Rogue Columnist

'Hard truths'

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie likes it hard. As in, "to lead as my mother insisted I live, not by avoiding truths, especially the hard ones, but by facing up to them and being the better for it." Also in his 2016 acceptance speech in Tampa on Tuesday night, he said, "With $5 trillion in debt added over the last four years, we have no other option but to make the hard choices, cut federal spending and fundamentally reduce the size of government." A few lines later, there it was again: "Hard choices..." When he finally got around to mentioning the nominee of the Party That Wrecked America, wealthy Republican Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney, he promised, "Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear..."

Really? In a contest already remarkable for Republican deceit, including the outright lie that President Obama loosened welfare work requirements, this is the bunch that is not only going to tell us the truth, but "hard truths"? And remember, the Romney camp has put us on notice that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Apparently the "hard truths" will also be heavily camouflaged in the racist dog whistles to the old, white party base. Did you know that the president is a Negro? Not even an American. Even Bill Clinton didn't face this from the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.

Mayor Stanton's report card

Eight months after assuming office, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is still enjoying a honeymoon. That means he's making the honeymoon last. So much for critics who thought he was just a pretty face. The contrast with Phil Gordon, his poignantly snakebit predecessor, is striking. Stanton can routinely speak in complete sentences and articulate coherent thoughts. Becoming the 52nd mayor of Phoenix hasn't caused Stanton to shelve his appealing nature. People who talk to me about the mayor use words such as "smart," "easy going," "open" and "welcomes new ideas." He remembers people's names and what they've been working on. His human touch and emotional intelligence are genuine, not the surface happy talk of a politician.

I was concerned about the "biosciences" bone tossed to Desert Ridge when so much needs to be done for the real biosciences campus downtown, the one site that could be a real game-changer for Phoenix. But my sources involved in downtown, light rail and sustainability aren't worried, so good on Stanton. Another concern was Stanton taking the lead among mayors on backing military spending, when Phoenix needs a spokesman on so many more compelling and productive issues. But this seems to be part of his effort to make regional cooperation a priority (good luck with that).

Stepping back, probably the best way to see Stanton so far is that he's doing a good job of getting his feet under him in a race that's already moving fast and carrying huge stakes.

Conventional Republicans

As the Republicans prepare for their national convention, a tropical storm with the ironic name of Isaac might visit a biblical comeuppance on the party of theocracy. Now wouldn't that be "spaycial," as they say in the South. Wouldn't that be in-ter-est-ing. The Grand Old Party couldn't have picked a more appropriate place to gather, Tampa, a "city" that makes Phoenix look like Paris by comparison, a poster child for Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere, and a deep-red suburban bastion of ignorant and retrograde Republicanism. Back in the day, a convention would have defeated wealthy Republican Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney on the first ballot, and then the old hands would have gathered in a smoke-filled room to choose a better candidate.

Tom Friedman opines that "America today desperately needs a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century 'conservative' opposition to President Obama, and we don’t have that, even though the voices are out there." Deconstructing Friedman is always a fun party game, but let me be brief. The sentence presumes that Mr. Obama is a liberal. And this is based on, what? Even Obamacare is a massive giveaway to big business, specifically the insurance companies and for-profit health oligarchy. The banksters got away with it. Wars go on. The national security state is bigger. Civil liberties more at risk. Tell me something liberal in the president's record. He's about as liberal as Jerry Ford. And the "voices are out there." Really? Tom Coburn? The world ain't the only thing that's flat.

The compelling question looms larger than Friedman's clueless search for the mythical center: Why is this election even close?

New life for Luke?

Much celebration has accompanied the announcement that Luke Air Force Base will be the training base for the new F-35 Lightning II fighter. If I read the news story correctly, the claims include 1,000 "permanent direct and indirect jobs," and the program will "bolster" the base's economic impact of $2.2 billion (from 2005). Winning the F-35 gives Luke a future as F-16 pilot training winds down over the next 11 years. Republic editorialists strained to tell how about how this West Valley "coup" was good for the East Valley. Mesa Mayor Scott Smith wrote how this enhances the region's dream of being an aerospace hub. On the other side of town, it seemed necessary to celebrate the benefits for Little League and dry cleaners.

