Rogue Columnist

The slipstream of time

It's been a blessedly cool summer in Seattle. Only a couple of brief warm spells and plenty of days with morning clouds. The rest of the nation has suffered through the hottest summer on record and still we will do nothing to address climate change. The big polluters and fossil-fuel giants are pushing an initiative in California to roll back that state's "Global Warming Solutions Act." The Great Recession drags on and things may get worse, much worse. The commentariat and leading economists refuse to see how much we have changed as an economy, as a country. The changes have accumulated, not least being the shattered social compact, and now we are trapped as surely as the Chilean miners, except no one is digging us out.

I'll be headed back to Phoenix for awhile. The civilization that thrives in Seattle lets me forget what it must be like to live every day amid the madness that has overtaken my home state. That wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III won his primary against the hapless J.D. Hayworth should surprise no one. McCain has the backing of local and national elites. The media love fest with Maverick will resume. Few will ask: Four terms of McCain and what does Arizona have to show for it? It's not just what he didn't do, but what he did to actively hurt and hold back a state that wouldn't even exist without large amounts of federal investment.

The Kookocracy increases its hold. I had hoped that enough Arizonans would be horrified by this bunch, would actually notice that their policies, carried out for years, had failed miserably. It was not to be. Now the proto-fascism of the Arizona white-right is a national tide. As someone who was raised as a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, it amazes me that today's GOP is down to two ideas: Tax cuts for the rich and hate. They hate browns and blacks. They hate immigrants and Muslims. They hate gays. They hate the president, science, Social Security and women who want the government out of their reproductive decisions. They hate the First Amendment (but not the Second). They hate the poor, "liberals" and, of course, old Republicans, who are RINOs to be exterminated.

The road ahead

Something about gated properties, lookalike subdivisions of lookalike tract houses, endless motoring and, especially, the heat, puts many Arizonans in the walking-talking equivalent of a persistent vegetative state. Nothing really seems to change. Nuts run the Legislature — our version of the Beverly Hillbillies. Sheriff Joe provides more entertainment. Freeways and shopping malls are the center of activity. Scottsdale is rich. Downtown Phoenix is still largely dead. ASU is big and can't win football games. The Mexicans are all right, as long as we don't have to see 'em or pay for 'em. Keep my taxes low. I moved here to be left alone. Even the worst recession in the state's modern history has done little to change the overall sense: Nothing much changes here.

This is, of course, nonsense. The world is changing fast and I can think of no place in America less prepared for it. Even Arizona is changing.

The Great Recession has temporarily frozen advantages and disadvantages; places have what they brought to the dance. Thus, with a talented, high-wage workforce, diverse economy and focus on tech, biomedical sectors and Asian trade, Seattle is doing pretty well. Houston and Oklahoma City have oil. Many smaller places with stable, real economies, places that didn't overbuild — you see them on the endless lists of "cities with jobs," etc. — are holding up. The industrial Midwest keeps losing jobs. Phoenix, so dependent on the housing Ponzi scheme, has little to pull itself out of a deep ditch. But this sense of stasis is temporary.

The reruns of August

As others have noted, the 'ground zero mosque' hysteria, whipped up by the white-right and the corporate media, is this year's version of 'death panels' and other nonsense that sandbagged Democrats last August. What's remarkable is that the party keeps falling for it. A party so cowardly doesn't deserve to remain in "power," if you can call their recent run being in power — a minority of lockstep Republicans have managed to block most meaningful legislation. A party so stupid doesn't deserve to survive, when it could run on the rhetoric of Harry Truman or FDR or its few contemporary real Democrats (Rep. Alan Grayson, Sen. Bernie Sanders et al). But it won't. That it could fall for the same play over and over, again and again. The president has given a few good speeches, including this one in Seattle earlier this week. Unfortunately, the Obama magic has fallen into a credibility gap with an administration run by Wall Street and Clintonites.

