Rogue Columnist

Downtown, again

Susan Copeland, chair of the Downtown Voices Coalition, recently wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, entitled, "A realistic downtown assessment." It was mostly a clear-eyed look at the reality of downtown Phoenix's challenges: Expecting too much from sports teams, failure to integrate ASU into the city fabric, too many surface parking lots and chimerical hopes from an "entertainment district." Copeland rightly adds that CityScape is "suburban mall stylistically dating to the 20th century," although I have a hard time mourning the brutalist "park" of Patriot's Square. She adds:

With all the damage done, there are still hopeful signs, if only our city officials and civic leaders follow their own community vetted and charetted ideals. The Urban Form Project; Arts, Culture, and Small Business District Overlay; and Adaptive Reuse Program are smarter moves for aspiring urban infill than another stab at a faux urban Entertainment District. When the city actually listens to its citizens rather than check-marking the input box, great things happen, like the improved ASU Nursing School exterior or the forthcoming Washington Street Centennial Project.

Well, fine (Her piece was written in response to this one). And good on her for searching for realism. But regular readers will have to forgive me if I cover some familiar ground as well as discuss the deep problems and real opportunities facing downtown Phoenix. I'm still not sure people fully get it.

Obamanation

We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.

So said President Obama in his second State of the Union address, amid a seating-chart of good feelings but no era of good feelings. When Speaker Boehner wasn't looking bored or, when the president lauded him, weepy, he was no doubt figuring out beneath his tanned pate how to defeat every Obama initiative. Boehner thought bubble: "Post-partisan, my ass..." I am so far from our national zeitgeist that I'm sure this speech soared for most Americans, just as they loved him for the Tucson pep rally. So forgive me, but I found it uninspiring. Worse, it bordered on the delusional. This is his chance to talk to the largest audience of the year and it ended up sounding like a Who Moved My Cheese corporate seminar given before your entire department is outsourced to a "third-party vendor" in Bangalore. He even said, regarding globalization, "The rules have changed."

Ronald Reagan's best speeches can still move me, in spite of myself. Mr. Obama, who outraged the Clintons by saying he wanted to be a "transformational" president like Mr. Reagan, just doesn't connect, but as I write, I'm sure it's just me. But when Dutch spoke he was changing minds and persuading Americans to make a hostile Congress do his bidding (often to destructive long-term consequences, but effective nevertheless). Behind the scenes, Reagan was using executive orders to dramatically change the nation's course. The results behind the rhetoric are just as telling for Mr. Obama.

On the eve of the State of the Union, Carol Browner, the president's point person on climate change, announced her resignation. Nothing has been done over the past two years to address the greatest threat of our time. Nothing. The corporate capture of the Oval Office is complete with GE's Jeff Immelt replacing Paul Volcker as wise man, William Daley of JPMorgan Chase as chief of staff, and Gene Sperling, lately of Goldman Sachs, heading the economic council. The report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was leaked, and it properly detailed the risky business, regulatory laxness and swindles that led to the Great Recession. Republicans on the commission promptly disowned the report, issuing dissents (minorities getting liar loans caused the worst panic since the Great Depression, don't you know). The big finance playerz are back to business as usual, saved by the taxpayers. Nobody from Bear Stearns, Lehman, Washington Mutual, Goldman, etc. has done a perp walk. No high-speed rail line has opened or is even abuilding. We got a repeal of DADT, a big and overdue act of social justice and common sense. But the imperial adventures that underlie that need for manpower are as operative as during the Bush/Cheney years. We got "health care reform" but Americans are still in the clutches of the for-profit insurance industry. Mr. Obama transformational? Trust, but verify, as the Gipper would say.

The governor's speech

Somebody sent me the "State of the State speech Jan Brewer never gave," which was supplanted by her short talk to the Legislature in the wake of the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It sounded so much like a screed out of the Goldwater Institute that I wanted to make sure it was real. It is. You can download it here. She starts out:

As America enters the fifth year of the most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression, Arizona is party to a vital national debate focusing on how state governments can most effectively enhance quality job creation and personal income growth. In pursuit of that objective, the leaders of some large states – principally in the Northeast and Midwest and on the West Coast – have chosen a perilous path that calls for dual expansion of the public sector and the regulatory supremacy of state government, while undermining and, in too many instances, scorning the principles of free enterprise that for more than two centuries have made America the envy of the world. This reckless strategy mirrors the model of irresponsibility that Congress and the White House have exhibited with uncommon zeal during the last two years.

In contrast, other states are pursuing a more prudent approach that limits the growth of the public sector and restrains unnecessary regulatory encroachment upon areas that are outside the rightful scope of state government, with the affirmative goal of stimulating free enterprise.

As to which economic model is superior, the verdict is in: With few exceptions, states that have a strong private sector enjoy a more robust level of job growth than Big Government states that deny the central role of the free market in putting people to work.

Brewer then lays out her Four Cornerstones of Reform. Among them: "remove unnecessary barriers that impede economic growth, and provide a stable, predictable, business-friendly environment in which private employers can grow." It's hard to know where to begin with this delusional, ideological mindset of the newly elected governor. But I suppose we must make a start.

