Rogue Columnist

Moscow on Lake Mendota

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. — Martin Niemoller

Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I attended an Aspen Institute event for government officials and "businessmen" of the new Russia. At night, we went drinking, me tagging along with the legendary foreign editor of the Rocky Mountain News, Holger Jensen (imagine when great metro newspapers had such assets). Over copious amounts of vodka, caviar and smoked salmon, a Russian told this joke: The devil came for three souls, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian. He told each he could have one day to enjoy his greatest earthly pleasure before being taken to perdition. The Englishman chose to walk the grounds of his estate, trailed by his loyal hound, reading Byron and Keats. The Frenchman, naturally, decided to spend a day in enchanting debauchery with his mistress, Madeleine. "And what about you?" the devil asked the Russian. "What would give you the greatest pleasure?" Without hesitation, the Russian replied: "Watching my neighbor's barn burn down."

I once told this story and added, "well, you had to be there." No more. If nothing else, the vicious attack on public employees and their unions illustrates that many Americans have achieved a special Slavic level of desolate envy and hatred. As the character says in the film, Moscow on the Hudson, "I love my misery..." This is on display in Madison, Wis., where unionized government workers are fighting to keep their collective bargaining rights, even as they try to compromise and give back on pensions. Yet polls show most Americans hate unions (although a new one indicates they support collective bargaining rights). Short-attention-span America can't recall a time when collective bargaining, unions, pensions and health-care benefits for workers and retirees were standard in this country. Purchased with union blood, they became the baseline for all workers, unionized or not. Now, as Americans get screwed with their 401(k)s, they either don't remember, or simply hate the workers who still enjoy these foundations of the middle class.

The Rule of Holes, II

Seriously, are any accomplishments ever enough or would acknowledging them erode your critical bias of AZ?

So asked one of my sources who is close to the powers-that-be. First of all, this misunderstands several of the missions of this blog, which include holding the powerful accountable, putting the news in context, benchmarking Arizona and Phoenix competitiveness, and providing or seeking context. The state is filled with boosters and cheerleaders, as it was when I was a columnist for the Arizona Republic. But that's not my mission, then or now.

Thus, three solar plants have been announced for the Gila Bend area.  What's unclear: How many jobs these will create; whether and how much water they will require to cool the cells; how many fossil fuel "inputs" are required to make the solar plants and whether or at what point their "outputs" offset these inputs, and other environmental damage and trade-offs involved in using the divine gift that is the Sonoran Desert as a dump for a very intrusive technology. Most importantly, what is Arizona doing to regain the leadership in high-paid solar R&D jobs, a sector that it virtually invented in the 1950s but allowed to slip away to Germany and now China? So, yaaay! Acknowledgement has been made. But questions must be asked.

The same serious skepticism must be applied to Gov. Jan Brewer's $538 million package of corporate tax cuts. The governor and her supporters say this will help lure business and create jobs. Unfortunately, Arizona faces one of the worst structural fiscal crises in the nation, partly because of the recession hitting both sales tax revenues and also the state's main industry: house building. But the roots of the shortfall are years of tax cuts and an ongoing imbalance between revenues and expenses, even with state buildings sold off, university funding slashed, libraries cut back, state employees laid off and now hundreds of thousands of the working poor to be booted from Medicaid. These tax cuts have not produced a vibrant economy. They are based more on ideology than economic pragmatism.

'Austerity'

The problem with the "austerity" con can be stated simply: Governments in the richest nation in the world may be "broke," as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker puts it, but the pain and sacrifice for righting this situation will not be shared, much less shared equally. This is the first recession in modern record keeping where the rich actually increased their share of wealth; average Americans continue to see their wages stagnate or erode — if they're lucky enough to have a job. Corporations have achieved their highest profits ever, but they're not hiring as unemployment remains at its worst levels since the Depression. The world capital markets are awash in dollars, largely being used to make more dollars via gambling ("trading") rather than to invest in productive, job-making enterprises, especially in the United States. So rich are the rich, and so detached are they from reality, that two American couples aboard a yacht have been murdered by Somali pirates, into whose clutches they heedlessly sailed as part of their blissful "lifestyle." When the pirates killed them, the U.S. Navy — that would be part of the commons of which the rich have such contempt — was negotiating to save them.

As Paul Krugman has masterfully pointed out, the Wisconsin battle is less about economics — for the state's finances are hardly as dire as Walker makes them out — as about power. The collective bargaining rights and pensions held by public workers there, which Walker, the Republicans and their puppet-masters such as the Koch brothers want to gut, were once foundational elements of the American middle class. Only 30 years of union busting and big lies about labor have caused most Americans to believe these teachers, firefighters, police officers and other civil servants are the enemy: Money-grubbing, overpaid parasites on the tax dollars of real hard working folks.