As usual, it's left to Homey to sun on the parade.

Despite all the professed love for Luke, the Real Estate Industrial Complex has been encroaching for years on a base that was once separated by many miles from the urban area. The difficult route that pilots must fly, especially when armed for exercises on the Goldwater range, and the danger to nearby subdivisions is one of the many unexplored local stories. As for the new house-owners who find out just how loud a fighter jet is...suckers. By the mid-2000s, land brokers were feverishly assembling parcels even closer to Luke for new tract houses and some very powerful land-owners were, er, tepid in their support of continued Air Force operations. This was a quiet but fierce clash that went on even as the Pentagon wondered whether it was safe and economical to continue such a large training base so close to residential development.

Let's help the Times

A few years ago, when it seemed that Phoenix had become the nation's fifth most-populous city, the New York Times decided to post a reporter to this unknown land somewhere on the other side of Jersey. Recently, the job has been handed off to Fernanda Santos. Lately, the Newspaper of Record has uncovered that it's hotter than hell in the un-air-conditioned atrium of the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Courthouse (a plan which I remain convinced starchitect Richard Meier just pulled off the shelf from his student days, although others say he was enamored by the misters at a restaurant at Arizona Center). Santos has also revealed for the Times' influential readership the tortilla factory at the Ranch Market on Roosevelt at 16th Street.

Then came the topper: A story this week on the excessive heat that never mentioned the worsening urban heat island because of the loss of agriculture and sprawl, much less climate change and its dire potential consequences for a big city where, to paraphrase Ed Abbey, one should not be. The conclusion of this bastion of sophisticated journalism: It's very hot in Phoenix in August.

To be fair, Santos was said to looking for a house in the historic districts, according to sources who wished to remain anonymous because they wished to remain anonymous, as the Times might put it. Good for her. She has done some (reactive) lifting on the Badged Ego's legal troubles and immigration. And one never knows the misguidance being given by editors. But Phoenix desperately needs all the real enterprise journalism it can get, however much it discomfits the local-yokels. Let's help out the Old Gray Lady.

Debt reefer madness

When did we become a nation of deranged accountants? These United States face many critical tests, from the perilous (climate change) and exceptional (the lesser depression and the destruction of the rule of law by the plutocrats) to the merely important (rising inequality and declining opportunity). But look around and listen. What is the Most Important Issue? Federal fiscal policy. The federal debt! The federal deficit! Oh, Jerusalem!

Americans who would otherwise have difficulty balancing their checkbooks live in terror of this menace. The Very Serious People (hat-tip to Paul Krugman) in government and media have made it the true north to which every other national need must bend. It has been a gift to demagogues on the right. But your neighbor and granny are lying awake over what is actually a bunch of macroeconomic hypotheticals they do not even understand. But, but, we're deeply in debt, facing bankruptcy — look at Greece! — families have to tighten their belts, so the government should, too, and if this isn't fixed now, we'll, we'll.. (head explodes). I suppose the consequences are of the operatic kind of payback facing a high-school kid who takes just one toke of pot in the 1936 classic Reefer Madness.

It would be laughable if the damage looming from attempts to "fix" or exploit the fiscal situation was not so real.

The party's over

America can accomplish a great deal when the most reactionary states pick up their marbles and leave Washington. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Pacific Railroad Act, which authorized government bonds and land grants to build the transcontinental railroad. The legislation had languished until the Southern states seceded. Then it sailed through the Republican-controlled Congress and was signed by President Lincoln on July 1, 1862. Other major pieces of the new party's agenda that never would have passed the filibuster of Southern Democratic senators also became law: Land-grant colleges and the Homestead Act. All three would prove decisive in the nation's development.

