'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
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My Seattle Times colleague Geoff Baker has an insightful column about Glendale's NHL arena disaster. Sometimes one needs to be at a distance — and a distance from advertiser and fan pressure — to see things clearly.
The situation remains very much in play. Mayor Jerry Weiers may back down in the face of a lawsuit from the team formerly and rightly known as the Phoenix Coyotes. Or the courts could rule against the city's attempt to break its lease. Then the team can socialize its losses until the contract allows it to leave in three years.
But some aspects of what Baker calls "the Glendale fiasco" require Homey's distinctive local touch. Which I will proceed to attempt.
As with almost everything in Arizona today, Glendale's misery began with a real-estate hustle and taking an asset away from Phoenix, trying to make it the hole in the donut.
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In retrospect, it was foolhardy of me to promise on Facebook that I would write about Phoenix's worst architectural disasters and … could they be fixed? Then to ask for nominations by Facebook friends.
There's just too much bad architecture out there (and no, not only in Phoenix). Now it's too late, a promise is a promise, so here are my top (or bottom) three worst buildings in Phoenix.
1. Phoenix Police Headquarters. Check out the seamless intertwining of Brutalist architecture, 1960s fortress mentality, and everything from the sides of the building to the abundant, heat-radiating concrete surrounding the structure screaming "bleak!"
It is an almost perfect example of sterile, dehumanizing, soul-killing, boring hack-work. It even lacks the authority projected by the 1929 City Hall/County Courthouse. Instead, the taxpayers financed a block of ugly that has stood through some 45(!) years of indifference and civic malpractice.
2. The Arizona Executive Office Tower. Yes, this is Gov. Roscoe's aerie.
Built in 1974, only about four years after the building above, this mishap has the same dreary "pour boiling oil on the invaders" upper-story rampart as its cousin.
Yet its transgression goes further because it is attached to the charming territorial capitol building and addition. The top of the tower overpowers the modest copper dome of the capitol. The two buildings clash like a Chevy Vega front on a Rolls Royce.
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Over the weekend, I posted this comment on Facebook:
Jimmy Carter, at 90, was in the area to attend the change of command of the attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter.
He was a failed president. I remember him as the holier-than-thou Baptist. He frustrated even his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, who later became my friend. But along with John Quincy Adams, he has been our best former president.
He was the only president to graduate from the Naval Academy, was a protege of Admiral Hyman Rickover, and intended to make the Navy his career until his father died. He was also the only president to "qualify in submarines."
Only years later did I understand what an achievement this was. Sailors and officers (like Carter) were trained before being assigned to subs. But to "qualify" meant learning every job, skill and task aboard a submarine. So it's a huge accomplishment and the mastery that makes a submariner special.
So no chickenhawk has standing to criticize Carter.
Now, I was simply trying to say something nice about the man. But as is often the case with "social media" — god, I hate the 21st century — it didn't end there.
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The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. Historically, Arizona and Phoenix have bounced back quickly from downturns. Not this time.
As of April, the state had yet to recover to its pre-recession peak on non-farm employment:
More importantly, neither has metropolitan Phoenix, the economic powerhouse of the state:
This comes into more stark contrast when we add the performance of peer metros in the recovery:
Although Phoenix has a very large workforce, it is the only one among these peer Western metros that has yet to surpass its pre-recession employment in this very slow-growing economy.
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The Phoenix Civic Center, built with the support of Councilman Barry Goldwater, was seen as an example of profligacy by hardcore right-wingers. This side of the center faces Central. Today most of the site is the Phoenix Art Museum.
It is tempting to see the likes of Diane Douglas, John Huppenthal, Tom Horne-y, "Better Call Sal" DiCiccio and the entire Kookocracy as a recent phenomenon in Arizona. It's certainly comforting to us natives.
Barry Goldwater wasn't raving mad, we will tell you (the "lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin" was a joke). He came to regret his early opposition to federal civil rights laws, and was instrumental in helping desegregate Phoenix's schools. He desegregated Goldwater's Department Store, as well as promoting minority managers. As a city councilman, Goldwater supported public improvements, including bonds for the 1950 Civic Center (and he backed every Phoenix bond measure thereafter). In the 1980s and 1990s, Arizona's new conservatives repudiated him.
The truth is that Arizona was always a conservative state, in a narrow definition of the term. But for decades most citizens understood it wouldn't have existed without enormous federal largesse. No wonder majorities voted for FDR all four times he stood for the presidency. Sen. Carl Hayden was a progressive and New Deal Democrat. His fellow Democratic Senator, Ernest McFarland was the father of the GI Bill.
But the Kookocracy has roots that reach back more than half a century in Phoenix, to a forgotten City Council election.
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After spending more than six years with Republicans questioning whether he is an American citizen and likening him to Hitler, the snub by the Saudi king was just another day at the office for Barack Obama.
But I can't help thinking what Harry Truman would do. More than once, confronted by the infamous "Do Nothing" Republican Congress, which is the Constitutional Convention by comparison with their successors today, Truman said in various iterations, "You may not like me, but you sure as hell will respect the office of the President of the United States."
