatedly said, in various ways, You may think I'm a son-of-a-bitch, but you will damned well respect the office of president of the United States. That was then, before the party of "values." Now, to other aspects of the State of the Union address:

Can liberalism be saved?

The only thing that can save America is liberalism. Unfortunately, American liberalism is on its death bed if not in its coffin. Voltaire said, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms." I'll let John F. Kennedy do it for me:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?” If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

Only liberalism, rightly understood, can stand for the middle class against the plutocracy, for the common good against nihilistic "individualism," for science and pragmatism against theocracy, for fair play against bigoted reaction. Liberalism gave us the greatest, widest wave of prosperity in the history of the world. It broke Jim Crow and let justice roll down like waters. It landed men on the moon. The seminal documents of the republic, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, are liberal creeds. And today? Ashes. The best that can be said of Barack Obama is that he is the best Republican president since George H.W. Bush, and he is at his core a conservative who Edmund Burke or Bill Buckley would be proud to claim. That he is all that stands, even momentarily, between us and national suicide, is astounding.

Sunny delusions

I climbed out of my funk that was half cabin fever from the rare Seattle snow (thank God, I'm downtown and not out in the suburbs) and part brain damage from the GOP debates. So far my nomination for the most under-covered Arizona story of the year goes to the abrupt resignation of Don Cardon as head of the state Commerce Authority. The Phoenix Business Journal carried the story. Then Betty Beard of the Republic wrote something more in depth:

Cardon, 51, said he believes it is a good time to leave because the commerce authority gives the state a good foundation for job recruitment, the Legislature has enacted more laws to help lure businesses and because there is improved cooperation among business and political leaders.

Cardon said he is especially pleased that the state recently attracted Silicon Valley Bank, which plans to build an operations center in Tempe, because it is a major venture-capital firm. All in all, he said, economic development efforts have come together faster than he expected.

Yet the "why" of old-school journalism remains largely unanswered.

Phoenix loses spring training

The Oakland As have accelerated negotiations begun in November with Mesa to move spring training from Phoenix Municipal Stadium to Hohokam Stadium in 2015. The Chicago Cubs, the biggest draw in the Cactus League, are leaving Hohokam for the new Riverview development at Dobson and the Loop 202 in 2014. New Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton dryly told Channel 12's Brahm Resnik that he had "inherited" the situation — (and these are my words) one of many messes left behind by the lost weekend that was Phil Gordon's second term. Stanton promised to do "anything reasonable" to keep the As, but "we have to be fiscally responsible." Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Brewers' contract at the stadium in Maryvale (to me the most pleasant spring training venue, but one that lacks the splash and comfort of north Scottsdale) expires this year and it's unclear if they will renew.

Spring training in Arizona was once a sweet, simple thing. After World War II, the then New York Giants started play at the old Municipal Stadium, while the Cleveland Indians built Hi Corbett Field in Tucson. In 1951, the Cubs came to the old Rendezvous Park Stadium in Mesa. The teams traveled by train and their arrival at Union Station was always a big event. For years, the Cactus League had eight teams (although they came and went). When I was a child, tickets were cheap, even star players were close and the atmosphere was easy-going and small town. This persists today at some spring training facilities, but it's become big business, and like much else in our society, cities are played off against each other to surrender the most tax dollars to further enrich the already rich.

The question is whether Phoenix should do much, if anything, to keep spring training in the city?

President Romney? Part I

You'll see a new In-Depth Report to the right, Campaign 2012. With the help of honorary Front Page Editor Richard Silc, I'll compile the best stories of the substance — not the horse race — of the campaign.

It says much about a changing America to compare Willard Mitt Romney to his father. George Romney grew up amid financial hardships and did not graduate from college. During World War II, he worked to better worker conditions, including those of African-Americans, in Detroit; later, he turned around American Motors, was popular with unions and pursued development of small, innovative cars before their time. As governor of Michigan, George Romney was a moderate Republican, fought for civil rights and against Goldwater extremism — and came very close to being the GOP presidential nominee in 1968, before admitting he had been "brainwashed" by the Pentagon over Vietnam.

