Rogue Columnist

Phoenix recovery? Part I

So desperate is "the Valley" for good economic news that the Information Center published a story on the big circulation day of Sunday quoting the Coincident Economic Activity Index of the St. Louis Fed. It reminds me of the old contest we had when I was a young reporter in San Diego: How few words could you write to alienate a reader (the winner: Otay Water District). In any event, this measure allegedly "shows Arizona's economy probably hit bottom in December." Then it quotes U of A economist Marshall Vest, a very nice man who was utterly wrong about the state's economy in the run-up to the collapse, writing that the national recovery is "proceeding nicely." (!) The story adds, "But Arizona's recovery is lagging behind other parts of the country, though conditions are looking better." OK, then.

The mandarins of economic knowledge in Arizona, prodded by their masters in the Real Estate Industrial Complex, have been predicting a bottom for more than two years. Now every little blip or sideways shudder is even more urgently flung out with incense and sparklers as a sign of "the bottom," or better yet, "recovery." Most of these yearnings are realized in extremely limited snapshots of real-estate activity, a problem in itself. Even the St. Louis index only looks at four metrics, concerning employment, hours worked, wages and salaries. And for every pebble of "good news" comes a landslide of less "positive" stories. In Forbes' list of "America's Recovery Capitals," even Vegas is given a sense of potential; Phoenix is nowhere. With Business Insider's slide show of "12 Cities Where Home Sellers Are Being Forced to Cut Prices Like Mad," both Mesa and Phoenix make the rogue's gallery.

Boosterism and denial aside, the reality is that Phoenix's economy is not recovering in any meaningful sense of the word. The idle rich did very well in this recession — a historic anomaly — so to the extent that north Scottsdale and Paradise Valley are a B-List destination for these critters part of the year, there's your "good news." Otherwise, the situation is harsh. I do not wish this on Phoenix. I wish it were not so. I wish I were 25 and had a squash player's body. But unless Phoenicians face up to their reality, whether they wish it that way or not, a real recovery will be even longer in coming, narrow in its benefits and short-lived.

The president and the general

Mindful of the saying that a bitching soldier is a happy soldier, I'm hard-pressed to join in the oft hysterical condemnation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal for said bitching by him and his staff in the Rolling Stone article. Many on what passes for the "left" today, having seen that President Obama is neither Lincoln nor FDR, now want him to be Harry Truman and enjoy a MacArthur moment. They forget, or don't know, that Truman's dismissal of the five-star general from command in the Korean War helped make him the most unpopular modern president — before George W. Bush, that is. In addition, Truman had served as an artillery captain in World War I and had little use for top military brass, particularly one with MacArthur's temperament and the intolerable situation in which the general had placed Truman. MacArthur wasn't trash-talking Truman but disobeying direct orders. As Truman said, "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

I even admire McChrystal on a certain level. Historically, America often had political senior officers in peacetime, ones good at keeping their civilian masters happy and maintaining the status quo — even if it meant, say, ignoring the meaning of air power or the tank. In wartime, which was not a continuous national endeavor at one time, the political officers were shunted aside for the fighting officers. McChrystal is plainly one of the latter. But what about the Tillman cover-up and the prisoner abuse that happened under his command? Worse, much worse, happened in World War II, the "good war." This is why William Tecumseh Sherman's full quotation should always be at our national shoulder: "I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell." These may seem like different times, when our forces are being asked to do impossible tasks driven by incoherent policies. But the brutality of the enterprise remains the same, and its coarsening effect on a democracy, as feared by Woodrow Wilson, is as potent as ever.

Maybe McChrystal's self-immolation in the Stone was a subliminal desire to get the hell out of this chickenshit unit.

And that's the way it is

I wondered if Barack Obama became a one-term president with his astonishingly vapid Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. But maybe Mr. Obama has the pulse of the nation better than any of us who wanted real change and the fierce urgency of now. It was grotesquely ironic that a few days after offering the usual presidential platitudes about the need to wean ourselves off oil, he was in Columbus, Ohio, touting his stimulus by dedicating work on a road expansion. It was, he said, the 10,000th road project that the stim has funded.

Around the nation the transit systems that had been dramatically expanding ridership as gasoline prices rose are now starving from state and local fiscal crises. Amtrak, despite the vice-president's supposed love of it, remains a shadow of the passenger rail system it succeeded and a political pawn awaiting further cutbacks and the demand that it "pay for itself." This even though no major transportation network pays for itself, certainly not roads. And this despite evidence that road projects don't even have much of a positive effect on unemployment. High-speed rail? It's being studied, even though other advanced and ambitious nations already have systems and are expanding them. Cincinnati, a lovely central city that has been devastated by freeways and sprawl, can't even muster the civic sanity to fund a streetcar line. America will continue its dependency on roads and cars — something far beyond our competitors in Europe or China. Why? Because that's the way it it.

