Rogue Columnist

Phoenix 101: Vulnerabilities

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, built upwind from the nation's fifth-largest city and plagued for years by regulator's safety concerns. It is the only nuclear plant in the world not near a large body of water.

People move to Phoenix bragging about the lack of blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. True enough. Yet they are moving into a place burdened by its own special hazards. They're the ones your real estate agent didn't mention; the ones that what is left of journalism rarely covers. That nobody talks about them besides — I hope — emergency planners, does not make them any less dangerous. Indeed, a case could be made that Phoenix is one of the highest-risk metro areas in the nation. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Risk Index, Maricopa County is rated "relatively high." Higher than "tornado alley" in Kansas and Oklahoma.

One of the most populous metropolitan areas in the nation has been built in a hostile desert. It's isolated, with limited highways, no passenger rail and surrounded by hundreds of miles of inhospitable, waterless badlands. Evacuation in an emergency would be impossible. The closest large cities — Tucson and Las Vegas — are as vulnerable as Phoenix. Gasoline must be brought in by pipelines from refineries hundreds of miles away. Water and the electricity for air conditioning depend on complex, vulnerable systems.

This harsh reality should have been brought home earlier in this decade, when, amidst brutal August heat, a gasoline pipeline broke; a year later, a mid-summer transformer fire threatened to shut down the power grid. The gas crisis was particularly frightening. Fights broke out at filling stations. People drove around in search of a tanker truck to follow. More inquisitive residents were surprised that such a large city has no refinery and is served by only two pipelines, one from the east, one from the west, built decades ago when Phoenix held a fraction of its current population.

Jon Talton July 27, 20094

Politics: National

On the edge of Waterloo

Republican South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says if Obama fails on healthcare, it will "break him"; it will be "his Waterloo." DeMint is right.

Those of a certain age remember the Jeff MacNelly cartoons during the Carter administration. As each day seemingly brought fresh setbacks, MacNelly's cartoon president shrank until he was a mini-me struggling amid the vast space of the presidential chair. Although he lacks Carter's tut-tut lecturing and, so far, foreign policy disasters, although Americans are proud of themselves for electing an African-American president, I sense Obama shrinking every day.

Many of the failures are not his. Obama inherited a nation in greater trouble than at any time since 1933, perhaps 1861. Not for nothing did the Onion have the headline: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job." In addition to the financial panic, Obama got two wars, foreign policy in disarray, a huge budget deficit, a government that had attacked civil liberties and enshrined torture as policy. He took over a nation that is in hock to China and the petro-states, that has been deindustrialized and seen its middle class devastated by policies to serve the corporate elite. And a nation ill-prepared for climate change or peak oil — indeed, one digging itself ever deeper in the hole.

He and his party, however, continue to make critical missteps.

Jon Talton July 23, 20094

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: The High Country

East Clear Creek near the Mogollon Rim

Mention the High Country now and several images come to mind. Escape from Phoenix during the worst days of summer. "Cabins," for those with means, that are usually just subdivisions plopped down amid the pines, sometimes with a golf course attached. Flagstaff's charming downtown. Prescott Valley's hideous sprawl. Wildfire season. The horrific traffic on Interstate 17 and the Beeline Highway.

Thank God, I got to see a very different High Country, as different from what exists now as old Phoenix was from the current migropolis.

Even in the 1960s, it was rough, empty country. The entire state population in 1960 was 1.3 million — smaller than the city of Phoenix now — and 1.7 million in 1970. In 1960, Flagstaff had 18,000 people, Prescott 13,000, Payson wasn't even counted (it had 1,800 in 1970). And yet Arizona had built good highways — and still had passenger trains — so it was possible to explore this enchanted land in relative comfort.

Jon Talton July 21, 20092

Politics: National

A giant leap, then the long fall

Amid the bitter war, in the Age of Aquarius, with fire in the streets, astronauts flew to the moon and stepped onto the trackless dust of the Sea of Tranquility… What's amazing is that I (over)wrote this sentence 20 years ago to mark the Apollo 11 anniversary. Nobody can outdo John Noble Wilford of the New York Times for his historic lede when the event happened: "Men have landed and walked on the moon." But my forgettable column from 1989 is a reminder of how fast time passes, for a man, for a nation.

You either got the space program or you didn't. I was a child of the Space Age, a rocket boy, minutely following every mission: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, as America raced the Soviets to the moon. I had NASA Facts films that the TV studio downtown had given me, sheaves of photos and publicity directly from the space agency, models of every rocket and spacecraft. I watched Neil Armstrong step out that July night in the company of my grandmother, a woman who had been born on the frontier, who had witnessed the invention of the automobile and the airplane — and now she had lived to see this.

