Rogue Columnist

Phoenix 101: What went wrong

If you think "everything's fine" or that Phoenix has no troubles that aren't common to other cities, this is not your post. Spoiler alert: Everything is not fine.

We discuss problems and challenges, as well as intelligent responses, frequently in this space. A previous column sought to debunk the excuses, myths and lies about the place. But reading the comments on the most recent post made me wonder: Is Phoenix uniquely troubled? If so, how and why?

Sprawl doesn't explain it. What Kunstler calls "cartoon architecture" has befouled the nation from sea to sea. Good civic design was lost everywhere. The best cities in the country are surrounded by soul-killing suburbs, office "parks," malls, shopping strips, parking lagoons and laced up with freeways.

Car culture, per se, isn't the answer, either. Oklahoma City ranks lowest in non-vehicle commuting, yet the entire metro has long backed a levy that has impressively rebuilt downtown. Freeway-mad Dallas also boasts the nation's largest light-rail system.

The First Street challenge

  The Greyhound bus depot at First Street and Van Buren, one of the many destinations along First Street in old Phoenix.

It's nice to read that the city of Phoenix is spending $560,000 on a facelift for First Street, including "street improvements, decorative sidewalks, new trees and pedestrian-friendly upgrades."

Unfortunately, my first reaction is that City Hall is about 50 years too late.

Into the 1960s, First Street, like much of downtown, was a thriving commercial avenue. Essential to this was affordable space for shops and a streetscape that meant every few feet you landed at the door to another business.

Let me give you an example. In 1956, between Washington and Monroe streets, two blocks, First was home to Russell Stover Candies, David's Shoes, Goldwater's, Hanny's, Dorris Hayman, Montgomery Ward, Porter Mercantile, Barney's Garage, Cole Home Supply, Morris Athletic Supply, Richards Dean Jewelery, Tony's Shoe Shop, The Normandie Hotel, Thompson's Indian Shop and Phoenix Stamp and Coin. All in two blocks.

That delightful commercial density was killed by "improvements" since then: Brutalist parking structures, hulking hotels that open onto other streets, teardowns and the Valley Center (Chase Tower) skyscraper. These destroyed literally scores of human-scale buildings and helped run retail out of downtown.

Secession with benefits

 The Battle of Antietam, 1862, where my great- great-uncle, fighting in the Confederate division from Texas under Gen. John Bell Hood, was fatally wounded.

What "Soleri" called the Cold Civil War is underway. The game of shutdown/default chicken, with grave consequences for America's economy and standing in the world, is only the latest manifestation. Although the worst was avoided, it is only a temporary truce. Republican House members representing about 18 percent of the population, were able to hold 100 percent of the nation hostage.

There is talk in places such as Texas of secession, and in Arizona and other states of nullification, choosing which federal laws to follow, hearkening back to the crises the preceded the Civil War. But these and the fetish about the debt and deficit, as well as the size of government, are carried out with high hypocrisy.

The reality is that almost all states of the New Confederacy — the old South, plus parts of the Great Plains and intermountain West — are net takers. In other words, they receive more federal money than they pay in taxes. For example, Arizona, whose entire Republican delegation voted against the compromise to reopen the federal government, received $1.60 for every dollar paid. In South Carolina, the cradle of secession, the ratio is $2.13 to $1.

The Friday saloon

[Saturday update] "12News" tweeted "Arpaio says crime sweep leads to 22 arrests." My first reaction: Why are journalists, even television journalists, still taking dictation from this publicity-mad sheriff who has cost county taxpayers tens of millions in settlements over inmates injured or who died in his abysmal jails and is now under a federal court order over racial profiling, among other abuses and blunders during his time in office? Response times on real crimes suffered during his anti-immigrant stunts. No police officer respects "Nickel Bag Joe." But the white-right blue hairs have made him High Sheriff for Life.

Upon reflection: What is the context? I suspect one Phoenix PD precinct makes this many arrests in one quiet shift. Will "12News" follow up to tell us how serious the charges involved (22 parking violators? 22 murderers?) and how many result in convictions? Of course not. This is press-release "journalism." Plus, "12News" is part of "Republic Media," as in Gannett owning the state's largest newspaper, biggest news Web site and one of its major TV stations. That was illegal until the deregulation after 2000. An uninformed citizenry won't ask questions. Doing so might land you in a "crime sweep."

• Stay put, young man. "Americans used to be exceptional for how often they moved. But that once-powerful source of both efficiency and upward mobility is now in steep decline." From Washington Monthly.

• Bleak house. "We have forgotten what this country once understood, that a society based on nothing but selfishness and greed is not a society at all, but a state of war of the strong against the weak." From the New York Review of Books.

• Yes, trains again, because they matter. Even Orlando gets commuter rail. Florida cities are also served by several long-distance Amtrak trains. Miami and environs have commuter service. High-speed rail is under consideration. And this is a red state full of old people. Meanwhile, Phoenix's far-flung suburbs have no commuter rail. And Phoenix has no Amtrak service (as late as the 1960s, we had eight trains a day). The ADOT plans to Tucson are moronic.

• Saving the best for last: The indispensable John Dougherty (we worked together on the Keating Five scandal) has another must-read on the mistakes ignored by the Yarnell fire investigation.

The open thread is yours....

What this is

In the 14th day of the federal shutdown and the media, traditional and new, with honorable exceptions, have done a terrible job of explaining things to the American people. It's a football game: The Republicans have fumbled and the Democrats would retake the House. Wait, the Republicans just did a quarterback sneak and are back on top...