We care about the poor birds and fish being killed by the oil spill. But not enough to give up our cars. We live magical thinking: That technology will simply replace the inexpensive light sweet crude that powered the automotive age. Rather like the technology that was supposed to allow BP to drill miles down into the earth to extract the remaining crude in the Gulf of Mexico. Electric cars will be expensive and require minerals from places other than America — many of them unstable — as well as demanding electricity from power plants that will be run on...what? Fossil fuels most likely. Beyond that, the dreams become loopy. Space aliens are not going to drop by and give us magical hydrogen cars. Tar sands are not going to yield inexpensive gasoline. Few seem to understand that the fossil fuel "imputs" into most alternative fuels are greater than the new energy produced; many also have nasty environmental or other unintended consequences. Nowhere is this more true than with any alternative to the big oil hog: automobiles.

Rogue: The user's guide

In 2008, Rogue Columnist began as my pro-bono work for the readers I left behind at the Arizona Republic. Nobody was offering my brand of analysis and commentary on Phoenix and Arizona's most critical issues or much on their rich history. Since then, it has developed a national and international readership.

Welcome! Here are a few tips:

1. Comments are welcome. And easy. You can comment using your own email address or a fake one. Pick a nom de plume or use your name. I don't care. All viewpoints are encouraged.

You will be more persuasive if you remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan's advice: "You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts." Be part of the reality based community.

My views may be considered "liberal" in today's America, but no one (contrary to a meme out there) has ever been banned from Rogue for being "conservative." Personal attacks are discouraged but you will find the debate among commenters can be vigorous and bracing. That said, they are the smartest and kindest bunch you will find on the Net.

2. I try to post one column a week. That's my aspiration but not a promise — I have several paying gigs and was careless in choosing my parents. If I am slow to produce, feel free to take the most recent comments thread in a new direction. Unfortunately, because of spammers, comments are closed on individual columns after one month. But the most recent threads are open.

3. Spammers, you say? If you are selling something and put your sales URL in your comment, you will be deleted and blocked. This is a non-profit blog, for me and for you.

4. Get the most out of Rogue. Check out the Phoenix 101 archive for my original columns on Phoenix and Arizona history. I update The Front Page and Phoenix and Arizona daily, with help from volunteer Front Page Editor Richard Silc and Arizona researcher Michael Sampson. 

5. Can't get through? Rogue Columnist runs on the Typepad platform. Follow this link for information about service outages.

6. Where to find me. I'm @jontalton on Twitter; find me here on Facebook, and in assorted bars in Seattle and Phoenix. I promise a Twitter feed worth your time.

Beyond Rogue, you can find my Seattle Times columns here. Novels, you say? Here's the author site.

7. You can subscribe to Rogue in a reader or receive updates via email. See the sign-up bugs on the right, below the shameless promotion of my books.

8. I don't have all the answers. But this is a column, not a news story. So I am writing opinion and analysis, backed by the facts. I have my say. Then, in the comments section, you get yours.

9. Thanks for the help. Rogue is literally a non-profit, no-revenue outfit. I'm grateful to Richard Silc, Front Page Editor. I get Arizona research assistance from Mike Sampson, who covers media in the Grand Canyon State, as well as urban issues. Our historic Arizona photos come courtesy of Brad Hall Art's wonderful collection, unless otherwise credited.

10. Make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and your seat belt is correctly fastened — this is not the kind of commentary that is welcomed by the Phoenix powers-that-be, or even many average people. Here's an exchange that illustrates the issue.

From commenter Joe:

I enjoy your commentary... however, the unending hate/sarcasm tossed @ PHX is getting a bit old and tiresome. Not at all rebutting any of the crystal clear facts you present. However, at one point do you stop being an interested commentator and more of the type of people you seem to rail against on a steady basis?? Rather than simply toss out attack after attack after attack — which is starting to take on a feel of virtual hate, if not bordering on offering the perception that you actually desire to see PHX fail, how 'bout offering up some constructive/practical solutions? Or, is all this is left to do is to toss barbs and lose all hope??

