Rogue Columnist

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:

 

Regrets? I have a few...

In 1999-2000, I was offered the business editor jobs at the San Diego and San Francisco papers. I also had feelers about coming to work at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. After nearly five years at Knight-Ridder's Pulitzer-winning Charlotte Observer, I was more than ready to leave a city where they ask if you've found a "church home," wanted to get back to the West. That was when John D'Anna at the Arizona Republic called and offered me a columnist job at my hometown newspaper.

Warning signs abounded: Downtown Phoenix was dead, corporate Arizona had moved out to north Scottsdale, and the Republic had recently been purchased by Gannett, known for its small newspaper mentality, suspicion of serious journalism, and obsession with fads (I had worked for the company as assistant managing editor for business news at the Cincinnati Enquirer and saw its bad and OK sides). On the other hand, downtowns were making impressive comebacks elsewhere — I had seen them first-hand in Denver and even Charlotte. Brahm Resnik, the business editor at the Republic, assured me the changes had been minimal. After years as a turnaround specialist editor, I longed to be out of management. And every journalist's dream is to write a column in his hometown.

So I took the job, following in the footsteps of the fine business columnist Naaman Nickell.

Susan and I bought one of the most beautiful historic houses in Phoenix, in Willo a block from where I grew up. And for the next nearly seven years I wrote one of the most popular columns in the paper. "Never thought I would read this in the Arizona Republic," was a common reader accolade. I enjoyed a position of prominence, leadership, and celebrity totally out of proportion with the job — at least in other cities. The parties we hosted at the 1914 bungalow on Holly Street attracted a who's who of Arizona. And then, in 2007, it was gone. We had to sell that beloved house as no other local jobs materialized and make our primary base in Seattle (we still have a Midtown condo and some lifelong friends).

Could I have found a way to stay?

The winter of our discontent

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

— Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

We've made it through the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump (let that name attached to that title sink in) without a nuclear war with North Korea. But there's next year.

Meanwhile, despite all the speculation and hope for a Democratic wave in the fall, great damage has been done to the republic. Total Republican control of the federal government resulted in the passage of a ruinous tax bill. Among its worst consequences will be the opportunity costs — no nice things for us, such as high-speed rail or rail transit for our metropolitan areas — because $1.5 trillion will be looted from the Treasury for the very rich. The resulting deficit will embolden Paul Ryan and the GOP-controlled Congress to come after our "entitlements" (read earned benefits). The cabinet is largely staffed by billionaire stooges committed to wrecking from the inside. The administration is rolling back laws to protect the environment and financial system. The people's lands, intended as a sacred trust for future generations, is under assault.

One of the biggest impediments to a Blue wave is the normalization of this norm-breaking, authoritarian-wanna-be president even by the respected press. This situation doesn't have "both sides" — only one. Then there's the lie machine of right-wing media. Beyond that, it must contend with vote suppression, gerrymandering, and no doubt new Russian interference.

 

Hollering past the graveyard

I get it that the "journalism" practiced by business journals is supposed to be celebratory and "positive." That it lacks the rigor, context, experience, and skepticism required by real journalism. So I hesitate to do a beat-down. But a story in the Phoenix Business Journal requires some pushback.

The headline is: "Does Arizona's Heat, Climate Change Hurt Business Attraction?" (pro tip: Don't write heds that end in question marks — you're the journalists, why are you asking me, the reader). And the bulk of the story goes on to say, no. Everything's fine!

Some lowlights:

Economic developers who work to bring businesses and jobs to the state and Phoenix region contend the desert heat doesn’t work against them in site selections.

They also say climate change doesn’t come up at all.

Instead, they tout the narrative of Arizona’s lack of natural disasters in appealing to data centers, back-office operations and other businesses concerned about potential disruptions.

 

If Alabama...Arizona?

The Deep South has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1992, but the state apparently drew the line at "If She's Old Enough to Pee, She's Old Enough for Me" on Tuesday. Doug Jones, who prosecuted two KKK perpetrators of the 1963 church bombing that killed four African-American girls, beat Roy Moore, who was wildly unqualified even before allegations of stalking adolescent girls emerged.

The natural question for readers here is, If this can happen in Alabama, why not in Arizona?

