Aux barricades?
Posted inPolitics: National

Aux barricades?

Paris_2006-02-11_anti-caricature_protest_Coran_dsc07547
Thought exercise: Which will destroy France first — Islam or Anglo-Saxon hyper-capitalism?

An American looks at the size of the French population that is Muslim (7.5 percent) and laughs. There are probably as many Muslims in metropolitan Phoenix.

And yet for all its claims to universal values — Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité — France is a distinct and largely closed civilization. Had I moved to Paris at age eighteen and stayed (merveillaux!), I would still never be considered a Frenchman. The barrier is so much higher for people from France's one-time colony of Algeria and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

The United States is a credal nation, unusual in the world. Thus, the ethnic group that was so reviled more than a century ago that it provoked the largest mass lynching in American history now includes governors, senators, mayors, Supreme Court justices — even the immigrant-hating High Sheriff of Maricopa County. Pretty much only on America.

In the aftermath of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, much of France is rallying to prove its intention to remain an open society welcoming to immigrants. But not all. Marine Le Pen's right-wing party that wants to halt immigration has gained from the bloodshed. Questions are being raised elsewhere in Europe, too.

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Posted inPhoenix

‘The Mexican Detroit’

Talk about burying the lede. Last week's Arizona Republic story on the Census started out by reporting on how "Hispanics led Arizona's changing population over the past decade." It's only if one reads deeper, which most people don't, that the real news is found. This was the decade in which Phoenix set its trajectory to become a "majority minority" city. Phoenix added 140,000 Hispanic residents — and this is the official number, for a Census taken during the white-right and the Badged Ego's persecution of brown people. The city also saw the Anglo population decline by 64,000.

Read that again. Read it a third time, and realize, along with the failure to maintain the fifth-largest city position, that Phoenix has finally reached perhaps the most profound tipping point in its history.

You know that during the boom, I was told by more than one smug north Scottsdale toff that "Phoenix will become the Mexican Detroit." My response was usually along the lines of, "We'll be the center of the most important industry in the world, with high-skilled and high-paid jobs, and the richness of Hispanic culture to boot? Sign me up." Or, being a realist about the disaster that has pummeled Detroit for decades, "Do you think that will be good for your property values, even up in Troon North?" They didn't care. I do.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

The Arizona syndrome

Arizona Democrats may have thought they were on a roll in recent years, at least in congressional elections. Harry Mitchell beat J.D. Hayworth in a solid red district and Gabrielle Giffords won a swing seat. Much of that was actually anti-Bush, anti-J.D. sentiment. Now Arizona seems poised to rejoin the South and most of the Plains and Intermountain West states as solidly red. My recent sojourn to my home state did nothing to dissuade me from this view. Many Democrats are dispirited. The party lacks the infrastructure of the right — from "think tanks" and big corporate money to endless right-wing talk radio. In a state with a fairly recent past of vigorous two-party competition, the Democrats were largely asleep as the extreme Republican right took control from the ground up, starting with school boards and obscure boards, eventually taking commanding power in the Legislature, by far the most powerful branch of government.

This is a crying shame for Terry Goddard. I heard the meme of "he thinks he deserves to be governor because his old man was." Far from it. Goddard is the most qualified candidate, a smart, open-minded public servant who has earned his way in elective office and actually did the most to attack border crime. The Democrats have a number of excellent candidates for statewide races, including David Lujan, Andrei Cherny and my old colleague and friend John Dougherty. They stand little chance against the vast capacity of the right. Mitchell and Giffords may well go down.

The big weapon against the Dems is, of course, SB 1070, the Jim Crow anti-immigrant bill.

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Posted inUncategorized

Learning from the Lone Star State

If anyone thought the Sun Belt was in danger from the Great Disruption, they can find swaggering solace in The Economist's panting, sheet-clawing passion over Texas, in an article headlined Lone Star Rising. The teaser says, "Thanks to low taxes and light regulation, Texas is booming. But demography will bring profound changes."

The Economist's journalism is often some of the best around, and even its editorials can challenge the psychotic screamathon that has become American "conservatism." But it can't completely escape its Tory establishment roots, or its intellectual grounding in the conventional wisdom, BGD — Before the Great Disruption. I don't doubt that America, and probably Britain, will exhaust themselves trying to resuscitate the old order. That will render it no less dead than the ubiquitous armadillos decorating the highways of Texas.

American right-wingers are no doubt sending the article to the faithful — and using it to further cow the Democrats, if such a thing is possible. But a close reading of even this article — and a better understanding of Texas — shows that the Lone Star State's success has relatively little to do with "low taxes and light regulation." I speak as one who covered organized crime and the oil industry there, and whose family roots go back to the bloody pre-Civil War Texas frontier.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Who is this ‘maverick’ I keep hearing about?

Every time I hear the media say Sen. John McCain "of Arizona" it makes me crazy. McCain has done as little for Arizona as possible and it shows. The state is Mississippi in the Southwest, an Appalachia with golf courses, the epicenter of a brewing socio-environmental calamity. It is a place frighteningly behind in the competitive world of the 21st century, however much it provides a haven for a certain kind of rich person and, until recently, for real-estate players. Arizona was never anything but a national political platform for McCain.

If McCain had been governor, his apathy would be an especially tempting target. Even so, as a senator he has done as little as possible in education, research, transportation, health care, the environment…the list goes on and on. Most days one wondered if Arizona even had senators representing it, rather than trying to be national political figures.

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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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