I know all this is true. I just hate to consign our nation to more of the same right-wing governance. On and on until...what? Perhaps the Democrats must go the way of the Whigs. Yet an America that has lost its lead in college degrees — lost the ability to value education and thinking in the age of Sarah Palin and suburban arrogant-ignorance — won't embrace a progressive agenda. Will it? We may never know because the major media outlets are themselves either compromised or terrified. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal, is openly giving money to the Republicans as well as tilting coverage. This is just the opening salvo in corporate money that will gain even more control over our government thanks to the "conservative" Supreme Court. (Do the Democrats think it was wise, say, to have two presidential nominees in 16 years from Massachusetts?)

Yet this is neither 1994 nor even 1988, when Michael Dukakis was punked by the late Lee Atwater, the political daddy of Karl Rove. The list of differences would be long and almost all are alarming and risky. The most immediate and volatile is unemployment. America has never seen a jobs crisis like this since the Great Depression — and then we were still the world's largest creditor nation and enjoyed the most powerful industrial base. Now we have at least 16 percent real unemployment and no prospect of recouping those lost jobs. Indeed, highly profitable companies are cutting jobs, freezing wages and, in one high-profile case, demanding pay cuts. In any other time, this would be the making of social and political strife. Don't assume that flat-screen TVs and Wal-Marts will keep the peace forever.

Phoenix 101: The economy

Motorola was once the backbone of technology industries recruited to Phoenix in the late 1940s and 1950s. Above is the 52nd Street and McDowell plant circa 1965.

How did Phoenix get in this mess? A mess where the economy is in an outright depression after outperforming much of the nation, by some measures, for decades. A mess where its grades in quality economic circumstances are among the worst in America, and where it may be America's fifth most populous city and 13th largest metropolitan area but underperforms its peers by an embarrassing gap.

It took a lot of work.

When I was growing up, people talked about the Four Cs of Arizona's economy: Copper, cotton, cattle and citrus. The fifth C of climate — I don't recall that, and it may have been added later to justify the machinations of the Growth Machine, although to be sure, "health" and tourism were Phoenix selling points for most of the 20th century.

For much of the territory and state's history, climate was a decided negative. In any event, even the "Cs" was an over-simplification, leaving out railroads, a wider array of mineral extraction, other agricultural sectors and the condition of the state. Arizona was a frontier state, isolated, with an unforgiving landscape and sparse population. Even in 1950, the population of the entire state was 750,000. In today's language, its carrying costs were low, its sustainability high. But as an economic player, it was dwarfed by most other states.

By the late 1950s, Flagstaff had timber and the Santa Fe Railway. Globe and the mining districts lived off copper, where Arizona was a world-class supplier. The copper industry paid 22 percent of the state tax load and provided thousands of good jobs, albeit with the downside of control by eastern capitalists. Other minerals hubs were mostly played out, often leaving ghost towns. One exception was Prescott, the onetime state capital, which was a division point on the railroad. Tucson was a major rail center on the Southern Pacific and a military base. Cattle ranches proliferated; this industry was valued at $200 million in 1962 (about $1.4 billion in today's dollars). But most of the state was wilderness. The exception, mid-century, was Phoenix.

The big breakup

So how will it go down, this mess we're in? Dysfunctional empires can last a long time (Byzantium) or not (the Soviet Union). We've been more violently divided, in 1861, and yet the nation survived, albeit with more than 600,000 killed. America suffered worse governance and severe big-business malfeasance in the decades after the Civil War, but the damage was limited by the decentralization of cohesive small towns, farms and close families, the opportunity of the frontier, rising living standards and finally was reversed by the rise of the Progressive movement. The nation saw worse unemployment and economic collapse once before in modern times, but finally the federal government led by Franklin Roosevelt responded with vigor and effectiveness. And yes, a big war helped. We were mired in Vietnam and finally gave up and still America sailed on, passing two centuries.

Times now are tough and alarmist sentiments are easy. We can always muddle through, can't we? One observer has written glibly about how we'll add another 100 million people in suburban bliss. Most Americans can't imagine a future that's not pretty much like the recent past, maybe with a few wind turbines and solar panels added. Still, I can't think of a moment in history quite like what we now face.

