Rogue Columnist

Block 23, a history

The first downtown Phoenix grocery in decades is scheduled to open in October, part of a mixed-used project that will also include 330 apartments. This will be a major test for the revived central core. I've been skeptical as to whether demand exists — Bashas' passed on the store during the Great Recession — but maybe ASU, more downtown residents, and proximity to light rail (WBIYB) will make the difference. Fry's is owned by Kroger, which wouldn't undertake such an enterprise without a good chance of success.

This is located on Block 23 of the original half-mile Phoenix townsite, laid out by William Hancock, one of the town's most influential citizens and friend of Jack Swilling, in 1870. Two parcels were set aside for public uses. One was Block 76, located between Washington and Jefferson and Cortes and Mohave streets, and Block 23 between Washington and Jefferson and Montezuma and Maricopa streets.

The former was designated for the county courthouse square. Block 23 was labeled "plaza," for municipal uses. In a turn of the 20th century renaming of streets, Cortes and Mohave became First and Second avenues. Montezuma and Maricopa became First and Second streets. In 1879, some 400 Phoenicians gathered on Block 23 to witness the hanging of two murderers.

Mean streets

I lost a good friend this week. John Bouma, the longtime managing partner of Snell and Wilmer and a towering figure among Phoenix lawyers, was struck and killed by two vehicles in the 7500 block of north Seventh Street. It was night. Maybe he strayed into the street to retrieve a lost item. The investigation is ongoing. He was first hit by a 2017 Toyota Tacoma, which apparently then threw him into the path of a 2017 Jeep Patriot.

Bouma and I had very different politics. But, brought together by the late Jack August, we enjoyed numerous lunches at Durant's talking about Phoenix history. He knew my mother, who worked closely with Mark Wilmer on Arizona v. California, the landmark suit that won Colorado River water. He could also name all the old bars, mob-ridden and otherwise, that once enlivened old Phoenix. As with Jack, I will miss him terribly.

When I posted this on Facebook, including a mention of Phoenix's deadly streets, I was surprised by the people who rushed to blame Bouma and say, essentially, "Nothing to see here, move along." Really? Your hair-trigger, defensive boosterism can't even acknowledge this reality? I shouldn't have been surprised. Social media is no less a cancer than the local-yokel sunny-championship golf denial.

In fact, Phoenix has a major problem with pedestrian injuries and fatalities. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, Arizona has the highest rate of pedestrian deaths in the nation.

Sick leave

I was hospitalized for pneumonia. So it will be awhile before I post again. Enjoy the archives and use this as an open thread. I will continue to post news stories in the nav bar to the left.

 

 

The water fix

The Arizona media have been producing many process stories (e.g. this one) about the federal government's insistence that states agree on a plan to use less Colorado River water at this time of historic drought. Resistant farmers in Pinal County have come in for special criticism, including an intelligent piece by the Arizona Republic's Joanna Allhands about Pinal likely to increase its pumping of groundwater.

At the same time, the same media have engaged in their usual growthgasm stories about Arizona once again being one of the nation's fastest-growing states in population. Arizona held 7,171,646 souls as of this past July. In 1970, two years after the funding for the Central Arizona Project was signed into law, the state's population was 1.7 million.

Yet I have yet to see any story connect the two.

The disconnect is staggering, matched only by the inattention to climate change as a prime driver of the ongoing Southwestern drought.

Arizona's "plan" is to keep adding people, no matter what. The entire economy's foundation is based on continuing large increases in population. Not only that, but to continue doing so in single-family housing sprawl far from historic urban centers. The Real Estate Industrial Complex hopes for 300,000-plus people west of the White Tanks. A monstrous development near Benson would destroy the San Pedro River, the last major free-flowing stream in the Southwest.

Ten questions about light rail, answered

It's the tenth anniversary of the completion of metro Phoenix light rail (WBIYB). I'll have a history of the project in a special insert of the Arizona Capitol Times. In the meantime, some common questions and answers.

1. What decided the route of the starter line? It was a combination of demand, available right-of-way, and cost. The line follows the route of the old Red Line bus, which was at 125 percent of capacity by 2000. This ensured high ridership and a favorable outcome in federal funding (with an invaluable assist from the late Rep. Ed Pastor).

2. Why was it built at grade rather than as a subway or monorail? Cost. While both those modes — especially a subway — would have been preferable to street running, the funding was not available. The federal government once spent heavily for such subways as the D.C. Metro and Atlanta's MARTA (originally meant for Seattle), but that aid largely ended by the 1980s. Monorails also have the problem of controversy about being unsightly to some, although the Skytrain in Vancouver, B.C., part overhead and part subway, is highly successful.

3. Did Mesa almost miss out on light rail? Yes. The most conservative big city in America was especially wary of the project, and the starter line might have ended at McClintock Drive in Tempe. If so, it would have been very expensive to eventually build into Mesa. Mayor Keno Hawker played a leading role in securing city council approval of the line to Sycamore. This set the table for extending light rail deep into downtown Mesa under Mayor Scott Smith (now Valley Metro CEO). With Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa on board, this helped the metro area rise in the national competition for federal assistance.

The desperate hours

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

The resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis moves us into a dangerous new phase of Donald Trump's illegitimate presidency.

I've asked several people who worked in the field as to whether Trump could use the launch codes carried by an aide in the "football" to unilaterally unleash thermonuclear armageddon. The answers are mixed. We do know that at the worst of the Watergate scandal, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger required that any launch order from President Richard Nixon go through him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first.

Mattis was our Schlesinger. I never subscribed to the "adults in the room" theory or the "principled conservatives" in the administration working secretly to undercut the worst of Trump's impulses. I come from the older American tradition that doesn't worship people merely because they have stars on their epaulets. Mattis moving directly from being a four-star Marine general to a cabinet post discomfited me (only the uniquely upright George Marshall had done so before). Still, I understood his duty-bound motive. And soon he'll be gone.

Remember, just after the 2016 election when I warned you that things would be worse than you could imagine? I was right, but we're not even halfway down the express elevator to hell. With the Mueller investigation closing in, co-conspirators flipping, the New York Attorney General, and U.S. Attorney from the Southern District in New York — all these probes tightening the web on the Don and his family... He's capable of anything.

Alleys and buses

KJZZ had a story about a pilot program unveiled at 15th Avenue and Butler Drive, making it "the first neighborhood to install gates to close their (sic) alleys to outsiders...designed to prevent criminal activity and illegal dumping."

It was spun as a "celebration," but it made me sad.

Alleys have a colorful history in early Phoenix. Many had names, such as Melinda's Alley and the vice-ridden Paris Alley downtown. As the Phoenix grew, so-called service alleys were part of the cityscape. Trash trucks used them as burly garbagemen heaved the contents of aluminum garbage cans into the back of the vehicles to be crushed and stored (in Scottsdale, it was the Refuse Wranglers). Utility crews employed the alleys for maintenance and meter-reading.

They were a delightful playground growing up in mid-century Phoenix. Alleys were the battlefield for our childhood conflicts: Flinging oranges, dirt clods, and, the highest escalation, rocks at each other. Secondary weapons included spears cut from oleanders. (Don't believe the nonsense about innocent children; of course, today we little boys being little boys would be diagnosed on a "spectrum" and heavily medicated).

I remember one battle where we were hunkered down in a makeshift fort as our opponents hurled rocks at us. One little boy named Harry kept running up within a few feet and throwing a stone into the fort. But I had a Wrist Rocket slingshot and after several close encounters with Harry, he came again, an angelic smile on his face — until I let go a decent-sized pebble into his chest at high velocity. I still feel a little guilty. But we won the rock fight.

Wealth and cities

In Seattle, I frequently encounter rich people whose family wealth can be traced back generations. Although they might be techies, bankers, lawyers, investors, or philanthropists, their great- or great-great grandparents made their fortunes from timber. It was the foundational extraction industry of the Pacific Northwest.

Timber and logging are now a small fraction of the region's economy, but they created the riches that would propel Seattle into becoming a world city. Most famous was Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a German immigrant who, with his partners, built a timber empire with help from the railroads. Although Weyerhauser's headquarters was in Tacoma for many years, then in the suburb of Federal Way, the company recently moved to Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, the better to attract top talent. William Boeing made his money from timber before founding the aerospace company that bears his name. And so it went.

