Arizona's Continuing Crisis

The truth about the emerging calamity in my onetime home. Also be sure to follow the follies of the reactionaries and thugs in power in Kookocracy Watch.

• NEW: Phoenix near the bottom of 200 metros in high tech.
  
• Global warming-caused pollution soared 61 percent between 1990 and 2007.
• NEW: Arizona seen in second-worst fiscal peril in nation.
  
• Urban Land Institute: Phoenix still 'poster child' for national real-estate crash.
  
• Forget about your romantic notion of 'Native Americans' loving the land. The Navajos want a coal plant, global warming be damned.
  
• Arizona's adjusted unemployment rate hits 17.2 percent.
  
• DeCiccio stands to profit big from Loop 202 extension.
  
• Arizona compassion: 3 cars hit woman; only 1 stops.
  
• Top problem for Phoenix: Abandoned tract houses.
  
• Dreamland -- faced with climate change, fiscal collapse and rising oil prices, Arizona planners foresee 400 miles of additional freeways for a population increase that will never come.
  
• Study shows how heat island is worst for the poor and vulnerable. Doesn't even get into how many of the the wealthy don't even "summer" in Phoenix.
• Freeze on development fees sets cities even further behind.
  
• 10,000 working families losing health coverage this month.
  
• The Badged Ego tarnished again as Arpaio's command staff caught in serious trouble.
  
• Phoenix suffers worst commercial real estate market in U.S. Too much building, no real economy to fill the space.
  
• Arizona faces 'financial tsunami' over Medicaid.
  
• NY Times: Phoenix has become "one of the nation's economic disaster areas."
  
• The scam that is the tax-credit tuition aid program for private schools. The poor gets screwed. And the way the "school choice movement" buys influence. (Read the more extensive investigation by the Pulitzer-winning East Valley Tribune here.)
  
• Giant empty warehouses dot Phoenix sprawl awaiting business that never came.
  
• Arizona's dismal showing in child well-being. (Watch the "Goldwater" Institute and its Info Center sock puppet say the facts have a liberal bias).
  
• NEW: "Global warming is a hoax": Phoenix suffers its hottest July in history.
  
• Uranium contamination haunts Navajo country.
• Gannett finds new way to screw laid off Republic employees.
  
• Arizona No. 2 in nation for foreclosures for first half of 2009.
  
• At the confluence of the Gila and Salt rivers, a promising riparian habitat turns into a vile trash dump.
  
• The headline says "Data center could boost Valley's technology base." Actually, it's a sign of a dwindling base of innovation, talent and decision-making. At best, this spec reuse of a building will attract the kind of server farms that go to poor, rural areas and create few jobs.
• NEW: Phoenix's already struggling non-profits face more pain.
  
• Already strapped for infrastructure, metro Phoenix faces new crisis as Prop 400 funds dry up, east side fights with west.
  
• Phoenix Museum of History to close.
  
• Report ranks Phoenix economy among nation's weakest.
  
• Metro Phoenix economy becomes even less diverse as GM closes proving ground. (Oh, somebody will build more houses and a "resort" as both sectors are in the toilet).
  
• Again, "the Valley" makes national news, as a hotbed of gangs preying on Mexican immigrants.
  
• Casa Grande loses neglected but lovely railroad depot to fire, continuing the list of Arizona's historical casualties.
  
• Grady Gammage and I discuss "the Valley's" future -- he's downbeat, too. (EV Tribune's more complete story here).
  
• Phoenix bears the brunt of hotels' steep downturn.
  
• Nearly $1 billion in state land sales have been canceled or at risk (from Pulitzer-winning East Valley Tribune).
  
• Somehow missed by the Information Center, but picked up by the LA Times and New York Times, Phoenix's only major industry tries to get back to "normal."
• My April 29, 2009, KJZZ discussion with Grady Gammage about Arizona's growth the future.
• Phoenix leads the way down in house prices (with priceless photo).
• 10,000 abandoned mines in a now-populous, urbanized Arizona.
• Surprise! The rise and fall of an Arizona exurb.
• Just in time for light rail, Phoenix sees largest migration of jobs outward of any U.S. metro area.
• Developer of subdivisions in parched Mojave County seeks bankruptcy protection.
• Next foreign crisis may be on doorstep of an ill-prepared Arizona.
• Phoenix homeless count up 20 percent from 2008.
• The disaster that is Maricopa.
• Low taxes and few regulations -- and lots of sun -- fail to lure solar industry to Arizona.
• Incredible story of undercover agent inside Arizona's Hell's Angels.
• Phoenix is epicenter of arms smuggling to Mexico's brutal drug cartels.
• USA Today on Phoenix area's grim real-estate market.
  
• Even boosterish Republic begins to admit depth of calamity from busting of sprawl bubble.
• Arizona's lousy economy drags down newly relocated Dodgers' spring training.
• Phoenix has second worst kidnapping problem in the world.
• Looming property defaults will further depress Ariz. economy.
• Needy flood already strapped charities.
• Phoenix loses another chip plant, some of the last of Motorola legacy.
• Another coup for Phoenix in the eyes of the nation.
• Brutal county jails stripped of health-care accreditation.
• Arizona food-stamp requests rise at twice national rate.
• Phoenix budget hit harder than those in other big cities.
• Development at Desert Ridge paralyzed by bubble collapse.
• Arizona rated worst in disaster preparedness.
• State's population growth drops dramatically.
• Avondale, from hot suburb to urban blight.
• Kookocracy halts efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
• In latest data, bankruptcies soar in state.
• Libraries face deeper cuts, including closing one day a week (in the "nation's fifth largest city."
• ASU, facing money shortfall, slashes nursing enrollment even as state faces critical nursing shortage.
• Arpaio ordered by federal judge to improve shameful condition of jails.
• More evidence of local warming in metro Phoenix.
  
• Maricopa County jails lose health accreditation.
• State's 21st century economic hope: cage fighting.
• In ranking of "green" cities, Phoenix falls even below Detroit.
• Tempe's grand hopes for Centerpoint highrise project turn to dust.
• Recession costing Sky Harbor millions, setting back long overdue projects.
• The Wall Street Journal uses Phoenix as prime example of real-estate schemes gone wrong.
• Legislature headed even further to reactionary extreme.
• Your Tax Cuts at Work V: Cities can't even find funds to fix crumbling roads.
• Ten million tires dumped in desert, with risk of toxic fires.
• Maricopa County jail inmates die of ailments that could be treated.
• Metro Phoenix air quality gets an 'F' -- again.
• Historic Gila on list of country's endangered rivers.
• Arizona's temperature rise outpaces the planet's warming.
• Your Tax Cuts at Work IV: The most recent budget train wreck.
• The hyped and "once booming" West Valley now one of the epicenters of foreclosures.
• Your Tax Cuts at Work III: No school libraries.
• Sprawling fringes of metro Phoenix are ground zero in subprime crisis.
• Your tax cuts in action II: Tucson cuts staff and increases school class size.
• Uranium exploration sneaks in near Grand Canyon.
• Arizona next to bottom in school funding -- again.
• Your Tax Cuts at Work I: Crumbling state parks.

• Read Jon's columns on Phoenix and Arizona.

Comments

[George Buddy]

Wow, I've never seen a list so extensive for the negative features of a city that truly has bad karma.

Great information to balance all the "positive" tourist chamber stuff.

I love it!