In fact, decades of tax cuts, especially for the rich, have a great deal to do with our present deficit troubles, whether at the state or federal level. But even the millions of low-wage workers who pay no federal taxes are part of the problem: They should be required to pay at least some, even symbolic, income taxes as the price of citizenship. Another big problem: The vast resources corporations put into tax-haven schemes, which means many of them pay no taxes at all, even as they benefit from the commons. Another big reason behind the deficits: The Great Recession and lack of real growth, partly because the economy has become more about making money from money and sending jobs offshore than producing dynamic growth in this country. Then there are two wars that have lasted longer than World War II — and does anyone wonder why we have a federal deficit that's a larger share of the economy than at any time since 1945 (e.g., the end of World War II, and tax rates on the rich were above 90 percent in the '40s and '50s to help pay that off). Meanwhile, what about hundreds of billions in corporate welfare? All this has helped government spending grow, along with average Fox-viewing Americans' insatiable appetite for government sevices. And yet none of this is part of our national conversation.

The Corner

In this city of loss called Phoenix, where do we even begin to mourn? The closure of the Borders store at the Biltmore gives a new generation something to miss, and a chain bookstore at that. Once the Biltmore Fashion Park was a unique shopping center of outdoor courts, shady trees, grass and low-rise, mid-century architecture. A few years ago, the odious Westcor/Macerich redid it to look like every other crapola shopping mall in suburban Phoenix. Ruined. Who cares if they decide to build a mega-mall in Goodyear — it will just be another lookalike ruin for the near future of this unsustainable place, a ruin no archeo-tourists will ever care to visit. The few who do will wonder how such a wealthy society could have squandered so many resources on such grotesquery (as they will wonder about the sprawl outside Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, etc.).

When I was growing up, the corner of McDowell and Seventh Avenue was but one of the many business districts that flourished in the area (Central was crowded with businesses from downtown to Camelback; McDowell along its length, the same with Thomas; the Gold Spot building on Roosevelt and Third Avenue was aging but busy). On the southwest corner was Val DeSpain's Chevron station and a Circle K, along with a forbidden tavern. Northwest was a gas station. The northeast corner held a distinctive, solid brick business building full of local retailers, including a barber and liquor store, then My Florist — a real flower shop — with its magical neon sign. The southeast corner was a treat: A Ryan-Evans Drug Store anchored a building with several shops, including the Best Cleaners and a Sprouse-Reitz five-and-ten store. The latter had a smashing red-tile front, while the drug store had its name proclaimed in neon. Each store in this strip had its own distinct front.

When I got back to Phoenix in 2000, most of the corner was in disrepair, the remaining buildings holding junk shops and a massively ugly Circle K box holding down the northwest side. But there seemed to be hope with David Lacy rehabbing My Florist as a restaurant. It was a huge success, a forerunner of midtown and downtown eateries to come (and go). The inside was beautifully appointed and at night the grand piano accompanied diners. It was never my florist: I found the menu unappealing, rather attuned to people who didn't really like to eat, and the servers were surly. Portland's and Cheuvront were more my style. But lots of people loved My Florist, many of whom had never even realized that the gems of the nearby historic districts existed. Is is safe to go down there?, some asked at first, living in the soulless suburbs where most of the lurid violence really takes place.

Carter and Reagan

This is the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth, an event greeted with armies of hagiographers and one heart-felt personal book by his progressive son, Ron Reagan. It's also the 30th anniversary of Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency and the end of Jimmy Carter's one failed term in office. Carter is seen as the most successful and admirable former president, but still a personal riddle, as a new Rolling Stone article explores. As if Reagan was not one: Charismatic to the masses, friendly in person (I met him once, as part of a group of other journalists), but utterly distant and opaque beyond that to everyone except, perhaps, Nancy. Some of this sounds like Barack Obama. Maybe there's a certain sociopathic streak that comes with modern presidents. Either way, we live in Reagan's shadow, whether it's for good or bad. But we also live in Carter's.

A few years before he died, Hamilton Jordon, Carter's White House chief of staff, befriended me. He was nothing like the scheming party boy I had been taught to imagine as a young Republican. Instead, I found a man of uncommon depth, intelligence and grace, tempered by a long fight with cancer. It's not giving up any confidences to say Jordan found his boss could be as frustrating as he appeared to us on the outside. My problem with Carter, aside from the Goldwater it took years to cleanse from my system, was his Baptist preacher sanctimony. And, with the Afghanistan invasion by the Soviets and especially the Iranian embassy hostage debacle, he appeared weak and willing to preside over American decline.

But of course the story is more complicated. Ask who started the deregulation movement, appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chairman with a real mandate to break inflation, pushed the MX Missile and modernization of NATO's nuclear forces, as well as presided over building the world's most lethal ballistic missile submarine class, and you'd likely answer, "Reagan." In fact, it was Carter. Ask which president was more pragmatic, most pushed the Soviet Union on human rights, grew to genuinely hate nuclear weapons and proposed banning all ballistic missiles, and whose life-ling hero was Franklin Roosevelt, you'd probably answer, "Carter." It was, of course, Ronald Reagan. The U.S. policy (quietly) invoked to justify both Persian Gulf wars and our huge military presence there is the Carter Doctrine.

Superiority complex

Judging from the comments on the previous post, readers were interested in hearing more about my appearance with former Arizona Republic Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey toward the tail end of KJZZ's Here and Now on Wednesday. It's a measure of the true grit and journalistic integrity of host Steve Goldstein that he has me on his show every year or so. I can only imagine the pushback he gets from the Kooks (so tell his bosses if you like hearing me). But, yes, there's more to be said.

