Arizona's First Political Blog

E-mail Anonymous Mike at zonitics4-at-yahoo.com

By Anonymous Mike, pseudonymously.

 
9/11

Last year on this day I wrote a long post on my personal impressions of that day. I'm not going to do that again except to say that the sorrow and rage of that day still burns.

Like last year I will point you to a story about a man who died that day, one of those people you probably never heard of before but when you read his story you will wonder why you haven't. It's a story of a life well-lived.

The link is to the article in the New Yorker, The Real Heroes are Dead: A Love Story and the book which is based on the article is Heart of a Soldier

Take a 1/2 hour and read the article, you'll be glad you did. If you get a chance to read the book, you'll be even the better for it because it closes with the following:

The book closes with the words of Hill, who remained Rescorla's best friend until his death. His haunting words form a fitting tribute to Rescorla:

"One of my life's biggest regrets is that I couldn't have been with Rick at the moment of his great challenge and crisis of his life. Then again, maybe it was so destined, because if I didn't survive, there would be nobody left to tell the story.

"Kipling wrote that 'all men should count with you, but none too much.' I failed there. Rick counted as the world to me.

"Somebody cautioned that if a person or thing means the world to you, and you lose that person or thing, then you have lost the world. I lost the world when Rick died."

Never forget
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:10 PM

 
Golden D'Ohmer

One of the thoroughly enjoyable parts of this college football season is watching Notre Dame get its collective butt kicked.

I wasn't always this way about the Fighting Irish. I used to think what was good for them was good for college football, sort of like we all needed a storied program to carry the torch.

The straw that broke the camel's back was their treatment of Tyrone Willingham. Now we in the PAC know Mr. Willingham quite well given his coaching stints at Stanford and Washington. A good man and a pretty good coach. He took the Notre Dame job after the school ran into the George O'Leary fiasco. He wasn't the first choice for the job, but received accolades for his work during the first season. The next two years were sub-par and despite Notre Dame's reputation for giving coaches 5 years (see Gerry Faust), Willingham was given the boot. Hero to goat in a little over 24 months, never had the chance to suit up his own senior class of recruits.

In comes Charlie Weis, a man who was never a head coach above the high school level. His first season, using players recruited from the Willingham era, he racks up a first year record one win shy of the guy they just fired. His reward? They give a man a 10-year extension and proclaim him a minor coaching deity. The next year, still largely using recruits from the Willingham Era, he goes 10-3 but that includes 2 season-ending butt whippings.

This year Weis starts 0-2 and despite his reputation as an offensive genius, his team has failed to score a single offensive touchdown.

Given the precedent set by the Willingham firing, I not only expect Weis to be fired at the end of the year but forced to use every last dollar of his multi-million dollar buy-out to purchase every piece of writing that mention his name in the same sentence as the word "genius."
posted by Anonymous Mike at 11:27 AM

 
The Argument Against Phil Gordon

Phil Gordon is going to win re-election tomorrow as Mayor of Phoenix. It's never smart to get in the way of a juggernaut and say he shouldn't be re-elected, but I'll take a crack at it.

First of all I want to say that Phil Gordon is a pretty decent guy and all-in-all not a bad mayor. We know he won't steal the family silver, be caught smoking crack with women of ill-repute, or any other scandalous mischief involving a "wide stance." We know that Phoenix will be fairly well-run over the next 4 years; the garbage will be collected, the police won't be shaking down donut shops, and our streets won't be overrun by packs of wild dogs.

Such a man, based on that criteria alone, is worthy of re-election. Certainly the local media thinks so if only because I bet 99% of Phoenix residents have no idea if his opponent, Steve Lory, is actually a real person or not.

Let me try to give an argument, no not about the existence of Mr. Lory, but why we shouldn't give Gordon 4 more years.

First let's look at Phoenix itself. I'm also willing to bet that no one moved here for the 24/7 night-life or a neat-o downtown; those who wanted that moved to Chicago or New York. You come here to raise a family, the climate, to live in the Southwest... not so you could live a car-free existence. After all you don't move to New York for the wide-open vistas and to have a 2-car garage. Horses for courses as they say.

