Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Ideas have consequences

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords in suburban Tucson on Saturday brought many things to mind, some echoed on the weekend Rogue thread. One of my police buddies told me, "Is there any doubt?" that this crime is the fruit of the Kookocracy and its gun love. "The Kooks passed an insane law that says anyone but a convict can carry a concealed weapon. With no background and no training. I treat everyone, especially Kooks and gang bangers, as if they are carrying a 30-round Glock under their shirt." I thought about the death threats I regularly received when I was a columnist at the Arizona Republic from 2000 to 2007. I was pilloried with violent criticism. My house was photographed and placed on a prominent right-wing Web site (trying to make me out a hypocrite for blasting the Real Estate Industrial Complex while doing well with my own real-estate "investment"; in fact, the 97-year-old house was in the Midtown neighborhood where I grew up and we bought it intending to live there for the rest of our lives, not flip it in two years for a profit). A deranged individual could have used that photo as a springboard to something dangerous. After I appeared on a radio show, a friend in law enforcement was so troubled by hearing one caller to the program that he came to a book signing specifically to watch over me.

As Soleri pointed out, the false equivalency argument began almost immediately, even though virtually all the politically motivated violence in recent years has come from the right. More about that in a moment. By no means let us rush to judgment — but that shouldn't become an excuse to never reach it. My biggest reaction is how this event was very tied to Arizona. When I came back to Phoenix, I'd been a controversial columnist taking on the toughest issues in Denver, Dayton, Cincinnati and Charlotte, with my work carried nationally on the New York Times News Service and others. Yet I had never received a death threat. The climate in Arizona even in 2000 was different: More vicious and threatening, more abusive and thuggish, more filled with us-vs-them hate and paranoia.

The shooting also caused me to recall an exchange I had with my grandmother nearly half a century ago, in another America. In full thrall of cowboys and Indians, I asked her why now, in Phoenix, people didn't go around with six-shooters on their hips — a nice idea in my childish mind. My grandmother, born on the frontier and raised in Arizona Territory, said, "Men wore guns then so we wouldn't have to carry them today."

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Posted inPhoenix 101: History

A Phoenician’s take on Tucson

800px-Ronstadt_house_6th_Avenue_Tucson_from_SE_1

The Ronstadt house on Sixth Avenue in Tucson.

Early in the 20th century, Phoenix surpassed Tucson in population and never looked back. The old joke: Tucson hates Phoenix and Phoenix doesn't pay any attention to Tucson, which makes the Old Pueblo hate Phoenix even more. I don't claim to be a Tucson expert, but a reader new to the city asked to learn more. So what follows is a Phoenician's idiosyncratic take on Arizona's second city.

Tucson is much older than Phoenix, having been founded by the Spanish (led by an Irishman in the pay of the Spanish crown) in 1775, a tenuous foothold in Apache country. It was a part of Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (otherwise, the border would have been as close as Goodyear — how'd that sit with the white-right Midwesterners?). Thus, Tucson always wore its Hispanic side with ease and pride. Tucson got the first main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1880s and for decades was the most populous city in the territory and young state. It was also a bastion of the Democratic Party, long after the state as a whole turned Republican. This was Mo Udall, Dennis DeConcini and Raul Castro country.

Growing up as a child of the Cold War, I knew Tucson would be a first-strike target in a "counterforce" nuclear exchange, because of the Titan II missile silos that surrounded the city. My first visits were on the train. My mother and I would board the remains of the once-grand Imperial, now a mail train with one coach, at Union Station, and travel south. We would spend the day in downtown Tucson and take the still crack Sunset Limited back home that evening. Early memories: The Santa Catalinas towered over the city in a way no mountains did Phoenix. Tucson was dry, a desert city, so different from the (then) lush oasis of Phoenix. Downtown was busy and vibrant, but no more so than Phoenix. I wasn't impressed.

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Posted inPhoenix

How Arizona can feel good

Random observations from my trip to Arizona:

'Zonies, particularly Phoenicians and the Real Estate Industrial Complex, are always after cheap praise. "Make the community feel good about itself," as the diktat from the Arizona Republic to its "information center" goes. This is usually a license for boosterish fraud and an extended holiday from reality. Real accomplishment must be earned. I saw some of that on display.

    * This past weekend's inaugural Tucson Festival of Books was a wonder. Sponsored by the Arizona Daily Star (what a concept: a newspaper supporting reading and printed media) and the University of Arizona, it was the first big-time book festival to happen in the state. The crowds were large and enthusiastic (people even came to see me speak and sign books). Big-name authors came from around the country. What was most amazing was the cohesive community support behind the event, from the array of corporate and philanthropic sponsors to the army of smiling volunteers. Tucson took its best-practices from the world-class Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and gave the state something magical. It's also important: a community push to improve literacy in a county where one out of five residents is functionally illiterate. Eat your heart out Phoenix.

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Posted inPhoenix

Apparently the road to perdition won’t be widened

I shed no tears if the TIME initiative doesn’t make the November ballot in Arizona. This misbegotten transportation measure, backed by Gov. Janet Napolitano and the "business leaders" somehow couldn’t competently amass enough legitimate signatures on petitions to make it through the secretary of state’s office.

The measure promised $42.6 billion in transportation "improvements" over the next 30 years, paid for by a one-cent hike in the sales tax. It’s difficult to find specifics; I could find no Web site by the supposedly "powerful" coalition backing TIME (Transportation & Infrastructure Moving AZ’s Economy). In newspaper articles, the measure promised rail service between Phoenix and Tucson, but apparently only 18 percent of the monies to be raised would have gone to rail and transit.

In other words, this would have been more roads and freeways to empower sprawl.

The "tell" about TIME came earlier this year, when Napolitano was accused of making a secret deal with the (genuinely) powerful Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, agreeing not to tax development in exchange for the association’s "support" of the measure. More sprawl, and paid for disproportionately by lower-income Arizonans.

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