It remains one of the most moving moments of my life. I also choke up re-reading about the Apollo 8 mission, with the revolutionary photo Earthrise, when humans first saw their precious blue planet from afar, alone in the vast emptiness of cold space. When the astronauts read from Genesis on Christmas Eve and concluded with, "And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth."

You get it or you don't. But either way, at what a remarkable place we find ourselves 40 years — 40 years! — out.

Jon Talton July 17, 20096

Phoenix

Cities and ‘markets’

Bashas' filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is a sad and telling marker for Arizona. You can forget about that downtown Phoenix store. And you can probably forget about Bashas', one of the state's last large, locally based and locally rooted companies.

Today's grocery company was founded in 1932, in the Great Depression, although its Arizona origins go deeper. That it may succumb in the Great Disruption is a tragic, but perhaps fitting bookend. I think of all the times I was out amidst the worst examples of unsustainable, desert-profaning sprawl, be it Gold Canyon, Hunt Highway or the insipid Verrado that was prematurely anointed the future by David Brooks of the New York Times. There would be a Bashas'. As the sprawl Ponzi scheme has collapsed, its not surprising that it takes down another vulnerable player.

This take-down is sadder than most. Bashas' has a great story: immigrant success, ties to Chandler when it was a real town, and keeping its base there even as the anodyne subdivisions encroached. Eddie and Nadine Basha have been civic leaders in a place where they are more rare than shade in mid-summer. This is an unforgiving business with razor-thin margins. If greater Phoenix ends up losing its only locally owned grocery chain — as, say, A.J.'s is sold off — it will only deepen the deep-bore mineshaft that is the hole the place is in.

Jon Talton July 13, 20098

Politics: National

Signed, sealed, delivered

Remember the Sarah Palin turkey moment? She had gone to "pardon" one bird ahead of Thanksgiving, and then, cluelessly or not, gave an on-camera interview while a slaughterhouse employee fed less fortunate beasts into a machine. Their heads were stuck into a funnel, their throats cut, and their blood drained.

The world is more complex than ever. Economic, social, geopolitical and military situations are full of nuance, contradiction and layers of gray. Still, I don't about you, but I am feeling more and more like one of those turkeys. Most of our necks are in that funnel, and the blood being drained out is the wealth of a whole society.

Where is it going? To ever-higher profit margins demanded by Wall Street. Profit margins that translate into greater wealth for an elite that makes its living off investments rather than wages. To the gamed market that is the world of politically powerful, highly concentrated industries, especially finance. And to tax cuts, the opiate of the duhs and ignos, that have become so deeply ingrained in our local, state and national polities that our society as we knew it is starting to collapse. Who, for example, would have thought 30 years ago that we would reach the point where we couldn't afford to keep Interstate rest areas open? Never mind that "we can't afford" the rail network found in other advanced nations, etc.

Jon Talton July 10, 20097

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Phoenix 101: Conservatives

Sen. Barry Goldwater, center, and Rep. John J. Rhodes, right, after the fateful showdown with President Nixon in 1974 when they told him he must resign.

Conservatism wasn't always synonymous with the Kookocracy. The political label has carried different meanings at different times through the state's history.

The Kooks down at the Capitol today would be anathema to the lions of the dawn of modern Arizona conservatism: John J. Rhodes, Paul Fannin and, especially, Barry Goldwater.

What later passed for Arizona conservatives could say, "Barry changed," when the senator criticized the religious right or the ban on gays in the military with his characteristic circumspection. No, he didn't. I had conversations with Rhodes late in his life — the House leader who, along with Goldwater and Republican Sen. Hugh Scott, told Richard Nixon he must resign the presidency. Rhodes was aghast at what the state Republicans had become.

Arizona conservative lions telling a disgraced president of their party it was time to go. Can you imagine John McCain or Jeff Flake showing such independence or integrity?

Jon Talton July 6, 20098

Uncategorized

Fresh posts resume July 7

In the meantime, read the Declaration of Independence for Independence Day (those of you who are not in the New Confederacy).