The stock market is swooning again. One reason is sobering enough: Fear of slower growth in China, which has taken the spot held by America for a century, as the nation expected to lead the world out of recession. But the market has been in a secular bear for a decade. The real American economy is a wreck in its fundamentals — something very different from the crises listed above. Before, we were always an economic powerhouse, a petro superpower, and each generation was guaranteed a better standard of living than its parents. No more. Another banking crisis is very possible, as is a new bubble in Treasury bonds. We make so little here now that we can't undo the huge imbalances of debt. The Ponzi scheme has collapsed. Long-term unemployment is a human tragedy and political nitroglycerin. What of the commons has survived the Reagan Revolution is now falling apart. We're mired in two wars that are only the most obvious pieces of untenable military overstretch.

And we know some things. We know the Democrats are unwilling to put together an effective progressive agenda and sell it to America. How could they when so much of the government is now controlled by corporate interests? We know Wall Street and the big banks have gotten away with it, and they will be cooking up new trouble for the economy and expecting the taxpayers to once again pay for their swindles gone wrong. Addressing climate change, building 21st century transit and rail systems, retrofitting suburbia for a peak-oil future, rebuilding our educational, research and manufacturing dominance — nope. Confronted with historic discontinuity and unsustainablity, our course will remain unchanged. The solutions are there — we refuse to undertake them. The confluence of business, political and even cultural interests and forces will make it so. The elites, even in the media, are well paid, live in fine cities and are educated in the conventional wisdom. They are paid to not get it. We know all this.

So, how's it going to go down?

Growing up in old Phoenix

I grew up in a small town. Its name was Phoenix, and even though it had 439,170 people by the time I was four years old, in 1960, it still seemed like a place I could wrap my arms around and carry with me, just like the little towns in the movies. We lived near Cypress Street and Third Avenue, about a mile from the border of downtown. The houses faced the street, many had porches, the lawns were lush, the shade inviting.

My friends and I stashed fallen oranges and rolled them out into the rush-hour traffic on Third and Fifth — back then, before the Willo Soviet tried to wall off this neighborhood, these streets had three lanes each and carried substantial traffic twice a day, people going to and from work downtown. The oranges were also useful in friendly alley fights; more serious conflict escalated from dirt clods to rocks. Oh, we also ate them, because everyone had citrus trees in their yards and it was a quick drive out to the groves, where boxes of oranges could be purchased at roadside stands surrounded by the lavish bounty of the Salt River Valley. Some days we lay under the trees at Paperboys' Island, a pocket park at Third and Holly, and just stared into the cobalt sky, dreaming the dreams of young boys.

By the time I was eight, I was mobile and free, within limits. Specifically, I could ride my bike from Thomas to Roosevelt and Third Street to Fifteenth Avenue. It was an amazing landscape for a child. The library, art museum and Heard Museum were there. Soda fountains proliferated at drug stores, from the Rexall on Roosevelt and Third Avenue to Ryan-Evans at Seventh and McDowell to shops on Central. Every gas station had a drinking fountain with cold water, an essential for young desert rats. The firefighters at the old Station 4 on First Street and Moreland, as well as the Encanto/Seventh Ave. station indulged us. We bugged the people at Channel 12 and Channel 5 (Wallace & Ladmo's home!) for old reels of commercials — the apex of our ubiquitous trash picking. Encanto Park was a favorite hangout; it was where I decided I wasn't cut out to be a fisherman, but that didn't stop me from endless fishing journeys to the lagoons. The lovely moderne Palms Theater at Central and Virginia offered movies if we didn't want to hitch a ride downtown.

This part of the city was dense then with businesses. This was long before entire blocks were bulldozed or turned into dead space by parking garages. The buildings on the northeast and southeast corners of Seventh Avenue and McDowell, for example, were chock-full of small businesses. So was today's mostly empty Gold Spot — I got my hair cut there by Otis Kenilworth. Downtown was still the busiest shopping district in the state, followed by Park Central mall — both bracketing our neighborhood. I wasn't as fortunate as someone born a few years younger to sample the old city, but it was still pretty intact in the early and mid-1960s.

