'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
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1The New York Times is a fine newspaper, but it has its blind spots. Its reporting on energy is often incomplete or downright wrong. The latter sin was not in evidence when it finally reported on the popularity of Amtrak. What’s frustrating is what the article left out or left unsaid, which makes it harder to achieve some results beyond our transportation system frozen in 1965 (and we had more trains then).
From the article:
Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it
carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May
is not usually a strong travel month.
But the railroad, and its
suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial
constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet
the demand.
And:
The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles”
traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960,
and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also
shrunk, making it hard to expand.
Only late in the story is a glancing reference made to Amtrak’s fate being tied to the whims of the federal government, and late late in the story the Times admits their boy crush President-elect McCain "was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee." Indeed he wants to abolish it.
Let’s fill in some of the blanks so Americans might have some options beyond expensive and congested driving, and airlines that treat passengers like cattle.
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No CommentsNews 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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1Seattle is so generous to the homeless that it’s known as "Freeattle." So it’s not surprising that in this lovely, liberal city there would be protests over recent sweeps to remove homeless camps from greenbelts and underpasses. The city claims the camps are unsanitary and unsafe. The protesters say there are not enough shelters.
To be sure, the homeless here are not as obnoxious as in San Francisco. Even the People’s Republic of Berkeley has had second thoughts about doing nothing to address panhandling and defecating on sidewalks. Phoenix, which offers a harsh minimum of services, eased somewhat in recent years by a services campus pushed by some business leaders, still attracts a huge homeless population.
My personal reaction to this has changed in recent years. Based on my street experience as an ambulance medic, I knew panhandlers would just go buy drugs or booze. So I never gave money. Once I started reading the Bible with more diligence, I changed my behavior. Now I always give money. This is just me. And it doesn’t represent a societal answer.
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No CommentsThe Wall Street Journal took a look at what it calls a "big daily’s hyperlocal flop," as the Washington Post poured resources into creating a "local-local" product for an affluent county.
For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save
newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July
was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic
powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town
square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and
fastest-growing counties.Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still
searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another
venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post
executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal
news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.
This was sadly predictable, and indicative of the group-think that is causing newspapers to commit suicide.
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No CommentsIt’s clear that President-elect McCain will run with this major theme: Barack Obama is not qualified to be president because he didn’t serve in the military. For example, when Obama praised McCain’s service and wondered why he refused to support the new GI Bill, McCain shot back, "I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his
responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my
regard for those who did."
The "religious test" prohibited by the Constitution has been seriously eroded by modern politics. But what McCain implies is more dangerous still to the future of the nation: that only soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are really qualified to lead the nation, particularly in wartime.
So many contradictions and hypocrisies here. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Roosevelt were veterans, yet they led the nation in the two world wars. And where was McCain’s outrage over the neo-con chicken-hawks who took draft deferments during Vietnam, notably Dick Cheney (five deferments). Obama was a child during Vietnam. And what of the swift-boated John Kerry?
But the biggest concerns cut to the core of the American republic. They could reveal McCain not merely as a misinformed and misguided candidate, but a potentially dangerous one.
No CommentsA 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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