Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The Stack: Super Loss; McCain greenwash; kid gloves for polygamists; Karen’s no crackpot; peak oil

The funniest story in the stack is an item reporting that Glendale did not even recoup what it spent as host "city" for the Super Bowl.  For years ahead of the spectacle, Phoenix media reported what an economic boon it would be. This is a classic example about how critical thinking is neither taught nor valued in today’s newsrooms (gee, why do we keep losing readers?).

A basic analysis of the hype would have shown that the promised economic benefits would be modest. It happened during high season, so resorts and hotels would already be booked. Indeed, considering the NFL demands blocks of rooms at a discount, the hotel industry probably made less money than it would have otherwise. Sales of souvenirs? Most of the profit goes back to the NFL. Restaurants would have similarly been packed anyway. And so on.

It’s not that the Super Bowl doesn’t bring benefits, in terms of exposure and the gathering of big deal makers. Too bad it took place in an amorphous place without an identity and a stadium in a cotton field on the metro fringe, in a place with little economy besides the great — now shuttered — housing factory. But the media shouldn’t have bought into the economic hype. Alas, the pressure is always extreme to "say something positive." Unfortunately, many reporters today would never even have applied the basic bullshit detector that was once a standard-issue item in their craft.

Read on for more of the Stack.

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Posted inPhoenix

Recalling Phil Gordon, and a corridor of lost opportunities

Some of the right-wing thugs that have the loudest voices in Arizona want to recall Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for being too soft on illegal immigration. Gordon doesn’t have anything to worry about, even with the ridiculously small numbers needed to get an initiative started.

If anything, Gordon’s cautious temporizing over Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s war on the poor — before criticizing it before a Hispanic audience — should earn a recall effort from the 34 percent of Phoenicians who are Hispanic and mostly American citizens (and those are 2000 numbers). But of course one reason the thugs rule is the populations that outnumber them, whether moderate Anglos or Mexican-American citizens, lack their lunatic zeal and often don’t even vote.

As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the illegal immigration problem is because 1) Arizona is a border state; 2) has a low-end economy  dependent on low-wage illegal immigrant labor, and 3) is doing nothing to really address the issue. Gordon, however, is in the spotlight, in his second term as mayor, and it’s fair to ask a question of substance.

Has Phil Gordon failed as Phoenix mayor?

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Posted inPhoenix

The Stack: Turnaround?; Phoenix ‘architecture’; ruining Biltmore; lost HQs; illegal immigrant hypocrisy

The Monday stack is rich, so let’s get right to it.

We’re hearing a lot of talk about seeing lights at the end of the tunnel, that the downturn is over or the recession will be mild…whatever. I hope so. But here are a few things to keep in mind. First, recovering from the collapse of a real-estate bubble takes much more time than the recovery we saw from the tech bubble after ’01. Japan in the 1980s and 1990s is Exhibit A.

Second, America has many "economies." So Wall Street and the globalized macro economy measured by the Dow and the GDP may well "recover." Another economy involves good jobs and diverse opportunities outside of the minority of fortunate cities such as New York, San Francisco and Seattle. I see no signs of that economy turning around. Indeed, by many measures it slips a little further back during and after the end of each business cycle. Jobless recoveries are only one aspect of this troubling trend. Throughout the boom of the past few years, most wages stagnated and many actually lost ground. So hold the celebration.

Read on for more of the Stack

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Posted inPhoenix

Problem with ‘county hospital’ even worse than Republic reports

The bosses obviously on vacation, the Arizona Republic committed real journalism today. The newspaper dug out the serious accreditation crisis facing the Maricopa Integrated Health System, which serves 400,000 mostly poor residents and operates the "county hospital." According to the story by Yvonne Wingett and Amanda Crawford, two of the few surviving serious reporters at the joint:

A detailed inspection of the county’s health-care system obtained by The Arizona Republic revealed widespread record-keeping problems and other flaws that could have posed risks to patients’ safety.

