Things about Arizona

It's centennial week in Arizona, and the local media are doing their part. On Sunday, the Arizona Republic had a clever front-page display of wishes for the next hundred years from readers. My favorite was that Arizona enters the 21st century before it's over. Another asked for less conservative politics (good luck with that). The paper is trying very hard and doing good work. Inside were some quick hits by state worthies on what you should know about Arizona. They were relentlessly upbeat, as is a requirement for being viable here as a worthy: "The good people of Arizona have always had grit"; "We defy a stereotype as some might see existing in Maine, Texas or California"; "We are an iconoclastic bunch"; "It's a fantastic state with an early history that is just special," and, from Gov. Jan Brewer, "There is nothing that can't be accomplished here." Draw your own conclusions.

As usual, the rest is left to homey. "Every dirty job that comes along...," as Clint Eastwood growls in the original and best Dirty Harry film. So what are some things you need to know about Arizona? It's one of this blog's missions, but I'll try to put it into short Gannett-ese (sorry, my crack graphics/design team is off):

1. Arizona is not metropolitan Phoenix. Even though Phoenix-like mass-produced sprawl housing and shopping strips have spread statewide, most of Arizona has very different history, topography, cultures and socio-economic challenges from the big concrete blob in the center of the state.

2. Arizona is a welfare queen. As is common with red states, Arizona receives more in federal benefits than it pays in taxes; it is a "net taker" at $1.19 received for every dollar paid. By comparison, California gets 78 cents for every dollar. But the dependence, as the right-wingers would put it, goes much deeper. From pacifying the Apache and bringing the railroads, to the great water projects, electricity for air conditioning, infrastructure for sprawl and the Military Industrial Complex, Arizona has required and enjoyed huge outlays from the federal government.

3. Arizona is a risky experiment. As Rogue readers know, the reclamation of the Salt River Valley was the closest thing to a trial of large-scale socialism ever attempted by the federal government. Now the entire state has embarked on an experiment that makes it fairly unique in America: How many people can you stuff into a hostile desert with climate change happening and only going to get worse.

4. Arizona lies about water. The available water supplies are far less than boosters claim and are certainly not enough to sustain a Sun Corridor of 8 million people living in sprawled single-family tract houses, aside from being in Third World die-off circumstances. The public mendacity on this issue is morally criminal, and the private machinations to "prove" 100-year water supplies, etc. would no doubt cross the legal line if investigative journalists wanted to do more than crusade against those evil public employees. The state's water issue is complex, but inside the complexity is scarcity, not abundance. No technological fix will change this reality. And the unwillingness of the elites to even discuss this dangerous situation is beyond irresponsible. "Sustainability" has become one of those meaningless words, but the outcome here will give full force to "unsustainability."

5. The Mormons have more power than you think. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is greatly intertwined with the Anglo settlement of the state, and has often played a beneficial role. It is not being anti-Mormon to note that the church's influence in politics, legislation, business and public policy is far greater than its numbers. This distorts all these areas because everybody else is so disorganized, many just here to be left alone. And we lack the Mormons who are building extensive light- and commuter-rail and improving downtown in Salt Lake, among many good projects,

6. Power has always been highly centralized in Arizona. In the old days, the railroads and mining companies ran the state. Now it's the Real Estate Industrial Complex, the extreme right and the LDS. Behind the scenes, as in every hydrological society, there's the one who controls the water, such as the Salt River Project. Interestingly that Arizona has grown to be populous and highly urbanized, yet it hasn't developed the many, often competing, nodes of power that one would expect. (And, no, it's not because "we're a young state.")

7. Arizona is based on extraction industries. This is another thing that, curiously, didn't change with tons of people and cities. Once it was digging and smelting copper, mining for other metals, cutting timber and exploiting the land for grazing and growing. Now it's subdivisions, other sprawl land plays and extracting populations of people who will put up with anything as long as its hot. Each has huge externalities, including vast environmental costs and exploitation of labor. Another result is the poisonous use-up-and-move-on mentality.

