Rogue Columnist

Thinking about water

The Central Arizona Project canal snakes through the desert.

The Arizona Republic's Shaun McKinnon did a fine job of using the breach in the CAP canal to provide a primer on the system and some of its challenges (here, here and here). This blog has written extensively on water and Arizona, but while a few people are paying attention, let me make a few essential points:

• The Colorado River is over-subscribed. There are, as the water geeks say, too many straws sucking from the river. When the Colorado River Compact was first sealed in 1922 (with Arizona disputing the allotments, chiefly because it believed it was due more because the Gila and its in-state tributaries flow into the Colorado), the Southwest was largely unpopulated and even Los Angeles' population in the most recent Census was less than 600,000. The river was to be "tamed" for reclamation. Nobody ever imagined Las Vegas, a tiny stop on the Union Pacific Railroad, would become a major metropolis. Critically, the river levels used to make the allotments were around 500-year highs. Now there's simply not enough water to go around. The Upper Basin states, especially the state of Colorado, always felt defrauded by the deal and the subsequent settlement of Arizona v. California. They will be much more jealous of their water resources now. Mexico was shortchanged, as well, with catastrophic destruction of the Colorado delta resulting.

• Climate change will transform all assumptions about water in the Southwest, especially its effect on snowmelt, both in the Rockies feeding the Colorado River, and the Arizona mountains whose snow charges the lakes of the Salt River Project. There will be less water and higher temperatures. We have no historical roadmap for what this will mean, especially because, as Ed Abbey would say, one has established a city where no city should be.

Open thread

I'm working on revisions to the manuscript of the new David Mapstone Mystery, The Night Detectives. So I leave things in your capable hands.

 

Reader feedback, please

I'm having lunch today with Rogue's honorary Page One Editor, so it seems timely to ask what you appreciate on this humble blog, both post topics and the aggregation pages. You can make multiple choices. Feel free to add comments on things the poll questions don't cover.

Parking lot city

"We like our parking lots!" lawyer and Real Estate Industrial Complex apologist Grady Gammage said a few years ago when the two of us were speaking at an event on the future of Phoenix. And how. I've read that some 43 percent of the city of Phoenix alone is empty land. It would be interesting to know how much of the city is surface parking lots.

I remember when Kenilworth School was surrounded by grass and majestic palm trees. It lost part of that to the monstrous Papago Freeway. More was taken away by parking lots. The consequences are even more telling at North High School. At one time, North boasted a beautiful campus with shade and trees — it was the probably the most attractive campus in the state. By the time I got back in 2000, most of it had been paved over. Similarly, the old city-county building, where my fictional detective David Mapstone has his office, was once an oasis of shade trees and grass. Those were ripped out for "authentic" dirt and palo verdes, and recently the parking lot on the south end of the 1929 building was...expanded.

More than aesthetics are involved. Surface parking lots are a big cause of local warming, which has increased nighttime temperatures some 10 degrees in my lifetime, causing the summers to be hotter and last longer, and turning normal monsoon storms into violent affairs when they collide with the heat being released by all these square miles of asphalt and concrete. The lots destroy the fabric of the city and make walkability and convenience much more problematic. Many sit atop former farmland, which will really matter in a future of food shortages. Take a drive, ride light rail (WBIYB) or pull up Google Earth and look at all the parking lots in Phoenix. Interestingly, most of them are largely empty most of the time.

Arizona merry-go-round

I was supposed to be on KJZZ's Here and Now with Steve Goldstein on Wednesday but we were pre-empted by POTUS. So let me run through a few Arizona observations:

As of Wednesday, the state was still counting ballots. If this were happening in a banana republic, it would be one thing...but in a supposedly advanced nation? This affront to democracy is not mere incompetence but a huge opportunity for mischief — not the virtually nonexistent vote fraud the GOP claims, but official vote suppression and disenfranchisement of "those people." Once upon a time, the Secretary of State's office was a sleepy but efficient place, presided over forever by Wes Bolin and his assistant, Rose Mofford. It has become increasingly politicized, especially in 2004 when Jan Brewer was both Secretary of State, overseeing the election, and head of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign. Ken Bennett is no less an ambitious political animal. This is a scandal crying for investigative reporting and reform. Also, how could you re-elect Joe Arpaio? No wonder Gov. Fright Mask is musing on another term.