Since the inspection, the Maricopa Integrated Health System has been
overhauling operations and has spent about $1.5 million so far to
address the deficiencies, which were identified in September by the
Joint Commission, a national accrediting body. MIHS, which operates the
Maricopa Medical Center, says it has fixed many of the problems and
continues to address others.

The reports revealed a culture of incomplete or inaccurate medical
record-keeping that meant, in some cases, there was no proof that vital
patient-care processes were conducted.

The danger is the people see the headline and the photo of Maricopa Medical Center, then shake their heads and murmur about wasted tax dollars and freeloading Mexicans. In fact, this is an intriguing political disaster and a lost opportunity of the first magnitude.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The stack: Tempered, lost Camelback, the med school joke

Peggy Noonan, always a formidable writer and sometimes a formidable thinker, makes this point about a Barack Obama weakness:

His youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered,
been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling
back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear
from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to
his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.

I’m not sure I buy the second part. Many white Americans won’t vote for a black man. It’s that simple. Her first point is well-made, and frankly is a problem for most at the top echelons of American society now that meritocracy is dead. A Harry Truman couldn’t become president now. And the days are largely gone when a son of the elite, such as Jack Kennedy, served in combat alongside his fellow citizens of all walks.

Which brings us to John McCain. Noonan says slyly he should promise to be a one-term president. "For many in the middle it would be a twofer," she writes. "You get a good man, for
only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He’ll be better
older." This is her partisan side clouding judgment. McCain is seasoned and has suffered. But to what end? To promise a continuation of the disastrous policies of his callow successor, and the general ideological tilt by the elite untested theorists on the right? To burnish a temper that is legendary and unsettling? I’ve been beaten around the head by life enough to be not merely skeptical, but scared of this man.

There’s more in the stack. Read on.

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Posted inPhoenix

Poor little rich Scottsdale

Some readers have asked me to comment on the latest dysfunction in Scottsdale, including the forced departure of City Manager Jan Dolan. I will, but with more than mixed feelings.

First, I went to high school in Scottsdale when it was a sweet small city and hadn’t been completely changed by money, transience, political extremism and the urban problems (without urban solutions) that plague all of Phoenix. Among its virtues was a small-town merchant class that was genuinely invested in a place of manageable size (Roosevelt to McDonald). My Scottsdale is gone forever, but the small city that it was in the 1970s nurtured much good in my young life.

Second, Scottsdale’s future is already baked in the cake. The thugs that want to recall the mayor for allegedly even thinking about light rail need not worry. They have "won." What you’ve got is what you’ve got, and the world will intrude. Of course their agenda is always more power and intimidation than accomplishing anything.

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Posted inPhoenix

The center of the, er, recession

Many days the Arizona Republic reads like a bad real-estate supplement to the National Lampoon, but today is especially priceless. The editorial proclaims Glendale as "center of the Valley."

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. And Glendale has quite a group gathering. It includes far more than ever-loyal football fans drawn to University
of Phoenix Stadium to watch the Arizona Cardinals fight for a win. It’s more than hockey fans or screaming concert-goers drawn to Jobing.com Arena. It’s more than the baseball fans who will certainly flock to Glendale’s
spring-training complex near Loop 101 and Camelback Road next spring.

I compressed the dodo short paragraphs and will cut the reminder for the sake of your gag reflex, but you get the idea. It talks about the developers and real estate ventures and concludes, "Wow." I am sure the Pulitzer judges are already taking note.

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Posted inPhoenix

The crime against children in Arizona

As far as I can tell, the Arizona Republic devoted a mere four paragraphs to the latest evidence of the state’s dismal school system. Here they are:

Arizona spends less on educating its kids than almost any state in the
union, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Wednesday.

In 2006, the state spent $6,472 per student, or $2,666 less than the
national average. Only Idaho and Utah spent less. The report has ranked
Arizona second or third from the bottom in per-student spending dating
to 2000.