Phoenix had its start in land extraction, too. First as an agricultural empire, then as a "migropolis," attracting millions of people to hundreds of square miles of subdivisions. But there the similarity ends. Phoenix never moved beyond the extraction industry of the land economy to become an economy based on value creation.

The consequences were on sharp display in the 2000s, when an effort was made to create a metropolitan arts council that would lobby for taxes to support culture. While the enterprise failed, it produced a remarkable study. That found that Phoenix ranked around 35th nationally in giving to the arts, despite Phoenix being the fifth most populous city and the 13th largest metro area. The same holds true for book markets. Phoenix is tough ground for writers. A new study found Arizona last in charitable giving.

The Suns arena dilemma

The rump City Council, with a caretaker mayor, seems in no hurry to address Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver's demands for a new or significantly remodeled downtown arena. Members are divided. Kate Gallego, facing Daniel Valenzuela in a March mayoral runoff, said, “it is not in Phoenix’s best interest to invest in an arena.” Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote, "taxpayers are about to get hosed if this deal goes through."

Here's the real deal: If Phoenix doesn't invest in the arena, Sarver — who has none of Jerry Colangelo's civic spirit — will move the team to the Rez, renaming it the Arizona Suns, no doubt, or even to Seattle, which is hungry to replace its lost Supersonics. The damage to downtown and light-rail (WBIYB) would be catastrophic. Talk about hosed.

Scholars are united in saying that professional sports arenas are bad public investments. But they are neither fans nor do they live in troubled cities. In an Atlantic magazine article, Rick Paulas writes, "Pro sports teams are bad business deals for cities, and yet, cities continue to fall for them. But municipalities can support local sports without selling out their citizens in the process." Indeed, it's outrageous that taxpayers are shelling out millions for super-rich team owners. They should say no. And this is especially true for robust, normal cities.

But Phoenix is neither.

Phoenix was wild about Harry

Before we get out of campaign season, it's worth remembering one of the most riveting contests in American political history: Harry Truman's run for president seven decades ago.

In 1948, Truman was serving out FDR's fourth term, having become the unexpected vice president to the ailing president four years before. Roosevelt died within months of winning the election, leaving Truman to lead the nation through the conclusion of World War II. Truman was untested and, compared with the suave FDR, came off as a country bumpkin. Also, after 16 years of Democratic triumphs, Americans were ready for a change. Republicans won control of Congress in 1946. The well-regarded New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who ran well against Roosevelt in 1944, was widely expected to win the presidency in 1948.

But the GOP misjudged their opponent in the White House. A fierce partisan with a volcanic temper, Truman famously ran against the "Do Nothing" Republican Congress. Even so, he remained the underdog. Thus, Truman embarked on a 30,000-mile whistle-stop campaign, criss-crossing the nation in a special train.

Truman visited Phoenix in September, where 7,000 people crowded around the rear platform of the armored presidential railcar Magellan to hear a "Give 'em hell" speech. The 17-car presidential special traveled east on the Southern Pacific. It previously stopped in Yuma, where 6,000 heard Truman speak and Arizona dignitaries boarded for the ride to the capital and Tucson. 

November impressions

As I write, Kyrsten Sinema has pulled ahead of Martha McSally in the Senate race. Republicans are suing to stop counting of ballots that have already been cast. Similar shameful gambits are underway in Georgia and Florida. The Party of Lincoln Trump will do anything to hold power. This is authoritarianism, dear readers.

If Sinema holds on, and the rule of law survives the Ducey appointed state Supreme Court, it would be an astonishing accomplishment. Sinema would have an insurmountable lead of not for the wasted votes of the Greens. As long as the Nader-Jill Stein-Bernie Bro faction insists on its purity, the Republicans will keep winning. No revolution will come from the left. It's already come from the right and is succeeding quite nicely.

Before Democrats take control of the U.S. House in January, Trump and the Republicans are capable of anything. Make sure your seats are in their full upright position and your seatbelts fastened. The survival of the republic is at stake.

Other notes:

• November feels like late September and early October in old Phoenix. This is on track to be the hottest year in recorded Arizona history, yet the booster magical thinking continues about what climate change means for Arizona.

• As much as I'm happy about the infill of the Central Corridor, I'm sad to lose the special view from Third Street looking south to the mountains. This was especially enchanting passing through Alvarado, where much of the lush old oasis still prevails.

• I am baffled by "shade structures," which are little more than ribs of steel or other designs that provide little shade at all. Not smart in the skin-cancer capital of America. Old Phoenix was covered with shade trees, as well as businesses that had awnings and overhangs to protect from the sun.

• We are at the centennial of the Armistice than ended the Great War. Our world was made by that conflict and its aftermath. Phoenix, too: Demand for cotton caused farmers to switch wholesale to the crop, reducing the diversity of agriculture in the Salt River Valley. After the war, cotton prices crashed, with hard times here.

Now I'll leave the comments section as an election open thread.

 

 

 

 

 

Like your life depends on it

"Vote like your life depends on it" is a slogan popular among Democrats. But the large numbers that support Donald Trump (42 percent according to FiveThirtyEight's compilation of polls) obviously think the same from their corner.

Beyond that, I have little to say about polls. After 2016, none of us should trust them. They can be skewed by the Bradley Effect — in this case GOP voters lying about their intentions — vote suppression tactics, gerrymandering, Trump's firehose of lies and distractions, maybe more interference from the Russians. Remember, 80,000 votes in three states decided our fate two years ago. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes — despite the factors listed above, plus media malpractice in overlooking Trump's deep corruption, unfitness for office, and Kremlin meddling.

From where I sit, our lives do depend on at least Democrats winning the House. If Republicans, who are complicit in Trump's corruption and malgovernment, hold all the branches of government, then it's over. I don't see how we come back. It's going to be difficult enough with a hard reactionary Supreme Court thanks to the evil Mitch McConnell (and I don't apply the adjective lightly).

Under continued GOP control, we will not only shirk essential American leadership in addressing human-caused climate change, we will make it worse by releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. There's no upper bound to worse, either. This is the greatest existential crisis humanity has faced.

More tax cuts for the wealthy, more cuts to domestic programs, then the big enchiladas: repealing the Affordable Care Act (instead of merely sabotaging it) and coming after Social Security and Medicare. No checks on Trump's power. No accountability for his crimes. Mueller is likely toast. An American Reichstag fire would provide the "president" and his supporters a convenient boost into full-blown authoritarianism. As Paul Krugman points out, Republicans must lie about their intentions because their actual programs are highly unpopular. 

The next Phoenix mayor

I know that I should have a firm conviction about the mayoral election, but I don't. We can ignore the Republican and Libertarian candidates — their dogmas are totally unsuited to the needs of the nation's fifth-largest city. That leaves Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela.

Both are supported by people I respect. According to the Arizona Republic, Gallego's backers include former U.S. representatives Harry Mitchell, Sam Coppersmith, Ron Barber and Anne Kirkpatrick, as well as former state Attorney General and Phoenix Mayor Terry Goddard. Valenzuela's big names include retired U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, former Phoenix mayors Paul Johnson, Skip Rimsza and Phil Gordon, councilwomen Laura Pastor and Debra Stark, and business leaders Jerry Colangelo and Sharon Harper.

That makes a choice tough. Gallego may get a tilt in her favor because she represented central Phoenix on City Council. But I'd be interested in what commenters say.

Neither Gallego nor Valenzuela were on the transformative City Council of the 2000s that helped land T-Gen and supported light rail (WBIYB), the downtown ASU campus, Phoenix Convention Center, Sheraton and other civic goods that led to today's downtown revival. 

Saving the mountains

Phoenix punches below its weight on almost category compared with its peers. But it has one amenity that places it above nearly every other big city: the mountain preserves and parks. They are a majestic and defining accomplishment.

The city has about 37,000 acres, or 58 square miles, of mountain preserves and parks. These range from South Mountain Park and Papago Park to the Phoenix Mountains Preserve and the Sonoran Preserve in far north Phoenix.

This also inspired suburbs, especially Scottsdale with its McDowell Sonoran Preserve. As I write, this is the subject of a big fight over Proposition 420, which would allow a tourist center — and potentially other development — to be built in this pristine land. Scottsdale preservationists are wise to be on guard. Phoenix's experience shows that saving the mountains didn't come easy — and is always at risk.

