Posted inPolitics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Obama and immigration

Some initial impressions on President Obama's immigration plan:

1. We have become so cynical that the talking heads, especially, can't imagine a leader doing something mostly for the decency of it. Yet this is likely Mr. Obama's prime motivation. Whites make up 75 percent of the electorate and anti-"amnesty" Anglos vote while too many potentially Democratic Hispanics don't. So it's a political loser.

2. Despite similar precedents set by Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Republicans will try to impeach Obama or otherwise act out. They can't stop themselves.

I moderated a panel of eminent China experts last night. One of the consistent themes is how our dysfunctional government sends the message to Beijing to not take us seriously, or to make a dangerous miscalculation.

3. Mr. Obama's limited overhaul doesn't address the core problems: Our appetite for cheap labor; the way trade agreements disrupted traditional economies and drew workers el norte; bad governance in Mexico and much of central America, and the fact that too many American employers and even average Americans are satisfied with the status quo.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

SB 1070 deconstructed

I received an email from a friend, or perhaps a lost friend, over my most recent post. I urge you to read it in full because it represents a viewpoint widely held by suburban Anglos. Here it is:

Jon: check your facts. Russell  Pearce was the
sponsor of SB 1070. Most of the text for SB 1070 was written by Kris
Kobach, a law professor and important figurehead with the Federation of American
Immigration Reform.  Russell Pearce was not voted out of office by the
Mormons. He was voted out of office by the Hispanics who know he
sponsored SB 1070. SB 1070 was written after James Krentz, a rancher
in southern Arizona was killed on his own ranch by illegals.

All of the Arizonans I know are not against immigration. They
are against illegal immigration. Big difference. As you know I grew up in South America, specifically Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. I did not come back to the States until I was a teenager and I can report first hand that immigration laws in all of the other countries I have been in are very tough compared to the U.S.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Will SB 1070 help or hurt?

On Sunday, the Information Center published a 573-word story, accompanied by many graphic and break-out doo-dads, asking: "Will SB 1070 help or hurt the economy." The lede: "Arizona's new immigration law will likely affect a sizable swath of the state's economy, but experts are uncertain whether it will bring overall economic gains or end up scarring the state with losses." I know one thing: These kind of shallow stories are among the many self-inflicted wounds killing journalism. Oh, I forgot, Gannett doesn't do journalism, it is an "information broker."

An old hand once told me, "Immigration isn't the most difficult dilemma facing America. It's worse." It is a result of Americans' insatiable addiction to cheap labor. But it is part of a far more complex set of phenomena involving a Third World nation bordering the First World superpower; globalization's destruction of Mexico's peasant economy; mass migrations on a scale never before seen on an overpopulated planet; corporate greed amid a worldwide glut of labor, and billions of poor living without hope but primed for instability and extremism. The topic deserves at least the kind of sophisticated work done early last decade by The Arizona Republic with the "Dying to Work" series.

The overwhelming evidence is that SB 1070 will be a net economic loser for a state already in a depression. The most comprehensive national work on the public costs of illegals vs. their output for the economy has been done by UCLA's Raul Hinojosa. The verdict: The aliens are a net positive. Nowhere is this more true than Arizona. The anti-immigrant bill is already dearly costing the crucial tourism industry from boycotts. Its explicit political extremism will deter capital formation and investments by quality corporations. To the extent that it causes an exodus of illegal immigrants, it will further erode the tax base, for those aliens pay a disproportionate share of their incomes to Arizona's regressive tax system. Most will stay, even deeper in the shadows and out of the mainstream, adding to the state's lost human capital and talent. Most important is this: No low-wage, easily exploitable migrant labor force, no Growth Machine.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Arizona depression II

My favorite hotel, adjacent to the Willo Historic District, is full. Two large conventions are downtown. This was all booked before Arizona passed its Jim Crow anti-immigration law. Now every restaurant owner and person associated with the tourism industry I speak with is terrified about the growing backlash against the state. Many here are outraged about boycott calls. But it's fair game: Without the boycott, Gandhi, King and Chavez would not have had a key weapon against a grave moral injustice. I wish people would boycott by legislative district, while spending money and time in central Phoenix and Tucson, as well as with Hispanic- and progressive-owned local businesses. The rocks come with the farm, and the residents of the state allowed the Kookocracy to run wild, not only with SB 1070 but a host of madness.