The state Legislature caps the amount of money schools can receive from
the general fund and in property taxes, said Chuck Essigs of the
Arizona Association of School Business Officials. That formula is more
restrictive than the majority of states’, he said.

Arizona also ranks in the bottom three when tallying money spent on
instruction, including teacher pay and benefits. Administrative costs
can’t be blamed for eating up the money, either. Arizona ranked second
from the bottom on money spent on administration of individual schools.

So that’s that. We can go back to the ever-desperate "everything’s fine!" Of course, it’s not.

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Posted inPhoenix

‘America’s toughest sheriff’s’ cowardly war against illegal immigrants

In my David Mapstone Mysteries series, the Maricopa County Sheriff is a Mexican-American tough guy — bull-headed, manipulative, egotistical, fascinating. Nobody ever accused him of violating prisoners’ rights, however, and he brings an ambivalent realist’s view to illegal immigration. In real life, we get Joe Arpaio, who casts himself, thanks to a gullible media and public, as "America’s toughest sheriff."

Many real police officers have nothing but contempt for Arpaio — they call him the "badged ego" for his endless publicity stunts. They talk about how the media leave largely unexamined the troubled record of Arpaio’s department (an honorable exception is the weekly New Times and my friend, journalist John Dougherty). But nobody wants to listen to reality in Arizona, particularly when the Arpaio fantasy so appeals to the simplistic minds of the many Anglos who want the Salt River Valley to be Des Moines with hot weather.

The latest spectacle involves Arpaio sending deputies and "posse" members into the city of Phoenix to arrest illegal immigrants. Phoenix PD wasn’t happy about it, and Mayor Phil Gordon belatedly condemned it, albeit before a safely sympathetic Hispanic audience. An Arizona Republic poll — an unscientific, self-selecting Web thang — shows most support the sheriff.

Whatever faith-and-prejudice-based ether Arizona’s Web lurkers live in, the reality is far different. Arpaio plays to the mob while doing nothing to address this complex issue of, in Joe Wambaugh’s words, lines and shadows.

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Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

Class, power and downtown development

Back when I was a college right-winger (and in those days we were few and had no pretty girls), I wrote fierce papers demonstrating the murderous fraud that was Karl Marx. A professor gently cautioned me that even if I disagreed with Marx, he offered another way of "seeing through history." He was right, of course. Marx's ideas led to some of the most bloody deeds in history. But his emphasis on class (and this was not original to him) is indeed useful.

I think about this as I watch downtown revivals and their failures. A city such as Seattle preserved most of its core buildings, many businesses and the downtown evolved organically and with all sorts of people. Phoenix and Charlotte, on the other hand, clear-cut most of their downtowns and started from scratch. If you arrived in Phoenix after 1980, you'd think the downtown was always vacant lots, government buildings and a few towers. Of course, Phoenix had a thriving downtown into the 1960s. Charlotte was similar.

Their results have been vastly different. But the class and power undertones are unmistakable and they have shaped the fate of each downtown and city.

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Posted inPhoenix

In Arizona, small quivers of an impending quake?

Despite the mandate to "say something positive about the community," sometimes the Arizona Republic can’t avoid saying something truthful about the community. Today there’s an ominous story about emerging evidence that in-migration "slowed sharply last year."

This matters because "growth" is the overwhelming (legal) economic driver of the state economy. There’s tourism, too — hardly a way to sustain a populous, urbanized region in the 21st century. The few other assets, such as the chip plants, would be big for, say, Tulsa. But for a region Phoenix’s size, the technology sector is actually smaller as a proportion of the economy than it was 20 years ago.

That leaves "growth" — meaning population growth, not growth of venture capital, IPOs, Ph.D.s, patents, per-capita income, foreign direct investment, research grants, college graduates, etc. If this even slows for long, the urban Arizona economy will face a recession the likes it hasn’t seen in modern times.

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