Rogue Columnist

The VA mess

They got Eric Shinseki's scalp. He's the same one who, as Army chief of staff, warned Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld that they were contemplating much too small a force to ensure success in invading Iraq. For this, he was forced into retirement. Had his warning been heeded, there would not be so many veterans needing care today in VA hospitals.

Although the relentless media meme will be that the VA mess is the fault of That (Black) Man in the White House and could well propel the duhs and ignos to vote so as to give control of the Senate to The Party That Wrecked America, the episode is full of irony and hypocrisy.

Here's another: The epicenter of the trouble seems to be the VA hospital in Phoenix (poor Carl Hayden, whose name is now affixed to the building, deserved better). Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake famously do nothing to help the state they claim to represent. It's part of their ideology. Only when there was political blood in the water, did these gentlemen remember their home Zip Codes. McCain, especially, was OUTRAGED. His default emotion on everything.

Even the G-men...

Dear Diary,

It seems that I cannot escape the toxic blob that Phoenix has become even when working on the new David Mapstone Mystery. I learn that the FBI's Phoenix Field Office decamped its Midtown fortress in 2010 for leased offices at Seventh Street and Deer Valley Road.

The FBI has a long history in Midtown, once being located on the second floor of a modest office still standing on the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Osborn. Back in the hardly innocent 1960s, it was labeled with "FBI" right on the outside wall. By the time I returned in the 2000s, the bureau was in a hulking, anonymous and heavily guarded midrise around Second Street and Indianola, with a motor pool a block away. If you tried to stop your car on the street to drink the Diet Coke you had purchased from the (now closed) nearby McDonald's, a uniformed federal officer appeared and told you to move on, no questions answered.

Now it is in a 210,202 square foot building built and owned by the Ryan Cos., meant to be home to the field office "for the next 20 years." News reports tell me the building won a LEED Silver design award, which shows the moronic/mendacious nature of these greenwash labels. The office is about 17 miles away from the most common destination for the feds, the Sandra Day "I Gave You The Presidency of George W. Bush" O'Connor Federal Courthouse downtown. It is located far from the urban footprint. How can this possibly be considered a green building?

The Republican civil war

A mass political party: Conservative Ronald Reagan, centrist Gerald Ford and liberal Nelson Rockefeller after a real intra-party battle in 1976.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Pretending that there is a titanic battle for "the soul of the party" between the "tea party" and the "establishment" provides much material for 24/7 media, which must always be fed. But there is little real disagreement. Where there is, it shows how the lunatic fringe that was once kept in the closet is now part of the GOP mainstream.

The Republicans, like the Democrats, was once a mass political party. That's the way politics have long been structured in these United States. We didn't have the plethora of parties that made up the polity of many European countries during much of the 20th century.

This conferred advantages. With conservative, liberal and "moderate" wings, each party could scoop up the maximum amount of voters and co-opt the emergence of third parties. Thus, for example, the liberal Democratic Party of FDR was also the home of Southern segregationists until Lyndon Johnson championed civil rights.

Snake removal

I've noticed that one of the most common calls on the metro Phoenix fire incident log, at least in the spring, is "snake removal." All these calls that I saw, requiring the response of an engine company or other fire apparatus, originated in north Scottsdale.

Facebook friends will have to be patient because some of this repeats posts I made there. But the response was enough that I thought it would be worth putting on Rogue. Also, this site maintained by Phoenix Fire, is not nearly as complete or entertaining as Seattle Fire's Real Time 911. In addition, Phoenix has a shockingly high number of 962s (auto accident with injuries) and 962s involving pedestrians and bicycles.

Back to the snakes.

This is territory where my buddies and I in high school would hike to seek out good (and safe) places for target shooting. It was completely empty of people and houses, breathtakingly beautiful Sonoran Desert with all manner of plant and animal life. We never imagined it would be otherwise.

From training as far back as Cub Scouts, we knew to tramp heavy — so the snake would be forewarned and slide out of the way — not to reach under bushes or into holes (hello, newcomers), avoid the terrain snakes like, pause to listen and how to react to the distinctive sound of a rattler. Being heavily armed, including with a varmint gun, helped, too. But the desert was always approached with respect. It could kill you.

Open thread

A bad cold and the prep work to be the interlocutor of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a Seattle Arts & Lectures event Friday night make it impossible for me to do a post right now. So I turn it over to you. Also, I invite you to browse our popular pages and topics (at right).

 

Phoenix rocks

Ansel Adams' iconic "Noon and Hydrant," showcasing the natural splendor of the Salt River Valley.

Five rivers and several significant creeks converge in or near the Salt River Valley, making it the site of the most abundant water in the Southwest, an oasis going back thousands of years. But let's not kid ourselves. "We live in a desert" after all, the Midwesterners constantly lecture us. So it is right and proper that Phoenix increasingly reflects this reality.

Our young city was established in 1993, when Jack Swilling discovered one of the ancient Hohokam concrete "ground skins" dating from the eleventh century. He swept it off and for years it was called "Swilling's Sidewalk." Others learned that the prehistoric dwellers had built hundreds of miles of sidewalks, surface parking lots, wide roads and — everywhere — thrown down small gravel. From the site of what today is called Pueblo Grande Estates Gated Community, archaeologists unearthed huge caches of red roof tiles, which they believe the Indians used to barter with other tribes.

Darrell Duppa, who claimed to have been a investment-banker lord from the City of London, wanted to call this enchanting place Phoenix. It seemed right: Like the bird of mythology, the city had been reborn on the ashes of its predecessor. Settlers from the nearby village of Table (the original name "Mesa" sounded too Mexican) objected. So people settled for calling their frontier town "the Valley."

 

Arizona's economy in charts

Despite all the hype, the housing depression continues, with building permits barely above levels of the 1990 recession...

...Growth in housing prices has bounced back somewhat, measured quarterly in year-over-year. But much of it is driven by speculators buying up rental properties and securitizing them. As you can see, it's way out of line with historic norms and raises affordability issues for average Arizonans, as well as a host of other potential problems...

Sterling, Silver

I've thought Donald Sterling (nee Tokowitz) was a pig since he moved the Clippers from San Diego in 1984 when I lived there. Commissioner Adam Silver banning him from the NBA for life over racist comments is entirely appropriate.

Yet the affair leaves a bad taste. It is not news that Sterling makes outspoken racist statements and discriminated as a landlord. One wonders why the NAACP was going to give him a lifetime achievement award before the latest blowup. And at age 80, that lifetime ban's sure to sting.

But this time Sterling met that strange inflection point in our culture when the insatiable appetite of 24/7 media meets a bad rich ugly white dude spewing hate and subjects him to the same beat-down as one of the victims of Billy Bob Thornton's character in FX's Fargo. Then America pats itself on the back and moves on.

Time wounds all heels. Or so we wish. I suffer from schadenfreude-interruptus.