Preservation began with two federal initiatives. First was the Papago Saguaro National Monument, established by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 at the urging of Rep. Carl Hayden (Hayden actually wanted a National Park). Second came the Coolidge administration's sale of the 13,000 acres of the future South Mountain Park to the city in 1925, again with the urging of Hayden, by then a Senator. Phoenix paid $17,000 ($248,000 in today's money) for the ranges of what were then known as the Salt River Mountains and surrounding desert. 

Carolyn Warner, an appreciation

I still subscribe unfashionably to the Great Man and Great Woman school of history. But history also carries cruel contingencies. Carolyn Warner, who passed away Monday night at 88 was a towering figure who might have saved Arizona from the Kookocracy, saved Arizona from itself.

Instead, Democrats split the gubernatorial vote in 1986, giving us Evan Mecham, then Fife Symington, and, with the Big Sort bringing ever more right-wingers and the old stewards passing, the die was cast.

Along with her ex-husband Ron, Warner ran the furniture and interior design store that bore their name at 28th Street and Osborn. It was for years the fanciest furniture store in town. A native of Ardmore, Okla., she came to Arizona in 1953.

As Superintendent of Public Instruction for 12 years, Warner oversaw the last period of great public schools in Arizona, long before the shameful charter-school racket. Although a Democrat, she worked well with pragmatic Republicans such as Burton Barr, in an era of both bipartisan compromise and competition. 

Brains, trains, and automobiles

The biggest local story of the week is the unanimous (!) decision by the Rump City Council to raid funding intended for light-rail extension to Paradise Valley Mall and use it for street maintenance. As disheartening is that, as far as I know, neither major candidate for mayor has spoken out against it.

This comes soon after the Council (6-2) bucked an aggressive astroturf campaign by the Koch interests to kill that south Phoenix light-rail line (yes, the Wichita billionaires are deeply involved in destroying local transit). One step up and one step back. What's going on? A few observations:

The Council has changed from the consensus of the 2000s that brought some of the most constructive measures in decades. These include light rail (WBIYB), the downtown ASU campus, T-Gen and the downtown biomedical campus, and the new convention center. In recent years, the Council is less visionary and more divided — a situation made more difficult by the departure of Mayor Greg Stanton, and mayoral candidates Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela.

Phoenix's size and means are wildly unbalanced. The Arizona Republic reported that city staff estimated that "4,085 of the city's 4,863 miles of streets will fall below a ‘good’ quality level in the next five years and require maintenance. Currently, 3,227 miles are already in fair, poor, or very poor condition. Bringing all of the streets up to a 'good' level in five years would cost $1.6 billion that the city does not have." 

'Constitutional crisis'

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

Every norm broken by the Trump administration, every norm threatened, brings commentary using the words above. Violating the emoluments clause, firing James Comey, threatening the Mueller investigation, leaning on the Attorney General, nominating a manifestly disqualifying Supreme Court Justice while withholding 100,000 pages on him, etc. Constitutional crisis.

The biggest is that the Republican-controlled Congress will not exercise its duty to hold the executive branch to account. It won't because Republicans are getting all the right-wing goodies (tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks) and they fear Trump's base. Checks and balances? We don't need no stinking checks and balances.

Cynical Ben Franklin is looking down, shaking his head. Leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was approached by a woman who asked whether we would have a monarchy or a republic. Said Franklin, "A republic, if you can keep it."

In reality, the current Constitutional crisis began on Nov. 6th, 2018, when Trump won the Electoral College thanks to 80,000 votes in three states with the help of a hostile foreign power.

No, it preceded that, with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refusing to grant President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland even a hearing, so the GOP might get the seat (as it did). The sainted John McCain promised he would vote against any nominee of a President Hillary Clinton. This was unprecedented.

Or it began in 2000, when the Supreme Court, with the deciding vote cast by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, made the constitutionally unsound decision to intervene in the presidential election, swinging it to George W. Bush.

The Roman Republic died of a thousand cuts. So it is with the American republic. 

'No hurricanes in Arizona!'

This piece of boosterism is not technically true — the state has been hit by the remnants of powerful Pacific hurricanes. Indeed, Arizona should take stock of Hurricane Florence and its effects in North Carolina. Let me explain.

Hurricanes are nothing new to the Carolinas. What is new is their severity, in part caused by climate change, combined with population growth and development.

Hurricane Florence was only a Category 1 storm when it made landfall, yet it caused historic levels of flooding. This came only a year after flooding damage caused by Hurricane Maria. In some cases, the very same areas saw severe flooding. Parts of South Carolina saw some damage, too.

North Carolina's population grew by more than 21 percent in the 1990s and nearly 19 percent in the 2000s. In 2017, it had more than 10.2 million people. South Carolina added more than 15 percent in those same decades.

A good part of that came in vulnerable coastal areas. For example, Wilmington's New Hanover County, an epicenter of Florence flooding, stood at 227,000 last year, more than double from its 1980 population. Horry County, S.C., another hurricane target, held more than 333,000 last year, more than three times its 1980 numbers. 

Ten years after

Newspapers are full of retrospectives on the Panic of 2008, the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. Phoenix and Arizona were one of the ground zeros of the housing crash, the result being the worst recession here since the Great Depression.

True, its effects were buffered by the safety net of the hated Franklin Roosevelt, including the copious amounts of Social Security checks that kept coming from the hated federal government. Still, unemployment shot up to nearly 11 percent statewide by 2010, slightly less in Phoenix and Tucson. The main industry, housebuilding, had been shot in the head. Prices fell 50 percent in many cases. Recovery was much slower than peer metros.

A decade later, single-family building permits are back at early 1990s levels. Construction employment is not only not recovered from the 2000s bacchanal but far below historic trend. This would be good news for conservationists but for the fact that much of existing and planned construction involves suburban pods in bladed desert, farmland, or forest.

So let others discuss Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve, how close we came to a second Great Depression, the good and bad of the response and recovery. What's so striking in Phoenix is how little was changed by this tectonic event. 

McCain, an assessment

A man who made “straight talk” one of his trademarks would surely not be satisfied with the flood of worshipful accolades enshrining him as a unique hero, statesman, and patriot for the ages. My aim is to remedy that.

I put my shoulder to this necessary task knowing that he was admired and even loved by people I respect. They range from Grant Woods to Alfredo Gutierrez and Neil Giuliano. I never much cared for John McCain, both because he did so little to use his prestige and power to help his adopted state, and because his conservatism helped set the table for today’s emergency.

More about that later.

McCain suffered terribly as a prisoner of war and heroically refused an early release as the son of the admiral in charge of Pacific forces. This denied a propaganda coup to the communists.

Still, hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, airmen, and naval aviators suffered at the hands of Hanoi as well.

In World War II, the treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese was barbaric. After they were liberated, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright who surrendered the Philippines and British Gen. Arthur Percival who surrendered Singapore were positioned beside Douglas MacArthur on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri for the Japanese surrender. Nearly walking skeletons in uniform, their presence was powerful. No one remembers them today.

McCain served 31 years in the Senate. But his legislative record was minimal. This is certainly so compared with giants such as Edward Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert Taft, Robert La Follette Sr., Arthur Vandenberg, or Arizona’s Ernest McFarland.

Mac, who served as Senate Majority leader, was the father of the GI Bill. Along with Carl Hayden, another towering figure from Arizona, he worked tirelessly for the Central Arizona Project. So did Sen. Barry Goldwater and Reps. Stewart Udall, Mo Udall, and John J. Rhodes. 

Vacation

I'll have new columns in September, barring compelling breaking news. In the meantime, enjoy the archives and use this as an open thread. The Front Page and Phoenix and Arizona will be updated daily.

 

Ghost railroads of Arizona

Today's railroad action in Arizona is largely confined to the Union Pacific across the southern part of the state and the BNSF Transcon across the north, along with branch lines from both to Phoenix. Long intermodal and merchandise freights power along with few stops, heading to California and the east. Classification and switching that once stood in railroad towns such as Winslow have been removed, Arizona posts some of the lowest levels of tonnage originating and being delivered in the nation.

It wasn't always that way. Railroads were essential to tapping the state's mineral wealth, especially copper, shipping produce from the Salt River Valley, and building towns that served as busy division and subdivision points.