I'll take my victories where I can get them, to paraphrase Soleri. But this race had special circumstances. Republican turnout was lower than normal, depressed by the prospect of the odious Moore. And African-Americans overcame vote suppression to turn out in large numbers and put Jones in office — if only for three years.

Arizona lacks these advantages. The people who actually vote are overwhelmingly old, Anglo, and right-wing. This is why Democrats don't hold a single state-wide office. It's why the Republicans have controlled the Legislature for decades and never paid a price for the ongoing failure of "conservative" policies. These are the voters who reelected Joe Arpaio again and again, despite his lethal brand of "law enforcement."

The Hispanic vote, the holy grail of hopes to turn Arizona purple, even blue, has never materialized. Hispanic turnout is always shockingly low, even in city of Phoenix elections. It was not nudged by the attack of SB 1070. Arizona lacks the infrastructure of powerful political organizations and unions that bring large numbers of Latinos to the polls in, say, California. Most Hispanics are poor, and poor people vote in far fewer numbers than other income groups. And it can't be assumed that Hispanics are a lock for Democrats anyway. I heard from a number of Mexican-Americans who quietly supported SB 1070.

Phoenix 101: The great stores

Phoenix was too small and too poor to have the grand department stores that graced mostly eastern cities. But it had some beloved stores, nonetheless. They were part of a dense, walkable downtown business district that also included scores of specialty shops, as well as national chain department stores. Here are a few of the most prominent locals: 

Goldwater's: Born in Russian Poland, Michel Goldwasser traveled to Paris, then London, changing his name to Michael Goldwater and becoming a successful tailor. In 1852, "Big Mike" and his brother Joe set off for San Francisco. He eventually ended up in the mining town of Gila City, Arizona Territory., in Yuma County. He mostly worked as a peddler. After many ups, downs and wanderings, the brothers opened a store in Phoenix in 1872. It closed only three years later and the brothers focused on their store in the territorial capital of Prescott. Big Mike's son Morris was manager and the enduring slogan "The best always" was born. Morris, a Democrat, was also elected Prescott mayor.

A store returned to Phoenix in 1896, thanks to the pushing of Big Mike's younger son, Baron. As a Washington Post story said, "The Phoenix store offered not only reliable merchandise at low prices but the latest fashions from New York and Europe. Baron decided that pleasing the ladies was the way to economic success. Once he had the new store running smoothly, Baron became active in the civic life of his adopted town.

"He was soon elected a director of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and saw the Sisters' Hospital (now St. Joseph's) through some financial difficulties. He helped establish the Phoenix Country Club, the Arizona Club and was a founder of the Valley National Bank. In his late thirties, still trim and good-looking, Baron became the town's most eligible bachelor. His parents hoped that all their children would marry in the Jewish faith, but Mike's death in 1903 followed by Sarah's death in 1905 allowed them to marry whomever they wished." Baron married Episcopalian Josephine Williams, on January 1, 1907. Barry Morris Goldwater was born two years later.

Goldwater's soon became the swankiest department store in Phoenix. For decades it was located on First Street between Washington and Adams streets in the Dorris-Heyman Building. It moved to Park Central Shopping Center, two miles north, in the late 1950s. Above is a photo from a Goldwater's display window in the 1940s, from the McCulloch Brothers collection of the ASU archives. Goldwater's eventually grew to nine stores, including locations in Scottsdale, Tucson, Las Vegas and Albuquerque. The family sold it to Associated Dry Goods in 1963, but that didn't stop Barry from being pilloried as a "department store heir" in the following year's presidential election. In a famous Herblock cartoon, Barry towers over a poor family huddled in a doorway. "If you had any initiative, you'd go out and inherit a department store," he says. The Goldwater's name endured until the late 1980s.

Diamond's: Jewish immigrants Nathan and Isaac Diamond founded this Phoenix icon as the Boston Store in 1897. A big draw in 1931 was the installation of air conditioning. It wasn't renamed until 1947. Located at Second Street and Washington, the store featured women's and men's clothing, shoes, outerwear, housewares, and much more. It, too, made the move to Park Central in 1957, with a 200,000 square foot store. Other locations followed, including Thomas Mall, Tri-City Mall, Scottsdale Fashion Square, and Metrocenter. The Diamond family were among the founders of the Phoenix Symphony. The chain was sold to Dayton-Hudson, then Dillard's.

