Posted inPhoenix

In Arizona, small quivers of an impending quake?

Despite the mandate to "say something positive about the community," sometimes the Arizona Republic can’t avoid saying something truthful about the community. Today there’s an ominous story about emerging evidence that in-migration "slowed sharply last year."

This matters because "growth" is the overwhelming (legal) economic driver of the state economy. There’s tourism, too — hardly a way to sustain a populous, urbanized region in the 21st century. The few other assets, such as the chip plants, would be big for, say, Tulsa. But for a region Phoenix’s size, the technology sector is actually smaller as a proportion of the economy than it was 20 years ago.

That leaves "growth" — meaning population growth, not growth of venture capital, IPOs, Ph.D.s, patents, per-capita income, foreign direct investment, research grants, college graduates, etc. If this even slows for long, the urban Arizona economy will face a recession the likes it hasn’t seen in modern times.

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Posted inPhoenix

Dreaming of more sprawl in Arizona

For as long as anyone can remember, the Arizona Republic has been part of the big booster engine in Phoenix. Lately, under pressure from falling revenue and corporate owners, the paper’s bosses have demanded that the news “say something positive about the area.” So it wasn’t surprising to see a Feb. 18th article pimping the Williams-Gateway hinterlands, nominally a part of Mesa, as a “brand new city” on the way.

Jim Tinson, identified by the article as a Yale-educated, New York-based architect and urban planner working on the project, said “This is an opportunity of international significance.” The idea is to create an “aerotropolis,” with the city surrounding the “maturing” Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.

The article goes on, “Planners stress that the current economic downturn and housing slump would not affect the overall long-term vision, which they expect to unfold over decades and through multiple economic cycles.”

Of course, the planners have no stake in telling unpleasant truths to the power that pays them.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Lies, damned lies, and withdrawal from Iraq

It’s easy to beat up John McCain for wanting to stay the bloody course in Iraq, indeed that America might have troops there for next 100 years. McCain’s strategy won’t be merely more of the same. It will be a push way down the slippery slope. But there’s much wishful thinking and dissembling on the part of the Democrats, too.

If Iraq really were another Vietnam, withdrawal would be without serious geopolitical consequences. Yet we shouldn’t forget the moral consequences of our withdrawal, with millions of South Vietnamese facing a brutal takeover and thousands who worked for us facing far worse. Hmong tribesmen who supported the CIA’s secret war in Laos are still on the run, abandoned by the superpower that so cavalierly used them. We should have gotten out. We shouldn’t forget that the cost was high.

But Iraq is not Vietnam, a fact that should be remembered every time a Democrat drives home from an anti-war rally in his SUV.

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