Rogue Columnist

Prepare for disappointment

First the good news. The monstrous Trump is out of office — can you even imagine our situation if he had prevailed or swung the election through the courts or Congress? We have a decent, competent president who is restoring dignity, normality, and good sense to the highest office in the land. As the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin noted, Biden has already made 50 things better.

Biden must act fast — on subduing the pandemic and pushing through a major stimulus that includes big investments in infrastructure. Not just "roads and bridges" but passenger railroads and rail transit. America is the only advanced urbanized nation without high-speed rail. He must bring the economy back.

People need to feel the improvement directly. Otherwise, Republicans will win the Congress in 2022 and the administration will be stymied as happened in six of Obama's eight years.

The bad news is that Republicans will try to defeat Biden at every turn. They are suddenly clutching their pearls about the debt and deficit (which they didn't care about when they were giving tax cuts for corporations and the rich that added so much red ink). Trump's Supreme Court and lower-court appointments will be another major impediment. Also, the wokesters on the left will be a problem for Biden. Defund the police and other moronic slogans helped cost the Democrats seats in the House in 2020.

So the table is set. Optimists see Biden as the second coming of FDR, as they saw Obama as the new Lincoln. Maybe. We desperately need to move the country forward, finally, rather than being stuck where another GOP administration comes in and undoes the work of its Democratic predecessor. One step forward, two steps back.

Please discuss in the comments.

 

 

 

 

When Midtown cooked

Midtown wasn't planned. It simply escaped...any coherent city planning, zoning, or vision. Some say it was Phoenix's attempt at Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard, the nearly 16-mile avenue from downtown LA's financial district to Santa Monica. Maybe. But Phoenix never had the economic power or urban assets to support its version of Museum Row on the Miracle Mile, Century City, Koreatown, Beverly Hills, Westwood with UCLA, and subway lines. Wouldn't want to become another LA.

The two are comparable in that both were the sites of a majority of post-1960 skyscrapers. In Phoenix, it began with the building above. A turquoise-skinned International-style box, the Guaranty Bank Building opened in March 1960, designed by architect Charles Polacek and built by contractor David Murdock (who lived a remarkable life). At 252 feet, it dethroned the Hotel Westward Ho as the tallest building in Phoenix and the Southwest. On the top floor the Cloud Club offered a spectacular view.

Over the next thirty or more years, this was the heart of the city. For better and for worse.

The Camelback Towers was also complete in the photo (a mile north at Pierson). Park Central Shopping Center had replaced the Central Dairy in the late 1950s. Del Webb's Phoenix Towers at Central and Cypress Street, one of the few co-ops in the city, opened in 1957 (built in two phases). Twin mid-rise office buildings were opened two blocks south of Thomas; they eventually included U-Haul's headquarters. Midtown, still unnamed, was coming together haphazardly. The central business district, including most shops and department stores, were still downtown (Fillmore to the railroad tracks, Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street).

Cold Civil War Turns Hot

Remember, remember the Sixth of January! For the first time since the foolish War of 1812, the U.S. Capitol was invaded. In this case, the attackers were not the redcoats but American citizens, whipped up by the president to overturn certifying the Electoral College that he lost.

Rogue readers have made some excellent points on the open thread which I put up this past week. I urge you to read them.

We have a mob president who not only specifically incited the putsch but then declined to respond to lawmakers' desperate pleas for help inside the besieged Capitol. These are not debatable points but objective facts. So is the fact that the FBI warned of a "war" planned to halt certification of the election.

Hitler used a beer hall. Trump used social media.

Arizona played a big role, from the Barbarian King Jake Angeli in his horned cap, as part of the mob to the likes of U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar helping organize the rally that led to insurrection. The event has a body count: Five dead, along with the members of Congress huddled in fear, then evacuated — House members were shut up in a room where some Republicans refuse to wear masks and at least one (a Democrat) getting COVID.

Insurrection open thread

Proud Boys march in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning. Soon a rightwing mob, incited by Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol. (Elvert Barnes photo).

I feel obliged to put up a forum for commenters in the wake of the unprecedented assault on the U.S. Capitol and our experiment in self-government by the extreme right, virtually under orders from President Trump.

A longer take will come next week. In the meantime, a couple of thoughts.

First, I've hardly been alone in warning that this event was coming (beginning with my first column after the 2016 election). This is what Trump is all about. As I wrote on Facebook, the surprising thing is that some people seemed genuinely surprised by the events of January 6th, 2021.

Second, it might not have been a coup. But it's not over yet.

I yield the floor to your comments.

 

 

 

Arizona's pandemic economy

The longest economic expansion in history crashed into recession this spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment skyrocketed to Depression-era levels before recovering...some. Industries such as airlines, hotels, tourism, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar retailers were savaged.

I've written about this extensively in my Seattle Times columns. But let's narrow the lens to Arizona and Phoenix with help from the invaluable data collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Click on the chart for a larger view.

Unemployment:

 

Population growth (by numbers and year-over-year percentage change:

Phoenix's historic schools

Once upon a time, schools weren't built to resemble prisons with walls and steel fences, along with no shade and heat-radiating concrete and gravel. Even in early Phoenix, most were built to inspire. In 1873 (above) an adobe school at Central and Monroe was the beginning of better to come. Here are a few — click on the photo for a larger view:

Central School, shown in 1899, replaced the adobe structure. The town's population was about 5,500.

Monroe School at Seventh Street and Monroe, 1914. The building was preserved and is now the Children's Museum of Phoenix, alas without the shade trees and grass.

Adams School, later Grace Court, at Eighth Avenue and Adams, in 1920.

'The homeless'

I use quotation marks because this term encompasses many distinct — sometimes overlapping — conditions. Its continued use makes it difficult to seriously explore this phenomenon, much less propose constructive actions ("solutions" aren't possible). Worse, it makes the situation appear simple: All they need are homes. In fact, it is among the most complex and intractable of social problems.

In the Depression, many people who lost their homes and farms were consigned to shantytowns outside cities ("Hoovervilles") or long trips to uncertain new places, immortalized by Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. They were not welcome many places, including Phoenix, which couldn't even care for its own, much less provide for "gas moochers." But this was a temporary emergency, eased by the New Deal and cured entirely by the demand for jobs in the ramp-up to World War II. Interestingly, crime was very low during the Great Depression.

At the other end of the spectrum were hoboes, vagrants, and bums riding the rails, living off the land and handouts, sometimes settling in the skid rows of cities. In Phoenix, this district was called the Deuce. They had cheap single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms, cheap grocery stores, cheap bars. This population was almost exclusively male. Vagrancy laws were strictly enforced. They could find temporary work in such places as the Phoenix warehouse district's produce sheds.

Color Arizona

Joe Biden won Arizona. But, as the Duke of Wellington said of the Battle of Waterloo, "it was the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." Biden prevailed with about 11,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points, over the most criminal and dangerous president in American history.

Mark Kelly's victory in the Senate race was easier to foresee. Kelly is a former combat pilot and NASA astronaut, as well as husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was the victim of an assassination attempt.

Martha McSally, his opponent, had already lost a Senate race to Kyrsten Sinema and was appointed Senator by Gov. Doug Ducey in a cynical partisan attempt to give her the advantage. Didn't work, Doug. For the first time since 1952, Arizona has two Democratic U.S. Senators. Otherwise, of the nine congressional districts in the state Democratic incumbents won five.

So does Arizona become a "magenta state," as the New York Times put it? Not quite.

Despite heavy Democratic turnout and Latino activism, Republicans maintained control over the Legislature. More about this later.