Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Travels: Ohio and Arizona

A vague sadness hangs over the Ohio countryside, even though the trees hang on to their last vestiges of summer green. I flew into Cleveland’s airport last week. This was once one of America’s largest cities, and even though the airport remains a hub for Continental Airlines, the place has the feel of a small, regional terminal. The nice part is that people are nicer in a less crazed and crowded setting, but I keep asking myself, "this is Cleveland?"

Yes. I can see the changes as we drive out of town, on the way to my conference at Kent State University. Buildings that held large businesses a decade ago sit empty. The big Ford plant sits looking vulnerable. While I was there, Eaton, the city’s largest Fortune 500 headquarters, announced it was leaving downtown for the suburbs. This is a downtown that has revived itself well and is a transit hub. Yet the Eaton bigs seem oblivious to the future of higher gas prices, as well as shameful as stewards of their hometown. Everybody talks about how bad the economy is, with high unemployment and job insecurity. The change in the vibe of this state from a decade ago is so real and raw you can’t miss it. No wonder Ohioans threw out the Republicans — the party that wrecked America — in 2006. And yet, McCain has an edge if the polls are to be believed, and one wonders.

Still, Ohio is a state synonymous with white flight and de facto segregation. Apart from some successful downtowns and a few still-lovely upper-class neighborhoods, the big cities are heavily black, while their numerous suburbs are white. It’s a class thing, but it’s also a race thing. And it may well be that Ohioans won’t vote for a black man. How they think Republican John Sidney McCain III, continuing the policies of 25 years of "conservatism," will help them is beyond me. But these are emptional responses beyond the reach of rational persuasion.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Barely avoiding economic judgment day, maybe

I’ve been traveling this week as the American financial markets came as close to collapse as at anytime since 1929. And make no mistake: this disaster is real, it will unfold in unexpected ways, and it won’t be an event that is over quickly such as in 1987 — or even the S&L scandal. Some early takes:

–It would be ironic if Republican John Sidney McCain III were elected and George W. Bush left one positive legacy by stabilizing the meltdown — the "let the markets rule" so-called conservatives, who saved the day thanks to mechanisms put in place by Woodrow Wilson, FDR and successive liberals. If we didn’t have tools such as the Fed, FDIC, SEC, etc. — this could have been a calamity on the order of the "panics" of the 19th century, with worldwide contagion.

–This event should totally discredit the deregulation, market-religion ideas pursued over the past 25 years — it is the direct result of these policies. But maybe not. The administration may use unprecedented intervention to save capitalism, and then go back to their Milton Friedman sock-puppet talking points. And the duhs and ignos won’t care — Obama’s black, remember?

–Gee, remember when W intended to "spend his political capital" privatizing Social  Security into the toxic investment bank dumps that are now failing? Republican John Sidney McCain III still wants to do this.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Can candidate Hoover fool us again?

John Sidney McCain III said today "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," sounding exactly like Herbert Hoover after the crash of 1929. The parallels are interesting. Republican policies largely caused the Great Depression. Hoover had done honorable and even miraculous work before the presidency (feeding World War I refugees). He was a progressive Republican but became a reactionary. The biggest similarity, besides "the fundamentals" lines, is that the world had passed both men by. The world had become too complex for their remedies or policies. They were/are overwhelmed. Except Hoover didn’t have Karl Rove, "the base" (which interestingly translates in Arabic as al Queda) and so many ignorant, easily led voters.

On the other hand, maybe the key word in McCain’s statement is "our" economy. As in the economy represented by his rich friends and supporters, the nationless corporate oligarchy and his Treasury secretary-to-be, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (also prime architect of banking and Wall Street deregulation). He of the "nation of whiners" and "mental recession." For them, the winners at a time when income inequality is worse than anytime since before the crash of ’29, the economy is strong. So maybe unlike his campaign of late, McCain actually spoke the truth.

The recession that’s all in our heads claimed two of the most powerful and influential investment banks in the world over the weekend. Anybody who claims to tell you what will happen next — much less that the worst has passed — is about as reliable as all those telephone mortgage chislers during the housing bubble. What is more clear is how it happened, and, perhaps, some of the ramifications.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Don’t get depressed — Get mad

Here’s my advice to Obama supporters: Turn off the television. Put away the depression. Get mad and get active. The race is far from over unless there has already been a stealth coup in this country — a subject for a future column. The Republicans are the party that wrecked America — and McCain and Palin are Republican to the core. They’re counting on Americans to be stupid and easily manipulated. Obama is counting on us to be smarter than that, to be Americans, a people who once were never "easily led" by demagogues.

I don’t trust the corporate media, especially the electronic kind. I don’t trust the polls. They are trying to game the outcome. The "economic royalists," to use FDR’s term, were never going to give up power easily — nor was the military industrial complex. I never doubted that the conservative base would come "home" eventually, or that this would be a close election. And there’s the elephant in the room: will enough white Americans vote for a black man?