• • •

For the first time, Arizona has no Democratic statewide officeholder. This is a profound change from what had been a majority Democrat state when I was little to a competitive state for both parties for many years. One-party rule is never healthy, but it is particularly bad when the One Party denies facts and reality. The Big Sort is at work — even progressives who read this blog talk about their plans to leave. So is the outsized organization and leverage of the LDS with no counterweights in the Latino community or elsewhere (Arizona once was a big union state, yes). The Sinema congressional win is fine, but her campaign was hardly progressive. Unless widespread Hispanic voter suppression took place and Carmona stages a win, this election confirms the worst. Arizona is a solid member of the New Confederacy.

Larry Beaupre, an appreciation

I was heartbroken to hear of the passing of my friend, Larry Beaupre, too young, at the age of 68. He was still working, running a newspaper, serving the public trust. I would have expected no less. We have lost one of America's great journalists and newsroom leaders.

What now?

America didn't commit national suicide in the presidential election. Rogue readers are well aware of my frustrations with President Obama. But there was no choice but to support him against a crazy Republican Party. Wealthy Republican financier Willard Milton "Mitt" Romney may have been the most dangerous candidate fielded by a major party in modern American history. Never before would we have had to wait until after the election to find out what he really stood for, besides his own ambition. He couldn't even be forthcoming about his faith, the most important thing in his life. The refusal to release tax returns was only the tip of a Titanic-sinking iceberg. What was clear: He had spent recent years wooing the Tea Party extremists, theocrats, Randians, racists and homophobes. And unlike with Reagan, they would bring their "revolution" to "take their country back," and with Paul Ryan and others had a very specific agenda. As I say, it would have been suicide.

Now we will see if the president can finally steel himself to the battles that face us. The "fiscal cliff" will be an early marker. He was elected by people who want to see tax rates on the rich revert to Clinton-era levels, if not higher. They do not want to see the safety net further shredded to fix the dreaded deficit — not when we've been spending about a trillion a year on all the facets of the national security state and big companies pay no taxes even as they ship jobs overseas. If Obama caves to a "compromise" framed by the right, this will be another four years of weakness and slow erosion of the commons, the middle class, and American competitiveness.

Watch also to see whom he names as Treasury Secretary to replace Tim Geithner. If he chooses the odious Erskine Bowles, he of the sell-out Bowles-Simpson Commission, we will see more power flow to the oligarchs. Bowles is a corporate shill and member in good standing of the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party, which has been panting to "reform entitlements." Translation: Betray Social Security and Medicare for the middle class. Also, watch out for Peter Orszag, former Obama budget director and now at, natch, Citigroup.

Note to readers: I will leave up the Campaign 2012 link under In Depth Reports for the rest of the week and then retire it. So get the URLs of your favorites now. It still should live on via the link in the Elections open thread below.

Election open thread

As we head into Election Day, I call your attention to Rogue's Campaign 2012 one-stop shop with some of the best articles on the presidential race. It's tempting to say this is the most consequential election of recent years, but so was 2000, 2004 and 2008. I'll check in as I can, semi-live-blogging, while also trying to finish up a novel.

I leave the comments fields to you.

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. 11/5: My Seattle Times blog post on businessmen as presidents. The record isn't what you might think.

11 a.m. 11/5: The Kookocracy is busy with election stealing in Arizona, with Flake robocalls telling Democrats to vote at the wrong polling locations. Meanwhile, a right-wing Arizona group sent $11 million in secretive "dark money" to meddle in California politics. It's a creepy story.

 9:30 a.m. 11/6: Atlas Shrugged vs. the Fire Next Time.

Read on for more. I'll be live-blogging starting at 6 p.m. Pacific Time