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When
in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and
to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such
has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Jon Talton July 2, 2009No Comments

Politics: National

While you were out

Obama's honeymoon, if it ever really existed — remember, not one House Republican voted for the stimulus — is over. Some have their theories as to the signs behind this turning point, but I have no doubt. It was the return of the Great American Freak Show, in the form of the wall-to-wall news coverage of the death of a song-and-dance man, once gifted, later creepy. If the triple-digit increase in television ratings are any sign, this is what you want from your news media. It is the "national conversation" you crave. Can a missing comely teenage blonde be far behind?

Obama's election gave us a moment of seriousness, to take stock of the troubles bearing down on us and make the urgent and consequential adjustments necessary to address them. Yet it is apparently not to be. Imagine if the outpouring for the song-and-dance man had been applied to universal healthcare or global warming? There would be no hopeless bottleneck in a Congress owned by big business, no Dianne Feinstein saying that criticism about healthcare legislation from the left "doesn't move her." No calling climate change a "hoax." As Paul Krugman pointed out in his Monday column, "The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists
expected…And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise
in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be
considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome
if we continue along our present course."

Our present course, sadly, is to find fresh distractions. If you care to take a moment, however, here's a bit of what you probably missed in the past few days, reported by that hopeless "old media."

Jon Talton June 30, 20092

Phoenix

The model modern city manager

One joke around Phoenix involving Frank Fairbanks was that he could never retire as city manager, because then all the scandals would come out. Of course, everybody loves Frank. Except for the ones who don't. Given the lack of curiosity and resources in the local press, we'll never know how true the joke might be. I never ran into evidence that Fairbanks was anything but clean. His problems were more complicated. Since most will be offering rapturous praise as Fairbanks is apparently stepping down, a more serious assessment is necessary.

The zeitgeist of Frank Fairbanks' City Hall was to move across the waters without making waves. He was not a creative thinker or a risk-taker — think of the guy on the Shredded Wheat ad who says, "We put the 'no' in innovation." His career spent with the city led to an unavoidable parochialism, along with perhaps a fatalism that the city's trajectory couldn't be changed, or a willingness to drink the booster Kool-Aid by the gallon. He was in an awkward spot in a systemically dysfunctional city government, mostly trying to keep the peace, even as Phoenix hit a grave turning point. All this would have profound consequences for Phoenix and its future.

Jon Talton June 25, 20092

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: The Mormons

The Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mesa.

Growing up in Arizona, I found the Mormons neither strange nor mysterious, much less threatening. They were part of the wonderful mosaic of a state still tasting of the frontier, before it had been overrun by immigrants from the Midwest and miles of lookalike crapola subdivisions.

We had a Book of Mormon in our library, more a testament to my mother's insatiable curiosity than any desire to convert. My great-grandparents were among the first non-LDS farmers to settle near Mesa, and Grandmother reveled in telling the story about how the Saints pestered them to convert and "seal" their marriage in the temple, much to the horror of these former Presbyterian missionaries. But it was a story told gently and with affection for all.

The Mormons were revered among the great Arizona pioneers. They were known for their generosity, including to "gentiles," something our family experienced. Mormons were hard-working, reliable, self-reliant, patrons of education and the arts. Mesa in those days was a beautiful small city, a monument to the energy and far-sightedness of its LDS founders. We would regularly drive down neat and prosperous Main Street to see the beautiful Arizona Temple. The Mormon kids with whom I went to high school were among the most talented in one of the country's top high-school fine arts program.

The Mormons were also powerful. That was clear even at an early age.

Jon Talton June 23, 200915

Politics: National

America becalmed

For all the vigor projected by our appealing president, America sits strangely stuck. Healthcare reform seems all but dead. Even the whateverthehellitmeans "public option" is struggling. Tom Daschle, who proved such a formidable leader for the Democrats during the onset of the Bush calamity, is urging President Obama to drop it. There just aren't the votes in the Senate. Indeed, the Democrats seem in a dead run to lose the next election, which would be a certainty if a credible opposition party existed.

It's easy for the senators to be complacent. They are deep in the pockets of the healthcare and insurance industries. The wife of Sen. Chris Dodd earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and stock grants serving on the boards of Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cardiome Pharma Corp., Brookdale Senior Living, and Pear Tree Pharmaceuticals. And Dodd is one of the good guys? Daschle has his own conflicts. The for-profit medical and insurance industries, along with the U.S. Chamber and assorted business lobbyists can bring hundreds of millions of dollars to bear to maintain the status quo. The only people who think this is a good idea are the diminishing ranks of Americans who have good insurance. The suffering and fear of everyone else has no political power. Meanwhile, the media hype the costs of single-payer (ignoring that America pays twice as much for its system as any advanced nation) and the alleged horror stories of rationing abroad. Can you believe this trick is working?