Commenter Soleri got it just right:

Joe, we're talking about a city that doesn't self-critique except from its Seattle outpost. It's really that bad. If anything, it's been getting worse over the past 20 years. Talton's punchy writing style (think of writers like Mencken, Breslin, Hamill, Mailer, Ivins, Taibbi) is really a compliment to Phoenix. It says if you're big enough to play in the majors you shouldn't mind hearing the truth. What's really depressing is that well-meaning folks like yourself get upset by one of the very few authentic voices Phoenix has produced

The "solutions" (here it helps to imagine a universe where Phoenix is actually conscious) are trotted out from time to time. Here again, Talton is probably the only well-known writer with contacts deep enough to write knowledgeably about the problems themselves. The solutions necessarily sound less convincing knowing what we do about denial and Phoenix's reflexive boosterism.

The small community that meets here is not a church. There's no real dogma or cognitive style except thinking outside the Phoenix box. I hope you come back and think "out loud" about this place. We don't really need an "amen corner" here or want one.

Amen!

 

Phoenix 101: Myths and lies

Plato's "noble lie" is one of the foundations of his mythical republic. It also handily cements the power of the elites. So it is with our city with the name from mythology. Let's take them on one at a time:

Phoenix is a young city. This is a canard tossed out to explain every shortcoming or difficulty that can't be blamed on "the Mexicans." As in, Phoenix lacks the amenities commensurate with a big city "because it's a young city." Phoenix was founded in the late 1860s and incorporated in 1881. That's 129 years for those readers who were home-schooled or graduated from Arizona charters. It didn't become what would be considered a large American city until the late 1950s; by 1960, it was the nation's 29th largest city. That's a half century to get its act together.

Where Phoenix can legitimately claim it was shortchanged by being a younger city is that it was too small to benefit much from the golden age of American urban design and architecture, including the City Beautiful Movement. And most of what it did have was torn down in careless acts of civic vandalism from the 1960s onward.

Phoenix grew into a city in the automobile age and the ubiquity of the automobile suburb, with all the dolorous consequences that followed once that became the only mode of city "planning." Otherwise, the reliance on the "young city" excuse actually undermines itself on close inspection.

The Arizona syndrome

Arizona Democrats may have thought they were on a roll in recent years, at least in congressional elections. Harry Mitchell beat J.D. Hayworth in a solid red district and Gabrielle Giffords won a swing seat. Much of that was actually anti-Bush, anti-J.D. sentiment. Now Arizona seems poised to rejoin the South and most of the Plains and Intermountain West states as solidly red. My recent sojourn to my home state did nothing to dissuade me from this view. Many Democrats are dispirited. The party lacks the infrastructure of the right — from "think tanks" and big corporate money to endless right-wing talk radio. In a state with a fairly recent past of vigorous two-party competition, the Democrats were largely asleep as the extreme Republican right took control from the ground up, starting with school boards and obscure boards, eventually taking commanding power in the Legislature, by far the most powerful branch of government.

This is a crying shame for Terry Goddard. I heard the meme of "he thinks he deserves to be governor because his old man was." Far from it. Goddard is the most qualified candidate, a smart, open-minded public servant who has earned his way in elective office and actually did the most to attack border crime. The Democrats have a number of excellent candidates for statewide races, including David Lujan, Andrei Cherny and my old colleague and friend John Dougherty. They stand little chance against the vast capacity of the right. Mitchell and Giffords may well go down.

The big weapon against the Dems is, of course, SB 1070, the Jim Crow anti-immigrant bill.

Peak oil and its deniers

UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong has a running feature on his blog called, "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?" Amen, brother. But even the best newspapers have blind spots, and that has especially unfortunate consequences when those dark zones concern some of the biggest issues of the day. The New York Times is already terrified of climate-change stories and won't plumb seriously into the soft empire we've created and its crushing costs. One of its biggest deficiencies is coverage of energy, especially the oil industry. Hence, we were served a story on Sunday about peak oil that failed to define the term and consigned the people in the story to the survivalist fringe. This from a newspaper that also publishes a deferential story about the retrograde nihilist Rand Paul and shrinks from nailing the tea party for its racist supporters, incoherent positions and — especially — shadow control by big corporate money.

Peak oil doesn't mean "we're about to run out of oil." Even defining it as "demand outstripping supply" is incomplete. Peak oil means the world has reached a point where half of the planet's oil has been burned up (see, "climate change"). The remainder will be increasingly hard to reach and more expensive to refine. America hit its national peak in the early 1970s. The North Sea has passed peak. Several of the world's giant "elephant fields" are near or past peak. This is a simple fact of geology about which there's no disagreement among most experts (the outlier: the oft-quoted and highly-paid-by-industry Daniel Yergin). Peak oil was being used in ads by major oil companies and speeches by their CEOs in the mid-2000s. As with climate change, the debate is over details; in this case, when will peak hit and what will be its effects?