It’s interesting to recall that, unlike many other democratic countries, America once had two mass parties. Republicans and Democrats had liberal and conservative wings. In 1936, for example, Gov. Alf Landon was a liberal Republican challenging FDR, and might have made a race of it had not his campaign been co-opted by the reactionaries in the GOP.

Now only one mass party remains: the Democrats.

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Posted inPolitics: National

McCain mobilizes, and cows, his ‘base’

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." — Gore Vidal

"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the
reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the
world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality.’ " — Ron Suskind

"This election is not about issues. This election is
about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." — Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager

Unfortunately Vidal is probably wrong, considering that most Americans get their tiny bits of information from television. Davis may well be right, despite the critical issues facing the country, and that his campaign is running to continue the very Bush-Cheney "faith-based" policies that created the disaster of the past eight years.

This is the background you need to understand the successful McCain effort to cow the corporate media into submission in the final weeks before the election. Remember that McCain called the big-time media "his base" and there’s been a long love-fest between them. But the old fighter jock will now slap around and intimidate his love — and many Americans will approve. It will be the Rovian tactic that puts the race within stealing distance, if not produce an outright McCain victory.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Napolitano’s mojo: You can’t lose what you never had

The news story begins, "Has Janet Napolitano lost her mojo?" And I am thinking about how the older core readers, loyal but constantly abused by the newspaper, are wondering, "What the hell is a mojo?" In any event, it continues:

Unthinkable even a year ago, the question is circulating among some of
the governor’s watchers at the Capitol. They’re struck by an
administration seemingly put on its heels by a stumbling state economy,
rash of key staff departures and, most recently, the disqualification
from the November ballot of her two most favored initiatives.

What was unthinkable until Monday was that the Arizona Republic would ever print anything even mildly critical of the governor, aside from the dreary sameness of the protected Republican political op on the editorial page. Napolitano was close friends with former publisher Sue Clark-Johnson. This, along with the Republic’s war against having experienced journalists consistently cover state government (or any beat), ensured that the governor would be treated with something like uninformed reverence.

The reality is that Napolitano never stood astride state government like a colossus. The faded "glory days" mentioned in the story were neither glorious nor had much to do with her. Nor did she have "absolute dominance" over the Legislature. The reality is more complex, and more interesting.

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Posted inPolitics: National

On the convention: Will Obama be FDR or Bryan?

Let me begin my convention observations by saying: I don’t trust the media. Whatever the Democrats and Obama do, it will be "the wrong thing" per the corporate media narrative. He still hasn’t "sealed the deal" and "closed the sale." He "lacks specifics" — a lie — and if he provided more, they would be instant red meat. If 75,000 people in the stadium hear one of the great speeches of our time — as happened in Philadelphia on the race issue — it will be swept away by the coiffed broomheads of television pundits.

As Michelle’s speech confirmed, the Obama’s have done everything the "conservatives" demand of black folks — and they’re still "foreign." He’s a celebrity — that’s bad. Americans "don’t know who he is" — as if they know who the hell John McCain is. He’s "not one of us" — as if that has any meaning in an America of diverse life paths, or that a former POW, longtime right-wing capo and rich consort of a beer heiress is "one of us." "One of us" is a stupid person, as the media would have it — because, after all, education and the ability to speak in complete sentences = elitism.

The best way to watch the convention is on CSPAN, so you hear all the speeches, not merely the prime-time ones that are filtered and "interpreted" by the bubbleheads. Of course, most Americans don’t do this. So they watch the prime-time spectacle as the Democrats try, again, to figure out how to beat the Republicans. Somehow eight years of misgovernment on an unprecedented scale isn’t enough. Nor is the obvious failure/scam that is "conservative ideas" in action. The right has wrecked the country and yet the presidential polls, if they are to be believed, show Obama struggling to stay even.

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Posted inPhoenix

How Denver beat the odds and saved itself

As the Democratic National Convention begins in Denver, the world will see the First City of the Intermountain West. It’s not Phoenix (population 1.5 million; metro 4.1 million), which sits in its desert frying pan like an overweight couch potato. It is Denver (pop. 567,000; metro 2.9 million). It’s another reminder that population alone is more likely to mean problems than strength. Let me tell you about one of my adopted hometowns.

Delegates will see a sparkling downtown and central city that have made a remarkable comeback from their fading 1980s. It’s genuine live-work-play. They can ride one of the best light-rail systems in the country, soon to be muscled up with commuter and light rail reaching more than 100 additional miles; the hub will be historic Union Station. Lovely old neighborhoods close to the core have been preserved and revived. Miles of bike and walking paths, including along Cherry Creek, flow seamlessly into a walkable, dense downtown. Nearby, the Cherry Creek district is a delightful walkable shopping area.

