Rogue Columnist

Arizona's desert towns

Dorothea Lange photographed Eloy during the Great Depression.

Before interstate highways, ubiquitous McDonald's and sprawl, there was that unique creature of the American Southwest: The small desert town. It was not like Bisbee, Globe or Prescott, growing rich from mining or ranching, or Flagstaff with its sawmills, cool weather and available water.

Nor were desert towns like Phoenix, sitting in one of the great fertile river valleys of the world. Instead, these were precarious footholds of human effort to conquer, or at least exist, in a deeply hostile wilderness. I think of places such as Casa Grande, Gila Bend, Eloy and Kingman. Wickenburg almost fit the description, but it benefited from mining, then dude ranches and proximity to fast-growing Phoenix on the main highway to Los Angeles.

Nineteenth century Arizona was a badlands in which only the most visionary dreamer, swindler or madman could see much potential beyond the mining country and the old Spanish outpost of Tucson. Going west from Tucson to California was only for the toughest or most deranged immigrant. A few tribes such as the Mojave knew how to live in this parched, poor land of eerie basins, rugged bare mountains and, in the south, the fickle Gila River. The European-Americans did not, even as they disparaged the natives as "digger Indians" and sometimes set out across the alien terrain.

One famous example was the Oatman party in 1851, traveling from well to well, until an encounter with (it's speculated) Yavapais 80 miles east of Yuma went wrong and most of the party were killed; young Olive was abducted, traded to another tribe and eventually returned to the whites, living out her life with tribal tattoos on her face. This was the world into which the desert town was planted.

One dreaming pragmatist was Jefferson Davis, who as Secretary of War encouraged surveys of a southern route for a future transcontinental railroad and pushed for the Gadsden Purchase (otherwise, Mexico would begin just south of Phoenix). It was the railroad that gave these Arizona desert towns their initial life. Sometimes they had water; other times it had be brought in by rail, but the steam locomotives of the Southern Pacific Railroad subsisted on a string of water towers along its route (the same was true of Kingman on the Santa Fe). One is still standing at Red Rock north of Tucson. From the water towers came towns. A few even survived.

 

Supremes SB1070 open thread

Here's my quick take on the Supreme Court's ruling on SB 1070 today: First, the law was never primarily aimed at stopping illegal immigration. Without illegal immigrants, Arizona's economy would collapse, and it would have done so by orders of magnitude had the '00s "boom" continued. The intent was to 1) Mobilize the aging Anglo right-wing base. 2) Push Latinos deeper into the shadows and reinforce their standing as second-class citizens/non-citizens. 3) Aid in voter suppression through its intimidation, wide net and climate of fear and Anglo supremacy.

The result: Mission accomplished. It really doesn't matter what the Supreme Court withheld or struck down. To use but one example, Terry Goddard, the best qualified candidate for governor in the state's history, lost to Jan Brewer. With this, any hope that the state's trajectory into madness could even be checked was lost. Nationally, the "papers, please" (and they don't say "please) has been a boon for the right.

Secondly, the great Hispanic backlash/political sea change that the East Coast media keep predicting ain't gonna happen. At least not for a generation or more. It's not happening in Texas. It's sure not going to happen in Arizona. "Mexicans don't vote." Hispanic turnout is miserably low. So the Supreme Court ruling is irrelevant, especially compared with this Montana case.

What do you think?

Dog days in Arizona

If all I knew was, as Will Rogers said, what I read in the papers, I'd be pretty depressed. This is ironic considering in Arizona their mission is to most of the time be the cheerleaders for the Everything's Fine! propaganda ministry.

Still, the sheer magnitude of the occasional story or a little bit of guerrilla journalism to slip out the truth happens. One example was an article by the Republic's excellent Gary Nelson on a recent meeting of the Maricopa Association of Governments. It was supposed to be a rah-rah-blah-blah lie-fest for the Sun Corridor, an insane brew of more sprawl and wishful thinking. But Bill Harris, the head of Science Foundation Arizona, warned that the state was headed for a Third World future without better leadership and education. This doesn't differ from what I've been writing for years or Mary Jo Waits' warning that Arizona was on track to be the "Appalachia of the 21st century," but it brought an absurd, tremulously defensive response from one of Gov. Brewer's stooges. This is how we know Harris was telling the truth.

