Rogue Columnist

Fate of the nation

I am writing this before the first presidential debate. I don't plan to watch. Too much brain damage. Nothing that would be said could change my vote for Hillary Clinton. The alternative is national suicide.

So far, the election is playing out pretty much as I suspected. Republicans, even the #NeverTrump crowd such as Sen. Ted Cruz, will dutifully line up and vote for Trump. If the GOP candidate were Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, or George H.W. Bush, I would give him a hearing. But one of our two great mass political parties has gone insane. Donald Trump is not an anomaly. He is the natural outcome of the paranoid style in American politics that long ago took over the Republicans. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater could not win a GOP school-board primary today.

It doesn't matter that Trump is a serial liar, totally unqualified for national office, temperamentally unfit on a frightening level, the most dangerous candidate ever put forward by a major party. They will vote for him.

I don't want to hear about how things would have been different with Bernie. Had he won the nomination and been subjected to months of SOCIALIST!, he would be losing badly in the polls already. To me, your protest votes for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson are just short of treason. And if Trump wins, which he may well do, Mencken's quote that "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard" will offer no comfort.

Tunneling into the new boom

While I was in Phoenix last week, the Census Bureau released news showing the biggest annual jump in median household income since 1967 and poverty falling the most in 50 years. Nationally, incomes jumped 5.2 percent from 2014 to last year, to $56,516. The numbers are adjusted for inflation. Thanks, Obama.

The data are more complicated for Phoenix and low-tax/light-regulation Arizona. Income statewide rose 2.8 percent to $51,492. Yet it was down 9.7 percent compared with 2007. Metropolitan Phoenix median household income increased 3.9 percent to $55,547.

In other words, the state and metro area trailed a nation that includes Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Phoenix was No. 25 among the largest metros, with Nashville and Birmingham in the lead in percentage increase.

Drilling down to the city level is even more sobering. Seattle, which is undertaking numerous progressive policies that would supposedly kill business, led the nation with a total increase of $9,374 to $80,349. Blue Portland jumped $6,268 to $60,892. Denver, another blue city, saw incomes rise $3,062 to $58,003. And Phoenix? Its income struggled up $523 to $48,452. (No, that's not a misprint).

If any comfort can be had, San Diego's median household income rose a mere $72 to $67,871. But metro Phoenix's underperforming is a serious problem. The city's poor showing is even more troubling, the "hole in the doughnut" effect. More than 23 percent of the city's residents are below the federal poverty line, compared with 13.5 percent nationally and 17.4 percent for Arizona. The state's poverty rate fell 0.9 percent from 2014 to 2015, but had risen 3.2 percent since 2007.

No, purchasing power doesn't cut it as an excuse. The conservative Tax Foundation used federal Bureau of Economic Analysis stats to calculate the real value of $100 in each state. Statewide in Arizona you get $103.73, but that's not much, and I wonder how much it translates to more expensive metro Phoenix. The bottom line is that Arizona's conservative policies have not yielded a strong economy, especially one required for such a populous state.

Flipping Arizona?

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll has Hillary Clinton within one point of Donald Trump in Arizona. You read that right. This is in line with a polling average from Real Clear Politics, which even had Clinton slightly ahead during and after both parties' conventions. 

Is it possible that Hillary could flip Arizona to the Democrats? After all, her husband won the state in 1996. I am skeptical.

Bill Clinton won in a very different Arizona. The state was still competitive for Democrats and "experts" predicted that continued population growth would favor the party. Arizona's population expanded by 40 percent in that decade, but it was the "big sort," where people came seeking ideological co-religionists. It was almost entirely on the right. With the exception of the surprise election of St. Janet in 2002 and hopes for her "sensible center," Arizona politics trended ever more rightward. Today not a single statewide office is held by a Democrat.

From the 1980s on, Republicans patiently took control of school boards, municipal offices, tightened their control of the Legislature and Corporation Commission, built a massive infrastructure including fake "think tanks," the charter school racket, private prison racket, and the aid of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. The Democrats never knew what hit 'em. The best Napolitano could do was play defense.

In our Cold Civil War, with the nation more divided than any time since the eve of the Civil War, Arizona sits comfortably in the New Confederacy. I can still start a fight on Facebook by praising light rail (WBIYB).

Minorities in early Phoenix

I'm gradually going back through Phoenix 101 columns and fleshing them out with more serious scholarship. This is a crazy week, so I may or may not get to a new column. In the meantime, enjoy this expanded column that first appeared in 2009: