We start out with news of Delta Air Lines and Northwest intensifying their merger talks. We won’t hear how the mergers of the past have only worsened the mess at the airlines. Why? They take away competition, leave the remaining carriers in a group-think mode that discourages innovations (hello, newspaper industry), and are paid for partly by laying off the experienced employees and cutting the service that make for a great airline.
The combined carrier will be two drunks holding each other up — most mergers fail to deliver their promised "benefits." If either carrier is too weak to stand, let it liquidate (it wouldn’t) and make room for new competition, Doing the same disastrous thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is a definition of insanity. Ah, but every time the crazy top execs and investment bankers get richer. Meanwhile, we do nothing to improve our transportation system, such as building high-speed rail.
There’s also a stack of Arizona funnies..
Electricity use has risen in metro Phoenix by 24 percent over the past 20 years. It’s a good thing we’re not entering an era of sustained higher energy prices, or that Phoenix isn’t utterly dependent on electricity to run air conditioning, or that temperatures haven’t risen 10 degrees in recent decades because the citrus groves and fields were paved over, or that people think they are being "green" by eliminating shade. Enjoy your impending calamity.
Speaking of green, the Republic cheerleads for a developer who promises to build "zero-use" energy houses. What could be wrong with that? Well, they will be built in Tonopah "next to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station," the Republic adds with chirpy cluelessness. New developments that turn rural areas into subdivisions and require long automobile commutes are not green. They are part of the problem, and this is a sham we see all over the country.
The joke continues with Phoenix winning a center to process the 2010 Census. What a great opportunity to make use of the new light-rail line, the abundant empty land of the center city and Mayor Phil Gordon’s promised Opportunity Corridor (remember that one? It’s lodged at the W Hotel). Nope — this will be at 43rd Ave. and Buckeye, adding yet more single-occupancy automobile commutes, while the idiots at the county continue their "bring back blue" ad campaign.
The East Valley Tribune has another story lamenting the decline of the "Fiesta District." It’s not a district but a piece of sprawl rapidly spiraling into linear slum. It was built that way: on the cheap, ugly and car-dependent, lacking any human-centered urban planning. Now it only has the urban problems. Meanwhile, the "growth machine" moved farther out, building tomorrow’s linear slums, which for now siphon off the retail and shoppers from this sad place. It’s near where my family farmed cotton in the late 19th and early 20th century. (And, sorry, we sold the land for nothing in the late 1940s).
The Kookocracy is busy, urging repeal of a state-wide property tax to make Arizona more "business friendly." So ‘splain to me all the corporate headquarters, major research facilities, foreign direct investment and huge venture capital infusions Arizona has received for its current low-tax "business friendly" status? It does have poor schools, overwhelmed infrastructure, crumbling parks, suffering libraries, etc. etc. Arizona also lacks the money to invest in proven competitiveness initiatives. It’s funny how them high-tax states keep all the corporate goodies, bubba. But hey, we got half-built subdivisions and Wal-Mart stores!
Finally, the major newspapers have covered Texas’ roundup of the polygamists of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The LA Times had more insight. The NY Times produced quite a blooper, claiming Texas has stumbled in its "aggressive" action, thus hurting the "trust" authorities in Arizona and Utah were trying to build with sect members. Especially egregious was its reference to the 1953 Short Creek raid which, claims the Times, caused the sect to hate the government.
In the world of fundamentalist polygamy, the phrase “Short Creek”
has resonated since 1953, when the police descended on the twin
communities of Hildale, Utah, and Short Creek, Ariz., now Colorado
City. More than 30 men were arrested, and hundreds of children were
rounded up and taken into custody. Psychological walls went up as the
communities retreated and taught the young to believe that the
government was the enemy.
Memo to insular Timesman: the "psychological walls" were up for generations. Short Creek brought out the vast power of the mainstream LDS church, which defeated the Arizona governor, J. Howard Pyle, and intimidated future ones from taking aggressive action. The mainstream Mormons don’t want this discussed or dealt with, and while the church condemns polygamy, many members have complicated family ties to it and feelings about it. Polygamy isn’t like the funny HBO show. It is child rape, abuse and enslavement, pure and simple. Suburban America lives in a sexual hysteria that even sends 19-year-olds to prison for consensual sex with 17-year-old girls. But polygamy somehow gets a pass. Not in Texas.