Rogue Columnist

The 2010 thing

I've never been big on predictions, much less had the talent to match the trenchant dazzle of Jim Kunstler's annual revel (my favorite line: "Unlike the 1930s, we are no longer a nation who call each other 'Mister' and "Ma'am,' where even the down-and-out wear neckties and speak a discernible variant of regular English, where hoboes say 'thank you,' and where, in short, there is something like a common culture of shared values. We're a nation of thugs and louts with flames tattooed on our necks, who call each other 'motherfucker' and are skilled only on playing video games based on mass murder.")

No, history is too filled with contingency to make crystal balls reliable. The conventional wisdom of our experts is perhaps more corrupted and thus worthless than at any time since 1929 or 1914. Our collective inability to see things as they are, rather than as we wish them to be, makes any clear-eyed assessment immediately consigned to the perdition of "doomers" and "he's so negative." We have more "information sources" than ever before, and we are more ignorant. Even so, we can take a spin through the major themes that the new year and decade will bring.

For America: The continued bleeding of multiple wars will continue to be underreported and ignored by most of our fellow citizens, barring a major calamity. And yet it will be an uber-burden that will keep building new matrices of trouble for the nation. One example is how our military is essentially providing cover for China to spend billions extracting Afghanistan's resources for the good of the Chinese economy. The military is the jobs and stimulus program for the United States, but unlike investment in, say, infrastructure and research, it will not repay itself. It is, in Ross Perot's famous locution, the giant sucking sound. We can't pacify tribal "nations" driven by medieval theology (and I'm not talking about Gilbert, Ariz., here). Our efforts will not stop terrorism. Let me go really far out on a limb and say President Obama's "limited" Afghan surge will end up like LBJ circa 1966.

The Maloney Doctrine

As the cops say, "thank God for stupid criminals." For whatever reason, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was unable to detonate the powerful plastic explosive strapped to his legs and Detroit was spared the further indignity of being the scene of a new terror attack. If the early reports hold, the explosive was easily detectable by current screening techniques. The suspect was also on terror watch lists in the U.S. and the U.K., but was somehow able to board an airliner.

A cynic would say: After all this crap law-abiding fliers have been through for the past eight years, and all the federal snooping into the lives of American citizens, here's what we get. Ted Kennedy was prevented from flying because his name was on a "no-fly" list, but not Abdulmutallab. Oh, but he dutifully took off his shoes like every other schlub going through the long, long security lines. Some things are remarkable: that the detection gear didn't work, and that with all the computing muscle at its disposal, the feds couldn't get this guy on the right list (despite a warning about the man to American officials from his father, a Nigerian banker). The man also used cash to buy his ticket. Suspicions, anyone? Anyone? Otherwise, the reality is that terror attacks will happen in an open society. We haven't gotten our La-Z-Boy heads around that yet.

It will go hard on the Obama administration, especially Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is discovering she's not in Arizona any more, coddled by the powerful women of the "sewing circle" and the hagiography of the Arizona Republic. First she said the system worked "like clockwork," now she says it failed. Andrew Sullivan, hardly an enemy of the administration, has called for her resignation, so that the Bush era of unaccountability and incompetence doesn't persist.

The dust bowl

Tuesday's hellish pileup on Interstate 10 near Casa Grande involved nine tractor-trailer rigs, 13 automobiles, killed three and injured 14. Add this to the hidden budget of Arizona -- it's not the one Jan and the Kooks are relentlessly cutting or that the nut-baggers obsess about being a sign of  "SOCIALISM."

Severe dust storms are a part of the eco-system of the Gila River valley and basin. They've been made more severe by generations of pumping out ground water in Pinal and northern Pima counties, killing off many desert plants that might otherwise retard the dust. None of this is new. When I-10 was built in the 1970s, federal and state transportation planners failed to account for it. At one point, lighted signs were erected to warn of windstorms. But no provision was made for drivers to be able to safely pull off the road. Remarkably, no rest area exists between Casa Grande and Marana -- the danger zone -- that could allow cars and trucks to find safety.

This didn't matter as much in the 1970s, when the two-lanes-each-way rural interstate was planned for a state with less than 2 million people. It was lightly traveled. Even so, it was built with the usual lack of foresight (unless there's a quick profit for politically connected developers). Two lanes? The Interstate between Dayton and Cincinnati was built with three each way, and this was serving comparable metro areas as Phoenix and Tucson in the 1970s. But not in Arizona.