I'm willing to bet that most Phoenicians aren't looking for excitement from their municipal government but rather want safe street and good city management. Call it Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for Local Government but if you cannot get the basics right then you aren't going to be able to do the extras. Put another way to my good friends, if you cannot make a good donut then it doesn't matter how delicious your filling will be.

Safe streets. As Robert Robb reported yesterday, while Phoenix may have a violent crime rate 21% below the big-city average it has a property crime rate that was 28% above. Yet Robb reports that Gordon refuses to address the issue publicaly. Also while violent crimes may be below the big city average, the overall numbers of such crimes have been trending upwards under Gordon's Administration.

Well-managed government. At the same time violent crime has been increasing and property crime remains above-average, Gordon has done little to fight the problem. Ratio of residents to sworn officers has declined approximately 12% since 1999. The last 2 years of that drop has occurred while the city budget has increased by more than 30%.

So if the money hasn't gone to increase the police where has it gone? In part it went downtown. The recent bond election allocated a lion's share of the money to downtown projects highlighted by the strange decision of Phoenix to build a campus for a state supported university. If you go through the debates of the bond committee that dealt with police projects, you find the participants trying to find ways of funding needed police substations in the northeast and southwest parts of the city. These are the high growth areas of the city which lie upwards of 20 miles from the downtown area; with the exception of sporting events what are the odds of these people riding the light rail or even visiting downtown? Yet vitally needed projects in those far-flung areas went on hold to pay for ASU Downtown and other projects which those residents will rarely visit.

The other part of a well-managed city involves light rail. I know Mayor Gordon wasn't responsible for either the initial starter line or for the extensions approved in 2004 but he is mayor while the first part of the system is being built. I've been beating this topic to death and I will continue to beat it into the next life, but light rail whether it's an operational success or not will fundamentally change the way businesses operate along its route due to its partial blocking of vehicular access. Go in to the retail outlets along Central and Camelback, especially those which aren't on corners where there are stop lights, and they are pessimistic about survival. Some aren't going to make it until the end of construction and those who do are hoping, praying is more like it, that the light rail will make up for the business they will no longer get into their parking lot. In fact one owner said very bluntly "I don't know one person on this street who thinks light rail is a good thing."

In other words the shoe is going to drop and drop hard and that soon-to-be empty Target at 7th Ave. & Camelback is going to be the first of many shuttered storefronts. Some of them, especially on Central close to downtown where there are condo developments will be filled by new businesses, but I doubt as you move away from that core that there will be many rushing to fill the void.

So when December 2008 comes around and Mayor Gordon takes the inaugural ride on the light rail system, I am willing to bet he will see a devastated commercial district along the majority its route; a phenomena that will take years for it to recover. Publicly he will say it is a surprise and point to all of his past efforts with Valley Metro to help those businesses. Privately he will know it's a feature, and not a bug, of the system.

So the argument against 4 more years is not that Mayor Gordon is a bad guy. It's not he has had made catastrophically made decisions. The argument is that he has ignored developing problems, stuffed them under the rug so that someone else will have to deal with them after 2011. The argument is that he has ignored the basics of good government that we have taken for granted in Phoenix, ignored a rising crime rate by not giving the police the resources that it needs, and overseen a rapid rise in spending while calling for new taxes. He has sustained and deepened the effort to take money out of the outlying areas through tax breaks and bond projects and direct them toward quixotic projects downtown.

That's not good management, that's not good leadership, that's not a good reason to give him 4 more years.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 11:24 AM

 
The Hsu-casaurus

So what does this say about America?

Man is convicted of fraud, escapes country before sentencing, goes to Hong Kong

Several years later re-enters country, sets up shop in Silicon Valley as an investor, police are stumped about his whereabouts.

