Rogue Columnist

The immigration con

A smuggler's Jeep found stuck on the border fence near Yuma in 2012.

As I write, here are some of the latest headlines: "Looming Budget Fight Could Doom Immigration Reform"; "Cecilia Munoz: Quarterback of Obama's Immigration Reform Efforts," and "Immigration Reform Supporters Ask for Help From Businesses."

Does any serious person believe there was ever a chance for "sweeping immigration reform," as it was called with a repetition of a bubblegum rock station playlist? I know, I know: This was how the GOP would save itself from extinction as demographic trends appear to shift against old, bitter, suburban and rural white people. Thus, at least in the minds of the oblivious D.C. pundits depicted with such savage accuracy in the new book This Town, wealthy Republican Sen. John Sidney McCain III would reclaim his mantle as a statesman, a maverick, and herd his party to a deal with President Obama.

But this failed the smell test from the start. Even McCain, who at certain points in his career had favored immigration reform (when he didn't and vice versa), kept prattling on about "a secure border" being the foundational element of any deal. After an amendment to the so-called Gang of Eight's immigration bill in the Senate, McCain said, "We'll be the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall." It says something about today's pretzel of a Republican Party that the once despised symbol of oppression ("Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!") is now offered as reassurance against an invasion of Brown People. And all that to get a deal that would somehow raise Republican favorables among voting Brown People. Next step: President Rubio!

Detroit and us

Detroit's skyline seen from Windsor, Ontario

[NOTE TO READERS: We will resume the Friday Saloon next week; in the meantime, feel free to hijack this thread if you wish.]

When some of you asked me to write on Detroit, I wasn't sure I could add much to the many stories and columns that have been produced after the city filed for bankruptcy. But many were the proverbial blind men trying to describe an elephant. Something big has happened, but what? How did things get so bad? And is this a foreshadowing of calamities to come? As one reader put it, "The Detroit default woke me up to the impending train wrecks we're facing elsewhere. What happened? Another oversight calamity?"

Back to the elephant, as in, the elephant in the room. No discussion of Detroit can avoid race and the city's toxic racial history. At a little more than 700,000 population, Detroit is the only major city in the nation with a staggering concentration of African-American poverty. It is 83 percent black compared with 14 percent for Michigan. The poverty rate of more than 36 percent is twice the state level. Median household income is 57 percent of the state average. There is no other American city so populous facing such an imbalance.

Solar dreams I

Arizona Public Service is engaged in a campaign to undercut solar power in the state. The 18,000 APS customers with solar panels essentially get a credit on their bill for the energy they don't use from the regular electrical grid. APS complains, as an Arizona Republic story put it, "customers with solar often see their bills reduced to the point that they are no longer contributing toward routine costs associated with maintaining the power grid. That, they say, forces customers without solar to pay the entire cost of maintaining the grid, even though solar customers use the grid to get power at night or when clouds pass overhead and to distribute their excess electricity." APS is asking the Corporation Commission to allow it to charge new solar customers an average of $50 to $100 more.

This has produced protests and at least one critical editorial. It is happening against a backdrop of efforts to "deregulate" the state power market (California, Enron, hello...?). Even the long arm of the Koch brothers is reaching in to support APS. The state's nascent solar industry is fighting on the other side. But with the powerful and little-scrutinized Corporation Commission now firmly in the hands of the Kookocracy — I'll make an exception for Susan Bitter-Smith — APS may well win. It would be one more headwind facing solar power in the sunniest state in the union. Perhaps worse, it distracts from the conversations we ought to be having about solar. With most of the reporting being "he said/she said" stories intended to avoid irritating powerful APS, it's difficult for most Arizonans to get the facts or explore the larger issues. I'll try to make a beginning in the next few columns. But today I'll focus on APS.

The company's argument is bunk. All customers must pay a basic fee that includes maintenance of the grid. But the attempt to kill solar in the crib — 18,000 customers out of more than 1 million — shows how the state's largest utility is accustomed to wielding influence and getting what it wants.

The Friday saloon

Emil is buying a round of drinks, so stick around. Comment on anything you wish. As for me, I am surprised at the vacuousness of questions (we offered some good ones) and debate facing prospective Phoenix City Council candidates. I am surprised that the city is moving forward with the short, ugly, hot Sprawl Needle. I am the eternal optimist-naif. And speaking of architecture, news arrives that the John Roll Federal Courthouse has been completed in Yuma. Take a look. With all due respect to the builder: That's it? Let us hope the finished building at least has screening from the merciless Yuma sun. Judge Roll was universally respected. He was among those murdered during the — tho' we dare not call it thus — political assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords. It's too bad we couldn't honor him and grace Yuma with a structure more inspiring than a suburban super Wal-Mart.

