Rogue Columnist

A death in Phoenix

A little before dawn Thursday morning, Byron Yellowhair pulled his car to the shoulder of the well-lighted Papago Freeway in central Phoenix, got out and started walking down the shoulder. Maybe he was drunk or high, and maybe he weaved out into the traffic -- he definitely had a troubled past. But he was 24 with life still ahead, dreamed of becoming a teacher back home on the Navajo reservation. He was an individual sacred to God.

Hit so many times, by so many cars, he was dismembered to an extent that even hardened DPS officers had never seen before.

The Republic reported, "officials said they will likely never know how many cars hit the man." Bedazzled by streaming video of school lunch menus or whatever, the state's biggest newspaper pays less attention to journalism basics. So one must hunt around for the "where" (near 24th Street), and it's never made clear how many motorists involved actually pulled over to wait for the law.

Even if some did, more, perhaps many more, drove on. Phoenix has a tremendous problem with fatal hit-and-run "accidents." One family lost two brothers, over a period of years, to hit-and-run drivers. Many never seem to be caught (story idea for a newspaper, Phoenix, if you have one). I remember another case involving a person in a wheelchair. The tone seemed to be set by Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who hit a man on a well-lit part of Glendale Avenue (speed limit 35 or 40), drove on and tried to get his secretary to arrange for his shattered windshield to be quietly fixed while his car was stashed in his garage. He claimed to have thought he hit a dog.

Crisis reveals character. Had O'Brien stopped and given aid and comfort, he would have been a hero. He didn't. Yet he is only one of a seemingly large cohort of vehicular assailants. Most of these murderers seem to get away with it.

Wednesday must read: The insecure American vote

Be sure to check out Art Levine's excellent "The Republican War on Voting" in the American Prospect. The wide-ranging Rovian assault on voting has not been stopped by ousting such characters as the odious former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Levine delves into:

...the Republican Party's ongoing nationwide campaign to suppress the low-income minority vote by propagating the myth of voter fraud. Using various tactics -- including media smears, bogus lawsuits, restrictive new voting laws and policies, and flimsy prosecutions -- Republican operatives, election officials, and the GOP-controlled Justice Department have limited voting access and gone after Project Vote, 1.6 million largely Democratic-leaning voters since 2004.

All told, non-profit groups registered over three million new voters in 2004, about the same time that Republican and Justice Department efforts to publicize "voter fraud" and limit voting access became more widespread.

Think 2000 and 2004 can't happen again? They can, unless voters and the media wise up.

What is the McCain camp hiding with his health records?

The McCain campaign "released" the president-elect's long awaited, long promised, health records in classic fashion: on the edge of a holiday weekend, when they would be guaranteed to get little attention. Not only that, but the records were made available to only 20 reporters hand-picked by the campaign.

Those journalists were given three hours to view more than 1,000 pages of often highly technical records; they were not allowed to make copies or remove them. McCain's doctors were made available for 90 minutes -- or so the newspeople were told. The questions were cut short after 45 minutes.

America's increasingly lapdog media did not report much about this odd, not to mention suspicious, situation, made more compelling given McCain's age and cancer history. The headlines were essentially "McCain is healthy...robust...takes a baby aspirin...no cancer recurrence."

Tellingly, the McCain campaign excluded the New York Times' Lawrence K. Altman, a reporter and a medical doctor. Even so, Dr. Altman's examination of the pool report made the real news, which Rogue Columnist will start your week with and keep up.

Weekend must-read

In today's Washington Post, James Howard Kunstler does an intervention on our magical thinking as we're confronted with a new paradigm, about energy, transportation, living arrangements and even food:

Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply...

Contempt for the Constitution

On page A-21 of today's New York Times and deep inside its Website is the day's most consequential story: Karl Rove being subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about his involvement in the political prosecution of Alabama's former Democratic governor and the firings of U.S. attorneys.