Passenger trains ended the state's isolation, bringing new residents and tourists. Crack trains included Santa Fe's northern Arizona fleet of the Super Chief, El Capitan, Chief, San Francisco Chief, and Grand Canyon, and Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited, Golden State Limited, and Imperial among others traveling through Phoenix once the SP northern main line was completed in 1926. They delivered and picked up the mail, often sorted en route in Railway Post Office cars. Less-than-carload freight service with the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe and Railway Express Agency served scores of towns and cities, the FedEx and UPS of their day.

Railroads built Arizona.

Almost all of this is gone. But the ghosts linger. Here are a few: 

Retiring in Arizona

Arizona is only the 29th "best state to retire in," according to a new survey by Bankrate. The consumer financial services company ranked cost of living, crime, culture, health-care quality, taxes, weather, and "well being." No 1? That would be South Dakota, followed by Utah, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Florida. The Grand Canyon State didn't even make the top 10 in weather.

If this is true, it's bad news for the retirement industry, which has been a lynchpin of the state's economy since Del Webb began Sun City in 1959. Social Security payments accounted for an astounding $1.4 trillion for nearly a million retirees in Arizona as of last year alone — not to mention the savings and other assets they bring from back home.

The survey is highly suspect, of course. South Dakota is a fascinating place, with Mount Rushmore and Deadwood, but between immense snowfall and isolation and being downwind from the ICBM fields of North Dakota should World War III erupt, it doesn't sound like the best place to spend one's sunset years.

Because of savage cuts that have destroyed 40 percent of newsroom jobs over the past decade, PR people now outnumber reporters by 5-1 or more. Every day at the Seattle Times, I get scores of pitches. Many are click bait such as this. I rely on more gold-standard information, such as that from the Federal Reserve, universities or authentic think tanks.

But that doesn't mean Arizona is quite out of the woods on retirement desirability. 

The permanent crisis

Illustration by Carl Muecke.

A few random thoughts as we circle the drain.

The drumbeat asks, why don't Republicans do something about Trump? It's simple. First, he's giving them their heart's desire: A reactionary Supreme Court for decades to come; tax cuts; rollback of regulations; sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, and well on the way to repealing the Nixon administration, Great Society, New Deal, and the Enlightenment. Second, they fear his base. So all the outraged tweets by John McCain and Jeff Flake add up to nothing when they vote to approve Trump's corrupt cabinet and agenda. The GOP has become a cult, far from the party that sent Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Howard Baker to the White House demanding Richard Nixon resign.

What does Putin have on Trump — because the Helsinki disaster resembled what spys call the handler and the asset? Pee tape aside, I suspect it has something to do with money. Speaking of which, one of the least-reported blockbusters was how retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy's son was Trump's banker at Deutsche Bank. Maybe this doesn't prove a quid pro quo over Kennedy leaving the court, but it's another suspicious correlation of forces. I stick with Robert Gates' assessment of Putin: "Stone cold killer."

What really happened at Helsinki, the summit that followed Trump's attack on NATO? We don't know because Trump was alone with the Russians, just as he was in the Oval Office with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in May 2017. Trump dismissed the conclusions of our intelligence agencies about the Russian attack on the 2016 election to favor him. He tried to walk it back, but the damage was done — except for his Fox-zombie base. Trump has long tried to deny the attack. In Helsinki, he initially appeared open to having the Kremlin interrogate former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, a persistent critic. McFaul is only the second ambassador to Moscow to be declared persona non grata (the first being George Kennan, author of the Long Telegram and father of containment). Not even Stalin dared seek to "interview" our ambassador.

Meanwhile, Trump is aggressively destroying the American-led rules-based order that brought unprecedented prosperity and peace among the great powers since 1945. Pax Americana, gone.

It's impossible to be paying attention and not conclude that Donald Trump is a de facto agent of the Russian government. This is without precedent in American history. It is a national security and constitutional crisis. 

Why 'haboob' makes me stormy

Daniel Bryant photo

My friend, the talented Richard Ruelas, wrote a diligently argued article in the Arizona Republic explaining why some dust storms here should properly be called "haboobs." He cites a 1972 article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and its use by the popular weatherman Dewey Hopper, among others. It's hard to argue with Ruelas' conclusions — but the term still drives me crazy.

The original haboob is native to the Sahara Desert, a completely different environment than the Sonoran Desert (until climate change works its sinister magic in the decades ahead). They're heavy on sand, unlike our situation, and of even more massive proportions. And sure, monsoon, another Arabic-origin word, has use worldwide and is a longstanding expression for the rainy season in Arizona.

Still, nobody besides Hopper used haboob when I was growing up. My grandmother, with memories back to the 1890s, never used it. These were called dust storms, a classic of the Old West. They weren't haboobs. They were dust storms. The phenomenon is especially prevalent in the Gila River basin between Phoenix and Tucson. When Interstate 10 was completed, the state installed a system of signs to alert drivers to an impending dust storm.

What makes me come off sounding like Gampa Simpson is that the widespread use of haboob seems like another out-of-town imposition on Phoenix. The city has lost so, so much of what made it unique and magical in all the world, why more? The influx of millions of newcomers left us with people who don't even know the location of downtown, fools who hike the mountains in high summer, often with fatal results. Sprawl has destroyed our citrus groves and farms, torn apart the civic fabric, left the enchanting Japanese flower gardens under miles of schlock development. The oasis has been paved over, with gravel and skeleton trees and a few heat-stressed plants dying amid the output of the Arizona Rock Products Association. People don't even realize what's been needlessly lost in this frenzy of vandalism. (Ruelas, a careful and fair journalist, is a Tempe native).

In this Phoenix, knowledge of history and customs is not merely ignored but scorned by too many. "Home" is where they came from. They only love Phoenix when they get defensive about any valid criticism of the place. There's not even consensus on what to call this sunscape. So instead of the magnificent and distinctive Phoenix, we get "the Valley." This even though there's Silicon Valley, the San Fernando Valley, the Red River Valley (of the North and of the South), and the Valley of the Jolly (Ho-Ho-Ho) Green Giant. Way to position yourself in the global economy. 

Mayors you should know

With Councilwoman Thelda Williams being a placeholder (for the second time) until a new Phoenix mayor is elected in November, it's a good time to reflect on her predecessors. Here is my admittedly subjective list of the most consequential:

John Alsap was Phoenix's first mayor, serving for a year in 1881 after incorporation. Dying five years later, age 56, Alsap, left, nevertheless compiled impressive accomplishments in the Territory. Kentucky born, Indiana raised, and a physician by training, he came to Prescott as a prospector and saloon operator. He began farming in the Salt River Valley in 1869 and was one of three commissioners who established the Phoenix townsite. In the territorial Legislature, he led the successful effort to create a new county — Maricopa — out of Yavapai County. He's buried in the old Pioneer Cemetery (now the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park, although its historic grass was removed).

Emil Ganz was the young town's first Jewish mayor and a two-term chief, serving from 1885-86 and 1899-1901. Ganz was born in Germany, emigrated to America and training as a tailor, seeing heavy action in the Civil War on the Confederate side, and moving to Phoenix in 1879. He ran the Bank Exchange Hotel, the town's first substantial hostelry. As mayor he pushed to establish a fire department and improve the water supply (his hotel burned in 1885 and the town was hit by a severe blaze a year later). 

I wanted to believe

I've been watching reruns of the original X-Files. Especially before it got too baroque weird in the later seasons, it was one of the best things on television in the 1990s. One thing that most strikes me is how good they look in their suits. We looked good in the '90s. I wore a suit and tie every day. Growing up without much money, this sartorial armor always made me feel wonderful. They were classy, too, not today’s clown short coats and flat-front slacks  

Admittedly, I now mostly live in Seattle, one of the worst-dressed cities in America. But norms are collapsing everywhere. When I boarded a flight recently from Phoenix to Seattle, my fellow passengers were a catalogue of the current American freak show, with their abundant tats, Civil War beards long enough to support a large ecosystem of vermin, and infantile "casual" clothes. Some of the richest businessmen now dress like 15-year-olds in T-shirts, or wreck the sexy design of a suit by going without a tie. It's all a sham. We're less casual in reality than in the 1950s, only the taboos are different and deviancy has not only been defined downward but mainstreamed.

But I watch the X-Files and think about the '90s — we looked good.

From today's perspective, the decade was the latest Fin de siècle, every bit the end of an age as the runup to the Great War. Bill Clinton was in the White House. The economy was enjoying its longest boom in history — widespread, too — and a modest tax increase put us on the way to the first federal surpluses in decades. The nation was at peace. Americans generally agreed on facts. Science was accepted and admired.

