Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix broiling: Apocalypse now, or later

The Republic devoted a magisterial nine sentences today to the fact that Phoenix is on track to meet or exceed last year’s record 32 days of 110 degrees or above.

Not that anybody living there now cares, but as late as the 1960s, the Salt River Valley had hard frosts in the winter (thus, far fewer mosquitoes, no West Nile virus). We went back to school in September, in un-air conditioned classrooms, because it was cooling down enough to open the windows. Night-time cooling in summer was significant, and the summers were not as hot, nor did they last as long, as now. The idea of more than a month of 110-and-above would have seemed frighteningly absurd.

Contrary to the mantra of "it’s a desert, shut up about the heat!," these man-made changes in the Phoenix weather are a Big Deal. So far, they are mostly a local event, caused by the massive loss of agriculture and gargantuan increase in paved sprawl. Global warming’s consequences haven’t really started to kick in.

What happens then?

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Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix and Arizona — the solutions are out there

Newer readers to Rogue Columnist might wonder about the attention I pay to my native state of Arizona, even though now I live in Seattle. First, because after I chose to leave the Arizona Republic in April 2007, I took with me a cohort of loyal readers who want something other than the usual mendacious Phoenix cheerleading (think of this as a virtual Battlestar Gallactica). But also because the challenges and troubles Arizona faces carry lessons for all of America. Finally, I fear Phoenix’s coming implosion will bring a huge pricetag for American taxpayers, and a human tragedy that shakes our souls.

Some of these readers still tell me they come away from my posts feeling depressed. I want them to realize the facts, get mad as hell and take action. But Phoenicians, even really smart ones, tend to have two emotional gears: blind optimism and suicidal depression. It’s a malady as old as settlement of the West, where promotional posters back east led to a trail of broken dreams. Others realize that the mountain Phoenix and Arizona must climb is so steep that it seems hopeless.

I spent seven years as a columnist in Phoenix offering solutions, as well as pointing out the emperor’s wardrobe malfunction (and believe me, I pulled my punches every time I wrote). But here again are some solutions. Some might apply to towns other than Phoenix.

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Posted inPhoenix

The Coles affair: Unsustainability is now

Once again, the Wall Street Journal goes to Phoenix to report on the most pathological aspects of our economic troubles. It does the in-depth, sophisticated and contextual story on the suicide of Scott Coles and the collapse of his Mortgages Ltd. that the local press will not allow its reporters the time and expertise to do. And remember, the Republic’s in-house diktat is, "say something positive about the community" (and use streaming video!!).

The personal story of Coles is the stuff of a tragic novel, albeit for our tawdry era. He was 48 when he wrote a goodbye note, donned a tuxedo, climbed into bed, and apparently committed suicide. His company was in trouble, and with it some of the highest-profile projects in "the Valley." His 20-year-younger second wife, whom he had met in Las Vegas, wanted a trial separation. The darkness he must have felt merits our compassion and prayers.

But the business story must also be told, for it illustrates not only how Phoenix got into its worst downturn in perhaps decades, but also the peril of Ponzi Scheme Nation.

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Posted inPhoenix

Is Phoenix really such a sleepy little Mayberry for news?

Today the Republic changed the online pages that contain the day’s newspaper to the uniform template that Azcentral.com recently adopted. The site looks very quiet now, even compared to some other big Gannett papers. It certainly lacks the production values, much less the substance, that make the Online Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or New York Times such eyeball grabbers (if only online ads paid the same rates as print). Nor is it any competition for such online successes as Huffington Post.

It’s almost as if they are trying not to attract attention. Saying: Nothing to see here. There is a certain numbing repetition to the news cycle in Phoenix: the latest outrages of Sheriff Joe and the Legislature (written with a straight face); traffic and freeway news; illegal immigration; Maryvale crime and the lurid stuff that happens out in the ‘burbs "where this kind of thing just doesn’t happen"; kids left in hot cars; weather stories; did I say freeway and traffic news?; those embarrassing reports on serious local issues that surface from time to time; the well-meaning white papers that will never be implemented; the drearily predictable right-wing voices, lacking in grace or even humor, and an unending vomitus of features, rewritten press releases and boosterism, especially about Glendale!, Chandler!, Gilbert!, and, especially, Scottsdale!! Until lately, there was much "growth" news — the latest sprawl crap to be built. Now it’s foreclosures.