On the national front, here's an interesting piece from John Cassidy about why the GOP needs to lose the presidency for a third straight election. But embedded in it is anything but triumphalism for the other side:

Thirty states—including seven of the ten most populous—have Republican governors, and twenty-nine have G.O.P.-controlled legislatures. With this firm grip on local power, the party is able to gerrymander Congressional districts to assure itself of continued success in the House of Representatives. Despite opinion polls showing the last Congress to be one of the least popular on record, there was never any real prospect of the Democrats overturning the G.O.P. majority. And in next year’s midterms, the Republicans may well gain more seats.

More conversation starters may be found on Arizona's Continuing Crisis. Now, I turn the saloon over to Emil, who has a Kook Watch update:

Local Rogue readers may recall Linda Turley, the iceberg who served as a news anchor on KPHO (Channel 5) a couple of decades ago. She retired to the "East Valley" but has kept busy in local Republican circles agitating against moderation. Back in 2011, in a column supporting then Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce for reelection during his recall campaign, Turley grossly exaggerated Arizona's job growth and credited Pearce for taking Arizona from 49th to 2nd in job growth.

The bedroom and the commons

We're often having the wrong argument in this cold civil war. The most recent example was the farm bill that came out of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. For the first time in decades, it stripped away food stamps from the legislation. The rationale was to cut federal spending. And yet the bill ended up giving away even more taxpayer dollars to already highly profitable big agribusiness than was proposed by the Senate or the White House. A useful lens for understanding the battles in America might focus on two areas: The bedroom and the commons.

Republicans are obsessed with legislating what happens in the bedroom. Along with their conservative Democrat fellow travelers, they gave us the Defense of Marriage Act and later rode fear of "the gay" to triumph in 2004. Even though the Supreme Court recently struck down DOMA and more Americans are embracing same-sex unions, Republicans keep trying to introduce or defend so-called anti-sodomy laws. One is Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli, who wants to be governor.

The conservative movement is now moving aggressively against abortion in state legislatures, most prominently in Texas and North Carolina. And they are succeeding. No gentle outreach for bipartisanship here: These Republican-controlled statehouses are ramming through draconian legislation, the opposition be damned. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich signed abortion restrictions, placed in a budget bill, surrounded by only men. Kasich is more popular than ever in a state that was once vigorously competitive and he is heavily favored to win re-election.

The Friday saloon

Perhaps the Zimmerman verdict makes all that follows from me less relevant, and if so, get on the thread and weigh in. Otherwise: The crowd still hasn't finished their martinis from last week's saloon. It was a remarkably intelligent, civil, enlightening and searching discussion; I urge you to read it. Maybe I can set up the bar for the first round by asking a few questions. Everything Soleri wrote about the racist dog whistles, President Obama's burden, the circular firing squad of the left and progressives' relative lack of power rings true. But when is it permissible to question Mr. Obama on executive decisions, rather than legislation that depends on the likes of Lieberman and Nelson? To take but one example, the Justice Department steadfastly declined to apply the rule of law to the big banks. Not one. Now I understand Newtown. About all Mr. Obama could do was give that incredibly moving address ("we have to change"). Guns are a losing issue for progressives in America. But the big banks? Even the Tea Party hated them.

In mentioning this, I am not blowing a dog whistle or accepting Republican nihilism. The Koch brothers aren't going to congratulate each other ("See, Bill, Talton's draggin' down the Democrats. Woo-hoo!") based on this. Those of us in the reality-based community aren't like the Krackpots, robotic in solidarity with power. We have to be able to discuss these things in a constructive way. How? And I would not subject Mr. Obama to the soft racism of kid gloves. He is, after all, commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of the world. He is no fool. He is not a victim. So, again, what's the road forward simply from a standpoint of felicitous debate?

I'm also interested in your thoughts on the future. Yes, the old white bigots are dying off. But minorities have maintained power in numerous nations and empires. The GOP is trying to protect its power long-term through everything from legislative action to Supreme Court decisions, and all the while wrecking the future for everybody but the rich. The latest e.g. is separating food stamps from the farm bill in the House, a remarkable act of hypocrisy and fealty to the oligarch. The final bill will spend more giving subsidies to big agribusiness; huge numbers of SNAP recipients are in red states. Will demographics reverse the Republican/reactionary trajectory automatically? Does the "left" need a new narrative? Or must things get much worse before people wake up? The New Confederacy is not to be underestimated. This plays out even in Washington state; without Seattle, we would be Idaho. So, to paraphrase Soleri, where will our armies come from? It's a long game, sure. But many things are bearing down on us. This is not 1885. Forgive the long intrusion into the conversation. There is much, much more to spark discussion on Arizona's Continuing Crisis, the Best of the Front Page, the City Desk, and Climate/Energy.