My professional life was good, too. Newspapers had yet to be "disrupted" by Craig's List and the internet. I was in demand as a turnaround business editor, and enjoyed helping build top business sections at the Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Charlotte Observer. Living in Denver and Cincinnati turned me into a committed urbanite.

This isn't the whole story. 

Kooks and Kochs try to derail south Phoenix light rail

It appears that the six mile light-rail line to south Phoenix is on life support. I say "appears" because much of the reporting on the issue has been inaccurate. The Arizona Republic's Jessica Boehm reported the immediate news correctly, but plenty still needs to be filled in.

If I understand correctly, the City Council — with transit-backers Mayor Greg Stanton gone and Councilmembers Kate Gallego and Daniel Valenzuela set to resign in August to run for the seat — voted to "redesign" the south line along Central Avenue. This is to address a "grassroots" opposition complaining that Central would lose two of four lanes for automobile traffic.

Redesign may well mean death and loss of federal funding, especially with the rump Council after August. Skillful/shameful maneuvering by Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an ardent light-rail opponent, even took hostage City Manager Ed Zuercher, threatening his job and the city budget. This is the shorthand to a very complex moving drama.

It's no secret that the Koch brothers and other dark money groups are working to kill transit projects around the country. The anti-rail fetish on the right has always puzzled me. The "You Bastards" part of WBIYB is intended for them and their thuggish opposition to the starter line. And it's always possible to find a few discontents for a "grassroots" front group. But south Phoenix voters approved this line by 70 percent. If the likes of Better Call Sal prevail, this would be a blunder of historic proportions. For the facts and context, please read on. 

Suffer the children

Everyone on my Twitter feed is in high moral dudgeon about the Trump administration's policy of separating children from illegal immigrant parents. It's compared unfavorably to the World War II Japanese internment, where at least families were kept together. It's Nazis (Godwin's Law notwithstanding)! But, then, nearly everyone on my Twitter feed lives within the blue bubble.

The move is actually shrewd if one wants to curtail illegal immigration: Try to come across and your family will be broken up. One of the biggest issues in our Cold Civil War is anxiety on the part of a substantial number of voters that America will lose its white majority and become a polyglot of multiculturalism. That word is heaven to progressives, hell to the right. Calling them "racists" doesn't change their minds. Indeed, it hardens them.

Yet the right, eschewing intellectuals as hated "elites," lacks the brainpower to engage in asking some serious questions. Can the United States continue to absorb 1 million legal immigrants every year, plus illegals, and remain the United States? This is an issue that pertains to more than competition for jobs and wages. It confronts a future of unsustainable migration as climate change destabilizes Latin America — but they don't believe climate change is real or human caused. And shouldn't America wean itself off cheap, fearful illegal immigrant labor? Shouldn't we penalize employers who hire illegals? As shown with SB 1070, the Anglos want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Thus, the moral high ground is claimed without a fight by progressives. Trump bobs, weaves, and lies — at one point blaming Democrats for the family separations. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions quoted the Bible out of context to defend the policy. But the Trumpist Anglos keep quiet. They know the score. No minds are changed. Trump could be re-elected in 2020. A Blue Wave in the coming midterms may be an illusion.

Discuss.

 

 

 

Ten and no change

A decade ago, Arizona and metropolitan Phoenix became an epicenter of the Great Recession, brought on by Wall Street hustles and Sun Belt overbuilding. Statewide unemployment reached a high of 10.9 percent, slightly less in Phoenix and Tucson. The speculative real-estate economy, which had become the economy, collapsed. House prices fell 50 percent or more, with historic levels of foreclosures or people being underwater on their mortgages. For many, this meant financial ruin. The overall damage was far worse than 1990 and both the state and metro area trailed their peers by years in recovering. Even now, the number of construction workers is at 1999 levels, even though population has grown considerably.

Ten years later, what's most remarkable is how little has changed. The one exception is real progress with central Phoenix infill, but it's a smidgen of the overall situation.

Sprawl development-driven economy? Check. Dependence on lower-skilled, lower-paid back office jobs? Check. The economic center in the car-dependent office "parks" of the East Valley? Check. Poorly-funded schools, more Big Sort Republican newcomers, Kooks in control of state government? Check, check, and check. Phoenix is the only major metropolitan area in North America that's building extensive new freeways, including the corruption-ridden South Mountain loop.

In other words, the vulnerabilities that drove Phoenix into a ditch a decade ago have been sustained and reinforced. No lessons learned. Nothing to see here, it's sunny with championship golf, so buy a tract house or move along. As Talleyrand said of the Bourbon dynasty, "They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing." 

Phoenix 101: Canals

Beneath all the concrete, asphalt, and gravel of today's metropolitan Phoenix is some of the richest soil on earth. No wonder early settlers called it the Nile River Valley of the United States, or, with more aching pathos given what's happened, American Eden. Add water and anything will grow here. Getting the water from the Salt River was the challenge — one solved with canals.

The Hohokam (750-1450 AD) built at least 500 miles of canals in the Salt River Valley. The mileage might have been in the thousands. They created the most advanced irrigation civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas.

The genius of Jack Swilling — Confederate deserter, Indian fighter, prospector, drunk, opium addict, brawler, first town postmaster and justice of the peace, adoptive father of an Apache boy, cherished friend of many — was that he understood the significance of the Hohokam canals, which laid dormant for more than 400 years. They were not mere prehistoric curiosities. They were the means of building a modern empire, where a new civilization would arise from the ashes of its predecessor. (Why would you use the amorphous word "Valley" when you have the magical and appropriate name: Phoenix). 

The man from no hope

Carl Muecke illustration

The most important story that likely didn't appear on the front page of your newspaper was that James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, has "no doubt" Russia swung the election for Donald Trump. Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, has spent his career in intelligence. He was unanimously confirmed to the position by the Senate in 2010. Yet aside from the Rachel Maddow show, this bombshell has barely received any coverage.

And so it goes. Almost every day, new incriminating information comes out about this treasonous, corrupt, malevolent presidency. You read it if you partake of the Front Page links on this site. And yet, almost every day I grow more fearful that it will make no difference. Forty-two percent (!) of respondents to the latest Gallup survey support Trump. And given the Bradley Effect, where people lie to pollsters, the number is probably higher.

As I've discussed before, whatever the outcome of the Mueller investigation, no legal action can likely be taken against Trump while he's president. The remedy is impeachment. But the Republican-controlled Congress won't use it. They are getting all their dreams come true — from tax cuts and gutting regulations to erasing the Obama presidency and wrecking the government from the inside. Also, they fear Trump's base.

The Framers put two mechanisms in place to prevent someone like Donald Trump from being president: the Electoral College and impeachment. Both have failed. So much for the GOP's reverence for "originalism" in the Constitution. And to think I'm old enough to remember when Republicans warned us that Democrats would surrender the country to Russia.

Filling in

In the 2000s boom, central Phoenix saw many proposals and promises — including 60-story towers in Midtown — but hardly any private development happened. It took years of heavy lifting to get WilloWalk/Tapestry and One Lexington. Finally, even though the local economy has yet to fully recover from the Great Recession, the central core is seeing major infill. One prime example is Lennar's Muse apartments, built on the long dormant empty lot at the northwest corner of Central and McDowell, once home to AT&T's offices.

Just south, and also near the light-rail (WBIYB) station is a massive apartment complex under way near the Burton Barr Central Library. The north side of Portland Park has a tall condo building. More apartments are complete around Roosevelt and Third Street, while a crane hovers over the former site of Circles Records, erecting Empire Group's 19-story apartments. South of One Lexington, the long construction of the Edison condos is nearing completion.

This is transit-oriented development and it's finally happening.

An aside: Why does the announcement on trains say, "McDowell and Central, cultural district" instead of "Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix Central Library," and "Roosevelt and Central, arts district" instead of "Roosevelt Row arts district"? 

What is Grand Canyon University?

The university is one of the foundations of liberal Western Civilization. The concept of academic freedom originated at the University of Bologna in 1158. The University of Paris and University of Oxford were among the earliest institutions of higher learning. In America, Harvard was established in 1636. The United States typically had three types: private, church originated (the University of Southern California was affiliated with the Methodist Church), and those established by states. A very different Republican Party passed legislation in the 19th century for land-grant colleges and universities.