Then, another article by Shaun McKinnon, who somehow survives to do fine reporting on the reality of climate change and Arizona. This one detailed how wildfires are bringing Arizona's majestic forests closer to collapse. "Fire has burned through one-quarter of the state's ponderosa-pine and mixed-conifer forests just in the past decade, leaving a blackened mosaic across 1 million acres. In all, nearly 4 million acres of Arizona's forests, grasslands and deserts -- an area slightly larger than Connecticut -- have burned since 2002." The only thing more upsetting about this is the utter lack of leadership to address it — let's have a Sun Corridor!

Thunder

Water taxis in Bricktown, Oklahoma City's reclaimed warehouse district.

Seattle readers can, and should, stop here and read other posts.

The Oklahoma City Thunder is in the NBA Finals. I think of 1976 and the Suns and Gar Heard's Shot Heard Round the World. Even though the league has been much degraded since then, pro sports will never get sweeter for a city than this moment. Enjoy, whatever the outcome. The Thunder — the former Seattle Supersonics, moved away by a new owner in a civic wound that refuses to heal — are also the capstone of downtown Oklahoma City's remarkable comeback from the grave. This in an even redder state than Arizona.

By the late 1980s, the state's oil industry was in a depression and downtown Oklahoma City was suffering all the familiar ills of urban America: Major corporations had decamped for the suburbs or a big office row in the northwest part of the city or been shattered by the economy, and shopping had gone out to malls. As Steve Lackmeyer of the Daily Oklahoman writes, "Oklahoma City's corporate base was dying. City Hall struggled to keep up with a record number of boarded-up homes. College professors were instructing students to seek opportunities out of state." Consolidation among railroads and changes in their business had left a vast area of warehouses just east of downtown empty. The old titan/stewards were dead or dying. Even worse, a misconceived "revival" effort involving famed and overrated architect I.M. Pei had only gotten about as far as tearing down many irreplaceable historic buildings, leaving blocks and blocks of nothing. I remember this desolate downtown from when I was teaching at a college in the southeastern part of the state and later working for a newspaper in Lawton.

Like a Phoenix?

All the boosters' stories and all the boosters' flacks can't get our mythical bird out of the ashes. Five years after the biggest collapse since the Hohokam unpleasantness, Phoenix still has the character of a fallen souffle. Perhaps that's for the best without a better plan, because the worst thing that could happen is a return to mass sprawl building. The most striking feature — and tell me if I'm missing something — is the lack of anything big happening. I don't mean nonsense such as "Buckeye will have 400,000 people!" I mean nothing is seriously moving ahead to follow on the genuine pre-crash achievements: ASU Downtown, light rail (WBIYB), the expanded and attractive convention center, the beginnings of the downtown biosciences campus and, disappointing though it is, CityScape.

Instead, Mayor Stanton is off on a misguided quest to "save" the state's defense jobs. Mesa at least is running light-rail 3 miles into downtown, but otherwise real advancement on LRT, much less commuter or intercity rail, is so slow as to be meaningless. The Gaylord "resort" collapsed in exurban Mesa — good. Glendale is in hock forever to save the Coyotes hockey team/development-con-gone-bad — good (never thought I'd find myself on the same side as the "Goldwater" Institute). Scottsdale is still rich (except for those long stretches of empty car lots on McDowell) — but who cares? The west side is getting its far loop freeway — bad news. Is this it, other than to hope for another real-estate boom?

Progress faces substantial challenges, some new, some old. The congressional delegation, Ed Pastor excepted, won't do a damned thing to bring home federal money to build a quality economy. The Legislature is anti-city, anti-science, anti-education and opposed to any real economic development besides the "What is that Smell?" state Commerce Authority. Suburbs keep cannibalizing business from the city and each other. There's no focus on the biosciences campus, the one real area of promise, and the big hospitals are happy to torpedo it. The new "takings" law puts further handcuffs on urban solutions. The city lacks a serious economic-development strategy for the city. Government revenues were vaporized. And there's the weight of so much empty land, so much inefficient sprawl, a huge underclass, the massive catch-up necessary but impossible to fund. Kook politics has cost the state dearly.

The new hard times

By now you know the news that Americans' wealth dropped nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. This is nearly all a function of the housing collapse, combined with the fact that the wages of average people have been stagnant or dropping for 30 years. And the data, being median wealth, probably understate the real damage. For all this, there's a very good chance that 50.1 percent of the voters will return the Party That Wrecked America to the White House, the last check on a federal government taken over by the extreme right. So if most of us are poorer now, just wait.