The awaiting

Illustration by Carl Muecke

I've been trying to lie low on the national circus, write about Phoenix history and transitions. I can add little to the latest social-media driven fads or distractions. It's tempting to watch from the sidelines and wait for this to pass. If it does. Yet every morning I wake up to the reality of the most unfit president we've ever had, the fact that Hillary Clinton should be in the Oval Office, won the most votes, but no... It's tempting to watch total Republican control of the federal government and think this is the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (e.g. the failed ACA repeal), and wait for some deliverance in next year's elections.

It's a comforting thought, but much is happening behind the latest twitter storm. The Supreme Court has been turned solidly reactionary thanks to Trump getting the vacant seat stolen from President Obama. With the guidance of the right-wing infrastructure such as the Federalist Society, the administration is remaking the federal courts more rapidly than any time in decades. This gift from the Bernie Bros/Susan Sarandon/Jill Stein faction will be with us for many years. Agencies, from the State Department to the EPA, are being wrecked from the inside. Obamacare is being sabotaged despite posting record enrollment. Politicization of the Federal Reserve and the Census carries huge risks, from the health of the economy to the integrity of critical data. Everywhere is a sense of retrograde movement.

That some 70,000 voters in three states determined our election, and perhaps our destiny — can't get that out of my craw. Or the widening disparity between population and representation in the Senate. Or the gerrymandered House, with the risk of worse voter suppression to come. The very structure of Madison's genius creation is showing dangerous cracks. And this is small compared with the pervasive odor of a stolen election, even treason. It doesn't bother the Republican-controlled Congress, the only body that could make things right.

Phoenix Confidential: OCB

The Organized Crime Bureau of the Phoenix Police Department was created in the 1974 when Chief Larry Wetzel sent Detective Sgt, Oscar Long to clean up the old Intelligence Bureau, full of place-holders and shady types compromised by the mob. His goal: Replace the old "subversive surveillance squad" with top investigating officers to dig into organized and white collar crime for prosecution purposes. The old squad just gathered names to put in the intelligence files. The new one intended to put made men and corrupt pols on the defensive in one of America's gangland playgrounds. Lt. Glenn Sparks requested a federal grant to fund the OCB and it was approved in a very short time.

OCB attracted some of the most gifted detectives and supervisors in the department, indeed in the nation, including Long, Sparks, Lonzo McCracken, Jim Kidd, Cal Lash and A.J. Edmondson. I leave out some names at the request of the detectives — safety is still an issue. Over the next several decades, the OCB was involved in the most important investigations in the state, from the murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles to corruption of high city officials and the depredations of the New Mexican Mafia (New Eme). Lash went on to serve as Administrative Sergeant for two police chiefs.

In a city where, as the blurb for my new novel goes, "gangsters rubbed elbows with the city’s elite amid crosscurrents of corrupt cops, political payoffs, gambling, prostitution, and murder cloaked by the sunshine of a resort city," the Organized Crime Bureau was Phoenix's Untouchables. And this was real, not fiction.

'Smart city'

I see that the local-yokel boosters bamboozled Popular Mechanics into doing a story claiming that Bill Gates wants to build a "smart city" in the Phoenix exurbs. This lacks any corroborating evidence, any skeptical journalism. It is, as the old newsroom joke goes, a story too good to check. What we do know is that Gates' investment arm plinked down $80 million for a stake in the speculative "master planned community" called Belmont. The promoters want to built 80,000 tract houses, along with industrial, office, and retail space.

The whole thing strikes me as dodgy. Water availability, especially in the long-term, is one of the two biggest issues facing Phoenix. A game of musical chairs is being played thanks to the complexity and opaqueness of Arizona's water law and enforcement. But the outlook is not good. The metro area and state are past population overshoot, especially for the one-trick-pony of building single-family detached tract houses in an ever-widening footprint of sprawl. The other unpleasant reality is climate change, which bodes very ill for the state. More sprawl destroys the unique, lovely Sonoran Desert.

The ghost of Ned Warren is looking on the spectacle of taking $80 million in Bill Gates' chump change with envy. As I wrote in a Seattle Times column, being one of the world's cleverest men in one field — bringing enormous riches — does not make you smart in everything else. Maybe he'll make a quick buck if the project is ever built. The suckers left holding the bag won't be so fortunate.