Willard Mitt Romney never knew anything but wealth. He holds an MBA and law degree from Harvard. He's never held what most Americans would consider a real job, having worked as a consultant and private equity player, most notably at Bain Capital. Although a moderate governor of Massachusetts, the son has readily embraced the extremism of the right in his quest for the White House.

The father was a leader of an America that made productive things and raised the standard of living of the majority of its citizens. Not only that, he had lived hard times and as an adult brought people together. The son is a leader of an America that makes financial deals, often leading to the looting of the productive wealth and destruction of good jobs it took a century to create. They don't use the words "buy, strip and flip" for nothing in private equity. The son is willing, eager really,  to further drive people apart for his ambitions.

A win for the good guy(s)

Steve Goldstein sent out this email:

You recently received an e-mail from me--or from a friend who forwarded it to you--about the future of KJZZ's Here and Now, which I've hosted for the past five and a half years.  I acted without authorization in telling you that the program would be going off the air. 

 

In fact, KJZZ's management has not announced an end date for the program, and it will continue for the foreseeable future. My e-mail caused considerable confusion, and I hope it didn’t trouble you or lead you to reconsider your commitment to listening to KJZZ or supporting the station.

 

Thank you for being passionate about KJZZ and for supporting the station in our current and future endeavors.

 

Best wishes,

Steve Goldstein

 

My thanks to all the Rogue readers who let their displeasure known after reading about the potential loss of this vital program. I'm sorry if I got Steve into trouble with his bosses. But not sorry at all if this caused them to back down.

 

Heywood and Giffords

The suicide death of Bill Heywood and his wife, Susan, hit many long-time Phoenicians hard. This is the hour of lead, remembered if outlived, as Emily Dickinson wrote. I heard from so many friends and acquaintances, some of whom hadn't been in touch for years. The Republic did a creditable job telling the story, although it's revealing that the article was closed to comments. Revealing about our age of thugs and haters, not about the Heywoods. I only ran into him twice, long after he had been a giant in radio. But he was a friend to thousands of us, "the bright good morning voice," as Harry Chapin sings in the poignant W.O.L.D.

Long before broadcasting was consolidated, roboticized and ruled by shock-jocks, talk-show screamers or anodyne one-size-fits-all national "easy listening" formulas, local radio was a very big deal in Phoenix. Radio antennas topped the skyline. Jack Williams, who served eight years as governor, started his career in radio. His trademark: "It's another beautiful day in Arizona. Leave us all enjoy it." Barry Goldwater was another radio guy. Older readers can tell those stories, but by the time I came along nobody was bigger than Bill Heywood. He was the morning drive-time man on KOY, historically at 550 on the a.m. dial, the oldest station in Arizona. His voice, as others have said, was velvet. His humor was witty, subtle and gentle. And he spun the popular playlist of the day. His afternoon counterpart, Alan Chilcoat, "sang" the weather. Corporate monopolists such as Clear Channel would never allow such un-focus-group-tested fun today.

Phoenix radio in the 1970s featured "mainstream" rock on KRIZ, KRUX and KUPD. The upstart KDKB played entire albums, was fiercely independent, counter-culture and fighting every Top 40 convention. I recall an easy-listening station but not its letters (KBUZ?); it did have some fairly cool promos, keying off locations in the city and ending with "and you've got the mellow sound of...). Speaking of which, a "mellow rock" station broadcast from the old Ramada downtown, including one of the era's few female jocks. Of course, the stalwarts such as KTAR and KOOL were there, too, as well as a classical station.

The American promise

Editor's note: This is an essay I wrote for the Jan. 8th edition of the Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine (it's one of the last metropolitan newspapers to carry its own magazine):

I overhear many conversations about the economy, but the topper came recently in downtown Seattle. As two well-dressed men discussed the eurozone crisis and high unemployment at home, one said, "I'll tell you what I think it is: It's the beginning of the end of the world."

The severe recession and its staggering aftermath do represent the end of a world, if not the world. We live in the new hard times.

People sense it. A Rasmussen Poll last October found that only 37 percent of likely voters believed that America's best days were ahead. In a Gallup survey, 55 percent of respondents said it was very or somewhat unlikely that today's youth would enjoy a better life than their parents'.