8. Arizona is capital poor. From the first mining operations in the 19th century, Arizona needed major capital investment from the east as well as federal largesse. That never really changed, despite a few attempts at serious economic development. Unlike California, for example, Arizona never had a "Big Four" and other capitalists who made their fortunes here and stayed, making it a major center of capital. Such an outcome would have led to a much more diverse, prosperous economy, along with well endowed universities, cultural institutions, etc. Thus, the state has fewer assets — and a bad attitude — to attract world capital markets today. The major exception, until the Late Unpleasantness, was real-estate hustles. And the pensions, savings and Social Security/Medicare brought by the huge retiree golfing cohort (oh, we "defy a stereotype").

9. Nastiness is nothing new. Every state has skeletons in its closets. Ours include the Bisbee Deportation, defrauding of Mexican-American farmers by sleazy Anglo promoters (part of a long history of land fraud), internment of most of the state's Japanese population during World War II, segregation in many places during Jim Crow and stealing the land from its tribal owners. So SB 1070 has plenty of company. That said, nastiness and self-destructive and immoral policies didn't always triumph. Barry Goldwater, Carl Hayden, Ernest McFarland, John Rhodes and Mo Udall would be aghast and not a little pissed at most of their successors.

10. Arizona has an identity crisis. Unlike, say, Ohio, most residents weren't born here. A large number don't really consider it home, as in a place that requires civic engagement and sacrifice for the greater good. They may say they "love it" and "Talton hates Arizona," but somehow they are always against every effort to improve the state, preserve its treasures and ensure a quality future (which Talton crusaded for, and paid the price, and for which the Resistance continues to fight). Along with this diffuse Anglo Arizona, we have a diverse Latino population, many stretching back generations, others — at least until recently — here to prop up the economy and then go back home. What is an Arizonan? It's a more complex question than 50 years ago. And "iconoclastic"? Please. Most of Anglo Arizona is as conformist as any Sinclair Lewis setting. It's just conformity to right-wing extremism, civic disengagement, gun culture, defensiveness and Things We Don't Talk About (e.g., water, climate change). Russell Pearce is the establishment.

Read more Centennial posts.

Comments

[cal Lash]

Thanks Jon, a well done, powerful statement!

[Steve]

It's been pretty tough to celebrate. I couldn't, even as a life-long resident of Phoenix, go down to the State Capitol to share in the event when I knew it is a place populated by right-wing loonies. I'll find another way that isn't so Capitol-centric.

[Walter Hall]

I wanted to state a number 11, but the best I can come up with is something that sums up or glosses on the previous 10. It's the idea that the worse things get in Arizona, the harder it becomes to reform the institutions and political culture necessary for a better future. Hence, we see the self-inflicted wounds of inadequate education funding, health care, and transportation (other than gifts to the real-estate cabal). There's also the smug, self-reinforcing denial about environmental issues. This means Arizona cements into place all its previous bad decisions about the political economy. It also means that delusional thinking about privatization and privilege have become rock-hard truths to people more interested in talking points than serious engagement with the issues. It means a state divided between haves who feel no responsibility for an ill-educated and badly trained population stranded in often vast linear slums. There is no successful polity that can keep digging itself a deeper hole with the idea that it will somehow discover a Randian motherlode if only taxes and services are always cut. It means for us an Arizona that attracts more immigrants wanting above all else to be left alone. This retreat from reform and renewal means Arizona has effectively given up on the future.

[eclecticdog]

Arizona is a colony, and colonies cost the government more than the government takes, but richly rewards the corporations, Mormon colonists, and "entrepreneurs" that suck everything they can out of a place until it is an empty husk.

[AzRebel]

Arizona icons used to be:

The Grand Canyon
The Saguaro
The Native American Indians of the Southwest
Clean, dry air

Now we have:

A butt-ugly former guv as head of DHS

A butt-ugly Senator who will serve until he's 100

A butt-ugly guv who scolded the President.