It's also worth noting that in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which broke the back of de jure segregation, 80 percent of Republicans voted for the legislation, a higher percentage than among Democrats. The Democratic majority included a solid segregationist Southern bloc, including most powerful committee chairmen and the wily Sen. Richard Russell. As Robert Caro majestically narrates in The Passage of Power, Lyndon Johnson knew how to "get" people — and as the new president, he got essential GOP support by relentlessly reminding foot-dragging Republican lawmakers that they were "the Party of Lincoln."

In the same year, Barry Goldwater won his party's presidential nomination. His opposition to federal civil-rights legislation ensured support in the South (before his assassination, President Kennedy's polling was showing him losing the South in a Kennedy-Goldwater matchup). But, still, there were Nelson Rockefeller, Kenneth Keating, Jacob Javits, Hugh Scott and George Romney, liberal Republicans all. Richard Nixon funded the Great Society, established the Environmental Protection Agency and proposed far-reaching improvement to health-care coverage. Ronald Reagan, demigod of today's Republicans, was more often pragmatic than ideological in his governing. And we don't even have to get into Poppy Bush.

Corrupt or stupid?

I don't mean to be harsh, but what is it with Arizona's climate-change denial? Sure, it's not as bad as North Carolina, which is trying to outlaw using climate science to estimate the rise in sea level. But Arizona is the focus of this blog, the home state I love (no matter what you believe) and fight for, even if it must be at a distance. Aside from the Republic's indispensable Shaun McKinnon, I am unaware of any public figures who are discussing a subject they should be screaming from the rooftops: The clear and present danger that climate change specifically presents to Arizona.

Of course, the Kooks (I coined the term, you're welcome) will be deniers. But consider the congressional primary race among Democrats Kyrsten Sinema, Andrei Cherny and David Schapira. I'm not sure the survivor from this circular firing squad will prevail in a new district that includes Chandler and Mesa. But one would think, especially given the talent and brains of the two candidates I know (Cherny and Sinema), that this could be a time for truth telling. Yet — and forgive me if I missed it — I can't find a mention of it on their campaign Web sites, much less in the "send money" push emails from Cherny and chirpy-happy-everything's-great-in-Arizona tweets from Sinema.

Issues in the closet

This is the most important presidential and congressional election in my lifetime. The trouble is, none of the major candidates is talking about the big issues. Or is it just me? President Obama and wealthy Republican challenger Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney are outdoing each other to please the Israel lobby. There's a fierce debate over alleged ill-treatment of the super-wealthy. Romney promises to increase defense spending; Obama cut it a little, maybe. What will get the economy going again: tax cuts and other Bush redux policies, or, as Obama seems to be saying, merely not electing the other guy. The gaffe watch is on high, of course. Are these the big issues upon which the fate of the republic hangs? The political press complains that it's a boring election. No wonder. The real issues, the serious matters screaming for intelligent responses, are kept hidden away:

1. Climate change. Despite a consensus among the scientists that actually specialize in this field that climate change is real, human caused, getting worse faster than anticipated and will produce far greater cost and harm than good, we're doing next to nothing about it. Try to write about it, as I did last Sunday in the Seattle Times, and you'll be marked on reactionary Web sites to be deluged with emails, all with the same wording and alleged research that climate change is a hoax, or at best unproven. The goal is to intimidate and confuse. I don't give a damn. I'll write about it every chance I get. But our leaders won't tell us the truth, won't campaign on policies that would address it and at least prevent the worse outcome. No issue is more important.

2. The (real) economy. Mass unemployment, stagnant wages, historic inequality, slow or no growth, the end of meritocracy. These things should be unthinkable in America, but neither candidate and few members of Congress will really lay out the policies to address them. The Romney solution, tax cuts and more deregulation, is a big reason why we're in this mess. We need a major stimulus focused entirely on creating jobs, especially by building large-scale 21st century infrastructure (not "roads and bridges"). And with interest rates and Treasury yields so low, there's never been a better time to borrow. Then we need to raise taxes, go after tax shelters and tax gambling in the capital markets that doesn't create productive enterprises and good jobs. Forget beating up China over currency manipulation; we need to play China's game in trade.