Phoenix is in trouble anyway. Mayor Phil Gordon, a good man who loves the city and came into office seven years ago amid such hope, seems adrift. The composition of the city council has changed and for the first time since the reforming Charter Government movement took power six decades ago is becoming politicized. The ability to do the big things accomplished by Skip Rimsza and seen through by Gordon appears gone. Huge swaths of the city look like Dresden after the rubble had been carted away. The largest business, based on signage, remains "Available." Light rail (we built it, you bastards) is a big success; for example, I see many guests at the hotel taking it to restaurants, the convention center or to and from Sky Harbor. Yet the fiscal crisis is causing cuts in frequency, which will hurt ridership. The bus system has already been reduced to service levels seen in small cities.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Roll over, Gene Pulliam

The Arizona Republic on Sunday published a remarkable front-page editorial concerning the pile of feces into which the state has done a face-plant, otherwise known as its attempt to "address" illegal immigration. It was not remarkable for its placement — old-time newspaper publishers often did page-one opinion pieces, perhaps most famously the Republic's own Eugene C. Pulliam. Rather, this article, pretty as it was with the paper's current obsession with design, proved astonishing in its intellectual shallowness, dishonesty and desperate pretzel-twisting to cast "blame" equally in every direction. And all the while demanding "leaders." Rarely has an institution in the broad land of vapid corporate newspapers made such a gaudy display of its daft cowardliness. One is reminded of Lincoln's line: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"Old Man Pulliam," who ran the Republic and Phoenix Gazette for decades, occasionally published — and even wrote, for he was a newspaperman to his marrow — thundering page-one editorials. They were not intended to compete in the Society for News Design. They were sometimes long, always trenchantly and even intellectually argued. I recall one from the late '60s (I believe) that was a fierce jeremiad against rising government bureaucracy. You always knew where his newspaper stood. Pulliam was a man of the right but he would not be allowed into today's Republican Party or corporate journalism club. He was too independent, endorsing LBJ over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and renouncing the idea of a newspaper as merely a business. It is said he wrote a trust to prevent the sale of his beloved papers to the likes of Gannett, but that's another story.

There's no doubt that were he alive today and running the Republic, he and his famed investigative reporters would make short work of Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

On the border

By Emil Pulsifer

Guest Rogue

Whatever your position on
the difficult issue of immigration, looming events make the need for
comprehensive immigration reform more important than ever, for America as a
whole and for Arizona in particular.  Mexico's proven oil reserves
are dwindling fast and may be exhausted at the current rate of production
within less than ten years: the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
estimates that Mexico will become a net oil importer by 2017.

Why is this a source of
concern for America in general and Arizona in particular?

First, is the fact
that Mexico has consistently been one of the top three sources of
America's imported oil (with Canada and Saudi Arabia). As of late 2009,
Mexico was the second largest source of America's imported oil. More importantly from the
standpoint of immigration policy is the reality that oil exports constitute
Mexico's largest source of legal revenues (about 40 percent); second to
this, and larger than tourism, are the remittances sent home by immigrants
working in foreign countries (chiefly the United States).  Remittances
are, in fact, so large a component of Mexico's economy, that they constitute a
peculiar form of foreign investment. So, barring rosy developments in
Mexico's oil industry, and unless the United States takes an even greater
nosedive than Mexico is going to in coming years, expect massive immigration,
on a scale to make the recent wave look puny, within a decade.

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Posted inPhoenix

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix

Phoenix, the nation's fifth-largest city, hasn't had a newspaper since 2007. I'm not being snarky. The storied, beloved and hated Arizona Republic was replaced by The Information Center. Its owner Gannett was very clear about this when the change was made. Staffers were told over and over: "We're not a newspaper anymore." It shows.