The onetime Bush political boss appears to have been deeply involved in the illegal and unethical acts. And of course he is refusing to testify. He may be held in contempt of Congress like his former colleague Harriet Meirs. The Bush Justice Department will refuse to prosecute the case. And the clock runs out.

Indeed, the clock is running out on American democracy. The United States Congress has only a little time to reassert its constitutional powers or the America we once knew is dead.

Unfortunately most of the media treat this as a minor tit-for-tat political story, which is exactly what the radical right wants.

Lisa Graham Keegan: Who says there are no second acts in American lives?

No doubt, the fetching Lisa Graham Keegan will play well on television as an education adviser to President-elect McCain. It will be instructive to see if the national media look beyond the blond good looks and quick mind to see that Keegan represents everything that voters want to get away from in Republican education policy.

As a legislator and then as superintendent of public instruction in Arizona -- the equivalent of education secretary -- she aggressively embraced the "charter school movement" and made Arizona into a national leader as an education "marketplace," where charters became as ubiquitous as Circle K stores. Properly constituted and regulated, individual charter schools have turned in impressive results nationally. These individual charters can be studied for best practices, but, there's little evidence they can handle the job of public schools on a massive scale. Evidence mounts that many fail to ourperform public schools, yet are more costly and prone to financial abuse.

The results of Keegan's crusade in Arizona were nothing short of tragic. Acting as if Arizona public schools were overfed, union-wrecked systems seen in a few big cities back east, she pushed for "school choice" in the form of charters. Few appear to perform well. Some are prime business ventures for well-connected right-wingers. Many are fly-by-night storefronts with no playgrounds, libraries or cafeterias. I recall seeing one where a roach coach would stop by at noon and toot the horn, as if it were a construction site. I guess the school owners were preparing the pupils for their future careers. Meanwhile, the costs of a school library -- a given when I was in Arizona public schools -- are foisted on the city library.

The Republic looks at a tale of three cities

The Arizona Republic's Chad Graham traveled to Austin and Seattle to report on some lessons recession-slammed Phoenix might learn. Numerous Rogue Columnist readers have asked for my reactions. Chad is a fine journalist and a friend. His story fits into a continuum of sometime efforts by the newspaper to educate the public and policy makers about the real world -- this goes back at least to the 1980s. These efforts are ignored as population growth resumes and the nation's last big factory town returns to churning out suburban tract houses.

The editors tip their hands by, I would assume, inserting this sentence to make defensive "Valley residents" feel better: "Phoenix will never have a gateway seaport to Asia that hums with activity. Seattle will never have the potential solar power of Phoenix." The sad reality is that the center of solar research, entrepreneurship and use is cloudy Germany. Phoenix literally started the solar power movement in the 1950s and let it get away -- therein lies the tale of the town.

Graham's important point is that Seattle and Austin "have learned the lesson that Phoenix is now being taught: Economic downturns hit harder when you are overly reliant on one industry."

Rather than go through the story, or even rehash my years of "controversial" efforts to raise these issues, I'd rather make a few key points among dozens that could be discussed. My perspective is as a Phoenician who has lived in Seattle for nearly a year and has seen both close up.

On transportation, stuff you can't make up

Gov. Janet Napolitano is not so tough when it comes to dealing with the real power in Arizona. Thus, we have this story broken last week by Capitol Media Services:

Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to take home builders off the financial hook for paying for new roads in exchange for a $100,000 donation to a campaign to persuade voters to boost their own taxes.

The deal, outlined in a letter obtained by Capitol Media Services, resulted in the recrafting of the $42.6 billion transit improvement initiative shortly before it was filed Tuesday to remove a provision to raise at least some of the money from fees on new developments — fees that would be added to the cost of new homes.

Instead the final version of the initiative — the one being circulated for signatures — calls for the entire costs of new highways, widened roads and mass transit projects to be paid for with a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax, an increase of 18 percent from the current 5.6 cent state levy.

I suppose this could be shrewd if it delivers long-needed Phoenix-Tucson rail service and commuter rail to Pinal County, not merely more roads. But it comes at a huge price, may never be approved, and will face the usual rear-guard attacks by the Legislature.