The same Democrats who won a historic election are struggling to enact the mildest of measures to limit greenhouse gases, even as the government issues a historic assessment of the consequences we are already seeing and will see from climate change. The Southwest can kiss its ass goodbye. So can the Southeast, including the exurban office "park" where the rat bastards at NCR are moving, stabbing Dayton, Ohio, in the back.

Jon Talton June 19, 20097

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Rugged individualism

Phoenix is built on many myths. Perhaps the greatest is that of the rugged individualist, standing in opposition to the statist and collectivist tendencies of "the East" and Europe. It's a familiar myth of the West, but it reaches levels of hilarious dissonance in my hometown.

In reality, Phoenix is the largest-scale example of government social engineering and public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy — i.e. socialism — in American history. Without massive government intervention, Phoenix would be a benighted little farm town of a few thousand, instead of a benighted migropolis of some 4 million, many raging along the public highways in their SUVs imagining themselves as 21st century range riders.

Modern Phoenix began with federal reclamation, the Newlands Act, which would begin the dam building that tamed the Salt River. It envisioned a Jeffersonian yeoman farmer democracy, with plots of 160 acres cultivated by citizens liberated from the dark satanic cities of the East. It didn't quite work out that way — rich farmers emerged and poor farmers (like my family) struggled. But all were being subsidized by federal tax dollars long before the New Deal. Their endeavors would not have been possible without the federal investment.

Jon Talton June 16, 20095

Politics: National

No we can’t?

Spring runs out and the American republic celebrates its societal strength and political will by regulating tobacco. That'll show the tobacco companies, long past their period of influence, and the diminishing ranks of smokers, primarily made up of the poor and disenfranchised.

Meanwhile, 10 big banks have begun repaying their bailout money to the taxpayers. Their primary reason is not to do the right thing or return to the business of funding productive enterprise. It is to gain the freedom to jack up the compensation of their 25 top executives. Like the Bourbons, the big bankers have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Unlike Big Tobacco, they not only retain their political clout — defeating an effort to regulate dangerous derivatives — but seem to largely run the federal government.

The consequences of this are manifold. The institutions that were "too big to fail" should have taught us that they are too big to exist. Instead, they have grown even larger. The secrecy of the Bush administration that led us into the Iraq fiasco has become the secrecy of the Geithner-Summers-Bernanke administration. We have only the tiniest sense of where the trillions in bailout money and "lending facilities" went, or who scratched the back of whom. We know, for example, that tax money went to help AIG repay Goldman Sachs which repaid…? You get the picture. Meanwhile, real unemployment is at least 16 percent, and millions may never regain their old earning power. Some may never be employable again outside of Wal-Mart.

Jon Talton June 12, 20094

Phoenix Phoenix 101: History

Phoenix 101: Lost opportunities

My chief goal in writing the Phoenix 101 post about the old city was to dispel the notion that “there’s no history here,” spoken by the transplants as they file into the tract houses of their so-called master planned communities. More, to fight the canard that “Phoenix has no soul.” Well, maybe now in most places, but it wasn’t always so. Yet the post was so popular, it seems logical to follow up with a brief history on choices made and opportunities missed.

It’s important to make a distinction. People have sometimes dismissed my observations with words such as “well, everyplace changes” and “my hometown isn’t the same any more, either.” At the risk of being pedantic, that’s not my point. First, while every place changes, it doesn’t necessarily change mostly for the worse. Cities such as Seattle, Portland, Denver, Charlotte, San Diego and even Oklahoma City have undergone massive changes. Yet they have managed to preserve and revive their center cities, their civic spaces and enhance livability (and they have plenty of suburbs, so Phoenix isn’t special there). I miss the old railroad yards in downtown Denver – but what an amazing city it is now. It’s gotten better. Second, Phoenix is not just any city – so who cares if it’s no worse than Fresno or Youngstown? It sold its magic for dross. And its choices have set the stage for crisis, whether sudden or lingering.

Much was out of the control of Phoenicians and their leaders. Phoenix grew large after the City Beautiful Movement, so it lacked many great civic spaces; it was a modest farm town during the 1920s, so it had relatively few art deco towers. Worst of all, it came of age with the automobile, Levittown-style suburbia, and the savage city planning and dehumanizing design ethos of Robert Moses and Le Corbusier. Still, Phoenix made choices. It lost opportunities. Here are a few.

Jon Talton June 9, 20095