False equivalency abounds: "Both side are to blame." Or it is the soccer mom explanation: They need to grow up and play well together.

It is none of these things.

We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis, the worst since the eve of the Civil War.

The Friday saloon

Several readers have asked me to comment on the Arizona Republic closing its East Valley bureaus and leaving the reporters as "mobile reporters" to work from wherever they can find wifi for their laptops — Starbucks, McDonalds, etc. Here's a memo from Executive Editor Randy Lovely explaining the change.

This is a huge defeat for the community coverage the paper began in the mid-2000s. Staff has already been cut to the bone. All over, older reporters have been shown the door, and with that the Republic has lost massive amounts of institutional knowledge and skilled journalists that hold the powerful accountable. But, then, Gannett has long dismissed much serious journalism. It sees itself as an "information broker" with coverage closely tied to pleasing advertisers, hence the large number of one-source stories and lack of skeptical, contextualized stories backed by historical knowledge and sophistication. Eugene C. Pulliam was kicked off the masthead which now reads, "Republic Media."

Back in the 1990s, as executive business editor of the Charlotte Observer, I told my horrified bosses that all my staff needed were laptops, cell phones and faxes (!). I wanted them out of the newsroom. But these were veterans, many of them the best in their fields. What is lost without a newsroom, however, is the creative hive where people discuss journalism and learn. In Phoenix, this cutback will merely reinforce the feedback loop of losing readers, leading to more cuts, backed by questionable research of reader preferences, and the fads that Gannett always chases.

Elsewhere:

• Phoenix TSA makes breast-cancer survivors remove prostheses.

• Imagining the end of the nation state, "a planet in which urbanization, technology and capital accumulation had brought about a landscape where governments had given up on real reforms and had subcontracted many responsibilities to outside parties, which then set up enclaves operating under their own laws."

• LA's downtown live-work boom. If only Phoenix could learn from it.

• Red states are most affected by the federal shutdown (natch).

 

Scandal for schools

Last week, two items came my way. I learned that Andre Goodfriend, my buddy from grade-school days, has become the United States chargé d'affaires, or deputy chief of mission, at our embassy in Budapest, Hungary. Meanwhile, it was reported that enrollment in the Phoenix Union High School District reached a 36-year high.

The district is 80 percent Hispanic and only 5 percent Anglo. As recently as 1990, the demographics were 41 percent Anglo and 40 percent Hispanic. Some 81 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — and based on my research, this is often the only meal some of them receive in a day.

What these tidings have in common is the scandalous trajectory of failure in our public education system.

This is a huge topic, and I recommend Diane Ravitch's Rein of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School System for anyone seeking some of the best examinations of the topic by one of our great scholar-advocates. My aims are more modest.

The Friday saloon

• The best piece I have seen on the extremism driving the government shutdown — and worse to come — is from Andrew Sullivan. "I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime." I highly recommend it.

• Ezra Klein writes, "Markets (still) aren't too worried about the debt ceiling. Sometimes markets are wrong." I examined this earlier this week: Default "is no longer just a scary story economists tell each other over campfires. It is barreling toward us." My column is here. Also, Wonkblog offers this useful primer to the issue.

• I find it telling that President Obama and Congress quickly ensured that the military would be paid. Forgive me for thinking of the Roman Empire and the power of the Praetorian Guard. One wonders what happens when our dysfunction reaches such a level that a new Caesar decides to take his legion across the Potomac. Meanwhile, we see plenty of stories about National Parks closed and GOPers escorting World War II vets into their memorial, but little about the poor and vulnerable being hurt.

• It's a laff riot, tears allowed, to watch the Scottsdale City Council try to "fix" the linear automobile slum that McDowell Road and other parts of south Scottsdale have become. They, after all, helped cause the problem by allowing car dealers to decamp north and, with the "I don't go south of Bell" mentality, otherwise neglect this area. It is the classic metro Phoenix problem of ageing mass-produced subdivisions divided by enormously wide highways called "streets." It is difficult to turn such an area into "a heritage corridor" aside from a drive-by illustration of tragic mistakes. This was once a wonderful area, with Los Arcos Mall and Coronado High School. But it always had the ticking time bomb of bad, car-centric civic design and the constant pull of the next real-estate hustle somewhere else. For all its money and even with ASU Skysong, Scottsdale is caught in the same mindset that perpetuates miles of blight across the region.

Some have asked me to "focus the conversation" better. Should I? Or is the open-thread format working?

The nostalgia rap

I was made aware of this recent conversation. My name came up, and an Influential Person said, "But he hates Arizona." The other person responded: "No, he actually likes it quite a bit." Influential person: "OK, but he's blinded by nostalgia."

Nostalgia has its appeal. Indeed, it can be healthy, as an article in the New York Times recently pointed out:

Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.

Nostalgia does have its painful side — it’s a bittersweet emotion — but the net effect is to make life seem more meaningful and death less frightening. When people speak wistfully of the past, they typically become more optimistic and inspired about the future.

“Nostalgia makes us a bit more human,” Dr. Sedikides says. He considers the first great nostalgist to be Odysseus, an itinerant who used memories of his family and home to get through hard times, but Dr. Sedikides emphasizes that nostalgia is not the same as homesickness. It’s not just for those away from home, and it’s not a sickness, despite its historical reputation.

But nostalgia is not what attracts people to Rogue Columnist, why traffic here keeps growing every month, or why people — even the Kooks — consider this a must-read.