Between the lines

At the risk of causing apoplexy among some readers, let me make a confession: I'm ambivalent about so-called birthright citizenship. This is a cause celebre among many conservatives. As the New York Times reports, "Arguing for an end to the policy, which is rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants...stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to have what are dismissively called 'anchor babies.' ”

They have a point. As Jack Rakove writes in his indispensable The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, the writers of the 1868 14th Amendment were entirely focused on the end of slavery and Reconstruction. First, they wanted to reverse Dred Scott, which held that even free African-Americans were not citizens; second, they wanted to give constitutional authority for the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and its efforts to prevent the old Southern ruling class from keeping the freedmen in serfdom (Jim Crow killed that ideal for a century). Yet I'm not thinking so much as an originalist as someone who believes the framers intended the Constitution to be malleable enough to change with the times. Neither they nor the writers of the 14th Amendment envisioned an overpopulated Third World country on our border, or our unthinking and venal appetite for its cheap labor.

We owe something to the immigrants we have exploited, particularly in Arizona and the Southwest (the anti-illegal immigration forces would deny even that). I'm just not sure citizenship for their children should be part of it. It's one of many areas that I come down between the battle lines that are neatly drawn by talk-radio ideology.

The sweet season

I am back from several days in Arizona for book signings. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that certain things still pull on me: A spectacular sunset over the Estrellas, a scent of blooms in the air, riding light rail (we built it, you bastards), friends who remained so even after I was kicked out of my columnist gig, and the comforting embrace of the old neighborhood. It's high season for the resorts and I suppose Scottsdale is full of golfers, but that's not the side of the street where I work. Phoenix will always be a home of my heart, but so much of that exists in what's gone. Most of the 4 million people living there have no inkling of this irretrievable loss. Yes, every city changes. But Phoenix threw away so much of what made it unique in all the world, gaining nothing but more people and a questionable future.

Economic depression hangs on the place even during the diminishing number of pleasant months. I read that Don Cardon, head of the governor's new "commerce authority," wants to put together a fund amounting to $500 million to $1 billion to provide loans to companies that will grow in Arizona. This, according to the new story, "at no risk to the state." Good luck with that. The state fumbled its best opportunity to leapfrog by failing to implement the "meds-and-eds" strategy during the 2000s. Now the Legislature plans to further gut funding to universities, the engines of an advanced economy — this has been going on for decades. The state's inward-looking, hostile-to-the-world intolerance and political extremism are kryptonite to attracting talented people. Plainly, Arizona doesn't intend to compete in a knowledge-driven global economy. If there's a strategy, it seems to be the same old routine of economic-development organizations appearing to be busy.

At one book signing, a man asked why people move to Phoenix, given all its downsides. Not in a hostile way, but out of sincere curiosity.  A longtime resident, he noted all the ways the metro area's quality of life has declined, not least the hotter and longer summers. How Phoenix has its own version of horrible weather, only in reverse from Minneapolis. My no-doubt inadequate answer: Sunshine, which for many people is enough; a huge supply of relatively cheap housing; the jobs that for decades went along with rapidly rising population, especially in construction and real estate, and massive federal subsidies. This goes well beyond the Salt River Project, CAP, flood control that made it possible to build tract houses on otherwise marginal desert land, etc. Social Security and Medicare, for example, underwrite a huge retiree population along with thousands of jobs in health care. At least somebody is wondering.

Tucson rallies

The white-right has been quick to deflect any criticism after the Giffords shooting, including Sarah Palin's appalling, but somehow strategic, use of the term "blood libel." The media have been willing accomplices, as usual. Anyone who has been paying attention since the frightening crowds egged on by Gov. Palin during the closing phases of the 2008 presidential campaign, the staged August disruptions of meetings with members of Congress in 2009 and the Tea Party and all its violent rhetoric and imagery — the connection to the shooting is unavoidable. And, as Pima County Sheriff Dupnik had the guts to say, there is a peculiar accelerant of Arizona political extremism applied to this fire. In the end, however, few minds will likely be changed.

But other factors are at work, too. We can debate and weigh them, but they must be considered.

I've driven by the place where the shooting took place many times. It's one of hundreds of off-the-shelf Spanish-Tuscan-schlock shopping strips with a huge, blazing parking lot plopped down across the state by the Real Estate Industrial Complex: ugly, characterless, dehumanizing and killing of genuine community. The same is true of the endless subdivisions of lookalike tract houses, built around a garage door rather than a front porch. The built environment does influence behavior and souls. It's telling that the attack took place there and not, say, along the Fourth Avenue business district in central Tucson. Most Americans like to believe crime happens in center cities; in reality, much of it, including some of the most hideous murders, occurs in suburbia and exurbia. Also, the 8th District, like most of Arizona, is so lacking in inviting public spaces that this is where Rep. Giffords had to set up her table to meet constituents.