This landscape existed through most of American history. In addition, states created normal schools to train teachers — most became universities, the most notable being Arizona State University. Many also created institutions of higher learning for African-Americans. Beyond this, communities had junior colleges — Phoenix College was founded in 1920 — which morphed into community colleges. And entrepreneurs set up business schools or "colleges" to teach such basic skills as typing and bookkeeping. But this latter operation was a trade school, not a university.

When I was young, Grand Canyon College was a small liberal-arts Southern Baptist institution. It was the only other four-year or higher institution in metropolitan Phoenix besides ASU. Phoenix is by far the largest American city with so few real colleges and universities. This is a major drag on the metro's intellectual, research, and talent-attracting life. One cause is that Phoenix came of age after the era when wealthy patrons established universities (E.g. the University of Chicago, backed by John D. Rockefeller in 1890). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bought land for a Brigham Young University in Phoenix in the 1960s but it was never built.

Now the Baptist affiliation is long gone and we have Grand Canyon University. But, as a former editor of mine was fond of saying, what does that mean? 

'The party of ideas'

Here's something that baffles me about this moment. The right-wing captured Republican Party has complete control over Congress and the White House, as well as growing numbers of federal judges. Damage abounds. But based on their rhetoric and the desire of their voters...

...Why not enact a new version of the Immigration Act of 1924? This was a backlash against decades of record immigration and set strict quotas on people allowed to come, based on their country of origin (hint: big plus for whites, but also no restrictions on Latin Americans). These were in place until 1965 and, uncomfortably for liberals, coincided with the zenith of the American middle class. Congress, firmly in Republican hands and facing no presidential veto, has the absolute power to do this.

...Abolish the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Again, the Republicans have the complete power to do this. None of these entities existed in 1960, when America was "great." Devolve the responsibilities to the states.

...Repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. It's a longstanding article of faith among conservatives that these are both unconstitutional and bad for the economy. Poof! Gone. Strict interpretation of Article 10 would allow states to impose environmental laws — or try to, facing right-wing federal judges — but it's not something enumerated in the Constitution for the national government.

Republicans, never more in lock-step with the most extreme agenda of their party, could do this. It could avoid the third rail of Social Security. True, it can't outlaw abortion (and birth control), force prayer into public schools, or reverse the gains of LGBTQ people. But the above would be monumental victories, on the order of the New Deal, Great Society, or Trump's beloved Jackson era. They might last only two years — but maybe not, given GOP control of the Census, gerrymandering, vote suppression, and divisions among the Democrats.The GOP couldn't accomplish these sweeping changes under Reagan (when it branded itself as "the party of ideas") or George W. Bush. Now it could.

Yet it didn't. This is fascinating.

The stand

John Loredo photo

I'm the beneficiary of Arizona public schools. At Kenilworth in the 1960s, we never suffered textbooks falling apart or holes in the ceiling. No, this elementary school whose alumni included Barry Goldwater, Paul Fannin, and Margaret Hance, which was integrated and taught everyone from poor kids to the scions of the Palmcroft elite, had superb teachers. It had a library and a verdant playing fields — the monstrous freeway only a line on a planning map — presided over by a magnificent, inspiring building.

At Coronado High School in middle-class Scottsdale, the story was much the same. Some of the finest teachers anywhere, one of the top fine-arts departments in the country, and Ralph Haver's inspired mid-century architecture. None of my teachers at either school were forced to buy supplies. Neither school was surrounded by a prison-like fence — and the '60s and '70s were hardly peaceful decades. There was even a brief teachers' strike in Scottsdale in 1971.

Now a statewide walkout is occurring. It is about much more than some of the lowest teacher pay in the nation. More even than gutting a billion dollars from public schools while dolling out tax cuts to the wealthy and politically connected. More than teachers seeing through Gov. Doug Ducey's cynical promise to raise wages 20 percent — something that wouldn't even bring their pay to the national average, and would require the Legislature to take money from other critical needs. Because...tax cuts. Taxes must always be cut.

Teachers have finally made a stand.

I have no idea whether it will be successful. I doubt it can change Arizona's trajectory. But the stand needs to be made. 

Phoenix confidential: Miranda

In our cultural memory, Ernesto Miranda was railroaded into a false confession by a thuggish and racist Phoenix Police Department. The wrong was rectified by the Supreme Court in the landmark Miranda v. Arizona lawsuit. This resulted in the Miranda Warning, especially its demand that suspects be told that they have the right to remain silent. Anyone who has watched cop shows, from Adam 12 to Law and Order knows it by heart.

The truth is far different — and more fascinating.

Miranda, who went by Ernie, was born in Mesa and mingled easily in the Anglo-dominated Phoenix of the early 1960s. His boss at United Produce in the Warehouse District praised his work ethic. All his brothers joined the armed forces, served honorably, and lived successful lives. But Ernie was in trouble in his teens, doing two stints at Fort Grant, once synonymous with the state Industrial School for Wayward Boys and Girls. In the 19th century, Billy the Kid worked as a ranch hand nearby for a time. Ernie joined the Army but was dishonorably discharged.

The cause was being AWOL multiple times — but also for being a peeping Tom. Miranda rationalized it to himself that the women wouldn't leave their curtains open unless they wanted to be watched. This compulsion — especially after he arrived back in Phoenix after a troubled wandering around the country — would turn him into a hard-core rapist (one crime as a teen had been "assault with intent to commit rape”).

Where to go in my Phoenix

Readers frequently tell me where to go, so it's my time to return the favor. Seriously, I get so many requests for restaurant and sights to visit from out-of-towners, especially Seattleites visiting for Mariners Spring Training. It will be easier to put it in a column and direct them here.

My suggestions don't focus on north Scottsdale or the asteroid belt of supersuburbs. Instead, I send them to my Phoenix, a vanishing place to be sure.

Restaurants:

Durant's: The legendary steakhouse, on the light-rail line in Midtown. If you drive, you can enter through the kitchen like a made man, as Jack Durant intended. The interior (above) is a 1950s throwback, the food is excellent, and the service is classy. Durant's features prominently in my David Mapstone Mysteries. Be sure to try a martini.

Also on light rail (WBIYB) and not to be missed: Fez, Forno 301, Switch, Lenny's Burgers, Wild Thaiger, Honey Bear's BBQ, and Macayo's.

Chef-driven Mexican food is big now, a trend started with Barrio Cafe. But I still love throw-down authentic Sonoran cuisine. My new fave, especially since Macayo changed its menu, is La Piñata on north Seventh Avenue, where Mary Coyle's used to be. Also be sure to check out the taco trucks you'll find all over. My enduring love is Los Olivos in Old Scottsdale, which has been there since before I was born.

Other favorites: The Persian Garden across from Phoenix College. Downtown, don't miss the historic Sing High Cafe on Madison Street, which once operated in the Deuce. The best pizza is Cibo at Fifth Avenue and Fillmore.

For fancy old Phoenix resort dining, I suggest Lon's at the Hermosa, T-Cook's at the Royal Palms, and any of the restaurants at the Arizona Biltmore.

You can breakfast like David, Lindsey, and Peralta at the First Watch at Park Central. The Farm at South Mountain offers a fine breakfast (as well as lunch and dinner). You can get a taste of the Eden that was once my hometown. 

'Do I return to my home state?'

I received a very articulate note from a young man who left to attend a well-regarded Midwestern university. He wrote in part:

I  lived in Phoenix my entire life, until I left ... to study environmental engineering. I was going to learn as much as I could about the ecological problems facing Arizona, especially the inevitable water shortages that come from placing millions of people in the middle of the desert in an era of rapidly changing and warming climate, and then triumphantly return and solve them. At least, that was my naïve goal at 17 years old. 

Now, I’m about to graduate, and I see myself at a crossroads, as one often does at this age of relative innocence. Do I return to my home state and try to make it a better place, or do I abandon it for a better place?

This is what I wrote back:

Thank you for your heartfelt and compelling note. The answer, I'm sorry to say, is don't come back.

 

Of course, many factors come into play. Whether you want to be near family or thirst for endless sunshine, for example. But your idealism would be ground to dust by the reality that is Phoenix and Arizona. You might be able to get a job helping developers get around environmental regulations. Or, for a pittance, working for one of the few environmental advocacy groups.