Not for nothing did America fare well in World War II because it was a petro superpower and the world's leading oil exporter. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese Empire had much in the way of oil resources. Hitler failed to make the Caucasus oilfields an immediate priority in his attack on the Soviet Union, a geopolitical example of when cops say, "Thank god for stupid criminals." Now, more than three decades after hitting peak, America still produces oil, especially in Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana. We're even still one of the world's larger oil producers, but that is way outstripped by our appetite.

Phoenix 101: Scottsdale

My earliest memory of Scottsdale is what would most intrigue a little boy: The fire station. The Rural Fire Department sat at Second Street and Brown. It had long outgrown its small building, so yellow-painted fire apparatus were parked all around. In the early 1960s, Scottsdale still retained much of its flavor as one of the minor farm towns that surrounded Phoenix. To that had been added "Western-style" storefronts: It was "the West's Most Western Town." With a few blocks on Fifth Avenue, Main and First Avenue, it was a tourist trap. It had a few hotels, such as the Valley Ho and the Sahara, as well as the wooden-sided stadium — continuing the playfully fake frontier theme — and a modest art colony.

We moved from Midtown Phoenix to what is now south Scottsdale in 1970. My mother had been alarmed by an incident at West High where a student had been kicked to death. Despite our modest means, she wanted me to attend the excellent Coronado High. I got to know Scottsdale very well. The neighborhoods around Coronado and Los Arcos mall were still separated from downtown Scottsdale by farm fields and vacant land. Scottsdale Road lacked curbs, gutters or sidewalks. Our house sat a block east of Scottsdale Road; one old, unoccupied house faced on Scottsdale Road across the alley, leaving a spectacular view of the Papago Buttes. It was an alley prowled by the "Refuse Wranglers" city garbage men. Closer to downtown was the YMCA, where I did a stint as a lifeguard, and the Scottsdale Daily Progress building. Then came the new Scottsdale Baptist Hospital and downtown, which still held some small-town retailers such as Lute's Pharmacy.

East of Brown, however, many of the houses were seedy, a few occupied by bikers and drug dealers. City Hall was only being planned. The police were based out of the old schoolhouse. But close to Scottsdale Road and Main Street, local businesses flourished, from Lute's Drugstore to Saba's Western Wear, along with the gas station with the iconic cowboy sign promoting community events. It was still a small town run by a local merchant class. The future giant Fashion Square was a Goldwater's department store. Newer suburbia marched ahead, of course, especially around Saguaro High. But most of Scottsdale ended just north of Camelback, where the horse ranches took over, then breathtaking empty desert. The airport was little more than a former Army airfield with a handful of newer, small buildings. Drinkwater's Liquors, a Circle K and a few other buildings sat at the crossroads with Shea "Boulevard." That was two lanes out to the Beeline Highway. On the way, you could make the long trek through nothing to reach Taliesin West. My friends and I launched model rockets in the desert southwest of Bell and Scottsdale. I got a glimpse of the plans "somebody" had for the place when the Hilton was built in the middle of nowhere on Lincoln Drive and Scottsdale Road; I worked as a bus boy at Paul Shank's, riding my bike every night along that no-shoulders, no sidewalks, no streetlights highway.

Top kill

Our front page editor translates into honest English the typical hate letter that comes to Rogue Columnist:

Dear Mr. Talton: If it wasn’t for you I’d have an additional 200 percent equity in my house in my gated community in North Scottsdale. If you would stop pointing out the minor problems we face in PHX, we could win the NBA and my greens fees would be lower.

He adds in his own voice: "We are a nation of spoiled shits living off of debt and about 40 years past the high water mark of America. The real shame is that it could all be fixable, but will never be. We live in Scamistan. The U.S. government scamming taxpayers and lenders. CEOs scamming shareholders. Military scamming the President. Corporations offloading the real cost of their fat/salt laden food. BP/Massey Coal on the real cost of energy. Iowa corn farmers on ethanol and water/pesticides killing the Gulf before BP….  People delusional in thinking short term and not long term in fixing our problems.  Pols worried about the next election, not the next 20-plus years."

And you think I'm gloomy. To paraphrase Emerson, God offers every mind its choice between truth and American brightsided "optimism." Take which you please — you can never have both. So, tell me, ye brightsiders, what are we to make of the unparalleled, at least in this country, environmental disaster happening off the coast of Louisiana?