Some members of the staff are still capable of fine work. It’s rare they are allowed to do it. But the truth is, not much happens in Phoenix for a city of such size. By that I mean the level of commerce, decision-making, world connections and newsmaking one would expect from "the nation’s fifth largest city." Reality flows like underground magma: the place is unsustainable. Otherwise, same stuff, day after day. That’s not to say there’s no news agenda to be had.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

John McCain, you’re no Barry Goldwater

I’m probably the wrong one to ask for an objective comparison between Barry Goldwater and John McCain. I’ll always love Barry, despite the flaws and misjudgments that were as big as his accomplishments. Attending Kenilworth School in Phoenix — where Barry himself had gone years before — I remember being one of only two kids with the guts to wear Goldwater buttons in 1964. Such was the power of LBJ. But I loved Barry, even at age seven.

Nearly everyone attests to, at best, an arm’s length relationship between the aging Goldwater and the newcomer McCain. John Dean and Barry Goldwater Jr. have a new book that looks at a true "maverick from Arizona." Although McCain brags about being a "Goldwater Republican," younger Goldwater family members are having none of it. Granddaughter Alison Goldwater told the Huffington Post, that Barry felt "deceived" by McCain. She says,  "I’m sure if we were to raise his ashes from the Colorado River…he would be going, ‘What? This is not my vision. This is not my party.’ "

McCain is an opportunist where Barry never was. McCain lands in scandals — from the Keating Five to the latest property tax oops — that Barry never would have contemplated. If McCain has principles aside from orthodox 1990s right-wing politics, with an occasional tilt to please the national press, I can’t find them. Most of all, Barry was an Arizonan. He loved Arizona deeply, personally. Starting as a Phoenix City Councilman, he supported every bond issue to make the city better (his name used to be on the plaque at the old library, simply listed as a city council member). He was a true conservationist.

Yet McCain-as-Goldwater isn’t another campaign distraction. It’s a topic worth debate and contemplation, one that says much about the trajectory of America over the past 45 years.

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Posted inPhoenix

Sustaining denial as the old world collapses

The Arizona Republic spent a week writing articles about "sustainability." This was obviously Gannett top-down: the series was relentlessly "positive," aimed at "the average reader" and ultimately useless. Which is too bad, because reporter Shaun McKinnon is as close to an expert on water issues as you’ll find at major newspapers — when he’s allowed to write on them.

This was followed, equally predictably, by the kind of anodyne editorial the Republic has written hundreds of times before. This one had such deep renderings as:

Sustainability: The word is everywhere. Companies from Wal-Mart to Ford
are trumpeting their commitment to it. There are indexes to measure it,
including a Dow Jones corporate yardstick. Bloggers have seized on it.

And, after gently laying out some challenges, then offering soothing praise for the state:

But more needs to happen on the ground. While Gov. Janet Napolitano,
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other leaders have certainly supported
sustainability, Arizona still seems in the minor leagues. The efforts
need to be bigger, better, faster.

"Seems"? Here’s what was not covered, as far as I can tell:

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Posted inPhoenix

Copper Square bites the dust, but has anyone learned anything?

News item: A Phoenix business group plans to stop using the name Copper Square
that has branded a 90-block downtown retail-and-office district for
eight years. The Downtown Phoenix Partnership is working with Scottsdale’s SHR
Perceptual Management on a name that will highlight downtown Phoenix as
"Arizona’s cosmopolitan heart…"

Where to begin? Perhaps it’s most telling that the Downtown Phoenix Partnership is paying a Scottsdale company to come up with a name for downtown Phoenix. Such is the fecklessness, confusion and drift that characterized the whole "Copper Square" debacle.

You know where I stand. I wrote against the silly name even before they rolled it out, saying, among other things, that the name of the "district" is already established by decades of custom: Downtown Phoenix. In a city hostile to public spaces, there is no square, and downtown has no historic link with the copper industry. And who wants to live in a city that doesn’t have a downtown? Yet millions of dollars that might have been spent on, say, recruiting private employers to downtown, went to banners and assorted crap saying "Copper Square."

So what will these marketing gods from Scottsdale — apparently there were no companies available in downtown Phoenix (which ought to tell you something of the real problem) say?

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Posted inPhoenix

A death in Phoenix

A little before dawn Thursday morning, Byron Yellowhair pulled his car to the shoulder of the well-lighted Papago Freeway in central Phoenix, got out and started walking down the shoulder. Maybe he was drunk or high, and maybe he weaved out into the traffic — he definitely had a troubled past. But he was 24 with life still ahead, dreamed of becoming a teacher back home on the Navajo reservation. He was an individual sacred to God.

Hit so many times, by so many cars, he was dismembered to an extent that even hardened DPS officers had never seen before.

The Republic reported, "officials said they will likely never know how many cars hit the man." Bedazzled by streaming video of school lunch menus or whatever, the state’s biggest newspaper pays less attention to journalism basics. So one must hunt around for the "where" (near 24th Street), and it’s never made clear how many motorists involved actually pulled over to wait for the law.

