Rogue Columnist

We need to talk about Bernie

Much of the pushback I received over the previous post on Hillary Clinton took place on Facebook. The pushers were fervent Bernie Sanders fans who argued I wasn't taking him seriously as a candidate. So I hope we can continue the debate here where many more thousands of readers will see it.

I get it. I love the way Sanders talks about the oligarchy that has taken over our politics, the inequality that has destroyed the middle class, the financialization that has wrecked the economy. He's right about all this.

I just don't see how he's electable.

My concerns were similar in 2004 with John Kerry. The Democratic establishment saw him as the "electable" candidate, even though a Democrat from the Northeast, from Massachusetts no less, had not won the presidency since 1960. And John F. Kennedy probably didn't honestly win that one.

Kerry was properly "swift boated" as an anti-war traitor by members of the vast right-wing infrastructure who had sat out the Vietnam War on repeated deferments. And we got another four years of the worst president since James Buchanan.

Thinking about Hillary

I don't want to but the media make it almost impossible. They have been fixated on her, and mostly in a malicious way, since 1992. The New York Times keeps floating trial balloons for the mediocre Joe Biden to get in the race.

Biden? I'm sorry the man lost his son, Beau, but as a presidential candidate he would be a disaster in a race trending populist, what with his vote for the 2005 bill that made it much more difficult for working people to declare bankruptcy and his son, Hunter, on the payroll of a credit-card giant. Good old Amtrak Joe hasn't done anything to expand or improve passenger rail during the past six-plus years. And this is before the vice president opens his mouth to give one of his blunder-filled speechathons.

Then there's Bernie Sanders, whose popularity is supposedly rattling the Clinton camp. As much as Bernie gives 'em hell and tells is like it is, he would win one state in the general election. One. If you don't believe me, you need to get out of the progressive echo chamber.

Benghazi is a dead end except for the Republican dead-enders who wouldn't vote for Clinton anyway. The private email account is a different matter, one of those reminders of the inexplicable things Bill and Hill do — the crazymaking we've forgotten during these years of No-Drama Obama. Why on earth did she do this? It might be nothing. But it looks bad — at the least bad judgment that is so at odds with the solid record she has built.

It does say something about the state of our republic that poor-boy-from-Hot-Springs (oh, Hope!) William Jefferson Clinton spent much of his adult life seeking and holding elected office in a poor, Southern state. Then he served two terms as president (salary at the time, $200,000 a year). And he ends up a zillionaire. He and the Candidate have been renting a lil' summer place in the Hamptons for two weeks costing $100,000.

And this is supposed to be the tribune of the average American?

Rebranding Arizona

So wealthy Republican Gov. Douglas A. Roscoe Jr., aka "Doug Ducey," has ordered the state Commerce Authority to "rebrand" Arizona.

This unleashed no small amount of mirth. A few serious articles appeared, too (see here, here and here).

As Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller pointed out, the state's problem isn't image but reality. If you doubt this, read through our Arizona's Continuing Crisis. Scan eight years of columns here. Correct those appalling problems identified and the Grand Canyon State will regain its luster.

But I'm not sure the in-state media are prepared, or would be allowed, to go far enough in examining the situation.

Arizona is at or near the bottom of almost every measure of economic, civic or social well-being, a national beacon of bigotry and know-nothingism, precisely because of the ideology Gov. Roscoe worships. Getting there has required an enormous amount of civic vandalism but Republicans got it done.

Specifically, this one party has controlled the Legislature, the most powerful branch of government, since the 1980s. All but two governors were Republicans. At the same time, the GOP moved from being a mass political party to one of ever more extreme "conservatism." Centrists were pushed out. Incumbents feared a challenge from their right, so became ever more ideologically enslaved. The result is what I labeled in 2001 the Kookocracy.

What killed Metrocenter?

Someone passed along an article on the demise of Metrocenter. It was from 2011 but is still relevant. The comments are especially interesting.

When Metrocenter opened in 1973, it was the first "super-regional" mall in the Southwest. Unlike the typical mall of the era with two anchor stores, Metrocenter had five: Goldwater's, Rhodes, The Broadway, Sears and Diamond's. With two levels, its sleek interior looked like a starship. The showpiece was an ice-skating rink with a bar-restaurant on the second level overlooking it.