Of course, good people are working hard for Arizona, from the activists behind Save Arizona and the campaign to recall the odious Russell Pearce, to grassroots leaders such as Becky Daggett in Flagstaff and Kimber Lanning in Phoenix, to hard-fighting state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the capitol. They are part of the Resistance. But they are losing. Arizona has become dominated by the worst kind of public and private craziness. Things have degenerated badly since Willey decamped for the Dallas Morning News in 2002 and even since I was kicked out of the state in 2007. Yes, she's in Texas, a very red state, but it's also a place with the kind of robust economy, opposition, vigorous media (e.g. Texas Monthly) and truly diverse cities (e.g. blue Austin) that are all lacking in Arizona. Dallas just opened a new 28-mile segment of its 72-mile light-rail system, just one thing that's unimaginable in Arizona. Its red-state Texas-sized braggadocio about conservative governance has run up against one of the worst state fiscal crises in America.

So with all due respect to my friend and former Palmcroft resident Keven, she doesn't know Arizona now. When Evan Mecham was governor, he was eased out of office by the business leadership because he was a national embarrassment. Now the business leadership is gone or hiding or compromised, and worse-and-dumber people than Mecham keep rising in power. Internally, at least, Arizona is rewarded for extremism. Also, as an editorial-page editor, she's paid to temporize. As a columnist, I'm paid, or not, to break china and throw down idols in the name of the truth. As for Arizona, the rocks come with the farm, so quit complaining about being badly treated by the rest of America.

Nullification

The latest Kookocracy folly in Arizona is a nullification bill. According to the Arizona Republic, "proponents, including Gov. Jan Brewer and many GOP lawmakers, call their effort renewed federalism and cheer the push to reassert states' rights." States' rights, of course, is longstanding American paranoid code for de jure racism. Now, beyond that, it's used as a trope to do away with Obamacare and the EPA. But does anyone think a GOP federal government would allow, say, California to nullify a white-right law? This is just another set piece of white-right theater to keep the duhs and ignos distracted. Or is it? With more than six million people, Arizona has turned from national joke to national trend-setter, from its Jim Crow anti-immigration law to its becoming the most prominent hotspot for political violence (and isn't it interesting how quickly the national media backed away from any censure of the climate of violence and "anti-liberal" hate speech that led up to the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords). What happens in Arizona doesn't stay in Arizona. And indeed, other red states want nullification, especially of the hated Obama health care revamp.

It's useful to recall the last time nullification was part of the national conversation. South Carolina passed a nullification act in 1832, to assert that the state would not be bound by a federal tariff that adversely affected the agrarian South. The South Carolinians backed down when they realized that President Andrew Jackson, no Barack Obama to put it mildly, would administer federal law with armed force — and if push had come to shove, Old Hickory would have done so with a bloody-mindedness than would have made Abraham Lincoln look like a pacifist, and the hotheads in Charleston and Columbia knew it. All this being history about which the Huppenthal home- and charter-schooled white-right are abysmally ignorant. Nevertheless, the Nullification Crisis was a step along the road to the Civil War. It was a sympton of an underlying unsustainable situation.

The crisis took place during a national economic downturn, as well as increasing sectional tension. Both of which apply today — and if the battle lines appeared more neatly drawn than today, it's useful to recall that most Southern states had strong pro-union movements. One of the most articulate anti-secessionists was Sam Houston. Again, we have sectional strife combined with a severe recession, and while the economy is on the mend the federal protection afforded the risky practices of the banksters virtually ensures another panic, sooner than later, and globalization is making the losers hurt ever more. All this drives political extremism.

Downtown, again II

The smart folks in the comments section of Rogue Columnist did not disappoint. So in the spirit of Abe Lincoln ("It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"), I should probably just send you to their thoughts and end the post right here.

Still, a few observations.

Let me join Soleri and others on my own SimCity dreams. Oh, to have the Westward Ho restored to its glory, as has happened in other cities around the country (such as the Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, the Skirvin in Oklahoma City or the Book Cadillac in Detroit)! To have the old Valley Bank building bustling again, with its magnificent lobby as I recall it. I'll see that and up you: A restored Union Station as an intercity and commuter train station, with intercity and city buses and a trolley to light rail. A real Symphony Hall worthy of a world-class city at Van Buren and Third, or any of the many vacant lots. Rebuilding some of the lost treasures, such as the red sandstone building that was located, as I recall, where the awful Wells Fargo (First National Bank of Arizona) tower now squats, on other empty land. Rebuild the Fox Theater, too. Somewhere architects must exist who would do something so subversive as to design pleasing, classical buildings.

For those wishing something to feel good about: Light rail, ASU Downtown, CityScape, the Phoenix Convention Center, Herberger Theater Center, Sheraton, Phoenix Biosciences Campus, Dodge Theater, Children's Museum, park of the Floating Diaphragm, USAirways Arena, Chase Field and the shady, grassy oasis of Arizona Center. These are all real accomplishments, major assets upon which other civic goods can grow.