Even if some did, more, perhaps many more, drove on. Phoenix has a tremendous problem with fatal hit-and-run "accidents." One family lost two brothers, over a period of years, to hit-and-run drivers. Many never seem to be caught (story idea for a newspaper, Phoenix, if you have one). I remember another case involving a person in a wheelchair. The tone seemed to be set by Bishop Thomas O’Brien, who hit a man on a well-lit part of Glendale Avenue (speed limit 35 or 40), drove on and tried to get his secretary to arrange for his shattered windshield to be quietly fixed while his car was stashed in his garage. He claimed to have thought he hit a dog.

Crisis reveals character. Had O’Brien stopped and given aid and comfort, he would have been a hero. He didn’t. Yet he is only one of a seemingly large cohort of vehicular assailants. Most of these murderers seem to get away with it.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Lisa Graham Keegan: Who says there are no second acts in American lives?

No doubt, the fetching Lisa Graham Keegan will play well on television as an education adviser to President-elect McCain. It will be instructive to see if the national media look beyond the blond good looks and quick mind to see that Keegan represents everything that voters want to get away from in Republican education policy.

As a legislator and then as superintendent of public instruction in Arizona — the equivalent of education secretary — she aggressively embraced the "charter school movement" and made Arizona into a national leader as an education "marketplace," where charters became as ubiquitous as Circle K stores. Properly constituted and regulated, individual charter schools have turned in impressive results nationally. These individual charters can be studied for best practices, but, there’s little evidence they can handle the job of public schools on a massive scale. Evidence mounts that many fail to ourperform public schools, yet are more costly and prone to financial abuse.

The results of Keegan’s crusade in Arizona were nothing short of tragic. Acting as if Arizona public schools were overfed, union-wrecked systems seen in a few big cities back east, she pushed for "school choice" in the form of charters. Few appear to perform well. Some are prime business ventures for well-connected right-wingers. Many are fly-by-night storefronts with no playgrounds, libraries or cafeterias. I recall seeing one where a roach coach would stop by at noon and toot the horn, as if it were a construction site. I guess the school owners were preparing the pupils for their future careers. Meanwhile, the costs of a school library — a given when I was in Arizona public schools — are foisted on the city library.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The Republic looks at a tale of three cities

The Arizona Republic’s Chad Graham traveled to Austin and Seattle to report on some lessons recession-slammed Phoenix might learn. Numerous Rogue Columnist readers have asked for my reactions. Chad is a fine journalist and a friend. His story fits into a continuum of sometime efforts by the newspaper to educate the public and policy makers about the real world — this goes back at least to the 1980s. These efforts are ignored as population growth resumes and the nation’s last big factory town returns to churning out suburban tract houses.

The editors tip their hands by, I would assume, inserting this sentence to make defensive "Valley residents" feel better: "Phoenix will never have a gateway seaport to Asia that hums with
activity. Seattle will never have the potential solar power of Phoenix." The sad reality is that the center of solar research, entrepreneurship and use is cloudy Germany. Phoenix literally started the solar power movement in the 1950s and let it get away — therein lies the tale of the town.

Graham’s important point is that Seattle and Austin "have learned the lesson that Phoenix is now being taught: Economic
downturns hit harder when you are overly reliant on one industry."

Rather than go through the story, or even rehash my years of "controversial" efforts to raise these issues, I’d rather make a few key points among dozens that could be discussed. My perspective is as a Phoenician who has lived in Seattle for nearly a year and has seen both close up.

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Posted inPhoenix

On transportation, stuff you can’t make up

Gov. Janet Napolitano is not so tough when it comes to dealing with the real power in Arizona. Thus, we have this story broken last week by Capitol Media Services:

Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to take home builders off the
financial hook for paying for new roads in exchange for a $100,000
donation to a campaign to persuade voters to boost their own taxes.

The deal, outlined in a letter obtained by Capitol Media Services,
resulted in the recrafting of the $42.6 billion transit improvement
initiative shortly before it was filed Tuesday to remove a provision to
raise at least some of the money from fees on new developments — fees
that would be added to the cost of new homes.
Instead the final version of the initiative — the one being
circulated for signatures — calls for the entire costs of new highways,
widened roads and mass transit projects to be paid for with a 1-cent
increase in the state sales tax, an increase of 18 percent from the
current 5.6 cent state levy.

I suppose this could be shrewd if it delivers long-needed Phoenix-Tucson rail service and commuter rail to Pinal County, not merely more roads. But it comes at a huge price, may never be approved, and will face the usual rear-guard attacks by the Legislature.

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