Hillary Clinton's crackup

So let me get this straight, Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic nominee because she is Landslide Lyndon in...West Virginia? The rich Yale grad has wooed the less-educated, poorer white voters who would never vote for a black person. That's a recommendation. The best send up of the charade comes from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. Well, there's also Amy Poehler on SNL.

Memo to Sen. Clinton: Those people will vote for McCain in the fall.

The longer Hillary stays in the race, the more one is prone to reflect unsentimentally on the Clinton years in the White House. Mrs. Clinton's arrogance squandered a chance for universal healthcare. Bill helped elect a GOP Congress for the first time in 40 years. He pushed through NAFTA and a host of destructive deregulation. He brought China into the WTO with no protections for American jobs. He squandered historic opportunities, lastly sinking into the squalid Monica scandal. She picked a state in which she had never lived as her senatorial entitlement. The net was to make the election of 2000 close enough for the Republicans to steal, leading to the calamity of W and Dick.

This is the woman who would be president? Not even in 2012 if she manages to sink Obama.

Getting ready to steal election '08

The Republican Party of Karl Rove has made voter suppression and voter intimidation a hallmark. Thus the likely stolen 2004 results in Ohio and the undoubtedly stolen Florida of 2000. Pay close attention this year. The strategy is to make it difficult for the poor  -- likely Democrats -- to vote. This will be done in the guise of various laws to prevent "fraud." One form has been upheld by the Bush Supreme Court (memo to Hillary backers: want four more years of this?)

Such was the talking point in Arizona, when it passed a voter ID law. I always wondered if fraud there were real, why were all those voting illegal immigrants electing a Legislature filled with anti-Hispanic bigots? Of course, they weren't even trying to vote. They were just working for less than minimum wage to keep the Anglos fat and happy.

Today, the New York Times has a must-read editorial about the fraud of "voter fraud"

Missouri and at least 19 other states are considering passing laws that would force people to prove their citizenship before they can vote. These bills are not a sincere effort to prevent noncitizens from voting; that is a made-up problem. The real aim is to reduce turnout by eligible voters. Republicans seem to think that laws of this kind will help them win elections, but burdensome rules like these — and others cropping up around the country — pose a serious threat to democracy and should be stopped.

There were already stories of vote suppression in the Indiana primary. Watch this for the fall.

The Stack: Super Loss; McCain greenwash; kid gloves for polygamists; Karen's no crackpot; peak oil

The funniest story in the stack is an item reporting that Glendale did not even recoup what it spent as host "city" for the Super Bowl.  For years ahead of the spectacle, Phoenix media reported what an economic boon it would be. This is a classic example about how critical thinking is neither taught nor valued in today's newsrooms (gee, why do we keep losing readers?).

A basic analysis of the hype would have shown that the promised economic benefits would be modest. It happened during high season, so resorts and hotels would already be booked. Indeed, considering the NFL demands blocks of rooms at a discount, the hotel industry probably made less money than it would have otherwise. Sales of souvenirs? Most of the profit goes back to the NFL. Restaurants would have similarly been packed anyway. And so on.

It's not that the Super Bowl doesn't bring benefits, in terms of exposure and the gathering of big deal makers. Too bad it took place in an amorphous place without an identity and a stadium in a cotton field on the metro fringe, in a place with little economy besides the great -- now shuttered -- housing factory. But the media shouldn't have bought into the economic hype. Alas, the pressure is always extreme to "say something positive." Unfortunately, many reporters today would never even have applied the basic bullshit detector that was once a standard-issue item in their craft.

Read on for more of the Stack.

The Keating Five survivor moves on to land swaps

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

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

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

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

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

Recalling Phil Gordon, and a corridor of lost opportunities

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

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

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

Has Phil Gordon failed as Phoenix mayor?

Making serious economic reform, part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read on for more of the Stack

Problem with 'county hospital' even worse than Republic reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grim economy, but there are silver linings

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

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