More remarkable still, the rural I-10 remains largely in place, even though it now funnels traffic between one large metro area and one of the most populous in the nation (state population tripled). The highway has seen development added along the way, especially the horrid sprawl outside Casa Grande. Driving to Tucson now much of the time is torture, stuck in congestion all the way -- with Arizona's road warriors doing 85 (and these are the responsible drivers).

Decade of delusion

The Information Center formerly known as the Arizona Republic prominently offers up a breezy feature on how the decade now ending "upturned our touchstones, left us suspended in a mixed-up, flip-flopped, name-swapping, upside-down place." Why, even the FBR Open (the huh?) is now sponsored by Waste Management. The feature quotes, yet again, Elliott Pollack and, yet again, declines to mention that he makes his money as a developer, as well as an economist in the service of developers. " 'Every place we were strong,' he says, such as commercial real estate and the semiconductor industry, has crumbled.... Waste management, indeed." So much for what Jacques Brel would term, "Cute, cute, cute, in a stupid ass way."

As someone who was in the heart of the battle in Arizona for most of the decade, I would describe it in more sober terms, for it represents lost opportunities that the state, and particularly the city of Phoenix, may never get again. Call it the Decade of Delusion. Admittedly a strong term for a place built on a history of boosterism, glasses half full and always, like the Roadrunner, seeming to escape disaster at the last second. Those escapes, in reality, were opportunities tossed aside and hard choices pushed into a future that has now arrived. They were decades spent devouring and profaning the last best place, arriving in 2000 with one more chance to get it right. Instead, delusion prevailed. Now state and city are Wile E. Coyote, standing on air, still not realizing it's a long way down.

I arrived back in Arizona literally just in time to attend a debate between Sandy Bahr of the Sierra Club and real-estate lawyer Grady Gammage over Prop 202. It was September of 2000 and the initiative, which would have placed limits on sprawl and leapfrog development, was leading in polls. What happened next was a remarkable turnaround, as the real-estate interests mustered a well-funded scare campaign against 202. I recall Pollack saying the state would collapse into recession if the measure passed. That was my first red flag: 202 was hardly radical, indeed could have been criticized for not going far enough. It would have made infill profitable and left huge swaths to develop elsewhere. But if its passage meant recession, here was a state too dependent on one sector, despite all the boosterism about Arizona's "vibrant, diverse" economy. Prop 202 was crushed. The land barons set about platting everything from Yavapai County to beyond Tucson. The Decade of Delusion had begun.

Phoenix and Seattle

It's been more than two years since I left Phoenix for Seattle and readers have repeatedly asked me to compare and contrast the two. I've hesitated because they are not merely different places but different planets.

As a columnist for the Arizona Republic, I used Seattle as a yardstick for Phoenix in a pair of articles. They were about the same size metro areas, and in 1960, same size cities. Both were weather challenged. Both had sat in the shadows of bigger cities (LA for Phoenix, San Francisco for Seattle). In 1960, Seattle was heavily dependent on Boeing and otherwise held a number of declining industries, as well as a history of labor problems. Phoenix was rich with newly recruited tech companies and a fresh slate. Which city would you have bet on? Of course, Seattle turned out to be a world city and Phoenix a massive real-estate scheme. The second column attempted to explain some of Seattle's strengths that could be nurtured to help Phoenix (yeah, I was the one who was always gloomy, never offering solutions). These columns went into the dustbin of all such writing about Arizona and, as teaching tools, they were also very naive.

In reality, Seattle had so many strengths Phoenix never had or developed. This is why a real compare-and-contrast may be of limited value, as well as being seen as more Phoenix bashing.

McCain Agonistes

Am I the only one who notices how radio news reports -- even on NPR -- on everything from health care to the budget always seem to lead with sound cuts from Republican opponents. They get the time to spout a talking point, then the announcer moves on to the next story. We're left to wonder why these bills that have passed garnered any support. Considering how bought-and-paid-for the Democratic Party is by corporate interests, I find this odd. What are the corporate media afraid of? In any event, when the roles are reversed, and the Democrats are reduced to theoretical powerlessness in the Congress, we will not hear their voices. We will still hear Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and, of course, the wealthy Republican presidential standard bearer John Sidney McCain III.

Even Tiger Woods' numerous paramours had more sense than the media do over their darling, the senior senator "from Arizona." Lately many stories have swooned over McCain "finding his voice again," "leading the opposition to health care legislation," etc. An only slightly more balanced report came today from the New York Times. I hear McCain on CSPAN and he sounds like a bitter old man. The media hear him and angels sing. Old fighter pilots never die, they still get the girls (and guys). That's the best explanation I can muster.