Becomes prominent donor to key Democrats including Eliot Spitzer, Andrew Cuomo, and Hillary Clinton. Becomes a member of the board of trustees of the New School. Police still cannot find the elusive fugitive.

Man's whereabouts are finally located. He turns himself in, posts $2 million bail, and is ordered to turn in passport because after all he has been known to flee the country to escape justice. Says he cannot find the passport, is allowed to walk, and then doesn't show up for his court date.

Police are no doubt stumped.

The man Norman Hsu.

Now what is it with the Clintons, campaign finance irregularities, and people with Chinese connections?

Also where did Hsu get the money?
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:13 PM

 
Holy Guacamole!

I know what the next Arizona Bloggerama event will be, a night at the movies to go see Beowulf:

The warrior Beowulf must fight and defeat the monster Grendel who is terrorizing towns, and later, Grendel's mother, who begins killing out of revenge.

Now go to IMDB and see who is playing Grendel's mother... or click here to find the trailer to see what Mom looks like.

I bet the movie is awful, but then again that didn't stop me from seeing Catwoman
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:38 PM

 
Horse Racing

Turf Paradise may not open until next month, but horse race coverage is already big in the AZ Republic.

Leave aside my previous post about the Republic's coverage of Phil Gordon, a man up for re-election next week, because the biggest coverage the paper gives him during the last week of the race is about his future ambition.

We all know Phil Gordon is going to win re-election and win big, really big. However is the purpose of the major newspaper in town to treat the electoral campaign as a celebration of personal triumph or as a time for community reflection?

Look to this blog post by Republic reporter Casey Newton titled "Mayor Reaches $1 Million Campaign Goal"

In the post we not only find out that the Mayor has reached his $1 million campaign goal, we find out this his sole challenger has only raised around $19,000. In addition Mayor Gordon has already spent more than $600,000 of it. The post goes on to list what various city council candidates have raised as well. You can see who's ahead in the race for cash, who's behind, and who still has money in the bank. All very nice.... who's winning and who still has something left for the stretch run. I felt like Mr. Newton was announcing the results of a telethon.

I might have missed it, but here's what Newton or anyone else in the Republic has yet to report or comment on:

1) Where did Gordon raise so much money from? Newton must have looked at the campaign finance reports in detail. Unlike other cities of comparable size, such as Houston and Philadelphia, Phoenix doesn't put such reports online but the Republic does have people on the payroll to go down to City Hall and get the paper copies. The Business Journal of Phoenix pointed out in March that there were a large number of real estate developers on Gordon's contributor list though I would expect that would hold true for any major politician in Arizona, but what about those who have business before the City?

2) Where's the money going? Newton points out that Gordon has spent more than $600,000 but you would be hard pressed to find a TV spot or radio ad put out by his campaign.

Hey if the Republic is going to treat politics as a sporting event and only focus on who's winning and losing then at least they can provide us with a box score
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:58 PM

 
The Dog That Didn't Bark

There was an article on the front page of the Arizona Republic concerning the political future of Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. I mention it, not because of any substance to his ambition, but because it's rare for the paper to discuss Gordon the politician, as opposed to Gordon the officeholder, on its front page.

What's strange about that paucity of front-page coverage is not just that Gordon is probably the top local elected official int he Valley, it's the fact that he's up for re-election next week for the top job in the 5th largest city in the country.
posted by Anonymous Mike at 12:46 PM

 
As College Football Season Get Underway

A story about the situation new ASU coach Dennis Erickson left behind at University of Idaho:

The Vandals haven't had a winning season since 1999 and are down in numbers after Akey kicked 17 players off the team for academic failure or for various disciplinary reasons. But that hasn't tempered his optimism as his team returns 12 starters.

I don't remember reading about that in the local papers.

As a friend of mine set with a shrug when Erickson's hiring was announced, "We already have shootings, academic failure, and there are probably recruiting violations galore and we're still not winning; at least Erickson will give us the wins to go along with the thuggery"
posted by Anonymous Mike at 10:43 PM