Read more here.

The postman

In the 1980s, when in real life we came very close to nuclear war, David Brin wrote a novel called The Postman. His main character lives through the apocalypse and is wandering in the woods of Oregon where he finds an abandoned mail truck. He puts on the postman's coat for warmth and carries a mail sack to a nearby town in hopes of getting food. But they think he is a real mailman, and latch onto him as the embodied hope that the United States survives and is recovering. The book is far superior to the Kevin Costner film. As Wikipedia summarizes, "Despite the post-apocalyptic scenario, and several action sequences, the book is largely about civilization and symbols."

So does it matter if the U.S. Postal Service, facing persistent deficits, private competition and the prevalence of email, intends to kill 120,000 jobs, eliminate Saturday service and shut down 3,600 post offices in smaller towns? I think it matters profoundly, and not least on the level of civilization and symbols.

As MSNBC's Bob Sullivan makes convincingly clear, the Postal Service's alleged financial trouble is largely the result of an accounting swindle from the Bush administration. This is backed up by a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Laying off 120,000 people in the worst labor market since the Depression is nuts, and will fall especially hard on minorities who already face much higher unemployment.

The new isolationism

Back when students were taught American history, they learned about the isolationism into which the nation retreated after World War I. It did not turn out to be splendid. Nobody would accuse us of that now: We're fighting undeclared wars on three continents, maintaining hundreds of military bases in scores of nations, policing the global commons of trade and oil transit with the U.S. Navy, going to great and disadvantageous lengths to manage China's peaceful rise to global power, trying to keep Israel, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan from starting World War III and carrying all the burdens of soft empire.

Yet we have entered an isolationism every bit as dangerous as its predecessor in the 1920s and 1930s. It is an isolationism of the national mind.

How else can one fully explain the vanishing act of climate change from the national discourse? No other event, not even the latest marital/divorce saga of the newest invented celebrity, will more adversely affect life on this planet short of a major nuclear exchange. But the growing costs and enormous future consequences of climate change are absent from our policies and politics. Meanwhile, one of our two major political parties, the Republicans, has been captured by extremism and madness. But the major media, where most Americans get their "news," won't truthfully discuss it. What happens to such a nation?

Thank you

Rogue Columnist will mark its fourth anniversary next week, a veteran run in the blogosphere. I write and produce this blog because it offers analysis and commentary, especially for my Arizona readers, that I don't find elsewhere. I write it because, as George Smiley said, I always thought I owed. I'm indebted to Richard Silc, the honorary front page editor of Rogue, as well as others who pass along important news. My thanks go out to the regular commenters who enliven and enlighten the conversation here, and to the growing number of readers who come to the site. May you all have a happy New Year.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue II

Midtown, including the Viad Tower, left, after the big boom.

The first defining event of today's Central Avenue was the real-estate boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. With land from Fillmore Street to Camelback Road upzoned for skyscrapers and money flowing from the deregulated savings and loan industry, the city was remade by a huge real-estate boom. Stuck with the disjointed set of highrises outside the old central business district, the city tried to put planners lipstick on the pig in the 1970s by christening the area from the railroad tracks to Camelback and Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street as the Central Corridor. As I wrote in the previous post, the visionaries of the 1960s and 1970s imagined Central would become Phoenix's version of Wilshire Boulevard. That never happened. Phoenix lacked the economy, assets and ambition of Los Angeles. But it gave a big try in the '80s and '90s.

These were the years that saw the rise of the Dial Tower at Central and Palm Lane. It was the new headquarters of the old Greyhound Corp. and remains, with its distinct deodorant container shape and copper skin the only truly arresting skyscraper on Central. Two bank highrises were built just south of Osborn, along with a little World Trade Center-style tower at Virginia, displacing the Palms Theater, and a few midrises. USWest anchored one of two skyscrapers erected on the northeast corner of Central and Thomas, where the iconic Bob's Big Boy, beloved of cruisers, stood. But this was nothing compared with what was planned. Back in the 1960s, the idea of a monorail running down Central was floated. It was revived in the '80s as part of a developer's plan to build, north of Indian School, the tallest building in the country with the monorail connecting the mammoth skyscraper to Sky Harbor.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue I