I've got no problem doing the Full Harry on the House of Saud.
In 2010, Mr. Obama agreed to sell $60 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. I'm sure that made the Military Industrial Complex happy, but think how much $60 billion would do to rebuild our lethally decrepit passenger rail system? (Amtrak's subsidy — and all modes of transportation, especially airlines and roads are subsidized — will be $1.1 billion if the GOP House has its way.
And let's quit buying Saudi oil — nearly $58 million a day as of February. Sure, they can sell to the Chinese, but that will be more problematic when we withdraw the U.S. Navy from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. Let the People's Liberation Army Navy or David Cameron's tiny Royal Navy pick up the slack.
Most of that Saudi oil, like carbon all over the world, needs to stay in the ground if we are to avoid leaving our grandchildren a planet out of a science-fiction nightmare. This is a good start. It would likely speed conversion to renewables, greater conservation, energy innovation and, yes, more trains. We have a surplus of oil to see through the transition.
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It was only a matter of time before the national media figured out that California is not the only place at risk from historic drought and the dwindling Colorado River.
Here is Slate, wrong from the first paragraph. And the Washington Post, which doesn't seem to have a clue about the dreary reality of Arizona's economy.
As a counterweight, I promoted this 2013 column on Twitter and Facebook — and traffic on this site exploded. It is important that the media elites understand the complex water issues facing Arizona. I urge you to read or re-read it.
Can Arizona and Phoenix survive the drought caused by man-made climate change? Probably. The question is whether it will be the easy way or the hard way.
But here's an easy back-of-the-bar-napkin calculus. The population of Maricopa County, mostly metro Phoenix, was 1.5 million in 1980, before the completion of the Central Arizona Project canal and the proliferation of sprawl that preceded it and was anticipating it.
Today, the population is more than 4 million. So in the long run, metropolitan Phoenix's sustainable population — in any pleasantly liveable way — is that 1980 figure. Two-and-a-half million people need to leave, head back to the Midwest and the East.
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Redlining is the practice of, in the United States, denying, or charging more for, services such as banking, insurance, access to health care, or even supermarkets, or denying jobs to residents in particular, often racially determined, areas. — Wikipedia
The SOBs are well-known, and what an appropriate acronym. It means the north Scottsdale fatcats who refuse to go south of Bell (SOB) and measure their specialness by pronouncing the city of Phoenix as "the Mexican Detroit."
Most people with means who move to metro Phoenix don't consider it "home," as in a place to treasure and be invested in the common good. They are drunk with the resort "lifestyle" use-it-up new extraction industry. Being "exclusive" means drawing red lines to show one's superiority. To define zones that are scary and lost, whether this is true or not.
In recent years, I've become more aware of another red line within the city: Camelback Road.
53So wealthy Republican Cara Carlton Sneed, aka "Carly Fiorina," is running for president. She represents everything wrong in an America run by oligarchy, including running venerable Hewlett Packard into the ground and laying off tens of thousands of people.
The two businessmen who became president were Warren G. Harding and George W. Bush. In fact, government can't and shouldn't be run like a business. A business, especially a big business today, seeks only its own growth and increasing stock price. Too many of its leaders, Fiorina included, are sociopaths with no notion of the public good. So she'll fit right with the Republican contenders.
It tells us something that this supposed titan of technology forgot to register her domain name.
Now, on to Arizona…
• I read that McDowell Road in Scottsdale is "continues (its) resurgence." With what little capital that metro Phoenix attracts clustering to the eastside — which should be a hair-on-fire issue at Phoenix City Hall — this isn't surprising. Here's what McDowell won't be: walkable, livable, or accessible to frequent transit. Make it shady, narrow it by four lanes or so, extend light rail, and plant mature shade trees and then you're talking.
• Narrowing a portion of 32nd Street is a good start in Phoenix. Unfortunately, it is outside the Salt River Project so the shade trees that would make it walkable for all but those seeking skin cancer is impossible. It is also served only by the 16 bus, not enough. So one-and-a-half cheers.
25If you follow the news through a certain group of Web sites (Huffington Post, Salon, Vox, etc. — even the New York Times)… If you run in circles where everyone is college-educated and progressive… Then events such as Ferguson and Baltimore fit a precise narrative.
Police are murdering unarmed black men in great numbers and getting away with it. The elites have turned their backs on African-Americans. Rioting is a rational response to despair. "Thug" is another word for n*gger. The war on drugs is a war on the underclass. Incarceration rates of black men are immorally high. Whites don't get it, none of it, from their position of privilege.
And some of this is even true.
Unfortunately, this is a rare case where there is equivalency between progressives and the right-wing. Both are operating in their distinct echo-chambers, their bubbles. For progressives, asking for a more nuanced and factual approach to understanding these problems risks losing friends and being labeled a racist.
The right-wing bubble sees things very differently. These are criminals, and the ones who aren't still live an adversarial gangsta lifestyle. They are "takers." Why do they have children they can't afford or support? Why are they on the street in the middle of the day, loudly taking up the sidewalk, instead of working? Why don't they obey police orders? Look how successful Asians are. Look how many blacks have advanced, even if it's through affirmative action.
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