Rogue Columnist

SB 1062: The aftermath

Keep Arizona green. Bring money. — Old expression

It was well and right to let a day pass for celebration that Gov. Jan Brewer finally vetoed the anti-LGBT Jim Crow SB 1062. To thank the better angels of Arizona's nature and imagine more appeared. To join in the boozy cheering at Seamus McCaffrey's downtown. A day when, as one observer put it, "we (could) be gracious in victory and in defeat."

Now it is time for a serious assessment. The illusion that with the international spotlight off, Arizona can "move on," the usual "nothing to see here, move along," could not be more misguided or toxic.

I don't see much profit in dwelling on Gov. Brewer and wondering if she is more complex and pragmatic than thought. Do not be fooled. She is no surprising "liberal hero."

If that were the case, she could have made it clear to legislative Republicans that the bill would be vetoed even before it was passed. She would have avoided letting the bill sit for days like a vagrant's turd deposited on her desk.

She could have issued a veto statement clearly, strongly grounded in morality. Instead, it was largely fuzzy proceduralism and nods to the "religious freedom" crowd (probably drafted by fixer Chuck Coughlin) cloaking a fear of the state losing billions. Her manner was that of a pouty teenager being forced to clean her room. She is a kook. She is not too bright. But she is ambitious and can take orders. And she might want to become a U.S. Senator.

To be fair, Hendrik Hertzberg disagrees with me.

The ghost of Ev Mecham

Given Arizona's population churn, many living there now probably know little of Gov. Evan Mecham. He's the one who opposed a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday ("King doesn't deserve a holiday") and thought it was fine to call black children "pickaninnies."

A broad coalition came together to impeach and remove this embarrassment in 1988. Tolerance won over hate. The beloved Rose Mofford became governor. And Arizona marched forward into its greatest era of (population) growth ever. Or so the elevator speech goes.

Now I'd like that, as Samuel L. Jackson's character says in Pulp Fiction, but that shit ain't the (entire) truth.

Which is why we should study Mecham as people come together again to press Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the Jim Crow, anti-LGBT "denial of service" law. Backed by today's coalition, Brewer can use her power as governor to stop the bill that has brought fresh infamy on the state, much as in the 1980s the Legislature stopped a hateful governor.

The Hate State

Why does the Kookocracy hate Arizona? For years this has been the unasked but most pressing question. Far more important than, say, tut-tutting that a certain columnist doesn't have multiple growthgasms every time the sun comes out and another tract house is laid down ("Talton hates Arizona").

Which brings us to the bills just passed by the Legislature which would essentially allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals — right down to refusing service — based on the owners' "religious beliefs."

Naturally, this has been pushed under the jingle of "freedom of religion."

Pre-emptive war based on false pretenses and torture by my government offend my Christian religious beliefs. But I had to suck it up. That's the way majority rule works and thank God for the Bill of Rights, tattered though it may be. More to the point, discrimination based on an individual's sexual orientation is another iteration of Jim Crow — it would not even get past the Roberts court.

But the damage done to Arizona by this action, whether or not it is signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer: Priceless. (Among the many national news organizations covering it, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the widely read parody, the Borowitz Report).

Park it

Before getting to the preliminary plan for the remake of the deck park, I want to linger over the most important recent story you may not have read.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, the Department of Justice has sued Barron Collier Co. over $66.5 million the government claims it is owed for parcels the giant land owner and developer has along Central Avenue north of Indian School Road.

You should read the story and try to make sense of it, but this gets at one of the most curious and outrageous events: Breaking up the old Phoenix Indian School and conveying the most attractive parcels of this public property to a private entity for private gain.

And make no mistake, there has been gain. Despite the company leaving the land a barren waste and claiming it is "not economically viable" to pay its obligations to the feds, this property has no doubt been quietly adding paper value like all the banked land in Midtown Phoenix.

The spirit of 2014

Try as I might, I can't figure out what it is. Today the American Zeitgeist changes from moment to moment, tweet to tweet. Or perhaps, to the extent that the word implies intellectual fashion or school of thought, it doesn't exist at all. We don't think. We consume.

Which is not to say that most of us don't work like dogs to do so. So perhaps inequality is new the American Zeitgeist. Maybe this will be the year of raising the minimum wage. This is certainly au courant in Seattle — a campaign to hike it to $15 an hour in the state with the highest minimum already. I see it all over our atomized (formerly mass) media.

Something needs to change. By any metric one wishes to choose, inequality is at highs not seen since the eve of the Depression or even the Gilded Age. It is bad for the economy, bad for out democracy. But the roots of the trouble go far beyond the minimum wage, and few Americans want to go there.

Phoenix's charter journey

For better or worse, Phoenicians with a sense of civic pride claim as their finest achievement not a magnificent city hall as in San Francisco, or a great subway system as in New York, or the breathtaking parks of Cincinnati. No, it is the efficient, professional handling of city business through the council/manager form of government. It's the most populous city in America without a strong mayor (with the city council acting as a legislature).

And it all began with the charter government movement of the late 1940s. Anyone that wants to understand Phoenix City Hall today or contemplate changes such as a strong mayor, must have at least a basic understanding of how we got here.

Once upon a time, Phoenix was a wide-open town, full of vice, politics dominated by unsavory bosses, and city hall eminently bribable. Then a group of crusading young businessmen, who knew the city could not grow and prosper under this corrupt yoke, threw out the rascals and created the cleanest city government in America. They went by the name of the Charter Government Committee. The rest is history.

But history is written by the victors. And the real story of Charter is more complex...and far more interesting.