That's too bad, because troubled places, corruption, exploitation of the weak and the crushing of fair play thrive when there's no real newspaper. Wal-Mart quit the despicable practice of taking out insurance policies — payable to the company — on its minimum-wage, part-time workers only when the practice was reported by the Wall Street Journal. Exposing wrongs in a complex world, and explaining that world, usually takes highly trained, highly motivated, intensely curious veteran journalists. Such work can't be done by "crowd-sourcing" or "citizen journalists" or any of the cheap fads publishers have used to get rid of their cranky, higher-paid intellectual capital. Some fine journalists remain at The Information Center, but they are rarely allowed to really follow their calling, especially upon a growing herd of sacred cows.

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix. One to write hard-news-put-'em-in-jail investigative journalism. One to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. To report the news and raise hell. To dig through court, government and business records, and cultivate deep, authoritative sources. To illuminate and hold accountable the most dominant institutions. If it existed, I can think of ten major stories to get it started:

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Posted inPolitics: National

When we say NAFTA, what do we really mean?

NAFTA figured heavily into the Democratic primary in Ohio, yet most of the news coverage and the debates themselves proved unsatisfying. We were served the canard that NAFTA helps consumers but hurt manufacturing jobs. NPR made it sound as if the trade agreement’s consequences are ancient history. The Democrats were more muted on NAFTA in Texas, where Laredo has boomed as a trade port.

Of course, NAFTA is a proxy for trade liberalization and globalization. China has hurt Ohio manufacturing more than Mexico. So, too, have the domestic automakers, undergirding the state economy, that continue to make boring, homely cars that fewer Americans want to buy.

But the real issue goes deeper even than that, and any fixes will be problematic. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make them.

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John F. Long, a builder of modern Phoenix, dies at 87
Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

John F. Long, a builder of modern Phoenix, dies at 87

John_F_LongIt is a sign of the cluelessness of the children hired by the Arizona Republic that its headline online says, “Valley philanthropist John F. Long dies at 87.” It’s a little like saying “Former cowboy actor Ronald Reagan dies.” Fortunately the obituary is in the hands of one of the few graybeards that haven’t been run out by “the information center,” Chuck Kelly.

John F. Long was a towering figure among the giants who built Phoenix from a small farm town into the nation’s fifth largest city. With Maryvale, he not only brought affordable, pleasant suburbia to post-war Phoenix, he paved the way for thousands of ex-GIs to own their homes. He was an innovator of national consequence, but unlike some who followed him in Phoenix development, he stayed close to his roots. He was a civic steward, city councilman, a man who loved to tend his burros in retirement and whose life was rich in stories and lore. And yes, he was also a philanthropist.

Long’s life also paralleled the rise and decline of the post-war automobile suburb.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Ground zero in the illegal immigration nightmare

For the second time in two weeks, the New York Times has produced major stories on Phoenix and illegal immigration (read the stories here and here). It’s about time the nation took notice of Phoenix’s second largest industry (after house building): people smuggling. Many of the immigrants that staff the chicken plants of North Carolina and the meat-packing plants of the upper plains states came through Phoenix.

This industry has caused a low-intensity war to be fought on the streets of Phoenix and its suburbs for several years, recently leading to the gunning down of a police officer. Of the millions who have gone through the city, many have settled. A third of the city is officially Hispanic, but the real numbers are probably far larger and many are illegal. Meanwhile, the Anglo population, whether from the Midwest or from Arizona, has increasingly rebelled against the influx. Arizona has passed some of the most draconian laws against illegals, and the state is full of anti-Hispanic sentiment, much of expressed in the most thuggish manner (check out any blog or story comment on the Arizona Republic if you doubt me).

But the situation is complex and contradictory. It’s not rocket science. It’s much, much more complicated.

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Posted inPhoenix

What I didn’t write at the Arizona Republic

People kept telling me they couldn’t believe I got away with what I wrote as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. I identified and questioned the vast power of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. While most of the local media were mindless boosters, I discussed the serious challenges to the state’s economy (which are coming true) and indeed to its future as a quality place to live (ditto). How, hundreds of readers asked, did I keep my job?

In the end I didn’t, of course. But for nearly seven years, I offered one of the few alternatives to local cheerleading and media growthgasms. And I was the only one to keep a sustained focus on economic, social and environmental issues — and how they were all tied together.

And yet, dear readers, I pulled my punches nearly every time I wrote.

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