Rogue Columnist

Sequester this

Jon Stewart has so degraded the usefulness of profanity with his unending use of partly bleeped F-words that I am forced to fall back on the oaths of my parents' generation: Let the goddamn sequester happen. I am so sick of the crazy fanatics called Republicans and their willingness to inflict great damage on the country, really do anything, only to hurt a man they see as an illegitimate president, a man who represents everything they loathe: Intellectual, cosmopolitan, urban, open-minded, tolerant, black and doesn't know his place. I am as sick of the president, who is squandering his mandate, doesn't know how to use it. He continues the Bush assault on our civil liberties, extends the drone war, won't tell the American people the truth and won't bring the banksters to justice. He named one to be Treasury Secretary. And is Chuck Hagel the only Republican he can find to be Defense Secretary? Let the goddamn sequester happen.

Speaking of the Defense Department, why don't we call it by its historic name: The War Department (and, yes, dear careful reader, I know there was also a Department of the Navy and where would the Air Force fit...hang with me)? This would at least be straightforward about its purpose, using serious language that might give us pause. Aside from the damage of the Great Recession, one reason we face the dreaded deficit and debt is two unfunded wars. Mr. Obama is prosecuting imperial ass-whippings around the globe even now, creating more new terrorists than we kill. We are "pivoting" to the Pacific, to pick a fight with our Chinese banker. We spend more on war than the next 13 powers combined. The F-35 fighter will cost at least $396 billion — that alone would expand our passenger rail system by 300 times — and the thing is still not airworthy. Our new $13.5-billion-a-pop Gerald R. Ford class carriers will be target practice for some Chinese kid guiding a missile. We have too many flag officers and too many mooching, corrupt contractors. Even if not a single blade of grass on an officers' golf course goes untended, let the goddamn sequester happen.

Let the sequester happen and keep it going. Ever since Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency, politicians have gotten ahead by claiming "government is the problem." And voters accept this as they accept their Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, safe food and drugs, freeways and roads to drive on, in vehicles powered by gasoline kept artificially cheap by federal subsidies, armies and fleets, live in a Sun Belt made habitable by federal initiatives from the TVA to the SRP, survive airplane flights thanks to government air traffic control...and they think government is the problem. A people this stupid and corrupt deserves the real-life experiment of seeing whether they really are rugged individualists who don't need no gub'ment. Bring it on. I especially look forward to letting the net-taker red states actually live the Ayn Rand fantasy they rave about. I can imagine how LBJ, whatever the statues say, would ensure that all the military cuts befell states that voted against him and especially the districts of members of Congress who defied him.

Arizona bio: part II

A rendering of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, set to break ground on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.

A decade after Arizona, and especially Phoenix, embarked on an effort to build a biosciences cluster, this is how things stand. According to a report from the Battelle Institute, "Arizona’s bioscience industry continues to grow at a rapid rate. Industry firms have increased employment by 30 percent overall since 2001 and have even added jobs since 2007, a period which includes the deep national recession."

That said, total Arizona bioscience employment in 2010 was 21,084 vs. 62,386 in North Carolina. The state is a pygmy in research dollars and has birthed no significant bio company. Phoenix is nowhere near being one of the nation's top biotech/biosciences centers. [Updated] A 2012 Jones Lang LaSalle report ranks Boston, San Diego, the Bay Area, Raleigh-Durham, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Seattle the top "established" clusters in the Americas. The "emerging" clusters are Westchester/New Haven, Conn., Chicago, Denver, Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Dallas, southern Wisconsin, Florida,  Indianapolis, southern Michigan and Atlanta. The top players are not much changed, aside from relative ranking, from a much-discussed 2004 assessment by the Milken Institute, with one exception. Minneapolis has moved into the "established" ranks. Most of the up-and-comers are new. Arizona and Phoenix are not mentioned.

A glimpse of the competition can be found by the jaw-dropping build-out of the University of California-San Francisco's Mission Bay campus, which is dedicated to bio and went from nothing to a major contender over the same decade. And this was achieved despite California's state budget crisis. It represents one path the Phoenix Biomedical Campus could have taken but didn't. Another is Houston's amazing Texas Medical Center. This is where I center my recollections of the bio effort and what succeeded and failed.

Enough to make you sick

I had grand plans for my recent visit but spent most of my time sicker than I've been in years. Little time was left to catch up, but some observations:

The fabric of the old city continues to be torn away. The block of buildings on the southeast corner of Seventh Street and Roosevelt has been leveled with, of course, nothing to replace it. The last I recall, one building was a llantera (tire) outlet with American and Mexican flags painted on the outer wall. Now only the concrete foundation is left. A little farther south is a 1920s-era gas station, but would even this be preserved?