Similar sad hilarity came from a New York Times Magazine piece about Doug Ducey making Arizona the capital of self-driving cars. No regulations, come on down! The problem is that the companies will neither have their well-paid design and engineering jobs nor make the vehicles here. They will merely use our abundant freeways and wide streets to experiment. What could go wrong? 

Bruno

Everyone who was blessed to know Alan Brunacini, who passed away in October at age 80, has a Bruno story. I'll tell two about Phoenix's long-serving Fire Chief.

At the 2005 going-away party for Sheryl Sculley, the deputy city manager who was leaving for the top job in San Antonio, I was talking to Bruno when a man walked up. He was a promoter on the make and wanted me to write about his project. I stepped a quarter turn and said, "Do you know Alan Brunacini?" The guy instantly (thought he) assessed the short, unprepossessing man in the Hawaiian shirt, said, "Howya doin', Alan," and rudely turned to face to me.

I thought: You just turned your back on the most powerful man in the city of Phoenix. Needless to say, his project never happened. His lack of discernment about Bruno was a tell. On the other hand, Bruno was accustomed to such reactions from those not in the know. "Most people think Bob Khan is the fire chief," he told me once with a broad grin, speaking of his ubiquitous public affairs officer (and successor). Bruno had little ego in the game. I suspect he also understood the advantage in being underestimated, especially in the perilous landscape of municipal politics. 

Years later, after he retired and I left the Republic, Bruno and I were enjoying one of our periodic meet-ups in the shady inner courtyard of Fair Trade coffee. A gifted raconteur, he told me about a pivotal moment in his early career.

Assessing Greg Stanton

Now that he's announced he will resign as Phoenix mayor to run for Congress, it's not too early to at least make a preliminary evaluation of Greg Stanton's tenure.

Whether they like it not, all Phoenix mayors since the mid-1980s have been judged on what we could call the Goddard Scale. Terry Goddard was a transformational Phoenix leader who swept away the last of the Charter-Margaret Hance status quo, led the change to a district system of council representation, saved the historic districts, and began to salvage downtown. He was bold! He was visionary! He got cities and had a clear-eyed view of Phoenix's situation!

And this is actually true. But even Terry Goddard wasn't Terry Goddard at first, or how he would mature as a leader and urban thinker after he left office (it was a terrible loss for Arizona that he didn't become governor). So on the Goddard scale, even Terry wasn't a 10. Let's say 9.1. Give Paul Johnson a 6.5 — Goddard was a hard act to follow, and Johnson faced the worst recession in decades here, up to that point. Skip Rimsza, who served from 1994 to 2004, gets a solid 8 in my book, although some would disagree. The same for Phil Gordon, especially his more productive first term.

And Stanton, who assumed office in 2012? I'd also give him an 8. Phoenix has been fortunate in its mayors.

Flake out

Amid all the orgasms about the "heroism" of Jeff Flake's speech on the floor of the Senate is this fact: He stuck around to vote with the Republican majority to deprive customers of the right to sue the banksters.

The soon-to-be-former junior Senator from Arizona is a right-wing Republican. He has a lifetime rating of 93.07 from the American Conservative Union, one of the highest in the Senate (wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III scored 81.62. This gold-standard score rates members on their votes for "conservative causes." He's higher than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

While he said some laudable things, what's he's actually done is quite different. He voted for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which would have deprived between 23 million and 26 million of his fellow Americans of health insurance. He voted for every one of Trump's deplorably unqualified and corrupt cabinet members. He opposed sanctions on Russia.

The light-rail divide

Glendale's city council killed an extension of light rail into the suburb, even though a majority of voters want it. Even though We Built It, You Bastards (WBIYB) — the epithet referring to the hysterical, thuggish opposition to the starter line, metropolitan Phoenix remains divided over mobility. The city, Tempe, and Mesa have embraced light rail. The other suburbs remain against it, crazy-so in the case of Scottsdale.