Salud!

Phoenix 101: Summer

The Sun Worshiper at Park Central mall in Midtown Phoenix, circa 1960. 

Summertime, and the livin' is easy," Gershwin wrote. I never understood that. Movies and television shows with children scampered through meadows in the noonday summer sun similarly baffled me. I was a Phoenician. Summer was the oven. It was a force that demanded respect. Summer could kill you.

We might have ridden bicycles without helmets and freely roamed our neighborhoods without "play dates," but we were also expert in desert survival. So in summertime the livin' was careful. My friends and I avoided going out in mid-day and paced our roams in high summer. I read so many books in a soothingly dim, air-conditioned room at home, or at the public library, where the blast of heat was only apparent if you came close to the windows.

The rhythm of the city changed, slowed down. Aside from the morning and evening rush hour, most people stayed off the streets. Mailmen wore pith helmets. Street work and construction was mostly done early in the morning or not at all. Bank signs flashed triple-digit temperature readings.

Summer did have its charms. For example, most of the snowbirds and tourists — the ones who would ask you where they could find a good "Spanish" restaurant — were gone. It was just us desert rats. The cold-water fountains at every gas station were heaven. Enough money to buy a milkshake or ice-cream cone at one of the drug-store fountains was a cloud above that.

The Friday saloon

Plenty to talk about this week, from the Yarnell and other wildfires to the prolonging of the Coyotes hustle in Glendale. I guess they'll change the name to the "Arizona Coyotes," as if it's the UofA team. It's insane that metropolitan Phoenix won't brand itself in the world with the city name — and such a beautiful name, too. Metro Phoenix is not Arizona. The Arab Spring is rapidly being exposed as a naive American dream, except most American cable news is focused on the murder trial in Florida.

Meanwhile, the administration delays the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act for a year, prompting this response from Ezra Klein. I know it irritates some of you when I criticize the president, but I have a bad feeling about Obamacare. It's not that I doubt the president's good intentions. I do worry about the bad faith of the insurance-pharma-medical racket and the complicated compromise needed to get the bill passed. Whether sabotaged by the aforesaid cabal or used as an excuse by greedy and GOP-leaning employers to cut staff, the ACA might cost the Democrats the Senate and the White House. But, I worry.

You'll find more fodder in Arizona's Continuing Crisis, the Best of the Front Page, and the Climate/Energy pages.

Now the floor belongs to you...

Young men and fire

Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened... — Norman Maclean 

Smokejumpers and other wildfire-fighters call them "shake and bakes," the portable shelters they carry. These cocoons of foil and fiberglas offer the firefighters at best a 50%  chance of survival and are deployed as a last resort, as when the wind shifts and the living devil of fire traps and turns on them.

The hope is that the fire will pass over quickly. Otherwise, "the only thing your shake and bake will do is allow you to have an open-casket funeral,” one crew supervisor told Wired. Such dark humor is a necessary component of dangerous, sometimes deadly jobs. The Prescott Fire Department's Granite Mountain Hotshots team reportedly deployed its shake-and-bakes Sunday in a conflagration at Yarnell, amid triple-digit temperatures and high winds. Nineteen died. As I write, the fire is at zero containment.

This is the deadliest event for wildfire-fighters in modern history. Deadlier than Colorado's South Canyon fire in 1994 on Storm King Mountain. Deadlier than the 1949 Mann Gulch blaze in Montana, which inspired Norman Maclean's classic study, Young Men and Fire. a book both elegiac and forensically definitive.

Here is what I don't want: Cheap sentimentalizing and cynical religiosity from politicians who are otherwise hostile to public employees, adequate government budgets and sensible land-use policies. The ones who use public pensions and unions as evil hand-puppets to distract citizens from the screwing they are getting from the plutocrats. The tax cutters and climate-change "deniers."

Please spare me your sudden compassion for public servants and first responders. Spare me your flags and "USA! USA!" and endless evocation of "heroes" if this is mere denial and lazy thinking.

Look: I get the shock and grief. I used to be a first responder myself, cross-trained to deploy with forestry fire teams, and more than once was nearly killed (in the city). I know those men are with the Lord and all their tears have been dried, and I pray that their families are given comfort and grace. But I am not going to endlessly tweet this or post it on Facebook. We owe them more. Read on if you agree. This will not be a popular column. It is a necessary one.