"The Arizona Taliban"
One of the commenters on the Talton post I just mentioned, “azrebel,” deserves special mention for an observation he or she made:
I have a theory. I’ll call it the Arizona Taliban.
For those of you who have not spent time in rural Arizona, let me tell you, you have no idea how much rural Arizona hates “The state of Maricopa”. They hate eveything about the valley and they hate all the millions of “ants” who live in the valley. Over the years, some of the craziest legislative measures have come from rural legislators. When you group the rural kooks along with the east Valley Mormon kooks and the west valley ultra-conservative kooks, you have a majority which can by design or ineptitude do immense damage to the state.
The Afghan Taliban regularly do things which shout out to the world – we are ignorant, we are uneducated, we are mindless religious, fanatical robots, we have guns and we will kill you all.
The Arizona Taliban, don’t use guns, they use votes.
8:33 AM
Jon Talton: How did they screw up our economy?
The former Republic columnist, now a Seattle-based author, continues his must-read meditations on the Valley and its discontents, “Phoenix 101.”
In his most recent post, he describes the diverse economy the area once had, ranging from vast swaths of agriculture to tech firms:
[B]y the late 1940s, Phoenix’s leaders knew the city must attract new industries or it couldn’t sustain its growing population. Stewards such as Frank Snell made aggressive efforts to attract “clear industry.” It paid off with AiResearch, Hughes Aircraft, Sperry Rand, General Electric and especially Motorola. Makers of automobiles and tractors were lured to establish proving grounds to test under desert conditions. (Between the mines, railroads and construction, membership was very high statewide in trade unions).
In other words, as Phoenix emerged as a populous city in the 1960s, it had an strikingly dynamic and diverse economy, with well-paying jobs — especially for a place so isolated and relatively new. Of course real estate and construction were big (along with tourism). Maryvale and Sun City were new. The groves of Arcadia were being turned into subdivisions. Land fraud was rampant — I remember vividly one man who defrauded my grandmother, a real estate agent, being sent to prison; the Arizona Republic’s martyred reporter Don Bolles earned his chops on exposing such schemes. But real estate was a consequence of the real economy. Real estate wasn’t the economy.
You know what’s coming:
Much changed from when I left in 1978 and returned in 2000. By that point, the Phoenix economy, while still containing the remnants of the old chip makers plus Intel, had degenerated into a massive real-estate Ponzi scheme plus some call centers. Everything depended on adding 100,000 more people a year. Aside from this, the metro economy couldn’t match up to the diversity, quality, dynamism or incomes of its peers. Arizona, after tracking the national average in per-capita income as late as the 1980s, consistently lost ground, a trend that continued during the 2000s “boom.”
The balance of his very long and persuasive post details meticulously how that change happened.
You can read it here.
The complete Phoenix 101 archive is here.
8:25 AM
"Arizona is sui generis"
Jon Talton reflects on Ken Silverstein’s Harpers story examining Arizona’s curious polity:
Silverstein writes, “Arizonans are generally moderate…And yet Arizona politics are disproportionately controlled by ultraconservatives.” This is one of many ways where Arizona is close to being sui generis. “Arizonans” now comprise a large number of retirees and other outsiders with little interest in the state except as a sunny place to use up for their personal convenience. Apathy is widespread, as are those working multiple low-wage jobs just to survive. In most cases, those who don’t vote “no,” simply don’t vote — and that extends to Hispanic citizens. Those who vote now are mostly not moderate. […] I can think of few states with such a self-destructive electorate — Kansas doesn’t even come close.
Talton concludes:
Similarly, the influence of the Mormon church, which Silverstein mentions, is very different in Arizona than in even Utah. The anti-immigrant Jim Crow SB 1070 runs counter to LDS teaching and I have had several Mormon acquaintances privately denounce it. But privately. The East Valley LDS operates by its own cruel rules, very different from Utah and not appetizing to America upon even passing examination.
PHXated’s take on the Harpers story is here.
8:08 AM
Jon Talton on SB 1070
Talton articulates something that’s been bubbling under the discussion biut hasn’t been laid out so clearly:
The measure was always a crafty weapon to maintain power, keep the base hysterical and intensely involved, sow fear and defeatism among Mexican-Americans and put Dems on the spot. As I’ve written, the bill was never intended to shut down illegal immigration — the state economy and not a few of the businesses that support the white-right would collapse. It is a brilliant tactic, like guns, God, gays and abortion — a faux existential threat that must never be really solved because it is so politically profitable.
Emphasis added.
12:26 PM
Jon Talton: The return of a native (of sorts)
Talton, a former Republic columnist and now a Seattle-based journalist and mystery writer, maintains a blog that has quickly become one of PHXated’s favorites: Rogue Columnist.
He’s back in town visiting, and has been posting some impressions. The first graf has a lot in it:
Traveling around Arizona, it’s difficult to imagine how the state can turn itself around, even if a majority understood the term. For most, a turnaround would mean a return to 40-percent population growth every decade, more sprawl, more “active adult resort living — with championship golf!,” more spec retail development and office “parks” to house the real-estate outfits, mortgage boiler rooms and call centers. The dirty secret is that as an economy, Arizona outside of Phoenix and Tucson is “the Third World,” as a prominent booster economist once told me, not for attribution. An overstatement of course, although the Third World also has its gated enclaves of the super-rich and depends heavily on tourism. But among the states, Arizona including Phoenix and Tucson performed dismally on almost any measure of economic well-being except for housing starts and population growth, the latter a mixed indicator that carries huge costs, too. And this was before the Great Recession.
The rest is here.
1:02 PM