A butt-ugly ex-state senator who won't go away

A butt-ugly sheriff who will serve till he's 100.

Notice the common thread?

Over-all, (outside the state of Maricopa) Arizona is still a place of beauty.

However, I'm afraid the butt-ugly goes way down deep.

[Walter Hall]

Then there's this:

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2012/02/13/phoenix-ranks-poorly-for-public.html?ed=2012-02-13&s=article_du&ana=e_du_pub

[Petro]

"Arizona is a colony, and colonies cost the government more than the government takes, but richly rewards the corporations, Mormon colonists, and "entrepreneurs" that suck everything they can out of a place until it is an empty husk."

This is the sort of metaphor that causes me to rifle through my entire Rolodex of thought.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Well, I just wrote a complimentary and detailed comment on this, with suggestions for numerous follow-ups: but when I went to copy the text it was "magically erased" and the only thing that would paste was a lone hyperlink. So tough titty. If I wasn't afraid of composing text offline and copying it into the text window here (because of problems posting) this wouldn't have happened.

By the way, I'm really pissed off that I spent 45 minutes working on this only to have the whole thing erased simply because I tried to copy some text using the perfectly ordinary cut-and-paste function and it then malfunctioned and eliminated that work unrecoverably.

[AzRebel]

Petro, I compliment you on your Rolodex of thought. You, Rogue, Walter and Emil have a need for a Rolodex.

I'm afraid I only need a post-it note.

It's pastel blue.

[neuromusic]

Do you have a reference for your numbers on point #2? Would really be interested in looking at the data.

[Supreme Commander]

11. Arizona is a fool's paradise.

[Nick]

I'm a native here and even I don't consider it "home." It's hard to feel a connection to anything in the Phoenix area.

[Petro]

Emil, I'm confused. When composing offline, I save the document before I do any copy/paste action. e.g., for me, I have a document called "work.abw" that contains the latest comment I've worked on (I use AbiWord, hence the suffix - it could be ".txt" or whatever's appropriate to your editor.)

[Rate Crimes]

"Power has always been highly centralized in Arizona" - Rogue

Power, both political and electrical:

http://ratecrimes.blogspot.com/2009/06/central-planning.html

[cal Lash]

"If we look more carefully at Arizona’s energy mix and the Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST) rules, we discover that utilities have long enjoyed the happy circumstance where the people of Arizona carry the greater risk. "

Think Phoenix is big enough to become their own Renewable Energy owner? Or is that even possible?

[morecleanair]

Walter Hall's comments should be put in a time capsule. It is hard for me (also) to muster much enthusiasm for the centennial cheering section because my adopted state has gone so far off course. Jon captures our dysfunction. I like the section about "water lies" best because it describes the WORST of our delusions and disinformation. I also like the "butt-ugly" recitation because that describes the face Arizona presents to the nation. In 40+ years, I've never felt such a sense of despair! Explains why my address reads OREGON for the worst 6 months . . .

[Rate Crimes]

cal,

The politics of energy in Arizona are the politics of Arizona. More broadly, the politics of Arizona are fundamentally about the water-energy systems of the Southwest. Phoenix is not big enough to change this. It isn't even 'big enough' to change even its own habits. As Jon points out, Arizona's habit is one of unconstrained extraction: including the extraction of its childrens' futures.

[jmav]

Arizona RED STATE NIRVANA

[morecleanair]

Would it be a reach to consider the Tea Party as an (almost) separate entity, since it has an agenda of its own that's often considerably more rigid and constipated than a typical Republican platform? In my little town, the TP is trying to recall one of the most effective Council members by using outside money to hire outside petition-mongers. Their target's big sin: being an Independent and favoring a single trash hauler vs. 5 fleets of competitors.
Was it Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra who described things as getting "curios-er"?