 

But you can't change the place. It's a lesson I and so many others have learned. Phoenix breaks hearts. There is the illusion of the blank slate — I've watched so many architects, academics, artists and designers come there with this sense. In a few years, they leave in frustration.

 

Life is short. I was your age just yesterday, or so it seems. Your talents and training could be more rewardingly applied in a place that has an environmental ethic and has livability high on its agenda. And there are so many wonderful cities in America for a young person to grow, encounter new ideas, thrive. Alas, that's not our home state. I wish you the best.

 Allow me to explain further. 

When a light goes out

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck

I was baptized in Central Methodist Church, so many decades ago. I remember Sunday school, attending services with my mother and grandmother. My mother had a glorious contralto and, a child prodigy trained as a concert pianist, sometimes played the immense pipe organ, with its 4 divisions, 28 stops, and 41 registers. In the 1960s, it was common for each service to see a thousand people or more, filling the sanctuary and its three balconies. Central was a prime posting for veteran ministers — only doctors of divinity reached the senior rank — and the choir was superb. I was confirmed there, age 13.

When I returned to Phoenix in 2000, I started attending Central again, this time with Susan. Getting a hundred people in the pews was a victory by that time. The quality of preaching was uneven, as individual ministers came and went (long gone from the days of a senior minister and others). But the music program was very strong under Don Morse. The core, including the corps of ushers, was committed. Important for us, Central still offered a traditional service, with the wonderful Methodist hymns. Christmas Eve could see five services in the soaring sanctuary, with luminarias in the courtyard. We continue to attend. When I lived in Charlotte, people would ask me if I had found "a church home." No — in that hotbed of religion, the question irritated the secular me. "I have a bar home," I would respond. But the truth was different. My church was here. It always was. Always will be.

But this year brought heartbreaking news. First, the music program was downgraded, with Morse and seemingly most of the choir gone. Finances were an issue; the church and Morse, who had already taken a pay freeze/cut, couldn't come to terms. But respect also seemed an issue, the lay leaders wanting to downgrade his position to "choirmaster." A botched remodel of the sanctuary was probably another cause, including the loss of the pipe organ and removal of two of the balconies. I don't claim special insight. I spent many years in United Methodist choirs, but tried to avoid church politics whenever possible. Next came word that the sanctuary would only be used for special occasions. A traditional service would be held in the small Pioneer Chapel and a contemporary one in Kendall Hall.

The sum of all fears

With the firing of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser, and their replacement by unfit, unqualified, and dangerous men...anyone paying attention has a pucker factor of 9.5. The only thing standing between us and World War III is Jim Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and how long until he is replaced by a Fox "News" personality?

The "positive" rejoinder can only be: Don't worry, we'll merely continue to see the President of the United States, run as an asset by the former KGB man in the Kremlin, undermine the norms of self-government, wreck the government from the inside, and shovel in private treasure like the head of a Third World failed state. Happy, brightsiders?

Sometimes, in this nightmarish period since Donald Trump won the second-most votes but still the presidency, I've tried to comfort myself with the notion that he's too lazy and obtuse to become a dictator. After all, Stalin was an intellectual and, as Simon Sebag Montefiore puts it, "a people person" in his rise to supreme power. Mussolini was smart, driven and shrewdly undermined democracy through populism (Republicans couldn't like this Fascism because they hate the trains that would run on time). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has been highly competent in setting up his strongman state. Trump, a reality television personality and often-failed developer, is none of these.

But going all the way back to paramedic days — even before,  noticing javelinas in the desert — the most unlikely mammal can react with unpredictable guile and violence if cornered. 

The kingdom and the power

The Salt River Project was recently in the news, with proposed pay increases including $251,000 a year for board President David Rousseau. The story noted that this was more than Gov. Doug Ducey ($95,000) or Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton ($88,000). SRP backed off following the news in the Arizona Republic. The real day-to-day boss in the new general manager, Mike Hummel, who will make $1.04 million. Despite the modest title, this is a position of immense influence. Former general managers include heavyweights Jack Pfister and Dick Silverman.

Phoenix lacks engaged moneyed stewards such as Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Seattle, or major headquarters such as Amazon. This only magnifies the power of SRP. It is no ordinary utility, even though it supplies electricity to the Phoenix metropolitan area along with Arizona Public Service. But much of what it does happens behind the scenes. SRP likes it that way. 

The Salt River Project is a unique entity. Unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Bonneville Power Administration, both created during the New Deal as public works to address the Great Depression, SRP is not a federal agency.

Rather, it is a hybrid private-state organization consisting of two arms. First is the Salt River Valley Water Users Association, which began in 1903. The first Newlands Act reclamation project, the association consisted of farmers and ranchers who pledged their land as collateral for low-interest bonds to pay for Theodore Roosevelt Dam. This followed the disastrous droughts on the 1890s and the failure of private enterprise to build a waterworks, notably the Arizona Canal, to match the potential of the burgeoning agricultural empire of the Salt River Valley. The dam also provided hydroelectricity. 

We'll be OK, right?

I don't know.

Arizona history has been a comforting topic of late. Writing on contemporary events is too much. I'm still poleaxed that Hillary Clinton isn't the president, that at best 70,000 voters in three states determined our nightmare, that it had even been that close. The evidence mounts — latest with a blockbuster article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer —  that Trump is not merely uniquely unqualified for the Oval Office but a traitor, a Russian Quisling. I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans warned that the Democrats would surrender us to Russia. How does one write about these things, even read them, without a certain madness setting in?

David Brooks, the stopped clock of American pundits, recently wrote:

...once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before.... Vladimir Putin’s admirers are surging. The center is still hollowing out. Nothing is inevitable in life, but liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself.

Indeed. So will we be OK? I'm less worried about nuclear war than two months ago — but that could change in a late-night Trump tweetstorm. Otherwise, who knows. The Roman empire endured for almost 500 years in the West and another thousand years in the East after the death of the Roman Republic. So might it be with the American Empire. Or not, after one or more Sino-American wars and/or the disruption of climate change. But I'm not sure we're going back to the country we knew, flaws notwithstanding.

Arizona's 'boom' (in charts)

To hear the boosters tell it, Arizona is enjoying one of the most competitive economies in the nation. Let's take a look, using authoritative sources.

Median household adjusted for inflation income is up, with its second-best showing since 2000. Unfortunately, it trails the national average and peer competitors in the West:

The workforce is at a record near 2.8 million. Unfortunately growth has been sluggish, along with the national average. It is well below the level of growth for this point of an expansion compared with previous cycles:

Population growth, the holy grail of the state's economy is at its lowest levels since the Great Depression, even as Arizona passed 7 million people.

 

'Another Los Angeles'

It surprised me to still hear Phoenicians say, "We're becoming another Los Angeles" or "We don't want to become another LA." This vox local yokel reminds me that people in Phoenix don't get out much. To be fair, I used to think the same thing. That was until I was 10 years old, when my mother took me to the City of Angels on Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited, and we arrived at LA Union Passenger Terminal (above). I had never seen a building so grand — and the rest of the city was just as stunning. This was the first big city I'd been in, and it was nothing like little Phoenix.

I judge a city by its trains. Union Station has been restored to its grandeur and actually hosts more arrivals and departures than when it opened in 1939. In addition to Amtrak intercity trains to Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, and Seattle, it is the hub for LA Metrolink's six commuter rail lines, plus three subway and light-rail lines. All around it, downtown LA is undergoing a stunning renaissance — not only with new buildings such as the 1,099-foot Wilshire Grand but rehabbing its stock of majestic architecture from the early 20th century. It was never true that Los Angeles "didn't have a downtown." It had several, including Century City, Westwood, Hollywood, and downtown proper. All of them leave Phoenix looking like Hooterville by comparison. LA made a terrible mistake in tearing out the extensive Pacific Electric Railway, but it's making amends fast.

Phoenix becoming another Los Angeles? It should be so lucky. LA is one of America's three world cities, as defined by sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod's famous book of the same name. The influential Globalization and World Cities Network ranks it as an Alpha city, the third highest level of global power (only New York is Alpha ++ among North American cities). Phoenix is gamma, the ninth category. Phoenix peers Denver, Seattle, and San Diego rank Beta-minus. The LA metropolitan area's gross domestic product totaled more than $931 billion in 2017, second only to New York City in inflation-adjusted dollars. Phoenix, although the nation's fifth-largest city and 13th most populous metro ranked 17th, at $220 billion (again, behind peer metros). If LA were a nation, its output would rival Australia.