As the photo above shows, it was initially built on the metropolitan fringes, along Black Canyon Freeway between Dunlap and Peoria avenues. Westcor, the developer of this and so many other Phoenix malls, assumed the growth of single-family subdivisions and office parks would follow. And so they did.

It gave the lie to "retail follows rooftops." Rather, Metrocenter was built on spec, and one underlying reality was that it would badly wound or kill older malls, especially Chris-Town and Park Central. And so it did.

Phoenix apocalypse

When Phoenix magazine Editor Craig Outhier approached me about writing an imagined Phoenix apocalypse, I was very reluctant. Too many minds snap shut at my approach because of my "he's so negative" reputation. The story would be paired with an imagined Phoenix utopia (written by Outhier).

I was given free rein to use zombies.

Anyway, I did it — but using the most realistic scenarios, not something fanciful. Here are the two best and worst futures imagined.

 

Bomb Iran?

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran — John McCain, channeling the Beach Boys

Republicans are dead set against President Obama's plan, worked out with Russia, China, the UK, France, Germany and Iran, to at least forestall the Islamic Republic from making nuclear weapons.

Israel doesn't like it! It's not verifiable! It won't succeed! It's not what Ronald Reagan would do!

In fact, it's exactly what Reagan would do. Dutch happily did business with Iran to finance the Contras. And as his horror of nuclear weapons grew, he came very close to making a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev to completely eliminate them.

As usual, the Republicans don't have a real alternative. It's like repealing Obamacare.

Mad dogs and Phoenicians

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. — old expression.

People in Seattle are undergoing tremendous angst because of the astonishing boom there. Plenty of the population was born there or has lived in Seattle for decades. They even have a name: mossbacks. A trenchant column of the same name is written by old-timer Knute Berger in Crosscut.

Things are different in Phoenix. Few people of my age or older are actually from here; fewer still were able to stay because of the limited economy. The term "desert rat" doesn't really apply. Cal is a desert rat. I'm thinking of those who remember the old garden city, a unique place they loved. Oasis people?

The defensiveness and boosterism of the growth machine is not the same as loving a place.

Which bring me to the New York Times story about "the rebel tribe" that hikes the mountains despite the murderous summer heat.

This is something relatively new. I climbed almost every mountain and hiked nearly every wilderness area around Phoenix, many repeatedly. But never in the summer. Nobody I knew would have even considered such a thing.

Send in the clowns

Tonight, the clown car of Republican presidential contenders will drive into the ring of the Fox "News" circus and they will all pile out, with enough hot air to do in the dodgy New York developer's combover. (One of my vows is not to mention him by name).

Today, I wrote a column at the Seattle Times on the economic questions that should — but won't — be asked. Earlier this week, Kunstler had a superb piece on "matters that serious candidates should dare to talk about." It's really worth a read, even for those of you who are Kunstlered-out.

Yet it says something about out Cold Civil War that nearly half the nation will look at the fools tumbling out of the clown car — not one of whom has done anything constructive for the public good — and see the next president.

Behold, the heirs to Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ike. These "conservative" voters will view this not for sport or comedy, but with ultra-seriousness.

Anybody but that Islamo-fascist socialist (pssst Negro) in the White House. Lord, if this is socialism, where are my high-speed trains, free university education, universal health care and month's paid vacation?

The transportation vote

See the comments section for an open thread on the vote.

Phoenix's Proposition 104 promises to extend light-rail and bus service, as well as make street improvements. Everyone who wishes the city well should vote for it.

Now that's out of the way, let's examine some lesser-explored aspects of the issue. I say "issue," because the debate has been won. WBIYB. Phoenix light rail is highly successful, as I predicted when advocating it — and getting death threats from the Bs in the latter B of WBIYB — as a columnist at the Arizona Republic.

A quick note on costs. With the $2 billion the state wants to flush down the toilet on the South Mountain Freeway, we could more than double the original 20 miles of light rail. That Arizona is still building freeways shows this racket for what it is: a way to keep spec construction going and enriching the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Costs? Freeways destroy cities and farmland, spread pollution and emit enormous amounts of carbon into the global commons called the atmosphere. That these costs are hidden "externalities" does not mean they don't exist. Transit is a bargain. Enough said about the "light rail costs too much" Big Lie.