Rogue Columnist

The new pintos

I operate the Arizona History Shop for journalists, amateur historians, and curious civilians — free and an email or phone call away. It's sometimes shocking how little Arizona's millions know about their (mostly adopted) state. The situation is even more startling with the East Coast media.

Today's exhibit is a story in the New Republic. Headline: "Arizona’s Democratic Senators Are Already Angering the Left." Subhed: "The activists who sent Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to Washington aren’t happy with their early moves in office." Kelly and Sinema voted for an amendment that would prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving pandemic stimulus checks. TNR reports:

Latino advocates aren’t happy about it. “We are extremely disappointed by the vote that they have taken to strip stimulus funds from immigrants in the Covid stimulus bill,” Hector Sanchez Barba, executive director of the Phoenix-based group Mi Familia Vota says. “So we are sending a clear message, early in the game with a new administration, that this is unacceptable. We immediately mobilized our people on the ground, we immediately reached out, but we’re going to use all the political capital that we have. We’re going to use everything that we’ve been building in terms of political power to keep all the politicians accountable.”

Mac

When today's Arizonans think about the state's most important U.S. Senators, they go to Barry Goldwater and John McCain. A few will remember Carl Hayden, one of the longest-serving members of the Senate and, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, third in the line of succession to the White House.

Yet Goldwater, although the father of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party, had a thin layer of legislative accomplishments, and McCain did almost nothing for the state he made his home. Hayden was undeniably the most important figure in winning the Central Arizona Project in Congress.

The Arizona Senator who casts the longest shadow of accomplishments is nearly forgotten: Ernest McFarland. First elected in 1940 when he defeated incumbent Henry Fountain Ashurst, Mac was an important partner with Hayden in fighting for Arizona's share of Colorado River water. His most significant accomplishment was sponsoring the GI Bill, which provided benefits for returning benefits for returning World War II veterans, including educational benefits.

Mac was the father of the GI Bill. He also served as Senate Majority Leader from 1951 to 1953, followed by Lyndon Johnson.

Supersized

It's difficult to find another major metropolitan area where most of the suburbs are as populous as in Phoenix.

Consider: The "town" of Gilbert alone held more than 254,000 people as of 2019. It's only the fifth-largest municipality in metropolitan Phoenix, but larger than all but two cities in Los Angeles County: LA and Long Beach. Mesa is the 35th largest city in America, at more than 518,000 — larger than Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis and a host of better-known cities.

This is very different from the pattern in most metros. Older eastern and Midwestern areas consist of large numbers of small suburbs and a large center city. That star may have dimmed, as in Detroit or St. Louis, but none of their planets are anywhere close on population. The same is true in Atlanta, with a relatively small city of 507,000 in a metro of 6 million, but no individual suburb comes close. Charlotte, the 15th most populous city in the country (886,000), essentially annexed its entire county.

Phoenix's populous suburbs weren't always this way. These were once individual towns in the Salt River Valley, separate from each other, with different histories, dependent on agriculture and railroads. Above is Main Street in Mesa 1940, when the population was 7,200. This separation was evident well into the 1960s.

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: