Jon Talton: Tongue-Lashing All "The Phony Happy Jive-Talk" For Phoenix

Sure looks like the indomitable Jon Talton is hitting his stride once again with a warmed-up pen in excessive heat and dirty air all across the entire East Valley and the Phoenix Metro Area - with Mesa as the biggest suburban sprawl  in the entire nation.
Rogue Columnist

Hype rises as the heat accelerates. Talton takes it all down when he disrupts some newly-concocted "Urban Myths" about fast growth:
Growth doesn't pay for itself.
"As regular readers know, population growth brings carrying costs: Increased need for

• infrastructure
• public services
• schools
• healthcare
• not to mention the externalities — the cloaked expenses from more sprawl, destruction of the environment, pollution, etc. . . "

NOT TO MENTION? WHY LET IT TRAIL OFF THERE?
Readers of this blog can find out more by using the Searchbox on this blog - type in "Mesa Ranks" or "Phoenix Ranks" or "Arizona Ranks"
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Debunking the myths:Population increase in Phoenix can be attributed to retirees and the low-wage service jobs that cater to them.

If the local-yokel boosters — "things must be good because people keep moving here" — are having a growthgasm, they're faking it.
> Phoenix ranks as one of the worst cities for growth of its millennial population. It even ranks poorly for baby boomers. This helps explain why it has such a low percentage of its adult population with bachelor's degrees or higher among major metros. It's home to one of the largest public universities in the country but can't retain this talent base.
On the latest Brookings Institution Metro Monitor, Phoenix came in No. 74 on standard of living and No. 31 in average annual wage. Phoenix has an abysmal showing in job concentration, a critical measure of how metros perform in the most advanced technology sectors. Astoundingly, Phoenix even does poorly in so-called opportunity jobs — promising positions for those without a college degree (coming in 76th in this rigorous Federal Reserve study). In other words, this is no blue-collar heaven, even if it performs poorly in advanced, high-skilled college-degree jobs.
READ MORE > https://www.roguecolumnist.com

Taking Rogue Up-A-Notch Retiring Here In Arizona

Here's a take-off tangent to what Rogue Columnist, the multi-talented Jon Talton, (who calls both Seattle and Phoenix home and is still working hard writing real news and fiction) penned for publication two days ago. 
Simply put to start things off, your MesaZona has no idea what the word Retirement  is or what it's supposed to be . . . to some people of a certain age it's Everything Under The Sun.
All the leisure time you want and need after working all your life until the age of 65 with about 20 years to finally enjoy life just before your expiration date rolls around.
What better place to find that fantasy of a good life after work than in Arizona?
However, according to what John Talton has to say it's a different story:

Retiring in Arizona

Blogger Note: Image to the left is from Del Webb's 55+ master-planned development named Sun City. It's inter-changeable with many other age-restricted retirement enclaves that dot The Valley of The Sun everywhere.   

"Arizona is only the 29th "best state to retire in," according to a new survey by Bankrate. The consumer financial services company ranked cost of living, crime, culture, health-care quality, taxes, weather, and "well being." No 1? That would be South Dakota, followed by Utah, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Florida. The Grand Canyon State didn't even make the top 10 in weather.

If this is true, it's bad news for the retirement industry, which has been a lynchpin of the state's economy since Del Webb began Sun City in 1959. Social Security payments accounted for an astounding $1.4 trillion for nearly a million retirees in Arizona as of last year alone — not to mention the savings and other assets they bring from back home.

The survey is highly suspect, of course . . . But that doesn't mean Arizona is quite out of the woods on retirement desirability. 

I suspect retirement is becoming a much more individualized choice than in the past. The stereotype of retiring to a single-family house on a golf course in a sunny place is no longer the default option, at least for the white middle class. . . "

Talton has two options: Seattle and Phoenix

• If he's allowed to retire before he gets underground furniture, he'd probably pick Seattle. He prefers the weather. Washington is a progressive state with a strong safety net for America.
• Retirement could also work for him in Phoenix. Although he dislike the weather for six months of the year, many of his friends are in Phoenix. In hard times, he would hate to be left to the tender mercies of the Kookocracy.

Translate that: AZ is not a progressive state with a strong safety net for America.

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Take some time to think about that: What is Arizona known for? Let's tick-off a few:

Barry Goldwater who will always be saddled with the phrase "Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice" where he lost out in a left-wing bid at the Presidency getting defeated in a landslide by Lyndon Johnson 

Charles Keating and The Keating Five who gave us The Savings-and-Loan Crisis, the last big scare before The Great Recession that Arizona is barely recovering after ten years of plunges in real estate values and more big bank mortgage-financing security scandals .

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, pardoned by Trump after getting convicted of multiple counts-of-crime and abuse of elected office who's now running for election to the United States Senate. 

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Talton goes on to say that "Some boomers no doubt want the suburban championship golf "lifestyle" of their parents . . .

Another challenge: Arizona's ascendency as a retirement destination coincided with the era of pensions, healthcare provided to retirees by corporations, and a tremendous era of wealth-building by the middle class. That's gone.

• Many boomers lack the savings to retire at all (and good luck finding a good job if you're older than 55), and the prospects are even bleaker for the follow-on generations.
• Pensions are mostly gone in the private sector and 401(k)s are highly inferior.

That means the size of the cohort as potential customers for Arizona's retirement industry will be smaller and poorer. Sure, the rich can add a house in north Scottsdale or Paradise Valley to their property portfolios. But the backbone of the state's retirees-bringing-money scheme was a secure middle class. That's gone. The state will face the challenge of ever-larger numbers of elderly poor Hispanics, kept from the ladders of better jobs during their prime working years.

Finally, as this week's record-breaking heat wave makes clear, climate change is going to handle Arizona roughly. In a few decades, "home" back in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana will look infinitely better than Arizona because of...weather.

[Image to the left insert from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality]

Meanwhile, the Pacific Northwest will be generating its plans for handling climate refugees from the Southwest. That's assuming the Union is even still intact.

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Please take the time (it's just a few minutes) to read John Talton's entire post here

As usual the comments afterwards are enjoyable with civilized points-of-view expressed as well as different experiences that are a refreshing change. 

 

 

^!^Heads UP^!^ Here In Mesa May 12: Jon Talton > He's Got A New Book

Perhaps, and just perhaps or just by chance or just by good fortune, your sometimes mellow MesaZona blogger gets really over-excited and way beyond-thrilled to the bone and marrow to connect with the mysterious fictional hero David Mapstone, created in words published on pulp paper for inquisitive and curious minds who love to read local stories firsthand, removed at a distance from hard-to-face realities that

connect the past to the present to obliterate the convenient group amnesia that takes over too many chapters in Arizona's murky history. 

Talton celebrates investigative reporting and deplores the real-estate development that has damaged Phoenix as he delves into the dirty past and politics of the city.

Jon Talton Official Author Website http://www.jontalton.com/news.html

The real-life subject of Jon Talton's most recent adult fiction novel is a reporter whose professional life and car gets blown-up in-the-line of duty to report the news. At the same time some people have said he was an undercover FBI agent on a mission to uncover foul play in Phoenix - an assignment that forever ended his life.That might have been the end of the story back then for those who never caught killing a news reporter. 

Not now though: It's an open case for those curious enough to bust through an attack on the media killing the messenger with no potential catastrophic consequences to punish the perpetrators. Let's get into it

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Talton's new mystery work of fiction is readily adaptable to the big screen if any industrious media agent wants to option the rights from the author.

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Coming in May:

The Bomb Shelter, The 9th David Mapstone Mystery

"Forty years ago, a Phoenix reporter was killed by a car bomb in one of America’s most notorious crimes. Three men went to prison but was the assassination ever really solved? Did the kingpin who ordered the hit get away with it? It’s a case custom-made for David Mapstone, the historian-turned-sheriff’s deputy. But the past never rests easy in Arizona and when Mapstone’s boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta, promises to reopen the investigation, new murders commence.
The crimes are reenactments of Phoenix’s mob-riddled past, where gangsters rubbed elbows with the city’s elite amid crosscurrents of corrupt cops, political payoffs, gambling, prostitution, and murder cloaked by the sunshine of a resort city. But who is committing them now? A former soldier who is an explosives expert and deadly with a knife? A woman with screen-siren looks and extraordinary computer skills? Or someone out of Phoenix’s seamy, swinging 1970s with secrets to keep?
Mapstone will need all the help he can get. He enlists a Ph.D. candidate and Black Lives Matter activist to help him comb through secret archives of the original bombing. Mapstone's wife Lindsey, a top hacker, rejoins the Sheriff’s Office and plays a dangerous cat-and-mouse game — one that goes from the digital to the real and risky world. In the house of mirrors from the 1970s killing, they must find the key that connects the past to the present.

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Meet Jon Talton here in Mesa live and in-person:
Explore Arizona StoryFest
1 p.m. Saturday May 12th
Mesa Convention Center
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In this swiftly-paced, compelling novel, a big city is trying to keep its darkest history off limits.
Through Mapstone’s wryly witty first-person narrative, Talton expresses his genuine love of Phoenix as it once was, as well as his exasperated but tolerant attachment to the city as it is today. Clear writing, an intricate plot, and credible characters make this entry a winner.— Publishers Weekly​

"Mapstone is hampered by records still under seal but is helped by his hacker wife, Lindsey, and PhD candidate Malik Jones as he pursues the case more as cop than historian. Talton celebrates investigative reporting and deplores the real-estate development that has damaged Phoenix as he delves into the dirty past and politics of the city. The ninth entry in a justly praised series."
— Booklist