The big Valley Bank sign turned atop the art deco tower and other neon signaled downtown. Among the downtown landmarks was the Hotel Westward Ho, with its famed Thunderbird Room, where presidents stayed well into the 1960s. The skyscrapers going up along Central seemed signs of progress, not incoherent planning. I watched so many of them being built. My grandmother and I took the bus to shop downtown or at Park Central. This daughter of the frontier "traded," as she put it, at the small A.J. Bayless store at Central and Moreland. Just west were the shady median parks along Moreland and Portland, two of the few City Beautiful Movement touches Phoenix received. The parkways were lined by lushly landscaped apartment buildings. Every day, we drove downtown at 5 p.m. to pick up my mother at the Greater Arizona Savings Building, where the Interstate Stream Commission had its offices. It was amazing to see the crowds on the streets, just like a big city.

 

None dare call it class war

In the fever swamps of the white-right, the conversation is about whether President Obama is a socialist, a fascist or a communist — as if they even knew what these critters are. The more on-point provocative question is whether the rich hate the American middle class and have declared war on it.

I know, I know: This is going way over the top, Talton. The crisis enveloping average Americans has been building for decades and comes from complex sources, not a conspiracy, for goodness sake. The capital markets may produce some destructive results, but it's not part of a master plan devised over cigars and cognac in the VIP suite at the Oval Room. True enough. And there are some inspiring examples of some wealthy people giving to worthy causes. This is a complex issue, which makes it beyond the talk radio- and television-addled masses. Still, it must be addressed. It doesn't take a conspiracy to create a community of interests that produces a similar result. Phoenix and Arizona are a textbook example with the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Somebody pushed for questionable trade agreements, job offshoring, union busting, monopolistic industrial concentration, the shredding of pensions and benefits, a financialized economy, deregulation, big government welfare for corporations and the lowest taxes on the rich in generations. Somebody continued to expand these policies even after their destructiveness was well known. Somebody profited hugely. Now, with the Great Recession, the long and growing estrangement between the elites and the rest of us has snapped. Corporate America sits on $1.8 trillion cash while millions face years of unemployment and most see years of wage stagnation. Two Americas, indeed.

What happens in Arizona...

Harper's magazine is doing some of the best journalism in America today. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of it is behind a pay wall. And because it is aimed at America's declining number of educated, intelligent readers, its overall influence is sadly open to question. This is not the mass-market Harper's of the 1870s that brought down Boss Tweed through the savage and wildly popular illustrations of Thomas Nast, nor does it have an American population that is largely literate. Still, Ken Silverstein's " Tea Party in the Sonora: For the Future of GOP Governance, Look to Arizona," was flattering: A magazine-length summary of many themes long examined on this modest blog. Arizona's breakout bout of crazy has caused numerous competent national journalists to parachute in, to try to explain the damned place. The New York Times and LA Times have been especially diligent. Yet they barely scratch the surface before gratefully departing Sky Harbor.

The New York Times, for example, had an arresting front-page photo of the bodies stacked in the Pima County morgue, bodies of illegal immigrants who have died just so far this summer crossing the desert. Yeah, the ones putting guns to our heads and forcing us to hire them at the lowest possible wages and with no protections while they pay taxes to every level of our government. I'd love to see that photo on page one of the Arizona Republic.

I can guarantee you that Eugene C. Pulliam's Republic would at least have run out of office the odious Joe Arpaio. The sheriff is held in contempt by every real law-enforcement officer I talk to, and old timers still refer to him as "Nickel-Bag Joe," for his strutting but ineffective, small-time busts when he was with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (then DEA). Alas, except for New Times, the media, local and national, merely play their parts in the Badged Ego's theater. Even the media criticism of Arpaio miss the larger areas demanding inquiry. Oh, for a press corps with more skepticism. Or one that would stick around awhile and really dig...