Phoenix did not benefit from the "Dallas effect." There the suburbs wanted nothing to do with light rail — until they saw the first line in action. Then they were clamoring to be included. Today, Dallas has the largest light-rail system in the United States.  Similar success stories are found in Denver, San Diego, Portland, and Los Angeles. The closest we came was Mesa. There, then-Mayor Keno Hawker convinced a skeptical council to pay for the starter line to go to Sycamore Street. Otherwise, Mesa would have been cut off — Tempe was only going to build to McClintock — and facing a costly future connection. Instead, Mesa saw the benefit and has extended the line to Mesa Drive with plans to go beyond.

Otherwise, the divide remains solid. It is driven in no small measure by racism and classism. The suburbs don't want "those people" coming on trains. And it's true that the poor and minorities heavily use transit in Phoenix. The criminal element of "those people" drive cars, but the white-right apartheid that defines metro Phoenix decisively defines the light-rail resistance. Another problem is the Republican fetish against rail of all kinds. It keeps us stuck with a 1971 transportation system when other advanced urbanized nations have high-speed rail and subways abuilding. Considering that the Republican Party began as the advocate of transcontinental railroads, this is an astounding but not surprising turnabout. It goes along with denying settled science on climate change. Anything, anything, to keep happy motoring going. Anything to keep the tax-cut scam going.

Light rail succeeded in Phoenix differently than in most cities. For example, in Seattle, where a majority of people use transit, light rail connects people to the major employment, retail and entertainment center of downtown, as well as the airport, sports venues, and the University of Washington. It's packed all the time and more lines are under construction despite efforts by Republicans in the Legislature and the suburbs to kill it. Most jobs in Phoenix are out on the freeways, especially in the East Valley. Instead, Phoenix's light rail found the sweet spot connecting the downtown and Tempe ASU campuses, as well as hauling people to Suns and (for now) Diamondbacks games. It helped reestablish downtown as a center of activity.

The water Ponzi scheme

Arizona has a sordid history of fraud, predating the predations of Ned Warren, whose land frauds in the 1960s and 1970s bilked hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible Americans. It continued through with the East Valley mafia's "alt fuels" scandal of the early 2000s and the big blowup with the Ponzi scheme of the housing bubble.

The relatively new racket, on a trajectory for crisis, concerns water. Last month, Arizona Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders produced a blockbuster about "water haulers" apparently stealing city of Phoenix water from hydrants for delivery to hundreds of residents in New River. Meanwhile, this entire area is seeing the ground water in its meager aquifers diminish as more people move in. New River grew by more than 40 percent, to 15,000, from 2010 to 2015.

Earlier this month, the Republic's Dustin Gardiner reported a fascinating story about Pinal County's complex but unsettling water situation:

So far, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, 15 proposed projects in the Pinal County area have received letters from the state notifying them that groundwater necessary for their projects could be in short supply.

It's likely the first time the state has sent such letters, but state officials say there is no reason to panic.

Of course officials would say that. And they're right, after their fashion. Panic isn't enough. 

The West Wingnut

While i'm finishing up the next David Mapstone Mystery, talented friend of the blog Carl Muecke has been commenting on the administration in his wonderful way. Until World War III engulfs us, enjoy a laugh:

 

The Chinese Cultural Center

In the late 1990s, a couple of years before my fateful and in retrospect foolish decision to come home and write a column for the Arizona Republic, I noticed a freeway sign for the "Chinese Cultural Center" and took the exit.

The location, on 44th Street, was strange. It was far from the original locations of Phoenix's Chinatown in downtown. The central core was dead then and the only memory of Chinatown was the Sing Hi Cafe, relocated to west Madison Street from its original site in the Deuce. There was also the Sun Mercantile building, a former warehouse, beside the basketball arena. Land was plentiful and more of the warehouse district was intact. Why not put a Chinese Cultural Center here?

But, no. And although the sign was one of the brown historic markers that usually went with something public such as the Desert Botanical Gardens, the Cultural Center appeared to be a private, mixed-use real-estate development. Yes, it had some Chinese-influenced architectural features, garden, restaurants, and Asian market, but it wasn't really a museum or cultural center. Wikipedia says it was developed by the Chinese state-owned COFCO group, but I don't know if this is accurate.

Lately, the center has been in the news because of the building's purchase by a Scottsdale private-equity outfit which intends to redo it as a corporate headquarters. Most of the center is emptied out and it's surrounded by a chain-link fence. Protests from the Chinese community brought a temporary restraining order protecting the garden statues and roof — but it runs out Nov. 3rd. Then a new hearing will be held and demolition could begin. The Republic and New Times have slightly different takes on the state of play.