Central and Monroe, around the year I was born (1956)

"The trouble with Central is that it isn't central to anything any more." So spoke a major leasing executive in 2000, over a breakfast I had been dragooned into to get my mind right about what had happened to my hometown. He was a fool, of course, and not merely because he helped drive the local economy into its present depression. Central Avenue does much more than demarcate street numbers from east to west. It lies at the heart of a far-flung Valley metroplex. Central is the touchstone of Phoenix's history, with more stories than a hundred blog posts could tell. It remains the most interesting street in the city. And it will be the critical marker for a quality future, if the metropolitan area stands a chance of attaining one.

In the old city, Central connected the discrete parts that made Phoenix whole. Starting at South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the world, it crossed two-lane Baseline Road. In both directions spread out the enchanting Japanese Flower Gardens. Ahead were bands of farmland, pastures and citrus groves as it descended to the Salt River, with the skyline and far mountains arms-length clear in the distance. After going through the tiny south Phoenix business district, you crossed one of two bridges over the river (Mill Avenue being the other), then entered the city proper. In the early days, both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads sited their depots on Central, before moving to the new Union Station at Fourth Avenue in the 1920s. Soon, Depression public works built an underpass that for decades held four very tight lanes. Before the overpasses at Seventh avenue and street, this was the only sure way under what were then busy rail lines. Everybody honked when they drove through the concrete tunnel.

Coming out at Jefferson, Central was in the heart of a vibrant downtown. The Hotel Adams, Luhrs building and hotel, Heard Building, Security Building, Hotel San Carlos and art deco Valley National Bank tower (nee Professional Building) with its iconic revolving roof sign all faced Central. Other neon faced the street, including from the radio tower on the Greater Arizona Savings building. The avenue was packed with locally owned small businesses, especially retailers. People crowded the sidewalks, where news vendors hawked the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. During the holidays, Christmas decorations spanned the street. For years, a low-rise coffee shop sat on the southeast corner of Central and Van Buren, topped by billboards.

Phoenix rising?

By Emil Pulsifer, Guest Rogue

Rogue Columnist readers may be surprised to learn than reading Robert Robb, editorial columnist of the Arizona Republic, is a guilty pleasure of mine. As often as I disagree with him, his arguments have a specious plausibility and level of detail that makes them worth refuting. I always learn a lot about a subject in deconstructing one of his columns — though not usually from Robb himself.

His column of December 7th, "Phoenix-area Recovery Better Than You Think" is a case in point. Not only does it elaborate Robb's longstanding thesis that "Phoenix doesn't have an economy dependent on real estate," it also argues that Phoenix's post-recession economy is doing better than that of most big cities.

This is astonishing. Even local-booster superstars like developer/economist Elliott Pollack, whose firm "currently serves as the economic department for Maricopa County" according to his company bio, and who also wrote the "Blue Chip Economic Forecast" for Phoenix appearing at ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business website, admits that "...the local economy cannot have much of a recovery without a significant increase in construction activity." Either Robb is a genius or else he's standing on his head.

America's racist sheriff

The big news is the release of a report, three years coming, about the racial profiling in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. You can download the entire report at AzCentral, Talking Points Memo and many other sites. It confirms what we already know: "America's toughest sheriff" is also America's most racist sheriff. The department has engaged in systemic racial profiling against Hispanics and "brown skinned people." This should be another nail in Joe Arpaio's coffin, but I suspect many of his constituents will merely go "Yaaaay!!"

This is only the tip of a very big iceberg. There's the hundreds of botched sex-crimes investigations, along with the many instances of abuse in the jail system. Honest police officers talk about fumbled investigations by the MCSO, including probable homicides that were tossed off as suicides. Much of the command staff has already been forced out in scandals. Does anyone doubt that the tone for this behavior was set from the top, in other words Arpaio himself? This is a department that runs by a cult of personality. As I asked in a previous post, Why isn't Joe Arpaio in jail? Yet he survives.

To be sure, departments nationwide face such probes. The Seattle Police are the target of a Justice Department investigation into excessive-force complaints. But the MCSO is different, with a longstanding pattern of bad behavior.