We're lectured that too many people have been living beyond their means, leeching off the public dole, racking up unsustainable debt. This is never you and me, mind you. It's someone else, but there are a lot of them and something drastic has got to give. David Brooks is one of the chief public scolds who also laments a loss of morality and dignity, even if he has spent his career supporting the jungle capitalism that has brought us low. Another is Thomas Friedman, prophet of world flatness. The government has spent decades giving and now it's going to have to spend the future taking back (but never from his pet projects, of course).

With Rep. Paul Ryan, lionized for his seriousness, we have federal budgets that put this wish into legislation. Never mind that they don't fix the deficit or debt, they do cut programs to the poor and lower middle-class. Social Security? Privatize it. Medicare? Give people vouchers worth a couple of thousand dollars (good for a low-end trip to the emergency room, if that). Military spending is "off the table," as are subsidies to big GOP donors such as the fossil fuels industry. So I hope you get a sense of this future barring a major course correction.

Military Keynesianism

Sometimes it's the (kind of) little things. The Hotel Palomar is open at CityScape. It's a boutique hotel run by Kimpton, which manages some wonderful places around the country, such as the Monoco in Denver, the Triton in San Francisco and the Alexis right down the street from me in Seattle. Many of the others, where I've had the pleasure of staying, are in restored historic buildings. The Palomar looks like a jail or the spawn of the ugly new county courts building. Meanwhile, the art deco headquarters of the old Valley National Bank sits vacant — it's even closer to the convention center — and the treasure of the Westward Ho is low-income housing. Across the street from CityScape? The historic Luhrs buildings look empty. The question just keeps coming back: Why can't Phoenix get its act together?

Check your defensiveness at the door, because I'm just winding up.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton has assumed a leadership role in an effort by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to blunt or stop defense spending cuts. He apparently traveled to Washington, meeting with wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III, nominally a U.S. senator representing Arizona, to discuss this issue. McCain did nothing to help secure funding for light rail (WBIYB), commuter rail, Amtrak, research, education or anything else that congressional members do for their states in such socialist havens as, say, Texas. But war? No problem, Greg. Come right in. This is a big thing.

Phoenix 101: San Diego

I never went to San Diego as a child. Nobody I knew did. Up into the 1970s, Phoenix's orientation was Los Angeles, and even that required a long drive across implacable desert. Part of this was due to geography. The Southern Pacific Railroad turned slightly northwest after crossing the Colorado River at Yuma and headed to LA. San Diego, although founded in 1769 and enjoying one of the finest natural harbors in the world, was initially bypassed by the railroads because of the imposing mountains and canyons to its east.

At the turn of the 20th century, sugar baron John Spreckels financed a railroad to connect the city with the SP at El Centro. It was one of the most difficult lines to engineer and build, including passage through Carrizo Gorge. Eventually, Spreckles was forced to sell the San Diego & Arizona to the SP, but the line never made much money. The Santa Fe Railway built south to the city from Los Angeles.

In high school, we took a couple of choir trips to San Diego. It was pleasant and sleepy, even though it was slightly more populous than Phoenix. Fast forward into the 1980s, and San Diego in the summer had become Phoenix West, with many thousands of Arizonans vacationing there, mobbing the place and not making friends. Advances in automobile technology and Interstate 8 had caused the big shift. By that time, I was living in San Diego and one of the first things I learned was not to tell anyone where I was from. One of my friends who knew the truth would derisively call me "Zonie Boy" when she wanted to get under my skin.

All fall down

We're at a very dangerous moment. The May unemployment report showed only 69,000 jobs created, all part-time, and only half of what's needed just to keep up with the natural growth of the labor force. The eurozone is headed for collapse and much of Europe is in recession. China, expected to lead world recovery, is slowing, as is India. We may never have escaped the Great Recession, but if we did we're on the edge of another downturn. Put another way: The Great Depression went on for more than a decade and had recessions embedded in it, like tornadoes in a hurricane.

Faced with this, the institutions and practices that were built up carefully to mitigate just such an event are either gone — Glass-Steagall — or in a free-fall of legitimacy. The European Union. A peaceful, strong Germany. A global system of free trade. An economy where the pursuit of profit, monopoly and plutocracy is offset by checks and balances that serve the common good. The paralyzed and compromised Federal Reserve. The "fixed" and hamstrung-by-extremists Congress. And, I am sorry to rub salt in your hopes, President Obama. Economic conditions are not as bad as they were in the Depression. Yet. Leadership is worse, at least among American politicians. Hardly any will even tell us the truth about our actual circumstances.

History offers a valuable "fund," as George F. Kennan put it, upon which we can draw to understand our present circumstances and perhaps plot prudent responses.