In all, it is so Phoenix: Disregard for history, car-dependent far from light rail (WBIYB) or the central core, and ultimately just another a real-estate play.

Additive history

I've returned from a long a lovely train trip to Denver, one of adopted hometowns (and what a stunning job they've done with Union Station and LoDo). So I was blessedly off the grid during the latest culture-war battle, over standing or kneeling for the national anthem. At the risk of losing friends among right-thinking people, I am torn about this.

On the one hand, protest has a long history in sports and if one or many of the pro-football millionaires wants to kneel to protest racism, that's his prerogative. Jehovah's Witnesses don't stand. For the players, I'm not sure it's a First Amendment right. I can't write anything I want as a Seattle Times columnist. To be sure, my masters give me wide latitude but there is an invisible fence. I am an employee. Nobody thought my First Amendment Rights were being trampled when the Arizona Republic took away my column because my writings offended the boosters and Real Estate Industrial Complex. Let's also state at the outset that the quisling in the Oval Office has no standing to lecture on anyone's patriotism.

Yet I also couldn't shake two other impressions. First, beyond the symbolism, can anything make amends? What would it take? Even on police shootings of unarmed black men, I have yet to see journalism to tell me whether this is worse now than in, say, the 1960s. It's bad no matter what, but are things getting better as President Obama, who may be remembered as the last American president, said? Or not? This question is beyond my aim today. Second, can't we have any modest civic above politic war, such as standing for the national anthem? We once had a common culture that assumed such things, for all our flaws. I won't even ask if it's a given to stand during the "Hallelujah" chorus. On the anthem, the answer is apparently, no.

On Facebook, my friend Tom Zoellner, one of the smartest people I know, wrote:

Historical reminder: "The Star-Spangled Banner" was a baroque nationalist poem written by a lawyer who helped slaveowners recapture their escaped property. In the third verse (almost always unsung) a line celebrates the murder of African-Americans slaves who had been recruited to fight for their freedom on the British side in the War of 1812. Here's the line: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave"

We don't just need to take a knee. We need to look honestly at our history, make hard amends for our national sin of racism, stop trying to pretend this festering wound doesn't exist, and make the USA live up to the sacred ideals implicit in its founding, even though their implementation has been messy, imperfect and painful over the course of 241 years.

Phoenix and Amazon HQ2

More than 100 cities are contending to win the economic prize of the decade, Amazon's second, "equal in every way" to its Seattle home, headquarters. Some $5 billion in investment and 50,000 high-paid jobs are possible. Both Phoenix and Tucson are among them. Above is a photo of the Day One tower, part of Amazon's massive downtown Seattle footprint.

I've written about this highly unusual development in my Seattle Times columns here and here. In "Dear Amazon, we picked your new headquarters for you," the Upshot team narrows down cities based on the company's request for proposals (RFP) and comes up with Denver. That jibes with my top three candidates, the others being Toronto and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the Upshot piece, Phoenix (and Tucson) is quickly eliminated: job growth isn't strong, plus lack of a highly skilled tech workforce, high quality of life (that attracts young, educated workers), strong mass transit, and willingness to "pay to play."

But let's not give up just yet. At the least, this could be an educational experience.

Returning to Rogue Columnist

The book is not quite done, but I'm 90 percent there and at least know, finally, how it ends (probably). I promised readers that columns would return in mid-September.

Coming back isn't an easy decision.

I know that nothing I write will change Phoenix's trajectory. It will bring more of the "Talton hates Arizona" claptrap. Nothing I write will alter the nightmare that began after Election Day 2016. I'm so tired of losing so much of the time.

As much as I hate "both sides" false equivalency, I feel increasingly alienated from the loud left, while "conservatism" is not only nihilistic and destructive but in power. It's tempting to watch the past few months and think Trump and the GOP are the gang who can't shoot straight and will soon be swept away. Don't fall for it.

Also, I tend to write what is now put in the genre ghetto of "long-form commentary," so you won't find quick hits, videos, and digital "storytelling" here, either. The photos tend to be limited and mostly as historical galleries.