 

Lessons from Denver

One went to Denver and the other went wrong

— American folk ballad.

Last fall, we took the train from Seattle to my favorite adopted hometown, Denver. This form of travel is worth the trip — vacation begins when you settle into your seat. Arriving in Denver, I found the city much changed from when I lived here in the 1990s, working for the Rocky Mountain News, and all for the better. Getting off the California Zephyr, the restored Union Station greeted us. Not only is it the hub for Amtrak, but also for the light- and heavy-rail trains on the 122-mile network funded by the 2004 FasTracks referendum. Light rail preceded FasTracks, with the first line from downtown to suburban Littleton opening in 1994. As in Dallas, once people saw how light rail worked, everybody wanted it. Now an electric-powered commuter line also connects to Denver International Airport, along with six light-rail lines and more coming.

Union Station, which recently underwent a $200 million renovation, is breathtaking. The exterior, with its iconic "Travel by Train" neon sign, is cleaned up and the center of vast amounts of mixed-use development. Inside, the once grimy waiting room, has been opened up into a wifi-equipped common area surrounded by shops and restaurants. We stayed at the Crawford Hotel in the station, named after the pioneering downtown developer Dana Crawford. It's a miraculous makeover from when I was among a small number of downtown residents and I would ride my bicycle around the deserted railyard behind the depot. Union Station is the anchor of Lower Downtown, or LoDo, where imposing warehouses from the 19th and early 20th centuries were renovated into lofts, offices, and restaurants. An early brewpub was started here by John Hickenlooper, who went on to become Denver mayor and Colorado governor.

It was a near-run thing. Although preservationists led by Crawford scored a win by saving Larimer Square in the 1960s as a tourist destination, many people were prepared to tear down the majestic but obsolete warehouses of LoDo. Only thanks to mayors Federico "Imagine a Great City" Peña and Wellington Webb, along with developers such as Crawford who had the skills to save and rehabilitate old buildings, was LoDo saved. Railyards made redundant by mergers were turned into a campus for Metropolitan State University, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver. LoDo and nearby areas also attracted Coors Field of the Colorado Rockies and the Pepsi Center where the NBA Denver Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche play. What was mostly abandoned railroad property when I first arrived has been completely rebuilt and knitted into the city.

It's no surprise that Denver is among the 20 finalist cities for Amazon's HQ2, with 50,000 high-paid jobs and $5 billion investment. Denver is a comer, win or lose.

 

Distressed Arizona

It's tough all over. Well, not really.

In the latest Distressed Communities report, which digs down to the ZIP Code level nationally, Gilbert ranks as the least distressed among America's 100 largest cities. It has zero distressed ZIP codes and 99 percent of them are considered "prosperous." The report, by the Economic Innovation Group, considers seven metrics to rank areas "distressed," "at risk," mid-tier," "comfortable," and "prosperous." It's become one of the gold-standard reports as America struggles with sharply different economic and social outcomes.

Chandler also did very well, No. 4 nationally, with zero distressed and 65 percent prosperous ZIP codes. Scottsdale ranked No. 10, again with zero distressed and 61 percent prosperous. These showings are no mystery. All three jurisdictions are overwhelmingly higher-income Anglos, along with the preponderance of the state's high-end economic assets. (Someone once sniffed that he lived in south Chandler, as if this would impress me. My Chandler is circa 1977 and south Chandler is alfalfa fields.). Scottsdale has plenty of extremely rich retirees and part-year residents. Gilbert, and to a lesser extent Chandler, also benefits from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yet Tucson ranks a shocking 91 out of 100. Nearly 59 percent of the city's ZIP codes are distressed and less than 8 percent are prosperous. This is the kind of calamity more likely seen in famously troubled places — and indeed the other bottom 10 include Detroit, Buffalo, and Newark. 

Phoenix 101: the nineties

The new decade came upon a Phoenix beset with crisis. Charlie Keating, the most lionized Arizona businessman of the previous dozen years, was facing federal fraud and racketeering charges. His palatial Phoenician Resort was seized by a platoon of U.S. Marshals, lawyers, regulators, and locksmiths in November 1989. American Continental Corp., flagship of Keating's complex web of businesses, was forced into Chapter 11 reorganization. Among the casualties was his ambitious Estrella Ranch project south of tiny Goodyear.

Behind much of the trouble was the savings and loan scandal and collapse, a financial crisis that cost taxpayers about $132 billion. It also took down some of the Sun Belt's biggest institutions, including Phoenix's venerable Western Savings, controlled by the Driggs family, and Merabank, a subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. meant to make big bucks for the holding company of Arizona Public Service. It would take the federal Resolution Trust Corp. years to sort out and dispose of all the properties and hustles. The worst of the S&L wrongdoing was the Keating Five scandal. Its U.S. Senator members, who leaned on regulators on behalf of Keating, included Arizona's Dennis DeConcini and John McCain (Disclosure: John Dougherty and I were the first to break this story at the Dayton Daily News).

The local trouble had been predicted in a December 1988, Barron's article about Phoenix's overheated real-estate market, fueled by S&L money. The headline: "Phoenix Descending: Is Boomtown USA Going Bust?" The boosters had been outraged. Barron's had been right. In an ominous foreshadowing of the future, the city hit a record 122 degrees on June 26, 1990.

For individuals, the worst was yet to come. Unemployment in Arizona rose from 5.3 percent in May 1990 to a peak of 7.8 percent in March 1992. This seems modest compared with the Great Recession (11.2 percent for the state); it was painful enough. State and city leaders committed to establishing a more diverse economy, weaning Arizona off its dependency on population growth and real estate. Economic development organizations were set up across the state for this purpose, including the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, led by the brilliant Ioanna Morfessis. It established goals to build strategic clusters around high-technology sectors with high-paying jobs.

Tragically, the effort failed. The 1990s, when the U.S. economy enjoyed its longest, strongest, most innovative economic expansion in history, saw Phoenix and Arizona double down on "growth." The state's population grew by a staggering 40 percent, 45 percent for metropolitan Phoenix. The cluster strategy lacked sustained focus. Yet none of this was obvious or inevitable as the decade began. 

The geography of madness

In 1994, James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere was published. It remains the best critique of suburbia out there and I highly recommend it. But something Kunstler didn't touch on was the psychological effects of the isolation and thinning out of America in car-dependent subdivisions.

I thought about this when I read the horrific story of 13 siblings held captive and tortured by their parents in Perris, Calif., a piece of sprawl in Riverside County. Look at a photo of the house and it could be anywhere in metropolitan Phoenix outside of the real historic neighborhoods.

The 1999 Columbine High School massacre happened not in downtown Denver, or the city at all. Instead, the shooting that killed 12 students occurred in unincorporated Jefferson County. It is an upper-middle-class area, but filled with lookalike single-family houses, walls, totally dependent on the automobile. Same landscape with the murder of 12 and wounding of 58 at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012.

When 58 were shot to death last year at a concert on the Las Vegas strip, the shooter lived in Mesquite, Nev., a spread of lookalike tract houses off Interstate 15 near the Arizona line. Newtown, Conn, site of the Sandy Hook shooting, was founded in 1705 but is mostly sprawl residential pods. Dylann Roof grew up in suburban Lexington County, outside Columbia.

On and on. Many reasons drive America's increasing pathologies, but the spatial element shouldn't be ignored.

Phoenix's lost gems

We spend much time on this site discussing urbanism, including the architectural losses and disasters of Phoenix. More than history or sentimentality is at stake. Much of the economic power in cities such as Seattle, Denver and even Los Angeles has come from the "back to the city" movement and restored historic masterpieces.

Phoenix was smaller and poorer at the zenith of Art Deco. But it did have a real cityscape before the post-World War II automobile era, subsidized sprawl, and municipal malpractice of massive teardowns created today's suburbanized mess. It had some saves, including the Orpheum Theater, Orpheum Lofts, San Carlos Hotel, Luhrs Tower and Luhrs Building, old Post Office, Kenilworth School and the County Courthouse/City Hall.

Thanks to Rob Spindler and the ASU archives, along with the collecting by the indefatigable Brad Hall, we're getting more photographs of the old city. I realize some of this is familiar  territory for regular readers, but the images tell more than words about what Phoenix lost (click for a larger image). They include:

The Fox Theater: