Rogue Columnist

Mayor Stanton

I'll admit to being an optimist who worries. Surely Wes Gullett, tool of the right wing extremists, couldn't win the Phoenix mayor's race... Yet, Phoenix and Arizona have fallen into too many tragic improbabilities for me to count and things had been taking a severe downbound course lately. In the end, a record turnout put Greg Stanton emphatically in office. Thank God. This is unalloyed "positive news," for those of you who think I have no bright side. Stanton could be a transformative mayor at a time when the city most needs one.

Now, to the serious stuff. Most of the issues that dominated the campaign and the media's attention are small ball. Phoenix is a well-run big city, with a few exceptions such as the Jack Harris-type backscratching. All of these can be addressed with a functioning  City Council. The one that requires reflection is water rates. The older parts of Phoenix need no further push to let shade trees die and throw down gravel. Indeed, they need an incentive to keep the oases that are critical protection against the heat island. In addition, city staff should roll back their demand for gravel and palo verdes on nearly every city property. This is only adding to the unlivability of Phoenix. A discussion on the investment of water for shade oases is critical.

Stanton's biggest challenge, as he well knows from his days on City Council, will be building majorities for the critical policies he wants enacted. Phoenix's mayor is more powerful than any of his peers in the state, but the city remains (foolishly, to my mind) a council-manager form of government. The mayor is "just one vote," as an intelligent, ambitious councilman told me years ago. Stanton is well-suited to the task: Amiable, emotionally intelligent, willing to listen, politically street smart and wearing hig policy wonkishness lightly. But without a majority, he'll get nowhere. It may shift from issue to issue, but it is the mayor's majority that Skip Rimsza wielded with such effectiveness. It will be interesting to see if Mayor Stanton has a "Councilman Stanton," an effective do-the-right-thing ally on big stuff. This was a role that Stanton played on the biosciences campus and ASU downtown to Mayor Phil Gordon, even though their overall relationship was always a wary one.

Occupy what?

Let's start out with the Arab Spring. Americans know little about the world, especially a place as complicated as the Middle East. This situation has been made worse as news organizations have cut back foreign bureaus and coverage. Thus the uprisings lumped under the Arab Spring have assumed this simplistic narrative: Arabs have risen up against tyrannical regimes and it's a new day of Jeffersonian democracy. This doesn't fit the facts. For example, the military has ruled Egypt pretty much ever since the British pulled out. Deposing Mubarak, whatever the inspiring protests seemed to show, was business as usual. Mubarak came out of the military; the military reasserted control, a fact underscored by the alleged killing of 13 protesters today. The Persian Spring was quickly and bloodily suppressed by Iranian security forces. To make a sweeping generalization, "democracy" in the Middle East will likely be very different than we imagine, leading to regimes that are anti-American, anti-Israel (and the Israelis do themselves no favors here), and installing Islamic law. Juan Cole has the best handle on the region.

Americans hoping for some good naturally make a tie-in with the Occupy movement. The most apt correlation I can see is that the elites still somehow find a way to maintain control, backed by police and the military. Before "Support the Troops," Americans were historically suspicious of a large standing army, and for good reason. With the ubiquitous police violence against Occupy protesters we have seen the militarization of law enforcement that has troubled older cops for some time. Now the oligarchs have the White House, Congress, courts and robocop law enforcement to do their will.

I am over Occupy, a point I first made in a blog post for the Seattle Times, which attracted 120 comments the last time I looked. Some of these points need to be fleshed out.

President McCain

Contingency is the great trickster of history. Let's assume that wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III had picked a serious running mate (say, Florida's popular Gov. Charlie Crist or even Mitt Romney), turned on the fighter-jock charm and not panicked during the financial panic. And won a close 2008 election. What would have happened?

The EPA would have seen its regulatory depredations reined in, especially new rules for greenhouse gases. Indeed, nothing would have been done to address climate change. Science would have been marginalized in policy in favor of the fossil fuels barons and plutocracy. Drill, baby, drill would have gone on in spite of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. American troops would have been added to Afghanistan and that war expanded, while President George W. Bush's timetable to exit Iraq would have been observed. American quiet wars would have been extended, say, into Yemen, elsewhere in Africa and South America. New military muscle would have been projected against China, say basing Marines in Australia. No effort would have been made to cut military spending that is larger than all other nations combined.

The GOP being the party of the wealthy, the Bush tax cuts would have been extended. And, naturally, Wall Street would have been bailed out of its swindles and made whole on the taxpayers' dime, then sent back to resume its sociopathic behavior. He would have picked a Treasury Secretary and top financial advisers determined to sustain the status quo. McCain's Attorney General would have been a corporate lawyer who would not prosecute a single major bankster, much less the war criminals of the previous administration. At the pleadings of Republican, as well as Democratic, governors, a McCain administration would have spent billions filling the holes in state budgets. Otherwise, his answer to the huge demand hole of the Great Recession would have been more tax cuts and spending largely on highway projects. Corporate profits would reach records, but middle-class Americans would see their prospects further dim.

Oh, wait. All that has happened anyway under the presidency of Barack Obama.

Crisis of legitimacy

The best takedown I've read so far of the Joe Paterno/Penn State crime comes from Jim Kunstler. He ends with something I have pondered more than once: "Every new day that dawns lately gives further proof that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished." As someone who grew up on the razzle-dazzle years of Frank Kush's Sun Devils, playing in the disrespected Western Athletic Conference and having teams such as Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State get all the attention, I never bought into the deification of Paterno. But who would have thought the fall would come from this. Child rape, a cover-up that lasted for years and more rotting shoes left to drop. As I wrote about Bishop O'Brien, he of the hit-and-run should-have-been vehicular homicide, crisis reveals character. The revelations continue to redefine disillusionment.

The study of history makes one wary of claiming something new or unprecedented. Monsters have always roamed in our midst. But the rotting corruption in nearly every important national institution is unlike anything I've come across in our history. In the American exceptionalism argument, I tend to come down on the side of exceptionalism, but today what makes us extraordinary is our criminality, ignorance and decadence. D.H. Lawrence wrote, "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer." Maybe so. But it was once capable of grand and good things, especially through the collective institutions it built. No more.

Look anywhere. The Air Force can't be trusted to handle the remains of dead soldiers brought home, from wars our leaders lied us into and maintain and expand for the profit of defense contractors, as well as to lock up oil supplies because they won't come clean with us about future scarcity. The Great Recession is a product of corruption taken to stratospheric levels.

A new day in AZ?

The evil that men do lives after them. — Shakespeare

I don't mean to sun on the parade. I really don't. Nobody is happier to be wrong about Russell Pearce's recall election than me. He becomes the first legislator in Arizona history to be successfully recalled. But what does it mean? In the flush of victory Tuesday night, state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who was my legislator when I lived in Willo and is the smartest person at the capitol, tweeted, "Voters sent a message tonight: focus on practical, common sense solutions to our state's challenges. Stop the ultra-partisan nonsense." What does that mean? My common-sense solutions include commuter rail, passenger rail between Phoenix and Tucson (and LA), land-use reform to focus on the existing urban footprints, a serious economic-development strategy, raising the revenue needed to support a populous, urbanized state, funding universities and K-12 education, etc. To much of Arizona, common-sense solutions mean more guns and less taxes.

When I asked Sinema if the election of Jerry Lewis would mean he might be more moderate and work across the aisle, her response was more pragmatic: "We're not sure yet. One must be judged by performance not campaign speeches. Here's hoping Rs moderate instead of 'double down'! ". Indeed.

Pearce may be gone, but the edifice he created lives on: SB 1070, Jan Brewer as governor who's formed a political action committee to "fight against illegal immigration and the new federal health care law nationwide," an extreme state Legislature owned by the NRA and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, and copycat laws nationwide, including the most extreme on in Alabama. Will any of that change with Pearce's recall? Or will he just be back again, running for another office, whether it's the state Senate or Maricopa County Sheriff when the Badged Ego decides to step down. Oh, yeah, in the "new Arizona" on the morning after, Joe Arpaio remains more popular than ever. Jon Kyl is blocking any progress in the "super Congress." Wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III keeps his incoherent/bought-and-paid for blather. Terry Goddard is still defeated in the governor's race, an election season of madness that turned on the fulcrum of hatred built by Russell Pearce.

Election Day

UPDATE: Pearce becomes the first legislator in Arizona history recalled and Stanton is elected Phoenix mayor. Read on if you wish. Definitely join the comment thread.

I've been predicting that Russell Pearce will survive his recall election, but what will it really mean if he's defeated by Jerry Lewis? The district still ends up with a know-nothing lightweight. Yes, it will be a nice screw you to Pearce, the father of SB 1070. But it won't change either the pathology in the Legislature or in the East Valley. It was telling that Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a conservative and Mormon but not a nut, chose not to run (he may have bigger ambitions, but could no better opposition to Pearce be found?). Whatever the outcome, the house (and Senate) that Pearce built will remain. The NRA will remain as powerful as ever. Ditto the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the private prison con. Jan Brewer will still be governor. Tell me what I'm missing. One observer predicted Pearce would run for sheriff when Joe finally retires.

The Phoenix mayoral election, on the other hand, is of major importance. Greg Stanton's internal polls, I am told, show him comfortably ahead of Wes Gullett. The danger here is that potential Stanton voters will stay home, so I am hesitant to even report this. That Gullett ever got this far is a sign that anyone with common sense had better get to the polls.

This contest has been narrowed down to the national meme of "public-sector workers bad." That's most unfortunate. There is indeed an ole-boys system in Phoenix government, but it involves the highly placed, most notoriously the double-dipping of former Police Chief Jack Harris. What's really wrong inside City Hall may be outside the ability of any mayor to fix because it's rooted in the council-manager form of government. Whoever is city manager, the Titanic keeps sailing along. One small example: Spending large sums for consultants to generate reports that could have been done better and cheaper by the city staff. That might have been different had David Krietor or Ed Zuercher (or Sheryl Sculley) been selected city manager. That they weren't tells you everything you need to know. The many interests that feed off the City Hall status quo want things to continue as before.

The shameless state

Corrected version

I keep waiting for Arizonans to experience their Joseph Welch moment. For those of you too young to remember, Welch was the man who finally, publicly stood up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It was another time of national madness, when the alcoholic senator from Wisconsin  was accusing everybody and his brother of being a communist. Finally, in a 1954 hearing, Welch, the chief counsel for the Army, which was being investigated for alleged red penetration, listened to McCarthy smear one of his law partners. Welch said:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

When McCarthy tried to interrupt, Welch made his famous statement: "Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Along with Dwight Eisenhower's quiet but lethal behind the scenes moves in a sane Republican Party, this destroyed Tailgunner Joe. The moment of national insanity snapped like the breaking of an evil spell.