Phoenix in December

I made a quick trip back home to speak at the Arizona Library Association annual conference. Sorry to all the friends I couldn't see, but beyond the speech I wanted to drive around and see the city, especially to gather material for the next Mapstone mystery, South Phoenix Rules. Some non-literary observations:

-- The gigantic rental car facility is one of those head-shakers. It's so big that I suppose it could become the terminal for the much smaller city that Phoenix may become because of the Great Disruption. In any event, how much did this monster cost and why wasn't that money put into a speed-up of the people-mover to connect with light rail? It's the usual backward thinking and spending, assuming the future will be based on single-occupancy car trips. The "landscaping" and "public art" out front are hideous. Saguaros baking in tightly packed gravel is totally ahistorical for the oasis city that was Phoenix, not a natural look for the Sonoran Desert and plain cayo-ugly. Nice job, Frank.

-- Christmas is always magical in Phoenix. As a child, I watched snowy Midwestern holiday scenes on television, but I knew the first Christmas came in the desert. This was especially enchanting with a rainstorm swirling, making the transplanted Midwesterners complain. I let it fall on me as I walked to the hotel next to the Willo district, feeling centered to be in the old 'hood. The rain is so precious, especially in this drought. Has it occurred to anyone that what makes the Sonoran Desert special, so rich in its plant and animal life, is its relatively high rainfall. A few decades like this and it will become more like the Mojave and Chihuahua deserts -- bleak and bereft. But you "won't have to shovel sunshine."

Turning and turning

We are told repeatedly by our rulers in business, politics and the media that the big hurdle to addressing climate change and health care is cost. Somehow war without end, the global effects of climate change and the towering costs of health care even as more Americans do without it are "free." And so it goes.

This is how we live now. There was indeed one conservative in last fall's presidential election and he now sits in the White House. Barack Obama fits the Burkean mold of slow change, respectful of tradition and custom, seeking to preserve the best of existing arrangements. Unfortunately, thirty years of right-wing revolution (represented by Mr. Obama's opponent, the wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III) have driven these laudable benchmarks so far to the extreme that Mr. Obama's innate restraint is exactly the wrong temperament for this pivotal moment in history.

On health care, one wonders if his heart was ever in it. This has been a colossal failure of the Democratic Party. The New Deal was not the product of a single, 2,000-plus page bill, but of scores of pieces of legislation over years. It delivered nearly instant relief to the nation's suffering, in both substance and confidence-building, helping to ensure continued Democratic majorities to keep it going. Under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, we have a massive dog's breakfast that will come to no good, and be undone by the Republicans because its good elements will take too long to kick in. Why, for example, not one bill that outlawed the savage practice of denying insurance based on pre-existing conditions, or charging outlandish premiums for it -- and having it implemented the moment the president signed the legislation? Another could have instantly required pharmaceutical companies to bid for Medicare drugs, lowering costs at the stroke of a pen. Yet another would have eliminated antitrust protections for the big insurers. And another still would have been a public option, if not Medicare for all -- and let the filibuster happen and its instigators pay the fearsome price in the next election.

Reality bites

You know times are tough when even the JPMorgan Chase outlook luncheon, which for years was an orgy of boosterism and denial, sounds like a post from Rogue Columnist. ASU economist Lee McPheters said Arizona may not recover until 2014. McPheters is one of the genuinely intelligent ASU economists who usually pulled his punches because of past Kookocracy threats against honesty, especially the nuts' vendetta against the truth-telling Tom Rex. Elliott Pollack, the booster rubber-chicken-circuit fixture whom the Info Center consistently refuses to identify as the developer he is, even sounded clear-eyed about the dire situation. (You can read the entire report here).

Unfortunately, Phoenicians have two emotional speeds: irrational optimism and suicidal depression. While they should take this highly establishment verdict on the situation as a call to arms, I fear they will break out the cyanide capsules or just go to the booster sweat lodge chanting...all together now...Please, God, just give me one more real estate boom...

The reality is that things are even worse than the luncheon crowd heard. Phoenix is in a depression. I've created a searchable tag for it if you're on Twitter (#PhoenixDepression) to catalog all the news and data (my Twitter feed is jontalton). Yes, as my readers have heard for years, the region is too dependent on real estate and now has an inventory of houses and spec commercial space that will take years to work out. And, yes, contrary to the "Goldwater" Institute's sock puppet on the Info Center's editorial page, Arizona has been hit harder than any other state by job losses. Indeed, metro Phoenix led the nation in job cuts in October compared with the same month in 2008. Alas, the troubles run much, much deeper.