The demolished structures, which dated from the same era, were part of an actual city commercial streetscape that extended contiguously along Seventh Street. One saw the same on Seventh Avenue, Grand Avenue and Van Buren Street. It's almost all gone now, replaced by dreary new suburban boxes, each surrounded by Holy Surface Parking Lots. Or replaced by blighted empty lots. It is, as Jim Kunstler would say, not a landscape worth caring about and obviously nobody with money and power cared for generations. But the loss of variety, density and urban fabric on these approaches to downtown, along with the absurd widening of these streets, is a piece of astonishing civic malpractice. What a lost opportunity.

In our name

Do you ever wonder about the acts committed in our name and the blowback that will be inevitable? After all, Osama bin Laden didn't spring fully formed as a madman from the head of Jove, nor did the terrorist organizations that continue his work. While their roots are complex, one big cause is that America has spent decades meddling around the world in conflicts it ill understands and whose consequences we rarely think through. Bin Laden was one of "our S.O.B.s" in Afghanistan when we were trying to bleed the Soviets. So were Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarak, Noriega of Panama and the House of Saud, the latter's extreme Islam helping radicalize the Middle East. What did we want? "Stability." Cheap oil. Anything Israel wants. No matter the long-term dangers or injustices inflicted on millions. When 9/11 happened, we were shocked, shocked. Aren't we always a force for good?

One feels compelled to quote John Quincy Adams at length about what America's role should be in the world: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own...She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind."

Now our march is the worldwide drone war of Mr. Obama. We kill whom we want, where we want, without due process, in violation of international law. Maybe we get a terrorist. We certainly kill women and children, too. Just another day as global hegemon. We could be leading the global effort to stop the worst of climate change. Instead, we're just bumbling imperialists. Someday this will come back on us.

The big merger

Here's Arizona's "positive business climate" at work: The combined American Airlines/US Airways will move its headquarters to Dallas-Fort Worth. That pretty much says it all.

Much is wrong with this deal. It continues the extreme consolidation of the airline industry into four giant carriers, limiting customer choice, reducing competition and damaging local economies. Where do you think the $1 billion in promised "savings" will come from? Largely from cutting jobs and eliminating operations. Anyone who thinks the combined carrier will maintain its existing hub at Sky Harbor, so close to DFW, has spent too much time in the sun. When Northwest merged with Delta, the modern and efficient Delta hub at Cincinnati was closed, resulting in thousands of lost jobs. American's takeover of TWA did the same in St. Louis. In these and numerous other cases, the airlines had leaned on local governments to build airport capacity, only to be thrown away to make the latest numbers work for another merger. These mergers almost never deliver as promised, even long-term for shareholders. For cities and workers, they are a cancer. Good full-time jobs have been killed and not replaced. Airline industry employment today is lower than in 1995 even though passenger revenue miles have soared.

The US Airways that Doug Parker has spent years trying to sell traces its roots to Ed Beauvais' post-deregulation startup America West Airlines. It was very much Phoenix's airline, closely tied to growth at Sky Harbor. And through upturns, downturns and bankruptcy reorganizations, America West persevered even as Parker took over as CEO and used it as a vehicle to buy long-suffering US Airways. Even then, the headquarters remained here.

Open thread

Regular posts will resume as soon as possible.

McCain of Arizona

The last time I saw John McCain in Phoenix he was stalking out of Arizona Center into the surface parking lot that used to stand behind the Arizona Republic building and I was on my way to see a movie at the AMC cinemas. He nodded. I said, "Senator." He stalked on. A good fifty feet behind were Cindy and a couple of his children. It was so shocking to see McCain in Arizona, much less downtown, that it made me momentarily take stock. Then I realized he was not supporting the central city — his local office, after all, is near 24th Street and Camelback. This was one of the few places where he could see a movie and not be bothered by constituents.

Wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III has been on my mind after his vicious attacks on his former colleague, Chuck Hagel,  during the latter's confirmation hearing to be Secretary of Defense. Juan Cole wrote the hearing "was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus freaks– a phalanx of moral midgets, stalking cat-men, vicious lobster boys and ethical werewolves." Foremost among them was McCain.

Much was written about how the two had been friends and were fellow Vietnam vets. In reality, I doubt McCain has any friends in the Senate, including his fawning pet Lindsey Graham. And Hagel was a mere ground-pounder, an Army sergeant. McCain was an admiral's son, an elite Naval Aviator.