This city that sits at the edge of the arid Great Plains (it was the Queen City of the Plains before the Mile High City) is blessed with shady streets and gorgeous parks. It’s rich in culture, with a superb performing arts center and art museum, and edge, with many galleries, coffee houses and warehouse spaces. Chain stores and local stores, historic architecture and avant-garde, sit side by side along 16th Street and in lively Lower Downtown. Four pro sports teams play in downtown stadiums, which only enhanced the move to preserve historic buildings full of real businesses, and add to the downtown population. Where the old Stapleton Airport once stood is one of the nation’s top New Urbanist developments.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Why the McCain house gaffe matters

President-elect McCain’s inability to recall how many houses he owns fits into a larger and more troubling pattern. The problem is not just that he is an out-of-touch rich guy.

This is the candidate who repeatedly confused Shiite and Sunni — all the while trumpeting his expertise on the Middle East. At one point, his sock puppet Joe Lieberman had to whisper the facts in his ear. He couldn’t tell Sudan from Somalia. He kept talking about a nation that hasn’t existed for years. Iraq and Pakistan share a border, the senator wrongly said, and the Sunni awakening happened ‘after’ the surge (edited out by CBS). He said he didn’t know much about economics, then denied saying such a thing. He spoke of a withdrawal timetable one day, then denied saying it later. He volunteered Cindy for a topless contest. Then there was the stupendous dead space and mumbling when he was questioned about claiming Obama was playing the race card.  He claimed he walked through Baghdad without body armor or protection, etc., etc. Most of this has been captured on tape.

What’s going on? Neither obvious answer is comforting. He’s either going senile as he nears 72, or he’s lying and unprepared on critical issues without realizing how easily this can be caught in a YouTube era. (Whether the duhs and ignos — those ‘undecided voters’ and angry Clintonites — will care, is another, depressing matter). Either one of these answers should disqualify  him for the White House, particularly because so many of his misstatements, confusions and subsequent lies come about issues where he claims superior experience and judgment.

But next consider all his flip flops, over torture, warrantless wiretapping, tax cuts, Social Security, abortion rights, engaging with Hamas, nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, offshore drilling, etc. Once the presumptive nominee, he said Social Security was "an absolute disgrace.’ His chief economic adviser and likely Treasury secretary called Americans a ‘nation of whiners’ and said the recession was in our heads. This from a rich man who helped deregulate banking, profited from it, then profited again from the current deregulated banking crisis. Soon after McCain reversed course to support drilling, oil industry contributions poured in.

The above is not a disjointed laundry list. When we combine it with McCain’s obvious mental fatigue, the really disturbing picture comes clear.

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Posted inPhoenix

A familiar problem still haunts downtown Phoenix

I saw a curious headline recently in the Arizona Republic: "Event Center could add life to downtown." Curious, because downtown is brimming with "event centers," from the convention center to hotel ballrooms to (I guess) what’s left of the star-crossed and badly located Bentley Projects. The story was actually sad and illustrative.

If I read it correctly (and one never knows, now that editors have become graphics clerks), the owners of relatively historic buildings at Madison and Fifth Avenue lost the business leasing their space. Now, they "are working to make the Fifth Avenue and Madison Event Center one of downtown Phoenix’s premier spots." (Editors used to prevent reporters from using embarrassing hyperbole; also, is the address in the story correct?). The "center" can be used for "weddings, bar mitzvahs, business corporate outings…" Surely, the next McCormick Place.

At least the owners aren’t tearing the buildings down, an act of city-encouraged vandalism that has devastated downtown Phoenix. But here’s a small but telling example of what holds back the center city: lack of private investment. I hate to sun on ASU’s parade of finishing one dorm tower — heavy lifting in an education-hating state, to be sure. But until a simple older set of buildings such as these on Madison are used by businesses doing daily commerce, downtown will remain an underachiever.

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Posted inPhoenix

What’s really driving Phoenix’s odd courtship of Dubai

Am I the only one who finds it strange that Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon appears to be putting so much energy into forging some kind of "economic development" agreement with Dubai? The Republic reports:

Phoenix leaders want to go global, and they’re banking on Dubai to
help secure the city’s place on the international stage. America’s
fifth-largest city wants to partner with one of the world’s
fastest-growing urban areas to attract investment, research,
transportation opportunities and more.

The pairing, Phoenix leaders hope, could bring everything from
sprawling new real-estate developments to collaborations on solar power
to a direct flight between Phoenix and Dubai, a wealthy desert
city-state between Saudi Arabia and Oman on the Persian Gulf.

It’s not that there’s no merit to the general principle. The Real Estate Industrial Complex, through its greed, monomania and, in come cases, outright corruption, has run Arizona into its worst recession in years. The state desperately needs to diversify its economy and gain foreign direct investment. And cities and metropolitan areas are the key competitive units in the global economy.

But Dubai?

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