Ideas have consequences

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords in suburban Tucson on Saturday brought many things to mind, some echoed on the weekend Rogue thread. One of my police buddies told me, "Is there any doubt?" that this crime is the fruit of the Kookocracy and its gun love. "The Kooks passed an insane law that says anyone but a convict can carry a concealed weapon. With no background and no training. I treat everyone, especially Kooks and gang bangers, as if they are carrying a 30-round Glock under their shirt." I thought about the death threats I regularly received when I was a columnist at the Arizona Republic from 2000 to 2007. I was pilloried with violent criticism. My house was photographed and placed on a prominent right-wing Web site (trying to make me out a hypocrite for blasting the Real Estate Industrial Complex while doing well with my own real-estate "investment"; in fact, the 97-year-old house was in the Midtown neighborhood where I grew up and we bought it intending to live there for the rest of our lives, not flip it in two years for a profit). A deranged individual could have used that photo as a springboard to something dangerous. After I appeared on a radio show, a friend in law enforcement was so troubled by hearing one caller to the program that he came to a book signing specifically to watch over me.

As Soleri pointed out, the false equivalency argument began almost immediately, even though virtually all the politically motivated violence in recent years has come from the right. More about that in a moment. By no means let us rush to judgment — but that shouldn't become an excuse to never reach it. My biggest reaction is how this event was very tied to Arizona. When I came back to Phoenix, I'd been a controversial columnist taking on the toughest issues in Denver, Dayton, Cincinnati and Charlotte, with my work carried nationally on the New York Times News Service and others. Yet I had never received a death threat. The climate in Arizona even in 2000 was different: More vicious and threatening, more abusive and thuggish, more filled with us-vs-them hate and paranoia.

The shooting also caused me to recall an exchange I had with my grandmother nearly half a century ago, in another America. In full thrall of cowboys and Indians, I asked her why now, in Phoenix, people didn't go around with six-shooters on their hips — a nice idea in my childish mind. My grandmother, born on the frontier and raised in Arizona Territory, said, "Men wore guns then so we wouldn't have to carry them today."

The Giffords shooting

It's too early to draw many conclusions about today's crime, but I'll open a thread for commenters. Rep. Giffords was "targeted" on Sarah Palin's infamous Web site. I know I received multiple death threats as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. Is this the fruits of Kookocracy and all its gun love?

 

My generation

Mick Jagger is not a Baby Boomer. Barack Obama is. Complicated, no?

Making generalizations about the Baby Boomers is even more perilous than about most generations. This huge demographic birth wave ran from 1946 to 1964. But it is the most sweeping-statement generation in history, trailed perhaps only by the so-called Greatest Generation, their parents. It caused a USA Today moment last week when the first of 77 million Boomers started to turn 65. The kids are not all right. They never were. They were blamed for every societal ill growing up, exploited with the commercialized youth culture, despised by their elders and younger people as self-centered and pampered. Now they will be cast as slothful takers from the republic as they seek to withdraw what were once considered solemn promises of pensions, 401(k)s and Social Security.

I was born in 1956 and always thought I was dealt the worst hand. Too young to get in on the drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll. Too old to pretend to be a Gen Xer. Too young to have fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, or honorably fought in it and been vilified (the spitting incident is a myth). Too old to avoid the disco era and the years of mid-calf skirts. Still, I always hung out with the older ones, including the former combat medics from 'Nam, by then hippified and adamantly anti-war/anti-establishment, who taught me my craft on the ambulance. So, as I age, I feel a certain kinship with the stereotype of My Generation.

A Phoenician's take on Tucson

The Ronstadt house on Sixth Avenue in Tucson.

Early in the 20th century, Phoenix surpassed Tucson in population and never looked back. The old joke: Tucson hates Phoenix and Phoenix doesn't pay any attention to Tucson, which makes the Old Pueblo hate Phoenix even more. I don't claim to be a Tucson expert, but a reader new to the city asked to learn more. So what follows is a Phoenician's idiosyncratic take on Arizona's second city.

Tucson is much older than Phoenix, having been founded by the Spanish (led by an Irishman in the pay of the Spanish crown) in 1775, a tenuous foothold in Apache country. It was a part of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (otherwise, the border would have been as close as Goodyear — how'd that sit with the white-right Midwesterners?). Thus, Tucson always wore its Hispanic side with ease and pride. Tucson got the first main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1880s and for decades was the most populous city in the territory and young state. It was also a bastion of the Democratic Party, long after the state as a whole turned Republican. This was Mo Udall, Dennis DeConcini and Raul Castro country.

Growing up as a child of the Cold War, I knew Tucson would be a first-strike target in a "counterforce" nuclear exchange, because of the Titan II missile silos that surrounded the city. My first visits were on the train. My mother and I would board the remains of the once-grand Imperial, now a mail train with one coach, at Union Station, and travel south. We would spend the day in downtown Tucson and take the still crack Sunset Limited back home that evening. Early memories: The Santa Catalinas towered over the city in a way no mountains did Phoenix. Tucson was dry, a desert city, so different from the (then) lush oasis of Phoenix. Downtown was busy and vibrant, but no more so than Phoenix. I wasn't impressed.